Several Supper Suggestions to Savor Spring Spinach OR Why we're having frozen pizza with black olives and spinach for dinner

Most weeks, I make tentative dinner menu for each night of the week. It's not an elaborate process, I just jot down four - six entrees. Most nights I cook dinner, and so it simplifies my life to plan ahead in this way. One less thing to think about! I am married to a farmer, so dinner always centers around what's coming out of the garden. If there is one thing coming on strong, then we are happy to eat ridiculous amounts that vegetable night after night. It's just what we do.

As springtime yields to summer, variety arrives. But right now, it's all about the spinach. The spinach is not only happening, the patch is--dare I say--opulent with oversized leathery leaves, which means we are devouring big bags of spinach everyday until it sends up its seed stalks. 

This week's list of dinner menu items looked something like:
--spinach soufflé (made this, it's a family favorite--I use the Joy of Cooking recipe but I double it),
--spinach quiche (another egg recipe, we're egg customers of neighbors Rebecca and Barb, but this got axed from thus week's menu--I've been too busy/lazy to do the crust),
--steamed spinach with orzo browned in toasted garlic and kale tops (added plenty of Parmesan to this--yum),
--spinach with lamb sausage over rice (haven't made this yet, but we buy artisan LinkLab sausage, made in Seattle, from 2nd Street Wine Shop),
--Rockwell beans with spinach (Chris froze more quarts of this local heirloom as shelly beans than I could count), and last but not least,
--ramen soup with, yes, you guessed it, lots of spinach.

But this evening, I am tired! I'm training for a half marathon so started my Sunday with a six-mile run. I headed up to our property and spent about four hours with our land partners staking out the lot sites in what will become Upper Langley Affordable Housing Community. Chris has been working like crazy getting the gardens going and finishing his movie, Dancing with Thoreau, while also overseeing the heavy equipment operators working on our housing project.

So tonight, we bought a frozen cheese pizza from The Goose, our community grocer, which we will lovingly adulterate with sliced black olives and the spinach Chris brought in, still dripping wet with rainfall.

Join Us! Our community is forming!

Front Yard Farm Stand or How Farming Followed Us to Whidbey Island

This is the fourth day of our new Front Yard Farm Stand. It has a nice ring to it. The table is filled with garlic, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, beets, and kale.

Two years ago when we sold our farm of twenty-plus years, and chose village life on an island in the Puget Sound, I thought we would leave farming behind. We would become the prosperous supporters of local farms, the city dwellers who turn their front yard into a garden, living a life of urban semi-self sufficiency. This felt like a relief to me, after an entire adult life committed to rather radical self sufficiency, including putting two children through cloth diapers with no washer or dryer, no indoor toilet, really living off the grid on the food grown by us and our neighbors. It was a good life. Nevertheless, our daughters grew up and Chris and I decided it was time to move to “town.” I am now a five minute walk from the best latte in the world, Yes, it’s true, many people who have traveled through Europe say they have not had a better espresso or cappuccino than that served by at Des at Useless Bay Coffee Company. But, I digress, such are the distractions of lively village life.

No sooner had we arrived, and in fact before we rented our first house in Langley, Chris had secured a plot in the local Community Garden at the Anderson Farm, turned the soil, planted seeds. My mind traveled back to the first weeks on our farm; we were living in a tent. The first work project was planting pecan trees, and the first structure built was a green house. Priorities.

And now, twenty-five years later, here we were, planing a garden before we had a home. Word spread that Chis had been a farmer, and a few people started to offer him land on which to farm. A minute later, he was on a plane, returning home to Kentucky retrieve his tractor and other farm equipment.

So, here we are again. Drying onions and garlic are strewn about the yard, our extra bedroom served as storage for a bumper crop of squash. The fridge is filled with goat milk, wine, local sausages, and cheese, all “purchased” from neighbors or local merchants in exchange for Chris’s vegetables grown just up the road a piece, at his market garden on the Anderson Farm.

