A New Plot

LOCAL OR NOT LOCAL?

2008-08-08T05:25:00.001-07:00

“He’s taking the labels off,” my husband said, pulling me back.

“Who’s taking the labels off what?” I asked.
“Look,” he said again. “He is taking those tomatoes out of those boxes and taking the labels off.”

“What?” I asked. And sure enough this man, a worker, was taking big, red ripe tomatoes out of boxes labeled New Jersey tomatoes and after removing the labels, he was putting them in a display container ready for the farm shop.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I thought that you only sold local produce here, from the farm at the back.”

“Ah,” he smiled. “These are from New Jersey.”
“Yes, I see that. Why are you taking the labels off?”

“Because we mix them with the local ones,” he explained, as though it were normal.

Well, no point having a go at him, he only worked there and was doing what he was told.

I went inside the shop and asked the cashier if the owner was there.

“No, they are never here on a Sunday.”

“I want to buy local tomatoes, and now I discover that they are from New Jersey.”

“Not all of them.”

“Well how can I tell the difference since they are all mixed in together?”

“The local ones are the ugly ones,” she explained.

“I would like you to tell the owner that some of us want to buy local products. Some of us don’t like to buy food that has traveled a long way and drunk a lot of gas to get here. And I came here because I thought that the produce sold was from the fields at the back.”

“I will,” she said; bless her, she was a bit shocked.

But so was I. On my way back from showing a house a few years ago, I took a different route back home and saw the farm. I parked, went in, bought a few bits and pieces and forgot all about it. Until… you’ve guessed. Until I started my save the Earth effort. Then I remembered that farm and rushed back there with my husband, because my own three cherry tomato plants only give us a few offerings every few days, and delicious and organic though they are, we can’t quite make a meal out of them. Maybe a bruschetta, but that’s about it. Besides, one needs other fruit and vegetables as well.

I was so happy the first time I went back.

“Look, Darling,” I gushed. “It is all so fresh, just picked and brought in from the fields.”

I could hardly contain myself as I filled my trolley with red chard, cilantro, tomatoes, nectarines, grapes and a new discovery: roly-poly. I couldn’t wait to get home to cook and I must confess that local or not, the roly-poly was good. But that’s not the point. The point is that I thought I was buying produce grown less than a hundred miles from where I live.

When the idea came to me that I could help reduce my family carbon foot print by eating locally and to grow a few vegetables in my garden, it seemed like a simple enough thing to do. And to some extent it is, you have to eat what is in season where you live (how will I manage without avocados, I love them). And of course you have to relearn what grows when.

What I was not prepared for, was that I would find it necessary to almost radically change my and my family eating habits. And this is because as a result of what I am trying to do, I am learning a lot about the food industry that is difficult to stomach, as well as how what we eat affects our mind and spirit as well as our body. We truly are what we eat. More on that as we continue on.

But for now let me tell you about roly-poly; they are zucchine (remember that in Italian it is zucchine, not zucchini). As the name implies roly-poly are round and fat, they are firmer than the regular zucchine and also almost seedless. I slice them, drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle some salt, a pinch of oregano, or rosemary or both, or anything else you fancy, and bung them under the grill. Great mixed in with couscous, on top of warm, crusty bread, or as a pasta or polenta topping ………. Buon Appetito!

Bye for now,

Esmeralda

INHERITANCE

2008-07-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

My daughter was twenty-one yesterday. Do you know what some of her birthday presents were? A water jug with several months supply of filters and a stainless steel water bottle. And guess what, she was thrilled! Yes, because now she will not have to buy so-called mineral water in plastic bottles, which creates more and more waste. What a blessing she is in my life and what a role model she is to me. After asking myself all these years what I want to be when I grow up, I finally realized that I want to be like my daughter. She is the one who gave me the idea of turning the front lawn into a vegetable plot.

You see, she belongs to the generation that is inheriting the appalling mess that we have made of life on Earth. Wonderful being that she is, my daughter is doing a master’s in public administration, with a focus on international non-profit-administration. Her particular area of interest is Hunger Eradication. If you ask her, she will tell you that the Earth’s resources can take care of all our needs if used wisely and consciously. Wisely and consciously are the keywords.

Although ours is a family that enjoys a meat casserole or a roast chicken, we are learning that a vegetarian diet is one of the best ways to conserve the Earth’s resources and maintain a balanced economy. Figures from the Department of Agriculture show that it takes sixteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. More than ninety per cent of all grain produced in America is fed to livestock.

