Another Vegan meal of twigs and berries. This time, in honor of Christmas and shared with Jason and Haruka:
Roasted tofurky and root vegetables, mashed potatoes, golden gravy and the ubiquitous greens. This time of year we eat greens at every meal.
 What we thought would happen This may be the last time I write about Oilseed Community. For years we thought Oilseed would die when the bulldozers came but that isn’t what happened. In 2001, when the original lease was negotiated, it opened up much-needed affordable housing and provided a revenue stream to support the broader community we call the Bubble. Since then, Oilseed Community has been home to college students, farm and fuel interns, and people who worked at The Abundance Foundation, Piedmont Biofuels and Chatham Marketplace. Oilseed provided a soft landing portal into the Bubble. Abandoned houses on land awaiting development became community housing and revenue. It was a triple win. The developer was happy. The tenants were happy. And the Bubble flourished. Bob and I moved to Oilseed in November of 2007 after approval by the community. Because Oilseed was more about community than cheap rooms, we were screened like everyone else. We were very grateful to move into the trailer, which we cleaned up and renamed “Camelina.” On many an afternoon, it wasn’t unusual to open our door to find see either Matt or Greg and the fresh, new face of a prospective tenant. During the two years we lived in Camelina, we formed lasting friendships with many wonderful people including Simon and Jessica, Link, Matt, Dana, Greg, Kathryn, Jack and Adah. Revenue from Oilseed rents fueled the bubble, helping pay for Biofuels Coop remediation projects and helping Lyle and Tami keep their many philanthropic projects afloat. None of the original tenants live at Oilseed today. We bought Trouts Farm. Greg moved to Michigan. Simon and Jessica bought a home in Durham, Link in Siler City, Matt in Bynum. We all fledged. Although we know many of the new Oilseeders, I have yet to meet them all. Most of them are snugly plugged into the bubble. But sadly, the Oilseed revenue stream that used to benefit the bubble is over, dammed up by the tenants themselves. In a bold move, the new crop of Oilseeders re-negotiated their lease with the developers. When I first heard about this, I assumed they had discussed their intentions with the current lease holders. Given that assumption, I accepted that they were taking their destiny into their own hands. Empowering themselves. It sounded like a positive move except for the part about removing all financial support from the bubble. Making payments instead to the developer when they weren’t asking for money seemed like a waste. But hey, if this was the new direction of Oilseed, who was I to protest? Come to find out, no one knew except for the tenants themselves. It was a surprise to everyone else. The bold move began looking more like a mutiny. We all assumed Oilseed would die at the hands of the bulldozers one day. None of us could have guessed it would have come at the hands of the community itself. Poor Little Vegetarians! Here’s what we had to eat tonight: twigs and berries.
Jason and Haruka’s incredibly sweet and nutty Koshihikari rice, freshly harvested greens with radicchio from Matt and Jenn’s Dickinson College Farm, pan-fried quorm “chicken” patties topped with Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce. The only things keeping this meal from being vegan is the rehydrated egg white, whey protein concentrate and buttermilk powder in the quorn patties. I’ve been happily making the smaller ecological footprint of a vegetarian lifestyle for about ten years now and it was only a matter of time before I felt inspired to shrink that footprint further. I’ve received many little nudges over the years, from Woody Harrelson’s 2003 movie, “Go Further” to recently released “Forks over Knives.” Lately, I’ve been admiring Jenny’s raw food choices when we eat lunch at the office and daughter Amy has been sharing gleanings from the Natural Chef program at Central Carolina Community College. But it was a series of conference workshops that supplied the push I needed to try on a smaller sized shoe.  Amy, Bob and Eric share a moment at the conference. Bob and I attended Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s 26th annual Sustainable Agriculture Conference for the first time a couple of weekends ago. For years, we’d been hearing about the incredible local food movement synergy radiating from the conference. This year, the conference was being held in Durham so we decided to go. We found the conference as exhilarating as advertised. Most of our friends and local food movement heroes were there; Jason and Haruka, Lyle and Tami, Jenny, Jennie, Kate, Carol, Stevie, Jessie, Tess, Hillary, John, Don, Jane, Jonah, Tasha, Anna, Adam, Betsy, Linda Watson, Eric Henry, Doug Jones. Two great days of hi’s, hugs and networking! The workshop choices were impressive. So much so that the topic in the halls was usually, “Which workshop are you going to next?” and “Oh! I’d really like to go to ‘Fun with Mushrooms’ but I also wanted to catch Tony Cleese’s workshop” Ultimately, I chose five out of fifty-six workshops and traded workshop highlights with friends during breaks and meals. I picked:
