Friday dinner

I don't eat meat on Fridays and I'm still on a pretty strict weight loss plan, so I wanted to make something that was healthy, lowfat, and vegetarian, so dinner was a warm lentil salad:

I cooked a half cup of lentils with a little salt and a bay leaf, and then mixed it with some leftover brown rice. I sliced up some red bell pepper and zucchini* and tossed them with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. I roasted the veggies in the toaster oven, and when they were soft and just beginning to blacken I added them to the rice and lentils. I chopped up some scallions, cherry tomatoes, basil,* and parsley,* and mixed those in as well. Finally, I made a dressing of red wine vinegar, a little Dijon mustard, and some good olive oil and stirred it into the salad. Feta cheese for protein. Vegetarian, vegan with the cheese omitted.

 * indicates ingredients from my garden

Becoming Simple-Minded

Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you,  and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land! The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah.  - Isaiah 5:8-10


As a follower of Christ I consider myself an apprentice to the Master, which means that not only do I believe in his teachings and his purpose, but I try to emulate his life to the best of my ability. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but the spiritual life I've developed for myself is more about discipleship than membership. At least that's what I strive for, even though I've been known to trip and fall over my character defects.

Let's face it: one of the things Jesus excelled at was living the simple life. This was someone who said of himself, "the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Matt. 8:20). Homeless, with few belongings, wandering through the countryside, Jesus taught the virtues of love, patience, friendship, faithfulness, and most importantly, the message that the Reign of God was imminent.  This reign as preached by Jesus is a vision of a radical transformation of both humanity and human institutions so that they become visible expressions of the nature of God, which is a nature of mercy and justice. The reign of God is most clearly visible when its values are made manifest in the social relationships of God's people.

In case you're wondering what this has to do with farming a backyard garden, the answer is: plenty! Making a commitment to a way of life that is based on Jesus’ teachings of compassion, love, and service means embracing a way of living that does not conform to our profit-obsessed consumer culture, but rather frees us to enjoy a simpler, more compassionate lifestyle, and to contribute toward a more peaceful, socially just, healthier, and environmentally sustainable world.

Now that my hands are in the dirt every morning and most evenings, I have a close-up view of what it means to make choices to do violence to the land or to spare it from an onslaught of pollution.  The garden is alive! Worms wriggle in the dirt, fertilizing and mixing the soil, while birds carry off the seed they find. Squirrels bury nuts (and grab strawberries!), and ladybugs rest on the huge zucchini leaves. Of course, there are the pests: weeds, aphids, beetles, but instead of giving everything a blast of pesticide I just pick off the aphids, reinforce the anti-squirrel fencing, and pull the weeds by hand. This is my stewardship.

My goal is also to disconnect as much as possible from Big Food, where one company owns almost all the genetics of the worldwide corn and soybean crop and has bioengineered seeds so that they cannot be preserved, an act which has brought economic devastation to farmers in the developing world. Simplicity means being as responsible as possible for the food that is eaten in our household, and what better way to control the means of production than to raise it myself? Besides, with all the time and attention given to home-work, there is less money and time for being plugged into the consumer-driven culture that produces fleeting enjoyment while also ensnaring households in debt.

Here's a list of books compiled by a fellow blogger who writes about Christian simplicity, food, and the environment. I've read some, and some I intend to read. I hope you find the list useful.

Dirty theology

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. 

― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

It seems as though I've quickly moved from being a casual gardener with an interest in nice-looking flowers to getting serious and excited about the prospect of creating an urban homestead. Actually, I find this rather funny because I really am a city girl, and the idea of having anything more than a hobby garden is an idea which I've never seriously thought about before. I had a small veggie patch at my home in California, but it was never big enough to supply most of our household's produce. It was fun to beam over the few ripe tomatoes and peppers as if they were precious newborn babies, but I still had to get in my car and drive to the local farmer's market to make up for the tiny output. When we moved to Reno for a couple of years I didn't even bother trying to grow food since the soil is so poor, so it's been a long time since I've given food a try.

