Eco-Photo

Last June 21 on the Summer Solstice, Ken and I began our first batch of mead. We’d enjoyed our friend Homsi’s mead in the past and couldn’t resist the adventure of making our own when he asked if we wanted to make some with him. We knew it would be fun, but as we were cleaning the 60 beer bottles for housing the mead, we realized making mead was a very sustainable act. Making mead is sustainable because we reuse beer bottles (saving recycling energy), we buy ingredients locally, and the mead doesn’t need to be shipped to us from a brewery. On top of those reasons mead saves money, is incredibly tasty and has a higher alcohol content which means we drink less.

Our summer solstice batch is made with honey and strawberries from Kruger’s Farm on Sauvie Island and has some champagne yeast to make it extra bubbly.  Homsi says it will take between 12-18 months for our Summer Solstice mead to mature, but it seemed appropriate to open a bottle a few months early on December 21, the Winter Solstice. The mead was a beautiful light pink color, slightly dry and very bubbly. I’m looking forward to trying it next June.

After visiting a grass-fed cattle farm in Texas (see December 2008), I wanted to visit a grass-fed farm near home. I had bought meat a few times from Jonathan Ehmig’s booth at the Portland Farmers Market, so I decided to drop by his booth again and ask if I could visit his Highland Oak Farm. Jonathan was more than happy to let me visit and he encouraged me to come out before all the leaves fell off the trees. I set up an appointment to visit and headed out early in the morning. We had a storm the day before which blew off a lot of the leaves and left behind some very dense fog that lingered for a few hours.

Jonathan has about 400 head of cattle and they all eat the grass from his many acres of land. The cows are grain fed on organic hay during the last couple of months of their lives, which he says helps to make the meat tender. I can personally vouch for the tenderness and juicy flavor of his beef. Before visiting his farm I purchased a new york strip steak and Ken created a lovely stir fry. Perhaps most people don’t stir fry New York Strip, but I must say it was the best stir fry meat I’ve had. It is comforting to know that his cows live a healthy life and are treated in a human manner. Here is a link to a gallery of photos I took of his farm. http://www.shawnlinehan.com/photos/highlandoak/

In the photos you’ll see an old, red, Chevrolet truck. Jonathan operates under the theory that dogs can stress out the cows so he and his father-in-law entice the cows to move between pastures by giving them hay out of the back the truck. It’s not easy work, but it seems like a good life.

I often go to Jamie Kitzrow’s Spring Hill Farm booth at the Portland Farmer’s Market. His vegetables always look healthy and beautiful and everything is organic. His farm is just like his booth - very neat rows of crops spread over many acres of beautiful, dark earth.  I was amazed to hear that Jamie grows around 80 types of vegetables each year. At the time I took these photos (November) he was harvesting kale, turnips, greens and onions which were just sprouting. While talking to Jamie about his current growing season and the stringent process of being organically certified I had an a-ha moment. He pulls a baby turnip out of the ground – the same type of turnip I had just eaten the day before – and I was instantly reminded of my very first time in the darkroom watching a print appear on the paper in the developing bath.  The two experiences had the same sense of “magic”. Instead of creating a print, I could create a delicious piece of food by planting a seed into the earth. Jamie says he is still amazed by the process, too.