where the wild things are

i'm going to take a cue from erynn and add subtitles, so here it goes:

where the wild things are
(the upcoming film and my excitement)

now, this has nothing to do with farming
(at all, i'm talking whatsoever),
but this is my blogging night
and i'm tired
and at this moment, i am just way too excited about the upcoming film adaption of
where the wild things are to think about anything else.
we all read the book growing-up,
and we imagined ourselves running away when we were upset to
explore strange new lands,
become king (or queen) of a people and place that embraced
our rebellion, our inner "wild thing!"
and now, thanks to the BRILLIANT minds of dave eggers and spike jonze
we, the humble folks who frequent the local cinema,
will be given the spectacular opportunity to see this beloved story re-imagined
into a feature length film!
from what i've seen it looks like one of the more visually stunning films of all time
and the cast is impeccable
and the soundtrack features arguably the best arcade fire song
(i could go on and on)... so consider this an open invite,
for the midnight showing on october 16th.
please, come with me and celebrateremember the beauty and pain of childhood.
i just know it will be delightful.

where the wild things are
(the farming life)

whew! thank you for letting me share that joyous anticipation with
THE CYBER WORLD!
and now i would like to address issues that might be a tad
more relevant to what we over here at the abundant table farm are all about.

this last week, we started noodling in the garden
(and sarah bagge has posted photographic evidence of the event below
so you must not doubt me).
there is just so much life in that garden.
of course, there are the crops, some of which are thriving
and others that have had to leave us and begin the decomposition journey.
but there is so much life in decomposition!
there are bugs that eat the waste,
and animals that eat the bugs,
and the waste from both of those creatures
contains the seeds of the decomposing plants
that make their way back to the ground
where they wait until the season
when they will (once again), dig deep into the ground
take root, and bear fruit.
what wondrous life.
we held a composting event over here at the house on saturday,
and the humble interns along with a few local community members
learned quite a bit about the differences between
green (nitrogen rich)
and brown (carbon rich) waste,
and the combination of the two to create some
lifefull, lifegiving, lifeenriching soil.
compost is, in essence, waste (or some might call it garbage).
i used to throw the current contents of our compost bin
into the trash without a care,
without considering the life
those discarded scraps still had to live
and to give!
with this compost, we will transform a worn-out, beaten-down,
over-watered, backyard lawn
into a rich garden, that will help to educate children
and friends and family and each other,
about herbs and weeds and the beauty of getting dirty and meditation and solitude;
and it will feed us all.
life and life and life (from death).

in the past few years,
i have not known what to call God.
i have tried many different names,
MotherFather, Peace, Joy, Love...
but here, and now, the name that feels most accurate,
is Life.
so i would like to thank Life for creating life,
for being discernible and present in all that lives,
and for continuing to dwell in the living
even when one form of life comes to an end.
all things that live continue to give life
even in death.
what a promise!
how beautyfull.

I do not recommend blogging while jogging

Critical thoughts on 80's and 90's eating and dancing

So, last night my sisterfriends Cristy Rose, Sarah, and I went on quite the dance adventure in Santa Monica and Hermosa Beach. After a long day of labor intensive work (brunch meeting from 10 am-1pm, lunch meeting with Farmer Blair from Indiana who talked about raising chickens-he gave a graphic description of how to slaughter a chicken involving a clothesline, gallon bottle cut in half, pan to collect blood and...a knife, dude I was so into it. I can't wait to experience the beautiful, natural cycle that is raising animals in a respectful and loving way to then kill and eat them to sustain our bodies with their nourishment. The food-based meetings were followed by an afternoon of CSA, community outreach and educational planning emails).

So, after a day of sitting and eating we were ready to dance our brains out. We witnessed a beautiful sunset while driving down the PCH to a free show at the Santa Monica Pier. We danced with Tomas ("a" should be accented in Tomas) and Mike, our Arts 4 Action friends. The band was made up of the surviving members of WAR (I think they were called The Lowrider Band-see upcoming Dazed and Confused mention). I think WAR is somehow related to the Chicano movement, but not sure. Hold on, I am googling this...According to WAR's website: "Our mission was to spread a message of brotherhood and harmony," states WAR founder, singer/keyboardist Lonnie Jordan. "Our instruments and voices became our weapons of choice and the songs our ammunition. We spoke out against racism, hunger, gangs, crimes, and turf wars, as we embraced all people with hope and the spirit of brotherhood. It's just as apropos today" They also played at the first Black Congressional Caucus and their song "Why Can't We Be Friends" (which will always remind me of the freshmen hazing scene from "Dazed and Confused" love that movie) played as a soundtrack to (quoting from the WAR site) "the first U.S.-Soviet space mission in which Astronauts and Cosmonauts linked up in the spirit of friendship." So, no Chicano movement connection that I found, but WAR soundtracking the astronaut/cosmonaut outer space love mission? Awesome. Oh wait, I found the connection. Check it out on a Mas (how do I put in accents on blogs? The "a" should be accented there) Magazine post http://www.masbakersfield.com/home/ViewPost/64573 I am totally digressing. Sorry.

