There are better ways

Bird feeders are back up. Birds are temporarily boycotting because we had the feeders down for a couple of days to discourage the peregrine falcon that was checking out the place.

Yellow Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius)

Photo by J. Harrington

The morning’s drive to pick up this week’s community supported agriculture [CSA] share was basically uneventful. Sightings included one whitetail deer, several pair of sandhill cranes, and multiple songbirds. Goat’s beard has started to bloom. The CSA share box included:

• BROCCOLI RABE
• BABY KALE SALAD MIX
• RADISHES
• GREEN INCISED AND MAGENTA LETTUCEs, and
• ENCORE LETTUCE MIX

I've been getting more and more frustrated with myself about the amount of time I spend doom scrolling social media while accomplishing little more than making snarky comments. Then I took a look at one of today’s emails and realized I’m already doing things to help make the world a better place. Voting is very important, but there’s lots more we can do the rest of the year. Here’s a list, via AFSC, of ways you might want to consider for yourself and your familly:

De-commodify what you can. Not everything has to be subject to money. Experiment with formal or informal mutual aid practices. These can include bartering; sharing time, resources, and skills; and receiving help yourself.

Consider self-provisioning. Are there things you can do, make, or grow for yourself and others? Possibilities include arts and crafts, music, gardening, preserving food, making bever-ages, raising chickens, do-it-yourself projects, and knitting.

Think about where your money goes. Consider moving it from big predatory financial banks to credit unions or locally owned financial institutions. When possible, spend yours on locally and sustainably produced goods and services and fair-trade items. Buy from worker-friendly businesses.

Support cooperative or alternative enterprises—or consider starting one. Community land trusts and similar efforts can be a way to preserve affordable housing and even support the local production of basic needs.

Research more possibilities. There are a huge number of resources and organizations that can help you learn more and find a niche to support this growing movement. Check out the websites of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and RIPESS, the Intercontinental Social Solidarity Economy Network.

Further reading:

• Seven ways to build the solidarity economy by US network coordinator (and former AFSC staffer) Emily Kawano
• Realizing the Solidarity Economy and System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy, by Nonprofit Quarterly

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The Campus on the Hill

By W. D. Snodgrass

Up the reputable walks of old established trees

They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches; chimes

Of the tall Clock Tower drench their heads in blessing:   

“I don't wanna play at your house;

I don't like you any more.”

My house stands opposite, on the other hill,

Among meadows, with the orchard fences down and falling;   

Deer come almost to the door.

You cannot see it, even in this clearest morning.

White birds hang in the air between

Over the garbage landfill and those homes thereto adjacent,   

Hovering slowly, turning, settling down

Like the flakes sifting imperceptibly onto the little town   

In a waterball of glass.

And yet, this morning, beyond this quiet scene,

The floating birds, the backyards of the poor,

Beyond the shopping plaza, the dead canal, the hillside lying tilted in the air,

Tomorrow has broken out today:

Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama;

Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,

And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence.

What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—

Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—

No; my little ones lean not toward revolt. They

Are the Whites, the vaguely furiously driven, who resist   

Their souls with such passivity

As would make Quakers swear. All day, dear Lord, all day   

They wear their godhead lightly.

They look out from their hill and say,

To themselves, “We have nowhere to go but down;   

The great destination is to stay.”

Surely the nations will be reasonable;

They look at the world—don't they?—the world's way?   

The clock just now has nothing more to say.

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Thought for Food

For quite some years, we’ve been purchasing shares in a community supported agriculture farm. Rarely have we shopped at a farmer’s market; sometimes at a roadside stand. We’ve bought quarter or half an animal for meat (beef and lamb) in bulk from local producers. Long ago we tried our hands at growing our own vegetables. That was a course in frustration involving poor soil, wildlife freeloaders, uncooperative weather, lack of training, plus excessive biting insects.

there’s more than one way to harvest sunshine

Photo by J. Harrington

Something like a dozen or so fruit trees have been sacrificed in our efforts to start a small orchard of apple and pear trees. At this time of year I deeply regret not having planted any crab apples for just their blossoming beauty. The fruit tree deaths appear attributable to sandy, excessively drained soil and the taste pocket gophers have for fruit tree roots.

