22 posts tagged “garden”

The other day we were watching an interview with the singer Jewel about her life growing up in Alaska, and she said that basically up there you spend all summer getting ready for winter. 

We don't live in Alaska anymore, but Idaho is close enough (actually, according to the USDA Zone Map, many places in Alaska, including where Jewel lived and where we used to live, do not get as cold as it gets here, and considering they actually have humidity up there, the weather in general up there is less harsh than it is here), and we know exactly what she means.

Today my husband and stepdad went out to cut wood and spent all day (well, 7 hours) doing it.  We now have a giant pile (about a cord and a half) of wood scattered about our backyard; my son has already built a fort out of some of it.  That wood needs to be split and stacked, and we still need to get about 4 more cords.  It's work--muscle-straining, backache-inducing work.

And today I spent about 4 hours working on cherries.  I had bought about 10 or 12 pounds yesterday at the farmer's market.  These are locally grown (more or less) Bing cherries, picked absolutely ripe and indescribably delicious, the kind of cherry that turns you off supermarket fruit.  I washed them all and pitted them.  The slightly overripe ones will go into jam (make that tomorrow) as cherry jam is one of my all-time favorite yogurt toppings, and we need a lot of it.  The perfectly ripe ones are being individually frozen.  I put them on cookie sheets to freeze, so that once they are bagged I can just pull out however many cherries I want at a time instead of having to defrost the whole bag. 

All the peas are harvested and stored now.  We have about 10 quarts of snow and snap peas in the freezer, along with 2 gallons of shelled peas.  We also dried enough peas to total about a pound of dry peas for soup.  We dried all the peas on a homemade screen rack outside in the sun.  We will plant peas again soon, for a second harvest in the fall.

Chamomile and other herbs for medicine and tea have to be harvested almost daily in this weather, because they're growing so fast.  We dry them on the same screen rack outside, using nothing but solar energy.  We're going to have a bounteous supply of chamomile tea, although I'm also mixing it with pineapple weed flowers.  Pineapple weed is, yes, a weed, but it's closely related to chamomile (the Matricaria chamomile, anyway), and it tastes really good as tea and offers some of the same benefits (being soothing, etc.).  We also have calendula flowers to dry and yarrow.  Indeed, I am utterly in love with yarrow.  I have never tested its supposed fever-curing properties, but if it's good enough for Achilles, it's damn sure good enough for us.  We also picked about a pound of wild mint leaves, and we are drying them and intend to mix them with our garden-grown mint (we have three varieties, currently) to make a mint tea for winter.  I'm letting the cilantro do as it wants to do and make coriander for me.  The poppies are also doing what they want and making seeds, later to make lemon poppyseed muffins with.  Lillies, sunflowers, nasturtiums, and cornflowers (aka bachelor's buttons) are all blooming to great effect and pleasing me mightily.

Oh, right, y'all wanted pictures.  After work finishes up, OK?

Also at the farmer's market yesterday, I bought 20 pounds of local apricots.  Yum.  I hope to get another box next week.  Of course, we are eating them, letting the bright-orange juice get all over our faces and forearms, but we will also make jam (we eat a fair quantity of jam, mostly because we only buy plain yogurt, and we put jam on top of the plain yogurt--we also use it on biscuits and pancakes and so forth, of course, but the yogurt habit is what really affects our jam consumption), and then--THEN!--I ordered a new food dehydrator, a 9-rack commercial type unit, and we will make dried apricots.  Oh, super yum.  I bought the big dehydrator because we intend to do a lot of drying this year, especially once my husband gets a deer (jerky!--fingers crossed, as getting a deer is by no means a foregone conclusion), and things like apricots and cherries take a long time to sun-dry here.  I think we're going to do the tomatoes out in the sun, though.  Oh, right, I also intend to make zucchini chips this year.  I read about it this winter, and I'm always looking for new ways to sock zucchini away for the winter since it produces so abundantly, and apparently dehydrated zucchini slices make a delicious chip, that you can just eat straight out of the bag like a potato chip.  You could also rehydrate them, of course, and use them in soup or whatever.  Whatever.  It's chips I want.  I figure once the zucchini gets going it shouldn't be too hard to fill that 9-rack dehydrator.  Fortunately, I have a mandoline for easy uniform slicing.

Oh, we also found a big patch of wild raspberries the other day while we were fishing/harvesting mint.  They're in flower now.  Can't wait...can't wait.   

I only have one week of work left for the summer, and it's good, because August is too full of getting ready for winter to hold down an actual job.  Once the tomatoes and zucchini start in earnest (all our tomatoes are still green right now--we should start having cherry tomatoes soon), dealing with them is a full-time job. 

People ask me all the time if I don't get tired of it.  The truth is that we get very tired of it about the end of August or middle of September, but the rest of the year makes up for it.  Well, not only that, but to be honest, I think for us there is great satisfaction in doing this kind of work.  There is satisfaction in using your hands and your back to do real hard work, in getting sweaty and dirty from mixing about with earth.  All three of us (because my son helps, sort of--as best as a 3-year-old can) sit back in October and look at our carefully split-and-stacked wood, our pantry full of dried and canned foods, our freezer stocked with both vegetables by themselves and some ready-to-eat convenience foods that I make (stuffed zucchini, soup concentrates, zucchini fritters, etc.), and we take pride and comfort from it.  It will mean lower grocery bills for us, of course, and it will mean fewer trips to the grocery store, more selection when decent produce is hard to get in winter, and higher quality food.  It also means that a significant portion of the work we do in our lives is not work where we trade our time for money, but where we work directly for whatever it is that we need, cutting out the money part of the deal.  It means that that work that we did was work we did as a family; it was time spent together, working towards a common goal, laughing, bickering, cooperating, trying not to cut each other's fingers off with the axe.

I don't mean to get too sentimental about it--it is hard work, and as I said, we do get tired of it.  And I don't want to sound preachy, but sometimes I wonder if more people tried it out, if they wouldn't also find it more rewarding than they imagined.  I wonder, too, if people would appreciate the energy (in the form of electricity, oil, or food) they consume more when they knew what that consumption meant in real physical terms.  Maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful as a society, and maybe we wouldn't abuse food the way we do.  Maybe being outdoors and working and finding yourself reaching for apricots and peas for snacks would give us better health.  Maybe the time spent working with their families would be good for kids and adults alike.  Oh, I don't know...but maybe.

I know, I know--I'm a dreamer and an idealist, but when you spend 4 hours pitting cherries, you have a lot of time to daydream.  Trust me.

