Happy Birthday to my darling Raquel!

The best friend I've ever had,


The best gardening cohort I could ever wish for,


veritable forest sprite,


and best person ever to curl up with.

I love you! Happy Birthday!

Which Yogurt?

Do you ever find yourself standing in front of the vast assortment of yogurts at the supermarket, wondering which is the healthiest, which the most environmentally friendly, or which came from the happiest cow and farmer? Maybe I'm just weird, but when we run out and I have to run to Smith's in the middle of the night for our yogurt fix, these are the thoughts that go through my mind.

I just listened to a really interesting podcast here and was introduced to the GoodGuide and how it ranks products for their environmental friendliness. It looks like it is a very useful tool, but I did have one problem with it (prompted by their discussion of different yogurts). Here's the comment I left:

"This is really great. I have an issue with the GoodGuide's yogurt rankings (and I suspect food rankings in general) though...

If you incorporate what Goleman is saying about the relation between number of steps and embedded energy, ranking low-fat yogurt products above whole milk/yogurt products because of "nutrition" is flawed (see here). Commercially dehydrated skim milk is added to milk to make it "low-fat" (i.e. more steps).

And lets consider moving beyond the industry driven low-fat diet concept - fats from ecologically happy (non-industrially farmed) animals are beneficial for people and planet without subjection to industrial food processing (ultra-pasteurization, homogenization, dehydration, "nutritional enrichment", etc, etc).

I am disappointed that these food rankings are tainted by the food industry's take on nutrition. I appreciate the sub rankings and will use those though."

Join the discussion here.

Now, you may not know that I have at times been so obsessed with the wondorous world of milk related foods that I am known in some circles as the "milk man". I've read many books, done much research and networking with local farmers, and have even run the odd semi-legal raw milk cartel! But I'm also extremely concerned about the threefold ethic - care of earth, care of people, and fair share. So what, you may ask, is the solution we've come to at home for the most feel good yogurt?
This:

Re-useable glass jar of home cultured yogurt and companion jar of homemade jam courtesy of my lovely GrittyPretty, made from unpasteurized milk, given by very happy 100% pasture fed heritage breed dairy cows under the care of a very kind farmer named Brandon Foote of Redmond Heritage Farms (109 miles away). (Milk now legal and available here).

Rethinking our Urban Surroundings

Landscape+Urbanism just wrote a great post on urban food production.


Last year, when we were tapping Hagrid for sap, I started learning to recognize maples on my bus route to work and daydreamed of an urban tapping setup, but it looks like someone beat me to it:

We'll have to follow suit this winter.

off on a new foot

On the subject of farmers markets, there has been a lot of behind the scenes goings-ons at Provo's Farmers Market over the last 7 months, which Raquel and I used to run. We have a great love for our local farmers, cooks and craftspeople here in the area and have worked very hard since April of 2008 when Raquel was asked to run it, to assist in the creation and sustaining of a market that supports them and is a thriving cultural event.

Raquel has been working in organizing community events around the arts and culture in Provo for the last 10 years or so and we have learned much from her dealings with the politics of Provo. Our motivation has always been to plug up the talent drain of people we saw leaving the area due to lack of support and venues for art and cultural events. The unfortunate truth of the current political situation in Provo is that there is a virulent component of people that is devoted to rooting out those "artists types" along with their often successful and vibrant events. They seem to have the ears of the decision makers and the result is that opportunities to support, collaborate with and embrace very promising events and projects are passed up or downright turned down or ignored.

The goings on at the Farmers Market grow out of this climate and its success this year prompted some really horrendous politics that Raquel and I worked extremely hard, through many sleepless and stress filled nights over 7 months to improve and move beyond. We were successful in assisting and cultivating a vibrant community space that built enough momentum and awareness to "get the ball rolling" for a market to support our beloved farmers, as well as the communities other local economic endeavors. But our farmers primarily need support and the encouragement to know that this community will support them if they choose to feed us rather than California's alfalfa appetite.

However it was quite apparent that the politics were not going to change, despite our and many of our friends' efforts to foster something collaborative and work with various components of the city and community organizations. So after much deliberation we resigned, trusting that the building momentum would continue to support the vendors, the people we had come to know and love.

Many months of hard work, coupled with such stress and anxiety of working with people who demonstrate their dislike of you and your honest efforts to improve your community and foster arts and culture, takes its toll. So we are pushing off on a new, slower foot, focusing on improving our small urban farm.

What made things ever so much more difficult after our resignation is that the city staffers who took over the market after our resignation, in their stress running an event that is a LOT more work than they were led to believe by those who wanted us out (we spent 40-60 mostly unpaid hours a week to run it) started some malicious, hurtful rumors about us and why we left. But this week we received a very kind and courageous email from one of the responsible people apologizing for his role, and recognizing us for the hard work that we did, for which we are very thankful, and feel like it is a healing first step.

