crazysalad

Every day do something that won't compute...

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

--Wendell Berry, 1973

How to Get Started

I came across this article in wikiHow and thought it summed up very concisely what the slow food and local food movement is all about. 

How to Get Started in the Slow Food Movement

(from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit)

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.[1] The slow food movement is a reaction to a fast food lifestyle predominant in many modern cultures. By choosing to become a part of the Slow Food movement, you are making a choice to be a co-producer rather than a consumer; an active, proactive and informed part of the food chain that recognises the "connections between plate and planet".[2] This article discusses a few ways to become involved and become a Slow Foodie yourself.

  Steps

1. Understand what slow food means. Slow food is about more than food; it is about a lifestyle that connects our food consumption to the wider social, ethical, lifestyle, political, environmental and spiritual elements around us. Slow food is about eschewing haste and recognising that over-reliance on fast food damages our health, social fabric and cultural food traditions.
2. Join a Slow Food group in your region. The Slow Food movement has enlisted over 80,000 members in at least 122 countries, so it's probable you have a group near you.[3]  Your local group will be known as a "convivium" and you will find your local group via Slow Food Where To Find. Of course, you don't have to join to be a part of the Slow Food movement; it is just a chance to be with like-minded people and to have the chance to share ideas and to participate in events together; benefits that may enthuse you.
3. Get cooking. That's right. Stop buying the pre-made selection and start pulling out your recipe books. Look for family heirloom recipes passed down through the generations; many of us can recall delicious meal occasions prepared by family members, or even by ourselves before the need for speed overtook us.  Be careful about your recipe choices, however. The fancy cookbooks might call for ingredients that need to be imported from many thousands of miles away; avoid these and favour recipes that let your local produce take centre stage, including veggies and fruit from your own garden.
4. Shop locally. Shopping locally is a key element to being a Slow Foodie. Shop at your local farmer's markets, your local fruit and vegetable store and even consider asking for veggies from your neighbours if they're growing some. Not only do you save the wear and tear on the environment from all the energy consumed in long-range transportation but you also know where your food came from and that's a very reassuring feeling.  The greatest benefit of shopping locally though? The food is as fresh as possible and that just tastes the best.
5. Avoid genetically modified food. Whilst some companies may put forth a vision that genetically modified food is the promise of the future, there remain many questions about the speed at which such modification is occurring and the means by which it is being achieved. Certainly, we have been modifying our food for centuries but the key word here is centuries, not a matter of years.  The Slow Food movement has a fundamental opposition to the use of genetically modified food products because in making a large swathe of common food sources generic, we risk losing the all important diversity and quality of food available around the world and replacing it with mono-crops that become more susceptible to disease, providing less healthy variety and possibly increasing the chances of human-induced disease through over-concentration on a few food types.
6. Buy organic. Where possible, prefer organic produce over conventionally grown food. You reduce your exposure to pesticides, fungicides and fertiliser chemicals and you get produce that many studies have suggested are higher in nutrients that bolster the immune system, presumably because plants not treated with pesticides must produce more antioxidants to protect themselves.[4] Organic food is an important part of the Slow Food movement because organic food is low impact and harm reducing, especially when practiced on a non-industrial scale.
7. Grow your own food. Whether you have space only for a container of herbs or space for a large veggie patch, you can become a direct force in your own food production.  For dwellers in small residences, use the window sill and balcony to grow herbs and fruit trees in pots. For those with larger gardens, plant vegetables in seasonal rotation and enjoy the freshest there is. It is really important to involve children in gardening, to aid their understanding of the connection between soil, food and their own health.  Start children with easy-to-grow plants, such as radishes, herbs and peas. Encourage children to eat some of their crop raw, straight from the garden, so that they can taste just how delicious a fresh pod of peas or cob of corn really is.
8. Share your home-cooked meals. Not everybody can cook. Those who are infirm, disabled or simply too busy to consider the value of slow food are just some examples of people who are not in a position to cook.  Share your cooking talents around to help out those less fortunate; and if you are trying to convince others about the message of slow food, what better way than by setting the example with your own delicious food? Tempt them...
9. Cook with the kids. The earlier that children get involved in the kitchen, the better. Children who know how to cook are not at the mercy of the fast food industry and know automatically how easy it is to whip up their own fresh food at home. Moreover, in teaching kids how to cook, you share a family tradition together that will bind you closer together and this helps to pass on traditional family knowledge. Encourage kids to enjoy cooking at home by letting their imaginations take a key part in the cooking process; creating shapes and food themes is a fun part of making food for the table, as in this image.
10. Pack a healthy lunch. For work, school, outings and play, take a home-prepared lunch. Soup can be kept warm in a thermos, sandwiches can be kept fresh by pre-cutting the filling but only adding it to the bread at lunchtime and homemade baked goods, cut fruit and veggies, salads and leftovers can contribute to a well-rounded and tasty lunch that lets you spend more time enjoying your lunch hour and keeping extra money in your wallet. Save that extra money for a delicious meal once a month in a restaurant that follows Slow Food principles.

