Ramble: Eating & Living Differently...

Rambling about food and gardens and health and getting past the industrialization of our food, there are a couple of things to highlight as I amble here.  We need a new kind of home economics. When my husband retired, one of our Texas friends who ranches lands very near the Mexican border, said, "just gitchew a tractor and go ride the land."  They come with UV filtered windows, sound systems and the idea is you can ride the land in your own little world. I think maybe I should have put my children in our garden more and toted them to structured activities less. I want to think of more native and natural things, rather than isolation and try to overcome succumbing to our culture/consumerism/society.  So here are my thoughts for today's ramble:

• American Indians believe in making decisions based on projecting the consequences out seven generations.  If we conducted ourselves with the idea of perpetuity for our actions, we might be more responsible for ourselves, our children and our world. 
• The use of native and drought-resistent plants as a substitute for grass will be a major design trend of 2008. One big trend in landscaping: letting lawns go to moss  and according to the NYTimes article,  "Moss, which grows fast and hugs the ground, prevents soil erosion. Its density repels weeds. Deer do not snack on it. It can be walked on. Even when it looks dead, a splash of water can restore it to emerald health within minutes. It doesn’t need fertilizer (lacking a root system, it takes nutrients from water and air). All it needs, in fact, are shade, moisture — though not large amounts of water — and what most gardeners would regard as poor-quality soil."
• Integrated gardening: Susie J has a post on planting combinations together, like planting chives around roses to keep the roses from getting diseases. These are things we used to know and those who work to do this and share it might help us virally change our ways. Let's hope. Now our society is doing only monculture. The typical calorie of food energy in your diet requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce.  Can you imagine growing some of your own food?
• More on non-monocultural gardening: Miss Cellania was working in her garden - literally and as a topic for her blog,  and she had a link on native american trios...  why a "Three Sisters Garden" works -- three plant partners benefit each other.  "Beans, like other legumes, have bacteria living on their roots that help them absorb nitrogen from the air and convert it to a form that plants can use. (Corn, which requires a lot of nitrogen to grow, benefits most.) The large, prickly squash leaves shade the soil, preventing weed growth, and deter animal pests. The three sisters also complement each other nutritionally.
• Perhaps if we got into our gardens more we'd benefit from the Vitamin D. Jill has a link about the importance of Vitamin D and scientists who say it could prevent diseases including cancer, and thwart autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rhematoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes.  She writes: "In the wake of emerging positive results, the National Cancer Institute gathered scientists to review the nutrient's ability to reduce cancer risk, particularly of the breast, colon, prostate and lung. And last fall, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued an evidence-based review of Vitamin D that found it to be key for bone health at all ages, including in the prevention of falls in the elderly."  Also included is this: "There are a lot of benefits to Vitamin D that have surfaced in the last 20 years," notes Hector DeLuca, a University of Wisconsin biochemist who has been a pioneer in Vitamin D research.  My mother, grandfather, my children and myself I felt have always benefited from sun at non-intense hours of the day but with light skin and seven years of lifeguarding, I'm so careful about skin damage and I, myself, take supplements.  Jill (or the article she quotes from) suggests that the next time you go to the doctor, get your vitamin D level checked.  You may be surprised to learn that you too are deficient as are most adults in the U.S.
• Learning how to return to simplicity and learn a different kind of home economics is a trend.  NYTimes has an article of one woman conducting classes to moms in the grocery aisles.Sandi has a link to this video of a young woman who is reaching out to teach healthy cooking to teens.  These things are new things and maybe high prices, driven up by oil going over $123/barrel this week (can you even believe????), will make us start changing our choices.

Most important: Years ago I was introduced to the work of ethno-botanist Gary Paul Nabhan and I'm a supremely wild fan of his work and writings and have read most all of what he has written.  When I saw him in Houston at his niece's wedding, he told me about the old orchards at Bishop's Lodge here in Santa Fe and their threatened status (being yanked up for modern landscape - lifeless waterfalls and such). This week at Ethicurian I came across an article on Nabhan  - Gary Nabhan Wants You To Go Native for Sole Food and the latest book he's edited, Renewing America's Food Traditions.  "Nabhan, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient who spoke this week in Lawrence, Kansas, thinks we are at a critical moment where both knowledge of native foodstuffs and losses of those species are high. He and others assert that taking advantage of those foods would address numerous ills, from the reliance of petroleum-based agriculture to the explosion of diabetes among Americans, particularly those of color, to loss of cultural identities."

Not much edible can I grow in the High Desert yard we have in Santa Fe, but I can try to propagate cactus.  Later I'll share with you (when I can dig it out) a recipe for prickley pear cactus that Gary Paul Nabhan gave me when he visited our home in Houston back in the mid-1990s.

Thinking, Eating, Living Cheers!

Comments

[susiej]

MotherPie, this should be in the NYT as a mantra for all Americans. All of your points are so well-grounded on common sense and science.
I'm really counting on my garden this year!

[anthony]

I do enjoy how you write and what you choose to write about. Maybe you should write a book!

[Miss Cellania]

Moss, huh? I have quite a bit in my back yard already. I have plenty of shade and poor soil!

I've always grown garlic around my roses. It started by accident, when I put roses where garlic had always grown (but I didn't know it at the time). Then I read where that was a good idea for the roses. Chives would certainly look better though- garlic gets big and ugly! Not that I ever worried about rose pests. My yard has enough onion grass to keep most critters away.

[tut-tut]

It's very important, I think, to support CSA's; we've been doing so since we've stopped having our own vegetable garden. I'm very interested in spreading how to cook and eat, but honestly--if you commuted an hour each way to your job, and worked an 8 hour + day, could you face coming home to cook a meal? I know that every night when we're cleaning up, my husband and I remark on how impossible it must be for anyone who doesn't work at home to do so.

I'd like to know how people who work at a "job" job do it.

[Hattie]

Where I live in Hawaii we get 120 inches of rain a year, and our lot is on deep volcanic soil. Before you envy me, let me say that we have so many pests and weeds that it is tough to get vegetable crops. What we do well with are bananas, avocados, citrus, and breadfruit. We have Med flies, so we have to put out traps for them. Not your typical American garden. I had to learn a completely new way of gardening when we came here.

[carron e.]

It is very interesting that when I moved to New Mexico from Dallas, I realized I was totally ignorant of gardening and growing. Here in New Mexico people know that the last frost is May 15th, so don't plant before then and the first frost is shortly after Oct. 1st in Santa Fe. My co-workers all plant and have gardens of vegetables. They all compost and recycle bring each other worms and things you need to be a serious gardener. But Santa Fe and much of New Mexico is crunchy granola like that. We had no seasons in Dallas...shorts at Thanksgiving. So, I learned that it was indeed a short growing season here and to enjoy it. It is wonderful at work when people tell everyone to come pick their apples or peaches or plums. They brought me their hollyhock seeds the first year I lived here and invited me to come take as they thinned out their "red hot pokers", a flower here! Maybe it was because I was a city girl; I never knew these almanac facts. I didn't know the plants or trees they had here...all different from Dallas. The people here love and appreciate the earth. No doubt, the Native Americans have contributed to that way of thinking. Love the idea of three plant partners...the three sisters. I also agree with your thoughts on Vit D. They scared us out of the sun, and now we are deficient in it. But not me, I am out there for 30 mins. every morning watering my plants. Best of all, I love the Native American stance on making choices based on seven generations. If we all made that consideration, what a better world it would be.