Aromatics

My husband Jim and I spent today at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, New York. The trip to Saugerties, according to the fastest route, was about an hour and a half. We decided to take a more scenic route, which made the trip an hour or so longer. That long road trip, coupled with the overwhelmingly heady sensation of sampling about a dozen different varieties of garlic, created a day trip that I will long remember.

I like to think of garlic as an aromatic. It, like onions, is a member of the allium family. This group of plants also includes shallots and leeks. My style of cooking often involves these flavorful vegetables as a base. Fairly typically, I will heat oil, chop up a couple of cloves of garlic and/or some onion and fry it in the hot oil until the air around the cooking pan is fragrant. Then, it is time to add the main element of the dish: whatever meat or vegetable or grain will comprise the key ingredient.

Garlic, as a result, is an important but perhaps under-recognized element of each daily meal. It was a treat, as a result, to spend a few hours hobnobbing with aficionados and to get a sense of what can happen when this base ingredient moves out of the sidelines and takes center stage.

Our entry into the garlic festival began with a stop at the first booth, manned by a garlic entrepreneur known as Jake. The booth, like many others, featured wooden boxes of both loose and bagged bulbs of garlic in several varieties, and small dishes set out in front. In the small dishes were bits of raw, fresh garlic diced into pieces that we perhaps a quarter-inch in diameter. Next to the dishes were toothpicks. Visitors were encouraged to select a toothpick, pierce one of the diced bits, and pop it into the mouth.

My first taste was of a fairly mellow German white variety. It was fresh and sharp. I felt both the freshness and sharpness penetrate my tastebuds, waking them up. In the meantime, my husband was sampling a different variety: a hard neck variety of garlic known as Georgian Fire. "You've got to try this, hun," he exclaimed. "I pierced one of the pieces and felt the fire slip down the back of my throat."

"Wow," I exclaimed.

From Georgian Fire, we moved to sampling what are known as soft-necks: a Chamiskuri variety that came from one of the former Soviet Republics and the famous (or infamous) Elephant Garlic, which is known for its large cloves and its mild flavors.

From each, along with several other types of hard neck garlics, came the sharp freshness over and over again.

To return to an unanswered matter, the difference between a hard necked garlic and a soft necked one has to do in part with the stem. Garlic grows from a clove planted about four inches deep into the ground. From the clove sprouts a green shoot that eventually stretches upward about four feet and thickens and dries into a stalk. If the stalk is firm like a small stick, the variety is a hard-neck. If the stalk is soft and pliable like a piece of twine, you've got a soft neck. Hard necks also produce a scape, which is a long green stem, just as the bulb growing from the clove underneath the ground begins to mature. Growers learn quickly to cut off the scapes -- partly to promote the bulb's growth and partly because the scapes are a delectable savory treat in and of themselves.

Most of the local farmers in our part of New York grow primarily hard neck garlics because soft necks are more vulnerable to cold. However, even if the soft necks are vulnerable, they tend to store better, retaining their aromatic headiness up to a year after their harvest. We wanted to give these soft necks a try, and a consultant with the Garlic Seed Foundation encouraged us to give it a try. A little bit of extra mulch would help protect it through the winter as long as we remembered to start pulling off those layers of mulch once the snow melted in April.

We left the garlic festival with a pound of the Chamiskuri soft necks, a pound of Elephant cloves, and a pound of the peppery Georgian Fire that had first kicked our taste buds alive. We also left feeling the heat of the late September sun baking through our skin and the sharp hot fragrances of the miniature pieces of garlic that we had sampled warming our stomachs.

I rarely eat garlic raw. Like most people, I see it as something that requires roasting, frying, or baking in some form or fashion. I also see it as an enhancement to dishes, not a singular ingredient. But eating it raw and by itself opened up an amazing discovery. Garlic, by itself, smells and tastes good. It is powerful in its strength and its freshness. What I had sampled had awakened my taste buds and kindled my appetite. It had cleansed my palate and made me eager for more.

Finding the Source

My name means Snow, which my mother told me throughout my childhood was Princess of the Snow. I was always embarrassed by the princess reference because it seemed pompous and girly. These days, it's funny when sometimes people call me "princess" -- as a sign of affection, mostly. I like it. I did like the idea that my name meant snow, and as I grew older, I realized that the snow references also were tied to the Himalaya mountain range. I saw the Himalaya briefly in 1973 when our family went to India and took a trip to Simla, where my mother was born. I felt -- or imagined -- some connection to the mountains.

