Category: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary Writing

Waking and the Imagination

Curing Squash

I’m not a fan of human physiology. Given a Cartesian outlook toward life, I’d rather not think about or acknowledge my physicality even exists.

Yet there it is, influencing my daily affairs in ways I don’t comprehend. The physicality of others impacts everything I do in public and in private. My physicality — driving a lift truck, operating a bar code scanner, lifting bags of feed, sitting in meetings with other humans — impacts others as well as myself. For at least a moment, I should consider and endeavor to understand physiology.

Maybe in another life.

“I think, therefore I am” has been my beacon since I was a grader. I call it Cartesian now but its roots are in serving as an altar boy a few blocks from home in the Catholic Church and in the convent located on the upper floor of our elementary school. I’d come home from daily Mass and read what today is called juvenile literature printed on cheap paper and mailed from places of which I’d never heard. I became fixated on my own awareness and with the fact that other people, places and things existed and had impact on me. I felt separate from their reality, connected only by ink on paper, conversation, and radio and television. I became aware that in fact it was a reality.

The origins of a Cartesian outlook have roots further back in my hospitalization for a head injury at age three.

“What I learned through the injury and recovery in the hospital was that there is an infrastructure of knowledge and caring to support us when things happen,” I wrote in 2009. “This experience assured me that although we are vulnerable, we are not alone.”

Four physicians ago, when we first moved to Big Grove, my doctor laid me back on the examination table and rested his left hand on my naked belly and held it for a moment.

“This is not normal,” he said, referring to excess weight layered between my guts and skin. I agreed, respecting his training and experience in physiology, something about which I cared little. One would have thought it easy to improve my Body Mass Index given the intellectual provenance awareness can bring.

But no.

It has been especially hard to exercise since developing plantar fasciitis. Given my love of jogging, I tend to avoid thinking about exercise now, hoping gardening and the physicality of work at the home, farm and auto supply store compensates. I don’t know if it does and am reluctant to do the type of analysis I did with other life schemes.

If mine is a life of the imagination, that’s where I’d prefer to live. Yet reality beckons: in the form of news stories of horrible things happening to people the world over; in the work required to put a balanced meal on the table; or in staying awake during the 25 minute commute to the home, farm and auto supply store. Who wouldn’t want to live in the imagination? There is an unparalleled comfort there.

Whatever I am, physically or intellectually, I go on looking.

I look through a window where spiders persistently weave and reweave a web to catch insects drawn to the warmth and light of our home;
I look through eyeglasses the prescription of which needs an upgrade;
I look through the car windshield alert for the sudden appearance of deer during the rut;
I look through the fog of morning to see what each day brings;
I look for things I recognize more than for discovery and that’s regrettable.

After college I vowed to read every book in our Carnegie library. At the time that may have been possible. I didn’t get past the religion section of the Dewey Decimal System-organized stacks. I don’t read as much today as I did then.

Now the veil of Maya wears thin.

Everything I believed upon retirement from my transportation career has been called into question. I was hopeful the long, difficult work of electing a Democratic president was finished and that common sense would dominate public discourse. It turned out to be too much imagining as we were struck in the tuchus by the physicality of modern politics.

As if awakening from a dream, it will soon be time again to get dressed and find my running shoes. Not because my plantar fasciitis is in abeyance, but because the built in arch support will comfort my aging feet as I re-engage in society. I didn’t imagine I’d have to do that again in this life. It turns out I was wrong and Frederick Douglass was right:

It is in strict accordance with all philosophical, as well as experimental knowledge, that those who unite with tyrants to oppress the weak and helpless, will sooner or later find the groundwork of their own liberties giving way. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” It can only be maintained by a sacred regard for the rights of all men.

I imagine it’s time to get back to work in the physical world.

Categories
Work Life Writing

Back to Work

Barn Wood

The desultory nature of lowly paid work is a grind.

That’s what I found yesterday upon returning to the home, farm and auto supply store after a four-day vacation. By afternoon I was ready for a nap but instead scratched at the stacks of piled up work and made a day of it. I won’t run out of work there any time soon.

I had thought to secure provisions at the warehouse club after work but was tired, achy and my feet hurt. I skipped shopping and drove straight home.

Vacation consisted mostly of sleeping, reading, napping, cooking, writing and resting. I’ve been working almost every weekday and weekend since February when I started soil blocking at the farm. It all caught up with me. By Tuesday night I felt more human if not fully rested.