So, I'm sitting there eating some popcorn and enjoying one of life's truly great guilty pleasures, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, listening to great Gordon tell some aspiring chef that he has tiny balls or something, when this commercial comes on.  It's for an upcoming news program about Zimbabwe and why Mugabe just can't be beat.  I think the answer is clear enough when one fella says something like, "Well, if you're the opposition, you'll be in jail."  But this does not satisfy Mr. Fucking BBC News Guy.

He asks the question:  Why does the US send its military to impose democracy on Iraq but can't be bothered with Zimbabwe?

I have to answer that question with some of my own questions:  Hey, you're British--if you care so much about Zimbabwe, why don't you send your own goddamned military to impose democracy? Or don't you think Zimbabwe is worth British blood?    Are you meaning to imply that it's a good thing America is doing in Iraq?  Because most of us would beg to differ.  Are you seriously meaning to imply that America should send its military to interfere with the politics of YET ANOTHER sovereign state?  How many nations do you think ought to have the American military in them, muddling around in their governance?  Do you seriously, seriously not realize that America has no more military to send fucking anywhere--not anywhere, not for any reason?  Do you not know that America has no more money to spend on this shit, either?  Seriously, there are a lot of nations who count on America for their defense, and right now, even such a soldiering sort of nation as America cannot muster enough troops to cover current commitments adequately, let alone add new ones.

And, last but by no means least, what the fuck? 

It's just so revoltingly stupid.  It's very easy to blame America for everything, but when are people like this guy going to realize that you don't get it both ways?  You cannot buy a Big Mac for lunch and then blame America for the fact that fast food is taking over your country--YOU fucking bought the Big Mac.  Stop buying Big Macs and American fast food companies will close for lack of profits.  Similarly, the world relies too heavily on the American military to protect them (hello, Japan) and to intervene when there is any kind of humanitarian crisis.  Then, of course, they resent our military presence everywhere.

If I was Commander in Chief, knowing this sort of thing, I'd just be all, "Dude, Mugabe?  Isn't Mugabe, like, the capital of Turkey?" because, you know, we're just stupid Americans who don't know anything about any other places and don't care.  Might as well live up the stereotype.

While we're on the subject, I keep hearing that because however many Americans cannot find Iraq on a map, they can't possibly know or understand what's going on over there or have any reasonable opinion about the war.  To me, there appears to be no logical connection between the two things.  Finding something on a map does not inherently imply or require any understanding of that thing or the geopolitical environment of that thing, or anything else.  I know it's also hilarious and gratifying to constantly harp on how stupid Americans are, but please.  You have to come up with something better than that to impress this American that she is stupid. 

I'm struck by a sudden craving for a Big Mac accompanied by tiny-scrotum jokes from Gordon Ramsay.  You know why I love Gordon Ramsay?  The man's a tyrant, yes.  But he fucking cares.  He cares about food, he cares about the chefs he works with, he cares about the restaurants he's there trying to help.  I don't watch Hell's Kitchen, because I did once, and the contestant people (people? is that the right word for that collection of cretins?) were beyond depressing.  I've never seen such a bunch of sad sack cooks in all my life.  But Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is brilliant stuff.  Come insult me, Gordon.  Please.  Because I know that if I take your insults to heart and follow your f-words to the letter, I will totally get a Michelin star. 

Speaking of food, because this will purge Mr. BBC New Man from my system, let me tell you:  Food preservation season started today.  I am not ready for that part of the garden effort yet.  But the greens are telling me it is time.  The greens, you see (and here I include spinach, some lettuces, and an array of the mustards and cabbages), hate this time of year.  They hate the day length; it makes them go to seed quickly.  They hate the sudden dry heat, which makes them turn bitter and tough.  They hate everything about it.  So, we're pulling them up.  Tonight it was mustard greens.  Tomorrow it will be spinach and bok choy and Napa cabbage and probably the red mustard as well.  God have mercy.  Because once food preservation season starts, it won't let up until late September or early October.  After the greens, there will start being peas.  And cilantro and parsley which are also desperately trying to bolt of late.  By the time we get done with that, we will be lucky to have a short time before the early cucumbers start coming in...then the early beets and carrots...and I'm already going to be exhausted before the tomatoes even come in. 

It's a strange cycle, I guess, or it seems strange these days.  You work your ass off half the year and enjoy the fruits of that the other half.  During the winter, when we're relaxed and being merry (and very cold), we are so grateful that we did the work--that we cut the wood and split it and stacked it; that we did the garden and harvested so many things; that we took those things and things we got a great deal on at the farmer's market and preserved them in some manner (canning or freezing or drying, usually) because our freezer and pantry are full of organic vegetables and fruits.  But right about now, in the start of the preservation season, it's hard to remember the times in winter when the work is done and I just have to pull stuff out of the freezer or a jar.  I must keep reminding myself of how good it is then.  That's the only way through this. 

Especially now, with these damned allergies.  I've always had hay fever, I suppose, but never like this.  Last year was bad, our first year in this town; this year is markedly worse.  T's theory is that I'm allergic to the wheat that is growing and blooming all around this town.  He may be right, since eating wheat gives me a lot of trouble.  Whatever it is, I have never suffered allergies like this, and once I find out what it is, we are moving somewhere where that thing does not grow.  I don't care if that means we're moving to Antarctica.

Whew.  We got pretty far afield from the original topic.  Fekkin BBC.

Yesterday was the summer solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. How did you celebrate the arrival of summer and the longest day of the year?

By shaking my fist at the heavens.  This is some fucked-up weather we're having.  Spring, very cold this year and extraordinarily damp (not that we're complaining about the rain, but really?  50 degrees in June?  That's the best you can do, sun?), lingered on and on...until, suddenly, about two weeks ago, the temperature climbed 30 degrees and went completely dry.  We went from rain every day to 23% humidity. 

My garden is in shock.  The few things that were really enjoying the cold damp spring (spinach, mustard greens, peas though they would really rather be a bit warmer) suddenly--oh, and I do mean suddenly--started suffering heat stroke.  The sweet peppers almost all dried out and died.  The eggplants nearly all suffered frostbite in those last cold days when we had unexpected hail, snow, and frost (in early June), but they're making a good recovery now.  The peas and their lovely purple and white blossoms are drooping and wheezing.

We're in despair.  There are only three things so far that are doing unquestionably well:  cilantro, dill, and sunflowers.  Sigh.  The cilantro and dill are totally taking over the garden, they're doing so well.  Actually, the nasturtiums are doing very well, too, so it's nice that they're edible.  We're going to have to take what we can get this year. 