An authority in food geography, Dr. George Borgstrom estimates that more than one third of Africa’s protein-rich-nut-crop, is fed to Western Europe’s cattle and poultry.

World food authority Lester Brown tells us that the average meat eater goes through some two thousand pounds of grain a year, feeding ninety per cent of it to animals for meat as opposed to the four hundred pounds consumed per person in underdeveloped countries. Brown says that the average meat eater uses five times the food resources of the average vegetarian. It is facts such as these that have led food experts to conclude and point out that the world-hunger problem is unnecessary as we are even now producing more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet.

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer said that the reduction of meat production by just ten per cent, would release enough grain to feed sixty million people.

Now that’s food for thought! As I said, my family and I enjoy a nice piece of meat as much as the next person. The mouth-watering smell of ribs or hamburgers on the B-B-Q makes me hungry just thinking about it, but how can one ignore the facts? How can one pretend that the problem does not exist? Let us look at this some more*:

One acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes; the same amount can only produce 165 pounds of meat.
It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.
More than half of the harvested agriculture acreage goes to feed livestock.
It requires 3½ acres of land to support a meat-centered diet, 1½ acres to support a vegetarian diet and 1/6 of an acre for a vegan diet.
It takes approximately 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat and 4,000 gallons of water to provide a day’s amount of food per person on a meat-based diet. 1,200 gallons of water are needed for one vegetarian person and 300 for a vegan person.
Developing nations predominantly use their land to raise beef for wealthier nations instead of using that land for sustainable agriculture practices.
In order to support cattle grazing, South and Central America are destroying their rainforests. These rainforests contain close to half of all the species on Earth, including thousands of medicinal plants. More than a thousand species a year are becoming extinct and most of these are from rainforests or tropical settings used for the meat industry. This practice is also rapidly causing the displacement of indigenous people who have been living in harmony in these environments for thousands of years. And this is contributing to global warming.
For each acre of land that is cleared for human purposes, seven acres of forest are cleared for growing livestock feed. This policy is fast destroying the few remaining forests.
Topsoil is the dark, nutrient-rich soil needed to grow food. It takes more than 500 years make one inch of topsoil. This soil is rapidly vanishing due to clear cutting of forests for cattle grazing.
Water is being contaminated by chemically-based farming methods used to raise animals. Because of such poisoning of our freshwater resources, we are quickly running out of clean drinking water.

Cheerful isn’t it? And this is what our children are inheriting from us. And we haven’t even talked about methane yet. But we’ll leave that charming subject for next time.

Happy Birthday Florentina

Mummy

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxo

p.s. Tomato update – Sadly, the broken branch of one the plants I got last week has not mended. Other than that, and the fact that they are cherry instead of plum tomatoes as I had thought, all three plants are doing fine. We have eaten a handful (small one) already and they are very sweet. I will be making mozzarella before the summer is over.

*Source: Ayurvedic Nutrition by Nibodhi and Gunavati

NO TOMATO LEFT BEHIND

2008-07-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

“My body and soul are yearning for some home grown food,” I told a friend to explain why I was going to grow radishes.

“You see, the planting season is over for most crops, but I need something to keep me going until next spring, and I was told that it is not too late to grow radishes.”

“Actually there is a fall crop,” she said. “You can still plant leafy greens like spinach and broccoli rabe.”

“And do you know where I can buy the seeds?” I asked, really cooking now.

Later that afternoon my husband, my son Robert and I were on our way to the only local nursery that stocks organic seeds. I was excited and with my husband I kept an eye out for the sharp bend in the road where we needed to make a left turn (my friend’s directions were a bit sketchy). We made the left turn and then a right and found the nursery.

I told the owner that I was starting a vegetable garden and was looking for something that I could still plant for an autumn harvest.

“There isn’t much left,” he said leading the way to the seed rack. “This is all we have,” he said, handing me a packet of spinach and one of crisphead lettuce seeds.

“What about tomatoes?” I asked.

“Too late for tomato seeds,” he said. “But you can buy a plant,they are twenty per cent off.” And he called a young helper to go outside with me to find a couple of tomato plants.

I happily followed my young guide to the front of the nursery. My heart was racing, I had resigned myself to having to wait until next year to grow my very own tomatoes; now it looked as if I could still have my homegrown tomato and mozzarella salad after all. Granted, someone else had started the seeds, but I could still love and nurture the young plants like a parent adopting a long hoped for child.

And there I was, staring at a few dozen tomato plants. How to tell which ones to go for?

