Simplifying the Simple Life

List love: simple and green highlights of 2010

-By Lisa

I was looking at Facebook the other day and saw that even Anthony Bourdain was making an end-of-the year list. And he didn’t know why he was doing it either, except that at the end of the year, people tend to take stock in the form of numbered sentences.

I love numbered sentences as much as the next gal (maybe even a little more) - so I'll join in the fun. Here is a list of things in the C'ville/simple/sustainable world this past year that I found interesting in one way or another. Feel free to add your own personal favs to my list.

1. We need to talk

Some mainstream media folks were talking about simplifying this year. This Forbes article about downsizing came out just as Husband and I were voluntarily slashing our square footage. It was very helpful in explaining that choice to some of our more "traditional" critics.

2. SunChips Bag Fail

And I’m still pissed about it. 

3. "Corn sugar"

Alright, Public, we aren’t stupid enough to fall for this smoke and mirrors marketing trick. We won't buy into the idea that high-fructose corn syrup is O.K. now that it’s called sweet little harmless “corn sugar.” We aren't going to just ignore that Princeton study with all those obese rats, are we? Wait – are we??

4. CASPCA lights up

When I thought I couldn’t love our local no-kill animal shelter more, they installed solar panels.

5. No class

Another important article this year was this Newsweek piece on food and class in America. It’s an interesting and uncomfortable must-read.

6. Meet yet Eats

Our local event got much bigger this year, with 18 farms participating. Townies came out in droves to learn about local sustainable farming practices and support Virginia agriculture. And I got to hold a baby chicken, so that’s really all I needed to have a great day.

7. Man's new best friend?

We can now have goats in Charlottesville! What a great town. But just cuz it's legal, doesn't mean I have my own herd (yet) so I must settle for spending hours in front of the Beekman boys goat cam. It’s a goat cam, people. Come on.

8. Crying over spilled oil

The Deepwater Horizon was the biggest U.S.oil spill ever. Five million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean between April and July. It was environmentally catastrophic and I don't even know what to say about that.

9. C'ville breathes

Jon Kabat-Zinn came to town to conduct a meditation retreat and brought some well-deserved attention to the UVA mindfulness center.

10. Genetically engineered salmon

Ah, Frankenfish. You grow super fast and freak me out. Let's stop screwing with DNA, lest we end up mid-horror film.

11. Smithfield sucks

There have been issues for years surrounding the Smithfield factory and their treatment of workers, which leads one to wonder about the treatment of animals. Well, it’s now officially bad with video proof from the Human Society and details that make your stomach flip. The Humane Society of the United States says that Smithfield has "unacceptable and systemic abuses." Ick. Let’s just hope that Paula Dean takes a wooden spoon to those folks.

12. I got a bread machine 

I won’t stop talking about it and you can’t make me - it’s my blog.

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Wishing you all a wonderful new year, and all the best for a peaceful, productive 2011!!

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

 

Simple satisfaction: autumn homage

Capturing those moments of simple satisfaction that tend to happen when you stop to notice them.

-By Lisa

Because I lived in eternally sunny Los Angeles for a decade, I now get downright giddy when the seasons change. It feels novel to me and I love it. Nature takes a do-over and I get to join in; I wear different clothes, cook different foods and do different activities in my free time. I get to shake things up, four times a year.

So, here is my photo homage to fall. Hope the season brings you lots of peace and sweet potatoes.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Somewhere between The Cove and The Real World: The Fabulous Beekman Boys

-By Lisa

There are important films that I know I should watch.

And I do. 

Sometimes.

Film can be amazing vehicle for change. But sometimes it’s hard to handle. I can’t even speak informatively about "The Cove." It sat on top of my DVD player for weeks, daring me to watch it, but I chickened out, sealed it back in the Netflix envelope and sent it away. I'm glad the film exists and I wish I could watch it, but I’m just not strong enough – the trailer had me hyperventilating.

So, I know these things are important but some days I just can’t handle important.  

Then the pendulum of my viewing habits swings and it’s horrifying to look back at my youth and recall how many hours...no, how many seasons (reunions, challenges...) of "The Real World" I watched. I know too much about Puck and I am kind of weirded out that The Miz is actually a professional wrestler now.

But right smack dab in the middle of important and immature, between sullen and silly, providing both education and entertainment – is "The Fabulous Beekman Boys."