The Better Half [BH] and I share two memberships in local food co-ops, if we are liberal in our use of the term local. The BH took out a membership in a central city co-op back in the days when one or both of us were working in one Twin City or another. After we moved to the exurbs and headed “downtown” less frequently, I took out a membership in a Greater Minnesota city co-op next to a favorite book store.

We annually make what we consider meaningful contributions to a regional food shelf. I usually shop for native harvested, Minnesota grown wild rice. For several years we traveled to rural areas in the state to buy, roast, and eat at Thanksgiving a heritage breed turkey. In the years when I was more active as a waterfowler, we occasionally enjoyed a roast Canada goose at Christmas. We consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to indulge our food and taste preferences and to limit our dependence on industrial scale agriculture.

All of the preceding is lead up to my pleasant surprise at finding in my email inbox this week several announcements from organizations I’ve been following for some time. Rhey are now emphasizing their focus on food as part of a response to reducing greenhouse gases. For example:

Welcome to Drawdown Food

Food is the forgotten frontier of climate action. While energy, transportation, and industry garner much of the attention, what we eat and how we grow is one of the biggest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions. To equip those in the food systems sector with the tools and insights they need to reduce emissions, Project Drawdown is launching a major new initiative: Drawdown Food.

“Using available technologies and practices, we can meet every person’s food needs while also neutralizing the food system’s impact on climate,” says Project Drawdown executive director Jonathan Foley, who is leading the initiative. “We just need to apply the right combinations of solutions in the right place at the right time.” Be sure to follow along – and invite those in your network to do the same – as we advance food-based solutions in the weeks and months to come. Learn more >>

and

🌸 Announcing the 2024–26 Rural Regenerator Fellowship

Calling rural artists in the Upper Midwest: Applications are now open for Springboard's 2024–26 Rural Regenerator Fellowship! We are excited to announce that this year’s Fellowship will focus on supporting artists whose work is connected to land, environment, and/or food systems.Rural artists who are using their creative practice to explore environmental justice, land and food sovereignty, agriculture, foodways, climate solutions, and/or sustainability are welcome to apply. We will select 12 fellows total. What the two-year Fellowship offers: Unrestricted $10,000 stipend to continue or expand rural artist's existing work. Opportunities for exchange and learning with other Rural Regenerator Fellows across the Upper Midwest. A supportive platform to build solidarity across rural geographies. This year’s new effort to amplify and support the urgent work of environmental stewardship aims to bring a new level of focus to the Fellowship in order to collectively contribute to long term change and support existing movements. Applications are open now through June 24, 2024. Interested in applying? Join our virtual info session on Friday, May 31 to learn more about the application and the fellowship.

Learn more and apply

I’m encouraged by the concurrent serendipity evidenced above because for years I’ve experienced how challenging, and expensive, it can be to eat healthy while limiting one’s climate (and related) footprint. If we really want to see widespread systems change, we need to make it much easier for families and individuals to do the right thing. Maybe we’re finally headed in that direction.

The Farmer

By W.D. Ehrhart

Each day I go into the fields to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.

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Too big to fail = too big

Once upon a time, I believed that big government was the the way to control big business, i.e., mega corporations. Then came regulatory capture and Citizens United. Now I’m of the opinion that too big to fail is simply too big and we can't afford that kind of oligarchy. The recent example of UnitedHealth and the damage being done through their failures confirms my opinion. The recent behavior of a number of college and universities, calling police riot squads to disperse peaceful student protesters doesn’t do anything to make me rethink my assessment.

small, but beautiful, bird, scarlet tanager

Photo by J. Harrington

If a business has only one customer, that customer can essentially control the business. If a customer has only one source for a critical element, the customer is totally dependent on that source. Neither is a healthy situation. For example, look at the status of downtown high-rise office towers now seeking new tenants after the recent pandemic triggered lots of work from home options. For too long, business consolidation has been see as a way to control prices through increased efficiency. Remember the 2007-2008 economic crisis? Were financial institutions bailed out because they were “too big to fail?” Are we now watching similar developments in our health care and insurance and information system(s)?

