November 12, 2009 at 5:51 pm (Energy, Musings)
It’s been a tough day, oh people of the Internet. I was working from home today due to health issues that, try though I might, I cannot wish, medic, or magic away. I got a request to present information on a project I’ve been working on for over 2 years to a very high-up person at the university, and I couldn’t fill it because I couldn’t be certain I’d not puke on him if I went in. So my boss had to take herself away from another very important meeting to cover for me. This is incredibly hard for me to deal with. I feel like I have total job fail.
Then there’s the crummy energy news: the IEA has been covering up how dire the world oil situation is, largely due to pressure from Americans who don’t want people to panic. Remember how badly that blip of $4/gallon gas threw off the economy? That’s going to become the norm, folks. The only silver lining there is that maybe it’ll slow down global warming, which makes me think Michigan will look like the Dust Bowl in my lifetime. We sure won’t be flying in strawberries from California and chicken from China, and I don’t know if Michigan can feed itself. We’re in a better position than many states: far from an ocean coast, plenty of fresh water (though some places have lots of groundwater pollutants), a diverse and fairly healthy agricultural base, and lots of arable land…which is tilled solely by diesel-powered tractors, outside a few Amish farms and “wacko” organic veggie plots.
And speaking of Michigan, a report from the Pew Center on the States tells us that Michigan is likely going to have California-like money problems in the near future. And a dozen other states, too. How bad is it going to get here? We already have 15+% unemployment (over 20% in Detroit). I’m incredibly grateful to have a job (don’t think about today’s job fail, don’t think about today’s job fail) and there are only slight, very distant rumblings that either my or my husband’s jobs might be in jeopardy, but I’m worried about my family and people around me.
I feel really impotent today. I can’t even go out and garden, which is my usual answer for despair of any sort, what with the dark and the health today.
What do you do when it all just seems like too much bad news you can’t do anything about?
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October 5, 2009 at 2:03 pm (Musings)
It’s been a very full summer for me. I’ve mentioned most of these things before, but the quick-and-dirty list of what’s been keeping me busy includes
- Increasing the garden from 200sf to about 1000sf (plus 250sf I didn’t get around to planting)
- Growing eight crops I’ve never grown before
- Learning to pickle (and putting up something like 20 quarts of pickles)
- Running Preserving Traditions events once a month
- …plus 2 preserving “work days,” the chicken harvest workshop, and a “how to stock a storage pantry” workshop
- Arranging merchandising for Preserving Traditions through Downtown Home and Garden
- Helping Mary Fox start a second branch of PT in West Bloomfield
- Having my day job blossom into a very busy and highly creative (and mission-critical) phase, including developing a course I’ll be teaching in October
- And, oh, trying to have a life with a husband and friends and family and such.
It’s been hard. I took on too much, frankly. I’ve stayed on top of the stress better than I ever have in the past, with only a few minor breakdowns, but this is in no way sustainable. I’m ready for bed around 9 every night and have a hard time getting up to exercise most mornings. I don’t feel like I have much “me” left to share with my sweetie and friends. If people need me, I get instantly frazzled because I have no reserves, even though I’m (just barely) staying on top of the day-to-day stuff. This will continue for a couple more weeks, because I’ve made commitments through October that I won’t back out of, but I’m not taking on anything new for a while. When I do, I will be much more careful about how much I commit to.
The problem is, there is so much that I *could* be doing. Things that I really, seriously want to do. More workshops, more venues, more topics. There’s so much I could give but…I can’t. Sustainable living means sustaining me, too. If I burn out, I won’t be teaching *anything*.
At some point this summer, this phrase dropped into my head: I have done enough, for now. That might mean that for today, I’ve done enough. The dishes can wait until tomorrow. The weeds can wait until the weekend. The workshop can be planned later. Cooking with Laura will be a winter project. For now, I’ve done enough and what I really need to do is to rest.
There will always be more that could be done. I will never finish my to-do list. So all I can do is draw a circle around what part of this big Work is mine, and as they say, “Do all I can do and still get up and do it again tomorrow.”
That being said, I’ve had a weekend with lots of time to write, so I’ve “stocked up” on blog posts here and at Preserving Traditions (see the new feed on the left side) so you’ll be getting details on many of these projects in the next week or two.
Have you rested lately?
4 Comments
September 11, 2009 at 9:49 am (Musings, Preserving Traditions)
Hi-
Does anyone out there know the ins-and-outs of non-profit status enough to help me think through “franchising” Preserving Traditions? I want to keep my relationship with the Grange, but I also would like others to be able to start branches that aren’t housed at a Grange. We’re doing this informally now, but I can see it growing to the point where something formal needs to be set up.
Emily
3 Comments
September 3, 2009 at 8:01 pm (Musings)
- Hubby and I just had a fabulous grass-fed steak dinner (with fresh green beans and salt potatoes) for a grand total of $6. Remind me why we ever eat out?
- Yesterday, Suzie and I made the first foray into the Cooking with Laura project. Details coming soon…
- Salsa canning day at Preserving Traditions was a success! About six and a half gallons total (52 pints).