It is a reality show is about a gay couple from New York City, Josh and Brent, who buy a farm upstate. Brent is a doctor and former vice president of Martha Stuart Omni Media and Josh is a writer and used to be a night club drag queen. (Come on, you can’t make this stuff up.) This first season chronicles their “Year of Sacrifice” trying to get their goat soap and cheese business up and running, while Brent is on the farm and Josh works during the week in the city. Luckily, these city slickers have John, an experienced and knowlegable farmer, who helps them out with the goats, pigs, chickens and a sassy llama named Polka Spot.

The couple have the prerequisite reality show relationship issues and both have sharp enough wit to keep it interesting. Famer John is a character in himself -- his deep love and devotion to the animals occasionally results in explosive crying jags.

But there is actual content here, too. Thanks to the Beekman boys, I know the difference between a Nubian goat and an Alpine goat, and that llamas might look gravely ill, splayed in the dirt like road kill, but they are actually just sunning themselves.

It's Simplicity & Sustainability Lite and it's fun with a glass of wine. 

Season one is currently in reruns, but they will be back for season two in 2011. The show airs Wednesdays at 9pm on Planet Green, or you can see clips and full episodes at planetgreen.com.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Wildlife Center of Virginia: open house day

-By Lisa

A few months ago, we found a racer snake entangled in some plastic landscape netting in our yard, unable to move. We cut him out as best we could but couldn't remove all the netting. A call to the Wildlife Center of Virginia assured us that we should bring our slithery friend in to them, where they cut him free from the net and cleaned his minor wounds. He was promptly returned to me - in a pillow case no less - so I could release him back where we found him.

If you want proof of this little story, check out my ridiculous attempt to be an Animal Planet host on Youtube. I sound more appropriate for the Disney Channel - seriously is my voice that squeeky?? I actually recorded the video to prove to family and friends that this thing was as ginormous as I claimed.

Because of my previous good experience with the Wildlife Center, I was totally excited to attend their open house last weekend and get the behind-the-scenes scoop.

The Center has been around since 1982, treating and rehabilitating about 3,000 wild critters a year, with ultimate goal of releasing animals back to their habitat. They care for bears, raptors, squirrels, turtles, deer and anything else you would find in our neck of the woods. While release is often the result of a rescue, some animals have sustained injuries that prohibit them from living in the wild and those become education animals at the Center.

Kelly gave us a great tour of the facility and introduced us to Pignoli, one of the education owls. Pignoli had been rescued after an injury which resulted in the loss of his right eye. He is therefore not be able to hunt and sustain himself in the wild, so he is now a wildlife ambassador, educating school kids and community members about conservation.

We toured the medical center where surgeries, tests and x-rays are performed. We checked out the kitchen, which contains everything from dog kibble to a fridge full of dead mice. We wandered amongst some impressive birds in the outdoor area, which provides fresh air and a safe environment for animals who are being rehabilitated.

The center will be running several other free open house tours, on Sept. 12, Sept. 26, Oct. 10, and Oct. 17.  And if you have a soft spot for the animals, consider one of their many volunteer opportunities which range from animal care to transporters who drive injured animals from the rescue site to the Center. This is a non-profit organization, which is dependent on donations of both money and time.

Oh, and one last word about wild animals. They are usually more capable than you think. Always call a wildlife center for advice before attempting to "rescue" something. They might really be better off without your goodwill, and an expert can help you determine if that animal really needs assistance.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Birdy num-nums: backyard bird feeding

-By Lisa

This post is about bird watching.

I know. Your right click finger is getting itchy and you are wondering what’s new on Facebook, because bird watching is lame. But you only think that because you’ve never done it before.

I used to think it was lame too. I’ve never been a bird person. I’ve never had one for a pet nor can I identify egg speckling patterns or in-flight silhouettes or whatever. But one day I randomly got a bird feeder and birds started coming to it. And I watched them. And they made me really freaking happy.

I love the simple thing of watching a bird. There’s something about being closer to nature, about knowing your finch from your titmouse (there’s definitely something about having the excuse to say “titmouse.”) But I also think it’s about slowing down to look at a bird. I stop when I see wings flit by the kitchen window. I stop with the dishwasher and the emails and the repetitive monkey-mind chatter and I just look. Sure, some birds are impressive looking and colorful, but most are just plain little brown birds. And I respect them for that. I’m in the moment, experiencing nature even though I’m in the suburbs and have shared walls. I’m nurturing and encouraging my involvement with a wild animal, and there is nothing lame about that.

It’s also wonderful to learn something new - you know which birds migrate and when they arrive and leave. You know which ones invade the nests of other birds and which are prone to an eye disease and you notice when that one doesn’t come around anymore. It’s both beautiful and brutal and, well -- natural.