So what's changed? Well, for one thing, I love to read books and websites which push back against my Western, urban middle-class worldview, and Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle began the process of tickling both my curiosity and conscience about how I have been living in a way that is really quite disconnected from creation. Since then, I have been profoundly influenced by reading Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan as well as a variety of websites that deal with issues such as sustainability, environmentalism, peak oil, and the locavore movement. This was all good and valuable reading, but I still hadn't gotten my hands in the dirt.

Ultimately, what moved me from thought to action, and from hobby to the stirrings of a new lifestyle, was theology. I am an Episcopal priest and parish minister, and although I am not a professional theologian by training I believe that thinking theologically is an important lens for any person of faith who wishes to view their life and their surroundings in a new context. There are serious theological conversations to be had on the issues of simple living, sustainability, food justice, and humanity's relationship to the rest of creation. These are the topics to which I return in both my reading and prayer life as now I now plunge my hands into the rich soil of southeastern Michigan.

In the next few posts I will take up each of these issues individually. I hope that you will join in the conversation.

Fences and Fierce Squirrels

Perhaps you've heard the expression "good fences make good neighbors," but one thing I learned very quickly is that good fences don't necessarily mean that the strawberries won't get stolen by our non-human neighbors.

After Miss Claire and I planted our seedlings we thought all we'd have to do was keep them watered and relatively free of weeds. I vaguely mentioned something about deer, but because I hadn't seen any deer wandering through the neighborhood I promptly forgot about it. As the strawberries began to flower and produce fruit and the tomato vines began to grow, I decided that putting up some chicken wire fencing would be a good idea. My friend Lisa gave us some of the fencing she wasn't going to use this year, and we supplemented it with an additional purchase from Home Depot. After much sweating, cussing, and struggling, we successfully surrounded the two new planting beds with a fortress of wire. The thing is that we didn't have enough fencing left over to cover the strawberry patch, but we were out of time and money for the rest of the week and decided to wait.

Needless to say, by the next day the strawberry plants had been stripped bare of fruit. There was a squirrel sitting on the fence directly above the planting bed, and I swear he grinned at me as if to say, "that was a great snack! Thanks!" I also suspected the robins ... or maybe the local groundhog. Whoever it was, the strawberries were gone. It was a devastating blow to my newfound confidence as a suburban gardener, but I promised myself that I would be victorious. They're just squirrels, right?

The Accidental Gardener, Part 3

The yard already had a planting bed that was in sorry shape, overrun with weeds and the skeletons of long-dead tomato vines. It was also partially shaded and I wondered how successful the previous owner had been. If I wanted to grow summer vegetables I was going to have to dig into the sod and rip it up. Miss Claire and I determined the sunniest spot and marked it off into two 4x16 beds. We then stood there silently, each of us no doubt contemplating how much muscle it was going to take to dig up all that grass. I could already feel my muscles aching and I hadn't even gotten the garden spade out of the garage.



Finally Miss Claire spoke up. "I'm calling Jack," she said and whipped out her cell phone. Jack is the husband of one of my parishioners, and I do believe that he owns every tool in the world. Since he only lives a few blocks away he was at our house in no time and soon we were rolling towards the equipment rental place in search of a sod cutter. Once at the shop, Jack stood there looking at the machine and thinking out loud. Finally he said, "I have a better idea. Let's go!" So it was back to the house, and within 30 minutes Jack reappeared with a small tractor! The sod was neatly scooped out in less than 15 minutes, leaving two large gashes in the lawn. Naturally, we didn't want to waste all that good topsoil, so we cut each piece of sod to a manageable size, shook the dirt back into the beds, and carefully plucked each worm out of the cut sod and placed it where our garden would be. By the end of the day I was filthy, exhausted, and aching in places I didn't know could hurt.



