Final Local Food Musings

The most tangible results of my personal project--preserving local food to eat throughout the semester--have been tasty indeed. Tonight I sat down to a bowl of spaghetti, with sauce containing locally grown tomatoes, zucchini, and onions from my freezer. Over the break I took some frozen Indiana pumpkin puree home to Alabama for Thanksgiving and included my family in my local food commitment by way of pumpkin pie (or not-so-local, considering we were about 650 miles away from the field of origin).


This project has allowed me to connect across generations through conversations with my grandfather, who grew up on a farm in Kansas and still cans tomato juice like he did with his mother when he was young. In fact, he laughed when I told him I was learning to can for a school project, and pointed out the irony of making an academic production from something that was common knowledge to pretty much everyone just a few generations ago. [As an aside, I'm willing to bet that my great-grandmother would think that it is a great blessing to be able to buy a can of tomatoes at the grocery rather than have to grow and can them herself.]

Four months ago I had not been to the Bloomington Farmers Market or set foot inside of Bloomingfoods or SaharaMart. I had never blanched a vegetable, I was scared of canning, and I also didn't know that people in Indiana grew peaches. Now I have been to each of those places (multiple times), blanched more vegetables than I care to recall, and have beautiful golden jars of Indiana peaches waiting to go into pies just as soon as finals are over. (And, ok, I'm still a little scared of canning.)

Barbara Kingsolver kept me informed (and chuckling) with tales of her local-food year interspersed with investigative journalism about the food industry and the benefits of eating local. Her writing also induced dreams of spring and sketches of garden layouts just waiting to be planted. Readings from Barry Rubin's Urban Economic Development class further added to the experience, highlighting the economic benefits of spending at locally-owned small businesses. Michael Pollan reminded me of what I learned years ago about King Corn and concentrated animal feeding operations, making me thankful that I rarely eat meat and ensuring that when I do, I'm going to be every bit as obnoxious as this couple in Portlandia (minus all the smoochy datey stuff).

My high school friend, Olivia, visited me last weekend, and after being shown around my apartment, she exclaimed, "You have lists of food everywhere!" Confused, I asked her what she meant. She pointed out my farmer's market purchase list on the refrigerator, an old list of "things to freeze, SOON" that was still on my desk, and some jotted recipes on a notepad in my room. This is visual proof of perhaps the most noteworthy impact of this personal project: my movement away from making eating choices based on convenience and price and toward a more strategic and intentional diet. I'm not perfect. I still buy plastic-wrapped bagels from the SPEA Cafe way more mornings than I want to admit. But my purchasing and consumption habits have changed, especially where produce is concerned.

Before this class, I was pretty complacent about what I ate. I knew I should do better--eat more locally and organically, and perhaps more importantly, be more informed about the effects of my consumption choices. But I was lazy, and I biked to school every day and minimized my electricity use and that was good enough, right? Through this project, I have realized with joy that I couldn't be more wrong, and that there is something incredibly fulfilling, spiritual even, about connecting with food and the community that grows it.

Although this stage of the project was only a semester long, it is something that I plan to build on as I move through life (hopefully to a place with a garden plot and more space for storing jars). I'm really excited about experimenting with heirloom varieties and being a part of their continued presence in our food supply. [Paraphrasing Kingsolver, eating an endangered whale doesn't keep if from extinction, but eating endangered food varieties does, by creating demand for increased cultivation and harvest.] With so many wonderful resources out there and delicious things to eat, there's no way I'm going to limit this adventure to just a semester!

Course Reflections

Wow...this semester went by fast! Throughout the course, I've been keeping a list of must-investigate books, online resources, and programs that have come up in readings, other students' blogs, or my own personal wanderings. I kept telling myself, "Soon! Soon you'll have time to sit down and soak it all in!" Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet, but the great thing about this course is that my list will still be relevant after the semester comes to a close. Because this sustainable community thing? It's about life, and our choices, and how they affect the world around us. And that doesn't change when finals week is over. How exciting, that we get to spend our careers making life better for people and the earth!

