Farming is more than putting plow to furrow. It is a multitude of experiences, evaluations and decisions made over time.
The same is true for gardeners. Each garden, each plot, has its own micro environment and climate. Not only sun and rain, but wind, topography and history play a role.
This year a friend changed rented land for her community supported agriculture project and stories about her struggles are going around the local food community. The new soil hasn’t been worked for organic vegetables, and is recovering from row cropping. I believe — everyone is confident — she will persevere through the change. Yet it will be a setback in a business that operates on thin margins and more physical labor than mechanization. It’s when the going gets tough that farmers get going.
Over the last 23 years my Big Grove garden expanded from a single plot to six, and I’m looking at adding more. That doesn’t count the five fruit trees which have been a source of produce for a number of years. Yesterday the pear tree burst out in full bloom.
I mistakenly planted a locust tree in one of the garden plots. It has grow to maturity, providing shade for two plots at the same time the frequency and severity of drought has increased. Shade serves to protect cucumbers, herbs and greens from constant, intense sunlight in the absence of precipitation. It took me a while to realize what’s going on and leverage it. Now I couldn’t imaging growing without it.
There are a hundred small things like the benefits of a locust tree that converge in the plots of my garden. When I think of retirement — more often now than previously — I can’t imaging life far from a garden and the diverse intricacies of what sustains me and enables vegetables to grow.
My garden and I are the same warp and weft of life that sustains us all.
The sounds of children playing, dogs barking and yard equipment running dominated the air waves of an unseasonably warm and dry Saturday and Sunday. I heard hardly any of it as I dug in the soil, cleaned out the garden composter and planted.
Yesterday’s average temperature was 16 degrees above the historical average, and we’re running two inches of precipitation behind historical averages. At 80 degrees, the high temperature was well below the record of 93 degrees set in 1896. It was warm nonetheless.
In predawn darkness I watered the seedling trays and noted the peppers are beginning to sprout. It took about two weeks in our bedroom. I planted a tray of seeds for extras, including scarlet kale, tomatoes and Swiss chard. I think I’m done with seed planting, with the next step being transplanting selected seedlings into larger containers.
I prepared and installed containers of Yukon Gold and Kennebec potatoes behind the compost bins. I planted Cherry Belle and Rudolf round radishes and purple top white globe turnips in nearby rows. The small bag of red onion sets from the home farm and auto supply store went into the ground between the composter and the day lilies. I harvested about three cubic yards of compost which is piled up and ready to use. Things are shaping up nicely in the Locust tree plot.
It seems late for pea planting, yet I used up the remainder of my Sugar Ann Snap Peas in last year’s kale bed. Even if they don’t produce, if they sprout they will fix some nitrogen in the soil planned for tomatoes in about a month.
On Sunday I worked at the community supported agriculture project, soil blocking 30 trays for new seeds. There was a crew to plant seeds, tend the greenhouse and plant a number of trays of seedlings in the second high tunnel. I worked until my shoulders ached and will return tonight after my shift to finish the trays I couldn’t get done.
I was tired at the end of each day and glad to be alive in the garden.
My participation in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 evolved in a convergence of social vectors. Among them was this Apollo 8 photograph of Earth above a lunar landscape by astronaut William Anders.
After viewing the photograph I felt conflicts and maladies in society were insignificant compared with what we have in common within our tiny, shared ecosystem suspended in the dark vastness of space. The photograph and its wide publication were a call to action to work for a common good. I still feel that way. It makes sense.
By spring 1970 we had witnessed the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, and renewed bombing of North Vietnam. We watched the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. We saw bits of Woodstock and Altamont in the media. We also landed men on the moon and returned them safely to Earth. At this convergence I didn’t know what to do, so joined with some high school classmates who were organizing Earth Day events. Earth Day was a common denominator.
What has Earth Day become?
Last week the Johnson County Board of Supervisors proclaimed April 17 through 23 Earth Week and announced two related events: an energy fair, and a local foods panel.