“Do you have any heirlooms?” I asked hopefully. Alas, as though in a mirror image of my life, no heirlooms awaited me. I would have to create my own.

As I scrutinized the plants, I found myself fretting that I could not take them all. In the end I chose two small ones that seemed to hold within the promise of the fruit to come. And another one whose irrepressible life had caused it to grow fruit and branches beyond her maturity. As we tried to lift her up, one of her tender branches broke and hung by a thread. Oh dear, I thought, taking it into my arms, hoping that I would be able to nurse her back to health.

“Careful,” I cautioned the young man as he unwittingly broke the young branch of another plant he was trying to untangle.

“They are all going to be thrown out soon anyway,” he said.

“Why?” I asked dismayed, and saddened that I couldn’t take them all.

“I don’t know,” he replied shrugging his shoulders.

While I was selecting the tomato plants, my husband had bought a roll of fencing wire to protect them from the deer and other animals that come to our garden from the woods on the other side of the stonewall.

It wasn’t until after dinner that evening that we were able to turn our thoughts to the tomato plants waiting on the patio.

“Shall we get up early tomorrow morning to plant them?” my husband suggested.

“I think that we should plant them tonight,” I insisted.

And so he went out in the dark, pointed the car’s headlights toward an empty flowerbed and gave the spade and rake a little work out. I sat on the front steps taking it all in, while eating ice cream. The fireflies added their little spark to the night and punctuation to my contemplation. How many families, I asked myself, could have had salads and tomato sauces out of the plants left behind at the nursery? And what about the feelings of the plants at being thrown away in the rubbish? They too throbbed with the Divine spark.

“Are you going to help or just sit there and watch?” my husband asked as he unwound the hose and watered the freshly dug bed.

“I am thinking about the tomato plants that are going to be thrown away. And I am thinking that no tomatoes should be left behind!” I lamented. “So many people starve in the world and here we throw food away.”

“And before I douse you, come and dig three holes for these tomatoes,” my husband said waiving the hose playfully.

I dug three equally spaced holes and Hugh put the plants in. For the time being, their branches are propped up on the stone wall and the wire fence protecting them is leaning against it. They are as safe and comfortable as can be and as someone once said, tomorrow is another day.

Esmeralda

By the way I didn’t find any radish seeds but I am not disappointed.

And one more thing; at some point I’ll want to talk about the farmers’ plight as well as the case for being vegetarian even though in my family we do enjoy meat.

TO TILL OR NOT TO TILL

2008-07-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Phew! I was really worried there for a moment.

When I first embarked – mentally - on this project of growing my own dinner instead of a lawn in my front garden, I didn’t bother thinking about all the ins and outs of the venture. I never do. You see, first I get an idea like say… going to India – see www.wifemotherseeker.blogspot.com for more on that – or growing vegetables in suburban New York, then I tell all and sundry, make a big thing about it and then I panic. Yes, I panic, because I get overwhelmed by the scale of what I want to accomplish.

The thing is, I have no green fingers and after pulling a few weeds, I get tired. I am not an outdoorsy person and I am not very fond of exercise. So, can you imagine how I feel that no one has come forward brandishing their shovels and hoes saying that if I supply my wish list, they’ll do all the work? My wish list is, by the way, all ready in my head: eggplants, you can cook them a la parmiggiana, or make caponatas and spreads with them, for example. Heirloom tomatoes of course. Zucchine, green beans, spring onions, corn on the cob, potatoes and sweet potatoes, different kinds of squash, and what else, oh yes, onions, garlic, chard, parsnips, maybe broccoli rabe, and of course plenty of lettuces.

And so it’ll just be down to my husband and I (mainly my husband). If that alone wasn’t bad enough, I discovered that growing vegetables involves a lot more than digging a hole somewhere in the lawn and planting a row of potatoes, as I had first thought. No, no, the soil has to be tilled first. In fact, as my mother explained, because this soil has lain fallow for goodness knows how long (not been cultivated), it will have to be tilled more than once. To be honest with you I didn’t even know what tilling meant, but I now understand that tilling breaks up the soil, making it soft and allowing it to breath. So, that’s tilling, but then, because we live with deer and other animals nearby, the plot has to be fenced as well as tilled and also mulched regularly. And mulching has nothing to do with munching as I used to think, but is what you do to stop weeds from choking your crop.

Well, as I said at the beginning, I was worried and wondered if I was up to the task. Having even started a blog on the subject, I had left myself with no choice (and that is how I do things) but to go forward. Still, we live in such a benign Universe, that when you put the energy of an idea out there, whatever you need to manifest it comes to you.

