Wind Dancer Ranch

I've been waiting to write this entry because I wanted to give it the time and attention it deserved. I need to get to it, before I forget everything that happened.

A few weeks ago, I went up to Wind Dancer Ranch in Yolo County, to "cut and wrap" my portion of a pig. I split the hog with two other people from the Bay Area Meat CSA. One person took half, the other half was split between me and one other person.

This was such an incredible experience! I feel bad, because I don't have the pictures I wanted. This is my fault - I've got to learn to be better about that. But I didn't get any pictures of the farm itself, despite the fact that the owners, Lisa and Jim, took us on a grand tour.

These two people are amazing - working regular jobs in addition to fixing up and running this old, abandoned farm. We could see how much they've accomplished, and how much they still have to do! But they just jump in work until its done. These are the real heroes of American life.

Wind Dancer has several animals: the pigs, of course, and chickens, turkeys, sheep, rabbits, horses... I had one of their turkeys for Thanksgiving last year, and it was wonderful.

They also have a garden, of course, but don't grow crops to sell. They do grow feed for the animals.

It was a hot day, which made it difficult for the weak city dwellers to concentrate. I brought my 14-year old grandson with me, and he was very impressed. He'd never been exposed to this kind of thing, but he loved it. He even asked if he could come work with them next summer! He couldn't do it this year, because he has a broken arm.

The highlight of the day, was learning to cut the hog. They had already cut it into quarters, so we dealt with the front and hind quarters of our half. We all gathered in Lisa's kitchen, where she has a marvelous wooden table.

She supplied us with cutting boards and knives, and with Jim helping, we proceeded to trim away the rough, pinkish remainder of skin from the fat areas. This was a very thin layer - you can sort of see it along the edge of the fat in this picture.

Jim gave us lots of direction as we sliced, and helped quite a bit with the hard parts. Strength-wise, I'm a wash.






We made sausage with a lot of the meat, using spices we brought from home. Lisa contributed any extras we needed.

This was an incredible experience. Lisa and Jim are working on a real "butchering room" which will have tables, large sinks, commercial refrigerators, and all the huge equipment this job requires. Including, hopefully, a commercial-grade food wrap machine. The little one we used kept stalling, and stretched things out far longer than we'd planned on. But they're talking about having classes for butchering or canning... whole weekends when people can stay in a guest house at the farm and spend time with others who want to learn these important skills. Or who just want to have fun with others while they work!

I had such a great time up there, and I hope I get back. It will take us a while to use all the meat we got. But I do need variety - some lamb, perhaps, or a rabbit or two. Maybe chickens. Another turkey, for sure! But thank you, Jim and Lisa, for all your hard work and help. Good luck to both of you!

How to Eat Local and Make it Work

Eating local is for the rich, but what about the rest of us?

If we want to eat fresh, locally-grown food, we need one of two things: a lot of time, or a lot of money to pay someone else for their time.

Because, let's face it: the reason processed foods are so popular is because they are cheap and fast.

Granted, they aren't as cheap as they used to be, and I've always maintained that it's possible to eat much more cheaply by buying the ingredients and making it yourself. As long as you buy what's in season and aren't trying to get the strawberries from Chili in January.

The article cited above is in the New York Times today, and tells us about people who can afford to pay someone to not just cook their food (hello Personal Chefs), but also to plant a garden for them and do all the work of maintaining it.

See, that's what I need. Not because I don't have time, but just because I can't seem to get the hang of making food grow.

But I can't afford to pay someone. And processing food takes time.

I spent a while this morning doing it again. I had five cucumbers from the CSA and what am I going to do with them? It's just me and my husband. I suppose I could use one cucumber a day on a salad for us, but really - we just don't eat that much. So I made cucumber soup. One jar in the frig for consumption this week, the other in the freezer for later.

Then there were those 3 big ears of corn from CSA. Darn - I was going to cook those last week, but I forgot about them. And back to my first dilemna, it's just the two of us. We can't eat 3 ears of corn at one sitting.

