Election Night: Fermenting Alternative America

To add to the rising tide of blogospheric Election Night photos...

Our friends at the Cultured Pickle Shop hosted a potluck with a tangy theme. We picked classic, Americana dishes, and gave them a fermented, germinated, or raw remodeling.

Check out the menu:

Chips and Dip (Pine Nut Sour Cream with Shallots and Celery).


Sweet Potato Freedom Fries with Fermented Ketchup.

Green Bean and Mushroom Soup Casserole with Fried Yuba Skins.

Potato Salad with House-Pickled Peppers and Cucumbers.


Chili with Mole and Shitakes, topped with a Cilantro-Cashew Sour Cream.


Jello: Agar Gel infused with Pomegranate.


Mousse Burgers! Coconut Macaroon Buns topped with Raw Chocolate Mousse, Kiwi, and Raspberry Puree.

Raw Apple Pie with a Fermented Cashew Coolwhip.

Dousing the Baked Alaska with Rum.

Baking Alaska!

(Not pictured: House-brewed root beer with Kentucky Bourbon.)

Sheet Mulching with Campaign Signs!

Feel guilty about throwing away your political yard signs on November 5th? Consider hiring them to work in your garden.

1) Find an area of lawn or weeds you'd like to turn into a vegetable plot.

2) Spread an inch or two of compost right over the sod or ground-cover.

3) Layer your colorful paperboard signs on top of the compost (as they slowly decompose, these signs will keep underlying vegetation from reaching the sun).

4) Cover the signs with several inches of grass clippings, wood chips, fallen leaves, and compost.

5) Water the area every couple weeks.

6) In the spring, you've got a cleared plot of fertile soil to plant in!

Freelance Farmers Endorse John McCain...

Just.

Kidding.

Gardening may be the final antidote to political brouhaha. Just in our ten-by-ten plot in South Berkeley, I've entertained scenarios of one-man secessions from the union ("I've got MORE than enough right here..."). I find myself making up for the sickness of our financial institutions by making this plot's soil even healthier, even more alive and fertile. As the invisible hand of capitalism deals with a muscle cramp, the invisible hand of birth and decay seems stronger than ever in our topsoil. Gardening feels like an eternal first step down John Prine's path of blowing up the TV, throwing away the paper, moving to the country, and eating a lot of peaches. There is little patience for political conversation in the haven of our garden, and even less for political advice.

So why are we endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States?

Because Obama's unlikely story inspired us to try an unlikely business idea. Because his patient cultivation of momentum and support, his prudence in the face of tough political weather, his ability to turn an ugly crop (Jeremiah Wright scandal) into a nutritious product ("A More Perfect Union" speech), and the daily, tireless labor of his campaign... all of these echo the best traits of the small farmers we've worked for. Obama's got that agrarian sensibility. Sorry, that organic agrarian sensibility.

The secret to our edible landscaping business is in the soil. Turn a yard into a nation of responsible microbial citizens, all doing good work, and healthy vegetables are going to be a by-product. The microbes do so much, and successful small farmers understand the potential of billions of them working in concert. You see thriving crops, they see well-managed soil.

From his days as a community organizer in Chicago to the sophisticated grassroots organizing and fundraising of his presidential campaign, Obama has demonstrated a similar understanding of America's political landscape. We respect Senator Obama's attention to our national soil, and not just our national flowers and fruits. These fruits (be they GDP, military strength, Nobel Prize recipients...) will be more nourishing, more honest and sweet, under an administration that knows its proverbial soil ecology.

Organic farmers must never emulate politicians. But we'll be voting for a politician who emulates organic farmers.

Garden Salesmen?!

The moment we began this venture of kitchen garden installations, a spectre showed its face. "We're going to be garden... salesmen?" Images of a used-car commercial haunted me. "Whadda I have to do to put YOU behind the wheel of a raised bed of brassicas and peas?! Let me show you our 2008 clearance model: an untreated-wood frame filled with our patented GOLD Freelance Soil Blend... seedlings, compost pile and drip irrigation included! Don't delay! Offer ends soon." (Note: we are actually quite proud of our soil blend.) I still find myself wanting to promise clients a sort of Chia-Pet magic: "Instant cornucopia! No work, no thinking!" What we offer, though, and what we see as most important, is simply not a commodity. It's a chance to participate in the timeless human endeavor of food-growing. Just as we aim to cultivate superb Sungold tomatoes and salad greens, we aim to cultivate curious and motivated gardeners.

And so we've entered an area dangerously distant from the salesman's charted waters. We're offering the chance to work on something wonderful. The chance to be challenged, to overcome, to be fulfilled. To suddenly understand "seasonal foods" in a point-blank way (try as you may, your sweet corn will not grow in January). To eat the most sacred of foods -- yours. And to (joy of all joys) flip through seed catalogues in the wet winter and plan this spring's layout. In each of these steps, we're not removing a task from your life, but adding a high, high quality one to it.

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, "Why Bother?" (April 20, 2008), Michael Pollan articulated the rewards of ... not hiring the Freelance Farmers to run your garden for you ... but learning to garden yourself: "Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support." Emily and I have talked, and we decided we have no intentions of becoming such specialists. We will not neuter our clients of this trophy of natural rights: sweet, sometimes sweaty, self-reliance. After installing our (first-rate) vegetable gardens, our goals (we're aspiring history teachers, remember?) are educational.

Talking to a family about installing a food garden is like asking them to consider a new pet. Both ask of us new daily rituals. Both communicate to us in elusive, non-verbal ways ... and we become obsessed with finding out what they're saying. Why did the chard do so well in the corner? Why did the cilantro go to flower so quickly in the hot summer? Why did the tomatoes set larger once I pruned the suckers? For both pets and veggies, there are books written to help us down these avenues, and there are trainers for hire. Think of the Freelance Farmers as breeders and trainers of produce-growing. We'll provide you with a garden of your choosing, and lay down the foundations of a life-long, ecstatic relationship with it. With no money down! Extended warranties! Low APR financing....

