yearofplenty

Wendell Berry, the Inhabit Conference, community gardens, and the kingdom of God

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Inhabit Conference, a collaboration between the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and the Parish Collective, a network of faith leaders equipping churches to live out the gospel in their neighborhoods. It was a wonderful collection of people seeking an alternative imagination for being the church in this modern, commodified, flattened cultural moment. In a fitting convergence of events, Wendell Berry gave the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Monday. The Inhabit Conference and National Endowment for the Humanities lecture both expressed a prophetic call to reconnect with a sense of place and a responsibility to people.

The Chronicle in Higher Education had the following report on the Berry lecture:

Mr. Berry's speech was a discussion of affection and its power to bind people to community. It was also a meditation on place and those who "stick" to it—as caretakers and curators. "In affection we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy," Mr. Berry said.

The opposite of the "sticker"—in the words of Mr. Berry's mentor, the writer Wallace Stegner—is the "boomer," those who "pillage and run."

"That we live now in an economy that is not sustainable is not the fault only of a few mongers of power and heavy equipment. We all are implicated," Mr. Berry said. Our relationship to the land and to community is increasingly abstract and distanced.

"By economic proxies thoughtlessly given, by thoughtless consumption of goods ignorantly purchased, now we all are boomers....." 

The antidote, Mr. Berry said, is affection, connection, and a broader definition of education—to study and appreciate practical skills like the arts of "land use, life support, healing, housekeeping, homemaking."

Berry's comments echo much of what I heard at Inhabit. In the midst of the growing wreckage of "boomer" models of church in North America, people shared stories about what it looks like to be a "sticker" church that specializes in affection, connection, and homemaking. As someone who battles mightily with my boomer instincts in leading the church, the conference refreshed my vision for a different, stickier path of leadership.

Part of the gift of the conference was to help me see the blessing of the stories that have unfolded in our community over the last couple of years. (The test of a good church conference is whether you go home feeling envious of God at work in other people's stories or encouraged by God at work in your own stories. Inhabit provided me with the latter.) Many spoke of starting community gardens, so I thought I'd share part of our story here as an example of how community gardens can serve as a living alternative to the "pillage and run" pace of life.

The story of the garden goes back four decades to the start of an iconic neighborhood pumpkin patch on the shores of the Spokane river, located next to a major north-south thoroughfare in the Spokane valley. Generations of children grew up in our vicinity making a seasonal pilgrimage to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin and pluck it from the vine. Not only that, they got to see the field plowed, the seeds planted, and the plants growing as their family station wagons drove by the site in the spring and summer. It was a community-sustained umbilical to the land and a constant connection to the rhythms of springtime and harvest that have been lost in most communities.

Ten years ago Spokane County set out to widen the Argonne bridge and the pumpkin patch was designated as the lay-down area for all the heavy equipment and machinery required for the year-long construction project. I was told that tractors came and shaved off the two feet of black humus that had accumulated from the years of growing pumpkins in order to level the land. After the construction was completed the land was left as a hard-packed abandoned lot that served as a turnaround area for school buses and a shortcut for people walking through the neighborhood. The land was so hard it took a pick-ax to loosen enough soil for a soil-test. 

Four years ago people in the church and in the neighborhood started a conversation about the potential of recovering the land and the story of the land by turning the site of the old pumpkin patch into a community garden. I had only known that plot of land as an abandoned lot and it was only after these conversations started that I learned its history. The loss of connection to the land is like that, we not only lose the use of the land we lose the stories that at one time gave life to the neighborhood.

We knew we couldn't do it on our own as a church so we reached out to the neighors and other community partners. The paper mill that owns the land agreed to let us use it and they even donated the water and facilitated the donation of lumber and compost through their connections. We enlisted neighbors, the school district, a local group home, scouts, local landscaping businesses as co-conspirators in reclaiming the land. We even had a bunch of guerilla gardeners from the Twitterverse that came to help us get started. We joined together and named it the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

The garden has become a gathering place for families and neighbors.

One of our goals with the garden is not only to let people have a plot to use for personal use, we wanted to bring back the pumpkin patch. So along with individual raised beds we have some area for row crops for Second Harvest and a place for pumpkins. Last summer we had a bounty crop of pumpkins and invited children from a local group home to come over and choose a pumpkin. The rule was that they had to pick a pumpkin that they would carry to the car. 

