WE CAN ALL Stop shopping at Corporate stores, stop eating corporate food, it is all owned by the same guys & their brothers, the ones that brought us loss of jobs, loss of our homes, loss of our monetary independence.  It makes dollars & sense, it puts money back in the local community, it is sustainable.

It-is-all-connected… & the destination for any continuing abuse of the body politic & your body, temple of our spirit – is sickness in community & in health.

What I am saying is we start spending our precious dollars in our own community, buy locally grown food, go to the Farmer’s Market, make a statement with our pocketbooks – we will feel good about it & will feel better physically too!

I spent the last few days creating and presenting a workshop on Fermentation, the live food chemistry kind.  It fits in with my political rant here as you have let me say – Fermentation of simple, garden grown, local food gives many health benefits & helps stretch inexpensive food dollars, as well as using produce from field & garden.  It keeps us out of the stores & helps us gather some “stores” of REAL FOOD.

We all loved the experience of making sauerkraut together, finding tastes that are new yet delightful & generally getting more deeply informed around the topics of yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, vinegar, kombucha & sourdough.  You can buy all these things or you can make them at a fraction of the cost, finding many ingredients in your locally owned farm stand or market. I encourage you to find such a class in your area or make one happen, it is about LIVE Food, Bio-available nutrients, Happy enzymes & intestines…all good stuff.   I give thanks to my students who trusted me to guide them into the shallow waters of Live Fermentation…simple cottage ferments, political ferments…  may we all find our way to the middle of the river, where deeper information resides, and a lifetime of experimentation brings new thoughts to the mix!

Certainly discovering the vast stores of knowledge at Sandor Katz’s website will be a beginning no Fermenter will regret.

And, oh yes – it is very political to grow & eat your own food, or get raw milk from a farmer down the road, let’s take that to the streets too!

It is a bit of heaven here…so much wildlife…there are even two swans that cruise the lake at all times looking Fairy Tale-ish. They come around our shore & into our water lilies at about 9am to feed…so beautiful!  Sometimes I hear a loon in the early morning & we saw it yesterday too; lots of Canadian Geese honking & flying past.  As to edible fowl, I am rooted in the modern agricultural 21^st Century & will leave the wild birds to themselves as we eat chickens raised for the purpose.

I have eaten really well this trip.  A far cry from the days when I brought a lot of my own food from California – raw sunflower seeds, brown rice & such as it was very difficult to make a trip into Kalamazoo where there was a great Coop.  The local market seemed to have only browning heads of iceburg lettuce, some soft red delicious apples, and bananas. Nowadays , it seems that every small town market has rice crackers, organic butter, fruit & lettuce.

Truth is – Great fresh & seasonal local foods have always been available during a Michigan summer – my childhood memories include heaps of corn on the cob & fresh tomatoes in August, peas by the bowlful & lots of squash.  August was always a healthy food month for us.  We tired ourselves out with canning many quarts of peaches, tomatoes, grape juice, and made jams and pickles.  I learned to make sauerkraut with my neighbor too.  The root cellar was packed by the time I started school, and could take a break from being my mom’s “peeler & cutter-upper”

So – back to the barbeque leftovers of yesterday… let’s make some bone broth & soup!

Got your leftover chicken bits?

Making soup stock from those old bones & skin…so good for you too!  The vinegar breaks down the bones into Calcium, releases the nutrient in the marrow. And, all of that “gristle” is also melted & becomes liquid in the hot broth.  Bone Broth is medicine food – a healthy builder of bones & ligament for all of us.

Take the edible meat off of that ole chicken whether baked or BBQ’ed,

Add all the bones, skin & gristle into a pot of water & boil for several hours with any herbs you have – thyme, bay leaf, sage, rosemary.  If you have a bit of wine or vinegar or even some Italian Dressing, add a big spoonful of that too.

Strain out the bones & bits, then add cut up vegetables to the broth…

We still had sliced onion & ripe red tomatoes from the hamburger fixin’s, so they went in.