Now, this may all sound like rather dry material but I’m here to report that what happened was pure magic! My eyes were opened wider than I thought possible and I actually heard angels sing during some of the presentations. Seriously. Haruka and I kept catching each others eyes and squeezing our hands during Will Hooker’s Urban Permaculture workshop. He told the inspiring story of how he and his wife transformed a tiny urban home and yard into a haven, playground, and food producing garden with fish pond, gazebo, arbors and more. Ditto with Jason’s wonderfully entertaining story of how he and Haruka were inspired by Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka’s to grow organic rice using the natural farming method. Bob and I found the panel on Organic Bread Flour sobering. I had no idea how much work went into the growing and processing of grain and it made me question my flour-dependent footprint. This is the same epiphany I had when I realized how many pounds of grain go into producing a pound of beef. I now realize how many man hours go into producing a pound of grain and how many more into a pound of flour! Surely, I can’t need that much flour to satisfy my protein and carbohydrate needs? Especially when much of what I bake with is unbleached bread flour, which by definition has had the protein milled out! Better I meet my nutritional needs with sweet potatoes and chick peas which I love every bit as much as seitan sandwiches. And then there was permaculturist Zev Friedman, self-admitted wild food vagabond, who introduced me to the concept of an interconnected food web. He suggested we cultivate food groups that work together, observe and replicate natural patterns, and learn to harvest the bounty that already exists. Zev pointed out that Monsanto will never be able to patent all the seeds in the forests, making yet another case for reducing our dependency on corn, wheat and soy.
It occurred to me that our culture is at the same pivotal point as the Mayan culture was at the end of their empire. It isn’t a mystery what happened to this vibrant civilization that lay buried for centuries deep in the rain forests of Central America. When population and resource demand got too unwieldy, the Mayans increasingly found themselves unable to weather drought and other natural threats to their corn crop. Those at the top continued to eat well while making heads roll down the sides of their pyramids. Many of the rest stuck around, hoping things would get better, too afraid of the unknown to leave civilization as they knew it. And some of the Mayan people simply walked off into the jungle and created a new way of life. These were likely the ancestors of the resourceful and confident Mayans we worked with in Belize. Rolando and Nikki and their families knew how to get virtually everything they needed from the forests, from building materials, to medicine, to food. As Bob and I walk away from the ambient culture, our footprints continue to shrink. Changes are already becoming apparent in our home menus. One step at a time, I am steering food choices towards whole and raw foods, choosing rice over pasta, salad over sauté’s, fruit over juice and chick pea patties over bread. Smaller footprint, here we come!
But, as I discovered with mangoes and peaches – when you move around the planet, what the left hand taketh away, the right hand replaces with something equally good. Peaches are one of my top five favorite fruits and peach pie remains my number one most favored and scrumptious dessert. When we moved to the tropics where there are no peaches, I discovered mangoes and decided early on that they were a suitable substitution. And the green coconut pie. Well, that was something from another world! Back when we were managing Mountain Equestrian Trails in Belize, we were often amused at the short sightedness of some of our guests. One lady asked us point blank, “How do you live without strawberries?” Another sighed at dinner before announcing that “Someday, I’m going to go to the REAL rain forest.” “Real rain forest?” I asked, “What would you find there that you aren’t finding here in this rain forest?” “You know,” she said “where there are orchids hanging from the trees.” Our assitant manager, Rolando was seething, “Step into the forest with me now and I’ll show you all the orchids you want.” he said through his teeth. Never mind the enormous cubic yard of oncidium cascading from the Stinky Toe tree beside the barn.