Later still, I learned that the Ganges River, which Hindus refer to as Ganga, had its source high up in the Himalaya mountains and that you could actually trek to the source. I never felt very connected to the Hindu religion -- it was a little too offbeat for the Midwest sensibility all around me -- but I longed to see the source. I think actually I wanted to climb into the mountains, and I felt that seeing the source of Ganga would be an appropriate excuse.

Growing up in the Midwest didn't give me a lot of opportunities to be around mountains, but I always felt that I would enjoy them. I remember feeling very excited about being near the mountains when I had an internship in Boise, Idaho, and loving the Cascades and Olympic mountains when I moved in 1988 to Seattle.

I got an opportunity to trek to the source of Ganga in 1999 when I traveled to India as a graduate student, as part of a study abroad group organized by a couple of professors from University of North Carolina. By this point, I knew that the town where one began the trek was known as Gangotri and that it was at about 10,000 feet. I also knew that the source of the river was actually a glacier, with the name of Gaumukh, and that it was all but impossible to get to the source -- the point of origin -- because the size of the glacier would vary with the seasons, which meant that the source was never a fixed point, a point that becomes obvious when one looks at the concept of an origin from the perspective that Michel Foucault offers in his essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. This essay teaches that there is no origin, only beginnings, with emphasis on the plural. Still, I was excited to make the trek.

The hike was 18 kilometers (about 12 miles) one way. It was supposed to be a relatively easy walk, but I was out of shape and relatively easy on a mountain trail at 10,000 feet has a meaning of its own. I was in my mid-thirties, and I was with a group of students who were mostly in their teens. I really could not keep up with them, but I wanted to do the trip.

There were tea houses along the way -- which were essentially huts built into the mountain where shepherds and other mountain folk would live. Serving tourists was a big part of their livelihood, and the tea and samosa and hot paratha that we could get at these rest stops were quite nourishing.

Most people walked to the base of the glacier, and stayed overnight in an ashram like guest house at the base of the glacier. We were going to do the same.

Our group of some fifteen to eighteen people kind of split into clumps. There were a few very kind people in the group who walked with me, mostly older men. One of them was the study abroad group leader Afroz. The other was a graduate student like myself, whose name I'm not sure of. I think it was Vinnie. Anyway, I caught up with a group at the last teahouse before the guest house. One of the girls in the group had gotten some altitude sickness and while she wasn't seriously ill, she didn't want to continue. She decided to stay overnight in the tea house at the shepherds' invitation. This made me a bit skeptical, but Afroz queried the men and gave his approval. It worked out okay, from what I could tell.

I then started walking with Afroz. He and I were talking, and he was putting me at my ease. Throughout the trip, I had sort of felt like an older person. I had had a chip on my shoulder because I am Indian and I wasn't particularly pleased at the way that a bunch of college-age kids were handling their first trip outside the country. I also felt like a prude because I didn't approve of smoking or of women drinking in India in public, unless it was some place like a bar. Afroz treated me like an equal. We talked about research, scholarship, and he encouraged me to keep on exploring my roots. He was Muslim so I talked to him a little about how he perceived the place of Muslims in India.

Then, we hit a point on the trail where a rock slide had occurred. What had been a fairly safe and wide mountain trail had become reduced to a narrow treacherous path that could only be crossed single file. Afroz panicked and said we had to go back. I knew, however, that darkness was coming and that we couldn't make it back. I felt that if we were careful we could get across safely. My knowledge of the Ten Essentials from hiking in the Cascade Mountains kicked in. I asked Afroz if I could walk in front of him, and I held his hand so he could cross after we made it. He was shaking like a leaf and worrying about his partner. I told him that if we kept our own thoughts focused on safety, everyone would arrive safely. My prognosis proved to be correct. Everyone arrived safely.