- Oh so busy at work, but it’s happy-busy. I get to make things, which always makes me happy.
- My squash and cantaloupe aren’t ripe yet, but the vines are dying due to beetle infestation.
- I forgot to open the greenhouse vents this morning and it got up to 118 degrees today. Doh!
- I need to write a post about the first year with the greenhouse. It’s been…disappointing.
- In another month, we’ll take delivery on half a pastured hog! I’m hoping to get lard and bones in the deal. I’ve heard you can’t make pork bone stock, but I think they’re wrong…
1 Comment
August 13, 2009 at 9:10 pm (Musings)
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August 7, 2009 at 8:45 am (Musings)
Hey, folks-
I’m going to be taking a bit of a blogging break for the next couple months due to all the exciting projects I’m working on. This is not to say I won’t be writing at all, but I’m cutting myself some slack as far as photographing every pickle and coming up with new recipes and such.
I do intend to pick up Cooking with Laura, though it might be October before that happens. I need a winter project, after all. 
But just now, I’m booked with teaching classes, Preserving Traditions, or travel 3 weekends a month through October.
Not to mention the garden – harvested 10 pounds of kale and 5 of chard Wednesday, and a steady stream of 1-2 quarts of pickles every other day. And the tomatoes are just getting ripe, and sweet corn will be coming in soon. All of this needs to be processed, and though I have much more help this year than previous years, it still needs my time and attention. Something needs to give, and so I’m letting go of the obligation to blog.
And if I know myself, releasing myself from the obligation will actually mean I’ll do more of it.
As a brief pickle update, I will say working through the Joy of Pickling is great fun. With a neat quart or two of pickling cukes coming in every couple days, we’ve tried five or six recipes so far, and are starting to branch out. Our faves so far are the Hungarian Half-Sours, but you need to add garlic, and either omit the hot pepper or take it out after a couple days. The quick summer pickles are good, too, but we used a little too much vinegar.
3 Comments
June 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm (Changing habits, Musings)
Going into this weekend, I was pretty tired of the eternal To-Do list. Items might change, but I never really catch up. And some items never change: clean the kitchen, weed the garden, clear off the dining room table, do the bills. Gah.
I wanted out of my rut this weekend, so I decided to ditch the to-do list and instead focus on making something beautiful. I decided to start with the front flower bed. Flats at the market are $8 – don’t need to make that offer twice! And black-eyed susans were 4/$10. And supposedly perennial, too. Sold!And as luck would have it, my favorite garden store was demoing a meat smoker by offering surprisingly large samples of smoked pork butt, homemade salsa, potato salad, and curtido. Beautiful!
Got home and started puttering, and before I knew it, I’d planted the flat of flowers – mostly in the front bed (let me just pull this grass and clover and elm seedlings out to make room), and also in the shade planter on the back deck (hmm, none of the herbs overwintered…better yank those…), and because I had a few left, I scanned the garden and planted them smack in the middle of my line of sight. That happened to be the edge of the rutabaga bed (just let me toss those last scraggly turnips that didn’t get harvested last week and hey…are those volunteer potatoes? Looks like dinner to me…). And oh, heck, why don’t I plant up this empty pot of dirt on teh deck with the last couple things from that flat? And move the rest of the junk off to the end of the deck where I don’t have to see it? I’ll put it away…later. But at least now I don’t have to look at it.
Dinner’s in the sun oven (baby potatoes and rutabagas, a couple bulb onions, brussels sprouts, and asparagus with a little schmaltz and seasoned salt), so while I’m waiting, I’ll put away this stack of cookbooks (huh, if I wipe down the coffee table, the living room will look really nice…) and take a shower. And if I wash those last couple pans, hey, the kitchen is also beautiful!
I’m glad I decided to ignore my to-do list today. Making things beautiful was much more interesting.
7 Comments
June 7, 2009 at 5:13 pm (Cooking, Musings)
- TT Supper Club Saturday night. I don’t even know where to begin. So much fun. Such fabulous food. I really, really wish you’d been there.
- Adventures in Food Bastardization! It started by realizing that chicken salad, cole slaw, and potato salad are more or less the same idea, with different main ingredients. (And mayo need not be primary among them…) So…why not make a salad that combines all three? It worked quite well. Started with a base of finely-shredded cabbage and carrots and a bit of raw kraut, marinated in kraut juice. Then added diced cooked chicken and potatoes, chives, chive blossoms, and sage blossoms. Dress with mustard, a little mayo, and enough kraut juice to make it salty and not gloppy. Quite nice. Though in the future, I might just do chicken/potato or chicken/cabbage.
- Next bastard food idea…potato/zucchini pancake + meatball?
- The rye field is gorgeous.
- My brassicas have aphids. I shall cry now.
- I made chicken stock in the solar oven on Friday.
- Soon I will begin experimenting with schmaltz. (This chicken fat kind, not the other kind.)
- I whined about cooking dinner all week. Then today, I made soup, meatballs, veggie pancakes, and am about to go help the boy making dinner. Well, at least I know there’ll be good stuff to eat for lunch this week!
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I wonder what it would take – if would even be possible – to create a truly community-supported health center that would achieve all of the following:
