Food for Thought

This inquiry of mine into life on a few acres outside of a metropolitan area has led me to explore places and ideas I didn't know I was going to.

I forget what I've blogged about. I wonder how much I've been thinking about I have communicated and to whom. I feel like I'm starting my sentences in the middle, but worry that I'm repeating myself. Oh well.

Originally, I was under the general impression that organic food was good simply because we weren't polluting our bodies with herbicides and pesticides, I didn't give much thought to the soil. Then reading Scott Chaskey's This Common Ground, I was shocked by thought of 5 acres of farm land being without a single earthworm. Then reading Bromfield, the picture gets a little clearer, and you see how bad farming practices rob the soil of living things (bacteria, worms, etc.) and organic material (stuff that used to be alive) and minerals and nutrients... all which work together to produce healthy plant, animal, and human life.

Bromfield hit upon something in 1944 that others are now only beginning to hit upon (though in a different way) some 60 years later. He connected the degradation of the soil with the degradation of society. His argument was that land that had been robbed of its nutrients and life could not provide adequate nutrition for quality life in the people it fed. Corn that is grown with chemical fertilizers on land robbed of its life does not contain the nutrients and trace elements that corn grown in live, healthy soil has.

He points to families that, through the generations, whether out of ignorance or indifference, farmed their land to death. The original members of the family were healthy, respectable individuals. As the generations passed, the family became poorer, trying in vain to maintain the same productivity from the land that their predecessors attained. In the end, they gave up farming and became migrant workers or moved to the city. The New Deal tried to provide jobs to some of these families by sending them to other parts of the country to work the farms that were still productive. However, after a life of struggle and malnutrition, these workers weren't as productive as those that grew up eating off fertile land.

I can feel the same thing on a smaller scale. In the morning, if I don't eat a proper breakfast, I don't feel so good. I am sluggish and slow, and have a hard time thinking clearly. How much more so for those that have never eaten good quality food in their entire lives?

I remember wandering through a discount grocery store, looking at the products, and wondering how any of this cheap, ultra-processed food could be remotely healthy for a person. And if this is the only food that poorer families can afford to buy, then how are they supposed to have the physical and mental health to truly improve their lives? Isn't it funny that we have to have academics tell us that children need a good breakfast before they go to school in order to learn properly?

Anyway, I was going to mention that this all ties in spiritually as well, but am not going to address that until my next serious blog post... maybe...

Stuff

I was sent a link to this video called The Story of Stuff. As much as I liked this video and want lots of people to watch it, if only to make them think for a moment, I, the eternal skeptic, was bothered by one thing...

A post WWII retail analyst (Victor Lebeau?) was quoted as saying (briefly) that we needed to "make consumption our way of life" and "seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption..."

Scary, gross words.

The only problem is that I began to wonder what context the quote was pulled from. I wanted to know who this Victor L. guy was and how it was that he was so instrumental in shaping our economy and habits. Wikipedia came up empty-handed, and the only internet sites that mention him were from the blogs of people that were pulling that same quote from the same video. Hmmm.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the general idea that our society is far too wasteful. It is too easy to be lazy and use disposable, plastic plates so that I don't have to wash some dishes, and I wish I could point to the statistic given in the video that only 1% of what we buy is in use 6 months later... But I don't have any idea how true that statistic is.

Regardless, if you don't mind being challenged in your thinking, watch it anyway, and you might just find yourself thinking twice the next time you go shopping.

The Pregnant Brain

After I put Joe down for a nap and sent Finley to her room to play quietly, I got out some yarn and my crochet hook with the intent of working on a new little project. (Something to let me feel productive, but not sap my energy.) I sat down on the couch (actually, love seat... a full sized couch doesn't fit well in our living room), and realized I was rather tired, but wasn't sure if I relaxed enough to actual snooze.

I looked around for the crochet hook, and didn't see it. I tried to think about where I had put it down, but nothing came to me, so instead I closed my eyes.

A few minutes later, I realized a very pregnant lady can't get very comfortable crammed onto our couch, so went upstairs to lie down on the bed. I caught a good hour-long nap, then wandered back downstairs to find that Finley had fallen asleep as well. Two napping children! How wonderful!

I thought again about sitting down to crochet, but motivated myself enough to wash the dishes. Then I went to get a snack. As I reached up to the cupboad door, I felt something moving in my hair. 'I hope it isn't some creepy spider,' I thought as I went to feel what it was.

It was my crochet hook. I had stuck it in my ponytail. It's a good thing I didn't try to look for it. I never would have found it.