That was one of the most empowering and strengthening moments of my life. Earlier, on our bus ride up to Gangotri, we had passed through the town of Tehri, which was controversial because a dam had been built there in the 1980s, displacing villages of people. Unlike the lively gurgling sparkling Ganga that characterized most of the ten-hour drive between Rishikesh and Gangotri, the river was dead in Tehri. The water was thick and mosquitoes swarmed the air. The air felt hot and humid, and there seemed to be a fetid smell. I realized that this was the impact of the dam. It had killed a civilization. I remember that I thought as we drove out of Tehri and up toward Gangotri that this was a good reason to be religious. One could link the religious values of Hinduism to the environmental activism that would restore land and life. I could get excited about this kind of a politics, a politics of justice, rooted in the land.

There's a lot more to the story of Gangotri. It's amazing that I have never told it. I have thought it over and over since 1999. That was a difficult period of my life, and I was a difficult person to be around. I had a huge chip on my shoulder then. But maybe when the rocks slid on the mountain that is part of the range from which my name is derived that chip began to loosen. The next day, upon reaching Gaumukh and getting to the glacier's current source, I did a little puja for my parents. That was my mother's request. I bought some incense and flowers from a shepherd, and I placed them in the snow. As I spoke to God, the mountains around me seemed to hover around me, offering me a protective quilt. I felt as if I were them and they were me. As the incense flared with a match light, (and the lighter was provided by one of the smokers in the group, which is ironic that yet someone else whom I had looked down upon came to my aid), I heard a noise. Snow was tumbling down a cliff, the result perhaps of an avalanche. Some people shuddered. I knew somehow that we would be safe.

The Joyful Clutter of Abundance

I live these days in chaos. Six cats tromp up and down the stairs of my house, chasing each other and their tails. Two young goats graze in my backyard, and one of the seventeen hens that lives in our chicken coop just gave birth to twins. Five roosters herald the sunrise in a harmonic chorus, and it's not unusual to see wild turkeys tromping across the yard.

With the cavalcade of animals also has come abundance in other forms: our garden is overflowing with fresh produce. Our kitchen is full of vegetables that need to be picked or preserved soon, and tiny jars of seeds I'm saving from this year's harvest to start next year's crops are scattered hither thither. Beyond the garden, our house is also filled with gifts of books, furniture, pots and pans, and kitchen appliances from our parents, and my office now boasts a stunning collection of feminist literature -- thanks to the generous donation of a retiring professor.

I feel blessed with all these gifts, and I know I want them in my life. I'm just not sure how and when and where I'm going to make space for all of them.

Themes of scarcity and abundance run through my life -- and often surface in my writing. I first encountered the pairing of these concepts in 2001 during a seminar at the Esalen retreat center in Big Sur, California, while attending a weeklong Anti-Career Workshop: Creating the Life You Love. In 2001, life felt perhaps as Thomas Hobbes described it: solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. I felt as if there were so much to do, and as if I had no choice but to do it all alone. During the workshop, I began to gain an appreciation for the fact that I had lived -- and was currently living -- in beautiful places, always had been able to do work that I enjoyed, and even when lonely never was entirely alone. Looking back, I see that during that time I was living with the glass half-empty and that the years -- post Esalen -- were about making a shift toward seeing life and its opportunities as, always, the glass half-full.

One story about abundance from Esalen comes back to my mind. The workshop facilitator was describing abundance as always being able to create more, of not running short, of always rejuvenating one's self, of always finding ways to accumulate. I don't think he meant accumulate in a material sense but more in a sense of gaining more joy, more creativity, more fulfillment. Still, I asked the question, "What do you do with all of this abundance? What do you do when you have too much?"

The facilitator's answer was simple: You start giving it away.

That credo also makes enormous sense, and over the years I have given away quite a bit: full wardrobes, box loads of books, enough furniture cumulatively over the decades to furnish a mansion, cars, appliances, and artwork, among other things. Not to mention monetary donations.

These days, I give other things away: food, time, knowledge. I earn a salary as a member of a college faculty, but I have no trouble doing a lot of additional work for free. One 'ism built into the credo of giving is that what one gives comes back ten times greater.

And so I wonder is the wealth of knowledge (from the books), functionality (from the household items), food (from the garden), life (in the form of all the animals and, of course, the garden, too) and future growth (in the form of seeds) the "return" ten times over. It feels like more than ten times. But the new question surfaces: What does one do with it all?