I consider myself to be fairly environmentally-minded and aware of the impacts of my actions. Before this class, I was well-versed in climate change and recycling and endangered species and biking and reduced consumption levels and all those other things we lump into the huge sustainability bubble. I incorporated that knowledge into my lifestyle, for the most part. Except that I still lived pretty comfortably in the mainstream world. This class has helped me to become disturbed again, which I count as a good thing. Without being a little uncomfortable, it's easy to fall into what's convenient because, you know, I'm just a graduate student with limited income, and big box stores and cheap food are pretty enticing. Until I am reminded to really think about it again and it becomes disgusting.

The overarching theme I'm taking away from this class is that of connections. That my actions and our societal paradigms, whether about food or transportation or economic growth, are interconnected and have social, economic, and environmental consequences. Additional connection--to methodologies, among students, between fields, across time, and to my own thoughts and passions--I elaborate on these below.

My other main takeaway is we need a better set of words to talk about this stuff. Vibrant, resilient, green, and of course, sustainable--all overused big time.

Ok, back to the more serious stuff. Main takeaways:

• Connections to methodologies: The community-based social marketing information we were exposed to was really valuable. And I can't wait to dive into this database of behavior literature!
• Connections among students: This course provided an excellent platform for flexible, creative expression. Reading what classmates had to share on their blogs and participating in class discussions enriched the course experience. I especially appreciated the diversity the business students brought to the classroom, and I'm excited about using the collective wisdom of the class to try my own vermiculture project, bee keeping, and winter gardening in the future!
• Connections between fields: Rubin's Seminar on Urban Economic Development dovetailed perfectly with this course. Both address methods to achieve vibrant, resilient communities (those words again!!), but come from very different places. In some ways it is as if this course provides the motivation and Rubin's course supplies the mechanics. Regardless, I've come to believe that both approaches are integral to bringing about the kind of world we want to see. I think the video below integrates them quite nicely.

• Connections across time: I really enjoyed the readings from the Sustainable Urban Development Reader. Since sustainability is such a new academic field, it sometimes feels as if it isn't anchored by much theory or knowledge. These readings changed my stance on that, and exposed me to some fabulous thinkers and writers of whom I look forward to reading more. 
• Connections to my own thoughts and passions: I love eating. The personal project required me to carve out time and energy to really think about what I was eating and why, as well as explore the effects of my eating choices on my community and the environment. Having this space for independent study and exploration allowed me to change my eating habits in ways that will last long after this semester is over. Much more on this in a blog post coming very soon...I'll just say here that this is the area where I experienced the most personal growth and expanded my sustainable lifestyle the most this semester.

I guess I'll close with the two goals I have for myself going forward:
1) To stay 'uncomfortable', and to tailor my lifestyle accordingly, and
2) To stay connected with sustainability literature--make time to read interesting books and websites because they are important, even if they aren't required for a class.

Wish me luck!

ICMA Conference in Phoenix/Maricopa County

I spent several days in October at the InternationalCity/County Management Association’s annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I attended as part of the local government management concentration here at SPEA. Looking at the session schedule ahead of time, I was excited to see that there were several sessions addressing sustainability in local government. Perfect!

After I got there and started attending sessions, however, I realized that environmental concerns were almost completely missing from sessions addressing sustainability. In individual conversations, city managers affirmed the necessity of planning for sustainability in its fullest form, and several presenters made brief mentions of initiatives going on in their cities. The ICMA has a Center for Sustainable Communities and devoted its June issue of Public Management wholly to sustainability. However, fiscal sustainability was on the mind much more than environmental or social sustainability, to my disappointment.

There were a few interesting “sustainable communities nuggets” that I brought home from Phoenix, though.