  Tips

• The Slow Food movement began in Italy, in 1989. Carlo Petrini advocated against fast food and was the founding member of the Slow Food movement.[5]
• Drink municipal water where safe; bottled water requires high energy usage to bottle and transport and there are concerns about leakage of chemicals from the plastic bottles. It is better to agitate for sustained municipal water supplies than to pay more per litre for water than for fuel; water that often is filtered municipal supplies anyway! Add a filter to your home taps and enjoy what you are already paying for and support the local waterworks.
• Many traditional cooking methods have fallen into disuse because of the time that they required to prepare and cook.  Many people have solved this problem by preparing large quantities of old-style food in one day (imagine that you were going to have many guests), then freezing it in meal sized containers for easy defrosting and consumption. Freezers are very useful tools for the modern kitchen.
• Never forget that your slow cooker can be started in advance and allowed to cook all day, maintenance-free; and that when in a rush, a pressure cooker can greatly reduce the time necessary to cook items or entire meals!  (Pressure cooking a half gallon of fresh-snapped green beans requires less than 10 minutes, and entire roast beef only takes 15 minutes per pound of meat.)  Additionally, a huge "bale" of fresh spinach microwaves in minutes!  Not all "slow" cooking has to be inconvenient or a long ordeal -- the word "slow" refers more to Anti-Fast-Food.

  Warnings

• Test your soil for toxins. If you live in an urban area, or anywhere that may have once been industrial you would be well-advised to test your soil before growing vegetables. Even healthy looking soil could be contaminated with lead, mercury, zinc, cadmium, or PCBs.  In the US, the local Agriculture Office should offer these testing services to their residents, along with relevant advice concerning growing things in your immediate area.
• It is easy to believe that organic farming and fair trade products are safer and better for the world. However, many experts disagree with the hype. Remember that while "organic" uses no chemical pesticides or fertilizers and is thus "clean," it  is a business model just like any other, and presents its own problems and challenges.[6]

  Things You'll Need

• Time (though not as much as you'd think)
• A passion for food that is good, clean and fair
• Farmers' markets, local fruit and vegetable stores
• Garden or container garden

  Related wikiHows

• How to Choose the Most Important Organic Foods
• How to Start an Organic Garden
• How to Save Money at a Farmers' Market
• How to Avoid the Temptation to Eat Unhealthy Foods
• How to Be Green
• How to Live a More Environmentally Friendly Lifestyle
• How to Practice Sustainable Agriculture

  Sources and Citations

• Official Slow Food website
• Slow Food USA
• Slow Food UK
• Slow Food Canada
• Slow Food Ireland
• The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity

1. Slow Food, Our Philosophy
2. Slow Food, Our Philosophy
3. Where We Are
4. New York Times: Is Organic Food Provably Better?
5. Wikipedia, Slow Food
6. http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8380592

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Get Started in the Slow Food Movement.  All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

What Comes After

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

        fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

       beauty     .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
        (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

        thou answerest

them only with

            spring)

--ee cummings

Sowing the Seeds

My friend, Julia Dashe, has spent the last three years of her life creating the school garden at Morse High School.

Julia is one of the most passionate, engaging, hard-working, funny people I know.  She loves working with kids, planting seeds, and helping things grow.

What about you?  What inspires you?

What do you love so much that you do it willingly, lovingly, whether you get paid for it or not?

I don't mean your job.  I mean your life's work.  Your calling.

I’ve found mine. 

It’s not a job that has a name.  At least not yet. 

I’m making it up as I go along. 

That’s the best kind of job, if you ask me: the one that didn’t exist until you came along.  The one only you can create. 

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My dad would have been 67 today.

Later today, as I do every year, I will make his birthday cake, his favorite--German Chocolate.

But this morning I made biscuits.  My dad’s biscuits. 