As a child, I recall my father driving me to Jersey through downtown Manhattan on a nippy fall day and while paused at the light, a vendor walking over to the car window and handing my dad a cone of piping hot roasted chestnuts in exchange for a couple of dollars. In case you don’t know, heaven on earth is a paper cone of hot chestnuts to share with your dad! Now, I love chestnuts and always have. They are fluffy and nutty and sweet – almost like cake. The perfect balance of savory and sweet, protein and carbohydrate. In fact, chestnuts have a very similar taste and texture to breadfruit as it turns out. Every Thanksgiving of my childhood, I would sit at my Nana’s huge dining room table with her other seven grandkids awaiting the arrival of her incredible chestnut dressing. Never mind the turkey. And most years since then, I’ve made a point of bringing chestnut dressing to the Thanksgiving table. Hard pressed to find local chestnuts, I’ve had to buy expensive imported chestnuts, many of which were inedible, having molded from weeks of travel and storage. Alas, local chestnuts were unheard of. The mighty American Chestnut tree, once ubiquitous in North America, all but disappeared after a blight was accidentally introduced and billions of trees died from the foreign disease. Happily, chestnuts are making a come back in our area. A few weeks ago, Jason and Haruka discovered that Esta and Murray of Cohen Farm were selling chestnuts at the Farmer’s Market. They happily picked up a couple of pounds for us which we promptly roasted. Bob and I ate chestnuts to our heart’s content and froze a pound for Thanksgiving. Hoping for more, I asked Haruka to shop for us again but alas, the Cohen crop had all been sold. And then two days ago Lyle and Arlo drove up out of the blue with a beautiful basket of chestnuts from their own tree down the road. I practically cried! “These are for us?!” These are exactly the kind of neighbors one can only hope for. Lyle had thought to plant chestnut trees on his property years ago and now they were bearing fruit. He and Tami are happy to share and willing to plant trees and wait years for the payoff. That’s when I had my moment of clarity. Chestnuts are food from the gods in the same way as breadfruit is. In the same way as strawberries, mangoes and peaches are. Every region has it’s own bliss. It’s up to us to seek it out and embrace it.
For a couple of days, many of us held our breath, at least those of us who knew why others might see us as a target. Maybe, our leaders would wake up and throttle down our war machine! Perhaps they would finally realize that violence only begets more violence. Slap me, I’ll slap you back – it only ends when someone stops playing the game. Within the week, we had our answer. We heard the rattling of sabers and knew that the Commander-in-chief would soon order up more blood to feed the military-industrial-congressional complex. Ten years later, more than 100,000 innocents are dead and the machine continues to grind on. It’s bigger than us and this is disheartening, but even more distressing is how many of us have bought into war and an astronomical military budget (which, by the way has forced us into debt beyond our nastiest nightmares) as a necessary way of life. It appears there’s no stopping this runaway train! Our economy is a giant ponzi scheme and the word from the top is “It’s unstoppable, there’s no turning back and we’re gonna ride it to the end.” This morning I read the following statement in the New York Times:
 Need we ask why this man is flipping us off? Unbelievable! Apparently our financial system is so totally broken and we consumers (er, I mean citizens) are so totally accepting of this that Bernanke can basically threaten collapse if we try to turn this sinking ship around. And no one is taking him away in a straight jacket! Or handcuffs. As proof of how crazy things have gotten, I am awash in credit card offers so that I can slide ever deeper into debt along with the Federal Government. My email spam filters are doing a pretty good job of filtering out crap but I am battling snail mail spam tooth and nail with little to no progress. I send a letter to direct marketing every couple of months in an attempt to remove our names and address from marketing lists but the junk mail keeps on appearing in our mail box. This used to work. Just a few years ago, the new junk mail was addressed to new forms of our names and address and I was able to routinely fend them off with a new letter. Not so these days. Despite my letters, I continue to receive mail to the very same addresses. Our good friend Shaun on Maui taught us a great trick. Whenever he got a postage free return envelope in his junk mail, he took some of his trash, inserted it into the envelope and mailed it. I’m pretty sure this little trick helped him win the Zero Waste Challenge. Last month, I took some unwanted advertising coupons to the post office window and asked if there was any way to stop this monthly wad of odd sized junk and they said, “No, we’re required to put that in your box.” You probably get the same kind of thing, a loose insert with lots of different sized coupons, envelopes and offers from local and not so local advertisers. It’s so easy to get real mail shuffled in with this pile that I have to look through the whole mess just in case, before I take it to the recycling bin.