So I cut the corn off and froze it. Now I have a bag of corn I can toss into a soup or salad whenever I'm ready.

A week or two ago, I made yogurt, waffles, and carrot soup. Last night, I chopped up several of the red onions from the CSA and made onion soup. I steamed the pretty purple carrots and froze them for another meal. And don't forget all the plum things (preserves, sauce, pies...) I've been making and canning and freezing lately.

This is what is takes to buy food from our local farmers. Time and effort. I love doing it and I would do it even if I was working a full-time job. But most people don't feel that way about it. So they keep eating the cheap, convenient, lousy processed food.

We need co-ops. I'm giving this a lot of thought and I'm going to come up with a business plan. Sure, I can add it to my services as a Personal Chef. I'll be available to work for a group of people who want someone to process their food. But the real winning idea is for people to do it themselves.

Form co-ops and share the tasks. It could be done in several different ways - people working all week could have weekend work days where each member commits to work an hour or two. They could do it in shifts until all the food is processed, then everyone takes home their share. Or have a few people do it all one week, and different people do it all the next week. Whatever will work for that group.

I think it's essential that we come up with a way to do this. We cannot survive if we stay dependent on the Food Industry. I'll keep working on the idea and I'll write more about it as it develops. Once I have a plan in place, I want to get the word out. I'd love to help coordinate these groups. Give people ideas on how to do it, and pitch in and help, too.

Because eating local, organic food is NOT just for the rich. It's for all of us.

Here We Go Again

Another beef recall.

When - when - are we going to stop this food industry madness? When will we go back to being responsible for our own food?

Oh never, I know. Not really for our own food, as in all the time, the only one responsible for planting, growing, harvesting, feeding, preserving, preparing, and anything else-ing, that we need to do for all our food. But we've got to break it down into smaller groups. Into regions, at least. None of this one-company-produces-billions-of-pounds-of-meat that go all around the country. And to the rest of the world, too.

What - don't they have cows in Asia?

Dude. I know they do.

Why do we continue to buy bags of loose greens when we know they've come from a warehouse that got lettuce from all over the country and piled them all together in a big bunch and stuffed them into bags?

When we know that if just one small batch of lettuce from one tiny farm anywhere in the country had a problem with their lettuce (say a minor e-coli bacteria-type problem) then every bit of the lettuce mixed with it and put in those bags, now has the same problem.

Why do we continue to buy it? Excuse me - why do you continue to buy it? 'Cause I can promise you, I don't.

Not even the organic stuff. I'll buy my own separate little head of lettuce and wash and tear it myself.

Sure I could still get sick, if I happen to buy the lettuce from the one tiny farm with a problem. But you won't. And neither will ten thousand other people around the country.

Put Big Ag out of business. Run - quickly - to your nearest CSA or Farmer's Market and buy all your food from them. Find CSAs that give you produce, meat, eggs, even milk. You'll probably need to join several to get everything that way. If you have to shop at a grocery store, shop at one that buys from local ranchers and farmers and buy the food that comes from the local source. Don't buy the food that comes from China or from the slaughtershouse six states away.

Do what you can. Just do it.

Eating Local and Fair Trade

An article in Sunday’s Chronicle (Farmers in Developing World Hurt by ‘Eat Local’ Philosophy in U.S. by William G. Moseley) pits Eat Local advocates against poor farmers in Africa. According to Mr. Moseley, it’s our fault that farmers in third world countries can’t get a fair break even when they turn to Fair Trade practices.

You know, I just can’t see it. In the first place, very few Eat Local advocates insist one must never buy anything from someplace else. How many of us live next to salt flats? How many can grow cinnamon or cumin or other spices? Have all of us given up coffee or tea? Chocolate?

The very people who want to eat local, are the same ones most likely to buy Fair Trade organic food when they need or want something they can’t get locally. We’re the ones who insist on food grown with fair labor practices and living wages for workers. But that doesn’t mean I have to buy all my food already processed and packaged at the grocery store, in order to support a farmer somewhere.

