Small harvests

Even in a year like this, with so many disappointments, the garden still gives us a lot.  Here is some of what we've been harvesting, and what we've been doing with it.

We had a lemongrass plant that had lived in a pot for a year before we planted it in the spring garden.  We dug it up and cut off most of the roots, but left enough to keep it all together because there's no way we could dry this many stalks separately.  We hung it upside down in our unfinished shed a couple of weeks ago, and today, because we're expecting several days of heavy rains from Hurricane Sandy, I cut off the dry part.  First I trimmed and discarded the tips, then I cut a little over half the length off and took that part in the house. 

It will be the lower-quality part, but if we lose the rest, at least we'll have something, and by cutting it off I allow more air flow to the part that is still drying.  It's a lot of lemon grass!  We use it only for tea, because I have yet to find a recipe for cooking with it that doesn't require other exotic ingredients I can't find.

Then, while harvesting some field peas, my husband discovered that the sunchokes, which were right next to the field peas, are quite nice this year.  I roasted some in a covered bean pot with 1/2 cup water

for 6 hours at 200 degrees.  The skin turns black.  Then I peeled them, checked them for worms (I found 3), and mashed them with butter, salt, and pepper.

I made black sea bass (a sustainable fish) Hong Kong style, with all local vegetables.  Although they may seem like frivolities, I love being able to walk out to my garden and harvest ginger, walking onions (which I used as both scallions and as a substitute for shallots), cilantro, jalapeños, and other small but essential, potentially costly ingredients.

Lastly, the herbal tea harvest continues.  Today I harvested lemon balm, bergamot, and wild blackberry leaves, and added to those the leaves from yesterday's ginger harvest, and a bunch of mint I got in my box from The Farm Table.  I laid out individual leaves on paper toweling or cloth (I use single-layer cloth diapers), stacked four layers deep, in the oven with just the light on to dry.

I take my herbal tea-making pretty seriously.  It won't keep us alive, but it does have medicinal properties, and tasty hot beverages are important to keeping people's spirits up in both everyday and crisis situations.  I'm hoping to add some real tea (tea camellias) to my yard soon.

Working with Inspiration

My little soft-soled shoe business is failing.  Not for lack of demand, though if I charged as much as I should for them the demand would probably go down quite a bit.  I haven't finished a pair of shoes in a while.  I got stuck, waiting for materials to arrive and tweaking the pattern for the adult shoe before filling orders for it, and then I got too busy with other things.  Now, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I ever made time to do the work to begin with, and the guilty, obligated feelings I have about getting back to work are not helpful.  Even though I have not taken money from anyone, I still feel like I owe people the shoes I have promised them.  I was making 2 pairs a week for a while, and I thought I could sustain that pace, but I cannot.  I don't want to give it up, but I will not take custom orders again, certainly not more than one at a time.  

Part of the problem is that my son's needs, or my understanding of them, or maybe just my ability to meet them, have changed.  I have realized that he really needs more time out of the house and around other kids, and now that we have a car, I've been taking him to parks more often.  I don't "waste" the time by playing with him or just relaxing - I either knit, or I read something practical, but that doesn't help get shoes made.  I feel guilty for taking my kid to the park when I'm behind on shoe orders, then I resent my customers for putting that pressure on me (even though they are doing nothing of the kind).

I can't deny that a big part of the problem is that my inspiration has shifted.  I am learning that I'm more productive if I honor my inspiration.  I might want to knit all the time for a couple of months, then for 10 months I want nothing to do with it.  Recently I've been canning, which I had done very little of this year, and I've been cooking.  Even though I'm being productive, everywhere I look there are things that should have been done a week ago, or a month ago.  I simply don't have the time or the energy to do it all, no matter how badly I want to.  So I do the unavoidable things (like laundry), and with what is left, I do the work that inspires me the most at the moment.  

If I had stuck to making shoes I was inspired to make, instead of taking custom orders, I would probably be happy cobbling away right now, trying my hand at all different kinds of shoes.  That was the point, after all, to learn; I didn't expect it to be a profitable venture at this point (and it is not).  Maybe it's irresponsible to honor one's inspiration, and certainly it's undisciplined, but it is a luxury I will give myself for as long as I can afford it.

Summer Garden Review

This has been a very bad year for the summer garden.  The extreme heat and humidity in July caused us to abandon weeding, with predictably disastrous results.  Out of desperation my husband mowed a path through the garden, which instantly turned the mowed area back to lawn: don't ever use a lawnmower in your garden!  Bad storms, one of which found me trapped in a car in the driveway with my son while golf ball-size hail fell, badly damaged the tomato plants because my husband had tied them to multiple stakes (so when the stakes went in different directions, the plant was broken). The bugs, like the weeds, loved the hot, humid climate.

This is what did or are doing relatively well in 2012: onions, early-planted potatoes (we were especially pleased with King Harry), peppers, tomatillos (including some volunteers), roselle, lemon grass, field peas, gourdseed corn, huazontle, sunflowers (volunteers from seed we fed the chickens).