I thought about this point in my office as I looked at the three tall piles of women's studies books collected from the boxes left behind by the retiring professor. I was so grateful to see these books because they included many classic titles that I have yet to read as well as provocative collections of works on activism, social movement theory, black feminists, multiculturalism and gender, and numerous other topics. I began to look forward to the time when I could go through them one-by-one, soaking in their wisdom.

And I realized, well, fact of the matter is this: I probably will not get through even a quarter of them. I read fast but not as much as I would like. The academic life is one of solitude, reading and contemplative writing in theory. In reality, it is a long, busy day of sound bite style activities: prepping classes that one teaches, responding to e-mails, attending meetings, applying for conferences, grants, papers, and other projects; household tasks, financial responsibilities, and, oh yes, your scholarship sandwiched in there somewhere. The great boon and bane of this frantic life is that it is largely one that one creates one's self. It is full, it is rich, it abounds with clutter.

Ice Buckets

I've been trying to get my head around the latest Facebook fad to engulf the universe. This is something called the Ice Bucket Challenge, which as I understand it, requires someone who receives the challenge to either donate $100 to a favorite charity or pour a bucket of ice over the head. For quite awhile, I dismissed the challenge as something of a celebrity spoof. If people who could spare $100 or more would do so to benefit a cause such as research on Lou Gehrig's Disease, all the better. And, I figured that since most of my circle of friends knows -- hopefully at least -- that my current condition of life is one of being cash poor and food rich, I wouldn't be challenged in the first place.

My hackles rose, however, when I learned from a close friend -- okay, my sister -- that the Ice Bucket Challenge was evolving into a bit of a popularity contest, particularly among teens, such as her children. Only the more exciting and risqué aspect of the challenge wasn't about donating the $100; it was about the brain-numbing thrill of dousing yourself with ice. My close friend -- okay, my sister, sorry, sister, that I am divulging the source -- has decided to respond to the challenge her daughters are receiving by donating the money for them and letting them indulge in the ice pouring exercise. That raised some questions for me: What are we, as a society, learning through this experience?

All right, before we go any further, I should issue a preachy alert. Anytime one starts talking about giving, some sense of moral piety is bound to emerge. And, so if it surfaces in the words that follow, my apologies in advance.

My flip answer to my sister was that I didn't have $100 to give to anyone right now (except National Grid, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Wireless and the countless other monthly providers of services whom I must satisfy with cash every month), and that if anyone challenged me, they were probably going to get a piece of my mind.

And, in a sense, that was the challenge: How to make the "piece of my mind" meaningful to someone other than myself.

I have given money to charitable causes -- and less charitable ones -- quite freely in the past. These days, because I lack money, I try to give time, food, and knowledge about various life skills that I happen to possess by virtue of living as long as I have. As the small food-growing operation in our backyard garden/farm/homestead continues to expand, I find myself feeling that it is important to remember not to sell the bounty of our harvests before: first, making sure that the nutritional needs of my husband and myself and all the residing animals on our land are met; and second, ensuring that we're donating at least 10 percent of what we raise to local food pantries. Anything that's surplus after that, in my view, can be gifted or sold. A piece I read by Garrison Keillor on "wisdoms" seemed to echo this point. He says that the credo of generosity says to give all you've got, but that if you do that, you'll have nothing and others will have to give to you. So don't give everything you've got, he advises. At the same time he notes that most people can give 10 percent.

But what is 10 percent? How is it measured? What if your wealth is not in the form of cash? What if you are a six-figure income earner with nothing left over after paying the bills that are helping you amass your wealth? What if the most valuable asset you've got is a skill you can teach, a practice you can promulgate? Why, I wonder, are these forms of wealth not figured into the traditional 10 percent figure of tithing or the $100 versus a bucket of ice over the head? Could an ice bucket challenge allow for these kinds of giving?

As some of you know, I have been a supporter of President Obama, and volunteered for his campaigns for the presidency in both 2008 and 2012. I will come clean now and acknowledge that the reason I did this had less to do with his politics and more to do with the value he placed on the $1 and $5 donations he sought particularly in 2008. The value of contributors was measured less in terms of the amount of money they could give and more in terms of the number of people they could mobilize for his campaign. Reading this logic in an Atlantic magazine article in June 2008 suddenly opened up a whole new scenario of political change in my mind. If all the poor of the country and the world gave $1 and urged their friends, neighbors, and family members to also give $1 and to tell everyone else, the insensitive 1 percenters would have no match. The tables of power would be reversed in an instant.

