Come the Revolution

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There this phenomenon going on around here where the basil in the garden, which gets loads of sun and has been kept well weeded (shocking, I know) is fairly small. The ones on the porch, on the other hand, have light only in the afternoon and are trying to turn into bushes. One of these is suceeding at a surprising rate, and I’m hoping that with the relatively little light it seems to need to be happy, we’ll be able to have a basil houseplant come Autumn.

But I digress. Basil is the food of gods, it’s hard to grow and tastes like nothing else does. We use it as a vegetable (often paired with tomato), but it’s also an herb and can be useful as a garnish. If you’re a friend of ours, it may even be part of your wedding bouquet.

There’s one problem with making pesto that I run into every year. It’s pine nuts. They’re very expensive. I suppose I could splurge on pine nuts and buy some for a batch of the stuff, but they’re over $25 per pound at the local co-op, and I make a large recipe of pesto. So I used walnuts.

Now some of you may say that it’s not pesto without pine nuts, but sometimes it’s better to follow the budget than the recipe. Considering I tend to consult a couple of recipes for something and then do something somewhat resembling them both but also somewhat different, I decided to work with walnuts.

Poor Man’s Pesto
4-6 cups gently packed basil leaves
3-5 cloves garlic
2 cups olive oil
1 cup parmesagna
1 cup romano
1/2-1 cup unchopped walnut halves
salt and pepper

Step one: Borrow your friend’s food processor with the feeder/drizzler top. Envy your friend.

Step two: starting with a little oil in the processor, add garlic, nuts, cheeze, and basil all the while blending it into a paste.

Step three: Taste.

Step four: Add some salt and pepper, and more basil.

Step five: Taste.

Step six: Add more basil.

Step seven: Repeat steps five and six until the pesto tastes like creamed basil with cheese.

Step eight: Require those you live with and then all of your coworkers to eat pesto. Feel proud of yourself.

The only thing that could make it better is if we didn’t have to drive home after late nights at the garden. Maybe next year.
I find myself thinking often of the farmer from the first farm I apprenticed at. He’s a vegetable farmer, but truly he’s a tomato farmer. I’m guessing 1/4 of his tilled acreage was devoted to the botanical fruit, and he was damn good at growing them.

This year the Garden of the Revolution has about 200 tomato plants. It’s a risk after last year’s blight, but 8 months of buying tomato sauce that is sub-par and shipped from who knows where is quite enough. If all goes well we’ll have sauce, salsa, stewed, sun dried, and soups soon. In the meanwhile, we have a lot of time to look forward to turning our hands yellow and black from the dust on the tomato plants.

Last night they needed some love. It was past time for suckering for most of them, but they were desperate for the airflow with the heat wave in New England this week. So after a full day of work for each of us, we drove up to the farm and suckered those tomato plants.

It reminded me of how nice it is to work in the garden in the evening. As we got to the last plant, the dusk was giving way to darkness and the haze that had rolled in while we worked had turned the air into a blanket of moisture. Glad to have finished right as the plants started turning wet from the haze, we packed up and headed home.

In that I might explain our long absence from this blog, I would like to say that farming is a full time job and a half, even for apprentices with short hours. We also made the decision to make a mad dash to the altar (or river, through a field, as it were). I tell folks it was to keep as many of our relatives in attendance as possible, Amanda says it was so that I could do her taxes this year. Either way, you will now be able to read a couple of wedding-related posts over the course of the next few months. First thing’s first, the ring.

Amanda asked me to write a little bit about finding an engagement ring that can be ethically and ecologically responsible. I don’t have a lot of history dealing with jewelry, but I’ve recently spent some time in local jewelry stores and learned a bit from the kind folks who helped me out.

I think the best thing I did for myself was to know what I wanted ahead of time. I got some nice hints from Amanda and started looking at websites to see what all of those hints added up to. Things to be considered: stone material, size, and cut; ring material, size, style, and the stone will be held. Have a price in mind, and tell the jeweler. The woman I ultimately went with told me that if I said $250 she could get me something I would be happy with for that much, If I said $25′000 she could do that, too.

I knew from the outset I didn’t want a diamond for both ethical and environmental reasons. The only diamonds that are conflict-free are lab-made. They’re beautiful but expensive, so they weren’t a viable option. I knew I wanted a sapphire, and once I’d secured that there weren’t any of the right size/shape available from within my family, I wanted an estate one if possible. I lucked into an estate stone that was perfect. If you don’t see a stone that you want in the store, ask about having a few in your price range brought in for you to look at- you can even specify country of origin if you’d like (for new stones, anyway) so you know more of what went on in the mining of your stones. Otherwise getting tips from the jewelers and then going antique shopping can be a great way to find a stone. I know at least one person with a beautiful sapphire ring that was found at an antique store by chance.

