American Gleaning

After mentioning last week that I'd never come across agricultural gleaning in the good ol' U S of A, I learned today of a gleaning program practically in my own back yard. An Americorp volunteer working in Sequim started the "Good for the Gettin'" gleaning project this summer, organizing volunteers to pick through the fields for useful food after the crops are harvested. Volunteers are allowed to bring home some of the food they gather, and the rest goes to local food banks. It's a modern manifestation of an ancient idea, which is every bit as relevant now as it was during biblical times.

Willie Greens CSA

This is my Willie Greens CSA box, which I've been getting every week for the past month or so. I get a complimentary box because they use my store as the Ballard drop off point. I look forward to it every week. This week there were leeks, apples, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, brussels sprouts, and their exquisite salad mix.

They start their CSA is the fall because they're really busy with the markets over the summers. The first couple of years I found it challenging to use everything in the box each week, but lately I've been doing a pretty good job of it.

Rolling Fire Pizza

This is the mighty, portable pizza oven used by Rolling Fire Pizza, the cornerstone of the food court adjacent to the U District market. (In the courtyard by the community center-you have to look for it.)

They make the best pizza I've had in Seattle. It's wood-fired but has a thicker crust than most other wood-fired pizzas, so it's closer to the stuff I grew up on in the pizza Mecca of Brooklyn. Did I mentioned that almost all of the ingredients are organic?

Plenty

This week I enjoyed "Plenty", Alisa Smith and JB Mackinnon's account of eating locally for a year. I think the only reason I didn't read it when it first came out was because Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" came out at around the same time, and I try not to read books with similar themes too closely together.

It did take me a while to warm up to this one, maybe because it's the third book I've read over the past few years about a year of eating locally. (The other one was Gary Paul Nabhan's "Coming Home to Eat.") Even though I keep picking up these books, part of me has a problem with the idea of setting out on a self-imposed odyssey, and then writing about its hardships.

It's not that I have anything against eating locally-I'm all about eating locally. It just doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. We're fortunate to be able to get olive oil, salt, chocolate and coffee from other places. The real problem with our food system is that we're shipping items like potatoes and lettuce, which grow nearly everywhere. Still, the heroic all-or-nothing thing makes a better story. Never mind that every one of these books--and every strictly local diet I've ever heard of--includes a list of caveats.

As someone who spends a lot of time around local foods, I found some of the couple's revelations early in the book kind of tedious, like when they discover the wonders of their local farmers' market. But eventually I realized that this was a very different book from the other two I had read. In "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," Kingsolver deliberately moves her family across the country to a place where they can grow their own food. She already knows how to garden, can vegetables, and even make cheese. Gary Paul Nabhan is a ethno-botanist, so he has connections that help him find local foods. But these guys just decided it would be cool to try this out, plunged in, and learned as they went along.

I most enjoyed what the book taught me about the Pacific Northwest, which is my bioregion as well. It painted a rich picture of this landscape's bounty, and also gave me a strong sense of how much has been lost.

The Gleaners and I

Earlier this week I watched The Gleaners and I, a French documentary by Agnes Varda about the agricultural tradition of gleaning, or picking over a field after the harvest and salvaging the useful food that remains. The film poignantly made the connection between this age-old practice and dumpster diving, the modern act of picking through the trash of supermarkets and restaurants for useful food that is thrown away.

As I watched I kept thinking about the fact that I never hear anything about American gleaning, though it must occur. I do have friends who dumpster dive, but I've never heard of people going through fields after a harvest, like the folks portrayed in the film.

Many French growers have specific parameters for allowing and restricting gleaning, and there are laws on the books for regulating the practice as well. The modern legislation is built on medieval tradition, which is built on ancient, biblical custom. From what I understand about European agriculture since medieval times, large tracts were controlled by the nobility and military elite. The typical farming family entered into a feudal arrangement with the landowner. Even after feudalism ended, vestiges of it kept most small-scale farmers from prospering.

Unlike Europe, where there has historically been a shortage of land--at least for the average farmer--America came into its own as a place of abundance. When the west was being settled the government offered parcels of 160 acres to folks who were able to improve them. Holdings of that size were inconceivable for a typical European farm. Perhaps this sheer abundance made this country a place where we don't often hear about rural gleaning.

Many of the people who Varda spoke to weren't gleaning because they were destitute, but rather out of a genuine respect for food, and the belief that it is too precious too be wasted. I wish we had more of that kind of respect in this country.

Alter Eco Chocolate

1. I found myself at Whole Foods the other day jonesing for a chocolate bar so I went and checked out their chocolate section, which I've mostly found disappointing the past year or so, since they stopped carrying some of the higher end varieties and focused instead on the fair trade and organic stuff. I have nothing against fair trade, organic chocolate--really I don't--but the varieties I like the most just don't fall in these categories. Besides, I find it hard to believe that you can make a truly fabulous artisan product with exploited labor and cut rate beans. Maybe I'm deluding myself, but I like to think that I can taste the difference, and I don't need a marketing label to tell me what to choose.

I noticed this line of chocolates made by Alter Eco, and I was intrigued because I'd bought some of their green tea a few weeks ago and thought it was really tasty. I got the one with almonds because it was the darkest variety on the shelf, and I was quite pleased with it. I was also impressed that this company has been able to market both good tea and good chocolate. It made me want to try their other products. I checked out their website and learned that they're French, which may help to explain their high standards.

Speaking of chocolate: the Mars company announced today that they're working with the governments of 14 African nations to develop a plan for sustainable cocoa farming on the continent. That's great news as far as the ongoing quest to take sustainable food mainstream. At the risk of sounding like a chocolate snob, though, it does validate my feeling that there's more to great chocolate than a fair trade label (although I'll bet that we'll start to see some higher quality chocolate from the Mars company.) I wonder if they'll be processing their sustainably raised cocoa with sugar from genetically modified sugar beets.

The U District Food Court

I stopped by the U District Market this past Saturday to check out the food court, where I've had a booth since May, though I haven't been there personally because I've been working at Magnolia instead.

The food court is run by the University Heights Center, the community center that rents space to the market. The market itself won't allow prepared food vendors who sell hot, ready to eat food except duriing the winter months, when they let us in because they have extra space and, besides, we're a draw.

But during the summer and fall we set up in a courtyard right near the building, which isn't visible from the market itself because there are two large vendor trucks blocking the view. We've had a hard time getting shoppers up there to eat, most probably because they can't see us. I've been taking a long term approach, figuring that it's just a matter of time before a critical mass of people figure out that we're there, but it's been frustrating. Not a complete loss, but a venue with a lot of potential that isn't living up to its potential, at least not yet.