Some of them pushed the rule about carrying the pumpkin to the limit. 

Others tried to find the perfect pumpkin. It took this little girl 15 minutes wandering the patch to find just the right one.

It was a wonderfully redemptive moment to see kids once again walking on this land with anticipation in their eyes and joy in their hearts about finding a pumpkin to call their own.

I imagine that when these children now drive by the pumpkin patch they remember the fruit of the land, they remember the richness of the soil, they remember the rhythms of the seasons, and the joy of the harvest. To use Berry's words they have a new sense of affection, for a land that sustains them and a community that is committed to a place, which serves as a tangible sign that they are part of a community that is committed to them. 

Along with this I think they have a better sense of God's redeeming work in the world and we in the church who have been involved with the garden have a better sense of this work as well. We better understand that the kingdom of God is not some abstract notion, it's like a community garden -- putting down roots in a place, redeeming abandoned places, and renewing affectionate relationships.

Thanks to those at the Seattle School and the Parish Collective for putting on the Inhabit Conference. It helped remind me of the God who is at work in our neighborhood.

Hostess declares bankruptcy - Is this the end of the Twinkie food culture?

Hostess Brands, the makers of Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, and the iconic Twinkie, has gone belly up and filed for bankruptcy protection. It seems they are dealing with the usual challenges of a legacy company limping along with large pension and benefits obligations but this could also be a signal that the American food culture is kicking the junk food habit. 

Jonathan Berr at MSN Money attributes it to a rising awareness of the obesity problem:

Hostess wasn't able to change with the times. Its whole-grain bread, Nature's Pride, was a flop, and its other products are being hurt by the growing awareness of the obesity epidemic sweeping the country, especially among children. That trend is particularly evident with respect to Hostess' signature product, Twinkies.

Twinkie inventor James Dewar swore by the cream-filled cake he invented in 1930 and ate at least two packets of them a week before he died in 1985 at age 88.

"Some people say Twinkies are the quintessential junk food, but I believe in the things," the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying. These days, many consumers don't share Dewar's heartfelt dedication to what were once dubbed "the cream puff of the proletariat."

I'd like to see some data on trends in the consumption of junk food but it's probably true that not too many kids go to school with a Twinkie in their lunch box these days. I grew up in a non-Twinkie household but I was an active participant in the black market of Hostess Ding Dongs and Ho Hos during school lunches. That being said I can't remember the last time I ate a Hostess fruit pie and it's hard to wrap my brain around who is eating Twinkies these days. I will admit to an occasional weakness for Lemon Zingers.

Is anyone out there still eating Hostess products? Would anyone protest a world without Twinkies and Suzie Q's?

 

Girls Scouts Unveil "Locavore" Badge

Alongside Architecture and Water Fun badges, Girl Scouts can now get a Locavore badge by learning about local food and cooking up a meal with local ingredients. According to Alisha Niehaus, Executive Editor, Program Resources:

"All of our badges reflect what today’s girls said they wanted to know about -- girls are interested in what they eat and how it affects their health and the environment, so the Locavore badge gives them a chance to delve into those issues in their communities....Plus, what’s more fun than making your own food, and truly knowing it from farm to table?"

Neihaus points out that there is a strong history of food-related badges with the Girl Scouts, including a Canning badge from the 1920's. 

It might be time for the Boy Scouts to get with it and bring back their Beekeeping badge, (Go here to sign the petition) or their Poultry Farming badge. They already have a Gardening merit badge.

In another sign of the trend, a local Boy Scout chose to make a nice dual compartment compost bin for the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden as his Eagle Scout project. 

The heart of the local food movement is about developing a healthy connection to where your food comes from. It's hard for me to understand why some people are so concerned about it. It's as American as Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and apple pie (made from organic, locally grown apples). 