Ideally the gold would have been recycled, but the jewelers voiced concerns about recycled gold. One told me it wouldn’t work because I wanted white gold and once recycled it doesn’t retain the color as well. I don’t know how true that is. The argument against it that won me over was that it would work for an in-set stone, but for a traditional looking ring that holds the stone externally, the brittleness of recycled gold could risk the tines breaking and the stone getting lost. This, to me, is the best argument against recycled gold for a traditional-engagement-style solitaire. I want the ring to be able to handle being worn in real life (although not during farm work) and not have to worry about it.

With this, as with most things, I compromised on what I considered important points for ecological reasons in order to have a ring that will likely last at least a few lifetimes. I ended up with a ring from a local store, with an estate stone, which Amanda was happy with. So happy, in fact, that she married me.

For your own responsible indulgences, here are a few incredible online retailers:
Green Karat
Brilliant Earth
Simply Wood Rings
Simply Wood Rings

To let us concentrate on gardening/farming, we’re going to take a summer vacation. Somewhat like the kind you have as a student, except this one involves more work.

In a few months we will return, we hope with awesome farmer tans (I will try and convince Amanda to share them with you), a lot of posts pre-written in our heads, and a better feeling for where we’re going.

I’m about up to my ears in educational debt. The current statistic (or at least the last one I’ve heard) is that the average newly-graduated bachelor of the arts or sciences has racked up $20′000 in debt. I’ll put it lightly and say I’m above average in this regard. With educational debt looming above our heads, this generation has two very different looks on graduate school. One is ‘I’d better go now or I’ll have to start paying back that debt,” and the other is, “I’ll never be able to afford to go with all this debt.” I’m of the latter camp, but that doesn’t mean I want to learn any less than my peers who ran up the stairs in the ivory tower. I just want to do that learning for free.

That is, of course, what I’ve been doing with apprenticeships on organic farms, but that’s not the best move financially-speaking. A far better move is to find online resources where you can learn for free. I’ve put together a few lists from the far corners of the internet to get you started, or to keep you procrastinating on those finals.

Universities:
MIT Open Courseware
The Open University Learning Space
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
Tufts Open Courseware
Utah Valley University Open
Gresham College Free Public Lectures
Berklee College of Music Online Courses
NYU Mathematics Lectures
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Stanford To Go (downloadable mp4 lectures)
UCBerkeley webcast courses
Utah State University Open Courseware
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Online Learning Programs
University of Southern Queensland Open Courseware
UCIrvine Open Courseware
Whatcom Community College Online Math Center
Open Yale Courses
Notre Dame Open Courseware
University of Washington OpenUW
Princeton Archived Lectures
Intro Probability from Dartmouth

Languages:
UMich ASL Browser
ASL Pro
ASL from Dr. Bill This one actually has lessons!
Sweedish via PSU
Hungarian via PSU
Italian via Oggi E Domani
Conversational Mandarin via CSULB
Turkish via University of Arizona
One Minute Languages
Mango Languages
Before You Know It

Other Stuff:
Library of Congress American Memory
Learner.org resources for teachers and professional development
ERI Distance Learning Center
TED“Inspired talks by the world’s leading thinkers and doers”

Hey y’all, sorry about the duplicate posts yesterday. This new theme forced me to change our permalink structure, and feedburner read the new permalinks as new posts. Shouldn’t happen again.

Happy autumn! Especially to those of you who live in places where it actually is autumn.

Photo by Glockenblume.

I got a heads-up that the recent plastics post was too much of a downer. The trouble is, I don’t want this blog to devolve into “reduce, reuse, recycle” and all the tips so commonly used you can recite them. I figure if you’re reading this you’re aware that using a cloth bag for your groceries or investing in permanent containers lets you use less plastic.

Therefore, I have made a completely different list of tips as to how to live plastic-light or plastic-free. If you want real help in this arena, ask Allie or Beth.

#1 Have money. A good bike costs money. All-natural-fiber clothing costs money (especially if you don’t like sweatshop labor being involved, you liberal). Your new wind-car is bound to cost money.