The focus on energy, CO2 emissions particularly, is well placed. We continue to use the atmosphere as an open sewer, discharging millions of tons of the greenhouse gases into it daily. Any reduction in electricity usage benefits the environment, even if the changes needed to solve the problem are trickier to accomplish than changing light bulbs.
Our food system is an obvious pick for Earth Day. Nine percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is a commonplace people need food to live, and the merging of Earth Day with the local food movement is an expected assimilation within normal spring activities. There are few better ways of appreciating Earth than getting one’s hands dirty in the ground, and spring in the Northern hemisphere is a great time to do it. It’s tough to see how planting a few trees, flowers or vegetables will rescue the environment, but as with electricity usage, every bit helps.
There is an entire menu of Earth Day related activities in our county.
Quoting Albert Camus in a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar described why the 2016 election is important,
“This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.” That is what the stakes of this election are: We are choosing between hell and reason.
In 1970 I thought we were already living a form of hell and the Earthrise photograph gave us hope. I would not have believed that in 2016 the Age of Reason itself would be on the brink of dissolution.
The good news is solutions to the climate crisis are working, particularly in the development of alternatives to fossil fuels to generate electricity and industrial power. The challenge is everything on our blue-green sphere is connected in a single ecosystem. What I do in my back yard has implications for living creatures around the planet.
Individuals in the U.S. are willing to do their part and what’s lacking is no secret: the political will to do straightforward things like ratify the Paris Agreement. Negotiated by 195 states within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agreement addresses greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. Some 120 nations are expected to sign when the agreement opens for signature this Earth Day.
Will the United States be among them? It’s an open question. Many politicians have indicated the United States should not participate in the agreement at all. Their rational doesn’t make sense, and that’s what Abdul-Jabbar was getting at. Reason the way most understand it is not in vogue in parts of our government.
Politics aside, Earth Day is a chance to revisit this iconic photograph. When we consider the big picture, as the photograph encourages us to do, little has changed since it was taken. Our troubles seem petty compared to the overriding fact we live on our only home and it’s much smaller than we often see.
Our daughter visited for four days — just over 96 hours. Once she was safely returned home, I was incapacitated with a headache, fever and dizziness for a full 48 hours.
Of course I went to work sick. That’s what low income people do.
I broke fast with some cornbread and milk for breakfast yesterday.
I also had the last follow up for my injured hand.
“Let me see you hand,” Doc said as he entered the examination room, barely closing the door.
After a quick look he said it was good and released me. Hand shake, fist bump and done in less than 60 seconds.
I like the efficiency and my employer likely does too.
I’m ready for work around the house and garden… work delayed by the last week’s events. I feel the pressure of being way behind, but still hope to get early planting done by Derby Day.
The forecast is great weather for working outside after my shift at the home, farm and auto supply store.
The Johnson County League of Women Voters is hosting a public forum with the candidates on Wednesday, April 27. I plan to attend and listen to what each has to say.
Pat Heiden is a blueprint candidate for 50-50 in 2020, a non-partisan group whose mission is to achieve political equity for Iowa women. Heiden said she was inspired politically when her parents hosted candidates like the late Harold Hughes at their home.
She seeks to give back to the community by running for office. This seems a tangible goal after more than 30 years working at Oaknoll Retirement Community.
Heiden is well connected and has a natural constituency. She has the support of former supervisor and state representative Sally Stutsman and retiring supervisor Pat Harney. She also has behind the scenes support from the significant political players who associate with 50-50 in 2020. Having three of five supervisors being female would not be a bad thing. Heiden has not been politically active.
The other leading contender for my third vote is Kurt Michael Friese, a local businessman and author. He chose not to run in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Terrence Neuzil. Lisa Green-Douglass won that election.
The strength of Friese’s campaign is his endorsement list. Some people I respect and know reasonably well, including Francis Thicke, Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, are publicly endorsing him.
At a recent event I overheard him tell another attendee he had the Laurie Tulchin endorsement. Tulchin is a member of the so-called Newport Road gang, a politically active, resource laden and well-connected group of people working to avoid development in the area around their homes. There is a conflict between the gang and the county land use plan which designated their area as open for development while preserving the farm land south of Iowa City. This endorsement will persuade some.
