by Vicki Robin
At Bayview I stopped to chat with Pam Mitchell, the systematic market gardener who spoke at our first Transition Whidbey potluck. She’d sold at the farmers’ market there for more than a decade, and for a few years had been the market manager, setting and enforcing parameters for who can sell what. A persistent debate runs about how far afield, so to speak, the produce can grow. Must it be the island? The four-county region (Skagit, Whatcom, Island, Jefferson)? What about east of the Cascades, where warm-weather crops flourish? Can that be considered local?
According to the USDA, yes. Local means four hundred miles from source to store:
Though “local” has a geographic connotation, there is no consensus on a definition in terms of the distance between production and consumption. Definitions related to geographic distance between production and sales vary by regions, companies, consumers, and local food markets. According to the definition adopted by the U.S. Congress in the 2008 Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, the total distance that a product can be transported and still be considered a “locally or regionally produced agricultural food product” is less than 400 miles from its origin, or within the State in which it is produced.4
To a 10-miler, of course, 400 miles sounds ridiculous—so bosomy as to not even fit into any tidy understanding of this “local” value. But that number later would take on a world of meaning for me.
At Bayview, though, local is, well, more local. Island growers are given a comparative advantage by rewarding them with prime “real estate” for their stalls. Pam’s seniority, for example, has netted her a spot on the outer rim of the market, in the shade, between the two most used entrances. This is one of the hundreds of microissues along the border between anywhere food and local food. Tomatoes, for example, are simply more challenging to grow here than in the sunny fertile fields of eastern Washington. Calling both local and selling them side by side makes survival for our island growers just that much more precarious. Even here in this little corner of the earth the trade issues debated in global fora show up. Where are the borders? What “market rules” will protect the little guy without punishing those who’ve figured out how to scale up? Viable regional food systems are critical if more of us are to eat more food grown closer to home, but how to support regional systems, and especially the local growers, will have to be figured out one transaction, one decision, one conversation, at a time.
I’ve shopped farmers’ markets since the first one sprouted in a community center parking lot in Seattle in 1993. A few years earlier we’d signed on with the first CSA in the region, Helsing Farm in Chehalis, Washington. Even so, I’d never understood, as I now do because Pam and others explained it, the blood, sweat, tears, and a thousand decisions that go into those seamless Saturday shopping experiences.
Pam Mitchell
Pam is the picture of a local farmer—round ruddy cheeks, slightly eccentric style, fingernails rimmed with permanent dirt.
Pam’s signature look is her bowler hat, always tilted back on her head atop a fringe of strawberry-blond bangs that frame her face. She is no central-casting rube, though. Her eyes are intelligent, as are her strategies for making a living farming. Pam works late into the evening the day before the market, harvesting the week’s produce, cleaning and bagging it, packing it into bins that then slide into her truck, ready for the wee-hour transfer to her Bayview stand. Depending on the season, Pam has vegetable starts (you can buy enough starts for a whole garden for a reduced price). She has biodegradable bags of salad greens and basil and net bags of squash, green beans, eggplant, potatoes, and garlic. She’ll have mountains of tomatoes and whatever variety her plots are producing
Pam knows—to the penny—what it takes to support herself as a market gardener. She knows what sells, what each bed in her garden yields, what her year-over-year growth is, and what the net is for her selling at the flourishing farmers’ market across the water in Everett (counting gas and time) versus the less-frequented Sunday Market at Greenbank Farm. This is not an experiment for her. It’s her life.
Her farming life, in fact, began when she was two and helped her paternal grandfather in the family garden in Cape Town, South Africa, where she grew up. Her mother reported that she’d watch Pam out the window eating soil (very good for the immune system). Farming literally got into her blood early in life, and she naturally became the family farmer and then got her horticultural degree in Cape Town, preparing for a lifetime of growing food. Reality struck. Making living things grow didn’t add up to making a living. She worked for years in the corporate world but, through will and grit, ultimately landed that “sharecropping” situation on the property of a high-end catering company on Whidbey, achieving a rarity: a farmer without a mortgage.
She’d dreamed all along that one day she’d kiss the corporate world good-bye. Now she’d done just that. More than marriage, more than family, more than fame and fortune, Pam derives her joy, satisfaction, and identity from farming.
The more I got to know Pam during and after my 10-mile diet, the clearer it became that I had asked the perfect person to give our Transition Whidbey community its first taste of how bare our larders would be if for some reason we needed to depend—all of us—on what we could grow here. As you recall, she did a rough calculation of population, land in production, and crops we can currently grow in the summer season. Her conclusion was that if all sixty thousand island residents had to depend on what our 170 square miles—less than 15 percent of that in farmland—could produce, we’d survive a month, that month being August. As Whidbey is mostly rural, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts (which were also missing in my 10-mile diet) that the 200 square miles around you would be no better and maybe far worse than Whidbey in feeding her folk.