Books We Like

Here is our recommended reading list on farming and gardening. We divided the titles into two groups: "Why" (inspiration) and "How" (information). Don't get stuck in either group; keep it moving back and forth. And don't get stuck in your reading chair; keeping a garden journal for your own particular plot may result in the most valuable gardening book on your shelf!

Enjoy. And don't hesitate to comment with your own recommendations.

Why:

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan.

The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life by Angelo Pellegrini.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World by Scott and Helen Nearing.

The Education of a Gardener by Russel Page.

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn by Fritz Haeg.

How:

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener by Eliot Coleman.

The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch.

How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons.

The Rodale Book of Composting by Grace Gershuny and Deborah L. Martin.

Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

Organic Soil Fertility Management by Steve Gilman.

Let it Rot! A Gardener's Guide to Composting by Stu Campbell.

Golden Gate Gardening by Pam Peirce.

Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy.

You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and $ucceed in a Farming Enterprise by Joel Salatin.

From-the-Farm Songs

In the sunburnt hills of Petaluma, California, I learned something about music: there are songs written about farms, and then there are songs written by farmers. Once you get to the farm, all those tunes about packin' in and headin' up to the country aren't as useful. You're there. You did it. We're not tending to produce and chickens all day, then singing about tending to produce and chickens all night! No. It's now that things get beautiful and weird.

A day of work on a small, diverse farm is like a tour of rhythms. You're weeding, you're harvesting, you're washing, you're tilling... everything brings its own little dance, its own monotonous pattern. And often, you're in solitude. And often, you're surrounded by breathtaking beauty, and cuss-provoking challenges. Death is there, and birth. Could conditions be more ripe for a song to germinate? And not just "farm songs." "From-the-farm songs." Things can get strange and abstract out there as you're playing god, seeding and weeding. Farm thoughts put to music are like postcards from another territory. Here are two of mine. (Click on the "Farm Tunes" links at the top of this page).

(Thanks to Kevin Cole and Josh Bruner for accompaniment!)

Back to the Yard Movement

This is a story that begins down the road from the Nearing’s Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, and ends in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1954, Scott and Helen Nearing published Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, which delves into the politics, economy, and pragmatic lessons of their 20th Century homesteading. It became a veritable bible for America’s “Back to the Land” movement in the late 1960s. Today, the Good Life Center (the Nearings’ final homestead) stands as a living museum of this lifestyle (www.goodlife.org). In 2007, Emily and I found ourselves apprenticing at a lovely farm a quarter mile from the Center.

We were working for farmer and author Eliot Coleman, who had made his own pilgrimmage to the Nearings’ farm in the 1960s. In his work ethic, resourcefulness, and attention to detail, Eliot is something of a Scott Nearing protégé. His picturesque Four Season Farm (he runs it with his wife, gardening writer Barbara Damrosch) operates on the back half of the Nearings’ farm, which they sold him for the same $33/acre they had originally paid (www.fourseasonfarm.com). Both Farm and Center are perched on a cape that juts into the Atlantic, giving this off-the-grid neighborhood an “end of the earth” type beauty. The experience, for us, was like a tutorial in a homesteading lifestyle: root cellars housed apples, beets, and homemade sauerkraut; household gardens grew with the size and diversity of small farms; the homes were hand-built by their owners; and a tradition of bi-weekly, neighborhood saunas still endured from an era when running water wasn’t available for bathing. Eating seasonally wasn’t a matter of intention, but of common sense.

I asked Eliot once what he would do if he were my age today. I was interested to know how a successful back-to-the-land-er from the 70s might navigate the combination of today’s dizzying land values and the burgeoning popularity of local food. His answer: since so much good land is already taken, find a way to farm it for the landowners. Give them a box of veggies every week, and earn your living off the rest. The new “Back to the Land” would be a sort of … well, not “indentured servitude” … but maybe a foodie-esque, Carhartt-toting, symbiotic spin-off of the concept.

Emily and I were both raised in cities. I’m writing this from Berkeley, California, where we moved at the conclusion of our Maine apprenticeship. It feels as though we’ve been thrown like a boomerang from our metropolitan nuclei, out to the end of the earth, and now we’re back. We felt more useful bringing our farming knowledge home, so to speak, to a city, to explore the uncharted horizons of urban self-reliance. We have a vision of dozens of Good Life Centers springing up in areas of clustered housing, challenging the notion that living simply and sustainably requires geographic remoteness. We’re inspired by black and white photos of American kitchen gardens from the 1930s and 40s – the insurance salesman cultivating lettuces in his undershirt, the military wife harvesting tomatoes along the driveway…

Setting up kitchen gardens in concise and sometimes unorthodox ways to deal with the contours of backyards and apartment roofs is a re-emerging art. Lacto-fermenting vegetables into sauerkrauts, kim chees, and pickles has become a (much healthier) urban-foodie translation of putting up cans of dilly beans for the winter. The Nearings’ legacy of resourceful, frugal, and purposeful living does inform our urban lifestyles, and we can create networks and forums for unprecidented urban homesteading cooperation! Emily and I have not taken Eliot’s advice completely literally, but its spirit remains intact. Instead of growing for landowners, we’re helping them grow for themselves. (http://www.freelancefarmers.com/) America’s open-armed receptance of residential farm figures like Michael Pollan, Rosalind Creasy, Fritz Haeg, and Amy Franchesini suggests that today’s transformative movement may be more of a Back to the Yard.