Eco-Photo

It really doesn’t make any kind of ecological or economical sense to import food or goods that can be created locally, yet that is exactly what we’ve been doing for over 40 years. Many of our craft skills have been scaled up into large factories and then we’ve seen those large factories moved over seas.  Now we find ourselves importing goods that were once made down the road, which is wasting a lot of time and resources in the process.  This globalization has helped to make the world “wealthier” and the people of countries like China and India have certainly improved their living standards.

Because of this new distribution of wealth, populations are growing and, unfortunately, resources are dwindling. We are finding ourselves faced with the challenge of using our resources more wisely. One way to accomplish that is to start producing and selling more goods locally.  Producing our own food and products locally will help us to become more self sufficient, and therefore more in control of our lives. I’m not suggesting we never buy imported goods, but that we begin buying a good percentage of our consumables locally and import the rest.

This is where local economies come in. Local currencies are monies that can only be spent within the community. They are backed by the trust of the people using them - trust that the community can provide goods and services that are needed. Local currencies are a tangible agreement with your community that you will spend your money with the people who surround you. That local exchange of money supports local jobs and helps to provide livable wages to the people living in your community.  And if you spend your money with your neighbors, you’ll get to know to know them and like them, and next thing you know, you are supporting each other in your businesses and your personal lives. This is what I call an enriched and vibrant life.

Local currencies allow transparency throughout the life cycle of a product or food. When I go to the farmers’ market, I’m paying for a farmer to continue farming and lead a good life.  I directly benefit from giving that farmer a good life because he in turns feels obligated to continue to give me healthy, tasty food. When I spend globally, I’m not sure who’s bank account or what agenda I’m supporting.  How do I know that the textile mills in China have good labor laws? Or whether or not the peanuts grown in Texas are sprayed with pesticides? Buying locally increases my power to support others who share my beliefs on how the earth, humans and animals are respected.

Watching the advertising trends of the past years has proven to me that we vote with our dollars. First I noticed that the fast food chains began offering options for the Atkins Diet. Now I’m seeing an incredible amount of “green” products on the market.  These new products were created to satisfy the public’s demand. If enough of us vote wisely with how we spend our dollars, be it local or federal, we are sure to create a more sustainable and humane civilization.

P.S. In doing research on local currencies, I came across a series of interviews with financial experts conducted by Bill Moyers, a highly respected PBS journalist. He is earnestly trying to understand the economic crisis and the series provides some good insights. You can watch them here.

I was amazed to learn that eggs are the result of hens ovulating. Unlike humans, they ovulate almost every day which results in a delicious egg. If a rooster is around then the egg gets fertilized but the chickens lay the eggs regardless. I don’t think they mind us taking their eggs. I learned these facts while photographing chickens which I featured in my April newsletter.

Along with my wonder at nature’s bounty I also learned some rather gruesome facts about conventional eggs. Each backyard chickener I met talked about the horrible living conditions of chickens in the “factory farms” which provide conventional eggs.  I did a little research online and found that our huge appetite for big profits and cheap food has driven the current model of the commercial chicken factory farm. The goal of the factory farm is to get the most egg out of the each chicken. This has lead to the widespread practice of raising chickens in battery cages. Battery cages are small wire mesh cages where the chickens live. With no room to walk or to spread their wings the chicken’s energy is used for the sole purpose of laying eggs. By limiting their movement and feeding them hormones, the factory farms realized they could get more eggs out of each chicken.

Not surprisingly, these conditions make the chickens sick and aggressive. Like other livestock factory farms, antibiotics are used regularly on factory chickens. This habit of feeding chickens and other livestock antibiotics is causing stronger strains of pathogens in humans and it is having deadly consequences.  I also heard that they cut the tips off the chickens beaks so they can’t peck each other. I guess they don’t need their beaks anyway since they are never allowed outside!

I did not visit a factory farm so I cannot say I saw these things with my own eyes.  But this brings up the question of trust. Like many, I’m having trouble trusting big food corporations. I have lived most of my life assuming that the food available to me in the grocery store is good for me. But recent research into the widespread use of ingredients like hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup have changed my assumptions. Now I question everything and trust my own experiences.

