The Abundant Table Farm Project

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2010-12-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

now

2010-10-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

Pulling on baggy work pants and rain boots this evening to take out the trash, I got hit by an extra-strong wave of farm nostalgia. My spaghetti sauce could use some fresh basil, my body could use a few hours of field work, and my spirit misses the company of my four sisterfriends.

Having boots on my feet also reminds me of a promise to update the Abundant Table community on my whereabouts post cross-continent move. After a roadtripping through some of the most beautiful parts of the US (you should have seen the look on the face of the woman selling tomatoes and cucumbers at the farmers market in Casper, Wyoming when I asked if I could pay for my selection in fresh California lemons and avocados!) and spending a few weeks resting and catching up with my parents at my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm in Lancaster, PA, I finally ended up in New York City a little less than a month ago. I just started my fourth week of working on the transition from the farm to the office, from the comfy world of flannel and rubber boots to the ambiguities of “business casual”, from “whenever we’re up til whenever it’s done” to a 9-5.

I’m doing a one-year AmeriCorps position with a community-based organization in North Brooklyn. For the first and final four months, my job is screening our clients (mostly low-income job seekers) for eligibility for public benefits (mostly food stamps and Medicaid). It’s a little like case work – talking to folks to find out what their situation is, helping them fill out applications, letting them know what offices to go to, and following up to see how things went. While the work itself is worlds different from the farm, I find myself continuing to wrestle with one of the fundamental questions posed at the Abundant Table: how to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food.

January-April things will look very different. My co-workers and I will be running a VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assessment) center, helping our clients file their taxes for free and making sure they get all the credits and refunds they qualify for. I’m enjoying my supervisor and co-workers, my interaction with clients, and (ever the nerd) the challenge of learning the endlessly complicated (and dysfunctional) system of public benefits in the U.S.

But as I couldn’t quite handle a complete break with the world of farming and sustainable food systems (and in order to supplement the AmeriCorps stipend that leaves me eligible for many of the benefits I recommend for my clients), I found work once a week as a Market Hand at the New Amsterdam Market. The market is an exciting effort to re-introduce a public market (much like a farmers market, only with more of an emphasis on regionally-sourced prepared foods like cheeses and pies) to NYC's 350 year-old market district in the south seaport area of Manhattan. It’s also an exciting chance for me to interact with vendors, customers, and the odd farm apprentice, and occasionally talk my way into a free loaf of fresh bread or half a bottle of good NY wine.

My free time includes a shameful amount of getting lost, a (thus far fruitless) search for a permanent place to live, a good library, a church community like the Abundant Table, and an affordable place to practice yoga, and vicariously getting my Masters in Food Studies through Mark. I’m enjoying an incredible array of apples, slowly finding new friends, and the ever-fascinating diversity of New Yorkers (my walk 1.5 mile walk to work, for example, takes me from hipster-art-school land through a Hasidic Jewish community and past the projects).

This time tomorrow I’ll also be enjoying the company of a certain Katerina, which reminds me that though my room may be 7x9 (and yes, that measurement is in feet), I always love friendly faces from out of town. It helps with the nostalgia, you know…

Hope all of you are well.

Article on the Abundant Table

2010-09-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Check out the latest Episcopal Broadcast, a newsletter for church youth leaders, for a piece I wrote about the Abundant Table:
http://episcopalcommons.org/broadcast/september2010/abundant/

If you read the article on Food and Faith, it looks like we have a "sister" farm in NY! Go, sisters!
http://www.chssisters.org/melrose-bluestone-farm/

what I leave behind

2010-07-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

At our big start-of-the-project celebration last August, Julie asked each of us interns to put something on the mantel of the community room as a symbol of our presence on the farm this year. At our closing gathering a few weeks ago we each took those symbols and were asked to replace them with something that signified what the Project has meant to us or what we would be leaving here.

A couple of days before the service I decided that my contribution would be a beautiful jar of different colored carrots from the farm given to us by one of Casey's (many, and generous) farmers' market friends. It fit - something from the Farm, made from scratch by a member of our community; something reflective of the amazing diversity of vegetables you discover when you grow for people in your local area and focus on taste rather than appearance or durability on a cross-country journey.

But it was missing something. I had no real personal attachment to that jar of carrots, and leaving it here would be easy. Leaving here is anything but easy.

Though I tried to avoid it the whole afternoon leading up to the service, I knew what I had to leave – a piece of my experience, both what brought me to the Farm and what the Farm has meant to me. A piece of myself.

So instead of the jar of carrots I left this…

It’s a bag I was given several years ago, made by a woman named Rose who lived in a refugee camp in dry, drought-prone northern Kenya. The bag is made from the sacks used to deliver US food aid, usually in the form of corn and soybeans grown in surplus in the US because of subsidies. This aid often ironically exacerbates famine by flooding markets with under-priced food and putting local farmers out of business. It acts, at very best, as a band-aid on the deep structural problems of our global food system. It was interactions with these unjust, destructive globalized systems that brought me to the Farm in the first place, and it’s appropriate that what I leave represents my continued passion for these issues.

But that bag is something else as well. It is creativity and an assertion of beauty in the midst of a very difficult situation. It is personal, with Rose’s name written lightly in ballpoint pen at the top. It came to me through relationships, as a gift. This, to me, is what the Abundant Table is about – something small and faithful and life-giving done creatively in the heart of the system. The daily sight of spray rigs and hazard signs in the fields around us and the sound of fighter jets landing less than a mile away at Point Mugu are a reminder of what this community strives to create an alternative to, but opposing these systems has never been the point. The Abundant Table has been about creating good food and gathering a diverse community at the table to eat it, a community that in turn has fed us. On just five acres in a corner of Ventura County, it’s only a whisper in the face of the problems, but has been transformative to those of us at the center.

I started my intern year knowing I had a strong sense of how I wanted to live but little idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I hoped that spending a year living out many of the things that are most important to me would help give a little direction to the career-path end of things, but this is perhaps the only way the ATFP hasn’t met or exceeded my expectations. In March of 2009 I planned on moving from Chicago to D.C. in the summer (and was wrong – I moved to Oxnard). In March of 2010 I planned on moving from Oxnard to D.C. (and again I was wrong – I’ll be moving to New York City). In March of 2009 I planned on getting a job doing research or administrative work, and ended up farming. In March of 2010 I hoped to find work doing research or advocacy related to food systems or international development, but at this rate who knows where I’ll end up . Though there is very little certainty in my plans for the coming months, I do carry with me a deep sense of gratitude for the Abundant Table community and for the ways this year has shaped me.

Thank you.

the beginning is the end is the beginning

2010-07-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

9 days of work and 11 days of living. That is all the time that I have left here in the farmhouse that has become my home over the past 11 months. I've spent the last few weeks moving quickly, filling my minutes, because the moment that I stop I come to feel the weight of what I am walking away from, and it is quite difficult to bear. It was not an easy decision to leave this beautiful place, this joyful and supportive community, this trying and rewarding work. But sometimes there are moments of clarity when we realize that it is time to share what it is that we have learned, rather than to stay comfortably put. I recall a conversation I had a few months ago with Tezzo, one of the South Central farmers. He asked me what all of the interns were doing after the year ended. As I was about to respond, he said, "You're all going off to start your own farms, right?" He believes, as I do, that our farms and the communities that are supported by them are not isolated occurrences, but rather signs of a movement, a movement that we hope to see grow. So that is what I am doing. I'm following the movement. I'm hoping to discover it and play my part in furthering it in new places.

Yesterday I finished my application for a farm job in Arizona. The farmer I'm hoping to work for asked me to write my agricultural "mission" statement, basically a collection of my farming experiences, educational knowledge base, and vocational aspirations. I can think of no better way to sum-up what it is I am taking away from this year than with the final paragraph of that piece.

"Through learning, through working, through failures and successes, I hope to be able to learn enough to start-up small-scale, truly sustainable farms in and near urban areas. How many, I cannot yet say. But I know that I want the fruit of these farms to provide food security and food access to people regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds. These farms will incorporate permaculture design techniques with animal husbandry, biodynamic, and integrated pest management practices so as to conserve water and not rely heavily on outside inputs to maintain the health of the soil and plants. These farms will save seeds when they can and strive to grow heirloom varieties in the hope of preserving crop diversity. I wish for these farms to be economically viable, to provide living wages to those who work them full time. It seems that I want it all. And I do. I want to continue to work with and learn from those who are actually living my dream, so that I may one day be able to teach others. This organic farming thing that we are doing is all-consuming, time and work and labor intensive, unpredictable, insecure, and (from the outside) quite foolish. But we on the inside know that there is something old that we are remembering. We know that there is honor in working the land, in growing food, in preserving Earth, in providing for our families. I want to be a part of sharing and practicing that knowledge. That is my work."

This year I discovered my vocation: to be a thought-full farmer. Though my time as an intern with the Abundant Table Farm Project is ending, what I have learned, what we all have learned, this year is only beginning. The farm goes on! Food continues to grow! The soil continues to live! We all continue to feast. It has been a joy working with, eating with, and rejoicing with you. This is my best year, my fullest year, the year where I came to honestly know and love myself. This is the year I found peace with God. This is the year that I discovered family in 4 strangers. This is the year, but it's only the beginning. There will be many more to come, for all of us interns and for all of you. This year has changed us all.

Should you like to keep up on my adventures, feel free to peruse my personal blog. I was rather infrequent with my postings over the last 11 months, but I can only imagine that I will have a great deal more time for writing and processing living in the basement of my parents' house in Arizona. And if this is where we part, know that I will continue to remember you and this place and this year. I will re-member in thought and in practice. Blessings. Peace. Joy. Gratitude.

*Casey

birds of the air

2010-07-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks after moving the Farm I noticed something odd…in the middle of all this farmland, I only rarely saw or heard birds. A few more weeks passed and we were exiled from the Farmhouse for a night while a fumigant called chloropickerin (re-purposed WWI tear gas) was being pumped into the strawberry field next to us. Things started to make sense.

When you sterilize the soil, you kill all the bugs.
When you kill all the bugs, there’s nothing for the birds to eat.

A few weeks later I noticed something else. What sounded like bottle rockets being set off every 15 or 20 minutes were actually flares being shot in the fields around us to scare away birds that might want to eat the crops. The scarcity of birds on the Oxnard plain is more than just the passive result of the conventional field environment.

Looking out at the hundreds of acres of monocultured specialty crops (which require high pesticide application) that surround our farm, I doubted that what we were doing on 5 acres could make much of a difference.

But at least where the birds are concerned, I am being proven (happily) wrong. A group of students from Casa Pacifica (a school a couple of miles down the road from the farm that serves abused, neglected and emotionally disturbed kids) recently conducted their science fair project on our farm. They wanted to compare organic and conventional fields, and decided to count the number of birds they observed on different plots as a way of comparing biodiversity.

The Casa Pacifica students (Jackie, Matthew and Thomas) hypothesized that there would be more birds on our organic field, and here’s what they found:

We observed three different agricultural fields within 40 feet of each other in Camarillo, we found that there was an average of close to 16 birds in the organic field and less than one bird in the same amount of time at each of the conventional fields. Not only did we not see birds, when we looked at the produce in the furrows between the plants, they were not bitten off of, which we think tells us that birds had not been there at all. We talked with the farmers of the organic field and they stated that they think the birds are good to have around and they do not worry about the crop loss due to the birds eating the produce because they think that because there are so many bugs, the birds that come to their field eat the bugs, not the produce. It is our thought that the farmers should attempt to provide nesting grounds in the area of their fields for birds that eat the bugs that eat their produce. This nesting ground would provide permanent organic pesticides…birds! Our hypothesis was that there would be more birds in the organic field when compared to the conventional field, and we were correct.

So here's to the difference we can make by doing things well, even on such a small scale.

a CSA meditation

2010-07-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday we start our farm meetings with a "zero moment" - a pause to reflect on why we do the work that we do here. Often these moments are inspired by words of feedback and encouragement shared by visitors, friends of the Project, and our CSA members.

In honor of Tuesday farm meetings, here's this week's zero moment, written by one of our subscribers:

Meditations on My CSA Box by Meenal Kelkar

Kris is out of town today, so I had the exclusive pleasure of picking up our CSA box, as well as washing the contents. I find myself reflecting on how much I have changed in the past 6 months since we first subscribed for this box. When we first joined, there were often pick-up complications with the friends who were splitting the box with us, and we would both feel overwhelmed and even drained at the thought of the washing and drying that proceeded the storage effort. But as we know … given time … things can change! Here are my musings from today …

I was the first to arrive at the YMCA today, so I had my pick of boxes. I felt happy to see that there are more subscribers at this spot than last season – word is spreading about this bounty! And then I felt eagerness at seeing the purple beans on top of one box, the drops of water on the heads of lettuce in another … the four boxes in a row looked like a cornucopia! How lucky I am to have such a mouth-watering, freshly picked decision to make!

As I fill my two sinks with water, clear the counters on either side of the sink so that there is a flow between the create, washing, rinsing, drying and my refrigerator bin, I reflect on this chance to take a much needed mid-day break from the computer. A break that I generally intend for myself and usually forget, so I intentionally timed my pick-up mid-day to ensure I took a break. My one day each week where I do honor my promise to myself.

And as I wash, I get to soak my hands in the lukewarm water, swishing the greens back and forth, first in the soapy water and then in the rinse water. Occasionally, my focus changes to dry leaves in the spinner or pat them dry with the towel. As I reveal layer, upon layer of produce, I find myself anticipating what awaits me underneath. Often a surprise lays hidden: a few weeks ago, it was a handful of artichokes … later, a bag of lima beans … more recently, purple beans! Last week, there were two perfectly shaped globes of zucchini nestled amongst the carrots and turnips. I’ll confess to my dirty little secret … sometimes there are so many greens that my refrigerator is bursting at the seams, so often the carrot and turnip tops go directly into my compost bin. I feel a twinge of guilt at that confession, knowing that my grandmother would have ensured that every little piece would have been savored … cooked, canned, dried, pickled … so many ways to preserve this bounty.

And as I watch the dirt and water spiral down the drain, I feel an enormous sense of privilege at what could be perceived by many as a chore. You see … this past Sunday, another layer was added to my appreciation when I got to be a part of the community celebration for Casey, Cristy Rose, Katerina, Sarah, and Erynn, the 5 interns who grew, harvested, and distributed the vegetables for the CSA. Each one of these women are pioneers in the Abundant Table Farm Project, sharing a passion for radical progressive change, the need for spiritual connection beyond existing religious affiliations, the desire for food equality, and the sheer joy at providing nurturing, wholesome produce to their ever growing circle of subscribers. On one hand, it is so lovely knowing that the fields are blessed by interfaith clergy each year. But the level of both intention and attention that these 5 women devote to each box of produce is stunning. … And humbling. Everything that it has taken to get this box to me comprises a devotional practice for them … as it has now become for me.

Do I really have to get back on the computer?!

Simple Gifts

2010-06-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Refrain: When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right.

Last night, we hosted our final Abundant Table Farm Project party for this internship year. The party started with a service, during which we sang one of my favorite songs (lyrics above), a Shaker dance song called, "Simple Gifts."

This song could not be more appropriate as we end our time together. It has been a year of simple gifts: sharing in unexpectedly deep friendships with four other sisterfriends, witnessing the miracle of life happening as seeds germinate and chickens grow, harvesting food for our table and so many other tables as well, welcoming friends and strangers alike into our home, seeing our farm become a hub for community engagement and justice work, forming relationships with CSA members, farmers' marketers, farm workers, nuns, professors, students, the list goes on and on.

This year has not always been the "valley of love and delight" of course. There was a period when our abundant table looked pretty barren, when we did not know if the farm would survive, and when we did not know if we could push harder than we were pushing physically or emotionally. Gone now are any notions I once had of the idyllic farm life. Instead, I now bear a deeper understanding of why my grandparents left that life and a felt knowledge of the challenges that this economic system holds for small farmers.

Yet this year has also instilled in me the belief that "to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed." My manual labor in the field and my work with the local organization, "House Farm Workers," taught me that though farm work is socially marginalized, often underpaid, and under-acknowledged, this labor forms the core of our society. Our survival rests upon the labor of farmers and farm workers, their daily maintenance of the soil, and the sustenance of food that comes from their hands. For this reason, and for the work itself, I have come to realize the essential dignity of farm work and the respect it deserves. I have stopped wondering if I am too "good" (educated, full of potential, etc.) for this, and have started to ask if I am worthy of this work. I now know it is holy work.

I am forever changed by this work and by this place. In some capacity or other, my hands will remain connected to earth. Already, I have begun to transition away from work at the Farm and have started working as a community garden coordinator at a local 1 acre community garden called Community Roots Garden. The Garden is a shared space where people come to volunteer and learn how to grow their own school/ community/ home gardens. It is also a ministry of the North Oxnard United Methodist Church, and the harvest goes to local food pantries and a women's shelter. I'm excited to continue sharing the gift of growing food and building community with and for all who are hungry (for all are hungry, in some way or other!).

I'll also be working part-time as an assistant for dear friends of the Farm, Ched Meyers and Elaine Enns at Bartimaeus Coorperative Ministries, who inspire me in their work of peace, justice, and radical Christian faith. Their Oak View home has been a place of rest and retreat for us at different points, and I look forward to learning from them there.

As I was deciding where to live this coming season, I couldn't shake the feeling that this feels like home now - as the song says, "tis the gift to come down where you ought to be." So, I've decided to continue to live at the Farmhouse as a part of the Abundant Table community! (Though not as a farm intern.) This means I'll get to welcome in the 2010 interns and journey with them through the ins and outs of farm life. And, if you don't find me on this blog, I may be updating my old blog, http://formingroots.blogspot.com, now and again.

Living the Gift,
Katerina

Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again

2010-06-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

Times of transition require giving pause, and as I step into my final three days of living in the Oxnard farmhouse, I want to honor the "year" here as well as accept the coming change. I'm not going very far, and so I think of the phrase I've heard some dear friends use to say good-bye - "merry meet and merry part and merry meet again" - and I pause here on our blog to be grateful.

There are certain things I am grateful for/ I will miss from this year as an intern/farmer/farm worker.

I am grateful for/ I will miss playing guitar in the morning in the big room with Oliver

I am grateful for/ I will miss driving down Hueneme Road

I am grateful for/ I will miss living so close to the ocean

I am grateful for/ I will miss my farm harvesting outfits

There are parts of the work we do that I will miss as well, including:

Working at the market

Retreats at the farm

Early morning in the fields!

ATFP parties at the house

Dinners in the big kitchen

Interviewing for the paper

Also, it's been wonderful to live in a place that friends want to visit! Having friends visit the farm has been another great honor. I think of...

Of course, a great part of this project has been getting to know my four sisterfriends!

And, last, I am grateful for my relationship with the Earth.

Altogether, the Oxnard farm is where I believe I was meant to be. I take away precious memories and a renewed sense of trust in the power of our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the Earth.

A poem by Julie Morris, beet poet

2010-05-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

Julie's been writing midnight beet poems, and sent us one this morning.

On meeting the beet week after week

First, I resist the foreigners.

Next, I resolve to include them in the hot melting pot.

Soon, I preach their inherent goodness.

To my surprise, my eight year old speaks their language.

Hauerwas defines family as “strangers God has given us to love.”

They all arrive on Tuesday, in my CSA box.

If any one else wants to share CSA-inspired poems, email them our way!

Of Pie and Pentecost

2010-05-23T21:37:00.001-07:00

In celebration of Pentecost Sunday, the day in the Christian liturgical tradition when the Spirit of God descended on the disciples of Jesus, I baked a "Tongues of Flame" pie for our potluck dinner. Loquats from our backyard and mangos saved from a Whole Foods dumpster went into the filling. I was pretty proud of how it turned out. If you look close, you can see the tongues of flame as slits in the crust :)

"Tongues of Flame" Loquat-Mango Pie

I don't come from a liturgical church tradition that celebrates Pentecost Sunday, and I've really enjoyed participating in the multitude of special days celebrated by the Episcopal/Anglican Church. From Epiphany and Lent to the Passion to Pentecost and Advent, it feels like I'm a part of a story that's larger than myself. This story is the broader story of the church that throughout the year is dying and being re-born through the re-telling and remembering of the narrative of Scripture.