These things were a relative or total failure: late-planted potatoes, tomatoes, pole beans, squashes (although there is some kind of volunteer squash that has taken over the entire lower story of the corn patch), artichokes, melons, gherkins.

These things we don't know about yet, but don't have high hopes for: peanuts, sweet potatoes.

The only thing I have preserved from my garden this year is a chile verde (tomatillo/onion/jalapeño) cooking sauce.

It won't be hard for the fall garden to beat the summer garden this year.

Time's Up (For Me)

If you thought unemployment benefits lasted for 99 weeks, we were both wrong.  I suppose I can't complain about my free money running out after a year, but it would have been really nice to know ahead of time, instead of getting a letter after the final payment had been made.  Alas.  I knew we were living on borrowed time, in more ways than one. What makes it better and worse at the same time is that my mom just helped us buy a second car, and we put all of our savings (which wasn't much) into that, so we're starting off our lower-income lifestyle broke.  But, we have a second car, which I am enjoying more than I'd like to admit, and which will also serve as a backup since our other car is getting pretty old.  And, the "new" car is a minivan, so it is useful in ways the small car is not - I might even drive it to Mexico loaded with my stuff.

So, what now?  We should have some news very soon about my husband's immigration case; I marked 9/11 on the calendar as the date to expect a document in the mail, after which we will meet the lawyer again.  We need to find out how much it will cost, how long it will take (this information was not available before because the procedural changes had not been implemented yet), and whether or not I can go live in Mexico while his case is pending.  My mom is planning on getting me plane tickets to Mexico for Christmas.  That will be the scouting trip.  Then, maybe, comes selling the house (more likely, walking away from it)...the plans necessarily get more vague the farther out I go.  All of this is going to require money, and I don't know where it's going to come from, but hopefully we can scrape together enough to get started.  At this point, reducing our expenses by me moving to Mexico might be the only way we can afford the immigration fees, if we can at all.  There's some desperate number crunching in my future, and I hate that.  Let me enjoy my last moment of peace while I wait for the bad news...except, I can't.  All of this causes me a great deal of anxiety.  The money, and the fact that my move might happen sooner than I thought (because, in my mind, I kept pushing it farther out).  I'm such a settled person nowadays that even spending the night away from home causes me anxiety.  I say it's because of all the things I have to do at home, but I'm not sure that's the whole truth.  Am I really going to be able to pack up my entire household, my entire life, and start from zero again?  It's one thing to do that when you have nothing to lose (as I did years ago); it's another thing to do it preemptively, to give up a comfortable home because you think you'll be better off elsewhere in the future.  It's a huge risk.  I'm terrified.  I'm not quite paralyzed with fear, yet, but I can see that coming.  

But, there is hope too.  Not when I'm lying in bed late at night, but at other times, I feel like a bit of courage will bring great rewards.
 

On Becoming a Craftsperson

I first became interested in making shoes after meeting my husband.  He used to work in a cobbler's shop in Honduras.  That there were still cobblers in some parts of the world, making shoes by hand for ordinary (poor) people, was something I had never imagined.  I bought a pattern for soft-soled baby shoes, and a book by an artisan shoemaker named Sharon Raymond, but I didn't get started right away because I had a baby, and I really couldn't do that kind of work until he became a preschooler.   (He's still very demanding but at least he's weaned and potty-trained, and doesn't fall asleep on my lap several times a day now.)  

I still don't get to work on shoes as much as I want, because I want to work on shoes a lot.  Now that I've gotten started, I'm obsessed.  Rarely do I close my eyes for even the shortest of cat-naps and not dream about making shoes.  I sneak up to the workshop just to sit for a minute if I don't have time to do anything else.  I hope this means I've "found my calling", and doesn't mean I'll burn out quickly.  

I also don't get to experiment like I want.  I started with the easiest thing: soft-soled, in-stitched children's shoes, and I started posting photos of the shoes I was making on Facebook, and got a bunch of orders.  But there are so many different styles, techniques, and philosophies of shoes that at some point I'll need to set aside what I'm doing for a while to try a new direction, or rather several new directions, one at a time.  I want to spend some time learning to make traditional moccasins, and a while working out of Sharon Raymond's book, and a while working out of another book I just got called Shoes for Free People, and a while learning to make Ugg-style boots with another book I bought (with those 3 books, I probably have the best shoe-making library in the state).  Then I want to adapt what I learn to be able to use only sustainable, environmentally friendly, and salvaged materials, and even learn to tan hides myself.