The part of the blog where critical thoughts on 80's and 90's living and dancing really begins

After bootie shaking at the Santa Monica Pier we relocated to Pier Ave. in Hermosa Beach to check out a fantastic 80s cover band comprised of two good friends of mine from my college days at USC. Ryan and Nick put on a really good show. They put their own electronica, modern spin on 80's classics. I don't know if anyone else out in the blog void (love this term Katerina) had a childhood (uh, continuing into adulthood) obsession with David Bowie's "The Labyrinth" but Ryan and Nick do a stellar, stellar cover of Dance Magic Dance. So, as I (along with Cristy Rose and Sarah) was dancing with truly reckless abandon to all the 80s classics (reckless abandon like jumping and singing and spinning, but fully clothed) it got me thinking about the food lifestyles of the 80s and 90s. There seems to have been some generational, cultural shift in our approach to food. While I think there have been many major shifts in our socio-economic/cultural approaches to food, I come from a white upper-middle class family, so I am just talking about this sub-group here. This shift was brewing in the 70's (thank you major social movements, we are liberated! Liberated people are busy being liberated we must cook for convenience!) This shift seems to have exploded in the 80's and 90's. I know folks like Michael Pollen and Barbara Kingsolver (and many others as I have come to find out) have been writing about this exact thing, but I was thinking about this on a more personal level.

I was totally shocked at my mom's response the other day when I asked if I needed to dry the lima beans I had shucked off the lima bean plant Farmer Paul left (he left them for my mom! We are winning her over!). She said, "Oh no! Don't dry them! Lima beans are best fresh off the plant. I remember walking down my grandfather's lima bean fields and popping the fresh lima beans right into my mouth." Now, I knew my great-grandfather was a lima bean farmer, right here on the Oxnard Plain where our farm is, but I had never, in my life, seen a lima bean plant before moving to this farm. I had never even seen a fresh lima bean! The lima beans I was used to seeing (and declining to eat) were of the frozen, packaged variety! I was embarrassingly old when I made the connection that beans come in a pod and the pod grows on a plant that grows in the ground (I think this revelation came eating edamame out of the pod with Elizabeth at sushi).

My childhood eating memories are blurred with television ads. When talking about childhood eating experiences with other members of my generation we can all recite the jingles of push pops ("don't push me, push a push pop!"), tootsie pops (the owl asking, "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?"), bagel bites ("pizza in the mornin', pizza in the evenin', pizza at suppertime! When pizza's on a bagel you can have pizza anytime.") Feel free to add other jingles blogfriends. Is it weird that my childhood eating memories are a weird mental montage of nice family dinners around the table with animated animals crunching into tootsie pops and little kids shoving bagel bites into their mouths after soccer practice?

Another result of my childhood eating is I am an expert at using the microwave. Yesterday I steamed a whole spaghetti squash in the microwave. It was awesome. Most things I microwaved as a kid did not come in vegetable form. (Did you know you can make an entire box of Kraft Mac & Cheese in the microwave, from beginning to end?)

Here is where I get into the generational shift.
I GUARANTEE YOU both my grandfathers have pretty much always known beans come from pods that come from bean plants that grow in the ground.

I GUARANTEE YOU both my grandfathers were not marketed by food corporations at a young age (yes I know there was marketing and advertising around in ye old times, but there was no Disney Channel and Nickelodean television market).

I GUARANTEE YOU both my grandfathers were not experts at making mac & cheese in the microwave. I would be willing to bet (not guarantee) that neither of them has ever eaten mac & cheese.