#2 Live within walking/biking distance of a store through which you can purchase most necessities in bulk bins. This generally requires living in a city, which will limit your ability to raise your own food. Choose your poison.

#3 Be extremely stubborn. No matter how dehydrated you are, never buy a plastic bottle of water. Always wait until you can buy glass (Perrier?) or re-fill your method of water container.

#4 Brand yourself “GREEN.” Wear Michael Pollen books in the back pocket of your 100% organic cotton and/or hemp pants. Never take transportation, even public transit, if it’s not gasoline-free.

#5 Be a Fruititarian. If it hasn’t fallen off the plant, the plant clearly doesn’t want you to take it.

It’s 8:30 AM on a workday and you’ve got to be in at 10. You feel ahead of the game for having only a 20 minute commute (including the metro ride) to Tenleytown from your home in Foggy Bottom. One problem, some little rubber thing in your toilet just stopped working and it doesn’t stop flushing. You can’t afford plumbers’ rates and think you’d be laughed at for being yet another professional who doesn’t even know what the name is for that damn piece of rubber.

Calm down. The rubber piece is called a flapper, and you can get one at the hardware store. It’s only a few blocks away, and they’re open at 9. You can get it when they open, grab a few pieces of advice along with, and fix the toilet without being late for work.

At least right now you can. That hardware store is District Hardware, and like all other small hardware stores, small pet stores, local markets, and the mom and pop restaurants (if they’re still open) it is not having the best time. Even though it’s close to Dupont Circle, Georgetown and Foggy Bottom in its West End home (24th and L, near Trader Joe’s and directly across from the Library), and even though it’s had the same owners for years (when it was up on P), even though the Bike Shop inside of it is the closest to home for many, and the closest to work for many more, there just aren’t enough people going into District Hardware.

So DC residents- rally for your local stores. Get your bike tuned up or replaced for the upcoming riding weather (it’s supposed to be 65 tomorrow!) at the Bike Shop, buy books at Kramers or Second Story if you’re in Dupont Circle, get something to eat at Sarah’s Market in Georgetown or Metro Market on P, or go to one of the many farmers markets. Put your money where your politics are, and support your local community. Come the Revolution, small businesses will be relied upon, if there are any left.

The Post can be quite inspiring.

Paper or Plastic? Many of you know the hilarious contorted faces you sometimes get in response to “Neither- I brought my own.” I find this particularly funny because I tend to be carrying a lime green backpack. It’s pretty clear to everyone that I have a bag. They can see the straps more clearly than I consciously feel them- and yet somehow using it seems to turn me into an alien of some blue-green variety.

Now, I know I won’t always have the ability to carry a nearly-empty backpack around with me for errands. Someday I will have a the kind of job where one wears slacks and button downs, and be forced to return to the shoulder-bag-plus-backpack lifestyle of my internship and collegiate work days. At that point I believe I will begin to stow canvas totes that fit in paniers under my laptop- extra cushion plus utility. Sounds ideal, except for one thing. I have, or will be told that I have following this post, internalized the societal standards for masculinity to a degree that makes me uncomfortable carrying most tote bags. It’s true! I’ve said it! I wouldn’t be caught dead sporting a Cherry Blossom Festival tote for the pink flower on it.

So, I did some scrounging around on the internet for bags I’d be willing to carry.
the CSA bag
the Hemp
Heavy Duty Reusables
Plain Bags
Panniers
Timbuk2 (I’m not cool enough to sport a timbuk2)

In the past week I have spent time in a city, the suburbs, and a couple of rural areas. I also spent about 12 hours on highways, but as I drive so infrequently and this driving was related to family and farm research, I’ve decided to not feel guilty about it. If you know anything about Catholic guilt, you know. The number of SUV’s I saw on the road was impressive. I even saw more hummers than can be counted on one’s fingers (likely also toes, I gave up after I ran out of fingers). For all those out there driving monstrous vehicles, especially those who felt the need to drive at 80mph nearly in the trunk of my borrowed civic hybrid, I give you two videos.

VeggieTales is essentially Christian bible stories via 3dimensional animated vegetables. Fortunately for me, there are Silly Songs with Larry sprinkled through the videos. Otherwise I’d never have gotten through the babysitting gigs for family friends. Here is one of the non-religious Silly Songs.

On the other end of the entertainment spectrum, the Asylum Street Spankers are not for children. They’re an Austin, TX (yes, there are liberals in Texas) based political and social commentary group. They’re also hilarious and brilliant.