two days, two backpacks. twenty miles.

We spent the weekend taking a walk in the woods east of home and enjoyed seeing the restorative power of the forest in a post-fire regime. The B&B complex fire burned a significant amount of the forest in this area in 2003, now, just 8 years later ghostly trees remain and the meadow and wildflowers are thriving.

We had a delightful time, hiking on a section of the PCT for about 10 miles and then skirting off to our overnight destination, about a half mile on its own trail. The next morning we connected with a local trail that looped us another 10.7 (to be exact) miles back to the truck.

Three Fingered Jack from the distance

Essentially, our hike circumnavigated the volcano. A feat that seemed out of reach when observing it from this far away...however, our approach was a rather gentle incline, and the next time we saw the peak it was surprisingly close.

Looking out over the ghost forest

This is me swiping away mosquitoes in the snow...the snow!

Looking much closer, the south-west side of Jack

Looking North to Mt. Jefferson

Much closer. We think it has more than 3 fingers.

Our camping destination from above.

Our midway point and overnight destination was relatively undetermined when we set out, more an inclination--we'd like to make it to the lakes. In fact, we must make it to the lakes, otherwise we will be melting snow water for cooking and for our hike out. We only packed in enough water for our first 10 miles, packing along the much lighter water treatment gear instead. It was our first time taking this approach and it was actually a great learning experience.

As we approached the lookout for the lakes a shout of thunder came from the distance, beckoning us not to linger. We managed to locate a relatively flat spot and erect our tent before the thunderstorm started in earnest. It was an intense but short rainfall as the storm passed quickly overhead. After a lovely camp dinner the sun had truly gone down and we headed to the tent. Within a few moments we heard something gallop past outside. Not heavy enough to be an elk, but not light enough to be a dog. Perhaps a deer...

post-storm sunset

coffee, breakfast.

ready for day two

I promise not to hang glide.

reclaiming the forest

Our path.

almost around, Jack from the south-east.

snacks among ghosts of trees

A wildfire at Mt. Washington and the last lake of our hike

I fantasized about sitting on the tailgate of the truck with my feet up and drinking our cold (waiting in the cooler) 'ride-home' water for about the last mile and a half of day two. My feet were quite sore after trudging through the dusty terrain. Our longest weekend backpacking trek to-date, it was absolutely beautiful and well worth the stiffness and soreness I am still feeling the day after.

'homework'

My birthday fig, now portable.

There are many things I enjoy about summer—with specific reference to work though— I will say that I give myself a bit more relaxation time and a less rigid schedule, which allows me to do other fun things, such as playing in the garden and completing projects on the house. The past two weekends have been a combination of both as we ripped out carpet, installed new floors, built a cedar box and planted, picked and pruned in the garden, made some delectable foods and enjoyed some deliciousness too.

I must also say, that it helps significantly to be actually in the country during the summer. I missed last summer quite a bit.




To maintain consistency with the existing floors we purchased a light shade of laminate wood flooring for the bedroom and our office. It pained us a bit to do it. We're coming to the latter half of our residence and ownership of this home and the decisions we make now are more about what fits with the ranch house, our budget and in a 3 to 4-year trajectory, which is, at times, in conflict with our social, environmental and otherwise long-term planning. I do think though, that it is rather funny to be worrying about laminate floors when we simultaneously seasoned our cast-iron pan, (over the same 12-hour period) by rendering pig fat from our 1/2 pig, purchased back in February, made a couple jars of tomato sauce from some CSA Brandywines and picked hops from our vines to embellish our evening libations.

 

Taking down the office...this is the before shot.

Anytime we make a significant change to this house we are met with some fantastic surprise of leftover goodness, circa 1972. In this case, there was evidence of two different carpets and some super awesome vinyl, that really wins the competition for crazy vinyl in this house overall.

 

Cat damage from move-in day.

Look! More vinyl!