I think that our journey as an Abundant Table community can also be told through this story. In just the past year, we've gone through a lot of growth, and also a lot of change. We're working through fears and questions about the sustainability of our project, and much is still unknown. Will we live and flourish? This church tradition, with its living memory of an old, old story, is a comfort to me and also hope-giving. Pentecost Sunday seems to come at just the right time for our questions, breathing life and wind into our sails and bringing an energy that excites me. There is something new in the air...

“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams..."

-Acts 2:17, from the prophet Joel

what a great idea!

2010-05-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

Check out the great blog started by our members at our newest drop off site (Calvert St. Elementary School in Woodland Hills), talking about what they do with their boxes!

http://calvertgreencsabox.blogspot.com/

A blessing for the Abundant Table

2010-05-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

Thank you, john o'donohue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Meet your Farmer

2010-05-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

This post comes from an interview for our CSA newsletter a few weeks ago with Agustin, who, along with his brother Juan, has been helping us with farm work at "Join the Farm." Agustin is something of a farm manager for us here. He does everything from cultivating, mowing, weeding, irrigation, and maintaining equipment to watering the outer roads of the field to keep down dust. With his background knowledge from growing up on a farm, he gives us tips on extending crop life and advice on plant problems. I've loved getting to know Agustin, and his jovial nature and jokes make our work lighter. Here's his short bio from the newsletter:

Agustin Contreras has been working on the DeBusschere family ranch for 18 of the 37 years that he's lived in the U.S. As he helped us wash carrots, turnips and leeks for your CSA boxes, he amiably answered some questions for this newsletter. Agustin comes from the town of Querendaro, Michoacan, Mexico. Some of Agustin's favorite memories from Querendaro include tending his family's cattle and helping out with the farm work there. His father left the farm in Agustin's care to work in Temecula, CA as one of over 4 million Mexicans contracted for agricultural labor as part of the Bracero program during the 1940's.
After 18 years of working on his family's farm, Agustin also left Mexico along with four of his siblings because it became too hard to feed the family there. He recently became a U.S. citizen, along with his brother Juan, the other employee on the Ranch. Agustin lives in Oxnard close to his sister and brother and is a favorite uncle of his nieces and nephews. On his day off, when he's not taking his nieces and nephews to their various appointments and activities, he likes to relax with a beer or two. His favorite vegetables are onions, garlic, and chili peppers. Agustin brought us back some chili seeds to plant from a holiday visit to his hometown, so hopefully we can share them with you too this summer!

Come out and join us Thursday for a benefit concert!

2010-04-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

Of Dirt and Worms and Birds

2010-04-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Raising Micah came out to visit the farm. They are a local group of families who want to raise their children in community to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God." Every month, they have a reading to reflect upon, and also take learning or service trips together. This month's reading is called "Of Dirt and Worms" (I highly recommend it!), and so they came out to our farm to learn about the importance of good soil. We had a lot of fun digging for carrots, looking at mycorrhizae, feeling, smelling and - for one earth-loving youngster - rolling in the soil, warming our hands over compost, and talking about all the living things in and around dirt. Before leaving the field, I led the group tip-toeing down the furrow beside our artichoke row to see a discovery that made my day last week:
A sparrow's nest! The kids immediately made the connection between the presence of the birds and healthy soil. When I asked them what the nest is a sign of, they yelled, "Worms!" and "Bugs!"

We talked a little bit about some of the basic differences between organic and conventional agriculture. Because we don't spray chemical pesticides, there are more insects and living things in and around our soil, both beneficial (like ladybugs and microorganisms that break down organic matter in the soil) and not so beneficial (like aphids). When the fields around us are sprayed with pesticides, it affects all the living things there, from the soil to the bugs to the birds. The soil becomes sterile, since the natural processes by which microorganisms make nutrients available to plants are disrupted. This necessitates chemical fertilizers. So, in addition to buying chemical pesticides, a grower must now depend on chemical fertilizers (or tons of compost) to supply the 14 nutrients essential for plant growth. In contrast, healthy soil, given plenty of good rest and care, will develop a natural balance of minerals and nutrients. Though organic plants might not grow as fast as they do with chemical fertilizers, studies have shown that they absorb more nutrients over time and are, in the end, more dense in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that we need for life.

Out here on our island in the middle of a conventional agriculture sea, we see plenty of signs of life. Thanks to naturalist John Borneman's gift of a bird book to the farm, I've learned the names of some feathered fauna in our area , including the following spotted in our field:

-White-crowned and House Sparrows
-Western Scrub-jay
-Red-tailed Hawk
-All kinds of hummingbirds!

I am glad for these birds, for their own sake and because they are signs of good soil.

P.S. Sarah is organizing a farm event to bring in John Borneman and the kids from Casa Pacifica who did a science fair study comparing the numbers of birds on our farm and on conventional fields. We'll let you know when it is so you can mark your calendars to attend!

A new video about us!

2010-04-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

Happy Cesar Chavez Day!

2010-03-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

I recently learned that Chavez lived here in Oxnard for a part of his childhood. He is still both highly regarded and highly controversial (depending who you talk to) in the area.
En memoria:

UNITED FARM WORKERS' PRAYER
written by Cesar Chavez

Show me the suffering of the most miserable, so I may know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others, for you are present in every person.
Help me to take responsibility for my own life, so that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others, for in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience, so that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration, so that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow, so that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice, for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us, so we can change the world.
Amen.

many hands...

2010-03-31T21:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I successfully orchestrated a crop mob. What does one do with a group of 30 adult volunteers from Excel Charter Academy in LA who want to volunteer a few hours for a farming cause to mark Cesar Chavez day?

You make them weed.

And they did. I wish I had taken pictures, because within two hours they had cleaned up nearly half of the beds we're currently farming. And some of those weeds (I'm ashamed to admit) were getting alarmingly close to three feet tall.

Because they were a big group, they had fun doing it too. We in the new farmers/interns/kids-who-have-no-clue-but-really-want-to-be-involved-with-food world are prone to romanticize pre-WWII farming communities, but one thing I think we can unapologetically reclaim from that era is the practice of gathering a whole community to do in a few hours or a day the work (like barn raising, or clearing a few acres of weeds) that a few farmers couldn't tackle in a month - and making a celebration of it.

So many thanks to Excel Charter Academy, and here's to many more community work day/crop mobs to come!

Change: A lenten reflection

2010-03-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

Every Wednesday during the 40 days of Lent, two of us make a soup and salad dinner for a gathering at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Ventura, a church that has been a faithful supporter of our project from the start. Father K. asks us to share about different aspects of the farm life as dinner is served. Last Wednesday, he asked me to talk about change.

I spoke about several changes that have been a part of this project - our project's growth, newer understandings of gratitude, and changes in physical endurance - but one of the changes I want to write more about now is a change in landscape.

Until recently, our farm was bordered on all four sides. On the north and east sides, Eucalyptus trees and fences, on the south side, at least 5 long acres of raspberry hoop houses, and on the west side, Poplar trees. I did not know how accustomed I had become to the familiar landscape of our field sheltered on all four sides. I guess it's not until something is gone that you realize how much you've grown to love it. The white hoop houses, which looked strikingly like the tops of Conestoga wagons, were the first to go. It was a slow dismantling as workers stripped their plastic outer shells, then the metal ribs. A foreman helped me glean a last little bowl of ripe berries before they finally mowed over the thorny vines.

After the operation next door removed their raspberries, the 5 acres we're working on suddenly felt more expansive. We saw cars on the Hwy 1 for the first time, and the trucks seemed noisier without the insulation of those hoop houses around us. If we looked hard enough, we could see "Missile Park" at the Navy base, an open-air museum of historic missiles with nice nature names such as "Oriole," "Sparrow," and "Loon." We watched the farm workers next door, previously obscured, picking fast to keep up with the huge machines that extend over about 10 rows of strawberries. Casey noticed that sometimes they break into a run to be able to pick more berries.

The southwest side

A few weeks after the raspberries went down, we drove out to our fridge truck on the west side of the field to load up for market. A bulldozer-type Excavator sat a couple hundred feet away, half way done with the western windbreak of poplars. Its long arm bent slowly backwards and, like a sleepy giant swatting at an insect with the back of its hand, it struck down a thirty foot tree with the flat of its shovel. "What are you doing?" I shouted over the roar of the machine to the men standing nearby. They told me that strawberries will probably be planted next, where the raspberry hoops used to stand. The shade from these trees would slow the growth of the incoming crop. I stood and watched as another tree cracked and strained at the roots, then toppled under the heavy hand of the Excavator. In a day's time, the 1/4 mile long line of Poplars lay horizontal with leaves in the dirt and deep root cavities exposed. Paul tells me they haven't been there long, only twelve years. I think, that's more than half of my lifetime.

It's been at least three weeks since the hoops were dismantled and trees felled. Yet for whatever reason, the changes do not leave my mind. A strange sense of grief remains. Cristy Rose named it when she said our field seems more exposed, more vulnerable. The changes opened our quaint-looking, sheltered farm to broader realities. We can see our neighbors now, and the difference between their work and ours is uncomfortably apparent. The military planes that fly low enough to shake the earth are housed closer than feels safe. The transitory nature of large-scale agriculture unnerves me, as does our economic reality that anything can be extracted to make way for business. Everything is shifting now, tractors spinning earth that was just cleared of the old to put in new crops, forming beds, laying down irrigation. A landscape has collapsed around us and is being re-built. I'm not ready for these changes yet.

This week, we celebrated Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus' triumphal entry (as triumphal as someone can get on a borrowed donkey, I suppose) into the city of his death. Before the church service, I walked out to the uprooted Poplars and broke off a number of the long branches that still had leaves on them. These served as our palm branches, which we waved above our heads as we marched around the living room singing about glory and honor to welcome our expected Messiah. We sang knowing full well, of course, that by this Friday, he will not save us in the way we expect, but will die on that tree called the Cross. Looking back, it seems appropriate, like foreshadowing in a sad story, that we lifted the branches of razed trees to welcome Jesus our Savior into this week.

A little something we wrote up the other day

2010-03-26T15:45:00.001-07:00

10 practical things The Abundant Table Farm Project recommends for “just food”:

Know where your food comes from – Join your local CSA, or support the farmers’ markets near you, and “shake the hand that feeds you.” Ellwood Canyon Farm in Goleta starts up their CSA May 1^st! Montecito’s farmers’ market is Fridays from 8-11 on Montecito Coast Village Road (found at http://www.sbfarmersmarket.org/). Buying local strengthens your community and supporting independent farms encourages biodiversity. Check out http://www.foodroutes.org/ and http://www.localharvest.org/ or for a lighter endeavor, http://locavorelite2010.webs.com/.
Buy Fair Trade – If you can’t buy something locally, look for fair trade products. Get involved at http://www.transfairusa.org/.
Use animal products sparingly - meat production is responsible for 1/5th of greenhouse gases, takes up 75% of water in the western US, and accounts for more than 1/2 of the nitrogen fertilizers used in the US. Even grass-fed organic cattle take up 8-10 acres of land each. As much as possible, use meat, dairy and eggs to flavor food rather than as the center of the meal.
Cook from scratch - making your own meals from scratch helps you know what's in your food and cuts down on waste from packaging.
Cook from what you have - limiting trips to the grocery store can help you get creative with the food that you do have and reduce food waste.
Know what’s native – native plants are drought-tolerant, attractive, and are made to be here! We recommend you check out Nopalito Native Plant Nursery. They are helpful and one of very few nurseries that know about and sell native plants. http://www.nopalitonursery.com/
Check out local garden projects – One such project is the community garden at St. Michael's University Church and Campus Ministry at UCSB. Their vision for is to “bring together community members to share in the honest labor and earthy satisfaction of planting, growing and harvesting fresh organic food!”
Rethink Plastic – Help stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, the environment, and wildlife worldwide. Check out http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/ and “just say NO to single-use and disposable plastics.”
Consider horticultural therapy - The therapeutic benefits of peaceful garden environments have been understood since ancient times. In Santa Barbara, they have the certified organic Healing Grounds Nursery (http://www.healinggroundsnursery.com/ ), which works to serve clients through the Santa Barbara County Mental Health Services.
Support eateries that buy locally -- It’s as simple as asking your favorite restaurant, “where does your food come from?”

news

2010-03-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

We just found out that the Episcopal Life news posted an article about our project. Check it out!
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_120973_ENG_HTM.htm

eggs

2010-03-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

Last week, it started. Little brown ovals, the first few of which were scattered around the coop, but which are now concentrated in the nesting box.

The chickens are laying eggs. After a really rough couple of months (2 chickens died, and 2 got sick and haven't really gotten better), it's nice to have good news to report.

Its a bit magical, going out to the coop around lunch time every day and finding three or four eggs.

And, skeptical as I was, I can now verify that Americana chickens lay blue eggs.

A friend's blog about us: "Down on the Farm"

2010-03-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Christy!

Down on the Farm

When I found out from Jenny that our friend, Cristy Rose, was living and working on an organic vegetable farm in Oxnard, I just knew we had to make a road trip out there to visit. Jenny loved the idea. She said she needed a vacation and also saw it as a symbolic return to nature, an opportunity to reap and sow and dig our hands in the soil. Personally, I’m not a big fan of dirt, so I wasn’t quite as excited about the symbolic return to nature, but I knew it would be an adventure, nonetheless.

And it was. We loaded up my car last Saturday morning with work boots, old jeans that wouldn’t mind getting messy, and a bag full of wine from Trader Joe’s—our 'thank you' gift for Cristy Rose and her roommates.

Instead of taking the 405 to the 101, Jenny suggested that we hop on the Pacific Coast Highway once we got to Santa Monica and take it all the way to Oxnard, which turned out to be a beautifully relaxing drive through the charcoal-colored mountains of Malibu. Because it was scheduled to rain later that afternoon, the mountains were enshrouded with a light layer of clouds that delicately adorned their grassy peaks, and made us feel almost as if we were driving through the islands of Hawaii—pounding waves on one side, misty mountains on the other, and an unpredictable highway that wound about, every which way, taking us in and over and through this little gem of Southern California. We were a little over an hour from Long Beach, yet it felt like a world away. I couldn’t help but recognize that old familiar feeling of freedom and excitement that always overcomes me when I am going some place new.

When Jenny and I reached Oxnard, we almost rolled right past the dirt and gravel driveway marked by a sign that says, “Join the Farm.”

Jenny read the sign aloud and then said, “Yup, that sounds a bit like the world Cristy Rose has been living in.”

I smiled, and turned down the small road, past the grove of avocado trees, and up to the farmhouse. We were greeted by a joyful Cristy Rose, with galoshes on her feet and a dog named Oliver in her arms. He is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, otherwise known as the dog Charlotte adopted on Sex and the City.

After exchanging hugs, Cristy invited us in and gave us a tour around the farm. Oliver came along—always the happy host—although he did have a tendency to get preoccupied along the way, feeling the need to pester the hens in the chicken coup, or sniff through the mounds of riches and mystery that are the compost pile. Every dog I know loves compost piles. I grew up with a compost pile, and if you are from the city and have no idea what I am talking about, then allow me to educate you. A compost pile is a collection of food scraps that slowly biodegrade and can be ground up and used as fertilizer. It is coffee grounds and eggshells and potato peels and moldy leftovers that have been cluttering the shelves of your refrigerator. It is nature’s alternative to a garbage disposal.

Yes, this farm has compost piles and clotheslines running through the backyard. It’s not that the girls don’t have an electric dryer, it’s just that they try their very best not to use it. It goes against the sustainable lifestyle that they faithfully adhere to and are incredibly passionate about. The longer I was there, the more I realized that it wasn’t a regime for them, or a trendy attempt at jumping on the sustainability bandwagon. It also wasn’t solely a matter of eating the organic vegetables they harvested, or having a few token recycling bins lying around the kitchen. It was about the way they envisioned their place in the world, and it influenced every aspect of their lives. At one point over the weekend, their sustainable lifestyle even resembled a fifth grade science experiment.

One of the bathroom sinks had gotten clogged with hair—a dilemma that is bound to occur in a house full of five girls—and rather than reaching for the Drano, as I surely would have, they started mixing various concoctions of vinegar and baking soda and pouring them down the pipes. We had an informal meeting of the minds, as each of us shared whatever at-home-remedies we could think of. Jenny suggested the vinegar and baking soda. Erynn suggested using Coca Cola. I suggested asking the almighty Google.

The girls likely would have gone online and found a recipe, had the vinegar and baking soda not worked so well. They are part of the new generation of farmers. Farmers who are in their mid-late twenties, and who are technologically savvy and who listen to their ipods as they dig up carrots out in the fields. Yet, the technology is nicely balanced with basic acts of simplicity. At the Channel Islands Farmers Market, I watched them barter and trade with the other venders. Some kale and mustard greens for a bag of organic oranges. A bouquet of wildflowers for some turnips.

The Sunday morning farmers market was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend. We left the house around 8:00am and crammed into the front seat of a pick-up loaded with crates of vegetables, folding tables, and an Easy-Up tent. Jenny and I got to help Cristy Rose and one of her co-workers named Casey set up their little corner. We arranged the leafy, delicate strands of fennel to hang over a crate. Below them were bundles of spinach that cascaded over the table and leaves of swiss chard, so large and sturdy you could fan yourself with them. Then, of course, there was the cilantro, the broccoli, and the purpley turnips that added a nice splash of color amongst all the greenery.

Just like the farmers market I love in Long Beach, this one was also located alongside a marina. As the customers started to pour in, the boats just sat quietly, rocking back and forth above the calm water. From behind the booth, we watched dogs of every breed and variety walk by with their owners, and commented on how cute the children looked bundled up in knit hats on this breezy winter morning. We chatted with the patrons—a woman who eats everything raw, and who drinks leafy vegetables thrown into a juicer; a chef who works at the buffet at Whole Foods, and who shared with us his dedication for overcoming what he calls, the “food issues” we have in America. “Yeah,” he said, “we have a few issues with eating in this country. Like one, or two, or thirty thousand.” He was an interesting guy. He stayed and talked to us for about an hour, telling stories of how he used to lobby for Greenpeace. Before he left, he gave Casey a container of sprouts that he had grown in his backyard.

When we got hungry, we wandered over to the hot food carts. I ordered a tamale and a shrimp taco from a smiling Mexican woman with an orange Gerber daisy in her hair. They were greasy and authentic and spicy and delicious! Jenny went to a different vendor and bought a jar of rhubarb jam for her mother. The lady recognized her as being with the “organic vegetable girls” and gave her a discount. We told Cristy Rose, who later sent us back to her with a bag of vegetables to say thank you.

By the end of the afternoon, we had gone from three tables of vegetables to one. We packed the leftovers into the truck, and headed back to the farm to get ready for the evening church service that meets each week in the common room of the farmhouse. This farm that we were visiting was a collaborative project funded by some farmers, a nonprofit organization, and an Episcopalian church.

The Episcopalian service I attended that evening was led by a female priest. She was blonde and she wore black-rimmed glasses, similar to mine. She led us through a passage from the book of Luke, and as the discussion began to pick up, I realized that I was almost entirely in the presence of farmers—farmers who had unique and personal interpretations of the many farming analogies that Jesus makes in the New Testament. He speaks of reaping and sowing, of crops that produce good fruit, and crops that seem to die and wither no matter how much nourishment they are given.

These are all concepts I’ve heard before and that I understand on a rather abstract level, but for this group of farmers, these ideas were more than just abstract. They were realities from their daily lives. They knew what it was like to plant and harvest. They understood the faith and vision it took to take an empty piece of land and turn it into an entire crop. They knew what conditions certain crops needed to flourish, and what it was like to have them wiped out by things like wind and floods and Mother Nature’s many other surprises.

The rest of the service was a mixture of Catholic traditions, like communion and liturgy, followed by a group watercolor painting. We concluded the service by kneeling on a blanket that was filled with paint and brushes, glasses of water, and blank sheets of paper laid out like cards from a game of memory. We each chose a piece and then painted a visual representation of our prayers to God. I had never experienced anything quite like that service before. It was one of many new experiences I had the privilege of encountering that weekend.

On Monday afternoon, after spending a few hours in the fields harvesting kale and carrots, we said our good-byes to Oliver and Cristy Rose, and headed back to Long Beach. Jenny and I agreed it had been an awesome weekend. We felt revived; as if we had both gotten exactly what we came for. She got her vacation, and I got my adventure, plus a captivating glimpse into a new way of life.