I left our property exactly three times: to meet with a neighbor about our relationship with Iowa Department of Natural Resources, to fill Jacque’s car with gasoline, and to pick up our share at the farm. Most of what I hoped to do while vacationing remains undone. I did manage a few things using the internet: applying for Social Security retirement benefits, ordering a couple of books for winter reading, and ordering parts to repair a burner on our aging electric range. It’s something.

I’m not complaining. We have it better than most who make it on less than a livable wage in the post Reagan society.

What matters more was the ability to author a few posts during this down time. Nothing profound — public journaling really — and that escape into the imagination made all the difference.

Categories
Writing

Last Share at Sundog Farm

Sundog Farm

The sun set as I pulled into Sundog Farm, home of Local Harvest CSA.

Eileen from Turkey Creek Orchard had just dropped off fresh aronia berries and jars of fruit jam to fill orders placed over the weekend. Farmers Carmen and Maja were there but didn’t have time to talk as they had deliveries in Cedar Rapids.

That left me with the goats and sheep to pick up our share.

Low wage work has kept me so busy everything that was once important gave way. I finished reading What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first book I read since April. Clinton’s book is an important read for Americans and finishing it a year after she lost the election seemed good timing. What surprised me was how much space she devoted to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. My native reaction was what happens on the internet doesn’t matter much to a U.S. general election, but she convinced me that maybe it does. I also enjoyed her personal stories throughout the book. As was the case while reading her last book, Hard Choices, I found her analysis to be helpful and reasonable.

Today is election day in Iowa’s cities and towns. My pal from the Clinton campaign, Lauren Whitehead, is running unopposed for city council in the town nearest us. There is no election in the unincorporated area where we live. Because of our family roots in southwestern Virginia, I have been following the gubernatorial race there. The Democrat is leading in the polls although that’s no guarantee he’ll win. Whatever the result in Virginia my Twitter feed will be clogged up with analysis and punditry tonight. It’s a good night to retire early with a book and read about the election in the morning.

Yesterday I applied for Social Security retirement benefits. If all goes as expected the first check will hit in late January. By Spring I’ll be in a position to scale back my work at the home, farm and auto supply store. After that I hope to return to the CSA farms to help with spring planting. It will be the sixth year.

For now, I took the vegetables home and will consider how best to use them before they turn to compost. That’s an essential human question. One I spend extra time trying to answer.

Categories
Writing

Potluck Beginnings

Basket of Apples

On Friday I clocked out of work at the home, farm and auto supply store for four days off in a row!

I drove straight home, dumped the coleslaw I made in the morning into a bowl and mixed it up one last time before the potluck. I grabbed a pair of tongs for serving and headed to the orchard for the 6 p.m. event.

The annual crew potluck is our biggest and only non-work event at Wilson’s Orchard.

About 80 people attended at the on-site Rapid Creek Cidery, bringing the best side dishes imaginable to go along with chef Matt Stiegerwald’s braised pork from hogs raised at the orchard’s farm.

We joked we weren’t sure if we were supposed to bring potluck table service. A veteran of many church potlucks brought a basket with plates, silverware, glasses and everything one would need. Most of us used paper plates and flatware. I enjoyed a glass of plain hard cider as aperitif before switching to non-alcoholic.

When serving began, I made a southern-themed plate with pork, my coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, dumplings and raw tiny carrots. One of countless possibilities given the many tables of side and desserts. All that was lacking was corn bread but it was a potluck after all.

My work pals were all there: the octogenarian who makes dinosaurs and showed off the scar from his recent knee surgery to all who were curious; the pilot who recounted his air-search for the other orchard, which he couldn’t find until I gave directions from ground level; the artist who gave a speech about entering the drawing for fabulous prizes mostly from the Orchard’s lost and found (think sunglasses); the data analyst who is sharp as a tack yet made a six-figure error on the cash register; the Ukrainian guest workers; and the crew of bakers with their families — it takes a lot of bakers to make all the turnovers, pies, apple and peach crisps and blueberry buckles we sell. The sales barn manager was there. She works non-stop from before the August opening until the end of the season. Actually just about everyone was there. Needless to say the conversations and meal, with a chance to win prizes, were delicious. That’s no apple joke.

We talked about when we might see each other again and confirmed that God willing and the creek don’t rise we would be back next year. My only regret was it wouldn’t be soon enough. Heaven help us if it’s not until next season.

Categories
Writing

Drawer of Ingredients

Drawer of Bell Peppers

Our household had no shortage of fresh food this year.

Barter agreements with two farms, my work at the orchard, and a garden that produces more food each year created a kitchen full of ingredients to feed the two of us and others.

I’m thankful to have figured out how to provide local food for our family mostly grown using organic practices.