I also had 4 ears of boiled fresh corn on the cob waiting to be used up, as well as a heap of baked potatoes, sliced summer squash, cut up yellow peppers, and some other crudités that didn’t make it into anyone’s salad or sandwich.  Add a handful of celery, carrots, garlic, if you have it.  Cook it all until tender & add your meat back in.  Salt & pepper to taste.   This soup is so fresh & good!   Mine came out very much like a stew from so many veggies added.  Yours will be a unique reminder of the party you just had.  Toasted Hamburger or Hot Dog Buns are almost as good as French bread with this Summer Cottage soup of the day.

You have a right to know what is in your food, and further – you have a right to eat what you think is healthy & good for you.  it is a matter of Freedom to choose.  Why cry over spilt milk?

Here are the facts…

Green Uprising Farm has received notice of violation from the California Department of Food and Agriculture demanding that they “cease and desist” the sale or giving away of milk produced at their small dairy.  Green Uprising has been providing wholesome, fresh milk to shareholders who have purchased an ownership interest in their herd for some time.

They are going to be supported by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

The long story is posted on my friend Dave Smith’s blog, and here’s the short version…

As Sara Grusky, who manages the dairy herd, says:

“According to the Calif Dept. of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) this is a threat to the public health. Our children, our grandchildren, friends, family, neighbors and shareholders all drink raw milk directly from the teats of goats boarded at our farm (my goodness!) and we are all alive and well, happy and healthy. In fact, if you go back three or four generations most everyone who consumed milk drank it raw from a family farm in their community. But, according to CDFA, our shareholders don’t have the right to drink raw milk from a goat herd they have purchased an ownership interest in. According to CDFA, they know better than you what’s good for you. And, they think that pasteurized milk from a feedlot dairy where large amounts of antibiotics are used (due to the unhealthy conditions) and Bovine Growth Hormone (a genetically engineered artificial growth hormone) may be given to stimulate milk production, is healthier than the milk I hand milk into glass jars from my ten precious goats. You have got to be kidding…”

Friends…this is a frontal assault on our right to choose our food.
Action Alert-  GET INVOLVED!  This is not a test!.. or a meeting to plan
for an idealized future – this is action needed …on the ground… right
now - a need for all of us who love local food to show up & create our future of food, keep our ancient human food rights!

What can you do???

1- Come to the movie showing & community discussion on July 15th at the Willits Grange -7pm

FARMAGEDDON – The Film

Link to Trailer >>see it & click here…

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under
attack.  Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging
farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights
to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods
safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations. The film serves
to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing
movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want
is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its
voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.

2- Come on the 15th & hear what Sara, her husband, and their shareholders plan to do in the face of CDFA’s demands and how you can help.
3- ALSO READ MORE ABOUT RAW MILK & YOUR RIGHTS:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/15/ron-paul-vs-the-fda-milk-police.aspx

4-  To take action on National Milk issues, send a Fax to Your Legislators – Ask Them to Co-Sponsor & Pass HR 1830

112th U.S. Congress – House Bill HR 1830

(Go to http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/petitions/pnum1079.php)

Congressman Ron Paul has once again introduced a bill that would allow the
interstate shipment of raw milk and raw milk products for human
consumption, HR 1830.

* We believe that there is a fundamental right to produce and consume the
foods of our choice including raw milk, contrary to FDA’s claim that there
is no such right in its response to a lawsuit over this same matter.

* We believe the federal ban against transporting raw milk for human
consumption across state lines is a violation of our rights, despite FDA’s
assertion that any transaction that involves crossing state lines with
such milk is illegal.
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/petitions/pnum1079.php

ALSO READ MORE ABOUT RAW MILK & YOUR RIGHTS:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/15/ron-paul-vs-the-fda-milk-police.aspx

Annie Brigit Waters

Thus does the public evil come home to each of us:
Straining, the courtyard gates no longer hold fast,
The evil leaps o’er the high walls; it finds everyone,
Even him fleeing to the inmost chamber.

– Solon

“The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest
are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the
qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and
conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing
conditions.”