Cristy Rose and Oliver

The kitchen

At the farmers market

Spraying organic pesticides over the crops

From left to right: Cristy Rose, Me, and Jenny

Casey working in the fields

Mustard Greens

Katarina, Cristy Rose, and Jenny

http://bloggingmisschris.blogspot.com/2010/03/down-on-farm.html

A note from a guest

2010-03-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

Last week, we interns joined in a 5-day "retreat" through the Bartimaeus Institute, led by Ched Myers and Elaine Enns. The institute focused on themes of ecojustice and Sabbath economics, and engaged participants in some radical Bible study. We also studied several "case studies" of folks involved in the work of loving creation, including Sister Dorothy Stang, a nun recently killed in Brazil for defending rainforest land from intruding ranchers. Last Wednesday, the 20-something other participants visited the "case study" of our farm to share dinner (and songs!), hear the stories behind our project, and to talk about farming and our farm community.

Dancing to Jay and Meg (from the group 'Psalters') at the Farmhouse last Wednesday
*Notice Sister Roseanne on the far right - these nuns know how to party.

I was struck by our guests' responses afterward and by how impacted they were by hearing from us and seeing this project firsthand. It almost required listening through others' ears to really understand the significance of our stories. Here's a note from Sam, one of the many people who visited our home last week (passed on by Sarah Nolan):

February 24th, 2010

Dear Sarah,

I once had the good fortune of having soup with Wendell Berry. At the time, I was a divinity school student, and a couple of friends and I had been talking a lot about intentional communities – what they were, how they worked, whether we might start one somewhere (anywhere, really – our first mistake). Perhaps foolishly, and probably seeking some sort of affirmation, my friend Steve decided to bring this up with Mr. Berry. His first response was that whatever far-flung ideas we had, an intentional community would have to be an agricultural one; it would have to be a land-based community. Maybe it was not surprising to us that he would say such a thing, but in retrospect I imagine he was pretty surprised. Here were some smart-seeming Yale students with almost no sense at all.

Long after the subject had been changed and we were all walking out the door saying our goodbyes, he made his second point: “Listen to your wives, boys – listen to your wives.”

In his little essay “In Distrust of Movements” Berry says that movements generally fail to accomplish their goals because they take aim at symptoms and not underlying causes; they usually fail to be radical enough. If he were to name the movement he thinks he might be part of, it would be called the “Movement to Teach the Economy What It Is Doing” (MTEWIID), which consists finally of a few elements. The movement must be dedicated to whole social, economic, and environmental systems and not mere solutions; it must be composed of people willing to undertake profound self-analysis; and it must content itself to being poor.

Berry concludes by writing, “The callings and disciplines that I have spoken of as the domestic arts are stationed all along the way from the farm to the prepared dinner, from the forest to the dinner table, from stewardship of the land to hospitality to friends and strangers. These arts are as demanding and gratifying, as instructive and as pleasing, as the so-called ‘fine arts.’ To learn them is, I believe, the work that is our profoundest calling. Our reward is that they will enrich our lives and make us glad.”

I was thinking these thoughts at the farm tonight and being very glad.

Peace,
Sam

chicken day

2010-02-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...

Today was full of chickens. One of the the first things I did this morning was hang my laundry on the line surrounded by a ring of curious hens (who then all trotted off to peck on the wall of the shed for reasons I don't understand).

Later I went down to Malibu to check out the Getty Villa, and this was my favorite piece:

A little terra cotta statuette of a woman feeding a hen, who has chicks under her wings.

And then of course the gospel reading for tonight's service was Luke 13:31-35, which includes the verse about Jesus wanting to gather Jerusalem's children like a hen gathers her chicks. So Emily and Molly colored pictures of chickens...

...and Anna painted this on a receiving blanket (symbolic of the warmth and security provided by the hen)

How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...

Interview with a Farmer

2010-02-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

The following is an interview I had yesterday afternoon with Juan for our CSA newsletter:

Meet Your Farmer!
In this section, we'll be profiling Juan and Agustin (see next week's newsletter), two of farmer Paul's employees who help the Abundant Table interns with work on the farm.

Juan Contreras is from the town of Querendalo in Michoacan, Mexico, a town famous for its annual chile festival. He moved to Oxnard in 1988 and worked in the lemon orchards for about nine years. Then, when NAFTA was implemented in the 90's, the market plummeted for Ventura County growers as cheaper lemons came in from other countries. Most of the lemon workers had to leave as orchards were replaced by strawberry fields. Juan was offered a job with his brother, Agustin, on the DeBusschere ranch working with avocados and beans.

Juan and his wife have four children, two of whom are married and live near them in Oxnard, plus one in college and one in high school. He enjoys tending his flower and chile garden at home and going out to eat in the evening with his family on his day off. Juan has two nicknames that his brother gave him: "Sophocles" and "The Philosopher," because of the higher education he had in Mexico and because of his quiet, reflective tendencies. Of all the vegetables on the farm, he says he can't pick a favorite since he likes them all. Keep an eye out on our website for recipes from Juan and Agustin - they know some good ones.

interview with a farmer

2010-02-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

My senior English class with Mrs. Potts!

I am a 1999 La Reina High School graduate. My dear Alma Matter continues to be a supportive and encouraging place. My former English teacher, Mrs. Potts, brought her granddaughter out to the farm and gave my work on the farm a really nice mention in the alumnae newsletter. It appears another English teacher (Mrs. Stanley has been extremely fond of me since I acted out a Maya Angelou poem sophomore year of high school-um, suffice to say I got really into it) is giving a helping hand to the farm by encouraging her students to profile me! (and the farm) for the school newspaper The La Reina Herald. As I was responding to the student's email interview (she was really hoping to make it out the farm but car borrowing situations arose-lots of sympathy there sister!), I realized how nice it was to sit down and write out some things I have been reflecting about for sometime now. Of course, this triggered my inner blog alert, "WRITTEN REFLECTION=GOOD BLOG MATERIAL!" So, I avail the interview to you, my public.

Me as a "sevie" (seventh grader) on the La Reina lawn

1. How did you get involved in the agriculture buisness? Why?

My interest in agriculture has been brewing for a few years. I think my earliest interest can be traced back to the time I spent in Cuenca, Ecuador (2005-2007). In Cuenca, and throughout Ecuador, most folks-especially the lower and middle socio-economic classes-buy their produce, meat, and cheese from large feria libres, basically huge farmers markets. Local farmers bring their goods to sell at these markets. I loved getting to know the farmers, developing relationships with them, getting to know their produce, and trying new and exciting things. At that time I was living with roommates from around the world and we were all able to connect over food-shopping together, cooking together, and learning from the farmers and vendors how to use new things from the feria libre. I started thinking of farming and food as means of developing community. When I returned to the U.S. I missed the feria libres and community shopping and cooking experiences. Here most of us shop at the grocery store and have no sense of the farmers and laborers who cultivate our food. Our food system in the U.S. is not set up to build healthy communities. It is set up to support large industrial farming and distribution chains that put many links between the farmer and the consumer. Each link decreases the quality and nutrition of our food because produce is harvested while it is immature, ripened with chemicals while in route to warehouses where it can sit for days before being transported to the grocery store where we buy it. Large scale industrial farming was created to feed our growing U.S. and world populations. Maybe large industrial farming would make sense to me if it truly did this. However, currently our government pays farmers with subsidies to grow excess amounts of crops like corn which is then turned into corn products like high fructose corn syrup and added to many cheap food products which make us sick with obesity related illness like diabetes and heart disease. So having gone from a community based food system in Ecuador to our large and anonymous food system in the States, I really started thinking not only did our food system not make sense- it is injust. People going hungry while we overproduce crops which go to waste is injust. The fact that cheap, processed foods, which can make us sick, is more available in some of our communities than fresh produce is injust. While I was attending Cal State Channel Islands last year getting my bilingual teaching credential, I started attending a campus ministry called The Abundant Table. The Abundant Table is an Episcopal Christian campus ministry inspired by Jesus' vision of inclusive love and courageous commitment to peace. Food justice was a piece of our group reflections. Our priest Julie's husband is a 4th generation farmer in Oxnard and had been wanting to start a small organic farm on his ranch. Julie envisioned an internship project of young adults who would work the land and connect faith and spirituality to sustainable living on the farm, farming, starting a Community Supported Agriculture program on the farm, and working with other community organizations on food issues like affordable housing, immigration, and education. I decided to join the project. This project has been a nexus of all the areas I have been so interested in the past few years; our food system; farming; living in community; growing my faith and commitment to service; and education (I am the farm educator). This project fosters a restorative connection between the community, their food, and the folks who produce their food.

2. I heard that you attended usc, did you like it there? Did you feel La Reina had prepared you well?

I did go to USC and I did feel extremely prepared both academically and emotionally. La Reina prepares you for so much more than the next four years after high school. La Reina fosters academic engagement which helped me succeed academically at USC and beyond. La Reina also fosters positive self-image and strong women. I was surrounded by incredible women at La Reina-fellow students, teachers, and my principals while I was there Sr. Lisa and Sr. Antoinette Marie. This network of support and encouragement helped me grow into a confident, capable woman. I also learned the Serenity Prayer at La Reina and part of it has stayed with me and motivated me ever since. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." These words absolutely guide my work on the farm. I cannot accept hunger and sickness in the face of such abundance and working to directly provide all members of my community with fresh, organic produce and educate folks about problems in our food system is my effort to change what I cannot accept.

3. How did you go from a major in journalism to agriculture?
Part of my strength and confidence comes in being ok with taking the less chosen path. After college while all my friends were applying for jobs, I knew I needed some time to reflect on my next big life choices. I moved to Lake Tahoe and focused on myself-spending time outdoors, developing a healthy lifestyle focusing (or trying to focus!) on exercise, meditation, yoga, eating locally. I worked in a restaurant until I knew I was ready for a change, always checking in with myself about where I was at where I wanted to be, and always listening to my heart. I was a Latin American studies minor in college and thought I would benefit from spending time in South America. I took a job as a teacher in a bilingual preschool and elementary school in Cuenca, Ecuador. I taught in a bilingual program that educated students in their native language while also teaching math, science, and language arts in English. I loved teaching! I have always connected with kids and found teaching utilized many of my skills and interests, while challenging me-exactly what a profession should do! After teaching there for two years I came back to CSUCI to get a bilingual teaching credential. This is where I connected to the Join the Farm project! It is perfect for me because I am the farm educator. I provide educational experiences for students on the farm. We have preschoolers to university students out learning on the farm! From planting seeds, to harvesting carrots, to acting out the plant life cycle, to learning about direct marketing models.

5. Do you have any advice for the La Reina population about farming, eating well, or just life in general?

Connect to your food! It seems we are living more connected than ever with facebook, cell phones, texting, and emails. But I wonder if these "tools" actually distract us from true connection. Person to person meaningful connection, community connection. The type of connections I found through food while living in Ecuador. So, get together with your friends or family (or both!) and stroll through a farmers market-come see my farm Join the Farm! at the Thousand Oaks Farmer's Market Thursdays from 1:30-6:30 at the Thousand Oaks Mall-talk with the farmers and pick up a few things you love to eat and few new things. Go home and make a meal together-laugh and have fun. My farm also has a CSA (community supported agriculture) program. Your family can "join the farm" by purchasing a share in our farm. You can purchase a share through our website www.jointhefarm.com and each week we will delivery a box of produce for your family at one of our 7pick up points nearest you! CSA members not only get their weekly boxes of produce, by they participate in different events on the farm. Or, you can just come and check out our farm, I'd love to show you around! Hmmm...life advice. Learn how to listen to what's truly in yourself and follow what's in you. Be reflective. Surround yourself with good people. Listen to old people-they know what they're talking about.

7. Any additional comments or personal experiments you would want to share?
Lots of personal experiments, don't know if they're appropriate for the La Reina herald! ha!

Bolted.

2010-02-10T20:49:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things to do at farmers' markets is a little guessing game for kids. While their mother or father is perusing our stall, I'll point to the bouquet of yellow flowers hanging from the tent corner and ask the child, "Can you find the vegetable that those flowers come from?" Sometimes parents get involved in the search around our booth, and they are just as perplexed as the kid as to the source of the bright, pretty blossoms. Here's what they look like in the field:

And here's a hint from one that is "bolting" :

It's... broccoli! Amazing, huh? To "bolt" is probably my favorite verb describing the process that a plant undergoes before producing seeds or flowers. I looked up the word in the dictionary, and laughed at the appropriateness of the definition: "To start suddenly and run away." That's exactly what happens. One day, we have beautiful heads of broccoli, and a warm, sunny day or two later, each little green nodule you see on the head suddenly opens up and buds as a yellow flower! Then, it literally runs away as it shoots up long stems and produces more flowers and seeds. If we don't pick fast enough, our rows of broccoli turn into rows of bouquets, a perfect habitat for bees.

Here are some more unusual bolted plants:

Arugula

Ruby lettuce

A radish (with a regular radish on the right for a size comparison - wow.)

my own two hands

2010-02-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

This Friday afternoon was spa time at the Farm. A few weeks ago while staffing a table promoting the CSA at the local YMCA (which mostly meant chatting up the assembled chiropractors), Kat won a free office spa treatment for eight, and this afternoon the lady from BeautiControl came out so we could redeem our prize. Shortly before it was my turn to indulge in the Sugar Cookie Hand Exfoliator, I snuck a glance at my hands - mud under every ragged fingernail, calluses on the insides of my index fingers from rubber-banding kale, chard, spinach and carrots, dirt settled into the dry skin of my knuckles, and plenty of nicks and cuts of unknown origins.

I should note that this sad state of affairs is not a foregone conclusion. Once upon a time I wore gloves while I harvested (until I realized how much it slowed me down), and some of the other interns do a much better job of taking care of their hands. But for me, knowing that my hands will be involved in this...

(Check out more of Josh Reason's pictures from the farm) at least three times a week makes me reluctant to put much energy into cleaning them up.

Besides, I have a certain sense of pride in being marked by what I do. When people stop by our farmers' market booth to comment on how beautiful the veggies are (and hopefully buy a few), we often tell them we picked them ourselves the day before. Occasionally the customer will want to see our hands as proof, and mine usually do the trick.

And for me, admiring the cuts and calluses is a daily reminder of the joy of being able to do things myself, to learn with my hands in the earth and invite others to do the same.

Eco-farm conference, thoughts on our CSA ministry, and seal puppies.

2010-02-04T15:25:00.001-08:00

An overdue post that I started but never posted last week...

January 20th through 23rd found Erynn, Sarah and I braving a long and rainy drive up to Monterey to participate in the 30th annual Eco-Farm Conference. Where to begin? Well, the opening plenary began with Wes Jackson (from the Land Institute) and Frances Moore Lappé (author of "Diet for a Small Planet," among others). Let's just say they set the precedent for standing ovations.

I'll let Sarah and Erynn talk more about the impact the conference had on them. Personally, it opened my mind to the variety of approaches that farmers and others take when it comes to the vague word "sustainability." Everyone from your nose-pierced, shaggy and/or dread-locked biodynamic farmers to the large-scale organic, wrangler-wearing, big-truck-driving farmers were there, mingling, exchanging stories, and dancing together during the final night's Louisiana funk band dance. It was a lot of fun.

One of the sessions on CSAs and their alternative role in the economy stuck with me in particular. The speaker outlined the history of Community Supported Agriculture, and how it goes against the consumerist grain. The CSA model offers an alternative to the typical commodity-based market economy. I got to thinking about this in relation to our Abundant Table Farm Project (ATFP) ministry.

How is our CSA program connected to the Abundant Table ministry? How does the worship service, Eucharist and potluck we host every Sunday night extend into the week and define our work? When our subscribers sign up for our CSA program, they are not simply buying a weekly box of seasonal vegetables and their unit-by-unit worth. No, their financial support symbolizes a deeper commitment for which the box could be considered an acknowledgment, a return of gratitude in the form of our land's bounty. They are "buying into" something beyond the worth of the veggies - and this something is our soil quality (good soil is everything in agriculture, I'm discovering), our care over a piece of land for future generations while cherishing the family history of generations past, the knowledge that those who tend the land are well cared for, housed, fed, insured, etc., and of course a closer relationship with the substance upon which we are all dependent, food, and the people who grow it.

Our CSA is part of our ministry, then, for it enables people in some small (but small is large) way, to step outside the role that society has ready-made for them as a consumer expecting direct, personal returns. Just as our boxes are not personalized based on individual preference but rather offer the same assortment to all, our ministry gently, even sub-consciously informs people that it's not "all about me." Our CSA ministry offers freedom from "cheap" materialism and an opportunity to participate in a richer materialism, in a different sense of the word if you will, that goes beyond individual gains to include things like the material of our earth, its friendliness toward worms and birds, and yet unborn material seven generations from now.

We can be a part of something larger than ourselves, contributing to the soil's fertility and to supporting a community. I believe that these things essentially teach us what it means to be more fully human, which is, as our priest Julie likes to say, the mission of Christ.

Now, to the reason I started to write this post. Pictures from our Eco-farm journeys!:

Erynn, me, Sarah. Stopping to breathtake off Hwy 1

...then we decided to stay for sunset yoga with some new friends.

And I just can't leave this out - SEAL PUPPIES!

relationships with our neighbors

2010-02-04T08:03:00.001-08:00

One of the necessary and wonderful goals of this project is laying down a foundation of trust with our local community. Here are some connections we've fostered!
Erynn and I sharing stories with the Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (http://cvuuf.org/) this past week.
Nopalito's Native Plant Nursery (http://www.nopalitonursery.com/) coming to share their own story at the farm with our subscribers and friends on Saturday.

This is what building community through the farm looks like

2010-01-29T11:44:00.001-08:00

Oh man. It has been brought to my attention that I am easily excitable. This past week people described me as, "peppy," and "perky." Words which don't conjure up the most pleasant images in my mind. Someone else said energetic, and I guess I will stick with that.

Well, people- I am excited right now. Freaking out on the inside about to explode with excitement excited. So, read the following. I dare you to try to keep the pep out of your step after reading.

Exciting thing#1- Join the Farm/The Abundant Table Farm Project is linking up with Cal State Channel Islands (CSUCI-about five miles down the road) as a community partner for the Sociology Deptartment's Capstone Project. Sociology students work with community organizations design and implement surveys to help organizations better provide community services. ATFP came up with project ideas and Kat and I presented them to the capstone students. Our Capstone collaboration ideas focus on lower-income local produce accessibility and local institutional local produce accessibility (rad, right?!). We will work with students to design surveys that will help us better understand factors in low-income and institutional food consumption, so we can more effective reach those communities with our produce.

Exciting thing #2- So after I gave the presentation (alongside my community heroes Cathy Brudnicki of Ventura County Homeless & Housing Coalition, Kathryn Benner of Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation-affordable housing and Kathryn is also our CSA subscriber, Todd from Project Understanding, Sandy Nirenberg from Camarillo Hospice, Rafaela Frausto from Neighborhoods for Learning, and Cameron from Coastal Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) Cameron from CAUSE approached me about a future survey CAUSE is planning to assess food access/security in Santa Paula and South Oxnard. He is experienced and knowledgeable in designing surveys and would like to help us with our capstone to make sure our surveys are relevant and appropriate to gather the kind of data our organizations can use to work together to improve healthy food access in Ventura County! CAUSE can then use some of our survey questions in their survey! Again- this is rad. This is the type of cross-organizational community building that can really affect local change. I'm visualizing Aspen grove imagery. When organizations collaborate, or build solid connected root systems, the community organism as a whole can thrive. We are building solid foundational systems to support big efforts that ultimately result in a healthier community.

Exciting thing #3- Rafeala Frausto of Neighborhoods for Learning works with parents, schools, early childhood educators, and service providers to offer a web of support for young children and families designed by and for each community. She wants ATFP to come out to their next meeting to connect NFL families with our CSA! Young families in the county eating our local, organic vegetables!

Exciting thing #4- Sandy Niremberg of Camarillo Hospice has been a wonderful resource in connecting Join the Farm! with the Camarillo Farmer's Market. Today, she also gave me a great connection with food service at CSUCI. Join the Farm! produce in CSUCI's cafeterias!