Friese’s name is widely recognized among city dwellers, but his universe of Iowa City is not strongly connected to mine. Despite the negatives, he is a contender for my third vote.
There are two in the also ran category, Jason T. Lewis and Mike Hull. Both are just getting their campaigns organized, so my prejudice is unfair.
Lewis works for the University of Iowa and we have enough influence on the board of supervisors from this dominating county economic engine. People I respect hold Lewis in high regard, but he’ll have to be persuasive at some level on April 27 to get my vote.
Hull is a medical helicopter pilot who got his flight training from Uncle Sam. He has been active in county veterans groups and had he inquired about or joined our chapter of Veterans for Peace, I might give him a second look. It seems doubtful a person who spends significant time with the American Legion will be my pick unless he is like Al Bohanan who served as a legion commander, is a member of Veterans for Peace and is very active in Democratic politics. Hull doesn’t appear to be like Bohanan.
My ballot in the primary looks pretty straight forward. Two incumbents plus one of two business people with a lean toward gender equity on the board. That could change by the election, and the League forum will be an important event to see how candidates handle themselves in public, and in reaction to each other.
That yesterday was opening day in Major League Baseball, and day after tomorrow begins the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, were inescapable sports facts on social media.
Spring is about Derby Day for me. It’s a race to get the early garden work done by then so once the risk of frost is minimal the main seedling crops of tomatoes, peppers and the like can go into the ground.
Most years I have been able to take a break from gardening to watch the two-minute Kentucky Derby, taking in just enough of the pageantry to feel a bit queasy. The old saw is horse racing is the sport of kings and who wants or needs it? It’s just there.
Iowa political class member Jerry Crawford asserted last year he had two goals: delivering Iowa for Hillary Clinton and winning the Kentucky Derby. Hillary won the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, just barely, and his team Donegal Racing’s 2015 entry in the Kentucky Derby placed fifth. That’s about as close as my life gets to so-called kingmakers.
I’ve been hobbled in gardening by my hand injury. Yesterday I limited my work to planting seeds in trays and transplanting those grown — celery, broccoli and basil — into larger pots. No digging for me… yet.
It was 71 degrees in Alaska in late March, almost 80 degrees in Iowa yesterday. The Alaska temperature was highest in recorded history and not a good sign for the thawing tundra and its release of long banked methane gas.
While sports distracts many, for those of us listening to a different narrative such distraction puts many more at risk of stopping Earth’s engine of sustainability.
That matters even on this small plot in Iowa removed from much of the turbulence in society.
I called off work at the farm because of the six stitches in my right hand. I had hoped to resume soil blocking today, but not yet.
On deck is transplanting basil into larger plastic pots, preparing containers for potato planting, and radishes, turnips and spinach planted in the ground as the temperature rises to 70 degrees and rain holds off until late afternoon.
With these tasks I can set my own pace and take breaks if pain in my right hand returns.
Mercy Hospital Auxiliary Cookbook 1977
Over the years I’ve collected several hundred cookbooks, including one from the hospital where I was born. Published in 1977, Cooking For… Mercy’s Sake is full of ingredients and ideas I won’t likely use — American cheese, lard, meat and seafood, and a host of prepared food and food mixes.
Still, I search through the recipes, seeking the name of a contributor I know and recipes that can be adapted to our fresh food, locally produced lifestyle. The cookbook committee wrote this poem as introduction:
Recipes are certainly handy
When making cookies, pies and candy.
On the pages of this cookbook you’ll find
Favorite recipes of every kind.
We thank all our friends who took their time
To write their recipes, line by line.
Good luck to you and may you have fun
Trying these recipes, one by one.
On first reading, there’s not much there. Because of my relationship with the hospital I’ll give it another read to see if I can find something adaptable.