Reality has not quite followed this vision, but I do feel that politics in America at least has gained a certain dimension of egalitarianism through application of this logic. With the ice bucket challenge, however, there seems to be a push back. You are valued if you have $100 to give. You are punished if not because the bucket of ice symbolizes the quality of your heart. I don't oppose giving or ice, but I wonder if there is a way to revise the language so that we all are giving the best that we've got without worrying about how the dollars and cents measure up.

Writing Process Blog Tour

I decided to join the Writing Process Blog Tour after receiving a request from another writer last week. The idea behind this tour is to share some views about one's writing process, and to tag three other writers to join the tour by posting next week. I have not had a chance to circulate a request so I'm hoping three readers of this blog might be inspired enough to contact me and let me tag them. We have been asked to consider the following questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my writing differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do you write what you do?
4. How does your writing process work?

So here goes:

1. What am I working on?
Currently, I am working on trying to get inspired. I mean that in more than a flippant way. I have been working on a book project over the past several years that, if all continues to go well, will be published in the fall of 2015. The project began as a doctoral dissertation, which earned me my PhD in 2007. It evolved into a strong and highly readable book manuscript from 2011 to 2013, after I floundered with trying to decide what to do with it for a few years. I was fortunate to have been able to make contact with an excellent university press, and the support of their editors and two external reviewers have made the manuscript stronger and stronger. I just received some comments and am working on a final set of revisions, and am looking forward to seeing the book in print.

I am proud of the work, and I do feel that it will receive a warm reception when it is finally released. But the book has taken a very long time to develop, and as you might guess I am feeling the fatigue. I do have a second book project in waiting, and an idea for a third project. I also have several short articles and contributions to edited compilations that are in progress. But the past year has been a hard one emotionally and financially, and I am feeling a bit burned out. I am looking for ways to reconnect with my writer-self, so that I can seek some new energy and intellectual stimulation that hopefully will start to reinvigorate me.

2. How does my writing differ from others of its genre?

I would describe my writing as a hybrid of narrative non-fiction and academic auto-ethnography. I integrate an interdisciplinary mindset into my research and my writing, but my writing is not ponderous or dull. Before I entered academia, I worked as a daily newspaper journalist. That training made me into a storyteller, and when I was able to release myself from the constraints of journalistic writing, I found that many of its sensibilities -- organizational styles, short paragraphs, measured uses of quotes -- had become organic to me. The style persisted through a master's program and a doctoral program, to the point that when I would try and mimic more conventional ways of writing academically, my advisors would tell me to stick with what I do best. I do my best to do.

On the narrative non-fiction end, my writing differs because it is scholarly. I hesitate to say academic because it is not writing that seeks acceptance within academic constraints but rather writing that uses the skills that scholars acquire to theorize, pose curious questions, investigate particular situations, and come to personal and sometimes forceful conclusions.

Overall, I write to be read and I would be quite disappointed if someone refused to read my work because it was either "not academic enough" or "too academic".

3. Why do you write what you do?

This is a rather difficult question. I would offer two answers. The first is that I like to share with the world the things that I do. While I have worked to get inspired, I have blogged about growing food, about researching and teaching hip-hop, about the politics of sustainability, and about my quests to maintain a sense of health and fitness for life through moving my body. These are daily pursuits. Lately, I have been interested in writing more about teaching practices because a large part of how I earn my living comes through teaching. I experiment and innovate, and it is this freedom to experiment and innovate that I enjoy most about teaching. Grading papers -- not my favorite part. I feel like I have created some interesting activities in classrooms that I would like to narrate to others.

The second answer is that I want readers to have an opportunity to know about the world I have experienced, and to consider that world from the lens that I offer them, at least provisionally. I grew up as the eldest daughter of immigrants from India in the 1960s in the Midwest at a time when immigrants from India were few and far between. I was born in the United States, which made me American. But my identity and my place in the U.S. has always been ambiguous. I am a permanent "no fit" person, and it was only when I hit the half-century mark that I began to feel comfortable in that role. Being a no-fit offers a way to see the world differently, and an obligation (dare I say moral obligation) to tell the stories of what one sees.