Meanwhile, governments and economies are responding with too little, too late to a number of global environmental crises such as the sixth extinction and loss of biodiversity, climate breakdown and its ramifications, and overconsumption. Lip service to responses is paid while too much business as usual continues. We need to pay more attention and only vote for those who have demonstrated they walk their talk, although for now we are limited to the lessor of two evils.

If you think I’ve been too negative today, see if you can get a copy of Small Is Beautiful and read it. These days we’re experiencing the consequences of not following Schumacher’s guidance.

A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

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How to get a healthy health system?

There’s an article in MinnPost that has me more confused than usual: Greater Minnesota cities seek funding for EMS delivery, infrastructure in ’24 session . Here’s the part that makes me wonder:

“Over the last two years, our communities have been literally ringing alarm bells about the fragility of the system,” Bradley Peterson, CGMC’s executive director, said during a Zoom call about the organization’s legislative priorities. “Reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance are simply not keeping up with the services provided. The fee-for-service model is, frankly, in many of our communities, not sustainable.”

If the real issue is the reimbursement rate, wouldn’t metro area cities be facing the same issues? The article fails to mention that aspect.

EMS are far from the only rural health service facing cost and sustainability pressures. As noted in an article in The Daily Yonder: Seeking a Cure: The Quest to Save Rural Hospitals:

Across-the-board cuts in Medicare payments and reductions in reimbursements for uncollected patient debt disproportionately have impacted rural hospitals, whose patients are more likely to be enrolled in government health programs.

Rural hospitals must support fixed costs with fewer patients. They frequently struggle to comply with regulations that are not designed for small facilities, or maintain aging buildings that date back to an era when hospital stays were longer and inpatient care was more common.

Are you ready to vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

But wait! he wrote, there’s more. Right here in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Fairview, Sanford call off health systems merger . This, after a prior merger between Fairview and the UM Medical Center hospital. Even the “big guys” are having real problems. Is it time to consider nationalizing our health care system? Are we getting what our insurance companies are paying for?

US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes among high-income countries, new report finds

US comes in last in health care rankings of high-income countries 

Things are so bad you’d think the Republicans were in charge.

Hope 2020

Ashanti Files

I tried to write about hope
But wasn’t sure I had the audacity
The pandemic took a toll
And our last president was a fascist
He
Said he did more for Christianity
Than Jesus
And between the BLM protest and right wing hatred we just
Stayed inside and tried to live
Contemplating if loans would be forgiven
To provide a little relief
We were safe at home but had to march in the streets
To beats
Of Black Lives Matter
See I was flattered
To be part of the Healthcare Hero’s
Until I start telling the truth and the death toll added zeros
And zeros
Until the number reached 100000
And still people believed it was a hoax
And wouldn’t wear masks in public places
The deck was stacked against us and the government held
Aces
But they underbid as the death toll continued to rise
But as the number grew there were fewer tears from eyes 
Of the privileged
Because big business needed that money
Propaganda had normal people acting funny
Yet still I dared to hope
Until I couldn't breathe as
George Floyd choked and his killer walked the streets free
See
We're going back into summer
But instead of George Floyd the name we will march to is
Daunte Wright
And we again will wear our masks as we continue to fight
Systems of oppression
The National Guards were called and wore bullet proof vest
When we said Black Lives Matter
But were nowhere to be seen when the right wing
Unhinged the government’s seat of power
And the hours
Continued to tick on
525600 deaths but rent wasn’t on
But Nurses were on
The verge of a mental break down every day
Saving lives of the people who claimed don’t tread on me
And yet I say I’m going to write about hope
As a black woman in America it’s impossible not to choke
On the repetitious contradictions
Vaccines vs quarantine things while the seams are bursting
On the national debt
“Make 600 dollars enough” because it’s all you gone get
As you try to survive this crisis
Going hungry while giving the nation its slice is
Your patriotic duty
I’m a poet and I know it sounds looney
That I can’t write about hope
2020 had me riding a high worse than dope
And when I came down it was comparative to death
Knowing that nothing would change
So I inhale and deep breath
And continue to think about hope

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It’s out and poke about time

This may be (one of) the nicest February days ever in the North Country. Blue skies, sunshine, temperatures in the mid-40’s, little breeze and lots of melting have historically been rare during this month. Perhaps not so in the future. I hope and pray we don’t end up with more freezing rain instead of snow in our winter patterns.

time to look for British soldier lichen?