Like many experienced cooks, my dad kept the “recipe” for biscuits in his head.  He measured with his eye and adjusted the dough as needed with his practiced hand.  When I moved out on my own, I began cooking for myself.  As a novice cook, I didn’t trust myself, didn’t have the confidence yet to work without a recipe. When I came back home once for a visit, I begged him for his biscuit recipe, he obliged me and wrote out the following:

From my mother, I learned how to make dinner.  She was a working mom, but every night she made sure we sat down together as a family around a well-balanced meal: meat, starch, and a vegetable.  When my sister and I grew older and my mom went back to school at night to earn her degree, all of us pitched in and took turns making meals.   I know my dad helped, too.  But when I think of him in the kitchen, it’s always breakfast time.   

He only made breakfast on the weekends.  During the week, with everyone rushing off to work or school, we usually ate toast or cereal.  Fast and easy.  But on Saturday and Sunday, Dad would rise, make a pot of coffee, and read The Washington Post.  Then he would make biscuits. 

Often I would wake up just as the biscuits were coming out of the oven.  Maybe it was smell that had pulled me out of my slumber and hunger that had provided the incentive to get out of bed. 

Hot biscuits.  I loved pulling them apart and watching the steam rise out from between the flaky layers.  Then came the hard part—deciding what to put on them.  Honey butter, apple butter, or jam?  I loved all three, so I usually had one with each topping.

But if I got up early, my dad would let me help him bake.  After we had shaped and cut out most of the dough with the biscuit cutter, he would give me the scraps to play with.  I would knead the scraps together and roll it into a long snake-like shape or coil it into a spiral.  Or I would experiment with new creations, filling the dough with jam or sugar or whatever I could think of and then folding it over.  Invariably, the filling would leak out during baking and burn into a sticky, black spot on the bottom of the baking sheet.  The thin snake would have to be pulled out early because it required less baking time than the thick, round biscuits.   In contrast to contrast to his high, fluffy, and identical golden rounds, the biscuits I made were small, misshapen, grey.   Tough from being overworked.

I learned a lot about baking that way. Playing.  Experimenting. Hanging out with my dad.  The best part was sitting down to eat with him afterwards. 

Knowing we had all morning together and nowhere to go. 

From my mom, I learned the fundamentals of cooking.  Shopping, planning, executing a meal.  Getting it done.  Doing it every night, because your family depends on you.  Understanding the importance of good nutrition.  All things I still use and appreciate.  A deep, deep respect for food. 

But from my dad, I learned the joy and camaraderie of the kitchen.  How to make things I love and crave to this day: bread, cinnamon rolls, biscuits.  Warm, delicious things that made the whole kitchen smell homey and sweet.

That’s how my kitchen smells this morning. 

Thanks, Dad.  I miss you.

The Real Enemy

Do you believe one person can change the world?

When that question was posed at a recent book club meeting, nearly every hand in the room went up in agreement.

Now, do you believe YOU are that person?

We all looked around.  We were in a room full of at least forty people, mostly older women, in the La Jolla Library.  We shifted in our seats.  One brave woman finally raised her hand.

I believe it. I believe that each person on this earth is capable of changing it. 

So why didn’t I raise my hand?

Was it modesty?  Was I afraid of what people would think of me?   

What were the others thinking?  (Who am I?  How can I make a difference?  Why should I bother recycling when most people don’t?  Why bother voting?  My one vote won’t change anything.  Why should I worry about someone else’s problems?  I’ve got my own problems to take care of.)

Or was it peer pressure that silenced me?  No one else had their hand up so I wasn’t going to be the first to stick mine out.  I didn’t want that kind of public scrutiny.

Why not?

How can I believe I can change the world if I can’t even take that first step?

If I can’t even raise my hand to speak for myself, how can I expect others to do so?  As Isabel Allende has said, with all of the privileges we have in this country, we have an obligation to help others, especially other women, who have less than we do--less money, less education, less power.

That takes courage.

No, more than that.  It takes audaciousness:

1.    A willingness to defy the status quo, the restrictions put upon us by society in the form of laws, religion, manners or tradition.

2.    A sense of adventure.

3.    A spirited fearless daring.

That’s what it takes.

Are we so wrapped up in our own world (work, relationship, TV) that we can’t be bothered to step outside our comfortable little boxes?

Well, one person can make a difference.

One person has.

The book in question at that discussion was Three Cups of Tea, the selection for the One Book, One San Diego program this year. The idea behind the program is to get everyone in the city to read the same book.  (Talk about audaciousness.  Getting everyone in the city to read a book would be a miracle.  The same book?  That would be a revolution.)

"How can Americans say they are making themselves safer?"  Pakistani Brigadier General Bashir Baz is quoted in the book, as he and Greg Mortenson watch a live CNN feed from Baghdad in the fall of 2003 of wailing Iraqi women carrying children's bodies out of a bombed building.  "Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next two hundred years."