"this is ridiculous" --Joe on removing the moulding

Oh vinyl, you are much better as a record.

planning.

Completed floor.

Reconfigured office

Bedroom, sans carpet

Half-done, the bed migrated as we worked

Finishing touches

Bedroom: same same but different

Before: frozen, chopped fat

As I mentioned above, we also took the opportunity, being home all day, to render fat. No, not like this.

When placing our order with the butcher back in February I asked for the fat from our pig. It has been in ziplock bags in the freezer, I took out about half and consulted with Rosanna to see how to go about it. I have to admit, at this point I was most excited about seasoning our cast iron pan, which has sat lonely in the cupboard for over a year.

After.

Without going into too much detail, I can say that it took longer than expected. I cut the fat up into too large of chunks, which lengthened and complicated the process and made all of the neighbors likely hate us. We used the homebrew burner and propane outside, which allowed a smell reminiscent of 1000 pounds of bacon being cooked to waft over our fence for 12 hours.

Lard.

I also used my new food mill to make the first tomato sauce of the summer. Although, since it's reached almost 90 degrees here every day for the past week, I do slightly regret opening the bottle of red wine to season the sauce with. It will likely be vinegar before I'm in the mood to drink it again.

What I really want, is one of these:

A mix of hops from the garden

arts and crafts (read: shenanigans)

We couldn't find the water balloons...so we used the next best thing...

A great friend of ours had a milestone birthday recently (not so much in years, but in deeds, let's say). We contrived to make it memorable by putting our elementary craft skills and drunkenness to work...the results of which were "hilarious."

Ian David wonders at the pinata medium

The mastermind behind the pinata, crafting her genius.

flour and water and boys

While not taking photographs I made silly faces

The other side had the Boston Red Sox "B" on it, oh yeah!

Sadly, my camera was not at the unveiling, but it was gloriously bashed in by the birthday boy with a baseball bat the next day.

Revisions! Revisions!

The title of this post sounds great in my head when sung to the tune of the opening song "Tradition" from Fiddler.
Clearly, I've hit a wall. You can tell because I am observing how nice and ordered my revision space is. I must say, revisions for a journal article entail far fewer books, papers and notes in my surroundings, yet far more head banging on table moments. ouch.

But look how nice my small piles are....one pile of articles to draw from, one pile of reviewer comments to revisit, one pile of manuscript, one pile of notes and one pile of laptop. I think I just had a breakthrough.

Vampires beware....

We planted garlic last October, overwintering it in three of our backyard beds. It was experimental. We've grown garlic every winter, with varying degrees of success, so this year, in the interest of increasing our 'storable' yield (read: self-sufficiency in garlic) we attempted to be more strategic and take better notes.

In the past, we've saved back a few heads from the CSA or grabbed strong candidates at the market and planted them. This year we bought heads of garlic specifically propagated for seed--the benefits here include selection of varieties that do well in this region and knowing the exact variety planted.Of course, these benefits accrue only if you are mindful enough to write down the variety when you buy the heads (ahem, of the three we know that one is Spanish Roja...)


Either way, we patiently waited until this past week to harvest. Definitely worth the wait: 108 heads of garlic total, only two that had underground damage (splitting) and four that were savagely mauled during the harvest (read: struck by the shovel).

The Spanish Roja

Softneck garlic

third bed: garlic leaves

The take.

Dry curing on old screens in the garage

Root trimmings

 After a few days of curing we cleaned and trimmed and braided the garlic. Braiding is an art, we are clearly not artists...but in theory the braids allow the garlic to continue curing while being stored in a more compact and manageable manner. The next stage of the experiment will be to see what storage area works best. Garage? Pantry? Something else....

The goal: to not have to buy garlic for the year.

Braids!

So, if you have a need for warding off vampires (although, I hear they are all the rage now) or enjoying some exquisite deliciousness...garlic!