I know all of these relationships and opportunities will take time to cultivate and grow. It's like seeing a yellow tomato blossom or bean blossom. You know it is going to grow into something good. Yes, that is exciting.

don't count your chickens

2010-01-28T21:24:00.001-08:00

Apparently hatching is only the beginning of the hazards in a chicken's life. There are diseases, hawks, farm dogs, small children, and even other chickens (think origin of the term "pecking order") to worry about.

On Monday I noticed that one of my hens wasn't doing well. When she does make it to her feet, she sort of staggers in whatever direction she wants to go and then flops down. She’s still eating and drinking, but seems pretty uncomfortable.

As Erynn noted, a 100% survival rate for nine chickens is probably a bit unrealistic. One of the other hens already owes her life to a more or less miraculous recovery. Before Ted had fully reinforced the chicken run to keep Oliver (farm dog) out and the hens in, I had a heavy set of wooden slats propped against the gate to the run (most frequent site of escapes leading to traumatic Oliver-chicken encounters). One day as I was trying to block their most recent escape route and the chickens were gathered around trying to…well…escape, I accidentally knocked the slats over, trapping one poor hen underneath.

It was awful. I pulled the slats up and she staggered, squawking into the coop where she sat awkwardly, panting and blinking very fast. Kat helpfully came in from the field to help me examine the chicken (and not so helpfully suggested that the vegetable pot pie she was planning for that evening’s dinner could easily become a chicken pie). I spent the morning bunching kale, renewing my commitment to vegetarianism by repenting of my recent fish consumption, and hoping that the hen would be dead before Kat had to kill her.

But when we went in to check on her before lunch, she was up and walking around. Within a day or two, Squashed Chicken was indistinguishable from the other eight.

I’m guessing I/we won’t get that lucky twice. Four days later I’m still trying to figure out the merciful thing to do.

here it comes

2010-01-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

Lately Sundays have turned out to be my only almost full day off. I sleep in a little (although honestly usually can't make it much past 8:00am) and take some time to read or make phone calls or go for a long run. In the afternoons I often end up at the beach or on a hike with the other interns.

Not so tomorrow. Our Monday harvest for Tuesday CSA box delivery has been moved up 24 hours because the rain is coming. Four storms are converging to dump inches and inches on southern California starting on Sunday evening at the rate of up to an inch an hour.

While this volume of precipitation is very unusual, it's made me notice how we talk about rain around here. The (admittedly only two or three) times it's rained since I arrived in August, the rain has been more of a nuisance than anything else. It makes harvesting cold and uncomfortable (even the joys of jumping in puddles don't quite make up for it) and the moisture can make our crops more susceptible to problems that thrive on dampness like molds and mildews.

After growing up in a place where rain meant the difference between health and starvation for many people, it's strange to talk about it as an inconvenience. Drip irrigation (plastic tape running down the middle of the rows with small holes) means our crops need not depend on the weather for water. Though the rain does replenish the local groundwater supply that we use to irrigate, we by no means depend on the timing of any set of showers. So here we are - farmers - stocking up on ponchos and rain boots, and complaining about the rain.

threshing

2010-01-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

"Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away".

logical

2010-01-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

Every few weeks on the Farm (okay, maybe more often than that) I learn something new about food or farming that seems so logical and self-evident that I can't believe I could have missed it, and yet I realize I would never have made the connection if left to my own devices.

Take vitamins in vegetables, for example. It's a pretty basic equation - plant takes in sunlight, water, and nutrients from the soil and produces something that we eat. Seems fairly straightforward, yet I was blown away a few months ago when I realized that you had to plant crops that restored manganese to the soil after a round of tomatoes because, well, tomatoes are high in manganese...

Around the same time I started noticing that there are almost no birds in our part of the Oxnard plain. The occasional crow tries to eat our seedlings and the occasional red-tail hawk tries to eat the chickens, but you never hear much in the way of birds singing. However obvious it seems now, I didn't make the connection myself - there's not much for birds to eat out here after most of the fields have been sprayed or watered with pesticides. (Maybe that explains why an egret has recently taken to making daily appearances on our farm.)

I had another one of these self-evident epiphany moments yesterday. I've been listening to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food (appropriately, while I pick organic whole foods), and yesterday, somewhere around my 20th bunch of kale, he made the observation that many of the techniques used in processing food to make it less likely to spoil actually rely on reducing it's nutritional value, thereby making it less attractive to anything non-human that wants to eat it. It just makes sense. (For more on what happens when you don't/can't block the other things that want to eat your food, see my previous post).

The thread running through all these "aha" moments is a slowly deepening understanding of both the complexity and absolute gorgeous simplicity of how connected everything is.

I'm so happy to be learning.

A farm student's perspective on education

2010-01-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

Photo from theatlantic.com

This last week, the Atlantic published a disappointing article by Caitlin Flanagan criticizing school gardens, in particular Alice Water's famous Berkeley garden. Her argument is essentially that education in the garden is useless; or worse, it inhibits children from moving up in cultural and economic class.

Of course the article triggered an enraged retort from all different sectors of the food movement. Chefs, food writers, teachers, gardeners, and others raised their collective pitchforks and challenged Flanagan's arguments in a cyber-slam of rather entertaining zingers such as this one, "I'd put them [the Atlantic pages] in the bottom of my bird cage, but one parrot with those ideas already is more than we need" (Prairie Fyre, Comfood).

After reading the article, I got pretty riled up too, especially when she subtly devalued physical labor. Criticizing Waters' philosophy of encouraging children to enjoy physical labor, Flanagan writes, "Does the immigrant farm worker dream that his child will learn to enjoy manual labor, or that his child will be freed from it? What is the goal of an education, of what we once called “book learning”? These are questions best left unasked when it comes to the gardens."

No, Ms. Flanagan, let's not leave these questions unasked. Really, what is the goal of an education? I found myself asking that question this last year as I neared graduation from a liberal arts college with a B.A. degree in anthropology. I stepped off the stage with a diploma in my hand and a heart full of questions and vacancies that my "book learning" could never answer. It is here, on a farm where I am doing manual labor, that I feel my deeper education actually beginning.

Farm work teaches skills that complement my degree, such as business management, research methods, nutrition education, public speaking, teamwork, and familiarity with farm worker justice issues. Yet those "marketable skills" are not why I joined a farm rather than a firm. I am a farm worker because this work is filling some of the gaps left after 16 years of book learning. It teaches me how to live in connection with the land and with a local community. This education finally acknowledges that I'm a body (not just a brain) that was not built to sit behind a desk all day, whether in the classroom or in the office. I'm becoming increasingly literate in the language of ripening vegetables, and the slow signs of change that correspond to a specific place. Finally, this work teaches me that my hands can be involved in the awe-inspiring work of creation, nurture and growth, lessons necessary for children and adults of any age and all social classes. Try creating a standardized test for those values. If these lessons and others like them are not the valid goals of an education, then the educational system needs some serious re-evaluation.

Our ATFP community is connected with a family of immigrants. The parents are farmworkers who do the manual labor of picking the fruits and vegetables upon which we all (if you don't pick your own, that is) depend. On several of their days off, our farmworker friends have brought their children out to our farm to weed and harvest with us. They say they want their children to better understand what their parents do, and to learn from that work. Their educational goals for their children extend beyond "book learning" and ladder climbing. Ms. Flanagan would do well to learn from them, for they know the value of physical labor.

gopher/rabbit art

2010-01-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

Organic means our produce is SO GOOD that everything wants to eat it. That's what I try and tell myself when I encounter holes in the lettuce or little nibbles off the summer squashes.

But this...
...can be frustrating. Happy thoughts about sharing with the other living things on our land aren't what comes to mind first after pulling up one gnawed-on beet after another...
I mean, seriously, why not just go ahead and eat the whole thing (though these pre-chewed beets did end up in a delicious dip).

Farmer's Market

2010-01-07T22:00:00.000-08:00

Sarah, ready for the veggie-loving masses

Every time I staff our stand at the farmer's market in Oxnard, I am struck by how completely different it is than any grocery store experience. There's a dj playing 90's jams, old men in cowboy hats smoking and exchanging news from where they lean against the palm trees lining the park across the sidewalk, the smell of tamales and churros mixing with their smoke, and women with strollers who linger after their purchase to chat with vendors they know by name, exchanging recipes, digging for just the right bunch of cilantro... It's hard to summarize why I love the market in a few lines, so I jotted down some notes while we worked.

Here's the sort of running journal:
One of my favorite things about the Oxnard Market is that the majority of our customers are Spanish-speakers. One older woman comes into our stall and starts speaking Spanish with me, then suddenly catches herself and peers at me, saying "Muestreme sus ojos," or "Show me your eyes." I lean over and she inspects them. "Oops," she says in English, "green." She thought I was Hispanic because of my dark hair, and refuses to switch back into Spanish because now she wants to practice English.

We're starting to recognize some regulars. The first regular who drops by is Teresa, known as "that hot evangelical lady" by my housemates. She's a pretty young woman with long hair flung back away from her eyes and always has on the same tight black pants that she wears for motorcycle-riding, her favorite hobby. Teresa has been known to pray in tongues in our market stall over people, sending them on their way with radiant faces. When she spies our newly harvested spinach, she exclaims, "Greens, thank you Jesus!" We talk about what she eats for breakfast and how she prepares it (kale, steamed), and she buys out most of our kale and an impressive 20 beets.

The spinach buying reminds me of Bill, and I look around for him. Bill's a big trucker, at least 6'5", with an insatiable craving for spinach. He's a walking advertisement for our farm. Every time he buys spinach from us, he stands in front of our table booming out praises and raving about the different dishes and delicacies he's prepared with it. I let him go on as long as he wants, since curious onlookers soon gather inside to check out the cause of his excitement.

Soon, a guy with long hair and a broad smile comes by. He introduces himself as Tom, and we soon discover that he loves our radishes and knows more about leeks than Sarah and I combined. We learn some new recipes. I say, "You must be some sort of cook, Tom!" He says, "Well, when I have access to cooking facilities, I like to." I find out that Tom is homeless, and only buys the vegetables from our stand that he can eat raw.

Three little kids pause outside of our stand with their mother. I lure them in with broccoli samples, thinking 'this will never work.' "Es muy dulce," I say. They don't need convincing. Five minutes later, I see the same kids, dragging their mom and grandmother in tow to buy broccoli! They are such cute little veggie lovers, I have them pose for the camera.

Around noon, I call Nashi because we have extra fennel. Nashi and his family are recent immigrants from Egypt who I met at the market a few months ago when they spotted our fennel, which they love to cook with in traditional dishes. A relationship was formed over food, as is often the case, and a visit to our farm soon followed. As we start cleaning up the stall around 1, Nashi and his wife rush over just in time to get their fennel.

As the market closes, I put some of our remaining veggies in a bag for our neighbor flower-seller, Ben. He sometimes gives us potted plants to beautify our house and lends us plastic bags when we run out. More veggies disappear from the already dwindling supply as I go out, encouraged by Sarah, to promote the informal trading culture that is the privilege of sellers. I first approach the mushroom seller's son, avoiding the father who, we have learned, considers a sloppy kiss on the cheek proper recompense for a bag full of greens. I do business with the son, informing him that we plan on making some enchiladas tonight that could only be made more delicious with his mushrooms. A few more stops on my way back, and we have peanut butter fudge, strawberries, avocados, a lemon, tangerines, and cucumbers. A successful day? Yes, I'd say so.

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart′s affections and the truth of Imagination" - Keats

2010-01-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

Although I love Keats, the farm is teaching me that the truth of the earth and physical reality is at least just as important as the imagination. And, it is beautiful. Consider the fields...our fields in the photograph here.

Or our Mexican limes in the backyard.

I'm thankful for these reminders to enjoy the amazing earth around us here at the farm!

new years resolution: utilize the blog

2009-12-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

i'm getting a head start on 2010 with re-engaging the blog.

so hello again, you lovely readers!

it's a thrill to be back writing and expressing my thoughts,

but it's even more of a thrill, i have to admit, to be back at the farm.

as i turned off of the 101 and drove into camarillo early this morning,

i was overcome with emotion.

the hills were covered in fog,

the migrant farmers were out harvesting strawberries,

and i was taking stock of the changes that had occurred in the landscape during my absence.

the plastic had been removed from some of the strawberry beds,

the artichokes had been tilled under off of Lewis and Las Posas,

and there were entire fields of celery that had been harvested,

leaving a canvas of soil strewn with discarded stalks and leaves.

The emotion that came, so unexpectedly, was joy

for the gift of living and working in a land where the landscape constantly changes,

where the fields are green and growing all year round,

where home is a place of unconditional love and peaceful communication,

where the term "boss" can be replaced with "friend,"

where our job is work, work that we all love.

the realization was unmistakeable:

i love this place

(in a way i have never loved anywhere else before).

i remember having a similar realization after living several months in bolivia.

it also came early in the morning after returning from a trip.

i was in a taxi, driving through the city of cochabamba

as folks were beginning their morning rituals.

boarding the bus,

stopping on the street to purchase maté de coca and salteñas,

greeting neighbors as they walked to work...

i looked around, and up at the rim of the canyon we were ascending,

and i knew that i was going to miss this place, these people.

my time there was neither picturesque nor easy,

but it became a part of me.

i continue walk to the rhythm of that city,

as i search for and remember its bright colors.

i grew to love it. i miss it in this moment.

but i was not transformed by it.

my parents' home made me.

my time in los angeles broke me.

bolivia gave me new eyes.

and i have been re-formed here, at the farm.

it is here and now that i am home.

so good to be back.

Our CSA box

2009-12-18T22:51:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday, Erynn and I filled baskets with vegetables to take to restaurants in Ventura along with an invitation to a chef's tasting out in our field in January. Looking at the baskets, I was struck again with how beautiful our produce looks!

Here's one of the pictures I took for the chef's invitation. And since we've never posted the contents of our CSA box; here's what was in our box last week:

Beets, carrots, shelling peas, radishes, broccoli, parsley, kale, swiss chard, cilantro, fennel, mustard greens, ruby lettuce, and calendula. Next week's additions: a surprise fruit! (though not certified organic... it's from our backyard.)

Click this http://www.jointhefarm.com/csaNews.html for a link to all CSA newsletters, which list what's in the box each week.

Hammock meditation

2009-12-18T10:08:00.001-08:00

WE have a new hammock at the farm! And, it's simply lovely!

Sitting in the hammock, I'm reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh's hammock meditations as well as of our own desire (us sisterfriends) to have a field meditation. Thanks to the visiting Nuns for the encouragement!

Here's what I have so far:

Breathing in the fresh and simple language of the earth’s goodness;
Breathing out, I listen and welcome her touch as I touch her.

NUNS!

2009-12-15T14:08:00.001-08:00

In high school I spent some time at the Sisters of Notre Dame convent adjacent to my school. The nuns sent an open invitation to all the La Reina girls and I was one of about 3 girls who accepted. I thoroughly enjoyed Sister Antoinette Marie and Sr. Lisa. They incorporated eastern and indigenous prayer rituals in our class prayers and were active in promoting justice and education through projects in Africa. Without realizing it at the time, the nuns embodied the type of Christianity it would take me 10 years to believe in being and actively cultivate. Finding God in all areas of Creation, loving inclusively, serving those in need, and finding communities that foster these ways of living.

I was reminded of my wonderful experiences with nuns when a group of Maryknoll sisters came for a farm visit last Sunday. These women are incredible. They've lived all over the world, built hospitals and schools, been incarcerated in China, contracted tuberculosis in Mexico, and are now staying in Monrovia.

My favorite part of their visit was their sharing of their daily spiritual practices. Each mentioned ways they pause to connect with God in prayer. Gloria practices centering prayer, Maureen sits on the ground, faces the mountains, and breathes in meditation, Moira cultivates her presence in the now by reading spiritual literature, Pauline sits in the sun in reflection and repeats a simple word or phrase until she has totally absorbed its meaning, Pat uses eastern meditations she learned while living in Asia. All of these women have engaged their spirituality through their experiences living abroad, just as I have learned to engage my spirituality through my experiences here on the farm.

What also struck me about these women, besides their amazing stories, was their lightness of heart and joy in being. When we toured the field they were absolutely delighted to pull on rubber boots, tromp through mud, and try all the produce (dirt and all). During our 1st Annual Christmas Sing-Along, they gleefully drank cheery eggnog, sang along, played instruments, and even got up to dance along to the music.

Gloria, a self-proclaimed "Latin from Manhattan" is as shocked as we were to see little rabbit bites in our geode squash.

Grace, a Catholic Worker, shows Pauline, Moira, and Maureen our mildewy spinach.

They were even good sports when their car broke down on the way home. Some Catholic Workers provided the transportation in a very beat up van which ran out of gas and overheated not even 20 minutes away from the farm. Of course, the sisters took the break down in stride and retold the story with grace and humor.

Days after their visit, I am realizing a connection I feel to these women, a few generations my senior. These women have spent a lifetime doing things I've only recently started to feel urges to do. They've made decisions to forgo traditional societal ways to live in communities of women who create powerful political, social, and spiritual changes throughout the world. I'm starting in my own familiar corner of the world and my steps are nowhere near as powerful or profound as the lives of these women. But, if my steps follow in the spirit of their footsteps, my path is looking good.

...for the journey

2009-12-13T23:36:00.000-08:00

Part of celebrating the holidays for the ATFP was our Christmas party at Duke's in Malibu (which just happened to coincide with the 4-month anniversary of the start of the project).

In addition to the wonderful dinner, I was sent off to spend three weeks with my family with (what else)...a loaf of bread

Paul, the baker, assured me that it contained no trace of whole wheat flour and plenty of sugar. It's delicious.

Joining forces

2009-12-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

Togetherness. We five women or womyn if you will are a strong force together. Yesterday, Casey and I supported Sarah's work with Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice.

And, last week, as you may have read, we supported Casey's Christmas Choir.

But, overall, I guess it's the little things that matter more and more. We help each other pause and be present and enjoy the simple moments of farm life.

Out of Reach

2009-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Click on the link below for an article in the San Francisco Chronicle called "Out of Reach: How the sustainable local food movement neglects poor workers and eaters." It's probably the best article I've read that addresses the shortcomings in the food movements of late. Even the comments are good.

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=9490&volume_id=452&issue_id=461&volume_num=44&issue_num=09

The critique is challenging here - how can we keep thinking and asking ourselves how our farm can make healthy, organic produce available to all, regardless of class?

"Intentional Community", Community as family

2009-12-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

I remember the thrill I felt when I read the words "intentional community" in the Abundant Table Farm Project's description earlier this year before I applied. It's a serious buzzword these days, but I'm still trying to understand what exactly an "intentional" community is, and how we fall into that definition.

We are 5 single, unrelated, post-college/ grad school women, most of whom did not know one another previously. We share our food, our house, and our work. I suppose these decisions were intentional on our part, but also just necessary and natural.

The words "intentional community" sound almost too stuffy for who I think we are. Maybe they're even overly noble. We're just living a year of life together, and I'm growing accustomed to the very natural rhythms of this year. Here are a few examples of the rhythms that have developed, from the vantage point of month 4: We...

- Sit around the breakfast table for an early morning coffee (or tea) and read the newspaper together before dividing up farm work. We sit around the lunch table and eat again. We sit around the dinner table and... yes, you guessed it. We eat most meals together - a different person cooks each night. Food binds us in many ways.

-Share a morning devotion/ meditation together before the work begins.

-Have weekly house meetings - when we do both practical tasks like chore assignments and also ask get-in-touch-with-your-feelings questions like, "have any boundaries been crossed this week that you haven't been able to communicate?" and, "what was something that challenged you this week?"

-Do things that recognize our individual personalities and interests, like salsa dancing, or capoeira, or instructing yoga, or watching a movie, or singing with a Broadway-wannabe choir, or making wreaths :)

-End (and begin) the week in corporate worship with the little house church that gathers in our home to share liturgy, prayers, the ritual of Eucharist, and a potluck.

These patterns that mark our days don't feel motivated by a conscious intentionality. I'd like to think of the rhythms that have developed as emerging out of a deeper need for family. So maybe the intentional part of our community is simply that we purposefully chose to live together. After looking over that list I just wrote above, we live as a family in a way, albeit a different kind of family than people are used to seeing and experiencing. Our community's daily patterns serve to deepen our experience as a family - eating a common meal, taking care of the house and land, and worshiping together. For 5 single, unrelated women, the definition of what family can mean has grown deeper.

