Simple Stress Strategies

We hope everyone will join us this Thursday, January 28, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Village Commons for another DELICIOUS edition of Pathfinder Produce.  With our great prices, great selection, and great staff, it’s always fun to stop by our friendly market.

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I’m a bit under the gun this week juggling a few projects, so I’ll keep this week’s blog post short.  Please forgive my brevity, but I’m sure everyone has times when there’s “too much stuff, not enough time.”  I think part of my goals for simplifying during 2016 was not to stress out when this inevitably occurs.

There are many ways to de-stress—yoga, a quiet cup of herbal tea, reading an inspiring book, talking to the dog.  One technique I use a lot is just to project a month into the future, and realize that the temporary stresses will be in the past and not look so daunting in hindsight.  Another technique is to break big jobs into smaller tasks.  I also recall the advice I learned many years ago at a leadership workshop, where the instructor’s main takeaway was, “Unless it’s fatal, it’s no big deal.”

When you are stressed it’s important that you don’t fall into bad eating habits.  Instead of reaching for that tempting bit of chocolate, eat a juicy orange instead.  Or, do something that distracts your craving for sweets, chips, etc., for more than 10 minutes, like taking a walk, vacuuming the house, or sorting the laundry.

Until next time, be happy and be well,

Lori

Diversify!

Hello everyone!  We hope you will be able to join us at our next Pathfinder Produce market here on Thursday afternoon at the Village Commons building, from 1 to 5 p.m.  Our “Little Market that Could” is heading into its third year; we’re grateful for the tremendous community support we’ve had and look forward to another tremendous year serving all our friends and neighbors.

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Last week’s column focused on the California drought and how it affects everyone as we shop for fresh fruits and vegetables for our families.  Unfortunately, weather predictions for the West Coast for the first half of 2016 may not offer real relief. According to the Weather Channel, California may get more rain, but “the drought may also hold steady in the northern Rockies and northern High Plains,” during this El Niño, the strongest weather occurrence of its type in the past 18 years.

That means the winter snow packs that feed the growing fields of the Golden State necessarily won’t be replenished as they historically have been. 

So what can we do about it?

I haven’t heard it mentioned in any of the Presidential Debates, but I believe the time has come to make big changes at the national level for American agriculture.  As in savvy financial planning, diversification is the key. It also makes greater sense from a national security standpoint.

First, as California will not have the same capabilities to supply our needs, we must look at growing edibles in other places around the country. Writer Tom Philpott of Mother Jones suggests that the former cotton belt would be ideal, especially in areas east of the Mississippi.

He writes, “Why not transition at least some acres into crops with a robust domestic market? I bounced my idea of a Cotton Belt fruit-and-vegetable renaissance off a few experts to see if it was nuts. Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, called it ‘noncrazy’ … and added that the region ‘seems ripe for entrepreneurial companies to come in, buy land, grow farmers, introduce a whole new vegetable supply chain on a bigger scale, especially with California's woes’."

We also need to rethink the potential for the Midwest, which at present, is over-planted in corn due to our reliance on grain-fed meats and ethanol for fuel. I’m not an agronomist, but if diversified crops were grown, it would improve the land, increase our sources of produce, and mitigate widespread failure if there were a natural pest or other disaster that targeted corn. Jonathan Foley, the Director of the California Academy of Sciences, wrote a 2013 piece in which he explores these ideas.

(I’d should add that a better answer to our ethanol needs is to grow industrial hemp, which can be grown without herbicides, produces greater biomass yields per acre than corn, and offers many other ‘green’ uses. Yes, it is a member of the cannabis family, but it does not contain sufficient tetrahydrocannabinol to induce pyschoactive effects).

Here in the Northeast, we should look to growing and preserving more of our families’ produce, as our grandparents and great-grandparents did.  We can also extend our growing seasons by using hoop houses and learn to eat seasonally. Authors and organic farmers Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch offer ample advice about growing in colder climates and producing fresh harvests year-round.  Many people are now starting to grow in urban areas too, like former NBA Player Will Allen, and are realizing impressive results.

Until next time, eat and be well,

Lori

California Update

Hello everyone!  We hope you will be able to join us at our next Pathfinder Produce market here on Thursday afternoon at the Village Commons building, from 1 to 5 p.m.  This year begins an exciting time for our market, and we have hopes of expanding our agricultural program here to provide even more delectable Pathfinder-grown produce in the months ahead.