If I choose to buy my potatoes from a local farmer, I’m not putting a farmer in Africa out of business. If I decide to make my own spaghetti sauce from tomatoes grown by the farmer selling them at the farmer’s market, instead of the Fair Trade Organic brand found at Trader Joe’s, am I really responsible for starving children in China?

I think it’s a stretch.

In the second place, and this is the biggie, these third world farmers are put out of business because America subsidizes our own corporate farms at a horrendous rate and we flood the world market with our subsidized mono crops. Solve that problem!

Africa’s problems are a lot bigger than the elite of America shopping at the farmer’s market on Saturday. I’m not about to get into it on this blog, either. But the farmers there need more choices and freedom and markets, there, where they live. Their whole answer is not selling to a niche market in Europe or America.

Look, it’s hard enough to get people to think about where their food comes from and what’s in it. Let’s not let all the air out the movement before it even gets off the ground. Our own farmers are going out of business. Charity is fine. But I want to keep the farmer down the street in business before I’m going to worry about the farmer in Africa or Mexico.

What is local?

Over at the Eat Local Challenge blog, there's a great article by Gary Paul Nabhan discussing local food.

Gary Paul Nabhan: Deepening Our Sense of What is Local and Regional Food

He makes a lot of good points, but his general thesis is that we need to think about what we're doing. Think about why we do it. It's easy for someone like me to just jump on a bandwagon because I like the sound of it or it "feels right" or seems to make sense. That's okay to start with, but at some point, I know I need to sit down and tell myself why I believe something is true or not.

I have a comment or two about a few of his points:

"3. The miles a food travels (“food miles”) must be placed in the size and volume of the mode of transport, its source of fuel, and its frequency of travel."

As long as we settle in cities, the farmers are going to have to get the food to us. Yes, we can have urban gardens, even rooftop gardens, but it would be a rare city that could grow all its own food within urban limits. Even buying food at the farmer's market from a farmer 20 miles outside of town will require some transportation. Most farmers drive hundreds of miles everyday to various markets in a given region. It's still "local" by our definition, but there's a lot of fossil fuel put into it, anyway.

"4. On farm energy and water use matter. If a farm near Tucson Arizona is irrigated from a canal that transports Colorado River water hundreds of miles (and at high ecological cost to wild riverine species), or if it uses fossil groundwater set down during the Pleistocene pumped by fossil fuel set down in Iran during the Pennsylvanian era, what is to be gained by promoting its food?"

This one is near and dear, since I was born in Tucson and lived there for 35 years. It's a desert, folks. Eating local in a place like Tucson requires some real effort. And we need to be honest with ourselves: these places were NOT meant to support large populations. I don't care if you do like the sunshine. If you insist on living there, learn to like jicama, dried beans, and pear cactus. That's what the area can support.

"5. Other on-farm inputs matter just as much. Where are the sources of hay for livestock, compost for garden crops or nitrogen for field crops? They should be locally if not regionally-sourced. Why call lamb locally-produced in Idaho when its flock has wintered part of the year in California and its hay comes in from southern Colorado?"

This is a good one. Now I think it's traditional for ranchers to move the herd from one locale to another. That's what cattle drives are. But is it "natural?" Is it sustainable? Dunno. What about our own sheep and cattle in California that are grass-fed? What do they eat in the summer when the grass is dead and brown?

"6. Fair-trade with other cultures, localities and regions is fair game. "

I think it would be a sad world, indeed, if we did away with trade, altogether. Trade has always been the engine for human interaction, for exploration, for expanding our knowledge of each other and the world. So someone is always going to grow something that is needed someplace else. Spices. Coffee. Maple syrup (please don't make me give up maple syrup)!

Maybe what I want is the romantic vision of the trader coming into town and setting up on market day, visiting with people and participating in the local events that happen there, and talking about his home and life. We lose this with our sterile, effecient middleman procedures, when the food is shipped to a central warehouse and sent from there to stores around the country. We don't get to meet the trader or grower and talk about life in that place or life in our place. Our food becomes empty.

And that's sad.