You may have noticed that we have a special name for our unique relationships with one another: "sisterfriend." That's one beautiful word you won't find in the dictionary, and it eloquently fills the counter-cultural, undefined spaces between us. Co-worker, friend, loved one, kin.

That Holiday Feeling

2009-12-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

It seems the farm has been a-buzz with many guests and a good deal of holiday warmth.
It's such a nurturing place, in fact, we've taken to growing children here too.
And, of course, interpretive dancing is encouraged.
And, all creatures are welcomed.

this year I'm thankful for...

2009-11-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

Since it's that time of year, I figured I could take a moment to brag on my sisterfriends. In the background of our 3.5 months living together has been the question "what exactly does it mean for us to be an intentional community?" In the last few weeks I've experienced that community in an abundance of support and creativity. I've spent a lot of time recently applying for a scholarship to study in the UK next year. To celebrate the submission of my written application Erynn prepared a delicious dinner that was...not exactly English, but at least vaguely European (with tea, crumpets, and Belgian chocolate ice cream for dessert). Last week as I prepared for the interview portion of the application, I was surprised in my pajamas one morning by all four sisterfriends, dressed in their professional clothes and doing their best to look intimidating, who proceeded to grill me for half an hour. Erynn and Katerina were gracious enough to take me shopping to buy my first suit (and find the ruffliest bright pink tops to go with it), and everyone sent me off to the interview in Chicago with notes of encouragement, hugs, and a music mix. And while I didn't get the scholarship, there was still champagne to celebrate and a theatrical account of the retreat I missed performed by Erynn and Kat (narrated by Sarah Nolan with music by Casey) when I returned.

I'm thankful for them!

An event to remember

2009-11-24T23:07:00.001-08:00

Since I didn't blog last week, I thought I'd post a few pictures and highlights from an event this past Sunday that was hosted by Join the Farm! and the organizations that I work for in a side-internship, House Farm Workers (HFW), and Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (VC CLUE). It was wonderful! About 125-150 farmworkers and other community members came out to the farm for an inter-faith Thanksgiving service out in our field. The purpose of the event was to give thanks for the land, the harvest, and the work of farmworkers in Ventura County, as well as to eat together as a community in a BIG OL' potluck celebration. After the potluck in our backyard, we screened "A Home of Their Own," a film from the perspective of the children of farmworkers on their experiences moving from sub-standard to affordable housing at Villa Cesar Chavez, a housing development (about 4 miles from our house) for farmworkers.

Highlights:
- Farmworkers, clergy and laity from different faiths speaking from the flatbed of an agricultural trailer/ tractor with the glow of sunset over the field behind them
- At least 5 languages spoken during the prayer service - Chumash, Arabic, Spanish, English, and Mixteco
- People bringing a dish from their family's tradition
- 3-4 huge vats of Postole soup made by the women of Villa Cesar Chavez
-kids from Villa Cesar Chavez who gleefully yelled out the names of the friends they recognized during the film
-This quote from the movie: “When the man who feeds the world by toiling in the fields is himself deprived of the basic rights of feeding, sheltering and caring for his own family, the whole community of man is sick.” -Cesar Chavez
-That people came together who might not have otherwise connected - from different classes, faith traditions, ages, and political views. And the feeling of unity that resulted.

Farm workers give a blessing in Spanish and Mixteco

Rev. Guthrie offers a prayer for the workers

A beautiful sunset over the fields

Joining hands for prayer circles

Thanks to Casey for the pictures!

A thanksgiving reflection

2009-11-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S. of A.? Family get-togethers, turkeys, pumpkin pies, and cornucopias come to mind. And kindergartners acting out the story of the pilgrims and the Indians with cute, not very PC costumes. As I remember the story, the European immigrants arrived in the New World unprepared for winter and were dependent upon the wealthier Native Americans for their survival.

What if we re-told the story in modern times? Here's what I imagine the story might sound like: "Pilgrims" come to the New World looking for a better life, but instead of being given corn to plant (well, in this story they pretty much gave up on planting corn after cheap, subsidized New World corn flooded the market and made it impossible to make a living on corn, which is partly why they came here in the first place), these pilgrims become laborers in the fields and orchards of the wealthier "natives." Not enough of the natives want to do that kind of work anyway. Yet ironically, in this story, the dependence goes both ways. The pilgrims, as I have been calling the immigrants who are mostly from Mexico, are obviously dependent upon the U.S. for labor and a means to support their families. Yet this time around, the "natives," the majority of people living in the U.S., are also dependent upon the immigrant population to survive. Most Americans are utterly dependent, in the most basic way, on the food harvested by the immigrant farm workers in this country.

As in the fabled first Thanksgiving, how can we acknowledge and give thanks to and for those who have supplied our food? I think that this holiday is the perfect time to acknowledge how the cranberries in that stuffing got there - the hands they passed through from bush to basket to table. Pause to reflect on the strawberry jam on the dinner rolls - do you know that farm workers bend over, rarely straightening, in table position for over 9 hours every day in the strawberry rows? I didn't, at least not before I moved to the Oxnard area, where there's huge strawberry industry and I pass farm workers doubled over daily. And, I might add, after working only about 5 hours a day in our field, I feel true respect for the workers next door.

Yet during the Thanksgiving event this past Sunday, when the inter-faith community gathered to pray with and for farm workers, I realized that acknowledgment, respect, and thanks-giving for their labor only go so far. Farmworkers in Ventura County, as in many other counties nationwide, live in over-crowded sheds, laundry rooms, and garages because the annual cost of rent for an apartment is higher than a year's salary (about $15,000, usually less). Maria, a farmworker in Oxnard who I met this Sunday, told me that she has no heat, no running water, and no electricity where she lives. How can this be?! This is where acknowledgment and respect fall short. In a mutually dependent relationship, both parties must not only value the contribution of the other, but care for their well-being. As I become more and more familiar with the issues faced by most farmworkers - inadequate housing, low wages, and lack of access to basic resources, the need for justice is painfully apparent.

At this point, the question, "What can I do?" comes to mind. First, relationship comes to mind. That's easier for me to say, I'm sure, in an area populated with farm workers. It's difficult for most, in a country where the average plateful of food travels over 1,000 miles to reach the table. Hmm, I'll have to think about that. Let me know any ideas...

Here's a possibility that came to my attention through an email last week:
Remember and honor farmworkers this Thanksgiving season by urging Stop & Shop, Giant, Publix, Ralph’s, Kroger and other Kroger-owned grocery chains (City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry's, Gerbes, Hilander, Jay C, King Soopers, Owen's, Pay Less, QFC, Scott's, Smith's) to address the sub-poverty wages, unjust working conditions and human rights abuses faced by farmworkers who harvest their tomatoes. See http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/2009supermarket.html for more information on writing a letter to the manager of a store near you (chances are there is one near you).

RETREAT!

2009-11-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

Us farmers took a few days to relax in Santa Barbara as part of our program. Here are some photographs of the lovely place we stayed!

the view from the back porch

a walk to the mission

the autumn leaves on the wall

one of my favorite lawns

some of the books (some saved from the mt. calvary fire?) in their library

the tree with arm branches

Art at the farm

2009-11-11T18:52:00.000-08:00

For a good long while, the farmhouse was graced with the presence of a local artist's work. Below is Jose Zuniga's piece on Frida. I absolutely love it!
Jose inspired me to create some of my own art, and here's my "Golondrina."

But, this blog is on more than "fine art"; it's a showcase of some of the art out in the fields. Below, "Rainbow Chard with a Fennel Background."
Below, "Young Women in the corn."

learning standard

2009-11-11T18:11:00.001-08:00

Oh, the odd calculations of the insurance industry (auto, in this case). Apparently the insurance gods would rather we interns (with levels of stick-shift driving experiencing ranging from years to none) lurch around in the big white unpredictable farm pick-up truck to deliver our veggies than use our own vehicles for the job. Since Cristy Rose and Katerina weren't particularly keen on doing every one of our deliveries, lessons in the truck have commenced.

I, for one, have no excuse for my poor stick driving. Various patient individuals have taught me (at great expense to their nerves and their tires) how to drive a standard several times in the last few years. It hasn't really stuck.

And the farm pick-up adds some additional excitement. Should I manage not to stall while starting, I might have the stick shift knob come off, leaving me in an unpleasant place between first and second gears. If I adjust the rear-view mirror to better view the impatient traffic behind me, it may come off in my hand. Once I make it out to the highway, the truck might lurch to a halt all by itself due to some mysterious configuration of front and rear gas tanks which can be empty without anyone realizing (you guessed it - the gas gauge doesn't work; neither does the speedometer). And how about when I get fed up and want to get out? The door handle, like the stick-shift knob and rear-view mirror, comes off in my hand.

And yes, Erynn and I definitely fight over opportunities to drive it.

Five loaves, two fish

2009-11-10T17:14:00.000-08:00

While reading through some passages in the Bible's book of Matthew, I got stuck on Matthew 14:13-21, the story that inspired our project's name and the pendants that each of us were given at our house blessing earlier this year (picture below).

In the story, Jesus seeks some time alone to process the violent death of his friend John. He goes away to a secluded spot, only to be followed by crowds of people who need healing. Jesus is moved in his gut with compassion when he sees the people, and cares for them physically and emotionally. It starts getting late, and the disciples get anxious. Being practical thinkers, they want to send the crowds away so the people can get something to eat. Jesus responds that the disciples should feed them. He takes the 5 loaves of bread and the two fish that the disciples have on hand, gives thanks for it, and passes it back to his probably incredulous followers. Then the disciples take this meager portion and distribute it out to well over 5,000 people. Afterward, they have to use twelve baskets to collect the abundant leftovers from the meal.

Two weeks ago, all of us interns underwent a couple of particularly stressful days. It was a time defined by worry about our project's future and its success, a time when our inadequacies and limitations became apparent. So for the past two weeks, I remained with this story, returning and finding new meaning in it.

What continues to strike me is that Jesus accepts scarcity, he even asks for it. He doesn't try to solve it by sending the people away. Nor does he ignore the people's need, continuing healing despite everyone's hunger. He accepts the poverty of what is offered, gives thanks for what he receives, and then gives the meager food back to the disciples to distribute, now transformed into abundance. This chain of giving and receiving - giving to God, giving thanks, then receiving back from God - seems so relevant to our project here.

Such an abundance of vegetables grow here, and yet I think we still feel the squeeze of scarcity. We interns are often poor in terms of our time, our finances, and just our ability to be up-to-par as new farmers in terms of production, knowledge, and skills! How will these things, our five loaves and two fish, become enough for hundreds beyond our imagining? How can we name our scarcity before God and others, and, I wonder, what will its transformation into abundance look like?

Systematize, yo...

2009-11-09T17:42:00.001-08:00

So, Join the Farm! is growing (read this again with a very happy tone). Our field is in full production swing. Our CSA program is 45 subscriptions strong. This week will be our 3rd week in the Oxnard Farmer's Market. We've gone from, "Well, isn't this little project fuuun!" to "Oh man, we are really doing this! This is farming!" So as we've grown, we've developed systems that help us harvest more efficiently, keep track of what's been harvested and where it has gone, and what types of materials we've treated our crops with and when. We keep all our records in our Documentation Binder which we had to show to CCOF, our 3rd party organic certifier. How have we managed to increase efficiency and keep fantastic records? We've SYSTEMATIZED. I LOVE systematizing (my mom says this is because I like to figure out how to do as little work as I have to, which I take as working efficiently). I enjoy systematizing so much, I created a little rap about it, a nod of sorts to a genre I find entirely mockable. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. *I'd like to thank Casey, my fly girl beat boxing in the background and Katerina, my videographer and rap motivator. Couldn't have done it without you guys!*

what would you feed a chicken?

2009-11-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

My part of this weekend's harvest festivities was guiding much anticipated tours of the chickens' new outdoor accommodations.

One of the most important questions is: what do they eat? Since grow mash (corn based, which is the bulk of the chicks' diet) isn't particularly exciting, we let the kids give the chickens a treat - worms from the vermiculture bin...

They even got to feed the chickens some rocks (which the chickens need to swallow to keep in their crop to grind up their food before they digest it since they don't have teeth).

Despite repeated offers, however, the kids would not feed ladybugs from the recently harvested lima bean fields to the chickens.

Maybe understandable if you happen to be dressed as a ladybug for Halloween...

Halloween and Dia de los Muertos at the Farm!

2009-11-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

We had an exciting event here at the farm this past Saturday. To celebrate Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, we brought out the Fall flair and invited the community to come on over. It was really lovely.
Here's me and our little sister-friends.
Sarah and Julie
Everyone in the jolly jumper!
Our lovely subscribers
And our altar inside the farmhouse. I put up a photograph of my great-grandmother Rose and of my cousin, Heather. I love that the altar reminds me to listen to their stories.

Yoga

2009-11-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

For this post, I'm going to start with some blatant advertising because I know Sarah wouldn't do it for herself. (But I have her permission :)

Perfect poster photo:

Yoga. 5:30 p.m. every Monday at the Farm, 4720 E. Hueneme Road. Taught by the farmer - turned-yoga-instructor-who-can-do-awesome-moves-like-handstands-on-wet-sand Sarah Bagge.

Oliver joins us for some deep relaxation

Sarah's a self-taught instructor after taking a lot of yoga classes during college and practicing crane pose until she can practically do it on her pinky fingers. I can barely stay in "tree pose" (standing with one foot on the ground) without toppling over, but I go to Sarah's classes and am slowly feeling my balance improving along with focus and stamina. For me, though, practicing yoga is not just about getting more flexible or stretching some sore muscles after long hours in the field, though that's certainly a plus.

I always found walking to be a prayerful kind of activity, and after being introduced to yoga by my mom a few years ago, I realized how important times of meditative movement are in my life. Yoga teaches me to pray with my whole self, not just my thoughts. It brings me through a flow of increasingly challenging positions - drawing me to a place of deep listening. I listen to the ways my legs tell me I can push further into a stretch, and I must listen when they tell me to stop and rest.

Someone told me once that attentiveness is the highest form of prayer. Through focused attention on the elemental motions of my existence: breathing in, breathing out, standing, lying down, I remember that God speaks and lives in and through us in these basic acts. God communicates with me through my body and through my attentiveness to the many physical senses. How often am I present and engaged enough to hear and feel God through the breath of air filling my lungs, the blessing of strong legs lifting me to my feet, through the way the muscles in the inner corners of my eyes relax their tightness at night, before I sleep? Regrettably, not very often.
A prayer my friend Amy once posted in our room that I love says,

"Lord, be in our seeing, our hearing,
in our knowing, and in our understanding today and everyday..."

and be in our all our daily movements as well.

Rethinking family: Living Communally

2009-10-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

A big part of the Abundant Table Farm Project is simply this: being (living, working, sharing, eating, cooking, cleaning, driving, meeting, enjoying, singing, communicating, crying, stressing, fearing, waking, pausing) together.

And, as you all know, intentionally doing all that together takes time, energy, and

....much love, forgiveness, and grace.

It's a beautiful thing. Here's some fotografias.
The Oxnard Farmers' Market

Early rise for the busiest day so far: CSA, Farmers' Market, Volunteer Orientation, Farm Stand, etc!

Ojai Folk Music Hootenanny

Picking up Erynn and the goods before delivery

Meeting with Farmer Paul with Food Share in the background

Sarah Nolan giving us some needed harvesting training

Dinner at "Our Beach"

The kiddos come to visit: Pizza, Hide n Seek, dance party

Meet your field!

2009-10-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

I spent some time today spraying alone in the field. Right before I left for the field I went to grab my ipod, which was charging in my computer. I failed to notice, when I plugged my ipod into my computer, that my computer was, in fact, not on. So, my ipod had not charged. I enjoy listening to music and NPR in the field, so I was slightly miffed. But, the sun was setting, my mood was pleasant, and I was looking forward to alone time in the field.

Walking and spraying in silence in the field gave me some time to realize that our 10 acres have sections with distinctive personalities! So let me introduce you to your field...

Section D rows 44-23. These are the front rows closest to our farmhouse. They are the warm, wonderfully fitting sweater rows. We know them, we love them, and even though sometimes we didn't give them the attention we should have, they are so good to us in return. This was the first section planted, before the interns had moved in. We loved seeing everything sprout and waited excitedly for things to come up we recognized. I have a particular affection for this section, because it welcomed me into farming. This section revealed what bean sprouts look like. The bean plants in turn showed me how they flower and turn into seed pods. I got to see how bean plants produce-prolifically. Even when the bean plant is uprooted those bean pods amazingly continue to form and grow. I know everything in this section: beans, squash varieties, spinach, arugula, ruby lettuce, romaine, beets, and cilantro. Some of the lettuces have lived a life cycle and will tilled under. This section also gave me a crash course on insects-the good, the bad, and the disgusting. Section D rows 44-23 and I have been through a lot together. I hacked the spinach here before I knew how to cut it properly. It showed me that stinging nettle has a very literal name that should be heeded. All we've been through together and this section is still producing some beautiful produce.

Section D rows 22-1 Ah yes, the thinking section. Compared to his neighbor section, the aforementioned section, this section only started producing recently. Before it started producing I'd be in this section and look over at neighbor D, growing and producing like crazy, and think, "all right already, let's get growing." It wasn't planted much after the other rows in D and I started imagining reasons for its delayed growth. I'd picture the carrots and broccoli trying so hard to pop up out of the ground with their arms crossed and brows furrowed in concentration. Then I pictured them little academics calculating the perfect time to pop up. At least the carrots have completed their calculations-they've all popped through the ground at the same time! It is also important to note there is a mini-jungle in the thinking section. Four rows of corn. Corn, to me, is a section (jungle) within a section. It makes me nervous and I don't go in there. After the corn, there are some rows of fennel, calendula (edible flowers), and cucumbers. While I am much more comfortable in these rows now, for a long period of time this area repelled me a bit. Fennel and calendula? Yeah, do you know what those are? And cucumbers, well they just look weird growing-although they've grown on me, but you'll have to wait to section C row 22 to find out why...

Section C rows 44-23. The workhorse section. In this section there are 16 rows dedicated to tomatoes (8 rows of actual plantings, but they bush out and need a row spaced in between). This is as close to "mono-crop farming" as we come. These tomatoes, as all mono-crops appear to be to me, are like incredible workhorses. Just rows of tomatoes, coming up, moving up and out, going, spreading, continuing. All working in unison, getting it done. The tomatoes are followed by green onions. Here, I get the sensation of a high note in an orchestra. The tomatoes are trombones-deep, continuous; and the green onions are these whimsical green stalks shooting out of the ground-flutes hitting sharp high notes!

Sections C rows 22-1 The surprising section. The second part of the front half (the B and A section) are empty beds (ha, the land of opportunity!), so this section is then end of the front section. I rarely went down here until recently-all the work was in the other parts. But, now that I am spending more time here, I am surprised at how this stuff just crept up on us and grew! Just weeks ago I swear this section was half empty and now it has taken off, grown, and is producing! What a surprise! Also, in this section I discovered cucumbers creeping into the basil and climbing up the basil stalks! Now, before cucumbers were creepy with their spreading vines sprawling across dirt. But not in the basil! No, the cucumbers were just looking for friends. Seriously, it looked like the cucumbers were just leaning on the basil, spreading some love, draping an arm in friendship. Seeing this changed my cucumber world. Surprising.

Next week. We meet the back part of the field. dun, dun, dunnn....

domestic violence awareness month at the farm

2009-10-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Our Program Coordinator, Sarah Nolan, just informed me that the majority of farmers out there are women even though we often think of the guy-farmer. Certainly, this is the case on our farm. We are five women living on a farm, and we are learning how to farm day by day. First the planting, then the weeding, then the pest control, then the harvesting, and then the cooking.

Our bodies are growing stronger ....as are our hearts....because the most basic part of our work is learning to respect the earth from which we came -- our Mother Earth. It's a very basic concept: we live in a world that encourages hierarchical dualism where the rational mind, the male, quantity, heaven ... over the heart, the female, quality/relational, and the earth/nature. It makes sense to me that after 5000 or more years of this way of thinking, us human beings have forgotten to respect the earth and the food that comes from it. And, you can see where I'm going, we've lost respect for women along the way.

