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The Short Story:
This simple lunch and post was inspired from my friend Mil’s post, My Sunday dinner: farmed and foraged, and from Dog Island Farm with their amazing Year Without Groceries project. Our goal is to be able to have one or two days a week where we eat nothing but our own food – even just one day a week would be 52 days a year.
We’re no where close to that, but today we had a great lunch straight from the yarden, a bitter green wild salad. Since Lynn spends most of the weekend studying, I surprised her with a plate full of weeds for lunch, and it all went better than expected.
Ingredients:
- Two large bunches of Dandelion leaves
- A small bunch of Sow Thistle
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Parsley
- Sage
- Mint
- Raspberries and Lemon
After cleaning everything and mincing the herbs, I made a salad dressing with Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar, Flax oil, crushed Raspberries and Lemon. Lunch was served with homemade Kombucha on ice.
The rest of the story (you can stop now if you’re not here for the Farm-a-losophy):
I’m not at the point in the season or the process where I’m getting a huge yield from our yard, but I know it will pick up in a month or so, and over time as we improve our skill. This is our third year of yardening and each year we get more serious than the last, and each year the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.
I am really starting to understand the quote from Masanobu Fukuoka, “Truly successful agriculture requires not so much arduous labor as awareness, observation, connection and persistence.” It certainly does require a hecka lot of labor, but nothing replaces being out in the dirt and gaining a new understanding of how to farm and live simply, in cooperation with the land. Fukuoka needed several years to repair his land and soil, and ruined countless trees and crops while learning more what not to do, than what to do.
I feel that way now. I can buy some junk from a catalog and grow pretty red organic tomatoes, but cheap organic tomatoes is not the goal in itself, it’s one of the results of the goal.
I had a “moment” while I was making the simple salad, and again excuse me for sounding like a moron but I’m sure I represent a lot of people so consider it good insight.
I spent the morning working with a big trash can that has become a worm bin. I was pulling out some worm castings for Compost Tea, and digging out junk that never broke down, like coconut shells and avocado seeds. Every kind of bug and beastie lives in this bin, with big fist-full knots of red wriggler worms. I was elbow deep in partially decomposed muck, spiders and worms. Meanwhile back in the kitchen I was cleaning up the salad and cleaning off the slug trails on some of the leaves and just had to stop myself from GAG REFLEX.
Sometimes it’s just clear how far removed from reality we all live – that the mere notion of my lunch having come out of the DIRT with the BUGS, the SLIME, the MOLD and the MICROBES made me gag. I also wondered for a moment if I had picked the right “weeds” or if I was about to spend the afternoon in the bathroom. Maybe something funny to Live Tweet in the future. Remember that Sow Thistle and Dandelion were brought here as garden vegetables from European settlers – but I generally have no idea what food looks like unless I buy it in a box labelled “food” or pick the right retail plants from the local garden supply. In fact I’ve been trained that most things outside are “ornamental” or “weeds” and it is a little like shock therapy to put them in my mouth, even when weeds like Dandelion ARE food, and sold in expensive bundles at Whole Foods!
…….
This year I can actually recognize many of the volunteer seedlings in the yarden while they are still small. I can also tell quickly if the plants look “right” or not, and then have very little idea on the next steps to help them. Several years ago I would have gone to the store and bought some chemical goo that addresses that issue, but not now. Now I have to actually learn something and understand the causality of my actions, and how to interact with an amazingly robust natural web of life that I am a part of. It is a humbling and clumsy progress of unlearning being at war with nature.
This is a real problem we need to deal with to get positive change in the mass of humanity, people like me. Being so abstracted and removed from the world effects the way we vote, the way we live, what we eat, the way we spend our money, and how we care for others. Most of us are too dang far from reality, life and death, dirt and bugs, except on TV, and as much of a Newbie as I feel like sometimes, I’m one of the most Highly Uncivilized people on the block.
Do you think people who grew their own food would vote different about GMOs? If people were more involved in the local supply chain of meat products, would they vote to reduce animal cruelty in factory farm environments? If they knew local farmers would they be more likely to spend a little bit more on local food? If they knew how to grow healthy organic vegetables would they have a higher standard for produce at the grocery store?
What is one thing you can do today to help people like me get a little further, a little faster?
Today’s Lunch, Farmed and Foraged by Brad Rowland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I love this post. I too recently battled my own gag reflex over demaggoting fresh picked cherries. I had the same epiphany that THIS was real food and I would rather go through the act of removing another creature who was vying for the cherry than eat pesticides, fertilizers, wax, etc.
Everything about me changed when I began to connect with my food. I now hold myself, my garden, my grocery store, and corporations I am forced to deal with all to a higher standard.