4. How does your writing process work?

I have two daily practices: I write three pages of longhand in the morning, and I write at least 750 words electronically at night. Followers of Julia Cameron might recognize both of these practices as versions of morning pages. I began the longhand habit in 1998, and I joined 750words.com in late 2012. The idea is to use the morning stretch to outline and hash out ideas, and the evening stint to generate sharable prose. The writings in these practices often do not dovetail with each other, which is okay with me for now. Years of morning pages have helped me draft essays, write course syllabi, outline books and book chapters, and generally take care of my life. The work that I began in earnest with 750words.com in April 2013 has led to a fairly vigorous blogging practice, and some good work. I do feel that I need to add a third daily practice, which is to go to a library or a coffeeshop for a couple of hours each day to do some quiet reading and writing. I feel that that practice will help tap the wells of inspiration so that they start flowing again.

Farmer or gardener?

Gardener or farmer?

I've been stumbling over how to articulate the meaning of these two terms over the past couple of years as our family's emotional, financial, and physical investments in growing vegetables and fruits and raising chickens and small livestock has increased. I think about these categories as I walk through my yard to gather food for an evening dinner or to pull weeds or amass a big basket of tomatoes for canning. And, I wonder, am I walking through a yard? Or am I walking through a farm?

Out of curiosity, I googled the definition of farmer tonight. I came up with a fairly broad range of hits, all of which seemed to unite, oddly, around a singular and somewhat capitalistic theme. A farm is a source of income. A farmer is one who works on a farm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is even more specific. Its website on Farm Household Well-being provides a glossary that states: "A farm is defined as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year. " In short, if you're growing food but not selling it, you are technically not a farmer. You are ... well, what are you? 

That seems to be an interesting question. We will have farm income this year -- about $200 from the weekly sale of a dozen eggs that my husband makes to a colleague at the local food pantry where we both volunteer. So, I suppose that's a start. We also receive inquiries from friends and colleagues occasionally as to whether we sell at the local farmers markets or whether we might have some particular product for sale. I tend to see these inquiries as not particularly serious. Everyone's curious about what other people are doing, and asking such questions such as whether we'd sell some turnips seems like a good way to open up a conversation. 

More to the point, however, is our own motivation. We put a lot of work into our food-growing endeavors. But we have no large aspirations to create a market for our produce. We mostly want to enjoy the food that we raise for our own consumption, share it with friends when opportunities arise to do so, and make some regular donations to food banks that always are in need of fresh produce. The last thing I want to do is to try and put a value on this endeavor in the form of retail purchases.

So does this make us gardeners? According to Wikipedia, "Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants as part of horticulture. In gardens, ornamental plants are often grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants, such as root vegetables, leaf vegetables, fruits, and herbs, are grown for consumption, for use as dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use. Gardening is considered to be a relaxing activity for many people." Without the immediate link to bringing the food to market, it does seem that "gardener" is an appropriate way to describe my husband and myself. But relaxing activity? I find myself puzzling over that point. 

Recently, I arrived late at a party. I attributed my lateness to the fact that I had been working in the gardens and needed to change clothes and scrub the dirt out of my fingernails. I was not expecting any particular reaction. Yet, I was surprised when people started exclaiming, "Oh, fun!" "Good times!" "My garden is so far behind this year." Gardening for this group of people was clearly a pleasurable pastime, as it is for us. But I couldn't help wondering: "Do they realize that we live off this garden?" "Do they know that if the tomatoes or peppers or kale doesn't get planted, we probably won't eat peppers, tomatoes, or kale through the winter?" "Do they understand that this is our food?" 

The linkage that I make between "growing and cultivating plants" and food to subsist on seems to straddle a line between "relaxing activity" and "$1,000 or more of agricultural products produced and sold during the year." I have always felt that growing food is a source of income in an indirect way: When one grows one's own food, one lessens the reliance upon other food growers. Hence, money is earned through not being spent on the capitalist market. I find the question to be of deeper interest as I recall how some "real farmers" -- those who definitely earn more than the requisite $1,000 a year from the production and sale of agricultural products -- responded when I asked once whether customers of farmers markets who get inspired by the farm produce around them to grow their own end up hurting the very farmers who were their prime suppliers at a particular point in time. My question drew several laughs and one fairly insightful response. "Are you kidding? The more people grow their own food, the less we have to grow it for them. You can't believe how excited we get when we see others doing what you're trying to do." 