Also, for the solstice that we actually forgot about and do not celebrate in any way, we went to Jackson and ate okonomiyaki. 

But, hey, we did the coolest thing today.  We put in a new window in the kitchen.  Mostly my husband and stepdad did it, and I just popped in to make concerned noises from time to time.  It's a supersweet window.  Low-e, tinted to keep out the hot afternoon glare, very nice--and it opens, which the former kitchen window did not do.  It makes me feel like a real homeowner, like a real adult, to have gone to the Home Depot and ordered a window and brought it home and installed it.  I don't know why it should make me feel that way, but it's like the final goodbye to the way I used to live.  And that's fine with me.

What are some of the best(and worst) things about summer?
Submitted by L33tchica.

Well, the worst thing about this summer so far is that it isn't summer.  As we approach mid-June, temperatures are not rising above the 60s.  See that blue area?  See that 50?  Yeah, that's us, on June 8.  Bloody hell.  YOU THINK EGGPLANTS GROW IN THIS WEATHER?  NO, THEY DO NOT.  I'm so aggravated, not that there's anything to be done.  Someone needs to pray to the weather god or something. 

But ordinarily the best thing about summer is the fresh produce and swimming in rivers.  I don't know why I like swimming in rivers so much given my experience.  We used to do most of our swimming in Arkansas in the White River, and you always have to be on the lookout for water moccasins, a kind of snake.  Up here in the north, swimming in the Blackfoot River or whatever, the water stays so cold that it actually makes your bones ache.  It's incredibly painful, yet also joyful.  If I remember right, it gets warm sometime late in the summer, so there's just this little window of opportunity between the time the river warms up and the outside temperatures drop so low that you can't or don't want to go swimming anymore.  Maybe that's why I love it, because it's so fleeting.  Delicious river swimming.  My ideal day is to spend all day in the river and then top it off with a grillin party and watermelon that drips juice all down your arm. 

The worst thing about summer.  Hmmm.  Well, it depends on where you live.  In Arkansas, the worst thing was the combined heat and humidity, I suppose, although the incredible numbers of parasitic insects (chiggers, skeeters, ticks, etc.) is a close second.  I remember days when we would have 100 degree heat (that's F--38 C) and 100% humidity without it actually raining.  That is a special kind of misery, one I was unhappy to encounter while 2 months pregnant in Vietnam.  In New Mexico, I suppose the worst thing about summer was just the heat, although it's not so bad--I mean, it's very hot, but it cools off substantially at night, and it's not humid at all.  Here in Idaho, man, the worst thing about the summer is this fucking wind.  It is the wind of hell, so dry that you can feel your skin sort of crinkling up and dying after just a few minutes. 

Oh, except we get the wind in winter, too, as a special helper to the cold, a way of moving the sub-zero temperature straight into the core of your body to cause immediate cardiac arrest. 

Anyway, at least the peas and spinach like this weather, so the garden won't be a total waste. 

Holy swizzle sticks.  Last week it snowed.  Seriously.  Not a lot, but it did snow.  Today it was 85 degrees F (let's call it 30 degrees C, for you foreign communist types).  I shake my fist at the heavens. 

Oh, oh, first some good news:  I don't think I told you people, but I totally got a teaching job again.  I am adjunct faculty now.  Their plight is now mine!  I will be teaching medical transcription (yay?) and English for a Montana college.  I will work entirely online and entirely asynchronously so that I can do the work around my other schedules.  It's going to be so fantastic.

We got our "economic stimulus" money today, and it was...puzzling.  There are two adults in our household and one child, so we believed we would be getting $1500 ($600 per adult, $300 per child).  But we actually got $900.  Now, I realize it's stupid to complain about suddenly receiving $900, but we are puzzled as to whether I don't count for $600 because I only work part-time or if T doesn't count because he isn't a citizen (though he is a legal permanent resident, a full-time worker, and a taxpayer).  T thinks it's probably him because it isn't the first time that he hasn't counted for something since he came here.  We think the American immigration system is wack.  But anyway.

Oh, I have to make one comment (or possibly more) about Top Chef before I continue.  This week Antonia made the comment, and from the tone I am assuming she meant to disparage, that Dale only cooks "Asian food."  That's like insulting someone for only cooking "European food."  In fact, in this one episode he made a Japanese-ish salad and then a Vietnamese lunch.  I would venture that there is more difference in flavor profiles and ingredients between Japanese cooking and Vietnamese cooking than there is between Italian and French cooking.  Get over your Occidentalism, bitch.  Besides, in the last episode, Dale actually made a ragu that was one of the only things the judges liked on that team, and so far as I know, Italy is not in Asia.  Sorry, I just really hate it when people think that all "Asian food" is alike (or, worse, that all "Asian culture" is alike).  It really ruffles my feathers. 

OK, OK, onto the good stuff.  Hum de hoodle.  The weeds proliferate.  The weed problem here is never going to be really under control because we have two large fields that are entirely uncultivated and uncontrolled near us, and the seeds blow in from there.  But the number and tenacity of the weeds blows my mind every day.  Fortunately, we eat some of them (dandelions good), but today I pulled up a dandelion that had a taproot of roughly the same diameter as my wrist.  Obviously I didn't get all the taproot, which means it will come back, and when it does, I'm going to break out the big tools and get that taproot and roast it and drink a cup of Victory Chicory.  Yum.

My son is on a kick where he wants dandelion muffins all the time.  For those we use the flowers.  I pull all the petals out of their base and only use the yellow petals, then I just fold them into a regular muffin recipe, and they give a light honey-ish flavor to the muffins.  We like them a lot, and my son is a devoted picker of dandelions when he is offered muffins.  Later this season, I am going to make "poor man's capers" by pickling miscellaneous edible flower buds, and I have dandelion buds on the list.  If we keep picking the flowers now, we might actually have some flower buds again late enough in the season to try it, but we'll see.  I've heard the "poor man's capers" are quite good, and I do have a recipe of sorts, but I haven't made it in the past.  I'm growing a lot of edible flowers this year, so I should have a good variety to choose from, each with its own flavors, and then maybe I can choose a favorite.  It is unlikely that I will ever live in a climate where I can successfully grow real capers, and we can't afford them at the store, so I have my fingers crossed.