• I toured Civic Space Park near the Arizona State University campus in downtown Phoenix. Billed as "sustainable adaptive reuse," the site includes a historic structure that was renovated and now provides community meeting space and displays community art. Solar panels and public transit connectivity are other major sustainable features of the park, although it is perhaps best known for the public art piece that looks like a giant net in the daytime but is pretty cool when lit at night.

http://ifwtwa.org/2011/06/ifwtwagreater-phoenix-media-tour.html

• In one of the most interesting conference sessions, the city of Mesa, AZ discussed the crowd-sourcing tool iMesa they recently deployed to enhance public input and engagement. This is an excellent example of integrating available technology to enhance the social sustainability of a community. Citizens can submit ideas online, vote for projects they support, and even channel funding to implement certain ideas. A pdf of the presentation is available here, courtesy of ICMA. The most noteworthy thing to me about the tool is the ability to reach a much larger segment of the population and to give people a more powerful voice in the shapes of their communities. 

http://www.mesaaz.gov/imesa/

• Finally, I took advantage of my trip to Phoenix and spent the evening with some distant cousins who live on a small farm in suburban Phoenix. Most of you probably know that Phoenix is in the middle of the desert, presenting irrigation challenges. I was interested to learn that my cousin's property is part of Phoenix's flood irrigation system, by which some residents receive irrigation water from a canal along the back border of their property. As I understand it, a resident can call the utility company and schedule the canal water to be turned on at a certain time and date. They close the sluice gate at one end of the canal that runs along their property, causing the water to back up in the canal and flood the entire lawn. I haven't researched this method in-depth, but it strikes me that if you must irrigate in the desert, this is perhaps one of the more sustainable ways to do it--canal water is non-potable, and evaporation rates are lower than if sprinklers were used. Interesting concept!

All in all, I left Phoenix having learned a lot but saddened that environmental issues, sustainability (broadly defined), and climate change (Climate Action Plans, GHG inventories,...) were not a bigger part of the discussion at the conference. One potentially skewing factor is that the majority of the communities represented at the conference are small to mid-size, and may not yet have the resources or political focus for Offices of Sustainability like we see in larger cities. Regardless, we have a long way to go before these topics are integrated into the mainstream discussions of local governments. Good thing so many of us are so passionate about this sort of thing! 

Personal Project Update

Lest you were worried after reading my previous  update that I would have to survive on only onions all winter long, I’ve spend the last month blanching and freezing kale, squash, eggplant, and okra. Now that it is actually starting to feel like winter and the semester is winding to a close, I’m realizing that it is probably time to start eating some of my preserved food rather than just stockpiling it. However, the winter continues after the semester ends (and this project is technically finished), so my real goal is to be able to continue eating local produce through March or so. We’ll see how long my stores last—one of the more difficult things for me has been to judge how much I should be preserving to get me through until the next growing season.

I don’t have my own garden now, obviously, but I’ve realized through the course of this process that I have this underlying assumption/dream that I’ll be using the skills I’m acquiring (canning, blanching and freezing, cooking produce-based meals) to preserve my own harvest in the coming years. I shared a picture of my tiny little summer garden in a previous post—over the past couple of years it has been constrained by time (because I was only living there in the summers, I couldn’t plant until late May and I could only harvest through early August) and the fact that I only planted what I thought I could eat when it ripened. I didn’t think about storing excess produce for the winter months. But I have big ideas for the next spring—lots of new things to plant for bumper crops! I love going to the farmer’s market and supporting local growers, and I will continue to do this in the future. But I also can’t wait to be able to augment my diet year-round with things I’ve grown myself.

I’m still trying to figure out how to shift my whole diet to be more local—I’ve got the produce thing down, but what about things like dried beans, rice, nuts, flour, cheese, etc.? One answer is to try and buy those things at local stores rather than at chain groceries. To this end, I’ve been shopping at Bloomingfoods and Sahara Mart more often. (Although that wasn’t hard to do, as I hadn’t stepped foot inside of their doors before this semester.) While some things are prohibitively (for me) more expensive than they would be at Kroger, others are comparable. Also the selection is different, which I appreciate. And the dry goods/bulk sections are amazing –delicious food + minimal waste!

Speaking of prices, on a recent weekend I shopped at the farmer’s market and then stopped by Kroger to compare prices. It wasn’t an exactly scientific comparison, but I tried my best to compare my farmer’s market produce to organic Kroger produce of approximately the same quantity. As you can see below, kale was the most drastic price difference. In the case of eggplant, Kroger was actually more expensive!

