FIMBY

Ugh... the first week of August, the pinnacle of summer, has been a wash out, literally. It's rained, rained and rained some more. Those beautiful beet juice pictures were taken on the one sunny day this week. Crops are rotting in the fields at the farm, my bean plants were floating this morning in my yard and my beautiful tomato plants that I've mulched, staked and lovingly pruned are all ravaged by blight - AH!! It's been a frustrating gardening week.

The artistic prompt today at Shutter Sisters is abundance. Specifically, "where is the too much, too little, never enough showing up in your camera lens". That's easy to answer today.

Too much green (or should I say purple) beans. I don't like canning but I had no choice when we got our 5 lb bag of beans yesterday from the farm. With last week's 5 lb bag I blanched and froze, gave away and of course ate. With yesterday's bag I made 7 jars of dilly beans this morning, and I still have beans left over!

Canning beans takes forever. All that rinsing, washing, boiling, and stuffing each individual bean by hand into the jars. So not my thing... but neither is wasting food I've paid for and I know on a snowy January day the kids and I will appreciate those dilly beans with our lunch.

We also have too much rain. Way to much rain. This morning we tramped through the swamp, also known as our back yard, rescuing drowning slugs and arthropods of various sorts. So I guess you could say we have too little sun.

Too much rain, too much beans (a blessing I suppose), too little sun and never enough fresh tomatoes. That about sums up the first week of August.

As you know I'm taking a break from writing long philosophical rants and soap-box posts. But I have so much to say about local and organic foods being for everyone, not only those who can afford to shop at Whole Foods (we certainly can't), that sticking to this writing break is killing me...

Oh well, the photos will have to speak for me. The kids and I attended the Local Foods Festival at our farmer's market this week, organized by our favorite community organization, Lots To Gardens,

That pretty much says it folks. Oh, and my kids learned their first parade slogan this week "We want local foods. When do we want it? NOW!" My children are community activists and I'm darn proud of it!

I steamed farm beets for supper last week (a vegetable I'm learning to love) and saved the "juice" left in the bottom of the pan. I stored the juice, about 2/3 cup, in a glass jar in the fridge and pulled it out yesterday for the kids to paint with.

The kids also mixed up a yellow paint with 1/2 cup hot water and 1 tbsp tumeric mixed together.

The resulting artwork is beautiful and my own art (photography) is inspired by my children's creativity. For more natural painting inspirations check out one of our favorites, Berry Smudges and Leaf Prints by Ellen B. Senisi.

Farmer's Market Flowers

Not too many years ago in the past I almost exclusively shopped at Wal-Mart (shh... don't tell anyone), it was cheapest after all. The only thing local there was the poorly paid and under-insured "associates". To be fair our family budget was tighter. We were still paying down consumer debt (a folly we won't ever repeat) and saving for a house down payment. I wonder if my miserly shopping helped us save money? Probably, but now we're choosing to save money other ways so we can purchase food according to our values.

Our biggest money saver is owning a small home (we rent out the basement), on a small lot in the community my husband works in, walking distance from his job. A huge blessing and a choice I realize not everyone can make. But even if it weren't "easy" walking distance away he'd hoof it on foot, longboard or bike, that's the kind of guy he is. Living close to employment, and sacrificing a larger lot in the "country", enables us to live very comfortably with only one car. In fact, it goes days not being used and during those times we sometimes lend it to friends so they don't need to own a car.

But wait, don't we have children? Yep, 3. And don't we camp? Yep, every month. How can we manage with just a car, not even any roof rack, trailers or other "carry more stuff" storage? Light living is the name of the game.

Owning one, small, old car and not driving it a lot, having no debt and a smaller urban footprint (fancy speak for living on a small city lot and renting part of our house) are three biggies that enable us to buy more local food.

I heard the other day on NPR the "average US family" is now spending $100/week for gas (I nearly croaked). I'd rather pay $30/week and use the "savings" to buy more I-know-the-farmer grown food. To be sure, we're not driving in luxury. Our car is 15 years old, there's little squirmies living under the booster seats , and the AC stopped working years ago. But who cares we're eating well.

But what about those who aren't so blessed? Those who are on very limited incomes and can't even afford to own a car, never mind limiting their car usage.

Stay tuned for next week's (and the last - I'll get off the soapbox, promise) local food post on making sustainable, local food affordable for everyone.

One last question. Where would you rather spend your money and time?

Local Farmer's Market

Thanks to a recent butterfly post at the lovely blog, gardenpath, the kids and I were able to easily identify this weekend visitor to the garden. Vanessa cardui, commonly known as Painted Lady.