"Project Hope" in Spokane Teaching At-Risk Youth Urban Gardening & Life Skills

Project Hope is a great model program in Spokane teaching at-risk teens life skills through urban gardening, backyard chickens, farmers' markets, and landscaping. Project Hope was initiated by a group in the west central neighborhood, with Salem Lutheran Church as a key sponsor. It's yet another example of how churches are leading the way in these kinds of earthy outreach endeavors. Here's a recent TV report

Notable Books - Shaking Up the Consumption Status Quo

I look forward to getting back to my series reviewing books that share Christian perspectives on God, Green, and consumption. (See list below) There are some other intriguing titles that have been released recently that I look forward to reading in the coming months. 

Green Mama: The Guilt Free Guide to Helping You and Your Kids Save the Planet by Tracey Bianchi

The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul by Dave Bruno

Here is my original list of books in no particular order. Go here to see the full list on Springpad.

1. Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, Michael Schut, Editor
2. Farming As a Spiritual Discipline, Ragan Sutterfield
3. The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, Donald B. Kraybill
4. Living More with Less, Doris Janzen Longacre
5. Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change, Jim Ball
6. Planetwise: Dare to Care for God's World, Dave Bookless
7. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues [EARTH WISE 2/E], Calvin B. DeWitt
8. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship, Fred H. Van Dyke
9. MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), Calvin Dewitt
10. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Engaging Culture), Steven Bouma-Prediger
11. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben
12. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Norman Wirzba
13. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, Wendell Berry
14. Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread, Michael Schut, Editor
15. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Ellen F. Davis
16. Bread for the World, Arthur Simon
17. Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God's Earth, Mallory McDuff
18. Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food [Paperback], Lysa TerKeurst 
19. Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess, Will Samson
20. Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson
21. A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katharine Hayhoe
22. Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, Matthew Sleeth M.D.
23. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity, Ronald J. Sider
24. Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet, Jonathan Merritt
25. The Consuming Passion: Christianity & the Consumer Culture, Rodney Clapp, Editor
26. Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship, Tri Robinson
27. Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God's People, Scott C. Sabin
28. The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God, Leslie Leyland Fields, Editor

 

Yale Study: Best Fast Food Meals for Kids (Few and Far Between)

Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has done a great service by doing a detailed analysis of nutritional content in fast food meals for kids and the ways the foods are marketed. The reality for most parents is that fast food will play at least a small part in a child's weekly rhythm of meals. Here's what they found:

The study examines 12 fast food chains, McDonald’s among them, and evaluates their kids’ menu options based on three nutritional criteria: the Nutrient Profile Index, a scoring system of “overall nutritional quality that considers positive and negative nutrients in foods,” and calorie and sodium limits based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine Committee on School Meals. I.O.M. guidelines suggest that a meal served to preschool-age children should not exceed 410 calories and 544 mg of sodium, while a meal served to elementary-school-age children should not exceed 650 calories and 636 mg of sodium.

The Rudd Center study found that out of a possible 3,039 kids’ meal combinations at the 12 restaurants – that’s one main dish, one side dish, and one beverage – only twelve meals (0.4 percent) meet all three nutritional requirements for preschool-age-children, and only 15 meals ( 0.5 percent) meet all three for elementary-school-age children. Of the 189 possible Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals at McDonald’s, none meet all three nutritional requirements. Subway and Burger King are the only restaurants with meals that meet the standard.

So 12 out of 3,039. I guess it's not all that surprising, although McDonalds' 0 for 189 is particularly impressive.The folks at Yale created a handy ranking of kid's meals from best to worst. Subway dominates the top of the list with different combinations of their Veggie Deli sandwich. In that most kids won't go for that, the most realistic meal that kids will like that is best for them is, surprisingly, Burger King's macaroni and cheese with different combinations of fruit and drinks. The best McDonald's meal comes in at number thirty four with a hamburger, apple slices (no caramel), and low-fat milk.  Dairy Queen has the dubious honor of offering the worst kid's meal with their combination of a cheeseburger, french fries, soft drink, and Dilly Bar. If you take the Dilly Bar out of the equation, McDonald's jumps to the front of the pack with their double cheeseburger, french fries, and soft drink. One surprise on the worst list was the Taco Bell bean burrito and cinnamon twist combo that is packed with sodium.

One of the more fascinating charts in the report shows the nutritional content of the foods that are advertised to children and youth in a given day. I can't tell if this reflects kids children watching too much TV or the content of the  ads. Probably a little of both.