So it is with this blog. It is a place to capture what’s going on in a turbulent world and make sense of it if I can. I post original content and significant writing from elsewhere. The interplay between this blog, email, Twitter and Facebook is complex and ever changing. Like the fruit and vegetable production, it is a pantry full of ingredients for bigger projects — snippets of this and that drawn from memory and experience.

I’ve written about 2017 as the final lap leading to a finish line. It is also a starting line. In addition to taking care of our aging home, ourselves and our relationships, I plan some writing projects, including an expansion of my post Autobiography in 1,000 Words. I made the plan a year and a half ago and once end of year chores are done I hope to schedule the work. Something else has to give — likely be my work at the home, farm and auto supply store.

At this point, memory is still good and the larder is full of ideas. Now to make something of all these ingredients. What else is there to do?

Categories
Writing

Grit Alone Won’t Protect Local Food Systems

Red Delicious Apples

The marketplace of home vegetable gardens, community supported agriculture, farmers markets, road side vegetable stands, restaurants, retail interests and direct farm sales hasn’t coalesced into a sustainable local food system, and may not.

One should never doubt the resilience of farmers. At the same time, due to unwelcome changes in society, our local food system is at risk before it has become sustainable.

A small group of pioneers made progress toward a sustainable, local food system. People like Denise O’Brien, Dick and Sharon Thompson, Fred Kirschenmann, Francis Thicke, Laura Krouse and Susan Jutz took ideas about sustainability and put them into practice. Their work enabled a new generation to enter the local food business — people like Tony Thompson (New Family Farm), Kate Edwards (Wild Woods Farm) and Carmen Black (Sundog Farm).

The idea of a return to diversified farms producing food for local markets begs the question how did we get away from it?

If markets for local food become stale or disappear due to changing tastes or financial stress, increased commodification could erase slim margins and lead to bankruptcy.

A local food system is about cooperation and support: between farmers, and with their customers, suppliers, workers, volunteers and bankers. Without that a family may have their dinner on the table, but the entire system is risked if such individualism is the prevailing attitude.

Change is in the air. Change driven by economic hardship and oppressive policies originating in Des Moines and Washington.

It doesn’t look good for growers, retailers or consumers, not because business models have changed, but because we are entering an era when wealth flows to the top, leaving the rest of us struggling. How will farmers get health insurance if the individual market becomes too expensive? They may take a job in town and let their agricultural aspirations go.

These changes and the challenges they bring will test the sustainability of a fledgling local food system.

Climate change is impacting society negatively as well. What we assume about Iowa’s growing conditions — adequate rainfall and predictable temperatures — is subject to change as the oceans and atmosphere warm, increasing the number and intensity of extreme weather events. Likewise, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be reducing the nutritional value of food, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

I don’t doubt the resilience of farmers I know. If a local food system can be sustained, they will do it. Isn’t it time you got to know your farmer? We could all use a friend during these turbulent times.

~ First published in the Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017 edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Categories
Writing

Apple Weekend

Apple Harvest

Best news of the week arrived Friday afternoon via email. The Cedar Rapids Gazette decided to publish my opinion piece on the local food system at risk.

A writer lives for exposure to an audience and my readership will get a boost just by being in print media with daily circulation over 30,000.

I will probably run to the convenience store before sunrise to buy a copy as soon as I hit publish. (UPDATE: Here’s the link).

This weekend is mostly about apples. It’s Golden Days at the orchard. We have multiple varieties of Golden Delicious and for the most part, that’s what we’ll be picking. There are a lot of them still on the trees. Last night was family night and I spent most of my shift stocking shelves, coolers and freezers in preparation for what we hope is a good Saturday turnout. I laundered my orchard T-shirts last night and am ready to go. It’s the beginning of the end of the u-pick season.

Fallen Apple Pile

It’s time to pick the Red Delicious apples on our backyard tree. With the record-breaking heat apples are beginning to drop. I’d better not wait any longer. They are sweet enough to eat out of hand and should make great apple sauce. Whatever I’m able to harvest will be a fraction of the potential. We can only eat fresh and process so many.

So that’s the plan. Read and publicize my article in the Gazette and live in Iowa’s apple world. There’s work involved, but it will be a labor of love.

Categories
Writing

Local Food at Risk

Last Garden Tomatoes

Our local food system is at risk before it has even become established.

The mix of retail interests, community supported agriculture, farmers markets, road side vegetable stands, restaurants and direct farm sales hasn’t coalesced into a sustainable local food system and it doesn’t appear it will any time soon.

One should never doubt the resilience of farmers. At the same time if markets go away due to changing tastes or financial stress, increased commodification could take slim margins out of farm businesses leading to bankruptcy. Iowans remember well the farm crisis of the 1980s.