Taking up space

One of my good friends--who incidentally is not a geographer--remarked to me once that a cup of coffee buys space.
I am acutely aware of that today as (after a quick search for coffee and wifi) I sit in a coffee shop adjacent to the train station. For a couple bucks I have bought myself a corner seat, complete with free wireless, a powerstrip (charge the phone, charge the netbook) and table space to spread my work on.
I have six hours to burn while I wait for my train. Ah coffee.
I have many more things to say on the subject of coffee and space, but perhaps that's for another time...

You are here.

I'm currently in residence at the Sustainable Living Center at UCSC. Also known as the Village.
 
I'm officially half-way through an intensive course on Agroecology and Sustinability, which has, thus far, afforded me the opportunity to sit in on lectures by the founding agroecologists (and also from the professors--Altieri and Nigh--who first got me interested in doing work on agriculture in Chiapas); visit farms employing agroecological methods; travel a bit around the downtown Santa Cruz area and take in the weekday farmers market; and eat amazing food from the gardens here and from local veg and fruit growers....oh my expanding waistline! yum!

Of greatest importance, thus far, I have made contacts with folks in Chiapas and with other researchers who have interest in my work. I'm giving a short presentation for everyone tomorrow night after dinner, so hopefully I will get some critical feedback on my work before I head into the funding fray. Also, tomorrow's official lectures promise to be exciting...food sovereignty, small farmer traditional systems and direct trade coffee from CAN (something I would love to get involved with in a research capacity). The team of lecturers here is quite a family...for them (this is their 12th course), it's a reunion...so that is really quite inspiring and wonderful to see in the academic community.

my residence...and some familiar humor

I had some trepidation before coming because I knew I'd be staying a dorm setting....all fears completely unfounded. The village is surrounded by fruit trees, redwood trees, small garden plots and families of bunnies, quails and deer. It's wonderful...and in the evenings I compete with the young bucks to get to the plum trees.

The politics of the plate

After unveiling a new (and useless) food pyramid five years ago, the USDA has recently released the new plate.

I find this to be equally useless. Yet simultaneously, it demonstrates better how different food lobbies prefer the food pie to be sliced up (carved? apportioned? cut?)

The recommendations that come with the new plate are short:  Balance your calories by eating less, increase your fruit, veg and whole grain consumption and change from sugary drinks to water, whole milk to 1% milk and high sodium to low sodium. Frankly, I'm surprised the USDA got away with saying 'water instead of sugary drinks.' For the government, this represents a pretty strong push away from the high-fructose corn syrup merchants, yet as Marion Nestle has pointed out, this lumps fruit juices in with energy drinks and sodas, which is potentially unhelpful.

These recommendations smack of a processed food society and implies several things: 1) everything comes with a nutrition facts label; 2) cow's milk should be part of a normal human diet; 3) people have an understanding of what whole grains are (and dairy/protein for that matter); 4) that the fundamental problem with our eating is that we eat too much...just to name a few. Furthermore, by consistently separating these things out into their own sectors, the fact that nutrients to not hold to these borders is lost; for example: protein is a nutrient and is found in many food items such as dairy...

And forgive me here, because I'm going to go Foucault on you, but this is an approach that has the USDA asking people to police themselves. It's a model to change behavior, indicating that it is personal food choices that are responsible for the problems of obesity, under-nutrition and hunger. I firmly disagree with this standpoint, to be sure, our choices influence such things, but this obscures issues of access, race, class and etcetera.

Again, this guide to "healthy eating" is an industry staple, serving the interests of companies, not people (oh wait, I forgot that corporations are people too). This serves capitalism, not diet. It allows large conglomerates to make unfounded health claims (heart-healthy cereal, immunity boosting yogurt and so on) and privileges the purchase of processed (labelled) foods. It also relies on these companies to make such claims, allowing Proctor & Gamble, Kraft and Coca-Cola to educate the public--through advertising--about what food is.

How I spent Memorial Day weekend.