Manna from Heaven
On my way home from the market I swung by the middle school football field, where Kent was announcing a Little League game and Tricia was running the scoreboard. She had told me to come by and pick up some veggies that were a bit too big or curly or twisty for her regular customers. I stood under the viewing box, elevated twenty feet to observe the whole playing field, so I could catch a bag from her and bicycle home. Here were two acts of community: Kent with no skin in the game (no kids on the field) was giving his time just because he is part of this place; Tricia simply gifted me.
As I rode home the word natural came to mind because this easy give-and-take among people in community felt natural. Back when I lived in intentional communities the flow of stuff and services was the most natural thing—an endless river of hand-me-ups and -downs. Though I live more conventionally now, my native habitat is sharing. Until this 10-mile experiment I’d felt a bit like a fish out of water. I breathed in a money atmosphere. Most people and even time itself were busy—dammed, clogged, not flowing freely. Now I was bathing in community again—and it felt natural.
The word natural when used with food has no official meaning. Products are labeled “natural” and we think that means straight from the source—land, sea, or air—containing no additives and minimally processed. In the United States, however, there are no firm standards for this assertion. The term also says nothing about our relationship with food—about either our fear of tainted food from afar or our longing for wholesome food to feed ourselves and our families.
My 10-mile diet, by taking out the middlemen—the packagers and distributors and shippers and grocers—was putting verifiably unprocessed natural food into my belly, but it was also doing this other thing, this relationship thing. I could literally feel the love, not just presume it because of a label or standard or picture on a carton. I could touch not just the food but my feeder—and damn if it didn’t feel good.
So as I glided into my garage, plugged my bike in to feed it some electrons, and lifted the bag of baroque green beans, squash, and potatoes out of the pannier, I decided to call my relationships with Sandra, Tricia, Pam, and Nina “natural food.” Perhaps soul food is just this: t
hat food given to us by people we know—as gifts, as dinner—feeds the soul.
Steamed veggies never tasted so good.
Tally—Week One
Just before Tricia delivered her second box I tallied my intake on my blog:
I’ve eaten through three turnips, five potatoes, three onions, half a garlic head, bunches of kale and chard, 11 eggs, a quart of milk, a pint of cherry tomatoes, a pint of strawberries, two apples and three Asian pears, a big bag of lettuce, three cuke-ettes, a small bag of basil, one pound of Long Family beef, raw honey from Island Apiaries, a few snow peas, leftover chicken from Britt and Eric’s wedding, those green beans—plus from my garden I’ve gotten three carrots, four cukes, some kale, some oregano and a bowl of green beans. From the roadside I picked a pint of blackberries and nary a scratch as I was out there with my protective clothing, clippers and a hoe (yes, these are killer berries). From my neighbor’s daughter I got goat cheese that I’m still working on. And I don’t know what I would have done without my exotics: oil, tea/coffee, lemons and salt.
I think that’s it. Sobering really to both see how much I eat and how vulnerable I am to Tricia continuing to produce enough.
Ready for week two.
Now It’s Your Turn
Location, Location, Location
Are you planted where you want to bloom? “Location, location, location” is a real estate mantra for purchasing a home: views, schools, economy, culture. From a local food perspective, location refers to climate, soils, sun, wind, and water.
Bloom where you are planted is best. Adapt your home and community to the changes ahead. The social, cultural, and relational wealth you’ve built where you now live are crucial for survival of both body and soul. The grass may look greener elsewhere, but, as Erma Bombeck once pointed out, it could be because it’s over the septic tank. You do want to take an objective look at your home, though, to see if the disruption of moving is offset by the benefits. Begin researching:
• What did people here eat two hundred years ago? One hundred years ago?
• What fruits and vegetables grow well here?
• What might the weather be fifty years from now?
• Where does the water come from?
• What is the solar, wind, geothermal, and water potential of this property—even if it is in the middle of a city?
Visit your local farmers’ market with an eye to understanding the whole operation, not just buying a few beets. Within a few years you should find somewhere you care about and live a life that shows it!
Try These Recipes
Because soup is such a staple of a local diet, I thought you’d like to know how Jess Dowdell makes stock. I’m also including Jess’s recipe for lamb, because, as I discovered later, it’s also a great way to cook a leg of goat.
Basic Vegetable Stock
Jess says:
I love to make stock with the vegetable trims from the kitchen. I think of stock as the essence of the kitchen, if you will, a story of the season, the farm, the harvest, and the creation. So it’s always good to start with food that is not grown with pesticides, herbicides, or hormones and ones that are genetically modified. I try to source all food locally, organically, and sustainably grown. I feel that when I know the farmer, then I know the story. Stock is nutritious and delicious just as it is or added to other creations. By keeping a container in the refrigerator to collect trims, nubs, and misfits that have already been washed your work is almost done! In my stock I like a balance of flavors that can be used to add complexity to any soup, sauce, cooking broth, or whatever, depending on the menu. I’ve been known for a few odd combos, but they are always fun and tasty. One time I put coffee in my stock (I love Caffé Vita from Seattle) and it actually worked! I used the “coffee stock” to braise Whidbey-pasture-raised lamb shanks, then later added red wine from Whidbey Island Winery, and, finally, just a touch of hot peppers from Bur Oak farm stand. What a wonderful treat. Anyway, this list is loose and free for the season and mood to dictate. It doesn’t hurt to play with different combinations. It’s compost otherwise, right?