Fresh and local milk & meat were on the table almost every day – even though fresh vegetables were not really available most of the year in Michigan in the 1950’s. But, in summer we were happily eating a lot of it!

Summer meant fresh food and sometimes it was grown in our backyard or from a garden just outside of town. We had a raspberry patch, a few tomato plants & plenty of rhubarb behind the garage. A black walnut tree by the driveway never failed to give us its strangely green fruit.

My grandparents were farm folk and appreciated fresh eggs. Grandma got them from Aunt Esther whenever she could. Grandpa fished almost daily for pan fish – bluegills, perch, sunfish, bass in Wall Lake where I remember the food being particularly great after a day of swimming & outdoor play. Once we crossed the lake on a boat to Aunt Nonie’s cottage where we picked blackberries & huckleberries too. The roads were full of summer farm stands with corn and squash. It was almost daily that dinners were centered on corn on the cob with plenty of butter and salt. Everything else on the menu from those meals has faded from memory, but the taste of fresh corn lingers in my primal brain.

We loved the blueberries, corn & tomatoes from the farm stands, and ate our way through August and on into September when at some point we noticed that the table was now set with canned beans or peas with a side of iceberg lettuce. Phooey!

I remember long hours helping my mother to can peaches, pears, and tomatoes on  hot August afternoons. I sat on the picnic bench & cut, peeled, lifted skins & pits out so that she could make the wonderful jeweled rows of canned fruit that we relied on during those Michigan winters. One year we made grape juice & the deep purple contrasted beautifully with the golden pears & red spaghetti sauce on the shelf in the root cellar. We drank that juice many a Sunday night with our popcorn as we watched the Ed Sullivan show or Disney. No coke or chips were ever in the house and this was a treat indeed!

Now that I think about it- almost all of our sweets were homemade except for ice cream Sunday drives or penny candy bought on trips to Grandma Bogner’s house. Some special Sundays we made fudge with black walnuts that my sister & I cracked using a hammer on the basement floor. They were ready once the fleshy green hulls had blackened and fallen off while being driven over & pushed into the dirt driveway.

One year mom won a prize at the Diamond’s Hatchery where she bought her eggs & chicken. One hundred baby chicks… They were so cute, and noisy! She enterprisingly traded them to a friendly farmer for the prize of a dozen full grown hens. I remember dropping off the chicks into their heated house lined with straw & fitted with water cans & feed cans. The next thing I remember is a line of chickens hanging upside down from the clothesline dripping blood onto the backyard grass. It was a pretty scary sight, so near to my swing set, and I have conveniently forgotten when or how we ate those birds. They entered the food chain and that was it.  Most of us have forgotten the relationship between our food and its death or sacrifice.  Whether a carrot or a chicken, something ended its life cycle for our health & life.  Better that I should experience this chicken harvest again soon, than to forget about this.

More on my early food memories: The milkman delivered quarts of whole milk in glass bottles into the insulated box on our front porch on an almost daily basis. He mysteriously arrived before I was up even on the coldest of winter nights. In our cold Michigan winters, the milk would often freeze in a relatively short time and push the little cardboard tops up. Some mornings, you would find a small tower of frozen milk protruding from the bottle. That little top hat of cream rising out of the top of the bottle was so fun to see. My dad always claimed that for his coffee, and would drink it black once the cream was gone. My mom was proud of her absolutely clean empties that she would put back in the box. Those bottles were re-used so many times, I wonder how many, and where are they now? The milk was processed in a small plant just a few blocks from home, and there were lines of big steel cans sitting on a metal conveyor for years after it closed down, until  housewives started collecting them to paint on, I guess.

Yes, I see now that we ate local food all the time, but it wasn’t a bragging point – it was just how things were. More memories coming soon!Things like riding in the wheat harvesting wagon & making bread & sauerkraut…

Jamie is doing it again – stay with this series, we can change the school lunch program; it takes some will & volunteers in each district -

what if every parent spent an hour a week helping with the cafeteria cooks to build their child’s lunch from fresh local REAL food?