Those who study such things call it biophilia, referring to the love of all living things, from plants and trees to animals. It’s something innate and encoded in our biological senses; it’s the understanding of the sacred continuous cycle of life. Those eco-psychologists claim that our connection to nature is just as integral to our happiness as our connection to family and friends. I believe it.

I love watching our bird feeder, though we needed to do a little adjusting before it all worked out. We have lots of squirrels, who tend to catapult themselves at the feeder and get all the food before our feathered friends arrive. I tried feeding the squirrels separately so they would stay away from the bird food, but they seemed to interpret that as me providing a two course meal. I found this solution that works quite well the Squirrel Buster Classic (I swear, that's what it's called) --- it just closes the outer cage shut when anything of squirrel weight climbs on it and they can’t get to the good stuff. It's also easy to remember when it's time to refill the feedeer; I have a Red Winged Blackbird who pecks on the window when the seeds are too low for his taste. Quite a helpful fellow.

Humming bird season is also super fun. Those fellows cruise by this area from April to September and a brightly colored hummingbird feeder will give them a lovely place to rest those hard working wings. Mix 4 parts water to one part sugar and you’ve got a the ultimate in hummingbird cuisine.

A book called Birds of Virginia Field Guide is super helpful for identifying your birds, if you like putting labels on things. Otherwise, it’s still fun to refer to a specific bird as “the one with the thingy on his head”.

If you are in the Charlottesville area, check out Wild Birds Unlimited, on 29 across from Fashion Square. Wild Birds is a chain, but it is locally owned and operated by the incredibly knowledgeable John and Judith Lane. They’ve helped us with everything from seed selection to deck mounting pole systems for the feeder.

See? Maybe not so lame.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Sweet rewards, indeed: volunteering with Local Food Hub

-By Lisa

Last Friday, I went out with the folks from Local Food Hub to pick peaches at Tupelo Farm. The peaches we gleaned were kindly donated to local kids who are in need of a healthy snack! The other volunteers and I enjoyed the gorgeous morning in a gorgeous place. It was everything you would think it would be out there in the fresh air on a 300+ acre farm on a warm summer morning– beautiful, peaceful, joyful and full of lots and lots of peaches - 740 pounds, to be exact.

So maybe you missed out on this one, but I totally recommend checking out some of Local Food Hub’s other volunteer opportunities. Their 75-acre certified organic farm down in Scottsville is now called Maple Hill - previously it was Best of What’s Around, under the care of Dave (Matthews, duh). They have lots of great opportunities at the farm and warehouse but also in the office and at various events if you are looking for a little less sweat and bugs. But there's something pretty great about the sweat and bugs. It makes you feel like you did some good honest work.

Thanks to Emily and Local Food Hub for the great morning!

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Where's the beef? Part II: Hamburgers for a year!

By Katherine

 

I spent a hot but lovely afternoon at Polyface Farm on Saturday to pick up the half-cow beef share my good friend “J” and I ordered and agreed to split back in May.

Both Lisa and I have written about Polyface extensively here and here.  We’ve bordered on gushing, but it’s hard not to gush. You just feel happy and inspired being there—like it’s actually a good thing to be part of the food chain.

This weekend was no exception. Despite the heat, the scene was lively.

There are always lots of folks lingering around the farm on weekends—serious regular customers who know their way around the meat freezer; groups of others getting an organized farm tour and still others emerging somewhat bewildered and giddy from cars with out of state plates—apparent pilgrims from New York and New Jersey come to see for themselves the sustainable, pasture-based, old school family farm made famous by The Omnivore's Dilemma and Food, Inc.

Polyface is the kind of beyond organic, non-industrialized, grass-based agricultural operation that used to be the norm and now is so rare in this country it's a tourist destination.

And there are always cute farm animals to coo over.

We didn’t see owner and national spokesperson for the local food movement Joel Salatin (a tourist destination himself) on this trip, but his extremely gracious and friendly son Daniel was there to greet us.

Daniel and a strapping young apprentice with a swagger and smirk reminiscent of Brad Pitt from Thelma and Louise but with shaggier hair and more authentic ruggedness carried our loot to the car—$350 worth of grass-fed, local beef processed and packaged into individual steaks, roasts, several pounds of ground beef, short ribs and stew cubes.

Our cow was slaughtered and processed at True and Essential Meats (T&E Meats) in Harrisonburg, which is co-owned by Salatin.  The friendly butcher had called J a few weeks ago to ask for specific instructions on preferred cuts and other processing questions such as did we want bones and certain organs for stocks and such.

According to its website, T&E is “[t]he only remaining full-service butcher shop and abattoir in the Shenandoah Valley.”