I'm finding myself somewhat baffled, also, by the sporadic germination going on in the beet and daikon areas.  I have about 8 daikon that are just growing like mad, and they're all clustered together in this one little section of their designated growing area.  Same with the beets.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why the other seeds around and near them are not germinating.  However, I am a big believer in Darwin, and I will keep seeds from these few, these proud, these survivors, because clearly these seeds have what it takes to survive the harsh conditions in which they find themselves.  I feel like I need to do a Stephen Colbert fist pump now.  I'll bet seeds are much happier in California.  Damn this weather.

Let's see.  My son keeps snacking on herbs before they've really had a chance to grow.  He is especially partial to sage and thyme, although the various mint plants are taking some hits, which is fine because you can't kill mint once it's there.  Raw, straight off the plant.  Am I the only one who finds this odd?

(In other good news, the kid is now entirely diaper free!  Yay!  It took a while to get him off the night diaper, but we let him set his own timeline and do it when he felt ready, and it's worked like a charm.  It's so cute when he wakes up all sleepy-eyed to go potty in the middle of the night and then demands a "huggle."  You can have a huggle anytime, kid.)

Operation Shubbery is also coming along grandly.  I don't know if I mentioned before, but when we bought this house, there was very little in the way of shrubbery or shade trees.  Our gigantic hounds promptly killed off the backyard grass, too.  And last summer we baked.  No shade, bare dirt, white house--our backyard was a fucking convection oven.  This year, we put rosa rugosa all along the south fence (that's where most of the wind comes from, and the roses should look good and offer some wind protection).  We also installed three baby trees--no, four.  Three paper birch and a black walnut, though they're all just one-year-old saplings right now.  Along the back of the house, we have put two rose bushes and two blueberry bushes and we're going to add one red-twig dogwood.  My husband has cut sod out of the places where we have the vegetables and the new flower beds and installed the sod in the backyard.  The dogs are sequestered in a portion of the yard.  They have shelter there and very nice shade, and when we are back there with them to mind that they keep out of the veggies patches and refrain from eating the rose bushes, we let them out to roam around the backyard, but so far the sod is living and looks good.  I am really hoping that between the grass, the new bushes (which are admittedly still small) and the sunflower forest we're going to plant, this year won't be quite so bakey back there.  It was truly intolerable last year.  Next year, we are going to put in several more lilacs.  For one thing, we need some screening in the front yard.  We live right across the street from the elementary school, and I often find myself groggily watering my rhubarb in pajamas and cursing at squirrels, and the kids don't need to see that.  For another thing, we need to screen that giant damned propane tank in the back yard.  We have one new lilac there this year, but we really need two to properly screen it so that we can enjoy our flower beds and corn field without having to look at that hulking sign of dependence on fossil fuels that are not only unsustainable but also originate largely in countries whose governments I don't particularly wish to support.  God, I hate the propane.  I love that my cook stove is gas, yes, because electric stoves are stupid (unless it's one of those super induction stoves that I covet so, as if such a thing were ever going to be financially within reach for us), but I hate everything about our heating system.  We have taken note that we need more wood this year, and we will get it and burn it and try to get off the Saudi teat, but damn. 

People, right now, and this is no joke, the plants are eating up all of my available free time.  I even do things with them (repotting, watering, what have you) while I'm watching Stewart and Colbert.  I feel like I am eating, breathing, and sleeping dirt.  It's not entirely awesome, and I'm ready to just get all the little babies planted and get it all mulched so that I can occasionally take a breather.  Bleh.  But official last frost date here is Memorial Day (sure, it could frost after that, but you have to bet that it won't--the only month frost is truly unlikely here is July), so a lot of things can't really go out until then.  I may well die before then.  And now I'm all frantic because I'm actually going to be gone on Memorial Day weekend, and not much will get done (we're going to Austin, TX--my son, me, and my mom).  I alternate between feeling like there's only so much I can do and it will all get done eventually, if not in the most ideally timely manner, and freaking out because it's not all already done now. 

Oh, I need to get some pictures up, don't I?  Eh, when I get back from Austin, I'll figure out how to get the pictures from camera to computer, I promise. 

Anyway, I'll be writing more when things get a bit more sane around here. 

I just wrote several paragraphs flaying some idiotic bitch that I randomly saw on TV today, but then I lost interest.  Yes, she was an idiot.  She was an idiot of a variety that I have met very commonly, namely the idiot who thinks that having friends who are gay and/or Hispanic wins her the Tolerance Merit Badge, despite the fact that said friends grew up in similar conditions, were similarly educated, read the same books, and hold entirely the same political opinions as she does.  Because diversity is all about the skin color or sexual orientation.  Right.  Idiot. 

But then, as I said, I just lost interest.  Idiots are a dime a dozen.  She was certainly not an exceptional idiot--half the college students in Missoula think exactly the same way (and the other half are too drunk to notice such a subtlety as someone's race).  So.  Let's pass her over for more interesting and non-idiotic topics.

Namely!  The asparagus!  It hath risen!  So, fuck you, Californian asparagus!  It's nothing against California or its asparagus, but I'm so excited that the asparagus I tediously planted and laboriously tended last year is coming up this year.  As yet, the stalks are barely peeking above ground, but we will actually be able to harvest and eat some of this year's crop.  Sweet mother Mary!

Oh, and the radicchio overwintered very nicely, and we harvested our first radicchio today!  Hurrah for fresh greens (or reds, as the case may be).  They are calling out to me for some bacon and cream, because nothing enhances healthful greens like a giant dose of heart attack.  Yum.

I don't know if I told you, but I developed an elaborate garden plan this year to milk as many nutrients out of our backyard as possible.  First, there are the cool-weather, spring things like peas and fava beans and spinach.  We basically turned our entire garden space over to these things with the understanding that they will be mostly kaput by the time we need to begin insertion of nightshades (tomato, pepper, eggplant).  In other words, we expect to have approximately one gazillion peas.  The first couple of weeks after planting, we had terrible weather with snow and lots of freezing, and the peas refused to sprout, and I had begun to despair that, as so often in the past, all my plans had come to nought.  But they sure the hell are sprouting now.  We have rows and rows of peas (only two rows of favas, because we do love favas, but last year they failed miserably, and we couldn't see giving a lot of space to something that failed so completely).  We have Alaska bush peas, Green Arrow, Blue Pod Capucijner, and god knows what else--name a variety of pea, and we likely have it sprouting out there.  Some will get frozen.  Some will get dried.  Many will be eaten right there in the garden.  Yum.

The spinach is going nuts!  The kale!  The daikon!  I am so pleased.  Despite the batty weather, things are going according to plan. 