A small group of pioneers made progress in starting a sustainable, local food system. People like Denise O’Brien, Dick and Sharon Thompson, Fred Kirschenmann, Francis Thicke and Susan Jutz took ideas about sustainability and put them into practical application. Their work enables a new generation of farmers to enter the local food business, people like Tony Thompson (New Family Farm), Kate Edwards (Wild Woods Farm) and Carmen Black (Sundog Farm). The idea of a return to diversified farms producing food for local markets begs the question how did we get away from it?

September Seedlings

Change is in the air. Change driven by economic hardship, oppressive policy in Des Moines and Washington, D.C., and climate change. It doesn’t look good for growers, retailers or consumers, not because business models have changed, but because we are entering an era when wealth flows to the top, leaving the rest of us struggling for subsistence. Cultural changes driven by our political and economic climate will test the resilience of a fledgling local food system. What we assume about Iowa’s growing conditions — adequate rainfall, predictable temperatures and soil quality — is subject to change as the oceans and atmosphere warm resulting in increased numbers and intensity of extreme weather events in Iowa.

The challenge is this: If I can buy perfect-looking Honeycrisp apples for $1.98 per pound at the grocery store, why would I pay more at a local apple orchard? The local foods answer is because one knows the farmer, has likely met him or her, and knows the inputs that go into fruit production. As families increasingly make limited resources go further, the risk to local food farmers is they will feel it as consumers pinch pennies.

Today’s food system centers around being able to say, “I’ve got mine,” with regard to a family’s food on the table or a viable agricultural business model. That individualistic, self-centered approach is not sustainable. Sustaining a local food system will take all of us working together.

Versaland, a farm owned by Suzan Erem and Paul Durrenberger, and operated by Grant Schultz, has been in the news. Schultz is well known locally and serves as an example of how a local farmer can create bad press, alienate neighbors and risk failure. In a recent blog post, Erem and Durrenberger answered the question what kind of farmer Schultz is in no uncertain terms: a neglectful, unfocused one. Read their post titled, “Grant Schultz — Facts to Consider.”

Schultz recently applied to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to rezone part of Versaland. The supervisors rejected the application unanimously, in part because land owners Erem and Durrenberger did not support it. Local farmers with whom I’ve discussed the matter don’t understand why he wouldn’t get buy-in from the landowners before applying for rezoning. The answer is likely he can’t afford to buy the farm according to contract terms without the money his proposed idea might generate.

Whatever one feels about the Versaland saga, disputes — some including lawyers and some not — are common in agriculture. The reason the Versaland dispute stands out is there have been so few of them in the local food system. For the most part, people get along despite differences.

What is more concerning than a legal dispute is the disconnect between Versaland and its reality. This narrative started a couple of years ago.

“Mr. Schultz and Versaland have completely shifted the climate change narrative in the heartland,” author Jeff R. Biggers opined in the Nov. 20, 2015 New York Times. “Today’s farmers can play a key role in climate solutions.”

The narrative Biggers crafted about farming and climate change, featuring Schultz’ work, tells what may be possible but falls far short of what is. Schultz’ first steps in what Biggers asserts should be a global climate change campaign faltered with the revelations about Versaland the dispute brought to light. That Schultz appears to be a neglectful, unfocused farmer isn’t a crime. Those who live in the country know plenty of farmers like that. However it detracts from the credibility of Biggers’ narrative. To the extent Versaland is part of the local food system it drags everyone down.

Our local food system is not at risk for lack of a narrative. What matters more is the relationships between farmers and their customers, suppliers and landlords. Government plays a role and the negative cultural impact of federal and state governments in society remains to be seen. That is the greatest risk the local food system faces.

One hopes the window to establish a vibrant, sustainable local food system remains open, at least for a while.

Categories
Writing

Apples Toward Autumn

Deciduous Tree Leaves in Late Summer

Apples exercise hegemony over everything of late.

Yesterday our orchard’s chief apple officer cut a slice of Kidd’s Orange Red to sample and it’s been hard to think of anything else. A cross between Delicious and Cox’s Orange Pippin, developed in New Zealand by James Hutton Kidd, and introduced in 1924, the flavor is unbelievable. I’d say it was delicious but that would be an apple joke, favoring one parent over the other.

The orchard is in peak production. I picked one or two of each from the cooler to bring home: Gala, Crimson Crisp, Crimson Gold, Jonathan, Snow Sweet, and Jonafree. There are more than a dozen other varieties ripe for picking from the trees.

“Heat early in the growing season built sugar,” our chief apple officer told the Iowa City Press Citizen. “Sunny days with cold nights —like those in the past month — brought color and flavor.”

