I wonder if my work as a “local food advocate” would ever extend to running business operations for small food producers? Maybe I just teach “how to run a food business” classes, or maybe I run the business, they make the food, we all get paid? Would that be too much like sales and marketing? Would I care, since I believe in the food so much? Would there be enough money in it? Would this happen only when local access to food becomes far more important than cash income? Is it even possible to do this without “selling out” and only selling the best, local food to pricey restaurants while folks of more modest means get Wal-Mart factory-farmed food, or none at all?

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?

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?

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

• 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…

Dear Universe,

Please find a way to bring this:

and this:

together and create an iPhone app that shows me the happy-food establishments from the Local Harvest database nearest to my location – and give me directions from my current location to the nearest place to get local, free-range, and organic food.

Will help facilitate with love, cookies, and possibly even money.

Thanks,
Emily

I’ve accomplished a whole bunch of stuff this year. I’m not finding a formal list of New Year’s resolutions or anything, but if you want to see what I’m most proud of since last summer, take a look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/espring/sets/72157622033499452/

Highlights after the cut…

• Starting Preserving Traditions, creating community, and teaching food-related skills – the culmination of five or more years of pondering and several false starts that went nowhere and made me miserable
• Increasing the garden from 200sf to 1300sf, even though I only actively planted about 1000 sf
• Learning to make pickles…and getting my sweetie hooked on the process
• Learning to garden in the greenhouse (a start)
• Growing many new crops: rutabagas, turnips, corn, cucumbers, and new varieties of kale and broccoli
• Harvesting over 105 lb of produce so far this year…and the tomatoes, potatoes, and squash are just starting to come in
• Doing my best job ever of succession planting, including green beans and peas I grew from seed I saved
• Feeding my family really well, both at home and when eating out (this one never feels like “enough” but I do a pretty good job)
• Ensnaring my beloved with the Power of Snap Peas so that he’s started foraging in the garden of his own volition
• Creating a carbon budget and tracking it for a year…and finding ways to improve
• Getting our monthly electrical usage under 300kwh/month
• Learning to cook in the fireplace (a start)
• Installing the new well and hand pump
• Learning to cook with the sun (a start)
• Not to mention my job…

I don’t want this to come off as bragging or anything, but every once in a while I need to write a list and say “I’m proud of this.” And I am. I feel like I’ve really started to figure out and live my values. There’s lots of room for change and improvement, but I am, on the whole, pleased with what I’ve been able to accomplish by taking things one step at a time.

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.

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:

• Provide basic healthcare – office visits, immunizations, birth control, in-office procedures (biopsies, vasectomies, mole removal, minor stitches, etc.), and simple lab work (urinalysis, blood draws, ob/gyn, bacterial cultures, etc.), and referrals to specialists
• Offer appointments and walk-ins on extended hours, maybe 6:30am-9pm, 365 days per year (or close to it)
• Pay an adequate number of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, and full support staff a competitive living wage
• Be funded by the surrounding community on a “subscription” model. You pay a monthly or yearly fee to the clinic, and you can partake of all the services of the clinic all year for free, or a minimal co-pay per office visit. No insurance would be accepted or billed; the idea is instead of paying a middleman, you support the clinic directly.

Could this work? Could it be entirely outside of the current insurance setup? If there was no insurance billing, would it save money or drive away potential clients? Would Americans go for this? How many practitioners would be needed? How many subscribers would be needed to support this? What if you added a chiropractor and/or physical therapist into the mix? Often, those aren’t covered by insurance anyway, so you might get some people to subscribe for that service only who would help to support the rest of the clinic.

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.