We still puzzle with the real-number economics of farming—fully embracing the ideal of local food production, but also too experienced to ignore the reality that a $3 head of lettuce probably took $20 to produce. A young couple we know puts in 60 hours a week each on their CSA farm. Maybe they gross $30-40k? We wonder when the social and environmental value of local food will catch up with the economic value.

But, we keep at it. It turns out, farming followed us here.

And thus we have the new Front Yard Farm Stand. Please stop by and pick something up for dinner!

—Christy Korrow

10 Things I Loved About India

Just returned from a month and half traveling in Nepal and India...

Biodynamic Preps and Giant Potato Plants

—Christy Korrow

Chris is charged up about his market garden. He is on track to have crops for sale beginning in early October, and hopes to supply customers through the winter. His plan is to create a membership garden—somewhere between a farm stand and a CSA.

He likes the idea of people becoming members at a $50 fee. It gives him the security of knowing he has a dedicated customer base. It will also give the customers more flexibility than a CSA—more choice of variety, how much they want to spend, and flexibility time-wise. He hopes he can orient people to the garden to the point where they can even go in and harvest on their own, and write down what they take in a note book, using an honor-based credit system.

He has a few members already and the space is limited, so email him if you’re interested!

He can’t believe how well the vegetables are doing. The potato plants are the biggest he’s ever grown—waist-high. He planted a local variety that our friend has been growing on the Chinook land for many years. Squash and eggplants are also bigger than we've ever seen. Healthy, too!

The peas are harvested, shelled and in the freezer!

Chris feels that the plot is performing so well in large part due to the amount of biodynamic preparations he has used—particularly the Pfeiffer Compost Starter and its effects on the horse manure he used. We have also done two sprayings of horn manure, one barrel compost, and we used compost preparations in the pile. Chris also did some spraying of fermented horse tail tea that we made last fall, as a preventative for mold.

I am behind on spraying silica, but am committed to doing at least two in August and early September. I just purchased a unit of BD #501 gold, this is horn silica with potentized gold mixed in! I also have my own homemade silica prep, made from the crystals on our farm back in Kentucky.

Our horns are still buried in the garden. I need to check those in the next day or so. Normally one would dig them up in early June, but with the cool Northwest spring, they were still green inside. I wrote to Hugh Courtney, my friend and colleague from the Josephine Porter Institute and asked his thoughts on leaving the horns in the ground. He replied, “Remember that Steiner says of the BD #500 (horn manure) that they can be left in the ground until you are ready to use them. (Not so for BD #501 (horn silica), because leaving them in over the winter totally changes the forces picture in a Sensitive Crystallization test as Harvey Lisle demonstrated to both of us once upon a time.) So summer forces do not affect BD #500, and the daily in breath of the Earth is akin to the winter forces needed to transform BD #500.”

Chris is planning to do a class soon. Email him if you want to be notified when one is scheduled!

Upper Langley Co-Housing Neighborhood Site Plan

 Our site plan is well underway and heading toward finalization.

Learn more about this project to create a green, affordable co-housing neighborhood in Langley, Washington that will be accessible to low-income residents.

Chris Sells Vegetables in Langley!

Chris planted quite a few trials this summer, testing varieties in preparation for a commercial scale market garden that will serve neighborhood customers beginning in early October, continuing through the winter.

He had enough excess cauliflower and cabbage to set up a table yesterday at the Second Street Market in downtown Langley.

It was a great chance for Chris to begin to share the news of the new Market Garden at the Anderson Farm, located at the corner of Al Anderson Ave and Fairgrounds Road.

 His plan is to create a membership-based garden, somewhere in between retail sales and a CSA. He is looking for a committed group of about 25 customers who will join the garden for a one-time fee, this will entitle members to purchase produce during regular weekly hours, or they can come and harvest on an honor-based system, once oriented to the garden.

Only organic and biodynamic agricultural practices are used.

If you would like more information, please call 221-0430 or email Chris at 90acres@whidbey.com.

Chris's New Farming Adventure!

—Christy Korrow

Exciting news from Chris! After relocating from Kentucky, our home for the last 20 years, we have been warmly welcomed by the wonderful community of Langley, on south Whidbey Island, Washington. We had not planned to farm commercially here on Whidbey, though we knew we would still be growing a large family garden.