"...Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America.  Thanks to America, Osama is in every home.  As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard.  You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength.  In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else.  The enemy is ignorance."

Greg Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote, volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  He has established over 61 schools, which provide education where few education opportunities existed before.

Mortenson has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders, government officials and tribal chiefs from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls.

When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke.  “It you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways,” Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl.  “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger.  The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest.  The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die,” he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson’s own.  “Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea.  We may be uneducated.  But we are not stupid.  We have lived and survived here for a long time.”

“That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life,” Mortenson says.  “We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly.  We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started.  Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.  He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”

If you want a truly amazing story of how one person can make a difference, read the book.  Even better, go hear Greg Mortenson himself.  He will be in San Diego this week, speaking at various places around town. 

I want to go to Camp Pendleton.  For one, in all my 18 years in San Diego, I have never once stepped foot on a military base.  Second, I want to hear what Mortenson has to say, especially to a room full of Marines.  Finally, I want to hear the questions that the audience has for him.  I have a lot of questions myself.  And this time, I will be there, with my hand up in the air. 

That’s the first step.

Moving at the Speed of Life

Part of the problem with modern life is the speed at which everything moves.  Fast food.  Jet travel.  High-speed internet service.  Everything comes at us in a constant stream, a barrage of stimulus. 

“Technology is a way of organizing the world so that we do not experience it.”—Max Frisch

Sometimes I think our ability to affect change in the world has moved beyond our ability to understand or control it. 

Injecting human growth hormones into animals? Cloning animals for food?  Why do we do this?  They grow faster that way.   It’s more “efficient” to “produce” animals this way.   Andrew Kimbrell calls this ethics of technology “cold evil.”

Do we know what the hell we are doing?  Do we care?

As Gandhi said: “there is more to life than increasing its speed.” 

I’ve often felt out of place, confused, disconnected from the society I live in. As though I was born in the wrong century.  Not that I am a Luddite, as some have accused me of being.  I love change and growth.  But at my own pace, not imposed upon me.  I want to taste it, experience it, digest it. 

I’m slow.   

On their Inner Work Blog,  Jerry Ruhl and Robert A. Johnson write about "Wisdom in Chaos and Confusion":  “David Bohm, a brilliant theoretical physicist, in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, conceptualizes the universe as manifestation of what he calls the universal flux. Bohm asserts that everything is process and in process. There are no stable enduring phenomena. What appear to be solid objects are simply slower processes than the human process. We perceive these as static if we vibrate at a faster frequency, and we perceive these as chaotic if we move slower. Each has its own rhythmic vibratory rate, its own velocity. Faster processes are more ephemeral. Our experience of constancy is an illusion created by relative velocity.

How might you appear to a redwood tree? Like wind or rain, people might be perceived as fleeting and intangible. To hummingbirds we are sluggish and clumsy, almost tree-like in our movements.

Modern science explains that we do not see the swirl of atoms or the hectic race of galaxies — our narrow sensory perceptions trap us. We imagine the world to be semi-static and filled with enduring things. Yet the truth is more fluid. We are ripples in a flowing ocean of changing life. We are waves breaking against some mysterious shore.

Life is constantly in flux, yet in our culture confusion is generally held to be a mistake or even a pathology. Confusion is not inherently a problem to be solved. It reminds us that life is always in transition, that everything we think is permanent is actually only temporary.

To be confused is to be in the swirling midst of what is. A basic spiritual principle is learning to accept what is instead of insisting that life be a certain way.”

Off the Shelf

“What’s that?”

My daughter, Siena, age 9, pointed to a small grey blob.  I  paused in our bedtime reading of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to examine the stain in the right margin of page 56.  “A tiny spider? Silverfish?"

“No, looks more like chocolate,” I guessed. 

She, the youngest in a household of readers, nodded in understanding.  While dinners are strictly social (cherished family conversation time, no TV or books), most solo eating in our house is done in the company of books. 

Mornings Siena props a Katie Kazoo behind her cereal bowl and steadies it with her left hand.  Head bent forward, her right hand travels a slow, circular path from milk to mouth, stopping only to rest the spoon in the bowl as she turns the page, her eyes never leaving the book.

Crumbs, stains, and watermark are an inevitable part of our library--and not just in the cookbook section.   So I am grateful for the latest Center for Ecoliteracy newsletter alerting me to a link combining two of my favorite things: Books and Food! 