We did also get some tomatoes this year that are supposed to have some cold hardiness.  Specifically, we have Beaverlodge, Oregon Spring, and Stupice tomatoes.  All of those do need protection from frost but should otherwise be OK in the cold.  I'm a little skeptical.  I learned to garden primarily in Arkansas, and the heat and humidity down there just make this a much different ballgame.  We did bite the bullet and go ahead and plant the Oregon Spring seedlings, though, and so far they look fine.  We're also putting in the potatoes.  Ack!  The potatoes!  What a fiasco!

See, my parents have recently purchased 5 acres where they are building a new house, and I had received permission to plant my potatoes on their land, so I ordered....ohhhh...about 27 pounds of seed potatoes.  That's actually 27 different varieties, one pound each.  I got them from Ronniger's, a source I highly recommend.  I have every color of potato known to man, I'm fairly sure, and I believe we have three different varieties of purple potato (my favorite!).  As it turns out, the water is a long, long way from being hooked up at my parents' new house (the city is dragging their feet--long story), so if I planted the potatoes there, I'd have no way to water them and so would have to just pray for rain everyday.  So, we planted them here.  It's going to be tight to get everything in this year.

I thought earlier that I should list all the varieties of veggies that we're growing to give you a sense of the scale of the enterprise here, but I realized that that was a bad idea.  We have more than 20 varieties of tomatoes alone.  Hell, we probably have more than 40 varieties of tomato, and then there's the peppers and the eggplant and the potatoes and the brassicas!  The brassicas! 

Perhaps I can give you a sense of the stupid overreaching of my plan by telling you we have two different kinds of sesame (kin, which is tan, and kuro, which is black).  Four kinds of scallions, in addition to the chives, shallots, leeks, and onions.  Three types of kale.  Two types of salsify.  Salsify, for chrissakes! 

Lord, I cannot wait.  It's all so delicious. 

OH!  OH!  I have to tell you about this new book I got.  Obviously, since I do the home canning, I am always on the lookout for good cookbooks for that activity.  Canning is not a subject that gets a lot of play in contemporary cookbooks, as you can imagine.  I suppose it is out of style, but it's really something you need a good cookbook for since it is really one of the most scientific and potentially hazardous of all kitchen tasks.  You can't half-ass it when you're dealing with pH and pressure--it's serious business.  Anyway, so I happened upon this book called Pickles to Relish.  It was written by a scientist/home canner who apparently is inhabited by a semi-fictitious alter ego known as "Jamlady."  And both of them are serious.  The first part is a rant about the failures of modern education, the failures of modern society, and a call for a return to the art and science of home pickling.  It gave me goosebumps.  I mean, she is preaching to the converted, but I was so pleased to know that someone (anyone!  even a questionably mentally ill woman!) else thinks this way.  I have no named alter ego, yet I have long felt crazy and isolated by my pickle-making.  It isn't just a hobby, dammit.  It's a way of life!  God, I love crazy pickle-making ladies.  Maybe later this summer I'll have another contest to give away some pickles. 

Also, later this summer, I'm going to start getting with some recipes and processing and storage information for all the vegetables. 

I suck because I totally caved since I have paid employment, more or less, and got satellite TV.  Seriously.  Out here if you don't have satellite, you have pretty much nothing (ABC is all). 

We got the 200-channel package.  Had to, to get Bravo so I could get back in on the Project Runway/Top Chef thing.  Tim Gunn is really necessary.

I didn't realize just how much I missed The Daily Show and Colbert, either.  I am still in awe that Hodgman compared the business model of al Qaeda to that of Quiznos. 

So, yeah, we're back on the TV.  Feh.

Anyway.  I'm down here shopping for seeds.  I've been studying--and I do mean studying--seed catalogs and gardening books for months now, and I have a game plan.  We're going to grow everything.  Possibly I have gone insane. 

Because, see, I live in Idaho.  Idaho is fairly far north.  The entire month of January this year, it did not once get above freezing.  Yet I just ordered a collection of seeds for a "tropical garden."  Just who do I think I'm kidding?

I think I can make it work.  It gets quite hot here in the summers.  The issues will be a) keeping tropical plants moist enough and b) getting them a long enough hot season.  The moisture issue can be controlled in large part with generous mulching.  Getting them extra hot days is going to take various types of plastic coverings.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, people, because we are also growing sesame, sweet potatoes, and peanuts.  I'm fascinated by the growth habit of peanuts, and I had to try to grow some.  But none of these things are even close to being adapted to this area. 

We're also growing a vast assortment of crazy Japanese veggies this year.  T grew up on a farm north of Tokyo, though, and he's grown all these things before (including sesame) and he thinks, with the exception of the peanuts, that we can get it all to work here.  He thinks the peanuts are just madness. 

He also, if he lets himself think about it too much, thinks the quantity of tomato plants we are planning to install is madness.  We might oughtn't go into numbers here--but let's say it's north of 50, south of 100, and they're going in at different times so we have staggered production.  So that makes it all OK.

Anyway, the goals this year are three.  The first is to improve the quality of the soil.  This "soil" we have here is terrible.  It had nothing but grass for who knows how long, and it's near worthless.  We have been adding organic matter to it--llama poo, hay, veggie waste, etc.--but it needs more.  In a few places we need hardpan broken up.  So, I have concocted a scheme to alternate crops and cover crops (the cover crops will serve multiple purposes including breaking up the packed dirt, adding nitrogen and phosphorus, and providing us and the chickens with some greens (mostly the chickens). 

The second big goal is moving to as close to year-round gardening as it will be possible to get here without a heated greenhouse.  We have been debating building a heated greenhouse, but since we're not staying in this house permanently, it seems like a big thing.  Anyway, if the weather cooperates, our first things will start going in the ground just after St. Patty's Day.  The last things will be planted in September--of those, some will be harvested in late October or even early-to-mid November, some will get mulched and stored in-ground (carrots, parsnips, leeks, etc.), and some will overwinter to produce the next year (garlic, shallots, etc.)  That only leaves us with 3 months in which we have nothing growing out there and even less time with no fresh veg at all.  To hell with the supermarket.

And the third goal is DAMN we need windbreaks and shade.  I mean, DAMN.  These hot, dry winds of Hades rip across our garden from the south and EAT OUR SHIT UP.  The tomatoes, which I put along the south fence not knowing about the hell-winds, did not like it one bit last year.  My poor, beloved Brandywines.  I shall treat you better this year, my pretties.  Anyway, a windbreak of mixed shrubbery is going in there--some rosa rugosa, some nanking cherries, some chokecherries.  It should be quite fetching and protect my beautiful little tomatoes from Satan himself.  Another group of shrubs will go along the back of the house to absorb some of the afternoon heat that beats down right into my kitchen, the kitchen that is already hot from all the canning and has a window that DOES NOT OPEN.  Last summer was unbearable.  We are also planting a couple of trees back there and a big forest of tall sunflowers to provide some relief from it all (not to mention tasty seeds for snackin'). 