My experience with true, free-range eggs is that they taste eggier, the yolks are darker, and I feel more connected to my community. I call them “true” because apparently loose guidelines exist for the term free-range and some egg companies call their eggs free-range even though they only allow the hens access to the outdoors through a small door for one hour a day – not what I would call free-range. Alternately, organic eggs must conform to the more stringent rules and are probably the safest bet for buying in the stores.

So I have switched to buying eggs from local farmers. Humane aspects aside, eating pastured eggs seems healthier.  If we are what we eat, I’d rather eat an egg from a healthy, happy free-range chicken than a sick, depraved factory chicken. Ultimately, I’m responsible for my health and for the food that I put into my body. I recommend doing a quick search on localharvest.org to find a local egg farmer in your area or do some online research on the eggs available to you in the grocery store.  Call up the egg farm and see if you can visit, even if you don’t plan to go. I find that the reputable farmers are open to visitors and I’m suspicious of the one’s who don’t.

I also want to mention a DVD that Frank of Crippled Crow Farm gave me.  It’s called Wegman’s Cruelty and it is a 30 minute documentary on factory farm eggs. It is not easy to watch, but it’s proof that these farms exist.  Also, my friend Christie gave me an article on a study Mother Earth News sponsored comparing the nutrients in true, free-range eggs to conventional eggs that you can see here.

And what happens to the chickens when they are done laying? A lot of the backyard chickens let them live and have a natural death. Others have them “processed” at small chicken processing plants to be used as “stew” chickens. Many ethnic families, still knowledgeable in the old ways, will buy your chickens and prepare and cook them. Bok-Bok!

I don’t know that I’ll ever eat white grits again. Being from the Carolinas, Ken and I were brought up on white grits and have loved them dearly. But recently we tried some of Bob’s Red Mill stone milled corn grits, which are yellow. Yellow grits include the whole kernel where white grits use hulled kernels. We were amazed to find that yellow grits taste better, are easier to cook, and are more nutritional than white grits. Plus, we can fry up the leftovers to make some lovely polenta. I know the South loves it traditions, but I think they need to try yellow grits.

Anyhow, I promised in my February newsletter that I’d give more information from my tour of Bob’s Red Mill. Stone milling was the method used for thousands of years until the introduction of roller mill machines in the 1880’s. Roller mill machines became popular because they produced a fine, white, fluffy grain that did not quickly turn rancid or attract bugs. Unfortunately, white flour has less nutritional value. It’s widespread use increased the instances of nutritional deficiencies, so mills began to enrich the flour with vitamins and minerals in the 1940’s. Another reason stone milled grains are more nutritious is because stone milling is considered a slow cool milling method.  This slow cool method allows the natural enzymes to live in the grains, where the roller mill machines kill the enzymes because of the heat generated by the rollers.

Here is a small gallery of photos from my tour of Bob’s Red Mill. Since 97% of their products are shipped to grocery stores around the world, you may be able to find Bob’s grains at your local grocer or food co-op. Bob’s Red Mill has a big reputation for the many types of gluten free products he produces which include gluten free pizza dough mix and gluten free brownie mix. On the tour I learned that gluten free grains have to be ground in a completely separate facility from wheat grains because of cross contamination issues.

I found a few quotes from Bob online that sum up the stone milling process: “With all the sophisticated knowledge of recent times, no machinery has yet been developed that grinds grains into flour quite as well as our flint-hard quartz millstones quarried in France and used by discriminating millers since early Roman times.” “Our well-dressed (sharpened) sets of millstones turn the highest quality wheat into a finer, better baking bread flour than all the hammer mills, steel roller mills, steel mills, or pulverizers ever built! These slow turning millstones grind the bran, endosperm, and germ (containing its nutritious wheat germ oil) into flour in a cool natural way, creating a more assimilable food.”

I also discovered that hemp seeds are more nutritious than flax seeds.  They are high in protein, omega-3, and omega-6 fatty acids.  Unlike flax seeds, our bodies can digest the hulls and they don’t need grinding before being eaten.  The sad news is they are about 2 to 3 times more expensive than flax seed. Bob’s Red Mill buys their hemp seed from Canada because hemp is not allowed to be grown in the United States. A system that illegalizes the farming of a food that is obviously healthy for us has confused its priorities.

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.