Not surprisingly I reached a fully automated line which did not respond to my repeated attempts to reach a human being by pushing “0″. I hung in there, stating and spelling my name and address, listening to the computer repeat what I’d said until they asked for my social security number. “No!” I said into the phone to which the computer replied, “We did not understand your answer, please state your social security number.” I couldn’t help myself. I answered again, “No, I will not give you my social security number!” The computer repeated itself and I hung up. This morning, I googled “chase slate scam” and a few other choice word combinations to see if these bastards have been reported to the Better Business Bureau and/or the Federal Trade Commission. And to find an address for them so that I can report them because, of course the mail itself does not come with any form of return address. While I didn’t find an address nor any hint or mention of a scam, I did find the online version of the automated opt out line I called on Monday. With high hopes, I filled out the online form, skipping the (not required) social security, birthday and phone number fields and opted out of financial offers like the crap I’ve been getting from Chase. On the one hand, I’m kicking myself to daring to hope and on the other I’m looking forward to the day I stop getting credit card offers in my mail. In the meantime, I’m stuffing garbage into their return envelopes and mailing them back. It’s futile, I know but it makes me smile nevertheless.  Jon Voight, hurtling to his death from the 1985 film "Runaway Train" I turned fifty seven on June 4th and my birthday wish was this: to work less and play more. I promised myself I’d continue my transformation from human doing to human being by reducing my To Do list and taking more time for the things I enjoy. In short, I vowed to become a sub-optimizer. More of a ninety percenter than a hundred percenter. The kind of person who knows when to say, “enough!”
Riding is one of those things you don’t realize you need until you do it again. Akin to how good it feels when you stop banging your head against the wall. Sure, my life seemed healthy and balanced, but it was lacking some of the luster. It was only after I joined up with Peg that I knew I had been suffering low level disgruntlement for some time. It isn’t just the riding. It’s the horses, the camaraderie, being out in the woods noticing new plants and animals, telling stories and jokes and sharing tick attacks. It’s about taking time for myself. That smell of dried horse poo on my shoes is proof positive that sometimes I come first.
On that particular day I had abandoned my To Do list. I was going with the flow in a brave departure from the norm. Bob was hosting an all-day board retreat at our house so I packed the car with anything I thought I might need and began looking for something fun to do. I wandered next door to see if Haruka fancied a walk in the woods. I didn’t find Haruka so I called Janice and found that she was of the same mind so I met her at the college walking path.
As we rode, I told Peg how I had left my To Do list at home because I was becoming a sub-optimizer and that’s about the time I saw a small blob of white fur on the trail. At first I thought it was a dead white cat but when I got closer I saw the telltale pattern of spots. And as we rode past, the tiny critter stood up and wobbled off into the undergrowth. The day continued along that way with me taking advantage of every situation. I called Amy and found she was thinking about driving to the craft store so I jumped in. We enjoyed the drive and bought all kinds of fun things, including a couple of cool plastic zebras which I couldn’t resist. When Bob called to say the retreat was over, he said there was enough leftover food for dinner. “All this, and I don’t even have to cook!” I thought, “Wow!” The image of Albino Bambi will be forever associated with the many precious moments from a special day and a reminder to take time out to play. From now on, when I’m swept up in my To Do list, I’ll picture a white fawn and throttle down. Call it good enough and take time out for myself! |
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