My life is about much more than food. While I write a lot about consumables, I’m also preoccupied with the journey — hopefully a long one — through my later working years to full retirement and old age. I didn’t think this would be the case, but as I finished writing for newspapers and took a full-time job there is an undeniable feeling that a corner has been turned. I know part of what’s around the corner and much is also a mystery. I’ll need nourishment along the way, but the unfolding journey is what life has become about.
My take on this is pretty simple, and it goes back to Joan Didion, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I’m trying to make a life in that sense.
Didion explained, “We live entirely… by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria — which is our actual experience.”
I respect the narratives of others, but can’t adopt them as mine. It is about disengaging from established narratives and experiencing what’s next.
Each day is an adventure in that regard, one to seek joyfully.
We called the day between Good Friday and Easter Holy Saturday when I was a grader. It was not as important as Easter’s main event in the liturgical year.
On Easter Sunday we dressed in our best clothes to attend Mass with Grandmother. We’d return home for Easter dinner and talk around the table. I remember Grandmother helping wash dishes in the kitchen. It was the most significant holiday of the year, for her, and in our insular Catholic community.
No longer.
It was a punk Saturday because of the stitches in my right hand. Restricted from activity, I stayed indoors, managing to cook dinner, water seedlings, do laundry, make the bed, and read. I would have preferred to get my hands dirty in the soil but it wasn’t meant to be. It was a day of healing if not repentance. Of contemplation, not work.
I rose Easter morning for the first time in a long time without the pain of plantar fasciitis in my feet. Hopefully this condition persists.
Matthew 16:24-25 says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.“
If I’m not ready to walk those footsteps, today’s healing is a signpost. Healing is possible. Healing can come. Healing can set us free.
The large bandage on my thumb is a reminder healing is not done.
As darkness yields to dawn and sunlight, one can’t help but be comforted by the possibilities each day brings. Days of work lie ahead until that final night and its return to Earth which engendered us.
People who harp about hourly wages are tedious and mostly fooling themselves. The economic instinct in society should be and is making a decent life from what we have and are given. Wages are a part of that, but there is a lot more.
A person can’t make a decent life based solely on wages.
I’ve read my friends at the Iowa Policy Project on Iowa’s cost of living, wage theft, and minimum wage. I don’t disagree with their analysis of the data sets they chose. My issue is work like theirs serves the political class more than it does regular workers. Useful for policy makers, but not for those working poor.
The Johnson County Board of Supervisors recently implemented a policy to raise minimum wage in the county — with caveats — to $10.10 per hour by Jan. 1, 2017 and then index it to the Consumer Price Index for the Midwest Region. I attended a public hearing on the ordinance in Solon, read online comments and news articles on the ordinance and its impact, and importantly, talked with scores of people impacted by the law. The ordinance is a lifeline to some, but has little impact on most working poor because it does not adequately address their central concern — finding a job that pays a living wage.
As a low wage worker, I tell a small part of my story in the following paragraphs. It includes a brief history lesson, corporate interests in consumer pricing of gasoline, work injuries, and the role of total compensation packages.
History Lesson
In 1975, minimum wage was $2.10 per hour. With the proceeds of a full-time, no benefits job at a convenience store, I rented an apartment, bought food, had a telephone, owned a car and lived a reasonable life in my home town. A person could get along on $2.10 per hour, barring personal cataclysm, if just barely.
According to the CPI inflation calculator, the $2.10 I earned in 1975 equates $9.26 in today’s dollars. The exact same job I held in 1975 — convenience store cashier — now pays a going rate of $10 per hour. Minimum wage hasn’t kept up but the market has.
How can a person can build a decent life on low wages? It’s not easy. However, addressing minimum wage is a form of tinkering around the edges. So many analyses of minimum wage fail to consider the corporate system we have in every aspect of our lives. Yes, people have to contend with complex issues involving corporate life. They include health care, insurance, banking, debt, fuel, communications, food security and electricity. People complain about these aspects of life rather than leverage them to their advantage. The one I know most about is fuel pricing.
Gasoline Pricing
Gasoline prices were $2.099 per gallon at local outlets this week. Gasoline is the dominant passenger vehicle fuel and buying it has become an accepted part of life that includes transportation as a basic expense.