And there I was, at a retreat last week (which is why I am a bit late with my postings), waiting in line to use the computer, when I bumped into someone I had met in India this winter when on my spiritual boot camp. On more than one occasion this woman and I had slept on the same floor but never spoken more than a few words to each other. On this occasion too we weren’t saying very much, when someone else joined the line and asked me how my book was coming along.

“Well, it seems to have developed a new plot,” I replied. “It’s a long story actually, but I am going to grow vegetables in my front garden now.”

“I grow vegetables. I grow a lot of vegetables in my garden in Canada.”

Well I never. This was from the quiet woman I had met in India.

“Do you really? What do you grow?” I asked.
“Oh, all sorts. Tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, onions, squash.”
“What about sweet potatoes?”

“No, I don’t grow them.”

“I want to. My family really likes sweet potatoes.”

Then I shared with her my worries about being up to the job. The need for tilling, mulching and building a fence chief amongst them.

And that is when she told me about raised beds. A raised bed is like a large planter without a bottom and you fill it with dead leaves, soil and compost if you like and then you plant your vegetables. Now, I think you’ll agree that this is a much more manageable project for the likes of my husband and I. It also means that we can protect the beds with simple wire fencing. Isn’t that cool?

So we are all set, or at least we will be by the time the planting season comes around. And that will not be until May of next year. That’s right, almost a year from now. I know, because we are used to seeing and buying whatever we fancy at the local supermarket, regardless of the season, we’ve forgotten that there is a time for planting and a time for harvesting.

However, my Canadian friend told me that I can still plant radishes, and while radishes may not be high on your shopping list, I want you to know that my husband loves them with butter and dipped in salt. And in India they are used as a diuretic and facial cosmetic, so there.

Another thing that I’ll do from now until May, is some more studying on the vegetable subject, find the seeds that I need, and which I suspect will have to be started indoor first.

Esmeralda

please email me at: esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com

ONCE UPON A TIME

2008-07-12T17:28:00.001-07:00

“We’ve had thunderstorms every day for two weeks now,” I told my mother over the phone.

“They’ve had the same thing in Milan. Your aunt told me that they have caused a lot of damage,” my mother said.

“It’s global warming,” I said

“Yes,” she agreed. “Once we ate apples and pears in winter, peaches and grapes in summer. Now there is everything all the time. The fruit is picked under ripe and by the time you bring it home it goes from not being ripe to over ripe and it tastes of nothing.”

“Mamma, do you remember when we used to go with Nonna to pick the vegetables that grew just outside Paceco?”

“Yes,” she said. “Once upon a time we would walk to the edge of the town and fill a bag or two with wild asparagus, gira, qualeddu, senapa (dark green leafy vegetables that used to grow wild on the western coast of Sicily) but that was a long time ago, now houses have grown there instead.”

This conversation with my mother a couple of weeks ago, brought back memories of my childhood and adolescent years when walnuts and Christmas time came together and plums and apricots heralded the end of another long school year and tasted all the better for it.

But that was indeed a long time ago, and I had forgotten that there is such a thing as food geography and seasonality, so used have I become to finding everything a recipe calls for at the local supermarket. But growing up in Italy I never knew for instance, that avocados existed. In fact the first time I ate an avocado was at a French Bistro in London when I was twenty-two years old. And loved it! Now I eat Avocados all the time. And my children didn’t have to wait until they were twenty-two to have their first one. And talking of Avocados makes me wonder about this mad scheme of mine about eating local food. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I am also talking about turning my lawn into a vegetable plot!

Really, I do wonder about myself sometime. What I know about food is that I love to cook and eat lots of it. And then I wear it. But maybe one of the reasons why so many of us wear our food these days, is exactly because we are eating the wrong food at the wrong time and in the wrong places. Not to mention of course all the “stuff” that’s in our food these days, like sugar for instance – And here is what I found out about sugar in Ayurvedic Nutrition, A GUIDE TO CONSCIOUS EATING

[…]Intolerance to sugar is very common and manifests as chronic tiredness, depression, mood swings, behavioral and learning disorders, poor concentration, intestinal disturbances, and headaches. People often crave and become addicted to the foods to which they are intolerant. This often happens with sugar. Processed sugar affects our health in other ways […] it lacks significant nutritional value. It is a source of energy but lacks any vitamins or minerals. In fact, to digest and utilize white sugar, the body must use up its own vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, especially potassium, magnesium, calcium and B vitamins. This can lead to nutrient deficiencies when large amounts of processed sugar are consumed. Significant consumption of processed sugar is associated with the development of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

[…]Most people consume far more processed sugar than the body can use for energy. In America, an average of 130 pounds of processed sugar is consumed per year per person. This translates to 1/3 of a pound of processed sugars a day per person. Many times consumers are unaware of the large amounts of processed sugars hidden in packaged foods.