Using a large stock pot, I always start with onion, carrot, celery, and herbs of any kind, and add any combination of the following, bring to a slow simmer, and let barely simmer for as long as 3 to 4 hours. Periodically skim off the foam as it rises to the top of your pot. I’ve gone longer on bone marrow stock, cooking it from 8 to 24 hours.
When finished cooking, strain the broth, and now your stock is ready for use or for the freezer. Have fun!
Veggies
Snap peas
Snow peas
Beets and greens
Chard
Corncobs
Kohlrabi
Kale: lots of different kinds (peacock-flowering)
Shallots
Spring greens
Dandelion greens
Green onions
Garlic
Melon rind
Peppers (hot—jalapeño, Scotch bonnet, cayenne—is good but any will do)
Parsnip
Any potatoes
Zucchini/squash
Tomatoes
Turnips
Herbs
Basil
Dill
Oregano
Tarragon
Cilantro
Parsley
Any others that you already have
Feel free to add meat bones, cooked or raw, to make protein stocks. Same principle!
Jess’s Coffee and Red Wine−Infused Lamb
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 lamb riblets or lamb shanks (locally grown)
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper (or more for spicier meat)
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 dried pasilla chile peppers, stemmed, seeded, and minced
1 cup red wine (from Whidbey Island Winery)
1 cup strong coffee (I love Caffé Vita)
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a heavy cast-iron pot that can later be covered, drizzle oil and brown the lamb on all sides over high heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and crushed red pepper as it cooks. Remove the lamb from the pan and lower the heat to medium. Cook the pepper, onion, garlic, and chiles in the pan, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes, until the onions and peppers are soft. Add the wine and coffee and reduce the heat by about half. Return the lamb to the pot, cover, and cook in the preheated oven for 2 to 3 hours. Turn the meat a few times while it’s baking. Pull all the meat off the bone and serve hot.
CHAPTER FIVE
Week Two: Getting the Hang of It
The warm fuzzies I was getting from this diet were great, and my body felt healthier than ever, but there was still something missing from my life—CRUNCH. And this set me off, surprisingly, on a hunt for more zucchini, which led to lessons in a new kind of cooking in my kitchen and a mystical experience in my backyard. Let’s start with the zucchinis.
The joke around here is that in September, no one hunts for zucchini—in fact, you need to lock your door to keep neighbors from depositing oversized black beauties in your house while you sleep.
BTD—before 10-mile diet—I’d have taken such precautions. In fact, I have foisted zucchinis on whoever would take them. Now that I found myself stalking the elusive crunch, though, I was vulnerable to anyone’s cockamamie ideas for crunch. I forget who told me I could turn zucchini into crispy chips. I didn’t know if they were sniggering in the bushes and sending me on a wild goose chase (hmmm, wild geese, I wonder . . .). It didn’t matter. I was desperate. With visions of corn chips and potato chips dancing in my mind, I followed their instructions.
Zackers
I want to first draw your attention to
the how of this story as well as the what, because how I made those first zackers (zucchini crackers) is important, no matter what the results.
In my first year on Whidbey I bought a countertop convection oven at the thrift store simply to save energy now that I was just cooking for one. It had a mysterious DEH setting. It never occurred to me that DEH stood for “dehydrate” or that I’d someday need this feature. But when a new-in-the-box set of dehydrating racks later showed up at the thrift store for this very oven, something told me I should buy them. I had no intention of spending my life energy slicing and drying fruits and veggies, but you never know (a phrase that’s the hallmark of a true thrift-store junkie). The “recovery” could turn into a nasty recession again and I’d be protected by . . . dehydrating racks. The logic isn’t perfect, but at least my 10-mile diet vindicated the choice.
Due to my early years living off the land and on the road, living on one hundred dollars a month, I host an inner survivalist who never sleeps, who prowls the thrift store keen for castoffs for my stash. I’ve stocked my shed with survival essentials from the thrift store: a new-in-the-box Mexican hand grinder (for corn tortillas), canning jars and lids, pressure canner, machete, bow saw, hand tools including a hand drill Joe Dominguez bought with his birthday money when he was seven in 1945. I pray that I’ll never have to use any of them. I don’t relish the thought of limited electricity. I am not rooting for the demise of Western civilization. Nonetheless, I value the products of all human evolution up until pretty much the post–World War II rise of small electric appliances. Even my dehydrator could be replaced by the sun, but the need for crunch—now!—meant I needed local electrons to help me out.