Apples: about 2 more apples at Kroger for the same price

Kale: much cheaper at Kroger ($0.99 vs. $2.50)

Pumpkin: about the same

Eggplant: $1 cheaper at farmer's market

Tomatoes: about the same

Winter squash: cheaper at Kroger ($0.99 per pound vs. $1.50 per pound)

A few weekends ago a good friend from Georgia, Hunter, visited me. How better to introduce him to Bloomington than by showing off our local brewery and winery? It was a great opportunity to do ‘homework’ and have a wonderful weekend enjoying good company, good football (How ‘bout them Dawgs?!), and good drinks.

                      

                           These are for gifts! Promise!

Yum. Upland's Bad Elmer's.

We also went to the farmer’s market together, and made this delicious butternut squash pasta for dinner. Another of my favorite recipe finds for all the locally-grown spaghetti squash I’ve been eating is this: the tomatoes, basil, and feta make a great flavor combination, and somehow the squash makes it perfect.

                 

                    image from recipe site

image from recipe site

The final piece of my project is the reading/research that I was so excited about at the beginning of the semester. Then schoolwork hit, and although I’m really interested in the local food reading lineup I put together, there just isn’t time right now. Enter: the brilliant invention of audiobooks. I had to travel to Cleveland for a wedding last weekend, which means 12 hours of prime listening time. The books on my original list weren’t available at the library at the time (I put them on hold and am saving them for Thanksgiving travels!) so I did some searching and landed on The Dirty Life, by Kristin Kimball and American Grown, by Michelle Obama.

The Dirty Life chronicles the experiences of a young couple as they work to establish a horse-powered farm that will provide CSA subscribers with a complete diet—meat, dairy, grains, sugars (honey and maple syrup), fruits, and vegetables. Their creation, Essex Farm, is hailed by Bill McKibben as “one of the most interesting farms in the country,” and is now thriving thanks to their hard work, sweat, tears, and entrepreneurial spirit. Mark, Kristen’s husband who originally dreamed up the farm, was inspired to do this because of a deep-rooted feeling that the system was broken—too many machines, too much consumption, too much pollution. Growing or raising everything that was required for survival in a sustainable, minimally-impactful way was his answer to the concerns that many of us have but tend to brush aside. It is seriously cool—go check it out.

Three main things stood out to me as I listened to Kristin tell her story.

1)  Wow. I should be more convicted like these people are. Or, maybe more realistically, I want to be a member of a farm like that!

2) Farming is HARD WORK, especially nonmechanized, organic, small-scale farming. Farmers don’t get vacations, and they take on a lot of risks to bring us organic, locally grown food. I’m willing to pay more for food grown by people like this.

3) Food can be so spiritual. It is often the foundation of connections between people. It is what we go to for comfort for ourselves, or to show someone else we care about them. To be engaged in the production of food for so many people, reconnecting with the earth, can be a profoundly spiritual experience.

Ms. Obama’s book was also enjoyable, but in a different way. It didn’t open my eyes to a new way of living, but through its discussion of the White House kitchen garden and the ways the presence of this garden touches people from Primer Ministers to DC elementary school children, it is a powerful statement about the values and ideals of the First Family.

Sustainable Community in Action

Sustainable Cleveland 2019 was started by Cleveland, OH, Mayor Frank Jackson in August of 2009. At the broadest level, it is a 10-year initiative aimed at engaging Cleveland’s citizens to work together to create a green city on a blue lake. This is accomplished through the creation of working groups addressing a variety of sustainability topics, from extending the growing season to fostering advanced and renewable energy in the area to strengthening neighborhood vitality. Working groups are made up of a combination of community members and professionals working in that field, and are largely self-driven, pursing the projects the group feels are most beneficial. The initiative designates a focus area for each year of the initiative. For example, 2012 is the Year of Local Food. 2013 will be the Year of Advanced and Renewable Energy. Every year the City hosts a Summit to gather key stakeholders together to assess and celebrate progress as well as prepare for coming activities. The Summit serves as a forum for connecting and inspiring attendees so that they might move Cleveland toward sustainability, as well as focusing efforts on the focus areas for the current and upcoming year.