One of my roles during a transportation and logistics career was to purchase about 25 million gallons of diesel fuel per year for a large trucking firm. I visited refineries, pipeline companies and retailers and came to know how every penny of the price we paid came about. While I bought diesel, the same lessons apply to gasoline — something almost everyone who lives outside public transportation routes has to buy.
When I drove my first car, a Volkswagen Beetle in high school, a couple of bucks would fill it up. During gas wars, the price went as low at $0.27 per gallon. Today, state and federal tax alone is $0.579 per gallon in Iowa. An escalating tax became part of the expense background.
Perhaps the biggest change in gasoline pricing over time has been the move from vertical integration of energy companies to the culture of outsourcing and partnering among varied aspects of the fuel supply chain. This is sometimes called horizontal integration.
When I worked for Amoco Oil Company in Chicago in 1990, the corporation was paid $600 million for its oil fields in Iran. Partly because of political instability — their oil fields were seized during the 1979 Islamic Revolution — partly to divest assets and buy crude oil on the open market. Little did we know at the time, Amoco, a company viewed as a stalwart of great places to work and the ninth largest global corporation, was in the process of disappearing. At one point they did everything from exploration, production, refining, research and retailing. They merged into a foreign corporation.
When we pull up to a gasoline pump at a convenience store, the details of the hydrocarbon supply chain seem very remote. Oil and other hydrocarbons have become fungible commodities, and as such, we tend to deal with the price at the pump. Crude oil and crude oil futures trade on financial markets which provides some price visibility. Invisible are the many people from exploration and drilling, to production and refining, to transportation and delivery, to sales and marketing who get some part of the transaction of filling a passenger car gasoline tank.
Working for low wages reinforces the focus on per gallon price. When gasoline prices go up it’s bad. When they go down, we like it. Set aside the government subsidies, the unrecognized cost of using the atmosphere as an open sewer for emissions and everyone taking a fraction of our $2.099 per gallon. Energy company executives and politicians alike realize price is king and expend resources to keep it so. All a minimum wage earner knows is when price at the pump goes down, there are a few more dollars to spend this month. What people in the oil and gas business know is each entity along the supply chain is taking a margin above their costs out of the pockets of gasoline buyers. The impact on working poor is disproportionate. Raising the minimum wage won’t fix corporate extraction of money from gasoline consumers or almost anything else.
Work Injuries
I cut my right hand at work this week and had to get stitches — six of them at the base of my thumb.
It doesn’t hurt much, and my motor skills haven’t been impaired, however, the doctor said I’m supposed to minimize use of my hand until a worker’s comp doctor reviews my healing progress on Monday. There’s plenty of work that can be accommodated at the home, farm and auto store where I work so lost wages there shouldn’t be a problem. I went back to work after returning from the clinic — there was no lost time.
What matters more is the loss of productivity in everything else I do during spring to get by.
I contacted the farm and asked for relief from soil blocking for a week. I’ll lose that wage earning opportunity. The work restriction will also be a setback for weekend work in the garden. I had hoped to plant radishes, peas and turnips in newly turned ground, some of which I will sell at the farmers market. Income is delayed. There’s no short term disability insurance, so If I don’t work, productivity and income will be lost.
People who craft models about minimum wage often include the idea of short term disability as a footnote. Focused on hourly wage, they say if everything goes according to plan a person can make it on $15 per hour or whatever. Everything doesn’t always go according to plan, especially if one is working poor. Consequences of the minor lacerations on my right hand serve as testament.
That’s where economic models created to advocate for raising the minimum wage are inadequate. Life is much more complex. There are unwelcome limits an injury imposes on life at the economic edge. Accommodating and adjusting in response is a more resilient skill that matters more than raising the wage.
I’ll adjust because I have to to preserve the tenuous thread from which our economic life hangs.