*sigh*  So much to do!  I want to get out there right now, but the foot and a half or so of snow left on the ground suggests it is not quite the time.

But I do have the seed catalogs, both online and off.  I wonder at the variety of seeds available.  We're trying to go mostly with open pollinated seeds so we can save them and even then, there are thousands of kinds.  Hell, there are probably thousands of kinds just of tomatoes.  I want to try them all, too.  Fortunately, I think we're going to sell some of it at the farmer's market this year, so I can justify all that zucchini (the catalog need only say "Italian heirloom variety" and I'm ready with the order form).

I'm browsing the catalog of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange right now, and I have just suddenly become convinced that I must grow chervil.  And horehound.  And...

It snowed all day.  All day and most of last night, and apparently it's set to do it again tonight.  When that happens, you have to really stay on top of the snow removal or else you get stranded (particularly when you drive a Toyota Yaris that has, like, 5 inches of ground clearance).

So I was out shoveling out the driveway (or, really, mostly sweeping it, as it is very, very dry snow) and a neighbor came up riding an ATV with a snowplow attachment and offered to plow our driveway out for us.  I respectfully and gratefully declined--it was nice of her to offer.

But this is one of the things that I think is so intensely stupid about modern American life.  It's a driveway and a front stoop; it took about 10 or 15 minutes of sweeping to get it totally cleared out (granted that has a lot to do with it being such powdery snow).  Meanwhile, for those 10 or 15 minutes, I created no pollution, I spent no money, and I got some exercise.  I also got to have fun with my son, who loves helping sweep and shovel, and the dogs who enjoyed wading through the virgin meter or so of snow accumulated in the front yard.  Why would I want a machine to do that for me?  What would I really gain from it?  I'd get less exercise, pump out noise and air pollution, and free up 10 minutes maybe ...to do what, exactly?

There is a pattern in which Americans will pay for something to make their life more convenient by doing some bit of trivial work for them, then pay to go to a gym or pay for exercise equipment (which, likely, they don't use enough) and go do that separate from their chores, then in the overall scheme of things, it's saving them nothing.  Maybe they get a little extra time, which most studies suggest they spend sitting unproductively on their asses watching reality shows.  Feh. 

I think about the garden the same way.  True, it's a lot of work, although it could be done in easier ways than I did last year, and the canning and freezing take time and effort and forethought.  On the other hand, it's work that, again, creates relatively little (canning and freezing create some, but far less than the alternatives would) pollution, gives us exercise and vitamin D from all the being out in the sun.  The alternative is to not garden, work more hours for money that I can then exchange for food--food that creates an unknown quantity of pollution and does not require me to exercise.  Most importantly to me, the time spent gardening is time spent with my family, as we garden together, while time spent working more hours to make more money is time spent away from my family.  It's also time spent caring for living things and getting back in touch with nature and the season cycle.  My most high-tech piece of gym equipment is a wheelbarrow, and my son is getting quite an education while we're out there, too.  It's all win-win. 

Our bodies need to do hard work, and so do our minds.  The human body and brain were not meant to spend most of the day sitting, let alone sitting reading gossip web sites and watching TV.  Until T and I are much too old and infirm to handle a snow shovel and a rake, I expect we'll carry on like this.  You wanna feel our biceps?

Well, instead of arguing that whatever isn't elitist, I'm just going to whip out my huevos and admit it:  I'm a fucking elitist.  And this is a typical day for my elitist little family.

7:30 a.m.:  My adorable son begins shouting at me:  "Wake up.  It's light outside.  Get up, mama."  I went to bed at 3:30 a.m., having had to work the night before, but I do, in fact, get up.  He promptly strips naked and begins streaking through the house shouting random things such as, "DOOM DOOM DOOM" and "Gir!  Come here, Gir!" while I shuffle bleary-eyed into the kitchen to nuke the last of yesterday's coffee and make a fresh pot.

7:45 a.m.:  Some coffee has been drunk, and the kid has his sippy cup of milk.  He refuses to wear clothing, preferring to wrap himself in a blanket and haul it around and get it dirty all day.  Fine.  Whatever.  I shuffle bleary-eyed down to the basement to attend to the matter of heat.  Thankfully, it did not snow again last night, and I do not have to do any shoveling this morning.  Shoveling out the driveway would, anyway, have to wait until after breakfast.  You need fuel for that shit.

8:00 a.m.:  The fire has gone so cold, I can't even get the coals going again.  Damn.  I guess I wasn't attentive enough at "banking" them last night.  Start new fire.  Adorable, naked son rams a giant stick into the neat little kindling pyramid I've built, destroying the fire.  *sigh*  Order him to go play with his Play-Doh and restart fire.

8:15 a.m.:  With fire raging away and providing us with nearly free heat, I stumble out into the frigid, frigid yard to attend to the mutts.  They are hungry, and their water has frozen.  I deign to pet them as I set their bowls before them.  I go into the kitchen and retrieve a large bucket full of very hot water with which to thaw their water.  I take a few minutes to ponder the snow-covered vegetable garden and deeply ponder just how many tomato plants we can reasonably fit back there.  I reckon it's a lot.  Then I realize I'm freezing my ass off and my footwear is unsuitable for standing in the snow.  Back to the house.

8:30 a.m., give or take:  Start cooking breakfast, now with second cup of coffee.  Grits and eggs today, with some yogurt and melon.  The melon is from last year's garden and was a particularly delicious specimen.  The flavor retention of frozen melon is good, we're finding, but the texture is somewhat lacking.  Anyway, it's nice to have melon in winter, however flaccid.  While the grits are cooking, make a round through the house to check the houseplants for water.  Hmm....the sage really needs water, and so does the fern.  The kid waters the sage (and eats some) while I water the fern.  Serve breakfast in son's Spiderman bowl, causing him to leap off the sofa with joy. 

9:00 a.m.:  Ooh, husband's home.  Smelling of dehydrated potatoes as always (it is, admittedly, better than when he used to come home smelling of salmon roe and salmon guts).  He eschews the grits, makes toast, and then does a round in which he checks that I have dealt satisfactorily with the fire and the dogs.  'S if.