Once I began to understand my food I began to recognize the evils of GMOs. Once I began to connect with my food, I became vegan rather that contribute to factory farming. Once I became AWARE of those who produce our food supply, I followed the Monsanto trail right to the bench of the Supreme Court.
I have no idea what my point is…other than I get you. 🙂
Najia, that’s an awesome comment. Our path started with food too, while trying to diagnose and ‘cure’ my wife’s migraines. Once we started eating better then we couldn’t afford it, so we started making our own food, then one thing lead to another and the same conclusion you came to.
I read an interesting quote from Masanobu Fukuoka, “Doctors and medicine become necessary when people create a sickly environment.” The ability to get healthy food and clean water seems to be so foundational in transitioning to a sustainable future.
The Food Sovereignty movement is something I follow with great interest and there was a good update today (june 10 update) on my friend Mil’s site.
http://urbanfarmandbeehives.com
Also check put what’s happening in Maine.
Blue Hill becomes third town in Maine to pass food freedom law
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
http://www.naturalnews.com/032142_food_freedom_Maine.html
BTW – i totally got your point. 😉
Are there any thriving CSA farms near you? We used to belong to a new, but enthusiastic, family-run farm; the farmers encouraged us members to head out into the field, both to pick and to help them run the place. It’s possible that an organic CSA farm would help bridge the gap between ‘boxes labelled “food”‘ (LOVE it) and your own home garden. They have slugs there!
We’ve been shamelessly harvesting food here at our site, and Annie has rescued everyone we accidentally brought in with us. The early worm gets the tomato.
Roxanne
That’s a great idea Roxanne and I saw the bucket of blueberries pic – fantastic! I don’t think there are any right near us, but now that you mention it we pass something like this all the time when we go to the coast — all the ‘pick your own’ places. I’ll have to investigate and see if there’s anything closer.
I can pre-prep some cardboard boxes with the word “food” on them so I don’t forget what’s in it by the time I get home.
😉
Great post Brad – thoughtful and insightful!
“Un-learning being at war with nature” – absolutely!
The cruelty involved in some factory farming is only possible because we are so far removed from it. If we saw it, we wouldn’t tolerate it.
One thing we can do today to help people like you? We can think, be aware of, exactly what we eat. Not everyone is brave enough to do what you do, but supporting locally grown, organic produce will hopefully break down the barrier of the boxes labelled ‘food’.
Thanks Brad!
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I totally know what you mean about the gag reflex thing. I remember being shocked, just STUNNED the first time I found a slug on a piece of chard in my fridge. Slugs in my fridge?!? Argh! And unwashed eggs straight from the farm, dirt and blood and fluid still on them? Does that mean I have to think about the fact that this egg actually came out of a chicken?
I’ve gotten more used to it now, but still have moments where I have to remind myself that food comes from dirt, all of it. I’m hoping that starting to grow more of my own food will make me ever more comfortable with the relationships that intellectually I understand, but that realistically still catch me by surprise sometimes 🙂
ok – you made me gag just reading that Jess. that’s totally funny. if we want to go full on gross out i can talk about some medical problems our rescue dogs have had. lets just say there could be a big market for Doggie Imodium.
I’d suggest going on a foraging walk if there are any in your area. I love the feeling of walking around and seeing food everywhere. (And there are way tastier things out than than dandelions. 🙂
If you feel like you’re past that already Tending the Wild is an amazing read. I’m able half-way through it right now. It talks about Native American’s relationship with the “wilds” of California and how they encouraged useful plants to grow.
Jess – I will put Tending the Wild on my Amazon list. Thanks for the recommendation.
Also I just went to your page and saw the ELDERBERRY pics – my friends from the UK keep telling me to make elderberry wine. The season is over? Where do you normally get them?
PS- love the pictures of Jack – awesome.
Hope you enjoy the book!
And aw, thanks for checking out my blog.
The elderberry season is mostly over, but you might still be able to find a few bunches hanging from the bushes. The type I’m most familiar with are Mexican Elderberries, which grow up the entire west coast. I’ve personally seen them as far inland as Yosemite, and wouldn’t be surprised to see them even further inland. (There are also other variaties that grow on the east coast and in Europe)
Elderberries grow as small trees or large bushes. I’ve mostly found them along trails and in other high light forest edge areas.
Hmm…. I wonder if anyone sells them at Farmer’s Market while they’re in season. I’ll have to ask…..
I haven’t seen any at farmer’s markets, but I’d believe they occasionally show up there. You can also get dried elderberry berries or flowers at some health food stores. Like I know Rainbow Groceries in San Francisco sells them. They tend to be pretty expensive that way.