So we want to thank everyone for supporting the vendors at the farmers market, and for supporting us through a difficult time. Provo has some deep seated problems, but we trust that change is on the horizon, even if it is coming more slowly than we would like to see it come.

The Worst Air Quality in the Nation

Here is the letter I sent to my State Representatives and Senator, the Governor, and the Division of Air Quality Director

Dear _________,

I would like to first of all express my disgust with the air quality of the last few days, today especially. On my bicycle commute through downtown Salt Lake this morning, it was hard even to breathe, I had to slow down, so that I did not need to breathe deeply. The air tasted acrid, bitter and felt thick in my lungs. I was not surprised to find out that we currently have the worst air in the nation.

I am frustrated with the resignation and inaction of our government, our industry and our populace towards our "fate" in this winter inversion-prone locale as far as exposure to toxic, carcinogenic, auto and industry borne pollutants.

Our inversions ought to be considered a blessing, reminding us that we are responsible for what we put into our air, a call to behave ethically. A blessing because it reminds us we're a part of our natural environment, and if we're willing to accept the negative feedback and respond, a harmonious relationship to it is possible. As a community, we need to be dis-incentivising pollution, and rewarding those who choose not to waste. There is no accountability for those who pollute indiscriminately and affect adversely the well-being of all of us along the Wasatch Front. The young among us suffer disproportionately, and because their suffering manifests itself slowly, they and their families are left with the burden and cost of treating it, often without help. This needs to change, and you can do something about it. Do not leave office without changing our course towards a future with clear skies.

Thank you, Oliver Smith Callis

Please take time to do the same!

Embracing the Sun

In permaculture design, we learn to arrange things so that each element of our lives is supported by multiple natural processes, and we make way for each process to be supported by many elements. This creates a safety net of redundancies where the natural order of things is to have their needs met and if one things fails, there's always something to back it up. Figuring out ways of incorporating the warmth of our neighborhood friendly nuclear reactor, the sun, into these kinds of arrangements is an important part of letting nature work for us when it can.

Our passive solar, straw-bale GREENHOUSE is an example of a beneficial juxtaposition. The hot south facing windows and the blanket of insulating straw and plaster envelop the sun's warmth throughout cold nights, offering plants (and our hungry stomachs) a refuge from the winter. It turns out though, that our birds fit nicely into the system. They're able to keep their toes from freezing, and their breath feeds CO2 to the plants. On cloudy days, their body heat actually does a lot to maintain warmth for the plants. Then there is their poop... which the plants love, and the eggs... which we love! Everybody wins.

Then there is the NATURAL SWIMMING POOL we are building in a part of our garden where there is always a lot of sun, even in the winter. Water is an excellent heat collector as well as reflector. To capitalize on this, we're building a sun trap on the north side of the pond out of rocks and soil to collect even more heat. In this good company, we'll plant fruit trees that need more warmth than is typically found in our climate, like citrus trees and kiwis. Between the rocks, the water and the increased air moisture, they won't get killed off by frosts. The mound will also give us a place to pump water to where it can filter through water cleaning plants and fall over flowforms to become oxygenated before it re-enters the pool. Ducks will be able to swim in it, and it will put water in easy reach of our chickens. And we of course have a place to swim, and relax. Natural swimming pools have become en vogue in Europe because they are easy to maintain and if they are designed well, will stay cleaner than chlorinated swimming pools. Again, everyone is happy.

The better we become at juxtaposing elements of our lives so that they compliment each other naturally, the closer we come to a life where our basic needs can be met by nature and our time can be freed up for helping others and living more creative, magical lives.

this post is the back-story for this post by grittypretty

Bioneers & Permaculture

Today was the first day of the annual Bioneers conference - the single most inspiring and replenishing event in our sun-cycle. What is especially cool this year is that there is a satellite session a little closer to home, in our watershed/bioregion (which we like to call June Sucker Nation). So we had a special opportunity to connect with fellow permaculturalists and people interested in permaculture from our area, as a workshop on the subject was held.

The presenters were Jacob Hansen from Wasatch Woodsgrown, Kendy Radasky from Tree Utah, Alex Parvaz from S.E.E.D. and Chase Fetter from Sage's Way Landscape and Design. It was great to hear about their experiences and projects in Permaculture, and to see some pictures of the EcoGarden - the permaculture demonstration site they've been developing in the Rose Park neighborhood of SLC.

Jacob Hansen is the person who was arranging the 2 Week Intensive Permaculture Design Certification Course this summer with Darren Doherty. These courses are taught to give people a solid footing in the ethics, principles, and strategies of permaculture. Unfortunately not enough people signed up for the course to take place and Jacob had to cancel it. I was one of the people wanting to take the course but unable to pool the resources to pay for it in time. So I want to apologize to Jacob for not being able to step up to the plate when he presented us with the opportunity and thank him for the effort and resources he put into organizing it. I hope we will be successful in convening another course soon, and really get the Permaculture movement growing in June Sucker Nation.