Over this last month, which just happened to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I've been called to recognize and pay attention to DV in the lives of our community members here at the farm. My own home culture NEVER talks about DV, but I've cultivated a Break the Silence sub-culture around me with my work at the Sexual Assault Crisis Agency and Interval House (http://www.intervalhouse.org/)and the Women's Resource Center at CSU, Long Beach (http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/students/wrc/).

Nevertheless, I'm surprised with how frankly and openly DV is spoken of here in the culture of Ventura County. No hush, no nada -- it just is and happens often and people are tired of it, so they talk about it a lot. The stories I've heard -- of growing up with an angry and abusive father and/or husband -- have just floored me, and in the midst of the discussions, I've cried.

BUT! something about respecting the earth that I am working with has given me HOPE! (as is our Non-Violent Communication Workshops!) My relationship with the land is becoming a prayer that change is and that in my relationships, we can manifest our dream of a world without hierarchy, without privilege, without oppression. A community where love is valued more than power and relationships and empathy is given more attention than control and production.

the grass is always greener...

2009-10-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard people say, “the good is the enemy of the best” as an encouragement not to compromise standards for the sake of what is easy or convenient. While this may be helpful in making big life choices, I’m finding the opposite to be true in the more mundane decisions. Sometimes the idea of perfection can be the enemy of the good. Our inability to get things just right in our lifestyle choices can prevent us from the “good” of the slow turning towards something more whole.

So lest you think we are living in a perfect carbon-neutral-free-range-fair-trade-dolphin-safe bubble...the dubious beginnings of our backyard garden:

Lawns are bad. They suck up a lot of water and take up space that could be used more productively for oh, say, growing plants or something. The Farmhouse backyard has one such lawn behind it, and we decided to turn it into a great space for doing backyard gardening workshops and experimenting with different seed varieties for Farmhouse consumption.

There is only one problem. The lawn. It is kikuya grass, which is particularly difficult to get rid of. Suggestions for removing it included taking out several inches of the backyard with a Bobcat, or covering the lawn with a layer of cardboard followed by a layer of compost and continuing to fight against the pernicious grass for years.

In the end, we chose Roundup. Yes, Roundup, made by Monsanto (the Big Bad Wolf of all things agricultural, or at least one of them). We did our homework and learned that Roundup only affects things with chlorophyll in them and becomes inert when it hits any non-chlorophyll substance. So it won’t be seeping into the groundwater or poisoning Oliver or the chickens. But still – there’s nothing organic about Roundup.

And we’re finding there’s nothing simple about trying to live in a way that is conscious of the wellbeing of the earth and other people. There are trade-offs on our grocery list – paying twice as much for organic milk isn’t worth it, but maybe a few extra dollars for a bag of local onions rather than a sack shipped from Peru, is. We got nine chicks to lay eggs and eat food scraps and bugs in the back yard, but having a 90% guarantee that they are hens meant that their brothers were likely ground up alive. The salads we eat for lunch have almost no carbon footprint, but two of us are flying to Chicago tomorrow to spend a long weekend with friends.

I share these things both for the sake of transparency and as an encouragement. Even living on a farm with like-minded people and the support of a close community committed to living simply and sustainably we don’t get it all perfect. Not even close. We’re making tough calls, but there is a sense of excitement and hope as well, because we are committed to the slow turning towards something more whole.

The Circle of Life

2009-10-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, one of our CSA subscribers (thank you, Dr. Huff!) generously gave us a big scoop of his red wriggler worms, and I started a vermicompost, or a worm compost. After our Sunday night Abundant Table service, I tried to convince some of the kids that my worms are just as exciting as Sarah's chickens (the kids always visit the chicks before leaving). When they looked into the bin full of decomposing vegetables crawling with worms, they weren't convinced. Then I suggested we take each chick a little wriggling surprise...
What followed was a fun half hour of "ewww!"s and "okay, let me try one...", and wonderful child questions like, "How do worms chew and swallow?" Thus we learned about the circle of life... an safely unsanitary educational experience that I tried to replicate in the pictures and videos below:

1. We fill our vermicompost bin with fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, and shavings from the cleaning the chicks' box

2. Worms eat chicken shavings and scraps

3. Selecting a choice morsel

4. Chickens, meet your food!*

From our "slogan:"
"Meet your planet.
Meet your farmers.
Meet your food."

When in Rome

2009-10-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

Ignorance is bliss. We've been having great fun throwing around idioms, aphorisms, and other sometimes salty phrases in discussions and conversations where the phrases make absolutely no sense at all. While our guests and visitors are bewildered why "when in Rome" could be so funny yet entirely nonsensical, we sisterfriends laugh with glee as only those privy to an inside joke can.

But there is nothing amusing about blissful ignorance. It is brain frying, frustrating, maddening, and exhausting to be shaken out of a blissful state of ignorance. I am learning, experiencing, and meeting folks who help build my knowledge and understanding of literally everything related the areas of spirituality, religion, ethical resource consumption, organic farming, family farming, industrial farming, chicken farming, cow farming, living more sustainably, creating community, fostering justice, and last but not least trying to build a website. The more I learn about these subjects, the more I realize I have been scratching the surface of these areas. I am feeling overwhelmed trying to become as informed as possible when doing very simple, mundane things like buying eggs.

It's not a sense of "oh, so much to learn, so little time." It is way, way deeper than that. It is realizing there is no clear right choice, wrong choice. The difficulty is the gray. The grayness of knowing there are endless sides and consequences to an idea, choice, and argument. The more I look for truth or the answer the more I realize there is no one truth or answer. Daunting.

I am thinking about the imagery I've heard lately of the spider web versus the ladder. Climbing up the ladder means we get to the top-truth!-but where to now? In the spider web, there is the center and I am making my way to the center-discovering, learning, experiencing my way to a center. Right now, in my mind the center is where this "knowledge quest" stops feeling so disconcerting. I also like the spider web because once we find our center, it doesn't mean we stay. We experience things things that will undoubtedly shake us from our center, but the quest will always bring us back, I suppose.

Ah, blogging. I am feeling better already. Ok, I'm just trying to find my way back to my center. I was feeling frustrated after a conversation this morning about the myriad of complex choices that go into grocery shopping. I'm also feeling frustrated because I sprayed out in the field for the first time today. I didn't have the strap fastened properly and the spraypack kept sliding off my back. I was so irritated I didn't know how to fix it. I was even more irritated when Sarah showed me how to easily fasten it.

But, hey man, I'm just journeying to my center. I'm just going to take this journey one day at a time.

Our first video. Come see.

2009-10-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

The beginning of new things

2009-10-15T21:07:00.001-07:00

As you probably know, it's our first week of official CSA work! YES!
We are 35 or so subscribers strong, and the energy on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (our CSA days!) is glorious! With so much pride, we harvest the cilantro, basil, lettuces, and all that goodness, and lovingly put it in the boxes!

Yet another new beginning to start next week is our week at the Camarillo and Oxnard Farmers' Markets. Eager to barter and meet the community, we've been making sure everything is ready.

We've even been practicing a bit at our own corner market stand.

Nevertheless, it's the simple pleasures that encourage me to continually be present where I am -- like harvesting these golden beans in my grandfather's old mechanic coveralls with my grandmother's sunhat I used to wear on the NM ranch.

something different

2009-10-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been reading Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. His central argument is that the affluent West's single-minded pursuit of economic growth and increased efficiency is making us unhappy and the planet sick. In support of the former claim, McKibben cites a wide body of research showing that the dramatic increase in wealth in the US has also resulted in greater isolation and unhappiness. People are part of fewer groups, know their neighbors less frequently, and move more often. New homes are designed with a premium on privacy, making even contact between family members less frequent.

What we're doing here is different, and baffling to some folks. I tried to count how many people we've hosted at the Farm in the last week and lost track somewhere around 60 - people who have come for meetings and meals, to teach us and to learn, to break bread and pull carrots out of the ground. They've stayed for a few minutes or a few days, and some have been so excited about what's going on here that they've brought friends back to see it. They've left gifts and artwork and junk food that we wouldn't buy ourselves (but secretly love to eat anyway), and yes, sometimes dirty dishes. And they've all taken part in something rare and so needed these days - the formation of community.

On Land and Home

2009-10-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

Some mornings when I'm working in the fields, I listen to books on tape. This morning, I was listening to "The Lemon Tree," by Sandy Tolan. The book delves into the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict through the inter-twining stories of a Bulgarian Jewish family and a Palestinian family. One of the most wrenching themes of the history is the fact that while one family, representing the scattered Jewish people, arrives in what they see as their homeland after 2,000 years and much persecution, another family, representing the Palestinian people, is forcibly displaced from this very same home.

At one point, Tolan describes how Israeli armies are ordered to burn fields that cannot be harvested so that the Palestinian farmers will not return. As I staked tomatoes, I tried to imagine what it would be like to see our crops destroyed by mass arson - the eight CSA boxes that we just filled with produce, this blossoming tumble of tomato leaves and stems that took me most of the morning to twine up, our ripe cucumbers and corn, my favorite purple beans... all that time, labor, and something more, too. Wartime acts of destruction reveal, in a way, the worth of land as more than the "sum of its parts." Among other things, agricultural land represents a people's means to sustain themselves, their commitment to a place, and a peaceful existence.

Agriculture's connection to peace and permanence go way back. In Christian scriptures, the first agriculturalist mentioned, Cain, murders his brother and is cursed to wander the earth with the added punishment of land that will not yield a harvest when he works the ground (Genesis 4:1-14). This pronouncement (and Cain's legendary parents' sad track record) seems to point to the Creator's disappointed intentions for humans. The ability to enjoy the earth's abundance and to reside permanently in the location of production and provision seems to be an elusive blessing throughout scripture's story of God's people. Throughout their enslavement in foreign lands, desert wanderings, and the occupation of the land they thought was theirs, the promise remains that they will "build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit... [and] long enjoy the works of their hands" (Isaiah 65:21). Yet God's promise of home seems never to reach fulfillment, and the people continue in the ways of Cain.

A longing for Home is one of the main reasons that I joined this project (sensing that ancient connection between land and home). I've known something of Cain's restless wanderings myself after about 11 moves in 22 years. At nearly every house where my family lived, we planted a garden or at least a few fruits and veggies. I imagine a trail of produce following us around the world: pineapples in Indonesia, corn in Tennessee, peaches in central California... and here I am today, staking tomatoes in southern California, knowing that next year they'll probably be part of the produce trail. Sometimes all I want is the security of a true home, where I can deeply know and love the place and enjoy its fruits for an indefinite time.

My dear friends, Michael and Pamela, visited this last weekend from San Diego and, probably without knowing it, spoke some words of wisdom into my wonderings (and wanderings). They told me about the little garden they're planting together in their yard. Though no one would expect renters to care for the place aside from the most basic upkeep, my friends are dirtying their hands in ground that is not technically their "own." They only plan to live in the house they're renting for a year, yet they are poking seeds into the soil and patting into place the hope that their garden will be a gift to their neighborhood when they're no longer around to tend to it.

Hearing Pamela and Michael talk about their small act of planting a garden despite an unknown future made me think of our work here. So many of the returns, especially for our work connecting to the surrounding community, are unseen and involve a scary amount of trust in the next group of interns. I only know for sure that I'll be here until mid-summer next year, and may be gone when others harvest what we sow. Yet I believe this relatively short time of connecting to place and developing a home will last longer than my time here, and will be a part of something larger than itself.

In this way, our farm project, like my friends' garden planting, helps me understand what people mean when they talk about the kingdom, or commonwealth, of God. I think that these hopeful plantings are, literally, contributions to a kingdom that doesn't belong to me or anyone else and whose harvest I may never fully enjoy. These thoughts make me wonder if I will ever experience permanence in my lifetime, or a sense of home... but maybe, as I glimpse more and more how our work proclaims a converging reality, I'll somehow live out something of the "Promised Land" on the different plots of rented earth wherever I may live.

-Katerina

sustenance

2009-10-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

last night at the abundant table worship service, each of us present was asked to give our name and our favorite word (or number, for the mathematically minded). i had a very difficult time thinking of a word that i loved, that i used or sought to incorporate into conversation more than any other. i could not come-up with one, and based on that particular classification, my mind still draws a blank. however, i do think that there are words that speak to important themes in our lives, that illuminate inner struggles, longings, or hopes. one such word in my life at the moment is "sustenance," and i have lately been thinking about it in every sense of the word.

one of the definitions of sustenance is "the maintaining of someone or something in life or existence," which is what we're all about on the farm, on any farm. in our case, we are attempting to grow healthy, organic food that will hopefully aid in sustaining the physical wellness of our csa subscribers; those who buy our produce from the farm stand or at farmers market; paul, julie, emily, molly, and meghan; and the five of us. we're also attempting to aid in the physical sustenance of our plants, many of which are constantly suffering near-death experiences due to disease, virus, mildew, or insect attack. and within the house, we are sustaining each other relationally, and endeavoring to do so spiritually as well. clearly, there is quite a lot to wholistic sustenance in our lives.

physically, i have been well-sustained since the moment i arrived at the farmhouse. there is a surplus of healthy food, exercise, and clean air to keep my body in tip-top shape. i doubt that my body has ever been healthier or more "full of life." in my relationships, i am becoming more sustained daily as i become better acquainted with my sisterfriends, as i (slowly) make new friends in the community, and as i intentionally connect with my family and friends outside of ventura county. i am even making in-roads with myself (one of the relationships that i need to work on the most, but in the past have spent time on least). in these areas, i have felt truly sustained. that being said, lately i have not felt sustained spiritually. even in this community where we are trying to stay focused on god's presence in this work, i am finding it difficult to see god here. as the list of responsibilities increase, as task lists that began as a few lines now take-up pages and pages, as my calendar fills-up with farm and work related activities until christmas, i find myself forgetting to make a time and place to center on god, to pray, to witness god revealing godself in all of these activities that make-up the day to day.

this weekend, i had two conversations that motivated me to re-prioritize my time, to look at my calendar, my schedule, and to center it not on tasks, but on sustenance, of which spirituality is so much a part. this project will come to an end if any one of us is not fully sustained. it was recommended that i walk through the farm not with a critical eye, not looking to see what needs to be done in order to repair this or that, how many more weeds need to be pulled, what new bugs have moved into the neighborhood, but rather with an eye of gratitude and wonder at what god has done.

walking. praying. hoping. listening. thanking. these are the things that so easily get lost when we allow work, even if it is such good work, to rule our lives. good work, i think, can be especially difficult because it never feels like a bad idea to be working on things that we care about. yet burnout can come, as it so often does, in such work because we cease to make time to be wholistically sustained. my hope, this week (and in the weeks and months to come), is to remember this deep need for spiritual sustenance and connection, and to not let the other aspects of sustenance come before time with and attention to god. god is the reason, and when we lose sight of the reason, the work becomes ultimately meaningless. i have never doubted god's presence in this project. it would be a shame to become so busy and distracted that i miss the experience of it.

Bartering...Sharing...Community

2009-10-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'm learning a lot about sharing skills, gifts, and time these days. Part of this revolution is trusting, communicating, and...bartering. By bartering, I'm not meaning the 3rd stage of grief. No, in the context of the farm, bartering is all very positive.

For example, Casey exchanged our vegetables for this lovely pomegranate that I so enjoyed eating yesterday and today:

Sharing skills with our Ventura County family has also been great. Food Share came again this week to glean some radishes and arugula.

And, Arts for Action is helping us a make a PSA (public service announcement)!

These trusting, sharing relationships are so beautiful, and I'm so thankful to be here and now.

running contradiction

2009-10-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

This evening Julie asked us to spend some time thinking about when in the last two months of being Abundant Table Farm Project interns we have felt most alive. For me, the answer is the times like this morning when I have been most conscious of being in balance, of having hit on the right combination of work, play, and rest. And finding that space here on the Farm has so much to do with the physicality of life here - weeding, harvesting, washing veggies, and then doing yoga to stretch out the resulting sore muscles. We've started to joke about telling our subscribers, "Don't join the gym, Join the Farm!" because we've all felt the benefits of our work in the 10 acres.

After spending four years in college generally ignoring my need for physical activity and sleep in favor of my need to finish papers and study for exams, I love spending part of every day working with my hands, and the chance to look back on a well-weeded row and feel an immediate sense of accomplishment. Still, I'm reminded every day I take a break from working on the 10 acres that the overly mind-oriented existence is not the only imbalance. I've continued taking runs in the neighborhood on my "days off", more because I enjoy it than for the exercise, and any direction I turn out of our driveway takes me past fields already full of farmworkers at 7 am. I'm self-conscious jogging by, knowing that even though I am working on a farm for this period of time, I come from a socioeonomic class that must schedule and even pay for physical activity to burn off extra calories. What a stark contrast to the hundreds of people I pass who are often valued for little more than their manual labor, the more machine-like the better.

The Farm is somewhere physically and metaphorically between the two worlds of only-head and only-hands, trying to create a space for both and conversations and eventually relationships between them. It is a space where people like me, who have never taken part in the work involved in growing food, can get used to having dirt under their fingernails, and a space also to honor those who feed this country and give them better access to its fruits. It is in this meeting place that I feel alive.

And we're off!

2009-10-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

Farmer Paul, Tasha, Erynn and Sarah load CSA boxes

Today, we launched our CSA* program! Our first week will be a free test run to our drop-off sites in Fillmore, Camarillo, Ventura, CSU Channel Islands, and here at the farm. Our boxes included: Bok choy, ruby red lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, green beans, spinach, zucchini, other summer squash, cilantro and basil. Yum! Did someone say it's SALAD time? After jubilantly filling the first 5 boxes for today's drop-off, we all sort dilly-dallied near the bins, not wanting to break from the excitement and from the inaugural box-filling activities. There was a lull in our energetic conversation, and someone suggested that we pray. So Julie, our priest and kind delivery-woman today, offered a spontaneous prayer for the inauguration of our CSA. It was one of those beautiful occasions in which a special but still "ordinary" activity is transformed and really feels blessed by God.

I'll end with a simple prayer I wrote after the occasion.

A prayer for the beginning of our CSA:

God, we are about to deliver these boxes
full of beans, lettuce, and squash.
We pray that You would fill them with less tangible goods, like:
Delight in a cucumber still warm from the sun,
fresh memories of meals enjoyed long ago, and
excitement to try a new vegetable, like an 8-ball squash
or some bok choy, and a load of creativity to cook it all up.

We pray that cooking this produce will bring together friends,
family and neighbors, and that the basic act of sharing food
will nourish growing relationships
as well as active bodies.

We ask that You will make it hard to waste
this food You provided, which we worked hard to harvest.
That people would treat their food with care,
because they in some way know the hands
that touched and picked their veggies, our hands.

Thank You that we get to be part of this miraculous production!
Please use this CSA and all our future boxes
in Your just distribution of daily needs,
increase the boxes and sustain us,
not for our profit, but that all who hunger may be fed.

Amen.

*Definition: Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) consists in a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Members pledge in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer's salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm's bounty throughout the growing season.

Official Source: National Agricultural Library, NAL Thesaurus Staff

Church: The remix

2009-10-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Spirituality and religion have been two fairly separate things for me for some time.

Spiritual experiences generally fell under the realm of connection with the natural world, sometimes resulting in supernatural feelings of meaning and belonging. Paddling out in the ocean, feeling the salt seep into my pores, gentle waves rhythmically lapping my sturdy foam board, gulls calling. feeling small in an immense blue sea. With every stroke, I released a worry, fear, or insecurity feeling more at one with my world. Being at the top of Heavenly Mountain, gazing at a turquoise lake, feeling the weight of powdery snow in every crevice of my clothes, laughing at the sign marking the invisible divide between California and Nevada. Man, once again, attempting to create absurd borders in an infinite geographic landscape. Long road trips with best friends or strangers. Sharing so much of myself with another person I felt I was scraping at the surface of the core of myself.

