My D'anjou Pear Tree

It's harvest time for my pear tree! I finally figured out what kind of pear it is - D'anjou. It's a hard pear that is picked in September before they're ripe, but still "mature" or when the pear is tilted sideways and comes off the tree easily. The total harvest this year is three bushels, one of which was compost. One bushel has been shared. I just picked the second bushel this evening, with my neighbor's fruit picker. The pears seem better than last year. I don't know if it's because they're actually better than last year, or because I know what they are this year. It's probably a little of both, and a good illustration of the permaculture principle on yield, stating that the yield of a system is only limited by the information and imagination of the designer.

I have figured out two successful recipes for the pears.

Pear Sauce
Slice 8 pears and boil them for 30 minutes. Drain. Puree in a food processor. Stir in ½ cup orange juice concentrate and some grated nutmeg.

Pear Crisp
Slice pears fairly thin, enough to fill a pan.
Pour a little water or pear juice or orange juice over them, so that there’s about ½ inch in the bottom of the pan.
Sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg, and a little flour.
Bake til bubbly, about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the crisp topping up with your hands: 1 softened stick butter, some oats, flour, sugar and cinnamon. You want the topping to be kinda crumbly, sticking together in marble sized bits.
Take the pears out of the oven and sprinkle on the topping.
Bake until topping is golden brown.

I'm going to try Jana's pear chutney this weekend, and maybe do a little more canning.

Still, I'm going to have to be really creative, industrious AND generous to make sure these pears maximize their potential. Does anyone want some pears?



The rest of the garden is happy too. Two of my Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato plants are over six feet high (tied to the ladder), and producing delicious little gems. My green bean plant is about done, and yielded me about five quarts of beans over the last two months. The basil, sage, cilantro and parsley. Hopefully, I can keep the cilantro from bolting so quickly this time. I have peas sprouting. I've planted winter kale, asian greens, chard and some other spinach type edible. We're still getting a few strawberries.


The long pole leaning on the fence is the fruit picker.

Drill, Drill, Drill

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin.
 


Drill, Drill, Drill



I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one.  Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.



I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.



But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.



I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, this is not a joke.  In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.



Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan.  She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
 


Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.



Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.



Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.



Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the 
undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
 


I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build 
more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.



If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of 
teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity 
or dissent.  I think of pain.
 


Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
 



Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

......
This is very scary.
Take Action.

Don't worry about a thing...

At noon today, wafting in through my 12th story window were the lyrics from this lovely Bob Marley song, played by a band in one of the open spaces next door to our building.

The timing couldn't have been better.

Every year in September I plan the Annual Meeting of the Councillors at Save the Redwoods League. It's a two day retreat, complete with a business meeting, fancy seated dinner, workshop, picnic and hikes...for about a 100 people...four hours away.

Today was my last day in the office before leaving for the event. Anyone who knows event planning, or me before an event, you know that the last day in the office is usually full of stress. This year, though, I'm actually not that stressed. Wierd. Makes me a little nervous. I felt better after about 2:45 today when the last minute ball of chaos (there's always one) was lobbed into my court. Things were just too easy. So, I fielded that ball and was still able to leave work at 6:30 (I got there at 8:20). Still a long day. I'll still dream about the event all night. But, I'm not a little tornado of bitchy anxiety. I've even had time to eat and make food for the next couple of days (and write this post!). Maybe I'm getting better at this.

Still having the musical reminder helped. I've been singin' "Everything's gonna be alright..." all day.


"Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou:")

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. Don't worry!"
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing" - I won't worry!
"'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right" - I won't worry!
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, oh no!
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right! /fadeout/

Eating with the Seasons

Finding Local Food in San Francisco

My book club just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors. The book is about her family's journey into local foods - either grown by them or grown in their region. They live in Virginia, where they have seasons, so the book is a month by month tour of what happens on a farm. Some sections made me downright homesick. Others were inspirational. The story is peppered with bits about the industrial food system, that in turn evoked anger, sadness, desperation and hope. One major take-a-way for me was how important it is to support local, organic farmers, and eat what the seasons bring. I new this before, and now I understand the theory and practice behind it more concretely. Here's a quick list of reasons to eat local.

Over the course of reading the book, I began exploring more local food options for us, specifically what we can get in grain and meat. Along the way, I found many other wonderful CSAs (community supported agriculture). Here are some of my findings.

Let's toast to protein!
Meat CSAs in the Bay Area This is the best guide that I found for pasture finished meat CSAs.
Frazier lane organics has organic beef and pork that can be ordered.
Places to buy Hertiage Turkeys in San Francisco Bay Area
Mary's Turkeys is actually close to SF, relatively. I'll get one of her turkeys for Thanksgiving this year. She also raises ducks and chickens.
Wise Food Ways has another listing of local meats.

Grains
It was a bit harder to find local grains. Eatwell Farm sells wheat berries at local farmer's markets and you can use their mill to make flour.

Windborne Farm is in far north California, which isn't exactly local (closer than Nebraska though), and they have a CSA that has a delivery in Berkeley. She offers a wide variety of dried beans, legumes and grains. Many of the varieties are not commonly available to the consumer; a majority of them will be grown out from a few seeds saved by grass-roots seed banks. The grain shares are delivered to your drop site monthly, not weekly. To sign up for the grain shares, contact Jennifer Green at: (530) 468-4340, 4932 Scott River Rd, Fort Jones, CA 96032. I've signed up.

Produce
Vegetables and fruit CSAs are definitely the easiest to come by here. In fact, there are so many of them sometimes it's hard to choose. I've been a member of Eating with the Seasons for about five years now. They have the best strawberries ever! Besides the veggies and produce, I can also get eggs, chicken (occasionally), local olive oil, and fair trade coffee. Plus, they deliver to work.

Om Organics has the most comprehensive list of CSAs I've seen.
Live Power Community Farm delivers to the Presidio. They have a lot of partnerships with other farms, and you can also sign up for meat, grain, fruit, and rice.
Eat Well Farm has deliveries in San Francisco and the East Bay, but many drop off locations have a waiting list.
Full Belly Farm has a lot of Berkeley deliveries.
Terra Firma Farm
Farm Fresh to You has home deliveries.
The Berkeley Ecology Center has a pretty good list of CSAs too.
Wise Food Ways has another list of local CSAs.