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A recent edition of Mother Jones’ website included an article by food writer Tom Philpot, who selected his seven biggest food stories of 2015.  His picks included updates on the meat industry’s overuse of antibiotics and how Americans are starting to eschew highly “processed junk.”  Midway on his list was an entry of how El Niño slightly eased the ongoing California drought.

Despite this, Philpot writes, “The Golden State endured its fourth consecutive year of punishing drought, to which farmers responded by drawing ever more deeply from finite underground aquifers.… Farmers have withdrawn water so rapidly that the ground is sinking by as much as a foot per year in some parts…. Meanwhile, growers continued to shift from annual crops to long-lasting ones like almonds and pistachios, putting long-term strain on those same aquifers…the state's farms have gotten so big and productive that their water demands have outstripped the state's water resources, even accounting for wet years.”

In an earlier post, Philpot explained that California is nearing the end of an era where it received greater-than-average rainfall, based on research by B. Lynn Ingram, a paleo-climatologist at UC-Berkeley.  During this 20^th century wet spell, California became the nation’s Victory Garden, accounting for nearly half of all domestically grown nuts, fruits and vegetables.  Through all that activity, farms used 80 percent of the state’s water.

So, at a time when rainfall is decreasing, water demand is increasing.  California’s water problems are not going to get better, and we can expect more bad news as massive fires, mudslides and other climate stories play out in the months ahead.  Sadly, all of this reminds me of a Beverly Hillbillies episode where Miss Jane (Nancy Kulp), naively explained to Granny (Irene Ryan) that she didn’t have to plow up the mansion’s front lawn to grow produce, because all of that was taken care of through California’s burgeoning corporate farms.  Fifty years on, we now know that Granny, ever spunky and resourceful, was right in her belief in food self-sufficiency.

For present-day consumers, the water-starved west serves up several consequences:

• Expect food costs to go up as production costs increase and less bountiful harvests inflate prices (the law of supply and demand).
  
• Produce quality may suffer from the water shortage.  In wet climates, plants grow lush and put out succulent fruits and veggies; conversely, water-starved plants put out spindly edibles.  For several years, California farmers have had to reduce their water usage, according to the New York Times.
  
• Food distributors will seek out produce from other countries, like Mexico, Canada and Chile (some of which are also encountering water concerns).

Stay tuned to our Pathfinder Produce Blog; next week, I’ll serve up some thoughts on how we may cope with the California drought and the changing picture of American horticulture.

Until next time, be well, and be thankful for plentiful clean, fresh water,

Lori

Simplification in 2016

Happy 2016 to all!

We hope everyone will join us at Thursday’s Pathfinder Produce market at the Pathfinder Village Commons, from 1 to 5 p.m.  We have so many delicious and fresh fruits and vegetables that there’s something to tempt everyone’s taste buds.

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New Year’s Eve always means a small get together with our oldest and dearest friends at Graceland, and this year was no exception.  We always have a toasty wood stove fire, a good meal, share the latest updates on families, talk about the gadgets that Santa brought, and sometimes the evening devolves into a Battle Royale in Scrabble (my 14 year-old is quite the strategist, having grown up with the game).  The festivities always wrap up before 10 p.m. …
yes, we are really that boring.

At some point, the discussion usually comes around to resolutions.  This year, along with continuing with last year’s resolution of really, really taking care of my teeth, I also resolved to simplify things.  I am not certain how one does that, but I have all of 2016 to learn.

I think through simplification, I want to de-clutter, de-stress, and just focus on “what has to get done” in the simplest way possible (without sacrificing quality, of course). The first step in this, I think, is to make an effort to spend more time reading books, going for more walks, and working on crafts that repurpose the flotsam and jetsam in my storage closet.  In other words, it’s time to spend less time looking at Facebook and other social networking sites during our evening downtime, and cultivate my brain in more traditional ways.

That ties into the “2” of the goals that we work for and advocate through our Edmeston Community 5210 Committee – five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, a limit of two hours of recreational screen time, one hour of fitness activities, and zero sugar-laden drinks. (I still need to work on the five and the one parts of this, but I pretty much have given up soda and sweet teas).

For starters, I have set up my great-great grandma’s treadle Singer sewing machine after a decade of it just sitting there, gotten it all running again, and have begun a machine-stitched quilt using the accumulated sweatshirts that my kids have amassed through the years.  Now mind you, I am not a seamstress, but it’s my theory that even a bad quilting job is good for the brain.

Until next time, be well and be kind to your cranium,

Lori