Religious experiences were about obligation and gratitude. My best sense of being Catholic after 12 years of Catholic education was to serve others and attend mass to show thanks for all of God's works and sacrifices. Don't ask me what that means, I have no idea. My religious understanding in the the few years following high school was condensed into "the least you can do is go to church on Sunday." The few years after the few years after college, it was more like, "my mom and the nuns tried so hard to make me a good catholic, the least I can do it go to mass on Christmas and Easter." Good old fashioned Catholic guilt, mixed with a healthy dose of perceived hypocrisy and dishonesty in the church was not a recipe for a nourished, loving Catholic.

So what is the recipe for a nourished, loving Catholic? I'm not sure. But, I've decided to start thinking about what going to church should feel like, cause obligation and guilt aren't working for me.

How I've connected spirituality and religion

(Specifically what I think going to church should feel like, since I've been going regularly to The Abundant Table Sunday services)

Think more about religion as living with love, consciousness, and nonviolence, hey, like Jesus.
Stop compartmentalizing things-religion, spirituality, family, friends, work, play. Live with love and consciousness and watch how it melts boundaries and connects you to others.
While you are living in love and melting your boundaries, make a conscious effort to connect with other people who are living in the same way.
Once you have connected with these people see if you find yourself regularly supported and nourished with the words and actions of this group.
Realize the church is a community that supports and nourishes each other.
Realize your church IS the community where you nourish and are nourished, support and are supported.
Keep going.

I have found that with religious nourishment, my spiritual experiences are heightened. I am lucky because I am in a place that helps me break down some boundaries that have bound and compartmentalized me for some time. I am in a environment where work with the land reveals daily miracles, struggles, and mysteries. My work and home community are essentially one in the same, where I can share myself and the joys/struggles of my work. My spiritual community is my living community and the other members of the Abundant Table who's words are the salt in my life and work, enhancing their flavors and essence. Nurturing my spirtuality, my religion, myself.

Mindful and Relational Spirituality at the Farm

2009-10-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

These are my words for the community: earth-respecting and holistic. By this,I mean something akin to what Barbara Kingsolver speaks to in her novel, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She writes:

At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region. Step two is to be able to countenance the ideas of “food” and “dirt” in the same sentence, and three is to start poking into one’s supply chain to learn where things are coming from.

We like to compare ourselves to Kingsolver’s family, we five interns and the farmer’s family with the support of a small board of local Venturians have set out to eat, sleep, pray and love in the fertile soil of Ventura County, California. But, I say, there is something more!

Respecting and living with my complete self in the land also means understanding the “animate, interconnected, dynamic universe,” as Starhawk states in Earth Path. Yes! I believe we have a relationship with the earth as we do with each other as we do within ourselves.

It is good to live in the present and with one another.

In other news, Denise and I finished a Farm House sign!

a real farm

2009-09-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd be blogging from a toilet seat, but here I sit, having acquired something considerably more exciting than a stomach virus. A few weeks ago a discerning kindergartner asked where, since we are, after all, a farm, were the animals?

Today, we have become a real farm. And the answer to the kindergartner's query has taken up residence in the bathroom for the time being. First, a stop at the Trading Post to make our selection...

Then back to the Farm House to prepare a new home

A little lesson in where to find water

And here they are...

9 chicks, falling asleep on their feet in their home by the shower. Hopefully all pullets (females). As yet unnamed due to dubious durability.

Hueneme, place of resting kindly

2009-09-29T11:28:00.001-07:00

More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure. More and more, we assume that if we want to be pleased we must wait until evening, or the weekend, or vacation, or retirement. More and more, our farms and forests resemble our factories and offices, which in turn more and more resemble prisons - why else should we be so eager to escape them? We recognize defeated landscapes by the absence of pleasure from them. We are defeated at work because our work gives us no pleasure. We are defeated at home because we have no pleasant work there...

Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?

-from an essay entitled, "Economy and Pleasure," by Wendell Berry (1988)

Tuesday evening, September 29th

Early this morning, I pull on my work boots and softly close our front door. A few hundred feet away, the field is swathed in sea fog, a heavy white cover that will not burn away until about 11:00 a.m. Our pesky neighbors, the crows, are either sleeping or invisible, and the usually clattering pie tins hang lax on their stakes with no wind to stir them.

Our field is shielded by a stand of poplars that lines the western edge of the field, perpendicular to another windbreak of towering eucalyptus trees along the northeastern side and avocado groves to the southeast. Like the trees, a barn, painted the traditional red and built by farmer Paul's great-grandfather, stands just beyond the poplars as another symbol of permanence and safety.

I walk past corn stalks already up to my shoulders, then pass a row of ruby red lettuce. The leaves cup delicate water droplets, which are just beginning their slow morning slide into the dirt. Beyond this acre or so of ripening vegetables, we have started to plant new crops in preparation for the next harvest (coastal CA winters being ideal). My hoe finds its niche in a row of purslane weeds that are engulfing the young broccoli and cauliflower we transplanted a few weeks ago.

I do not consciously think about much as I work. I raise and pull the hoe again and again as weeds pile in the furrow. Yet it is not "mindless" labor. Rather, my mind feels full, like a satisfied belly after a healthy, delicious meal. In this mind-full state, I allow my senses to unwind and savor the way that dirt clods fall apart under the blade, the sound of my hoe's soft drag and snap of the weeds, and the smell of an eighth inch of compost working deeper into the soil, the resulting growth and decay, intermingled.

When we first moved here, I remember someone told me the meaning of "Hueneme," the name of the road we live on and the nearest little town. "Hueneme" (pronounced "Wy-nee'mee") means "Resting Place" in Chumash, the Native American language and people group who settled here long before other "settlers" arrived. Resting Place. Today, the place where I work is hueneme, a resting place. I know it will not be this way all days, like when my shoulders are sore beyond pleasure or when the harvest comes in full. Yet I relish the times, more frequent than not these days and in this line of work, when my work involves what Wendell Berry calls, "resting kindly" in the quote above. I am learning to re-define and to de-compartmentalize what it means to work and rest and am finding that this work here unites with kindly rest in my body to create a deep sense of pleasure. Today, I am content.

interesting films on related subjects.

2009-09-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

as you may (or may not) have noticed, this blog is going to be posted quite late. i was sleepy and very busy last week, and i did not prioritize the posting of my blog as i ought.

however, now i'm here to present some interesting film clips on topics related to farming, gardening, food, etc. they will be few, but they will be meaningful!

The Garden at the White House
This describes the creation of the new White House garden, and features Michelle Obama inviting school children to help plant, harvest, and cook with the vegetables they grow!

(Movie Preview) "The Garden"
This is the Academy Award nominated documentary all about the struggles that have plagued the South Central Farm. Our program coordinator, Sarah Nolan, has been volunteering with these folks since the time that this film was made. It's an incredible film, and it's now out to buy/rent. Please do see it!

Michael Pollan- "The Omnivore's Next Dilemma"
Anything that's on TED is worth watching. Anything that Michael Pollan has to write/say is worth reading/hearing. Enough said.

Organic Pest Control
I just find this topic really interesting. And sometimes watching something on it is much more amusing than reading a text book on organic integrated pest control.

And that's all for this week. Tune in next week (or tomorrow...) for some of my actual thoughts, rather than a collection of other folks' genius.

feeding future tomato bandits and other fantasies

2009-09-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

My little cousin Morgan is a bit of a tomato bandit. A girl after my own heart, the call of fresh garden tomatoes is so strong that while others are playing she can be found munching tomatoes in her family's garden. I love watching Morgan and my other little cousins Jordan and Timmy eat. Their plates are always colorful and filled with fresh fruits and vegetables.

So are the plates of students receiving lunches at Ventura Unified School District. Not only does the district, which serves 17, 321 students of which almost 7,000 receive free/reduced cost lunches, source most of their food service produce from local farms but they also have a comprehensive "Healthy Schools Project." The Healthy Schools Project "provides learning opportunities for students to make healthy choices through a variety of hands-on experiences. Classroom lessons are standards-based and include label reading, making good food choices, and cooking. Students learn to recognize the link between food production and consumption by participating in school gardening activities. Exploring nature and gaining real world learning in math and science are two additional and important components of school gardens." http://www.venturausd.org/childnutrition/healthyschoolsproject.htm

So, kids experience growing produce in school gardens, are provided with ample opportunities to link their knowledge across the academic content areas while learning about food systems, and they get to eat the produce they've grown and learned about in their cafeterias (developing life-long positive eating habits). Meanwhile local farmers have a consistent channel to distribute their produce. Kids learn and eat healthfully while supporting a healthy and viable economic relationship between local schools and local farms.

The Abundant Table Farm Project is part a the Ventura County Food Justice Coalition. One of our goals is to bring local, quality food into our schools. The ATFP is focusing on Hueneme Unified School District and Pleasant Valley School District in Camarillo.

I was disheartened to learn that PVSD does not prepare any food at any of their school sites. Their food is trucked in prepared and packaged, food is only warmed and served to kids. When I checked PVSD's lunch menu on-line, the only fresh items, pears, banana, oranges, and apples on the daily menu were asterisked meaning they were "subject to change." http://www.pvsd.k12.ca.us/164110511599280/lib/164110511599280/Pleasant_Valley_SD_LN.xls_Sept_k-5.pdf

In my dream world, a world that exists only five exits down the freeway in Ventura, Join the Farm! would be part of a growers collaborative that directly supplies my surrounding schools with fresh, local produce for quality, healthful school lunches.

In my dream wold, this program would be so wildly successful that school districts would band together and create a unified school menu and combine purchasing power to grow the farmers collaborative and a farm to school program.

In my dream world, Join the Farm! and the other farms in the growers collaborative work with teachers and schools to plan educational visits to the schools and to the farm to develop students who not only learn about eating healthfully, farming, and food systems but gain real-world knowledge in all the academic content areas. Think of how farming is connected to migration patterns (history), creating bed shapes that maximize water and sun (geometry), developing marketing literature (language arts), etc!

In my dream world, food service workers are not limited to opening cans and cutting apart packaging. They are trained with more emphasis on long-term integrated culinary skills, e.g. knife skills, knowledge of seasonal menus, compost management (ha! cafeteria food waste is composted and turned into beautiful soil for those school gardens!).

If my dream world is a reality in Ventura, we can make it happen where I am and where you are.

Everything belongs ...or blogs

2009-09-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

Here at the farm we've been talking a lot around the kitchen table. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between -- we are our own school of thought.

Here's our ritual in the morning:
we stumble in about 7/7:30 to get some coffee, we sit at the table and read the Ventura County Star, and we talk before we head out to the land at 8.

One of the ongoing conversations is about oppression and privilege. We agree that are purpose is to be a creationary community rather than a reactionary, to not fight the system, but to offer an alternative.

This reminds me of the title of a book Sarah recommended to me: EVERYTHING BELONGS. The title in turn reminds me of Rumi:

In other news:

It's so great to have friends out in the fields with us!

First, the conversations we have are hilarious!
Second, you need a dance team on the field with you to boogie to Prince while you work!
Third, they are so photogenic!

(in)experience

2009-09-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

There's a common question that arises on farm tours about five rows on to the 10 acres when I have to bend over yet again to try and decipher the bleached-off name of another form of squash.

"So...how much farming experience did you have before this?" While the squash has started to help the identification process by producing in abundant quantities (eight-ball, geode, crook-neck, zucchini), the answer remains:

Pretty much none. I've never farmed, and barely even gardened.

We weren't chosen for this program based on our agricultural qualifications (and perhaps that's why, though he allows us to change the plates on the swanky Italian planter, farmer Paul has not even suggested that one of us interns take a turn driving it yet). A month ago I could not have told a squash from a zucchini, much less known what size any form of summer squash should be when harvested (my apologies to those I proudly presented with very-large-and-therefore-tough-and-bland zucchini in my early days).

I knew I'd be on a pretty steep learning curve with farming, but didn't realize how many other things I'm vastly unqualified for that I'd be up to. Take today for example. After weeding one row of carrots and harvesting another of zucchini (tasks I'm pretty comfortable with at this point)I set out to tackle the corner of the shed that will eventually be a chicken coop. I'm kicking myself for not taking before and after pictures because it was a mess - cob webs, dust, dried leaves, rat droppings, and the rat himself (who kindly waited until I had removed his box home to make his presence known). This is the sort of dirty job I would once have left to my dad or someone else. But I figured it out, and I did it, and that shed is now the cleanest it will be for another 20 years (bring on the chickens!). After lunch, at the request of the birthday girl (Erynn!) - I taught a yoga class (number of pupils: 2). My yoga qualifications - 2 years of taking a class at college. I still can't even do a headstand... Then to round off the day...a few hours of translating various documents from English to Spanish, a pretty dismal prospect for anyone that's tried to have a conversation with me in Spanish.

One of the many perks of intern-dom: the space to take on things you've never done before...and the sore muscles to prove it.

Agriculture in Ventura County 101

2009-09-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

A little over one month ago, I moved onto this farm (if unfamiliar with the farm, see www.jointhefarm.com), which is located in Ventura County, CA, an area that I knew next to nothing about when I arrived here from Mariposa County, CA. My college major, anthropology, taught me to know the "cultural context" of the place and people with whom I work. Yet I am often a person who is mainly just curious about the "Culture" of a place when I am in a foreign country or living among people whose skin is darker than mine. It's difficult to notice my own cultural environment, since it seems so normal. I've noticed this same tendency to overlook my native state's (CA) land culture: what is cultivated there, the issues surrounding its cultivation, and the people who directly cultivate the land. Because of my internship with the Abundant Table Farm Project, though, I'm trying to become more attentive to my new "Agri-Cultural Context."

Some "fact sheets" given to me by the supervisors of my side internship with House Farm Workers (HFW) and Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (VC CLUE) clued me in on some of the must-knows of this county, like the fact that strawberries are the major crop around here (well, just looking out the car window informed me of this. "Hello, Neighbor Driscoll, Neighbor Dole."). So for this post, I thought I'd share with you some of the useful information that I've found both online and through the previously mentioned fact sheet. That way, we can all learn more about the agricultural context in which we are working.

Here's a little Q&A*:

Q. What’s the total value of crops grown in Ventura County?
A. For 2008, the estimated gross value was $1.6 billion.

Q. What were some of the most valuable crops?
Take a look at the following graph:

Source: http://www.venturacountystar.com/photos/2009/jul/21/70953/

Q. How does the area in farms compare to the area in cities?
A. According to the state, Ventura County has 102,873 acres of urban and built-up land. So, for every acre of shopping mall, city street and housing tract, there’s approximately an acre of celery, strawberries, lemons, peppers, flowers and other crops.

Q: How does the area in agriculture compare to the county’s total land area?
A. The county’s total land area is 1.2 million acres. Using the Department of Conservation data, 28.1 percent of the county is agricultural land. (About half the county’s land area lies inside Los Padres National Forest, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and other protected areas.)

Q. Is farmland being lost to development?
A. Yes. Even though voters have approved laws intended to protect farmland and open space from development, the county continues to lose about 600 acres of farmland to development each year.

Q: Where are the farms located in relation to the towns and cities in Ventura County?
Take a look at this map that shows where our county's major crops are growing, and the concentration of each:

Source: http://www.farmbureauvc.com/crop_report.html#

Q: How many jobs does agricultural work provide in Ventura County?
Altogether, farming and farm-dependent businesses provide an estimated 31,000 jobs in Ventura County, more than any other sector of the economy except services. Agriculture and agriculture-related businesses account for about 4.4 percent of overall economic activity in Ventura County, generating $2.1 billion in revenue and $76 million in indirect business taxes annually. One in 10 county residents relies to some degree on income derived from farming.

Q. How many field workers are employed on Ventura County farms?
A. It’s difficult to get a reliable count, but there are believed to be about 20,000 Ventura County farm workers. The number ranges seasonally from a low of 15,000 to a high of 25,000 during the peak spring and summer harvest of strawberries, lemons and avocados.

Q. Where are they from?
A. If they are like the rest of California’s farm worker population, an estimated 95 percent were born outside the United States, and 91 percent were born in Mexico.

Q. What percentage are undocumented immigrants?
A. Precise local figures are not available, but statewide surveys suggest at least 57 percent of California’s field workers are undocumented.

Profile of farm workers**
Number of farm workers 17,000 – 24,000
Percentage born in Mexico 91%
Permanent Ventura County residents 67%
Migrants 33%
Employed year-round 20%
U.S. citizens 10%
With resident green cards 33%
Unauthorized 57%
Percent earning less than $15,000/year 75%

* Most q&a facts from http://www.farmbureauvc.com/crop_report.html#

** Work Force Investment Board, The Future of Ventura County Agriculture: Issues and Opportunities for Workers and Growers, from: http://www.wib.ventura.org 2006.

lessons learned

2009-09-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

sleepy

farmer days are getting earlier and earlier.
planting at 7:00 am,
which means waking-up sometime between 6:30 and 6:45
if breakfast is a priority.
other days there's weeding/harvesting at 7:30 am,
which might mean that i wake-up at 5:45 or 6:00 am
to get in a bit of cardio before bending and squatting
the next several hours.
community outreach and social justice and grown-up office work
are filling-up these afternoons.
gotta make the connections!
gotta get stuff done before the harvest is too bountiful!
and the nights are getting longer and fuller
with community meetings and house dinners
and friends and folks who just are interested and want to stop by
and chat until 9 or 11 or 10.
then crash.
then repeat.
like i said, sleepy.

spicy

arugula is about to bolt or "go to seed"
which means that it is HOT
i'm talking pee-kahn-tay.
(picante)
maybe we'll try and pair the rest of it
with apples or potatoes or winter squash
something really mild
because the once go-to arugula and radish salad combo
is becoming more like a "how hot can you go?!"
dining competition everyday.

sunburnt

note to self:
wear sunscreen
wear a hat
wear gloves
wear pants
wear lightweight long sleeves
or else.

Farming musings...

2009-09-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

An Ode to the Seeder

Machine of steel and plastic.
Moving wheels and spinning plates.
Seeds are stealthly sown, tracks are covered.
Adjust, calibrate, feed, sow, cover, grow.
Farmers drive and record.
After machine has spoken,
Nature's miracle is awoken.

Malva Haiku
Taproot of iron strength
Leaves are like geraniums
Pulled! HA!-I shake fist.

Growing with the greens

2009-09-17T15:14:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I made a salad with the many lettuces and other greens from our land. I thought of doing so while I was weeding and harvesting the radishes. I thought to myself, "mmmm....that lemon and olive oil dressing would taste so good with this," so I picked some, and then washed the leaves, sprinkled on the lemon and oil and feta, and ate! I felt like a participant in a miracle of some kind. The great part is that I can manifest this miracle everyday! I am truly happy the lettuce is nearly ripe because I think I need the iron.

Speaking of iron, Erynn and I went to an evening capoeira class in Oxnard taught by a fellow who works for an organization we are collaborating with: Arts for Action (http://arts4action.wordpress.com/). One of their leaders, Dina, came over with other local mujer activists to talk about food justice, that is, making food from the earth available for everyone! I felt honored to be with the other women at the table.

I feel honored to be working with organizations like Arts for Action, Cause (http://www.coastalalliance.com/), and CLUE (http://www.clueca.org/1-clue-network.htm). Some amazing work is going on and some strong relationships are being built, and we at ATFP are now part of the mezcla.

My last thought for this blog is about the morning thinning we did today. We had too many tomato plants, and we needed to take out about half of the plants. It was a sad affair -- an unnatural selection. There seemed to be a few elements involved in the procedure:

1. My power to choose.
2. The size and health of the plant.
3. The location of the plant.

I almost cried --
pulling out the beautiful chosen ones
to die
and thinking of the relationship between
choice and chance.

from scratch

2009-09-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things to love about the Farmhouse kitchen/dining room: many windows, the continually-replenished (thanks, Erynn!) vase of Double Delight roses from the backyard on the table, the proliferation of fruits and veggies on the counter from friends and our own soil...

And then there are the things made in this kitchen - under the influence of favorite cookbooks, mothers consulted by phone, and the exigencies of having a whole row of arugula ready to harvest a month before our CSA boxes are ready to go. One theme of our culinary endeavors has been eliminating a few items from our grocery list by learning how to make them ourselves. We’ve been enjoying a steady supply of homemade hummus, bread, salsa, soup stock, and corn tortillas.

It is in this spirit that I write this blog post on the kitchen counter next to a pot of milk heating on the stove. The latest addition to our homemade repertoire is yogurt. I’ve made my own a few times before, but it always turned out runny (European style). Before we purchased a fancy yogurt maker to achieve a thicker yogurt, I poked around on the internet to see if we couldn’t figure it out without buying another appliance.