And so you see, when I learn things like this I realize that although I started on this journey to reduce my family carbon foot print, the benefits that follow eating simple, unprocessed locally grown meals go further than reducing gas consumption. As we go forward on this path, we will discover the far-reaching impact that eating non-seasonal, non-local food has on life on the planet.

Before I go,I wanted to add something to my last entry about bottled water.

Avoid drinking from very thin plastic bottles, as the plastic contains carcinogenic substances that can contaminate the water.

Did you know that by shaking it the water in container becomes oxygenated and undergoes cellular restructuring and more easily oxygenates blood and lymph while energizing the cells? Cool!

Esmeralda

Please email me at : esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com

ABOUT BOTTLED WATER

2008-07-07T06:35:00.001-07:00

We spend more on bottled water than we do on gas and we don't even complain about it. Did you know that in 2006 we consumed 8,000,000,000. 10% more than in 2005. Look what I found out:

Yes, some bottled water comes from sparkling springs and other pristine sources. But more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they’re drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren’t required to list the source on the label.
This year Aquafina will begin stating on labels that its H2O comes from public water sources. And Nestlé Pure Life bottles will indicate whether the water comes from public, private or deep well sources. Dasani acknowledges on its website, but not on the label itself, that it draws from local water.
Labels can be misleading at best, deceptive at worst. In one notorious case, water coming from a well located near a hazardous waste site was sold to many bottlers. At least one of these companies labeled its product “spring water.” In another case, H2O sold as “pure glacier water” came from a public water system in Alaska.
greener loudounAlso, do you know about compostable cups and utensils? They are made of potato starch, corn starch or sugar cane. Compostble items not only reduce the amount of landfill, but they also require less energy to produce. Oh, before I go; yesterday I made a delicious frittata with the parsley from the garden. I just thought I'd mention it.

Keep your emails coming and don't forget to keep looking for ways to reduce those CO2s like using a water filter instead of buying bottled water for instance, you might even help reduce the thunderstorms too.

Esmeralda

Please email me at : esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com

I FORGOT TO MENTION THE SAGE

2008-07-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

The storm had exhausted itself. Images of my vegetable plot to be, bursting with zucchine, fragrant heirloom tomatoes, eggplants (in Italian melanzane) peppers, corn and potatoes had receded into the ether, keeping a physical presence on the vision board in my bedroom. All was quiet within and without and I was almost asleep, when the sage from the flowerbed in the garden came crushing through my consciousness.

Undulating in the wind, she mournfully reprimanded me for having mentioned newcomers like parsley, thyme and mint in my blog and not her.

I am sorry dear Sage. Truly sorry!

She was the first and most successful herb in my garden and had pretty much looked after herself from the get-go. Many of my dishes would not have tasted the same without her: not the roast potatoes nor the yummy scrummy creamy tortellini with delicately flavored sage-infused-butter. Phew… I hope I won’t make any more faux pas like that with any of my future crops.

And talking about crops… Well you see, coming up with the idea of growing vegetables in a suburban garden (or anywhere for that matter) was the easy part. I know that anyone with a handful of soil grew vegetables in their Liberty Gardens during the First World War and Victory Gardens during the Second. But, how does one turn a lawn into a vegetable patch? How is the soil prepared? What equipment does one need? How much does it all cost?

In the meantime I have received some much-needed encouragement: Tony from the UK told me about an amazing ingredient that he adds to compost and he swears by. It is called Bokashi. I will look into it Tony.

A client of mine told me that she will try her hand at growing one or two vegetables when she moves into her new house. She is also one of the few people I know to drive a hybrid car (this is next on my wish list)

Three ladies from New Jersey emailed me saying that they wanted to sign up for the “vegetable club membership” and one of them said that she already hangs her laundry out to dry. Libby from Canada emailed me suggestions for an inexpensive do-it-yourself fence to keep out the deer, which I have sent on to my husband (I have volunteered him for the job.) She also supplied a very easy cheese recipe that my daughter, a friend and I put to the test this afternoon. Libby also told me that by making simple adjustments, she has reduced her family’s electricity bill by 25% and their carbon footprint is one third of the national average.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what a huge difference we could make if we all did something? Certainly it is not for me to preach about what people should or should not do. Yet I am sure that anyone can find ways in their every day lives to lessen their impact on the environment, such as conserving water (do the sprinklers really need to be on if it’s been raining?) or by switching off the light when it is not needed (like when there is no one in a room) Or how about saving the plastic bags that sliced bread comes in? They can be used when making school lunches for instance. When one starts being “environmentally” minded, awareness about one’s actions grows and so do ways of being mindful of the impact we have on our surroundings.