After being here just a short time, Chris had three people offer him farmland where he could develop a market garden. The offer was too good to pass by! In December, we bought him a one-way ticket to Kentucky, where he rented a large Budget rental truck, loaded up our tractor, bush hog, front end loader and Italian spading machine, braved the icy mountain roads, hauling the equipment back to Whidbey.

Fast forward to the first day of spring...

A hot box is now built up against the rental house where we live, filled with seed flats-- flowers, brassicas, early tomatoes and herbs.


Chris will be developing a 1/3 acre market garden in the city limits of Langley, on the property of the Anderson Family Farm. Dorothy is the third generation to tend this family farm. The farm is home to the Langely Community Garden, beginning its third year. Twenty families/individuals each tend an 18 x 18 foot plot. There is also a group who manages a small herd of milk goats, another group who raises chickens and there is a heifer and a young steer being raised for beef. Compared to running our own farm, it is a welcome change, and such an honor to have the opportunity to participate in this kind of community run farm, where many hands make light work.

The ground is about turned, and I just sprayed the first barrel compost on the soil, to celebrate the first day of spring and to welcome in Persephone's return.


The field is a sandy loam, with predominantly rhizome grass, which will be determined to keep growing, even after it has been plowed up. Chris is going to plant cover crops this spring, and plans to get the vegetables going later in the summer. The growing season is quite long here, and though the winters are quite dark, the temperatures remain mild, making it easy to grow into an extended summer season, fall and on into winter time. Our spinach patch thrived uncovered all winter, as did our cabbages. The vegetables don't grow much during the winter, but they hold well. It seems similar to what we are used to with our winter growing in Kentucky.

The land is on the corner of two somewhat well-traveled roads. Chris is planning to keep marketing simple, and by word of mouth, people will know that he is there in the field on certain days of the week. Maybe we'll try an honor system farm stand as well.

I honestly have to say I have mixed feelings about selling food again after so many years. On one hand, I am firmly committed to local food security, I believe it is one of the most important necessary social deeds for our time. I am also keenly aware of the continuing price disparity between what we pay for food on the grocery store shelves, and what kind of price a farmer can ask for vegetables so that he or she can actually come close to making a living wage. The joy of knowing we will be producing food for the community, the excitement of experimenting in a new climate where daylight goes on until after 9pm in the summer, to grow food in the city limits of a town, and be part of such an active community farm are the thoughts I am holding onto for now....

Random Localness

This yummy sauce is made here on Whidbey Island.


Gabbi and I picked blackberries today, she made tarts and cobbler.


Chris picked this horsetail yesterday, so we brewed up a big vat of tea for the garden. It's one of the nine biodynamic preparations, also known as BD #508. It helps combat fungus and mold, and regulates water forces. We'll spray it on plants, and use some in the compost piles.



Amy gave us these big green apples from her tree on Maxwelton. I can't remember what they are called. They taste like a yellow apple! So crisp and sweet.

Local Food Challenge or Boy Am I Glad Washington is a Wine Producing State

—Christy Korrow

September, (starting now!) Chris, Gabe and I are participating in Transition Whidbey’s local food challenge to, as much as possible, eat foods grown within a 100 mile radius of our home on South Whidbey Island, Washington. Mind you, I have only lived here for six weeks, so I thought this challenge would be a good chance to learn more about our local food shed, and the rest of the family agreed to give it a try.

I also want to use this challenge as a chance to become more aware of what we eat in general. I expect it will be an interesting exploration and take me to the next level with my commitment to making the right food choices and remind me of the social and economic consequences of my and my family’s food choices.

I don’t want to attempt to eat “only local” for the month, instead I want to use the challenge time to examine my non-local food choices, and to discover new food choices that we can integrate into our family diet for a long time to come.