We weren't finished, of course. It was off to the garden supply center for compost and peat moss, which we tilled into each bed. Then it was off to the farmer's market for seedlings, and that's where I first had an inkling that I was either going crazy or discovering a new vocation. I bought 3 kinds of tomatoes, beans, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, corn, and cucumbers. Meanwhile, Claire had taken over the weedy old bed and had prepared it for planting. This bed received watermelon, rhubarb, and strawberries, which were donated by Jack's wife Gail. After another exhausting day, I gulped the maximum recommended amount of Aleve and staggered off to bed.

The next morning we learned about the critters.

The Accidental Gardener, Part 2

After a little over three years in Michigan it was time for us to get serious about buying a home. We had lost our shirts in our short sale on our home in the West, and then went through several failed offers, disagreements, twelve steps of recovery and a return to sanity. We were here to stay, and it was time to set down some roots.

We had become enamored of a small community on a lake just west of the church where I serve, and we began looking. A small housing stock and deflated home prices made the search challenging, and after nearly 9 months of looking we came back to a place we had initially rejected - a plain-looking colonial that needed a little TLC. The thing that really stood out about this house was the enormous backyard:



It measured 10,697 square feet, which is nearly 1/4 acre.

I have to admit my initial reaction wasn't: yay! I can have a really big garden! It was more like damn, that's a lot of lawn to mow. But we put an offer on the place, and after some nail-biting negotiations we were the proud owners of a Plain Colonial With a Huge Backyard. We moved in shortly after Easter, which means that this minister had to pack during Holy Week. As God is my witness, I will never, ever do that again.

And then spring came, and Michiganders began to talk about gardening. One thing I've learned is that as soon as it gets just a little bit warm, Michiganders obsess about gardening and lawn care. You can hear blades being sharpened all around, while people drive out to the farmer's market to dream of seedlings. The seed-growers have been busy since early March, and as their electric bills skyrocket from Gro-Light use, they draw up their meticulous garden bed plans on fresh sheets of graph paper. Meanwhile, I looked out at my lawn with dread, filled with the knowledge that mowing would soon commence.

And then I had an idea: rip up some sod and plant tomatoes! Less grass to mow, fresh tomatoes in the kitchen. It was a concept filled with win, and I got busy with my own plans. The Plain Colonial With a Huge Backyard wasn't yet The Suburban Farm, but the seeds of change had been planted.


to be continued ...

The Accidental Gardener

One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.  - Wendell Berry


It all started when I lost a few pounds.
I have been overweight for over 20 years. At one point I managed to diet down to a healthy weight, but the success did not last, and by the time I had lived for a year in my present location I was heavier than I had ever been. A combination of stress, back pain, and getting used to that first Michigan winter made for a deadly combination of sedentary living and over eating. I've never been a vain sort of person and didn't care that much about looks, and because I've always been pretty strong I was able to drag around the extra poundage with not too much effort.
But then I turned 50 and the effects of obesity began to wear my body out. Lower back pain from scoliosis became unrelenting, my gall bladder began to complain loudly, and I was tired all the time. My blood sugar began to rise, and the blood pressure numbers began to creep upward. Oh yes, and my knees hurt, too. The Vicious Cycle had begun: chronic pain meant no exercise, and no exercise meant more sitting. My headaches became fierce and cyclical, and I found that eating carbs gave me temporary relief. My moods became darker from pain and frustration, and my work suffered. When my doctor asked me if I wanted the stroke in five years or the heart attack in three, I knew it was time to do something. So I did.
With the help of a local clinic's weight loss program the pounds began to slide off. I was encouraged to exercise and joined a gym. I worked with a trainer and got stronger. The pain in my knees went away. My blood pressure and blood sugar dropped, and my headaches vanished. My mood improved. I gave most of my clothes away because they didn't fit and tentatively bought some new ones. I looked nice.
I won't say how many pounds I've lost, but last year I wouldn't have been able to lift it. I still have more weight to lose and the journey to health will probably never stop, but I'm OK with that, because it was on the journey that I met The Suburban Farm.


to be continued...