Philip H. Howard, an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, has compiled this searchable online bibliography of books and films related to community, food, and agriculture.   A quick search revealed that several of my recent favorites like Full Moon Feast and Food Not Lawns haven’t made the list yet, but several older classics and must-reads like Fast Food Nation, Fatal Harvest, and Wendell Berry did. 

Professor Howard created the database as a resource for his Community, Food and Agricultural Systems course.  So far the list only has 200 items, but Howard plans to keep updating the site, so kudos to him creating it and making it available online.  Great start!

Be sure to check out the rest of the site as well, especially his graphs on the consolidation of the organic food industry.  (One that surprised me was learning that Hershey’s owns Dagoba chocolate.)

Co-op America’s Responsible Shopper site is another great resource for finding out who the major players in agribusiness (Cargill, Monsanto, ADM) and the food industry (Nestlè) are and what they are up to. 

As consumers, we have a lot of power.  The choices that we make every day determine the world we live in.  This year we will elect a new president.  But we don't have to wait 4 years to vote.  As Michael Pollan has said: "you can simply stop participating in a system that abuses animals or poisons the water or squanders jet fuel flying asparagus around the world. You can vote with your fork, in other words, and you can do it three times a day."

And here's who is behind the names on my shelf (in the picture at the top of this entry):
Muir Glen, Bearitos & Spectrum: Heinz
Seeds of Change: M&M Mars
Annie's: Solera Capital

Skeletons in the Attic

Q: Have you noticed all these new nonfiction books on "happiness"? It's an industry.

Charles Simic: It's really frightening.  People need to read a book on how to be happy?  It's completely an American thing.  Can you imagine people in Naples sitting on a bus or in a trattoria reading a book about happiness?

Q: What advice would you give to people who are looking to be happy?

Simic: For starters, learn how to cook.

--Interviewed by Deborah Solomon in the New York TImes

Eyes Fastened With Pins       
by Charles Simic

How much death works,

No one knows what a long

Day he puts in. The little

Wife always alone

Ironing death's laundry.

The beautiful daughters

Setting death's supper table.

The neighbors playing

Pinochle in the backyard

Or just sitting on the steps

Drinking beer. Death,

Meanwhile, in a strange

Part of town looking for

Someone with a bad cough,

But the address somehow wrong,

Even death can't figure it out

Among all the locked doors...

And the rain beginning to fall.

Long windy night ahead.

Death with not even a newspaper

To cover his head, not even

A dime to call the one pining away,

Undressing slowly, sleepily,

And stretching naked

On death's side of the bed.

From Charon's Cosmology, by Charles Simic. Braziller Series of Poetry, © 1977.

Ecological Farming Conference 2008

Last week I attended the 28th annual Ecological Farming Conference at the beautiful Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove (near Monterey), California.  The first year I went to the conference was in 2002, just a few short months after 9/11. I don’t know if it was the fact that I came alone—or that the farm I had been volunteering for and fighting to save had just been sold to developers—or just the general mood of the country that year—but I left that conference feeling completely despondent.  The world was going to hell and despite our best efforts as environmentalists, there seemed to be nothing we could do to stop this destructive, downward course. 

But this year the mood is completely different.   You can feel it.  Hope and change is in the air.  We are electing a new president this year.  “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “Fast Food Nation” have awakened a lot of people to the fact that there are changes happening in our environment and that it is imperative (and in our best interests) to get involved and make some changes in the direction we are headed.

The theme of this year’s Eco-Farm Conference was “Root Values: Connecting Ecology, Community, and the Land.”   I was here representing San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, a group of volunteers that came together 7 years ago to help save a farm that we loved from being sold and converted into a housing development. 

San Diego Roots has grown in these past few years from a handful of concerned citizens to a community-wide effort.  We have much to celebrate.  We helped start and maintain a successful high school garden project at Morse High School and we are now in the process of buying a farm, WIllow Glen Farm, which will eventually serve the entire San Diego community as a working sustainable farm model and educational center. 

Representing San Diego at the conference were fellow Roots’ board member & OB People’s Food Coop board member Doug Zilm, as well as David Solomon, Dashiell Kuhr & Erika Shickle from La Milpa Farm in Escondido.  We left San Diego on Wednesday morning and made the 7 hour drive up to the Monterey Peninsula through rain and snow (at 4000 feet through the Tejon Pass)!

The first evening of the conference began with a keynote speech on sustainability by author Eric Schlosser.  Schlosser didn’t really cover any new ground, but reiterated what he learned in writing his best-selling book Fast Food Nation.