9:30 a.m.:  I'm falling asleep in my chair, so I ask husband if he can possibly remain alert long enough for me to catch a wee nap.  He assents, and I go to bed but not to real sleep.  I reach a point in exhaustion at which I can no longer sleep well.  It takes days to recover from that, and I don't have days--I have an hour.  *sigh*

10:30 a.m.:  Husband goes to bed, I get up.  I remember to get meat out of the freezer for dinner--about half a kilo of deer tenderloin, to be precise.  I spend some time thinking about how I'm going to cook it, in case I need to make other preparations.  Decide on Japanese food.  Japanese venison?  I will do as Tim Gunn decrees, and make it work.

11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.:  Play with son.  We made Play-Doh sushi and built a house from Lincoln Logs, a house that lacked structural integrity to be sure.  We also decided on some of the seeds we want to order.  He is a full partner in this gardening deal, and this year he will have an entire patch to himself.  He wants peas, pumpkins, watermelons, sunflowers, radishes, tomatoes, and "peppers that aren't spicy" in his patch.  Last year he ate a couple of those Chinese hot peppers straight off the bush and a pepperoncini as well and apparently that memory stuck with him.  He wants, specifically, orange tomatoes and "biiiiiiig" pumpkins.  Alrighty.  Also, upon looking through the flower portion of the catalogs, he has decided he wants them all.  He still isn't dressed.

1:00 pm.:  I decide he should get dressed and manage to get him into underpants and a shirt, anyway.  Oh, hell, lunch?  What to do about lunch?  Well, there is brown rice and pumpkin soup left from last night, so that's what we'll have.  Heat it up, serve it.  Watch The Jungle Book while we're eating.

1:30 p.m.:  Don't finish the movie, because damn it's so sunny outside, and the temperature is approaching freezing (which means it's much warmer than it has been--we've been in the teens [Fahrenheit] lately, which would be below zero in Celsius), so we decide to go for a walk.  This entails a bundling-up process that takes nearly half an hour, as the kid likes to do as much of it by himself as possible, and it takes him longer to get his own boots on than it does if I put them on.

2:00 p.m.:  Depart for the post office and the bank.  I'm walking; he's in his wagon checking out the frosty scenery.  Winter wonderland, indeed.  Get the mail--nothing worth the trip, but nothing bad either.  Head to the bank to get cash for tomorrow (we're going to Jackson, Wyoming, tomorrow with my parents--there is a whole food store in Jackson, and we are in desperate need of provisions).  Make small talk with the bank teller, a woman I deeply distrust.  But I guess she had nice holidays.

2:30 p.m.:  The kid decides he wants to walk home.  Christ, we'll never get home.  It's nice for him to walk, but a breeze is kicking up, and I'm beginning to go all Popsicle.

4:00 p.m.:  Notice grandma and grandpa are home, so decide to stop in and visit for a while.  The visits have their ritual elements.  For example, every time we go there, the kid wants grandpa to open the gun safe and bring out the knives.  My stepdad has quite a few knives in there, and they take out each one and the kid (with help from grandpa) methodically cuts large holes in cardboard boxes.  He cuts until he decides the knife he is using is "too dull" and then they have to either sharpen it or get a new knife.  This continues until the box is shredded and all knives have been used.  Then he starts hauling out the animal calls, particularly the elk bugle which is his favorite.  Then we play a game in which he removes a cookie cutter from grandma's drawer and asks, "How do you say this in Japanese?"  Mom and grandma say, "I don't know.  How do you say that in Japanese?"  The kid says, "GAPA" (which is an unvarying answer--whatever it is, it is always GAPA, and to my knowledge, there is no such word in Japanese.  He just made it all up.) and runs off.  We chase him around, and the chase culminates in tickling him while asserting that he made that up.  Repeat, until most of the cookie cutters are scattered around the floor. 

5:30 p.m.:  Head for home, time to tend the fire and cook dinner.

5:40 p.m.:  Ack!  The fire!  It is cold, so cold.  Start it up again.  Get a real rager going and decide to stick a sweet potato in there to make yaki imo.  Yum.

5:45 p.m.:  Rifle through the freezers and pantry looking for shit to cook.  Edamame from last year's garden, yes!  Decide to make a nikujaga kind of thing with the venison, potatoes and other root veg from the garden.  Find a languishing chunk of cauliflower that needs to be cooked.  Decide to stir-fry it with sesame, chile, and katsuo bushi.  Look at the giant bunch of dried shiso, also from our garden, and decide to make shiso rice.  OK, now there's a plan.  Time to cook.

6:00 p.m.:  The kid is watching a DVD of Horton Hears a Who and guzzling hot tea.  I am chopping and guessing wildly at how much soy sauce and sugar and all of that to put in the various things I'm cooking.  But I am marveling at how much stuff we're still eating out of the garden, and I start daydreaming about next year's garden...again.  I look in the pantry to find the mugi (barley flakes) to put in the rice to make mugi gohan, and curse the fact that all of our grains are in those unlabeled plastic bags because we buy them in bulk.  They are all organic from Bob's Red Mill, but it's easier to buy them in bulk...easier, that is, if you ever bother to label the bags. 

6:45 p.m.:  Dinner's almost ready.  Husband is awake and shuffling around the house.  The kid and I head down to the basement pantry to pick out some pickles.  We opt, for this meal, for green tomato pickles and carrot pickles.  These carrot pickles in particular are really gingery and crisp, and we love them.  All homemade, all from our garden.

7:00 p.m.:  Serve dinner.  The kid keeps picking up giant chunks of the yaki imo, stuffing them into his mouth, and then belatedly realizing they are still too hot for that.  Everything is tasty, although husband thinks the green tomato pickles are weird-ish, and he is less excited about shiso than I am.  But he eats it all, and so does the kid.  The cauliflower is a hit with everyone.

8:00 p.m.:  Time for the kid's bath.  Bathtime is the province of the father.  My only role in bathtime (except in weeks when my husband is working swing shift) is helping the kid undress and ordering him to take his filthy clothes to the laundry, please.  They bathe, I nap. 

9:00 p.m.:  Awake.  It's time to read stories.  We read several stories, then he just completely crashes in my arms.  I put him gently in bed and think motherly sorts of thoughts about his angelic little face and sigh deeply.

10:00 p.m.:  Hey, time to work!  Yay! 

Feck.  Sit here until 3:00 a.m. working.  Have to get up at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow to go to Jackson.  Feck, feck, and more feck.  It's a good thing we're so elite, with our chest freezer and meat stockpile and locally grown veggies and fruits.  I mean, if I was one of those working-class people, I would surely go insane from the lack of sleep.  But now that we are "locavores" and elitists and drive a brand-new Toyota Yaris, we are feeling pretty sweet.  We're ready to oppress the proletariat. 