Yay, finally a "preserves on a sunny window sill" shot

I don't can, except dilly beans (pickled green beans, so delicious) when we get inundated mid-summer from the farm. Should be any week now I guess.

But I do make refrigerator pickles. No bubbling, boiling water and finicky sterilizing needed. Well, the jar should be clean of course...

I dare you NOT to make these. They're my kiddos favorite cucumber treat, trust me that's a lot of white sugar in this house!

Refrigerator Pickles

8 c thickly sliced cucumbers
2 small onions, sliced
2 tbs pickling salt (I use less)
2 c white vinegar
1 c sugar (more or less depending on taste for sweet pickles)
1 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed

Combine cukes, onions, and salt in large bowl. Mix well. Combine vinegar, sugar, celery seed and mustard seed in saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until sugar is dissolved.

Pack cukes & onion mixture fairly tightly into jars (to minimize floating in liquid as much as possible). While still hot, pour vinegar mixture over vegetables.

Let cool to room temperature. Screw on lid and put in fridge. Let pickles age 7-10 days in fridge for best flavor.

Will keep for several months under refrigeration. Ha, like that ever happens!

Picture shown is a half batch, fits in a quart Mason jar.

Is that kind of like "Ebony and Ivory"? (You are a blessed individual if you can read that and not hear the song in your head)

Enough eco-friendly orientated posts.

What I want to know is what's summer like in your backyard these days? If you care to share, leave a comment with a link to a blog post or flickr photo (my latest photography foray). Oh, and please share something sunny. Because summer in my backyard these days is, in a word, wet.

But I did manage to take this cheery photo at the farm yesterday after I gleaned peas. Today when I went for our weekly share pickup these beautiful strawflowers were all closed up from the rain (notice those foreboding clouds in the background). And what a rain we've had. Today, every hour or so the sky simply opens up and lets down literally sheets of water. And booming, bone rattling thunder at 9am, what's that all about? Weird.

But honestly, I'm glad for the break from the intense pace of summer sun worship. We live in Maine so when the weather's warm we grow food, harvest food, go to the beach, hike, camp, come home again and harvest some more. I needed a break, and this week I got one. Just don't tell any other Mainers I've enjoyed the week of quiet indoor weather.

There's been a lot of potty talk these days and not from the usual under-four-foot tall crowd.

It started over a month ago when Samantha at Our Green House wrote about hating waste and hum... could she somehow reduce that daily, down the toilet, paper waste??

Right around the same time I was feeling pretty good about our family making the switch to recycled, save-the-trees, toilet paper. That didn't last too long though as my friend Cori upped the anti with her Uber-Eco recycled, for real save-the-trees, cloth toilet wipes.

I'm not the only one noticing all this potty talk. Even my friend Rich (not so much of a tree hugger but great guy who plays a mean uilleann pipes), just posted this week about the growing cloth trend.

What's going on here? Until just a couple months ago I was blissfully ignorant of any toilet "alternatives", excepting of course composting toilets which are very cool but kind of impractical in our current bathroom directly off of kitchen house arrangement.

I'd of been content, for now, to stop the discussion here. However, my research-happy husband, whose RSS reader keeps him up to date with all the techie-eco trends, has one-upped ya' all.

I should of started to worry when he innocently asked "how much do we spend on toilet paper each month?". Next thing I know, "because for a year's worth of [kind of expensive recycled] toilet paper we could get a bidet. And it would fit right on our current toilet." (like this is a good thing)

Oh brother! We are weird enough already. This would shoot us right up into the eco-wacky stratosphere.

I gleaned peas from the farm this morning. No altruistic motivations here (wish I could say I donated them to less fortunate folks), just taking advantage of stocking the freezer with free, organic veggies. This isn't the norm though. Obtaining local, organic and sustainably grown foods costs, sometimes a lot. So why do we do it?

Basically, our family has made the choice to value the health of our bodies, community, planet and the farmers who grow our food. Incidentally, these are also the reasons, more or less, for us choosing a plant based diet.

But the health benefits of sustainable foods aren't just physical. Knowing your farmer is good for your whole health and well being. Buying food from local farms is spiritually grounding and a return to our roots. I am connecting myself to a person, not a corporation, brand or store. That person is directly connected to the land - blood, sweat and tears. My connection to them connects me to the land, albeit somewhat vicariously, and returns me to the original Divine mandate to tend the garden, the task we were created to do.

Valuing everyone's health and "returning to the garden" is all fine and dandy but let's get down to the nitty-gritty, what about the cost? I'm not even going to address the long-term environmental and health costs of eating a fossil fuel dependent diet, that's a book. But if I did the cost question would be blow out of the water. However, I know most people think of cost in terms of next month's paycheck so I'll stick to the here and now.