Friends, it is do-able. Here’s how:

I start with a quart of 2% milk and a few tablespoons of plain yogurt left out for a few hours to reach room temperature. My secret to thicker yogurt is adding about ¾s of a cup of nonfat dry milk powder to the 2%. Next comes the step I’m on now – heating the milk over medium/low heat without stirring and watching it so I can catch it just before it boils (looking for bubbles around the edges and steam rising). In a minute I’ll take it off the burner and pour the milk into a non-metal container for it to cool to a bacteria-friendly temperature. Most recipes say you need a thermometer at this point…you don’t. You can tell the milk has cooled sufficiently when you can keep your index finger in it for 20 seconds. Don’t forget to remove the skin that forms on top of the milk. I then mix a few spoonfuls of the warm milk with the yogurt and add this mixture slowly to the rest of the warm milk and stir a bit.

Then it’s time to incubate. You can search the internet for the method that best suits your kitchen. What I did last week that worked quite well was heated the oven up for a few minutes and then turned it off and popped in a pan full of boiling water (and the bowl of yogurt-to-be, of course) and left it overnight. The idea is to keep the bowl at about 115 degrees for about eight hours. If your milk hasn’t become yogurt after 8-10 hours, it’s not going to – it just gets more and more sour.

Finally, refrigerate the yogurt for a few hours before eating!

Next items: granola, applesauce, cheese…!

Someone has to die?

2009-09-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Phrases or lines from songs often circulate through my head while I'm working. This week, the lyrics from a song called, "Someone has to Die," by the band "Maritime" have been on my mental playlist. The refrain goes, "Someone has to die to make room for you and I..." (http://www.last.fm/music/Maritime/+videos/3100107)

I bend over the weeds on the plot we're farming, humming to the corn, "Something has to die, to make room for you and I." The weeds must go in this work of (un)natural selection. I watch Erynn pull out a big tap-rooted weed and hold it to the sky, like some victorious warrior holding up the head of her enemy. Casey moves along her row, cursing the stinging nettles in almost respectful undertones (they are the smartest weeds we know) as she flings them to the ground. I stomp down the Malva I'm pulling, a weed variety which, I'm sure, shares a Latin root with the word "malevolent." "Something” - in this case, the weed, has to die to save water for the preferred plants, and to make room for what we want to grow.

Then I wonder how this concept applies to our human population. There's no arguing that the U.S. is one of the most powerful nations in the world, and that with this power has come major control of global economic markets. In general, U.S. citizens, particularly the upper class and also within our wide upper-middle class bracket (myself included), have enjoyed living in a state of luxury that the vast majority of world will never experience; two or three cars, two or three kids in college, paid vacations, closets brimming with clothes, expensive houses (maybe a little too expensive), expensive diets. These things aren't wrong in themselves, are they? We have a right to have these things.

But I wonder, as I pull up certain plants to favor the growth of others, how many “someones” have had to die to maintain “room for you and I” at the top of the global economy? I'm no economist, but I understand that other economies in the world are crippled to support our top-dog status. There is more of a connection than we like to imagine: many bodies die daily through poverty and unjust working conditions, and we are able to live in a level of excess that we've become accustomed to here in the U.S.

I hope that this economic crash has woken us up in some ways to our unsustainable lifestyles. We need to be shaken awake, I think, in order to realize that our lifestyles have been privileged by our country's economic position and its continued dominance, oppression even, of the poor within (I think specifically of immigrants here) and without (those working in unaccountable multinational companies, for example). As Paula Crossfield says in a blog I just started following called, “Civil Eats” (http://civileats.com/), “The bottom line is that we often think of our wealth as a product of our ingenuity, education and technology, when it is more specifically the result of the exploitation of other countries' labor and resources.” Essentially, many someones have had to die to make room (and wealth) for you and I.

I'm still wrestling with the question - what alternatives do we have in this globalized economy of ours, and how can we seek to live a simpler lifestyle that is not based on exploitation? I believe that this Abundant Table Farm Project will be a way of living, working, and distributing resources that steps out of the current system, which promotes living at the expense of others' lives. For starters, we're working for a family farm that does not view our labor as a means to increase their profit. We're trying to find ways to get our CSA boxes to all who would like organic, local produce, without restricting distribution to those with full financial means. We're involving our supporters, the “consumers” to take part in a new relationship of consumption in which they are involved in the process of production. (This means, for instance, that supporters and volunteers can come and help us with farm work and harvest)! So for me, this year is one step in the “out-of-step” pattern of thinking that is required of us if we are to live in a way of greater sustainability and justice for all, not just the economically privileged.

Because humans aren't like weeds in this farm's economy... there is room here for all to live and flourish.

a cause for celebration

2009-09-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

over the past week,

i have had a reason to celebrate practically everyday.

and this has led me to reflect on the reasons

i've desired to celebrations in my life,

and how much deeper

and how much more frequent

those desires to celebrate are now.

for example, last thursday i wanted to celebrate,

when i went out to gaze upon the few rows we had cultivated

and weeded over the past few days,

and they were absolutely thriving!

and then on friday,

i needed to celebrate

after i finished (crudely) constructing

some twenty-odd "annoy-crows"

or makeshift wooden stakes

with pie tins and c.d.'s tied to them

with hot pink nylon rope.

then sunday,

i just had to celebrate when i walked out

into our test garden

and realized that we had picnic watermelons,

long of naples squash,

spaghetti squash, hubbard squash,

and even the tail end of cucumbers,

patty pan squash,

and zucchini all ready for eating

(and sharing with friends).

my excitement grew even more when i ran over

to the ten acres,

and pulled-up about 8 heads of spicy,

hearty arugula,

and handfuls of sweet baby cilantro!

i had a private party walking back to the farmhouse with my bounty.

now, in my college career,

i wrote a lot,

i mean a whole helluva lot.

i turned in far too many 30 and over page papers.

yet, i don't think that i've ever felt as accomplished

as i have in the past few weeks.

this sense of deep contentment and satisfaction is new to me.

when i go to bed every night,

i'm tired not because i slept three hours the night before cramming for a midterm,

or because i drank way too much coffee and my body finally came down hard

from its caffeine rush at around 4 am

(which still happens from time to time),

but when i go to bed,

i'm (typically) exhausted because i spent my waking hours using my body

to tend to the land, or to tackle important housework,

or to exercise so that i'll be strong enough

to repeat the first two activities in weeks to come.

everyday i find that i'm tired, but i'm also energized,

and i want to celebrate every carrot(!),

every squash, every day and

every flavor of this experience.

you know, it's my birthday this friday,

and though in the past i might have been craving some sort of birthday festivity,

all i can think about right now is how i want to throw a party

because butternut squash is finally in season.

A blog about the feeling of excitement

2009-09-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

"Farmers?! Um, you guys do NOT look like farmers!" This was exclaimed by my childhood next door neighbor upon seeing him out in Camarillo while I was with my group of sisterfriends. Indeed! What an unlikely cast of farmers we are here at the Abundant Table Farm Project! 5 young sisterfriend interns, 1 Farmer Paul, 1 extern Kyle, our radish radical Julie and South Central guru Sarah.

*The following is my opinion, based on my experiences and not any statistical data* In Ventura County, a very agricultural area, farming happens on a large scale. Farmers are farming on hundreds of acres. Farmers are renting out their land to big agro-business who then contract out farming responsibilities to other farmers who then contract farm labor work to farm workers through labor contractors. The Farmers are men, the farm workers are men and women, but mostly men. The farm workers do not look like Cristy Rose, Sarah, Katerina, Casey or me.

The farm lands are largely farmed mono-crop. Meaning lots of acreage is devoted to only one crop (around here it's lots of strawberries). This means pest control is a huge problem. Lots of one type of plant, lots of bugs that eat that one type of plant, nothing that comes to eat those bugs. Pesticides kill those bugs.

Growing up around here, that is my idea of farming. Apparently, an understanding quite similar to my neighbor Luke's, hence his surprise to hear of five young, lovely ladies farming.

This "understanding" of farming is what gets me out of control excited about what we are doing here at the Abundant Table Farm Project. This "understanding" of farming is what is getting the community out of control excited about what we are doing. This "understanding" of farming is what got the ATFP on the front page of the Sunday Ventura County Star. We are turning this "understanding" of farming on its head.

We are working together, our motley cast of farmers along with as much support and involvement from the community as we can cultivate and harvest, to organically farm 10 acres with as much bio-diversity as we can plant and grow. Farmers are driving by our 10 acres and are boggled by this project Farmer Paul has taken on. What a crazy looking field with all kinds of different things growing! We are working from within to plant, weed, and harvest. The farmer is working his land! With ladies! We are involving our community to come to the farm to learn, have fun, and know where their food is coming from.

People, this is exciting. Isn't it?

Getting to know each other and the land

2009-09-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

The party on Sunday was huge and delightful! I'm really thankful for the more than 100 folks that came out, some from L.A. and Long Beach and Orange County to celebrate with us!

A BIG THANKS!

The energy of the food, live music, and dancing still lingers in the air. And, I feel the blessings of all the guests (from so many spiritual communities!) in each of our rooms.

If it didn't feel like it before, now we are go! We've been weeding and transplanting and scoping out the Farmers' Markets!

On top of the Join the Farm aspects, we've been learning to live together in community. Above is a pic from Sunday! It's such an honor to live with my sisterfriends. They are each of them a woman who is unique, hard-working, and real! How could I ask for more when it comes to communal living?

The last thing I wanted to touch on for this blog is labyrinths. We are creating one here on the farm this year, and I'm just too excited. I met with Rev. Nicole Janelle at UCSB yesterday to talk about the possibilities of making one there in Santa Barbara as well. I liked the idea mucho. My hope is to someday create a labyrinth based on my own design....

assignment

2009-09-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

Before the house blessing this past weekend (to stick with this week's unofficial ATFP blog theme) we had a long list of to-dos: assemble publicity materials for the CSA, make our beds, strip the experimental garden of zucchinis and patty-pan squash in hopes that we could off-load some of the abundance onto our guests...

My favorite assignment in preparation for that evening was given to the five of us interns by Julie Morris. She asked us each to bring to the Eucharist service something symbolizing our intention to be present on the farm this year. Now the candles on the mantle in the community room have been joined by a journal, a bundle of New Mexican sage, an Ethiopian cross, a childrens book (The Carrot Seed), and a clay cup made by the Dalit.

(You can keep all the radishes you can pick if you correctly match the five objects to the five interns. Actually, you can have all the radishes you can pick no matter how you score. Seriously, help us out here!)

One of the reasons I liked this assignment so much was that it ended up being really easy (at least for me). For graduation my parents gave me this wooden Ethiopian cross

(not hard to guess that was mine, right?!) to take with me, a reminder of the things that have been constant as I've lived on four continents, and will remain constant in however many more places I'll call "home" long enough to have a bed and a bicycle.
Sitting there on the mantle, it is also a reminder of something I hope to learn from this year - how to be present in all the places I will live in a way that is conscious not only of their historical, social, political, cultural, and economic particularities, but also of the uniqueness of the land itself and the people who live closest to it.

Pink Radishes: A poem in pictures

2009-09-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday we hosted our inaugural event, the ATFP house blessing and BBQ. We journeyed as a group out to the field to end the blessing time with a blessing on the land that we interns are farming. After the blessing, our visitors got a little tour of the 10 acres and the crops we planted, with particular emphasis and open invitation to help harvest the pink radishes that are already proliferating in excess (these crops just don't know how to wait). Since I happened to have grabbed our trusty dispenser of used plastic bags on the way to the field, I stood at the end of the row offering bags to people as they returned from harvesting, hands bursting with bright pink radishes. I felt like a bagger at a grocery store, but in a completely new sense, almost as if that metaphor had been turned on its head. On this non-shopping occasion, our visitors were consuming in an altogether different way, a more participatory and connected way. The people coming down the "aisle" to get their radishes bagged were literally picking their own produce, not from a shelf, but from the dirt.
And that's what this short poem that I just finished is all about. Come pick pink radishes (and maybe some weeds too) with us sometime.

Pink Radishes
The crowd walks out to our field
to see how exactly food grows,
there are yellow, purple, and green beans,
the gold corn left from the crows,
and, like bright eggs in a carton,
pink radishes packed in tight rows.

After a blessing, the harvest,
"Pick all you can hold," we invite,
without cart or basket they scatter,
and bend over the Pinks in delight.

A woman leads her young daughter
between two furrows of dirt,
clutching produce to feed her
a vegetable chocolate dessert•.

I stand as our guests come back loaded,
holding bags like some check-out clerk.
But these aren't some super-store shoppers,
No, these hands have touched earth!

•A reference to Julie Morris' kickin' chocolate-dipped radish appetizers.

oh, the house was blessed

2009-09-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a big ol' day for us here at the farmhouse. see, we've been planning for september 6th practically since the moment we stepped through the front door of 472o e. hueneme. we invited all of our friends and family to come and celebrate the beginning of our year of farming, and also to participate in eucharist and an inter-faith house blessing.

and there was quite a turn out.

i've heard estimates that somewhere between 120 and 150 people passed through the doors of our humble abode last night! we sang songs together, we were commissioned as interns, we blessed the bedrooms, the kitchen, the office, the backyard and the farmland in Catholic, Lutheran, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, and Episcopalian traditions. we feasted on mesquite barbeque alongside a wide array of delectable salads and desserts. there was live music provided by bill knutsen's band, and then, there was also the dancing. oh the dancing... honestly, i'm sorry if you missed the dancing. it was surely the stuff of legend. all in all, it was incredible night. i am honored and deeply grateful to be a part of something that so many believe in and have chosen to support. thank you to all who came. you have helped us start the year off with a bang!

i cannot wait to have another celebration with our family and friends. and harvest time is coming up quick. my goal: invite more folks. i say, at least 250 next time. ¡sí se puede!

Join the Farm! in the news

2009-09-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to the front page article of yesterday's Ventura County Star article on our CSA! http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/sep/06/farmers-preparing-to-share-harvest-with/

Blogging tardiness: Cristy Rose

2009-09-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

My sisterfriends are shining here on the blog, and I’m feeling compelled to step things up. Thus, I’ve made a list of topics I’d like to cover in today’s blog: Process-Relational Theology/Thealogy, the main point behind the Bible from where I stand now, Water Conservation Month, and lastly, the need for a Wailing Wall.

Before I begin, I’d like you to know that Thursday has been a particularly favorite day of mine for a while. I feel Thursday, unlike other days, is more connected to autumn. I think of Thursday, and in the same moment, I think of autumn, and I like this even though I now identify as a Summertime Person in general.

Okay, first of all, I’m studying Process-Relational Theology/Thealogy for the first time in my life; well, actually, I’m studying it for the first time with this title. I’ve been considering the importance of relationships and dialogue for a goodly amount of my life being an English Literature and Writing fan. I’ve come to the conclusion recently that it’s the relational and conversational experiences that are vital in life. I’m working on being an authentic self, which means speaking MY language instead of complying with another’s and/or denying mine. Then, when the other person speaks their authentic language, we miraculously come to a third language all our own! That’s relationship as I see it! If I only speak his/her language, I’m objectifying myself! If I attempt to control the other person’s language, I’m objectifying him/her, and objectification is my new word for “sin.” Anyways, it’s really nice to have a title or the umbrella of Process-Relational Theology/Thealogy to put this conversation of language under. I’m glad it belongs somewhere.

Second, I’ve been having conversations about the Bible and Torah a lot lately. I first took a class in the Herstory of Judaic Tradition. The question was asked, “How can a person against oppression and privilege (in questions of sex and gender, that is, a feminist/womanist) even acknowledge the Torah or Bible?” With so much HIStory about power and conquering and rape and war and obvious privileging of the chosen and the men, why do I even bother continuing to dialogue about the Bible? WHY?!!! Aren’t I just validating an oppressive system? I’ve thought for a while that it could be like I’m keeping my enemies close, but recent conversations have inspired me to remember/rethink what I take away from my childhood Sunday school classes, that it might be a story of how unconditional love continues to resurrect itself (like the nature) after being murdered again and again in 5000 years of oppression and privilege! I’m still at odds with the whole Jesus man thing. Even though I like this Sophia Jesus language, it’s not enough.

This brings me to my third point (I’ll come back to Water Conservation Month): We need a wailing wall at the farm and in life. We need a place to throw and release and cry and ….WAIL …because we are the survivors of white/men/rational/exclusive/wealthy/educated/western and, yes, Christian privilege. I understand that this year of intentionality at the farm is going to give us a closer look at inequality and abuse as we advocate for the earth and all people. We need a place to feel anger and sadness and let them go because keeping that anger and sadness hurts us the most. By holding them in, we become, as Laura Riding writes, part of the oppressive muddle from which we are seeking freedom.

This leads me to my last point -- Water Conservation Month at the farm. This month, we are dedicated to only using one bowl and one cup for, at least, this week (in addition to cooking ware). Yesterday, we also sang one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s songs – Yes, I do think Buddhism too is very male/masculine biased – which speaks to the freedom I am cultivating inside and out:

Breathing in, Breathing out.
I’m water reflecting what is real, what is true.
And, I feel there is space deep inside of me.
I am free.

jack rabbit packing demo

2009-09-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

So, as we are now "real" farmers here at Join the Farm!, we have developed some systems to keep us farming efficiently. When it comes to transplanting, there are four positions: hole poker (this person pokes the holes to put the transplants in), transplant hander (this person pulls the transplant from the container and hands the plant to the placer), the placer (this person places the transplant in the hole) , and the packer (this person packs the plant in place in the hole-arguably the most physical of the positions). We rotate the positions so everyone gets a chance and doesn't burn out. I developed a method for the packer position. The jack rabbit allows me to quickly move from plant to plant, pack the plant in, and then cover with dirt and press down. These systems help us to do great work. Some other methods arose during our transplanting session. The competition method. This is where Sarah and Kyle race to place the plant in a row, only damaging a marginal number of plants. The deliberate method. Casey was very deliberate and gentle in poking her holes, placing and packing. "Slow and steady wins the race." So yes, a good day. Kyle also explained the difference between gingers and day walkers, but I will let him explain that when he blogs.

fighter jets, a good excuse to go camping, and bunnies

2009-09-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here on the farm we have interesting neighbors. I haven't actually met anyone who lives on our road, because there isn't really anyone (and maybe that's why it's so hard to get our trash collected), but the other inhabitants of our area do make life exciting.

#1 NAWS - the Naval Air Weapons Station. Not only does this particular facility obstruct direct access to the ocean, we must daily suspend conversation during the sonic boom following fighter jet landings. The planes are frequently mounted with funny disks, which I'm told are cameras. I think they know what we're up to.

Hidden benefit: Their missile display does provide nice shade for stretching mid-way through my morning runs.

#2 Industrial agriculture. The Oxnard plain has some of the world's best soil, and hence many of its biggest growers. Buying Driscoll strawberries in Wheaton a few months ago, I thought "I'm going where this was grown", and sure enough, they're just down the road. On a recent bike ride I passed the largest greenhouse in the United States. Berries, tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, lima beans, avocados, citrus and many other crops are grown on a huge scale around here. There are a range of systems and practices that allow these massive fields to be farmed with minimal human input, and I'm sure we'll be talking more about those in this blog. The one that's germane to our house at the moment is fumigation.

Sometime in the next few days we'll be clearing out of the farmhouse for a night while the soil on one of the neighboring berry fields is fumigated. A chemical called chloropicrin will be added into the irrigation tape running under the plastic covering the berry beds. Though we are outside the "buffer zone" for this particular application, there have been problems with chloropicrin exposure in the past. Apparently it has effects similar to tear gas (go figure since it, like many pesticides was first used as a chemical weapon in WWI), so the farmers don't want to take any chances and neither do we. A window into our food system...

Hidden benefit: We are planning to take this opportunity to go camping.

#3 Rabbits. I'm with Mr. McGregor on this one. The bunnies have to go. We planted an appetizing salad mix a week ago in our experimental garden amongst the avocado trees, and I doubt we'll ever even see any of it. Bloodmeal, pepper, rotten eggs, fences, and of course a .22 have all been suggested.

Hidden benefit: none