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve already gotten antsy to get out and poke about. That directly conflicts with feeling catlike lazy and wanting to curl up in a warm sunny spot and, although not as much, with reactivating my sourdough artisan bread baking cycle. I can sometimes multi-task but only in one place at a time. I’ve got a couple of pounds of King Arthur Climate Blend regeneratively grown flour I want to try out. Plus, the local flour mill, Sunrise Flour Mill, has some new products from heritage wheat I want to check out. A long, slow, spring this year may be just what I need to fit in all my play time. Wonder what we’ll get.

The dogs and I enjoyed an early morning peek at the almost full, ivory-colored, moon today. It’s almost beautiful enough to make it worthwhile to get up and out a little after 4 am. You’re probably thinking I’ve been reading too much Ben Franklin if that’s when I get up. (“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”) I wonder if Ben had dogs with large stomachs that needed feeding and small bladders that needed emptying.

I’m not sure how I ended up on his distribution list, but I’m glad I did. A Vermont legislator, Tristan Roberts, newsletter yesterday makes me, and the Better Half, wonder if we could convince him to run for president. You can get a feel for what we’re talking about here. I wish Minnesota had a bunch of legislators that think like him.

Late February

By Ted Kooser

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying

under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun. Now children,

stiffened by winter

and dressed, somehow,

like old men, mutter

and bend to the work

of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;

by five o’clock

the chill of sundown,

darkness, the blue TVs

flashing like storms

in the picture windows,

the yards gone gray,

the wet dogs barking

at nothing. Far off

across the cornfields

staked for streets and sewers,

the body of a farmer

missing since fall

will show up

in his garden tomorrow,

as unexpected

as a tulip.

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Airing the first hints of Spring

During the next week, our neck of the woods should return to mostly bare ground. Ice will slowly begin to melt. If you’re sensitive and tuned in, you may be able to discern the first hints of our second or third thaw of the year. This one for Spring. Within the next week, we’ll be less than a month from the Northern Hemisphere’s Vernal Equinox. That should be enough to make everyone but snowmobilers happy.

Monday is President’s Day. That may, or may not, affect whether our trash and recycling get picked up. I’ll put both cans out Sunday afternoon and pretend everything is “normal” and if the pickup isn’t until Tuesday, so be it. Back when our waste services were provided by a local company, each year they’d send out a postcard schedule we could put on the refrigerator. Now that the local company has been bought out by a big national outfit, we’re supposed to check their web site to see what’s happening so they can nag us to sign up for autopay. I’ll do that the day after hell freezes over. I suppose the thinking is if you don’t have internet service, you can haul things to the dump yourself so why send out a schedule listing holidays.

preview of coming attractions

Photo by J. Harrington

Yep, I’m grumpy again. I made the mistake of growing up in an era when “the customer is always right.” It’s shaped my perspective and attitude. This morning I was reading about a book I may want to read, about small scale farmers and Love for the Land. As happens all too often, neither of our local library systems has available a book I want to read. That helps explain my overflowing stacks and shelves of books. Tsundoku, anyone?

Thaw

Edward Thomas
1878 – 1917

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

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Small? Beautiful!

To show how old, and old fashioned, I am, today we received four CDs of Christmas music I ordered a week or so ago. As I’m typing this, the Better Half and I are listening to An American Christmas: Shapenote Carols from New England & Appalachia. As native Minnesotans would say: “It’s different.”