And here is Libby’s cheese recipe. Enjoy.

Warm 8 cups of milk on medium heat to 165 degrees F, add three to four tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice and stir until it begins to coagulate (that’s when the whey start to floats to the top.) Remove from the heat and let it sit for fifteen minutes then pour through a cheesecloth-lined strainer. Let it rest for an hour. While it is still warm it can be rolled into a ball with crushed nuts or chopped herbs.

Mine has been resting for the prescribed amount of time, and I can’t wait to go and try it.

TIPS - Laundry can also be dried indoors on a rack by the fire, in a spare bedroom, in the basement…

About zucchini - The correct spelling is zucchina for one and zucchine for two or more. Zucchina means small zucca, pumpkin.

About Sage – Common Sage, Salvia Officinalis, originated in the Mediterrenean basin, like most of our culinary herbs, but it is hardy enough to grow almost all over the world, both wild and as a garden plant. It has been valued for its medicinal properties since ancient times, and indeed its Latin name derives from the same root as ‘salvation’, since sage was considered able to save people from illness and death. It was also called ‘Herba Sacra’ – sacred herb – by the Romans. AND it will save you when you have nothing in the house other than tortellini (or pasta, gnocchi… you get the picture) Melt butter in a sauté pan, add a handful of, you’ve guessed, SAGE leaves then toss in your favorite tortellini and serve them sprinkled with Parmiggiano if you are in Italy or any other hard local cheese and a seasonal salad. Buon Appetito!

So, bye for now, but don’t forget to tune in, send me your ideas and go on, be a devil, give your spade a work out.

Esmeralda

Please email me at: esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com

Sites to check: www.goingcarbonneutral.ca

2008-06-30T09:44:00.001-07:00

A Vegetable Plot To Be

2008-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THE PLOT

2008-06-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

The worldwide farmers’ suicide crisis was the tip of the iceberg. Wanting to know more about it led me to discover agribusiness, multinationals, mono-crop cultivation, high-fructose-corn-syrup, genetically modified organisms, terminator genes, global warming, disappearing honeybees and on and on. The horror-movie-type-reality is that our species is destroying the Earth! It is time to change the plot.

And this why in the past year I have gone from simply being interested in sustainable development, to wanting to take what concrete steps I can, big or small, to help save the Earth by reducing my family carbon foot print.

I am lucky enough to have my own backyard and while I am no master gardener, I do manage to grow a few herbs such as basil, parsley, mint and thyme for use in my kitchen. I have been collecting all biodegradable foodstuff generated in my home and returning it to the soil for quite sometime now. Also, since this past April I have started hanging my washing outside and I reckon that I’ll be able to continue drying it al fresco well into the autumn.

Of course we recycle paper and plastic, though I am looking for ways to use less of it altogether. But in a quiet, meditative moment, I felt that there must be more I could do to lessen my impact on the environment and that is when I came across a piece by Steven Hopp in Barbara Kingsolver’s “ANIMAL,VEGETABLE, MIRACLE.” It gave me the inspiration to expand the scope of my save-the–earth-efforts. What those proposed efforts are, I will explain in a minute, but first let me quote Hopp:

Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen- about 17% of our nation’s energy use – for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use. […] But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of total used oil used for our food. The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. Each food item in a typical U.S meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. […] If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of local and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels a week. That’s not gallons but barrels.

And this is what I want to do — reduce the amount of fossil fuel-thirsty-foods my family consumes by using local products as much as possible. I have also given myself — and my family — the challenge of turning part of our small suburban backyard into a vegetable plot, and growing our own dinner. Hence the title of this endeavor:

A NEW PLOT

Efforts To Help Save The Earth, One Home Grown Meal At A Time

I would welcome advice and help wouldn’t go amiss either. In fact I would love for other kindred spirits to take up their spades and join me.

Esmeralda Williamson-Noble

ps. I would like to try making my own mozzarella. Apparently it can be made in the kitchen in half an hour, the basil I have already, all I need for the salad now is the tomatoes. I'd better get busy.

Please email me at: esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com