What that really means is that T&E is the only small, federally-inspected, humane slaughterhouse in the region and one of only a few left in the whole state of Virginia that enable Virginia farmers to raise and directly market their own branded beef processed under USDA inspection.

The more conventional option is for Virginia farmers to raise their cattle for only a year before sending the stock off to CAFOs in the Midwest where the cows are fattened up on corn, loaded up with antibiotics and then slaughtered in mechanized, inhumane, large-scale industrial processing plants.

I couldn’t eat beef anymore if it wasn’t for Polyface and other local, grass-fed, locally processed options, but right now I feel pretty good about my full freezer full of meat.

 

Having your pole beans and eating them too: a simple recipe

By Katherine

Last year was our first foray into gardening, and as I’ve mentioned before, the results were kind of poor.  We had lots of juicy tomatoes (Sun Golds, Green Zebras and Brandywines), a couple of thriving herb plants, two so-so swiss chard heads, one decent cucumber (yep, just one) and an almost squash. Attempts at early spring spinach and mid-summer zucchini and peppers were total busts. 

Undeterred, we started this season by digging a second raised garden bed (per this book), planting everything we did last year and adding a few more items: beets, radishes, carrots, English peas and pole beans.  We’re going for a quantity over a quality strategy here and just hoping we get luckier (or actually figure out what the hell we’re doing this season).  

So far zucchini, squash, pepper and cucumber plants are looking a lot more promising this year. We’re on our second planting of romaine and swish chard, and the tomatoes already are starting to ripen. We had a couple of good radishes, but beets and carrots were less than stellar, and the peas mysteriously died almost overnight. One day there was this cute climbing pea plant and the next day, it was dead and brown.

Oh, but the pole beans!  The vine, which almost magically wound itself around its stake with no coaxing from human hands, is 3’ and still growing. In the evening when we go out to turn on the garden soaker hoses, my family likes to stand there just admiring the beans as they climb skyward.  

We harvested our first pound of beans on Friday, but in all our giddiness over our good fortune we almost forgot that we actually had no idea what to do with a pound of pole beans. We’d really only planted them because we thought it would be fun to put up a stake in the garden bed, and after all our gardening disappointments, we needed a little levity.

A quick Google search yielded a bunch of similar-sounding recipes and dishes, most involving long simmering with some sort of pork product. Turns out, pole beans are tougher than regular green beans and need a little more love and a lot more lingering on the stovetop before they’re “fun” to eat.

I chose this Basic Pot of Pole Beans at myrecipes.com, basically because I’m a sucker for any recipe with “basic” in the title.  Plus, this one called for three strips of bacon, and I have a love/hate relationship with bacon: I love it and I hate myself for it.

This dish went well with grilled sweet potato wedges dressed with maple syrup and scallions and bone-in pork chops, and tasted gloriously of our blood, sweat and gardening tears.

My gift from the sea

-By Lisa

Writers have long explored the connection between simplicity and the ocean; this idea is not likely to blow any literary socks off. 

But I was just at the beach and I write about simplicity so let’s just be OK with the redundancy. 

Perspective is a fascinating thing. The feeling of being blissfully small is never clearer to me than when I face the vastness of the ocean. And if I am that small, my troubles must be downright minuscule.  The salty air smells amazing and it gently reminds me to actually smell the air and really breathe it in. I can breathe in the interconnectedness and the natural rhythm of the place.

It’s not a huge shocker that in my old life (the highly complicated one with all it’s wheel spinning, cockeyed priorities and desperate desire to impress other people) I lived pretty close to the ocean and I never went.  I was a very busy person. 

But now Husband and I have made time to visit dear friends who live on the beach in North Carolina. I’m reminded of all the great things about a seaside existence, namely, slowing down and enjoying life.  

We did highly important things.  

Like feeding turtles.

 

Like cooking from a well-loved old cookbook. With a lot of butter. 

Like digging with our toes.

And when I was not doing those things, I was rereading one of my favorite books, Gift from the Sea. It’s a classic about simplicity by Anne Morrow Lindberg. She was a phenomenal writer, something that was (regrettably) somewhat overshadowed by her husband and his airplanes. Her advice is timeless, and her tone is kind and encouraging. I read it just before getting married and her thoughts on relationships, contentedness and simplification have stayed with me in the 5 years since. It seems that what worked 50 years ago is still relevant. 

Just like Anne Lindberg, I brought a shell back to my real life, to remind me of the simplicity and slowness I experienced at the ocean. It sits on my kitchen window sill and quietly tells me to remember that a simple existence is possible - regardless of my physical location. 

Many thanks to M & B for a lovely vacation. 

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com