The other three CDs are Windham Hill albums, one guitar, one winter solstice, one Christmas. We’re building on years of enjoying George Winston and a few Celtic Christmas albums. Last night’s snow provides a wonderful setting for listening to Christmas and Solstice music. Now, if we can learn to keep away from news media and social media platforms for a couple of weeks, we may get to relax and enjoy the holidays.

another Charlie Brown Christmas tree

Photo by J. Harrington

This year’s tree is pictured above. To its right are the sprigs of winterberries we foraged a couple of weeks ago. [Look for sprigs arising from the brown vase on the stereo speaker.] I think we’ve got the Christmas greens taken care of. Presents are getting acquired, sorted and wrapped. Soon it will be time for attention to be turned to cookies for Santa, and his helpers.

Before we sign off for today, we want to share something that showed up in our email inbox this morning. A bit of background: twenty-five years ago was the 25th anniversary of E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered: 25 Years Later ... with Commentaries. Today’s quote from Schumacher seems to fit the times and the season quite well. I’m going to take it to heart as a resolution for next year and offer it here for your consideration. You might want to take a look at the book also.

Everywhere people ask: "What can I actually do?" The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind. 

The Way We Love Something Small

Kimberly Blaeser

The translucent claws of newborn mice

this pearl cast of color,

the barely perceptible

like a ghosted threshold of being:

here     not here.

The single breath we hold

on the thinnest verge of sight:

not there   there.

A curve nearly naked 

an arc of almost, 

a wisp of becoming

a wand—

tiny enough to change me. 

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A season’s progress

 The suet feeder is now hung for the first time this season. We want it to feed the birds, not bears, so we wait until we’re pretty sure hibernation is underway. A large flock of somethings, the Better Half [BH] claims cedar waxwings, I didn’t get a good glimpse of anything that looked like a waxwing, descended on the seed feeder earlier today. The extended cold spell seems to be moving folks southward, although I’ve still not seen any dark-eyed juncos.

woodpecker at suet feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Thanks to the BH, Christmas music is now next to the stereo and Amy Grant has brightened the morning. This afternoon we picked up several Advent Calendars at the international award-winning St. Croix Chocolates {link near upper end of right-hand column}. [We knew them back when they were just as tasty but not world famous!] Then we stopped at the Gammelgården Museum on the way home and did some more Christmas shopping. My seasonal mood isn’t yet overflowing, but it has improved markedly over the past few days.

Somewhere still to be dragged from a closet are our Christmas books, including two different versions of Christmas in Minnesota and the annual, mandatory, read, A Dog Named Christmas. We’ll look for those after we harvest our tree and get it in the stand. I think that may be the morrow’s expedition. Before heading off this afternoon, the BH accompanied me on a walk through a small patch of our woods to see if there was a tree more to our liking than the one we picked out a week or so ago. There wasn’t, but it feels better to have checked.

The week upcoming brings the Daughter Person’s birthday and delivering some seasonal goodies, plus tree decoration. Let’s hope that’s enough to help me keep out of trouble so Santa doesn’t have to leave just coal in my stocking, adding to my carbon footprint and a disappointing Christmas morning.

Christmas Trees

By Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

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Not just meat and ‘taters

Yesterday we picked up another autumn community supported agriculture [CSA] share. This week our box contained:

• RED KURI SQUASH
• RED POTATOES
• APPLES
• BELL PEPPERS
• LUNCHBOX PEPPERS
• SPINACH, and
• BULB ONIONS

Now that we are into serious autumn weather, food seems more significant than during summer. Maintaining body core temperatures requires more than lightweight summer salads. The Better Half did something deliciously creative, or maybe it was creatively delicious, when she cooked up a bunch of root vegetables the other day. She splashed a taste of maple syrup into the pan with the veggies and stirred. I don’t recall ever tasting anything quite like it. She may yet convince me that eating veggies isn’t just a punishment for naughty adults.