I know elements of food convenience, food marketing and advertising, and food tech advances are vital to our daily lives and can actually make us happy and healthy eaters (I reserve the right to take this back). I am not advocating we overthrow all the advances made in food production and consumption. I think I am just critically reflecting. Are all these food changes, which mark differences in how my grandfathers and I eat food, really advances if I discovered as an adult that beans come from pods that grow on plants that grow on the ground and do not, in fact, come from frozen, cardboard, microwavable containers?

Homesteading in the 21st Century #2
As Katerina and I discussed, since the inception of farming folks have probably been better at farming/gardening than others. I imagine folks in the days of old would confer at town gathering or barn raisings and discuss crop problems or trouble shoot growing problems with village elders. We here on the farm are experiencing similar crop problems. Unidentifiable bugs are in our 2 acres. Our cucumbers in the intern veggie patch are looking sad. We also have village elders who help us troubleshoot (our elders are Mike Taylor and Susan Crespi!). However, we also troubleshoot with internet chatrooms and websites! A whole world-wide-web village of town elders!

Info about me #2
I grew up with a wonderful great dane named bluebell. When I was a child she fulfilled both my little girl dreams of having a dog and a pony. She was like both in one. I always knew that the comic strip Marmaduke was about a great dane. I just learned last weekend at Liv's going aways party (she went to Cuenca, Ecuador to teach at the same school I taught in!) that Scooby Doo is ALSO A GREAT DANE. This blew my mind. How did I not know this?

Casey is wonderful
Thank you Casey for being my 21st century tech troubleshooter/elder (you can be my computer elder even though I am technically older). The past two (and only) times I have blogged, blogger.com in cahoots with my computer has done some weird freezing thing. This resulted in me freaking out. Like really freaking out. Casey, your calm knowledge of computer language and behavior helped remedy its ills and I could successfully post my blog. Thank you. Thank you.

Update! Cristy Rose

Yesterday I took a morning walk about the land, and (sigh)it was good. I've just returned from an intensive program in Women's Spirituality at a school in San Francisco, the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). By the end of the program -- being in class from 9 to 5 everyday! -- I was thankful to be returning to the simple farm life with my sisterfriends and farm family. Some things I learned from school and want to share with them, include:

dancing and spirituality
herstory in judaism
composting/recycling everything!

Some things I learned from my life (readings, conversations with fam/friends/meditations) while in SF, include:

the power of speaking aloud our desires/the power of prayer
the realization that I am in love with potential/dreams


It's exciting to be able to have an outlet to share the knowledge and experience I've gained! It'll be interesting to see how we continue to bring ourselves together in this communal living throughout the year, no?

That's all from me just now.

what we're actually up to

Over the past couple of days I've gotten multiple phone calls, emails, and g-chat messages beginning with inquiries into whether I am all sore and blistered/toned and tan from spending all day in the fields tending vegetables and reciting Wendell Berry poetry with my sisterfriends. As I began to compose this post in my head yesterday, I decided to set the record straight. We've actually spent most of our time on our computers or in meetings getting the CSA going and plotting our farmers' market debut. Yesterday I had not yet pulled a weed or lifted a hoe, shovel or trowel. I thought this post would be an account of a typical day spent emailing, perusing CSA sites, and reading how-to books on subscription farming.

The moral of the story is, don't start writing your blog post before it is your day to blog.

After spending the last two weeks on very important but less than typical farming activities, we interns made a break for the outside this afternoon. While the corn, radishes, beans etc. on the 10 acres are not yet mature enough to receive our ministrations, we do have a wonderful experimental patch planted by our extern Kyle in the avocado orchard. This afternoon we decided that, having harvested our fair share of zucchini and cucumber from his garden, we should do a little something to help with its upkeep.

Problem is, other than Kat, we have minimal gardening experience. So it was time for a lesson. Here is the result:

Kyle gives a lesson. Kat says she already knows all this, can we start farming now?


Hard at work. For a little while at least.

After an hour or two, we were a) done planting salad mix and b) in the possession of some very large (and therefore marginally edible) zucchini...

Uh oh.





Moral of that story: if you want to get your zucchini across the road, throwing underhand is best.

Zucchini Bread Recipe!