It is pretty cool to tend the fire, though, and it's even cooler that the stove almost entirely eliminates our use of the propane-fueled furnace.  Propane is, of course, petroleum, and I don't like to use it so much.  It's yet more awesome that I can then use the wood stove to cook parts of our dinner.  I rule.

By the way, the wood we use is all deadwood from the forest.  You can get a permit from the Forest Service to go out and cut up the dead wood that is lying around, wood that would be fuel for a forest fire if you just left it lying around, for super cheap.  No living trees were harmed to heat our home.  Thank you.

I mentioned previously that I had just read Michael Pollan's wonderful book, The Omnivore's Dilemma (why haven't you read it yet??  Janette gets toffee!  the rest of you get scorn!), and now I am reading the captivating Barbara Kingsolver book, Animal Vegetable Miracle.  Well, I just read half of it in one sitting.  There will be much more said about both of these books, as time goes along, but the main thing about the Kingsolver book is I just keep thinking over and over again, "Yes, this is how I want to live.  This is it."  To be completely honest, the book has made me laugh and sigh and weep just a tiny bit at her descriptions of how good good food is and how much it means to our lives.

Anyway, one thing both books have in common is that they take up the question of whether it is elitist to recommend eating organic and sustainably raised food.  Many people have apparently decided that it is, because organic food tends to cost more at the grocery store, and it is presumed that this makes it unaffordable to anyone who makes less money than Michael Pollan (for the record, I have no idea at all how much money he makes).

Both books assert that every consumer-citizen is subsidizing the industrial food chain through taxes.  The Kingsolver book comes up with some figure, something like $725 a year from each household goes to subsidizing this horrifying, petroleum-guzzling "food" industry.  They both say that those hidden costs actually make a standard industrial diet comparable to an organic, sustainable one.  That is absolutely true.  Our society as a whole is paying a huge cost--larger, if we count all the damage to the environment and the public health--to keep the shitty tomatoes coming.  The only problem with telling people this, people who do not think that they can afford organic, is that you are asking them to pay the higher price of organic foods in the market while continuing to pay the taxes that subsidize the other.  This makes organic food at this time yet more expensive, because it's not like you can opt out of paying that portion of your taxes (how nice if we could write in and say, "Well, I buy organic food, so I'm not paying this percent of my taxes that would go to ConAgra"). 

Both authors also point out that Americans on average spend only around 10% of their incomes on food.  I am unclear if that figure includes eating out, or if that's only groceries, but this still seems absurdly low to me.  My household spends a good deal more on food--probably 20-25% of our income.  Partly that is because our income is lower than average; the same amount of grocery bill in dollar terms will obviously be a higher percentage of a lower income.  Part of that, though, is that we willfully select the best quality foods we can possibly manage.  If we're going to buy syrup (I make a lot of fruit syrups from berries and such that we use on pancakes, so we don't always buy syrup), for example, it will only and always be real maple, not that weirdly viscous corn syrup-based crap.  Managing our grocery budget is sometimes complicated and requires a good deal of attention on my part, but I am not willing to cook up unidentifiable industrial products and call it dinner.

Anyway, this is all just to say that I don't think it's elitist to eat organic.  I cannot understand the mentality of people who are unwilling to spend money on food.  The quality or lack thereof of your food is one of the most vital pieces of life, in the most fundamental of ways.  It isn't even just the nutrients and phytochemicals and whatever else they find in spinach these days--and it isn't even avoiding pathogens like E. coli either, although that, too. Food is about caring and connections and nature and health.  How is it even possible that we've allowed ourselves to get this way?  The mind boggles.

Life's too short to stuff a mushroom?  Fuck that.  Life's too short not to. 

I wonder...if I cut our grocery budget to 10% of our income, what would we eat?  What kind of horrors would we be forced to ingest?  With that extra money, I could go buy myself a digital camera for sure.  But then every time I sat down to dinner with my husband and son, I would be telling them and myself that I care more about buying shit than I do about our health and enjoyment (for we are food lovers, all of us).  I would die a little.

I think that if you're in a lower (not the lowest, because then you quite probably cannot afford organic) spot on the economic totem pole than Michael Pollan is, you do have to be a bit smarter about how you afford good food.  I cannot walk into a grocery store and just buy whatever I please. Instead, I have to plan and scheme.  I bought assloads of food, especially locally grown fruit, at the farmer's market this summer and froze it or otherwise preserved it.  Now, I can easily have perfectly ripe peaches in January, and I don't really feel guilty about it.  As you all know, we gardened (and next year it will be even bigger and better!  I am so dying to get started.  We've been sitting around drooling over seed catalogs, planning.  Cardoons!  Jerusalem artichokes!  Sesame!  We can grow it all!) and preserved that food, so that we are still eating our own backyard zucchini in some form nearly every day.  We hunt and fish and while that would not be sustainable if every American decided to start doing it, it is at current rates, and that is some good eats (not to mention nutritious--wild meat is substantially lacking in marbling, it's true, but marbling will kill you).  Not all of these systems are open to all people, but more people have access to them than realize they do (farmer's markets are increasingly available, and very many communities have garden plots you can rent for the season; in the communities where I have done so, this has been highly underused).  More people also have access to foraged foods than they realize, but there is an unwillingness to look for that food source. 

Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that, no, I don't think it's elitist to eat organic and urge others to do as much as possible.  It's really, ultimately the most nonelitist thing you could do, as it gives some money and power back to farmers rather than consolidating it in the hands of CEOs and bureaucrats. 

I do want to add that these two books were very much making me feel bad about the maple syrup and other nonlocal, nonorganic stuff, but Kingsolver or her husband pointed out that even if American households just switched to eating some stupidly low percentage of their diet from local sources it would save some ridiculously huge amount of petroleum every year.  I feel much better now, as our diet contains a larger percentage than that of locally grown foods, many of which involved no petroleum whatsoever, as they came from our yard.  It's like when you read about how replacing just one light bulb with one of those CFLs makes you akin to Mother Teresa; suddenly you're all, "My whole house is full of CFLs, so possibly I'm not an evil monster ruining the earth.  Good to know."

Now, back to the seed catalogs.  Anyone know anything about cardoons?  We're serious about growing some, but we've never eaten them before or even seen them before, though goodness knows we're familiar with thistles.  Also, next year, T wants to keep chickens.  In the front yard.  Ha.