Amador Hill Orchard

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m noticing that there appears to be a growing number of local, small, family farms following regenerative or similar practices. The latest that’s been brought to my attention is just up the road in Lindstrom, the Abdi-Mayfield Farm. I’m intrigued by their claim to offer “edible flowers,” among other fare. We’ll have to learn more and possibly try some of their products. One of the potential disadvantages we’ve discovered in purchasing whole, half, or quarter animals from local sources, rather than packaged meat from a big box, is that sometimes the cuts may be less than prime, like the need to turn a roast into stew meat because it’s a little to chewy when simply roasted. Back when the food system was through-putting “dairy herd buyout” products, a similar issue cropped up. We’ve not yet purchased and eaten enough local meat to have a sense of how widespread and/or frequent the question of “mislabeled” meat may be, but my aversion to confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is strong enough that the problem will have to be much worse than we’ve experienced so far to deter me from eating local as much as possible.

The Farm

By Joyce Sutphen

My father’s farm is an apple blossomer.

He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet

and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose

and the jack-in-the-pulpits.

His sleek cows ripple in the pastures.

The dog and purple iris

keep watch at the garden’s end.

His farm is rolling thunder,

a lightning bolt on the horizon.

His crops suck rain from the sky

and swallow the smoldering sun.

His fields are oceans of heat,

where waves of gold

beat the burning shore.

A red fox

pauses under the birch trees,

a shadow is in the river’s bend.

When the hawk circles the land,

my father’s grainfields whirl beneath it.

Owls gather together to sing in his woods,

and the deer run his golden meadow.

My father’s farm is an icicle,

a hillside of white powder.

He parts the snowy sea,

and smooths away the valleys.

He cultivates his rows of starlight

and drags the crescent moon

through dark unfurrowed fields.

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Food: sovereignty?

Early this morning, but after the dogs’ walk, we had thunder and lightning that, over an hour or two, delivered about a quarter inch of much needed rain. Many trees are showing early color with greens turning into yellows. Lower leaves on a maple sapling in the back yard are turning red, but there’s no red on the throats of the hummingbirds we’ve seen the past few days. Only gray throats around the feeders is a sign the male ruby-throated birds have headed south. Females and youngsters will follow in a few weeks.

backyard: wild turkeys

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of our engagement with our place is either entertainment like watching birds at the feeders or wildlife crossing the yard, or chores like mowing the grass or trapping pocket gophers so their mounds don’t wreck the mower. When we first moved here, we tried planting a vegetable garden. Horseflies, deer flies, sandy soil and similar detractions deterred us from continuing that “hobby.” Our dependence on ecosystem services is indirect, tenuous, or both. Yes we need fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink. We have little, if any, control over significant destruction of forests in the Amazon or the North Woods. We have actively helped oppose hard rock mining in Minnesota, but that’s as much on principle as based on a direct relationship with the resources that would be affected. We don’t eat much wild rice nor vacation “up North” all that often.

On the other hand, we support local and regional food systems as much as we can. That also contributes to the local economy and helps protect local water quality. But, all in all, our dependence on “nature” while  as pervasive as it was for those who lived here prior to colonization is nowhere near as obvious. I’m rambling about this because I can’t figure out how we get substantially more people to understand and appreciate that we can’t afford to destroy our water supplies so that we can eat, harvest timber or mine metals. I’d happily rely on cast iron fry pans and griddles if we could get rid of PFAS. What I haven’t yet found is a rigorous and reliable way to organize my day to day life so that I can tread lightly. The building industry organized itself into the Green Building Council which brought about standardized criteria in the form of LEED ratings. Can someone work up a comparable set of LIFE ratings? Would enough folks bother to apply such criteria if they existed? Do we need an update to our Original Instructions? And how do we consumers get honest ESG ratings on the producers of our products? There’s lots of advice available, almost all too general or abstract to be applied by ordinary folks who have overly complicated lives to live.

Ledger

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is 3,592 measures.
A voice kept far from feeling is heard as measured.
What’s wanted in desperate times are desperate measures.
Pushkin’s unfinished Onegin: 5,446 lines.

No visible tears measure the pilot’s grief
as she Lidars the height of an island: five feet.
Fifty, its highest leaf.
She logs the years, the weathers, the tree has left.

A million fired-clay bones—animal, human—
set down in a field as protest
measure 400 yards long, 60 yards wide, weigh 112 tons.
The length and weight and silence of the bereft.