Nesting

About a month ago, we noticed that a pair of doves were camping out on one of the brick pillars of our front porch. Chris wanted to make sure they didn't build a nest and make a mess of our porch. I secrectly hoped he would forget, then lose the nerve to disrupt them if they did.

They did end up building their nest, and Chris left them alone.

Soon after, the kids and I went out to sit on the porch. The mama bird immediately flew from the nest and tried to distract us from the nest by flapping on the telepone wire and performing all sorts of aviator stunts. I didn't want to stress her out, so herded the kids back inside. Thankfully, she's gotten used to us, and doesn't feel that we are a threat, even when I tried to get in her face to snap a photo.

Until yesterday, I hadn't seen her leave the nest since that first stressful encounter. I was watching her as I sat on the couch and read, wondering when she slept. (Her eyes are always open, and seemingly watching us through the windows.) All of a sudden, she flew off, presumably to get something to eat, and I had my chance to see if there were actually any eggs in the nest. I stood up on the couch to try to see, and sure enough, I caught a glimpse of something white among the twigs. I'm not sure if there is only one egg, or if there are more, but I didn't want to freak mama out by poking around near her nest when she felt it was safe enough to leave it for a second.

I have to admit, I am a little jealous of her. In spite of her watchfulness, she is allowed to sit still nearly all day long and simply wait for her little one(s) to hatch. There are so many things on my before-the-baby comes 'to do' list and my 'want to do' list... but generally by the time I get a moment, I check my energy level, and it is running close to empty. Oh well. The thick layer of dust on the bathroom light will just have to wait.

Undercurrent

I can't get away from it these days. Not that I want to, but every step I take seems to lead me deeper, whether I mean it to or not.


I received a comment on a post a while back from the founder of Johnny Seeds, and in a quick email exchange, he offhandedly mentioned the author Louis Bromfield. I couldn't figure out if I had heard of him before, but am always up for good recommendations, so requested Pleasant Valley from the library. I didn't realize it was an autobiography. I have only read the first 50 pages, but have this insatiable desire to carry the book around and read passages from it to anyone who will listen.


I know that there aren't many people that really understand what it is that is stirring my heart these days, but, like I said, it keeps pulling me in, so I am compelled to keep talking about it, even if no one really gets it.


Louis Bromfield grew up in rural Ohio near his grandfather's farm. He wanted to become a farmer, but was encouraged by his mother to travel the world first. He became a writer, and spent 30 years in other parts of the world, most of that time in Europe. After thirty years, at the onset of WWII, he moved back to Ohio and bought a farm.

He believed that farming practices in America had largely destroyed the soil. He described it as raping and mining. Soil life, minerals, and nutrients were being taken from the soil and nothing was given back to it. Bromfield wanted to prove that 'worn out farms could be restored again...' He wanted to be a new pioneer 'who created new forests and healed and restored the richness of the country God had given us, that richness which, from the moment the first settler landed on the Atlantic coast we had done our best to destroy.'

Restoration. I'm hearing it over and over. Back in the fall, I went to a women's retreat. I don't remember a thing about the retreat. I just remember that when we were supposed to 'seeking the Lord,' the only thing I could think about was the healing and restoration of the soil, of the earth. And recently, I have started to see the coupling of this passion for the restoration of the earth with the restoration of people as well. Something I can't explain, but something I know is there.

On a slightly different note, I have also been thinking about the disconnect between the majority of 'conservative Christians' and creation. It feels as if most have given up on the earth as a cursed entity, and therefore have the right just to let it all 'go to hell' as it were... but I think I'll get into that some other time. That's a little too deep for me to wade through tonight.

Little Things

In Wendell Berry's book, Andy Catlett..., he talks about how modern culture has changed our perspective. As we drive down the road in our cars, we are forced to focus in the distance. The things closest to us are missed out on because they pass by too quickly.

Here are just a few of the little things I have happened upon when I take the time to slow life down and looks around:

This is a cactus sprout. I used to have a cactus planted in this flower bed. Four years ago I tore it out. After four years of lying dormant, this seed decided to sprout.

Morning dew drops on a leaf of our tulip poplar tree.

Every sunny, summer morning, the light streams through the crystal in the little window by the fireplace, throwing rainbows all over the room. The kids love to play in the colorful light.

Glory, Hallelujah...

This morning, instead of waking up under the dirty-brown view of ceiling joists and subfloor, I woke up under the clean off-white ceiling of newly nearly-finished attic space in a pool of filtered morning light from the skylight above our bed. I hadn't heard a stir, creak, or thump from the children's beds all night, as sound was no longer being transmitted through the hardwood floors straight into the airspace above my head. I didn't have to pull myself up any flights of stairs in the middle of the night. Although the needs of nature did wake me up a few time, I was able to stumble just a few feet back to bed and return to sleep after just a few moments. Amazing.