And because I am a feminist who loves the art of cooking (and eating well), I'm adding to my previous post. Here is my mother’s zucchini bread recipe, as requested by a friend of the Abundant Table:

2/3 c. oil
1 1/3 to 2 c. brown or white sugar
4 eggs
3 c. zucchini (shredded, unpeeled)
2/3 c. water
3.5 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. vanilla
2/3 c. nuts, chopped

topping: 1/3 c. flour, 2 Tbsp. sugar, 2 Tbsp. br. Sugar, ½ tsp. cinnamon, ¼ c. chilled butter

Heat oven to 350. Grease 2 loaf pans. Mix sugar and oil in a large bowl, then add eggs, zucchini, and water. Blend in flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves with vanilla. Stir in nuts, then pour in pans. Top with topping if desired. Bake until wooden toothpick comes out clean, about 40-50 min. Cool slightly, loosen sides with butter knife. Remove from pans and cool completely before slicing. Keeps 10 days in fridge.

Note: I like to use almost all (about 3 cups) of whole wheat flour, often with a little flaxseed meal mixed in for a more “breakfast” bread rather than a dessert bread. Also, you can use less sugar, no topping, and 1/3 c. applesauce substituted for half of oil if you want a healthier bread.

If you like food and cooking as much as we do here, I recommend the movie ‘Julie and Julia,’ which Sarah and Casey and I saw last week.

"What do you want, a sex change?"

I (or maybe you) just fell for the trashy title trick. Caveat: This post is going to be a little long and reflective, which will definitely not always be the case for my posts … I’ve shared some conversations in the past few days that stirred up gender issues that I am really concerned with, hence the direction of this post.

My parents’ current home church, where I spent four years (and a few summers) of Sunday mornings, is a non-denominational Bible church surrounded by a stand of pine trees in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The pastor of this church baptized me as a follower of Jesus in a cold stream that runs through these pines, and the church nourished my faith in many ways. At the same time, this church falls short of the equality promised in the Bible to those who believe in the gospel of Christ.

The church recently held a meeting to elect elders. There are no women elders, and there are not any women currently represented on the board to elect elders. The pastor and assistant pastors are men. I recently submitted a question for a Sunday night q & a time. My question asked why women never read scripture in front of the congregation. At the forum, the men leading the event answered questions that were submitted about church structure and Bible history. They even answered questions about the occurrence of dinosaurs in the Old Testament. In the end, they regretted not having enough time to get to other questions.

That was not my only question that remains unanswered or unheard. As I sang with the church, I wondered why women always sing the echo parts in songs (“We will follow. We will follow. We will listen. We will listen. We will love You. We will love You…”) Why are our voices restricted to choir echoes and the nursery rather than reverberating through the sanctuary from the pulpit/lectern?

Two nights ago, my mother told me that she was beginning to ask some of these same questions again (she thought a lot about them while she attended seminary). Because of these questions, a person jokingly asked her, “What do you want, a sex change?” I don’t think she laughed. The message is clear: positions of authority belong to men. To be male is to be in leadership. If a woman wants to be in a position of leadership, logically, she wants to be a man. Get a sex change! Or at least a pulpit-power-suit, woman! At least try to look like a man.

I am convinced this is not how it was supposed to be. Women don’t have to be men to serve the church in positions of leadership! I know this from experiences and through being in churches with women who are obviously natural leaders and immensely gifted. As a professor of mine once said, (paraphrasing) the Holy Spirit doesn’t go peeking under skirts and pants before deciding who to gift.

Most recently, I was refreshed and reminded of the free and unbiased gifting of the Spirit of God through our first Sunday night worship service. Julie, Farmer Paul’s wife, is an Episcopal priest in the area. She led our first liturgy and worship time at our Abundant Table fellowship gathering at the farm house (Julie, Paul, and family used to live in this house and were kind enough to lend it to us interns rather than college student renters). In addition to us interns and Julie's husband and their lovely daughters, three other couples were present, one of them with young children, as well as three young adults connected to CSU Channel Islands. I loved the service for its intimate, familial atmosphere, for the time of questioning and commenting on the scriptures read by women and men sitting on couches surrounding the sacred/ordinary communion/coffee table. I especially loved our time of Eucharist that flowed into a potluck feast.

This sight from Sunday stays with me, soothing my frustrated thoughts on our patriarchal church history and church present: Julie stands in front of our fireplace, very much a woman, with two daughters beside her and breaks the homemade bread that she and her girls baked. “This is my Body,” and then she pours the wine, as Jesus did for his disciples, saying, “This is my blood.” The Body of Christ, bread of heaven, formed and given through the hands of a woman.