Bees do not question the sweetness of what sways beneath them.
One measure of distance is meters. Another is li.
Ten thousand li can be translated: “far.” 
For the exiled, home can be translated “then,” translated “scar.”

One liter
of Polish vodka holds twelve pounds of potatoes.
What we care about most, we call beyond measure.
What matters most, we say counts. Height now is treasure.

On this scale of one to ten, where is eleven?
Ask all you wish, no twenty-fifth hour will be given.
Measuring mounts—like some Western bar’s mounted elk head—
our cataloged vanishing unfinished heaven.

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For food sovereignty

 Here’s this weeks’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share:

• GREEN BELL PEPPER
• GREEN ONIONS
• BROCCOLI
• CUCUMBERs
• KALE
• SUMMER SQUASH, and
• FENNEL

Unfortunately, per the farm manager’s email, some of the past week's intense summer storms “tore our tomato hoop into sheds, knocked down one of our gates, and hailed on our van leaving five cracks in the windshield and pockmarks everywhere.” The email doesn’t mention any anticipated shortage of tomatoes, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some future boxes end up on the light side due to this summer’s drought, interrupted on occasion by intense thunderstorms and, rarely, gentle rain.

summer storm

Photo by J. Harrington

Later this afternoon, we’ll head off to pick up our CSA share box and drop off half of it with the Daughter Person et. al. It’s almost always a fun drive on lots of back roads that give us a chance to see what’s happening in the real world. Some of the bushes and trees are already beginning to turn color. Heat stress? At least we’re looking at a week plus of more reasonable temperatures and increased possibilities of showers. Now, if only the John Deere dealer can get the parts to fix our tractor, we may be able to check off some yard chores before snow flies.

We did bake another sourdough boule this week. This time using 20% Irish flour. It turned out tasty, crusty, and crumby, that is, with a nice crumb! That’s all for now.

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

By Matthea Harvey

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart

Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and

Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves

That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and

Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down   

I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence

And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that

They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense

In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear

She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without

It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when

You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of   

A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets

So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds

With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter

About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on   

The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp

I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry

If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire

So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them

To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

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Thoughtful food, for thought

Here’s a list of what’s in tomorrow’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] box for us:

• MAGENTA LETTUCE
• MILAGRO LETTUCE
• GREEN ONION
• SORA RADISH
• SNAP PEAS
• GREEN BEANS, and
• SUMMER SQUASH

As usual, we’ll be splitting the contents with the Daughter Person and her family. Meanwhile, the Better Half is baking some of my favorite apple cookies so we can use up a handful of small apples that, even after sitting on the counter for more than a week, are still too firm to comfortably eat. (She wasn’t thrilled with my idea of baked apples and I was equally enthused with her idea of applesauce. I love the way we compromised.)

farmers markets: alternative to CSAs

Photo by J. Harrington

I didn’t set out to eat healthier as the reason we've joined various CSAs over the years. I wanted to support the development of local food systems and keep as much of our food budget as possible out of the hands of corporate ag, the folks who bring us biofuels and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Eating healthier has been a pleasant unintended consequence, aided and abetted by the Better Half’s culinary skills.

We’re also members of two food coops plus, with the Daughter Person, purchase locally raised beef, pork and “lamb” by the whole or half or quarter animal. We don’t completely avoid big box and local chain grocery stores, but we’re doing what we can. Now, if more “farmers” would act on this information: Better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, data shows we might begin to enjoy a “win-win” scenario. (Our CSA farm is organic / restorative.)

One of my go to climate scientists manages to frequently annoy me by, as I see it, giving a pass to too many folks who aren’t helping with the lifting needed to limit and adapt to climate’s weirding effects. Katherine Hayhoe recently suggested on social media:

If you’re convinced we’re doomed + there’s nothing anyone can do about climate: ❌ Stop doom-scrolling & get off social media 😳 Don’t attack or hinder others doing their best to help 🐾 Adopt a pet in need of a home 🌳 Spend as much time as you can in nature ❤️ Focus on love

I'm often tempted to follow the first point; need to work more on the second; we’ve already done the third twice over; need to increase the “as you can” in point four; and work much harder on the last one. Maybe I should adjust my annoyance sensitivity, since I seem to be more in agreement than opposition to Professor Hayhoe’s guidance. Then again, who was it that claimed consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds?