Total Compensation Package
Anyone who has studied employee turnover knows the key reason people leave jobs is not wages. It’s how they were treated by their manager. None of the analyses about minimum wage I’ve read included this key aspect of work life. It makes a difference how well trained a manager is in a lowly paid job. The tendency is to rigidly design a work process and try to get workers to fit in like they were a precision machined part of the operation. Low tolerances for performance are often baked into the job, but regardless of performance if one’s supervisor is a prick, that employment will end eventually, usually by choice of the employee.
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, companies that employ workers 30 or more hours per week must provide health insurance. To the employer this is one of many costs that yield a total cost of the employee. There is a tendency to push as much of the cost for health insurance on the employee in the form of premium co-pays, deductibles and co-pays. In my current job employees get health insurance benefits with reasonable premium co-pays and a high deductible/co-pay structure. Family coverage is more expensive, and the cost of covering a spouse is roughly equal to the cost of the least expensive policy on the government health insurance marketplace for a single individual.
Since the insurance is offered by the employer, there is no government premium subsidy, which with premium co-pays creates a disincentive for working poor to seek full time work with benefits. It is easier, and better economically, to work multiple part time jobs without benefits and sign up for health insurance through the marketplace to get the subsidy.
Wages in larger businesses are a function of total pay package. Smart companies look at the competitive marketplace for employees and determine the range of how much a position should be paid. Often a human resources consulting firm is engaged to benchmark compensation per position. Once the range is determined, the company decides what part of pay is through benefits and what part through wages. Wages, paid time off, workers compensation, disability, health and dental insurance, employee discounts, clothing allowances and the like are all part of the cost of an employee and their total compensation package. Companies will always strive to keep the overall cost of employees low.
If government raises the minimum wage, a company will seek to keep employee compensation costs the same or lower. That means some aspect of pay and benefits will take a hit, shifting the same dollars to wages from benefits. Another alternative is to turn employee hiring and management over to a temp agency which bills employee costs at a fixed rate. In some cases, like that of the Whirlpool Corporation’s recent operation in North Liberty, there are multiple layers of this type of outsourcing. The employee may earn slightly above minimum wage, but the rest of the benefits package is taken by the temp agency or subcontractor. Raising minimum wage may only shift where the money is coming from. It all comes from the total compensation package.
Conclusion
The starting point for a new conversation about wages is to consider our history, the impact of corporations on almost every aspect of our lives, the risks of injury in low wage jobs and how the total compensation package and erosion of benefits in favor of wages makes a difference when one is working poor. Hopefully this post will serve to begin some new, more meaningful discussions.
I cut my right hand at work yesterday and had to get stitches — six of them at the base of my thumb.
It doesn’t hurt much, and my motor skills haven’t been impaired, however, the doctor said I’m supposed to minimize the use of my hand until a worker’s comp doctor reviews my healing progress on Friday. There’s plenty of work that can be accommodated at the home, farm and auto store so lost wages there shouldn’t be a problem. I went back to work after returning from the clinic — there was no lost time, an important metric for people like our store manager.
What matters more is the loss of productivity in everything else I do during spring to get by.
I contacted the farm and asked for relief from soil blocking for a week. The work restriction will also be a setback for weekend work in the garden. I had hoped to plant radishes, peas and turnips in newly turned ground. I’ll experiment with turning the soil without my right hand, but the prospects seem dim for getting much done.
There’s no short term disability insurance, so If I don’t work, productivity and income will be lost.
People who craft models about minimum wage often include the idea of short term disability as a footnote. Focused on hourly wage, they say if everything goes according to plan a person can make it on $15 per hour or whatever. Everything doesn’t always go according to plan, especially if one is working poor. Consequences of the minor lacerations on my right hand serve as testament.
That’s where economic models created to advocate for raising the minimum wage are inadequate. Life is much more complex. There are unwelcome limits an injury imposes on life at the economic edge. Accommodating and adjusting in response is a more resilient skill that matters more than raising the wage.
It has been so long since I was injured at work — more than 40 years ago at the meat packing plant — I can’t remember what to do.
I’ll adjust because I have to to preserve the tenuous thread from which our economic life hangs. It’s all part of sustaining a life in a turbulent world.
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