The Crimson Crisp apples are the best I’ve tasted this year. Food is about flavor as much as sustenance, isn’t it?

In our backyard the Red Delicious tree is ready to pick. This is a baseline commodity fruit apple for us. Like many home gardeners I make apple dishes from what is available. The fruit is smaller than usual because there are so many apples on each branch. There are plenty to make juice for drinking and apple cider vinegar, apple sauce, baked goods, dried apples and frozen slices for winter. Once they are picked, a mad rush to preserve them begins — I’m putting it off until Wednesday to work on a couple of other projects.

I took two bushels of kale leaves to the orchard on Sunday. I was surprised how many co-workers had never seen scarlet kale. Likewise my large leaves are much different from the bundles of small ones available in the grocery store. I asked one of my colleagues to compost whatever was left at the end of the shift. She said she wouldn’t but would take any remainders home. A gardener is always looking for outlets for kale.

In the garden, late pepper growth is happening. There should be plenty more Cayenne and Red Rocket hot peppers, some jalapenos, and maybe a few sweet bell peppers. The Fairy Tale eggplant is producing and there will be a few more large tomatoes. Some carrots survive but not enough to make a dish of them.

I took two days vacation at the home, farm and auto supply store next week to work in the yard. Garden cleanup, tree work and much needed mowing and trimming are on the agenda… also apple picking and processing. Here’s hoping the rain holds back those two days.

I’d move on to other work now except I can’t escape the complex flavor of apples. It dominates my waking hours and carries over while I sleep. As leaves on deciduous trees begin to turn I embrace the apple season, holding on until the last fruit falls, the last leaf turns to compost — sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Practical Gardening

Red Rocket Peppers

Gardening is of light and shade, moisture and soil health, seed genetics and cultivation. It is an endeavor in which we can invest personal effort and a few resources to see practical results.

We garden in complex creation, only partly of our own making. Imbued with elements, animals, insects and microorganisms we don’t fully understand, this year’s garden plots brought new understanding, a bountiful harvest and a busy kitchen.

Gardeners become the verb “to garden,” and if lucky, become inseparable from the process of growing and cooking food. What was once new knowledge becomes embedded in daily actions that appear intuitive. We become the syntax of food production. Words can’t do justice to what gardeners experience and learn over decades. One sees it only in practice.

Pear Harvest 2017

Last night I rushed into the house after work at the home, farm and auto supply store to change clothes, get the ladder, and pick pears before they all drop. We planted the tree at our daughter’s high school graduation party and have had some almost every year since they bore fruit. The season is very short as are our lives. We plan to enjoy the sweetness of fresh pears as long as we can.

Red Delicious apples are not fully ripe. I ate one while rushing around the back yard chasing pears and sunlight. Sugars are beginning to dominate starches and a couple more weeks on the tree will serve them well. After that it will be a mad rush to pick and preserve them. It could be another 1,000 pound harvest.

Second Growth Broccoli

There were beautiful second growth broccoli heads, about eight of them. I broke them off by hand, cut and peeled the stems for work lunch.

There were more Red Rocket peppers. I harvested the reddest ones, leaving many more to ripen. In the kitchen I took the others from the baking sheet in the oven (oven turned off) and carefully spaced them on the five trays of the dehydrator. I’ll dry them until they are ready to grind into red pepper flakes.

Someone brought cucumbers to the orchard on Monday. I took half a dozen (there were an inch thick and 5-6 inches long) and combined them with what was already in the ice box to make a second batch of fermented dill pickles. It takes 10 days if everything goes according to plan. Fingers crossed.

Monday I picked up two crates of tomatoes and two dozen quart Mason jars at Kate’s farm for canning. This is part of our barter arrangement in which she provides tomatoes, I process them, and we split them resulting canned goods. I sorted them Tuesday morning before my shift. Once spread out they filled four and a half crates instead of two.

I made ground tomatoes from the ones with bad spots as a base for pasta sauce. Here’s the process: Wash, trim and quarter the tomatoes then pulse in a blender until the big pieces break down. Put the blended tomato pulp in a juice funnel to separate liquid from the flesh.

After an hour, the split was 50 percent juice to 50 percent flesh. I put the results in jars and stored them in the ice box. I’ll can the juice and make pasta sauce while I work in the kitchen tonight or tomorrow night.

With two paid jobs and diminishing daylight there’s not much gardening time in my schedule. The lawn needs mowing and I plan to plant garlic in a week or two and there’s work to do preparing the soil.

It’s a rush until first frost, after which I may be able to slow down — but I doubt it.