One last definition comes up in discussions among farmers and gardeners. The term is "homesteading" and it refers, according again to Wikipedia and numerous other online sources, to "a lifestyle of self-sufficiency." Homesteading, according to Wikipedia, "is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale."

What does it mean, then, to be a homesteader? Is this the way of the future, of life after capitalism, when farmers cease to exist because all people are dedicated to becoming self-sufficient, a lifestyle that erodes the necessity of buying and selling produce via the market? 

Frugal Feasts

The month of August seems to offer an interesting paradox: On one hand, I walk through my gardens every evening and marvel at the fact that I have so much food that I cannot decide what to eat. On the other hand, I open my bank account in the morning and look at the diminished rate of return. I shake my head and sigh as I realize that this paycheck cycle will not be the one that will leave over enough money for such desirable trifles as running shoes, car repairs, greenhouse sheeting and lumber, or a much needed break from cooking for a dinner out. It seems that the paradox is perhaps instead a parable, a less on how to feel rich and poor all at once.

There's got to be a capitalist theory of money out there that explains the imbalance: an almost over-abundance food, a scarcity of cash. August (and July) also are difficult months for food pantries and providers of social services because the demand for assistance goes up. "School's out," one individual who works at a local food pantry explained. "More bodies at home, more mouths to feed."

And more people on vacations, and less likely to give.

A year ago, I had a hard time seeing the abundance even as the gardens were exploding with their harvest. All I could think about -- and, for good reason, worry about -- was whether or not the bills would get paid. Some grim realities were staring me in the face: a cut to the paycheck as the result of what the State of New York (which is my ultimate employer) described as the "deficit reduction program" was going to slice about $140 off my after-tax monthly income; an increase in health care premiums as the result of a new union contract was going to swipe an additional $100. On top of that, I had income taxes I owed the IRS as the result of receiving several generous (and unfortunately in the long run untaxed) grants in 2012.

In the face of this dire scenario, my husband and I made what seemed to be an audacious decision. We reconfigured the direct deposit plan for my paycheck so that a modest amount -- $50 a month -- would go into a money market and investment account we had with Charles Schwab brokerage. I didn't see how this diversion could be possible; for the past three years, we had been withdrawing money from the account in order to live. It was nearly tapped out, and my paycheck was diminishing. So how could we possibly put money back?

Somehow, we did. And a year later the modest amount that had accumulated provided enough to expand our small farm to accommodate two goats. We acquired the goats -- two boys -- along with their mother on loan as they had not quite been weaned off of her on the first day of August. They live a good happy life on the farm eating weed-ridden swathes of grassland that we hope eventually to turn into cultivated land, and generating a fair amount of what I've come to call "black gold" -- manure that contains only vegetable matter and therefore can immediately be put back into the land as a natural fertilizer and nutrient rich booster of soil.

The goats will go to a butcher in November. While that might seem crass to a vegetarian, it is another way of building abundance for those who eat meat. For now, they are part of a growing family of animals that live on our farm: six cats, five roosters, and seventeen hens. Like the goats, these animals too create wealth for the land. The hens lay an average of four dozen eggs a week, a figure that probably will come close to doubling when the birds that were babies in March begin to mature enough to lay eggs consistently sometime later this month. The hens and the roosters also generate a form of black gold, and they keep the incessant insects that dominate the Adirondacks somewhat at bay.

The cats, too, build abundance in ways that transcend their innate cuddly qualities. Despite their cute, sweet purring demeanors, they are among the planet's best hunters. For us, that has meant rodents that dominate farms and can wreak havoc in gardens are relatively under control. Without getting too graphic, I would also note that the spoils of the hunt also contribute ultimately to the creation of black gold.

When I consider how we managed to save $50 a month during a time when the net monthly
income went down by about $200, I am reminded of the paradoxical parable that August unveils. One year later, our bills have not diminished nor grown less urgent. My bank account doesn't look a whole lot better than it did in August a year ago. But we have food in the gardens, and in the chicken coop. There's plenty to eat and plenty to share. A little bit of frugality can indeed lead to a bountiful feast.