Over the summer I interned with the Cleveland Office of Sustainability working on metrics to measure the impact of the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 initiative. In late September, I returned for the 2012 Summit to see the initiative in action. Reflecting back on my experience, I gained two significant things from my time there: new knowledge about the progress and breakthroughs of sustainability initiatives in Cleveland and across the world, and inspiration from the power of community visioning.

The Summit had an awesome line-up of keynote speakers, each leaving me with a list of things to read and research further. Jeremy Rifkin spoke to us about decentralized energy generation and his Third Industrial Revolution. Janine Benyus talked with us about biomimicry, analogizing the networking and communication going on between participants at the conference to the underground nutrient exchange and ‘communication’ going on between fungal mycelia and plant roots in soil. Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture at USDA, introduced us to new data sources on local food production. The best part is they recorded all the keynotes and posted them online, so you can watch them at home!

The City of Cleveland produced this primer and this video to highlight energy advances made in the region. Check it out; I’m pretty impressed.

But possibly the more meaningful part of this experience for me was watching 400-500 participants imagine a sustainable future for their community around the areas of local food and advanced and renewable energy (remember the focus topics for the year). Everyone brought their unique ideas and experience to the table, and by working collaboratively for a day and a half, at the end of the Summit there were several new projects that had been designed, working groups that had been formed, and commitments that had been made to furthering the cause of sustainability in Cleveland. Although time will tell how many people follow through and turn the talk into something concrete, being a part of the creation stage was pretty inspiring.

Back in time...to early October

[Guys...I just found this update that I wrote about a month ago when I was flying home from Phoenix, and then promptly forgot to post. Sorry! This is what I was thinking on October 10. :) ]

***

I’ll start out with an update from the canning project: Imagine you are trying to become more sustainable and decrease your environmental impact by eating locally and seasonally, including during the winter. Now imagine that in pursuit of that goal you just canned 30 pounds of heirloom tomatoes and 16 pounds of peaches. Now, say that Mark Milby calls you and says he found mold in his tomato jar. How does your imaginary self feel after essentially ‘sustainably’ wasting at least 46 pounds of food and the amount of natural gas required to run a stovetop on high for 8 hours?

I’ll tell you. You feel as if you must run home immediately and check all your own jars for signs of contamination before you can think about anything else at all.

Good news: all the other jars seem to be ok. We followed the instructions exactly, boiled those dang jars for 45 minutes, and checked the seals multiple times. There shouldn’t be anything growing in there! I think Mark’s jar has bionic mold—would anyone like to make a starting bid for the DNA sequence?

[Conveniently, the weekend after this discovery Kayte the Canning Queen from Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard gave a canning demonstration at the farmers market. She confirmed that we did everything right and all the other jars should be fine. Phew!]

Speaking of preserving food, I also started worrying that I was ruining all this beautiful produce by putting it in the freezer to develop frostbite for 2 to 3 months. I procured a Ziploc vacuum bag setup, and am conducting experiments to see if it makes a difference over normal Ziploc freezer bags.

Canning drama aside, I’ve recently started the more academic side of my personal project. As I mentioned earlier, I spent this week in Phoenix, AZ, the city that shouldn’t be. Located in the desert, Arizona is still an agricultural state, using borrowed water to irrigate crops such as cotton and citrus. Even eating locally here is unsustainable in a way that for the most part we in the Midwest don’t have to consider.

GoogleMaps image of a portion of a Phoenix suburb. Look at that patchwork of lush green and desert-brown!

This week provided a good backdrop for my first foray into Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It begins as she and her family are packing up their home in Tucson, AZ to relocate to a farm in Appalachia. The first chapter is a reflection on the unsustainability of living and eating in Arizona, along with some zingers about eating in the United States in general. “We were thinking Parmesan meant, not “coming from Parma,” but “coming from a green shaker can.”

It’s quite pleasant to augment my farmer’s-market-going, local-produce-eating, blanching-and-freezing personal project routine with some of the great local food nonfiction that’s out there. I’m excited to keep reading!