When Ella was born I commented to Michelle and Andy that if we could bottle and sell the smell of baby + the immense feeling of relaxation that washes over you when holding a sleeping baby1 we'd make a killing on the graduate student market.

 {--------After all of that, I feel like this.


I love being Aunt Zee.









1: note that the baby should not be the offspring of said graduate student.

If nature...

Perhaps it's due to the carbonation...heh heh...

iMatter - Happy Mother's Day!

First, Happy Mother's Day...especially to the mommies who are celebrating for the first time this year!

Second, today saw the global march (called the iMatter March) of youth in cities all over the world. Their cause? Climate Change. Their goal? to remind us that "climate change is a moral issue -- not a political or financial one." I find it fitting that they chose Mother's Day.

This March is tied to action in the past few weeks, where the organization Our Children’s Trust, filed either a lawsuit or submitted a petition for rule-making in all 50 US states, DC, and at the federal level to demand that the government do more to address climate change. This action utilizes a different legal approach, one that is based on the public trust doctrine, arguing, for the first time ever, that the atmosphere is a public trust and that the government has a legal obligation to protect it for its citizens. Namely, its future citizens.

Hellshire

The line flowing out of the brewery for the first Hellshire release on Saturday at 8am.
People started lining up at 7am.
I am so proud.

french fries are good for you...

Since I've been back in school I've started a small collection of ads from the big Ag companies. I don't come across them too often in my daily reading material...but when I do...oh man.
This troubles me exceedingly.


This first ad campaign comes from ADM and has the tagline..."you're body can't tell the difference." They are currently being sued over this ad campaign (US District Court) by sugar distributors, disputing that claims of High Fructose Corn Syrup being equated to real sugar is false advertising. This campaign is a jumpstart for the rebranding and relabeling of HFCS as corn sugar to deal with all the bad press it has gotten. Imagine when all the packaging changes from saying HFCS to 'corn sugar' how the consumer imagination will change.

Frankly, I can't worry too much for ADM, since corn syrup and HFCS are in a plethora of processed foods (as this picture gently reminds us), and people are unlikely to give those up anytime in the future. Although the 'real coke' and 'throwback pepsi' campaigns, which feature cane sugar probably have the execs shaking in their boots.


This next one hits a number of levels for me.
First, the idea of "fitter french fries"...that's right up there with heart-healthy cocoa-puffs. That getting rid of that 'trans-fat risk' is all that is needed to make it possible to eat french fries all the time.
Second, the normalized sounding altruism around this campaign, which is targeted at keeping people interested in fast food through explaining the use of new "non-hydrogenated oils" in the creation of that french fry we all know and love.
Third, the idea that tampering with canola seeds on a genetic level is the answer.
Fourth, the idea of growing more canola to accommodate this new 'non-hydrogenated demand' (yes, yes it's an edible oil, but think of what foods we could be growing instead)
Fifth, that once again, technology (whether it be through different processing methods, genetic manipulation, chemical use whathaveyou) is the answer to issues related to food and agriculture.

 And my all time favorite, from Monsanto. This was a full page ad spread in the New York Times, which I now have taped to the wall of my office. Again, the claim that Monsanto has anything to do with sustainable agriculture makes my skin crawl. Campaigns like this speak to the desire of global ag to convince its audience that we have used up our available resources (land, water, soil) and must turn to technology to create greater yields, efficiencies and fixes to this problem.
Nevermind the fact that the industrial processes perpetuated by big ag are largely the culprit in water pollution (including salinization), soil degradation (read: topsoil loss, desertification, toxicity) and the use of large tracts of land for the production of corn and soy that goes to feed meat and cars.
Again, the altruism that this campaign speaks to, "improving farmers lives" absolutely slays me...as if putting the "latest science-based tools in farmers hands" is an amazing feat to counter the twin issues of climate change and the impoverishment of farmers worldwide.

Lest we forget, profit is the bottom line here.
Accumulation for the sake of accumulation