After having the carpet installed yesterday (see above photo), Chris and I (with a little help from my bro who had the misfortune of stopping by in the nick of time to help move a few pieces of heavier and/or awkward furniture out the basement door, through the blazing heat, around the house, then up a flight of stairs) moved our bed and a few other items upstairs. I feel a little disappointment at not having some matching nightstands to really give the room a feeling of completedness, but maybe someday...

In the meantime, I just have to laugh at myself for caring so much. I used to have a room furnished with a bedesk (desk built of 2x4's with 6 foot high platform above on which I had my sleeping pallet), an (admittedly) ugly, brown, striped chair that I covered with an old army blanket, and random things that I collected and thought were interesting. But, really, I haven't changed so much. My room 'matched,' and I was very particular about the atmosphere of my living space and the way things looked (thus I covered the ugly chair with a blanket). Chris doesn't mind so much, at we are sometimes at odds as to how to furnish our rooms. In the end, I think he ends up agreeing with my decisions.

Now that we are semi-settled in our new master-suite, I am about to enter into some serious 'nesting' activities. The house is covered in a layer of dust, the basement is cluttered and crazy still, and baby things are crammed in corners all over the house. My hopes are to get everything cleaned and put in their proper places. I'm hoping to usher truckloads of unneccessary items from this house, maybe have a garage sale, and feel like I have room to breathe again. I've got one month.

Thoughts

I recently read Wendell Berry's Andy Catlett: Early Travels, which is a short novel that documents a boy's week spent with his grandparents, narrated through the view of Andy as an old man. Andy talks about how, in 1943, he was living at the time of transistion from the old way of life to the new way, the transistion from a largely self-sufficient culture to one dependent on manufatured goods and all the things the age of 'cheap petroleum' provides.

One of the things that really struck me is that over the span of two generations, we have largely lost the skills and knowledge necessary to be self-sufficient. His comment in the book is that if we needed to go back to the older way of life, we would 'do so only uncomfortably and with much distress.'

It brought to mind the night I had watched a movie about farmers and couldn't get to sleep because I was wrestling with the fact that I didn't know the first thing about raising chickens or milk cows. Thanks to modern conveniences such as the local library and the internet, I now don't feel quite so ignorant, but I am still painfully aware that I'm not really used to working that hard.

I borrowed anoth Berry book of essays from my brother, and in the preface, he addreses the way in which this new age has affected the way we bring up our children. He writes (tongue in cheek):

The main thing is, don't let education get in the way of being nice to children. Children are our Future. Spend plenty of money on them but don't stay home with them and get in their way. Don't give them work to do; they are smart and can think up things to do on their own. Don't teach them any of that awful, stultifying, repressive, old-fashioned morality. Provide plenty of TV, microwave dinners, day care, computers, computer games, cars. For all this, they will love and respect us and be glad to grow up and pay our debts.

I heard a news report this spring about how the sale of vegetable seeds tends to rise whenever the economy is supposedly in stress. People try to think of ways to cut costs, and decide that growing their own food is one of them. It makes sense, but it makes me wonder how many people my age have the skills and knowledge to just go out and plant a vegetable garden. How many of them, like me, have to consult the internet or a book in order to do the things that were naturally taught as a part of life a century ago?

My Weedy Garden

Plums

The year we moved in, we planted several trees, including two plum trees. They were hardly more than bare root trees, just stuck in a pot of sawdust, so we didn't expect any fruit that first year. The next two years, we had an infestation of Japanese beetles, which ate the leaves into something akin to Swiss cheese, and the fruit was buggy with spots and mostly just fell off. I remember getting to eat one plum one of those years. Last year, we had a late frost, and the fruit had already set, so they just shriveled up and fell off the tree.

This year, the tree is loaded with fruit, most of them looking very healthy. I ate my first plum today. The inside was very sweet and juicy, the skin very tart.

By the way, I have six weeks to go, and despite the 90 degree weather, I'm not as swollen as I thought I'd be. I guess it helps when you don't eat canned ravioli and fast food for lunch like I did when I was pregnant with Finley.

Attic Progress, Cont.

In case you were wondering...

Carpet is scheduled to be installed next Monday.

Just need to stain the posts for the railing, and paint some trim.

The railing will come later. My bro is going to help us out and build one for us. After discovering some metal work I found at a salvage yard was waaaaaaay overpriced, he sent me a link to a sight where we can add some nice detail to the railing. I am very excited about it...