This is the thing about shoemaking: it's not very popular, even among leatherworkers.  I guess there are significant barriers to entry, starting with conceiving of the idea of making shoes by hand in our modern world.  While it is not a totally lost art, shoemaking has never been the kind of thing everyone did at home, like sewing, spinning, knitting, and embroidery, for example, so the craft had fewer opportunities to be passed down.  The tools and materials are not cheap: I've got at least a grand invested, not counting my sewing machine.  The few artisans who are making shoes by hand today are, by necessity, doing really creative work, and providing me a lot of inspiration.  There's plenty of room for experimentation in this craft, and while the dearth of available patterns can be frustrating, it is also liberating.  I do worry about my limitations, but there is little enough competition in the craft that I don't feel hopelessly outdone (like I do with knitting).  And there seems to be an eager market for my efforts.  This is going to be an exciting journey.   

On Parenting, Homeschooling, Carlessness, and Chik-fil-a

My son and I went to Chik-fil-A for lunch today, as we do about once a week lately.  I didn't get the memo about today being a special day for them, but I noticed it was unusually crowded at almost 2:00, and I quickly gathered from overheard snippets of conversation that churches had sent people to support the anti-gay cause.  Although I am an atheist and support gay marriage, I haven't been participating in the boycott because Chik-fil-A is the only place we can get to where my son can play with other kids.  There is no public playground or park, or other restaurant with a playground, within walking distance or on the bus route that serves our house.  And honestly, I think I'm doing more good by not buying gasoline than I would do by boycotting Chik-fil-A.  

I've actually been feeling desperate enough to consider trying to buy a second car, even if I'm only here for a few more months.  Parenting like this is just too hard, and I feel like I'm doing permanent harm to my son by keeping him in the house all day, with only me for company.  My child is an extrovert and he needs to play with other kids.  We've tried playdates at home, but I, as an introvert, find it so exhausting to play hostess to the other moms that it's an unsatisfactory solution. 

It has always been my intention to homeschool my son, and I believe I can give him a better education than any school.  But I recognize that he wants and needs the social interaction of school, at least for now.  I have pretty much made up my mind to put him in a half-day Kindergarten in Mexico, so that he can integrate better into the culture and make friends.  I maintain that I will not put him in any school in the United States as long as I draw breath.  But, ironically, I am excited that I've just found a preschool program at a county recreation facility right on our bus route that he can go into for a couple of mornings a week.  I don't know if this constitutes selling out my homeschooling ideals, but it is a necessary compromise for our family and our situation.

Sustainable Low-Carb Eating

I have lost 21 pounds so far (in 11 weeks), following a diet that allows 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, and I have not been hungry or dissatisfied.  The only thing I really miss is ice cream.

One of the common misperceptions about a low-carb diet, one that I myself am guilty of believing, is that it means you eat mostly meat.  I've been surprised to note that my consumption of meat hasn't increased much since I returned to the low-carb lifestyle a few months ago.  Low-carb eating appears to go against the grain, no pun intended,  for someone who tries to eat a sustainable diet, but in the balance, I believe it would take more of society's resources to medicate my obesity-related health problems or raise my orphaned child than it does to provide me the kind of food I need to be healthy.  It isn't my fault I have developed insulin resistance, it's a product of the high-sugar, high-refined-starch American diet I've eaten since childhood.  Still, I do my best to make my low-carb diet sustainable.

While we don't do anything as formal as Meatless Mondays at our house, we actually do have plenty of days when we don't eat meat, and some of them happen to be on Mondays.  I eat protein in the form of eggs from our chickens, cheese, yogurt, and locally-grown peanuts.  Often, when I do eat meat, I end up eating the same portions or the same meal I would have eaten before, minus the starches: I don't replace the missing starches with meat, because I don't need to eat that much any more.  My consumption of vegetables and salads is the only thing that has increased dramatically.

Nose-to-tail eating has always been my soapbox issue, and it applies here especially.  When I buy offal from local farmers and they ask me what I'm using it for, they're always surprised I'm eating it myself rather than feeding it to dogs.  If, as many assert, it is immoral to feed livestock food that people could eat while there are hungry people in the world, is it not worse to feed pets?  People can eat almost anything dogs can eat.  It's simply a question of learning to prepare and eat the whole animal so that nothing is wasted.  Look to authentic ethnic cuisines for ideas.  If we don't request and buy offal from our farmers and butchers, those parts get discarded.

Food storage is more of a challenge when you can't rely on grains and other dry goods.  Meats and fish can be canned, dried, cured, and smoked, although it is expensive to build a supply of preserved meats.  In the garden, we've started growing peanuts, and we're growing seed pumpkins (Lady Godiva) and spaghetti squash rather than pie pumpkins this year.   Greens and low-carb root vegetables are easy to grow, especially in the fall garden.  Growing stevia is something I haven't had success with yet, but I intend to keep trying. 

Not all family members require a low-carb diet. I do feed my child and my husband bread, rice, pasta, tortillas, beans and potatoes.  I believe whole grains and natural starches are fine in moderation for healthy people.  But, we must be careful not to perpetuate the plague of obesity in the next generation by feeding our children too much sugar and white flour.