I grabbed my daughters' school lunch menu to see how the nutrition content measures up to the I.O.M. guidelines and the thirteen meals in December all fail to meet the requirements. They're not far off on the calorie count, hovering around 680 calories per meal. Where they really miss the mark is in the areas that aren't federally regulated. I.O.M. recommends 636 mg of sodium and the school lunches for next week at our school average 1255 mg of sodium per meal.

The Potato is Becoming the Unlikely Hero and Villain of Current Food Debates

The public debate about food has run into a surprising crossroads, with some heralding the potato as the hero of the local food movement and others villifying it as a scourge on poor families. I took the above picture at Spokane's recently opened Five Guys burger sensation. When you walk into the fast food parlor the first thing you see are the bags of stacked potato bags next to the line of people standing in front of the cash register. When you look up from the retaining wall of potato bags you see the sign pictured above proclaiming, "Today's potatoes are from Warden, WA, Hatch Farms." It's one of the most simple and compelling local food messaging strategies I've seen in a restaurant.

The potato is quickly becoming the food of choice in marketing the local food message. They store for a long time. Most regions have local sources to tap into. They are cheap compared to other locally sourced foods like beef. And people are always looking for another good reason why they should eat a huge cup full of french fries. McDonald's has even gotten on the locally sourced potato bandwagon.

Like I've said before, I think this kind of development is generally great news. The more the local food ethic is mainstreamed into our everyday food lives the better. It's always good for people to be more connected to where their food comes from. I think this should be considered a victory for the local food movement.

But on another front-line of recent food system debates the potato is being singled out as enemy number one. Under pressure from health advocacy groups, the USDA recently pulled potatoes off the approved list of foods that can be purchased through the WIC (Women Infant Children) program for low-income families, and is considering pulling potatoes from school lunches as well. The potato industry is responding as reported by Northwest Food News;

The executive director of the Washington Potato Commission is on an unusual campaign to protest a decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Chris Voigt is on day 22 of a diet that even he admits is a little crazy. He’s eating 20 potatoes a day for 60 days. Chris Voigt is eating nothing but potatoes to get the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s attention and the public’s too. Voigt says recently the USDA excluded potatoes from its list of subsidized foods in low-income programs. And now the agency is deciding whether potatoes should be allowed in school lunches.

I guess that amounts to 20 potatoes a day.

The USDA is basing its actions on a report from the Institure of Medicince.The basic argument is that schools need to offer non-starchy vegetables. Potatoes are cheap and therefore schools rely on them to meet their vegetable requirements. 

So which is it? Hero or villain?

Korean Kimchi Crisis Serves as a Reminder of Lost Food Culture in U.S.

picture: the Walrus blog

The story of how the rising price of Napa cabbage is creating a crisis of constraints on the Korean supply of kimchi is a fascinating story in its own right. (I wasn't aiming for alliteration in that sentence but, hey, sometimes it just happens) What has really got me thinking, though, is how the Korean way of life is so connected to food and food processes, in contrast to the American way of life that is so disconnected.

Kimchi is so much a part of Korean life that the kimchi crisis warranted a response  from the government as if they were talking about the supply of gasoline or fresh water;

“There is no reason for regular folks to have to buy items integral to daily life at higher prices than international prices,” Mr. Lee said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, while instructing his economists to more closely monitor commodity prices that have sent the South Korean consumer price index to a 17-month high.

Notice that the essential nature of the food item is not it's nutritional content, but something deeper, more cultural, more anchored in identity and frameworks of meaning.

The article describes the Autumn family ritual of making kimchi;

The price increases have caused many middle- and lower-income homemakers to cancel the making of kimchi at home this year, a traditional rite of autumn that typically brings together mothers, daughters, aunts, grannies and neighbors. Some families can go through a couple of hundred heads of cabbage, and it’s not unusual for all the bathtubs and sinks in a house to be filled with bobbing cabbages as they are washed, soaked and brined.

The question that arises for me is; What would be the American equivalent to Korean Kimchi? What food items and rituals are so central to our way of life that they would warrant a statement from the governor? What food rituals bring together the generations in our households?