This time, my questions about gender arise from delight rather than anger and frustration. I wonder at the new meanings of this Eucharist. How does a woman priest’s breaking and passing of Christ’s body fill out our understanding of the feast? For me, being fed by Christ through Julie, a mother, brought a sense of nurture and tenderness that I had never before experienced when taking the bread from a male priest. I recalled a memory from a book called “God’s Advocates,” in which the feminist theologian, Sarah Coakley, observes that the addition of woman priests (and pastors, I’ll add), both enrich and challenge our understandings of a God who sacrifices the Godself, giving God’s own body and blood so that we may have abundant life. She points out that when the officiant’s pronouncement of Christ’s blood shed for the world comes from a woman, this adds a dimension to our understanding of sacrifice, that it becomes life-giving rather than defined by death.

I could go on for a while about how we can understand God better through women’s participation in church leadership, but I’d like to know what you think! I’ll take a cue from Erynn and open this thing up to the blog-o-world. Are any of you bothered by the “priesthood of all males” in many churches? If you’re a guy, I don’t think you’re the problem, but that the issue extends beyond to encompass and affect both genders, and can only be solved by men and women working together for greater freedom and true “Biblical” love for one another. Do you disagree on anything I say? What about those who were at the worship service (or others with woman priests)? What stands out to you?

Okay. Got to sleep now.

Good night,
Katerina

food.

there's obviously a lot that can be said about food
(but it's likely that i won't be addressing many of those things).
mainly i just want to write about all of the delicious food that we cook and eat in this house.
i have to warn you that by the end of reading this post,
you will likely be hungry
and kicking yourself that you did not apply to be an intern at the abundant table farm project.
consider yourselves warned.

last monday at our house meeting, we decided that each intern would have a night every week where she cooked dinner for the house.
sarah cooked tuesday.
i cooked wednesday.
erynn thursday,
and katerina finished the week off on sunday.
oh, and boy did we cook.
we dined like international royalty.

on sarah's night,
she decided to use the ample amounts of peanut butter that we had in the house
to make an indonesian peanut curry sauce (known as "gado gado"),
which she mixed with brown rice, sesame seeds, green beans, carrots, and chunks of fresh apple.
...
i don't really have words to describe how good that meal was.
maybe "otherworldly" or "heavenly" or "divine" or something along those lines.

then for my night, i decided to rummage through the good ol' vegan cookbooks,
take a cue from my bolivian friends,
and tackle a cold quinoa salad with tomatoes, basil, scallions, and yellow bell pepper.
then i stumbled upon another recipe to use up some excess vegetables
that involved a citrus-ginger marinade, 

which i threw on some sauteed asparagus, green beans, and carrots.
i sliced a few apples to finish it off,
and i would like to think that all left the table with satisfied bellies and smiles on their faces.

on thursday, erynn prepared a meal that was as good as sarah's tuesday concoction,
which is high praise indeed!
she spent all afternoon in the kitchen,
and ended-up presenting us with ecuadorian cheese breads called "pan de yucca" (much like bolivian cuñapes),
as well as some delicious mexican-inspired lentils,
and a fresh arugula salad with beets and goat cheese.
uh, yum.
(am i right?)

oh, and you know, friday, saturday, and sunday afternoon were filled with cold cucumber dill soup, homemade hummus, left-overs(!), delicious yogurt/fruit/nut breakfast combinations, freshly-picked produce at farmers market, zucchini pupusas...
clearly, life was pretty rough.

but then came katerina to save the day!
she started preparing her minestrone sometime friday night (if i'm not mistaken),
and had finished a double batch by the time our potluck came around sunday evening.
and. this. minestrone.
it had spaghetti squash, zucchini, golden squash, onions, garlic, tomatoes, lima beans (that she shucked herself!)...
ah it was so good!
then some of our guests brought over chicken molé, elaborate fruit salad, tortellini salad with sun-dried tomatoes, and vegan cookies.
balance was once again restored.

and life was truly good.

if these descriptions don't make you want to visit our home and share a meal with us,
i worry for you.
but if they do sound intriguing to you (if not absolutely mouth-watering),
then please come over!
sarah's cooking again tonight, and she hasn't let me down once.
you still have time.
so stand up, run away from your computer screen, out to your car/bike/roller skates,
and make your way to our table as fast as you possibly can!
i can almost guarantee that it will be one of the best meals you've ever had.