Onions

By William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by   

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   

slithers and swirls across the floor   

of the sauté pan, especially if its   

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto   

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,   

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   

from the taut ball first the brittle,   

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,   

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on   

weeping as you go on in, through   

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   

in to the core, to the bud-like,   

acrid, fibrous skins densely   

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most   

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal   

comfort that infant humans secrete.   

This is the best domestic perfume.   

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed   

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual   

endurance. It’s there when you clean up   

and rinse the wine glasses and make   

a joke, and you leave the minutest   

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

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Another mixed bag

Local farms are in the midst of a first cutting of hay. Round bales are popping up everywhere except corn or soybean fields or where the cut hay is still drying in the field. I should have guessed that this spell of rainless weather would benefit someone doing something. Someday soon I expect to get my schedule and calendar clear enough to actually go stand in a river and wave a stick. Meanwhile, there’s decent, if overly dry, weather to enjoy and various flowers coming into bloom and a couple of dogs that provide entertaining distractions plus restorative affection. 

hay baling time

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re in an interlude between spring greens and peak summer seasons at our community supported agriculture farm. Their summer season doesn’t begin until early July. There’s a recent article in The Guardian on eating local food that begins with an assessment of food miles before it gets around to looking at the idea that local foods are an alternative to industrial farming and confined animal feed operations (CAFOs). My quick read of that article helped me remember how easy it is these days to focus on a less significant aspect of an issue and how little attention gets paid to answering the question “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” While I was putzing on a different project this morning, I did some quick research on logic models and wish we could make their use mandatory for all legislative efforts.

The Guardian has done a much better piece of journalism in its coverage today of Kate Raworth and her Doughnut Economics. I managed to get about 80% of the way through my copy of the book before I got distracted. After skimming the Guardian’s piece I dug out the abandoned book and will now recommence reading it. Doughnut Economics and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab [DEAL] got me thinking about yesterday’s posting here and has me wondering what the reaction in Minnesota’s mining regulatory agencies would be if Glencore (not currently, as far as I can tell, a member of IRMA) and the PolyMet folks proposed to develop their mine project in full compliance with all the guidance and audits and procedures the good folks at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance have created and used that effort to prototype new Minnesota laws and regulations for mining. Of course, that idea may make so much sense it would never be implemented, unlike Doughnut Economics and its Action Lab. Just sayin’.

Emergency Haying

Hayden Carruth

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,

my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 500 bales we’ve put up

this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn

by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way

my body hands from twisted shoulders, suspended
on two points of pain in the rising
monoxide, recall that greater suffering.

Well, I change grip and the image
fades. It’s been an unlucky summer. Heavy rains
brought on the grass tremendously, a monster crop,

but wet, always wet. Haying was long delayed.
Now is our last chance to bring in
the winter’s feed, and Marshall needs help.

We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales
to the barn, these late, half-green,
improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds

or more, yet must be lugged by the twine
across the field, tossed on the load, and then
at the barn unloaded on the conveyor

and distributed in the loft. I help—
I, the desk-servant, word-worker—
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,

the close of day, how I fall down then. My hands
are sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,

less able and less well prepared than I.
Rose Marie in the rye fields of Saxony,
her father in the camps of Moldavia

and the Crimea, all clerks and housekeepers
herded to the gaunt fields of torture. Hands
too bloodied cannot bear

even the touch of air, even
the touch of love. I have a friend
whose grandmother cut cane with a machete

and cut and cut, until one day
she snicked her hand off and took it
and threw it grandly at the sky. Now

in September our New England mountains
under a clear sky for which we’re thankful at last
begin to glow, maples, beeches, birches

in their first color. I look
beyond our famous hayfields to our famous hills,
to the notch where the sunset is beginning,

then in the other direction, eastward,
where a full new-risen moon like a pale
medallion hangs in a lavender cloud

beyond the barn. My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who

if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say

woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.