Maybe Thanksgiving turkey comes the closest, but my basic observation is that there is no equivalent. American food culture has been plowed under like a chemically enhanced, genetically modified field of corn. There is not much of an identifiable food culture. By contrast, when we went to Thailand two years ago one of the most memorable, tasty meals was the Korean food on the Korean Airlines flight. Most cultures in the world are integrally connected to food and food processes. A big part of the movement toward local food in the U.S. is an effort to recover our food culture. That's something that economists will never get.

But Korea's food culture may be facing greater challenges than a cabbage shortage;

Mrs. Roh has two daughters, both in their 30s, and she said they learned to make kimchi “by looking over my shoulder, by tasting and doing, like all Korean girls are supposed to.”

One daughter works at an Outback steakhouse, the other at an upscale department store, and they have little time to make kimchi on their own, Mrs. Roh said, lamenting the loss of another tradition to the “ppali ppali” or “hurry hurry” lifestyle of modern South Korea.

Outback steakhouse? I wonder if they serve kimchi with the steak.

Berkeley Study Shows School Gardening Curriculum Makes Kids Healthier

A new study out of UC Berkeley examined the benefits of the Edible Schoolyard program in the Berkeley Unified School District and the results are in. The program formally known as the School Lunch Initiative (SLI) led to substantial health and lifestyle benefits to children, but did not necessarily improve academic performance.

The study compared two categories of school lunch programs. According to the executive summary;

Schools with highly developed School Lunch Initiative components offered cooking and garden classes integrated with selected classroom lessons along with improvements in school food and the dining environment.

Schools with lesser-developed School Lunch Initiative components primarily focused on launching the district-wide improvement in school food, but did not offer regular cooking and garden classes integrated with selected classroom lessons.

Sarah Henry at the Atlantic has the run down of the benefits for students in the highly developed SLI.

• Increased nutritional knowledge among 4th and 7th graders who were fed a steady stream of gardening and cooking curriculum.

    • Higher fruit and vegetable consumption among elementary-age students in schools with more SLI components than in students at schools with less-developed SLI offerings, including a preference for leafy greens like kale, spinach, and chard.

    • Vegetable intake was almost one serving per day greater in the schools with a beefed-up food curriculum, and combined fruit and vegetable consumption increased by 1.5 servings. About 80 percent of this increase came from in-season produce. In comparison, researchers found a nearly quarter-serving drop in produce intake among other students.

    • More positive attitudes about the taste and health value of school lunch in students in more highly developed SLI programs than those in lesser-developed SLI schools.

    • Small increases in produce consumption occurred among middle-schoolers with higher exposure to nutrition education as opposed to a drop in fruit and vegetable intake by about one serving a day among students in the other group.

    • There were no detectable differences in academic test scores or body mass index based on differences in SLI exposure.

This study comes out at the same time the Center of Disease Control and Prevention reports that Americans are no eating enought veggies.

Happy Meal News: McDonald's + Ant Farm = Art and A Happy Meal Is Forever

picture: Richard Perry, New York Times

Artist, Elizabeth Demaray, has put together some unlikely eco-art titled “Corpor Esurit, or we all deserve a break today," currently on display at Exit Art Studio in New York. Pictured above,forcing the ants to live off happy meals for a month is supposed to be a commentary on the way the food chain suffers under our fast food habit. The ants are cooperating (and mostly dying) but some scientists aren't cooperating with the cutting edge eco-art vibe. Read about it here.

In other Happy Meal meets artist news, photographer Sally Davies is 140 plus days in her project to take a picture every day of a McDonald's Happy Meal until it decomposes. If past efforts are any indication she may want to specify someone in her will to carry on the project after she dies. Back in March, Nonna Joann, at the Baby Bites blog, celebrated the first birthday of a happy meal she purchased and it was still going strong. Then of course there was the woman with the 12 year old unchanged Happy Meal burger.

But Morgan Spurlock's experiment from Super Size Me had different results, with nasty fungus on the Big Mac and Filet-o-fish althought the fries were unchanged. I think it might have something to do with moisture and condiments. If you dry out any food it will last a long time. If you tie up a happy meal in a plastic bag it will go nasty. Maybe someone needs to put all of this to rest and do a control experiment on several happy meals under different conditions. Maybe that can be a Year of Plenty contribution. And then when it's over we can put the remains in the chicken coop and call it art.