We are blessed to grow all of our own vegetables in a community garden within walking distance from home. Right now we have plenty of potatoes, chard, spinach, lettuce, carrots, onions, green beans, beets, what else...assorted herbs, cucumbers, zucchini. Right around the bend, we’ll have kale and collards with broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage coming on before winter. This seems to provide us with more than enough variety of vegetables. We buy an occasional avocado and also fruit. Neighbors and friends either give us eggs or we trade for produce.

Last month we ate a lot of bing and Rainier cherries (organic were available for almost the same price as conventional). Now plums, pluots and peaches are all for sale at the farmer’s markets. Since I am new to the area, I am not sure how long these fruit trees of Eastern Washington continue to produce. Blueberries from Oregon have been for sale at the grocery store, and yesterday, a friend brought by some apples from her tree.

With all of that, we still eat a lot of food that we don’t grow, and there are a number of foods we eat which might or might not be available locally.

I am hoping to meet with Georgina, a woman who is producing kamut, hard winter wheat and barley on a seven acre plot in the historic Ebey’s Landing National Historic Preserve. While her land is not Demeter Certified Biodynamic, Georgina uses biodynamic farming practices. I’d like to buy some locally grown wheat from her, although I have no grinder, so I am not sure how we will put it to use. I think she offers flour. The barley we could put in soups.

I spent over an hour on the internet trying to find out how to buy lentils grown in the Palouse region Eastern Washington, even though it is the (self-proclaimed) lentil capitol of the world and home to the National Lentil Festival. I finally did find a couple of sources, but nothing organic so far. Go figure.

So the challenge begins!

Happy Birthday From Far Away

Chris is getting ready to play Kaysha one of her favorite songs for her Skype birthday party..."Milk Thistle" by Bright Eyes.

Someone Left the Package Out in the Rain

—Christy Korrow

Today when I went to the post office, the prized proofread copy of the fall issue of LILIPOH magazine had arrived in the mail. I knew it because of the red card in my PO Box. I took my tag and handed it to the lady working behind the counter. She presented to me my Express Mail package encased in a plastic bag, stamped with the words “We Care.”


Normally, the cardboard envelope was not surrounded in plastic. As I picked the package up, it went limp. It was soaking wet. I could see through the clear wrapping that the envelope was torn. The postal looked at me with compassion, “It arrived that way,” she said. She also noted that it arrived late, which meant that Caryl, our proofreader, could obtain a full refund of the $18 dollars it cost to insure the package arrived in my hands the day after she’d mailed it.


Now, for years I have been studying the process of thinking, watching thoughts arise, trying to be mindful and awake to the understanding that thoughts are realities and have an impact on the physical world. I noticed what was surfacing in me as I held my soggy pile of important papers. I was annoyed. Pissed. Discouraged. A refund just wouldn’t be good enough. Someone had to make this right.


I walked home, and peeled the package open for closer inspection. The pages were damp all the way through, but luckily, not to the point where the ink had run. The copy was still legible. I pulled each article apart and spread them out across the living room floor, near the open front door so the air blowing in would help them dry quickly.

As it was, I was running late. I was headed out to attend Just Write for the first time, a writer’s group in Coupeville hosted by literary agent Andrea Hurst. I brushed off my annoyance and rushed out the door.


On the 30 minute drive north to the midpoint of the island, I thought about the following:
My package was wet, and though the label on the outside said “We Care,” the subsequent fine print said, in so many words, “We’re sorry, but mistakes happen.” I can understand that sometimes a machine might tear up an envelope, or a piece of mail might get lost. But this—this was clearly the result of someone who did not care, someone who was sloppy or negligent. So here I was, a mind full with negative thoughts (as opposed to mindful). At least I noticed that much.

Later, I began to wonder about the man or woman who’d mishandled my package. What kind of day might he or she been having? Underpaid, overworked, feeling pressures of family, economy—while here I sat, in the sun, on the Coupeville wharf writing this blog post. As I looked out over the water, the wet manuscript suddenly didn’t bother me one bit. This unnamed postal worker had a careless moment, and it resulted in a wet package. But then, I had personalized the unfortunate experience.


Thankfully, I realized I had a choice. Did I want to say “yes” to the negative thoughts I was having toward this person, when, by thinking them, I was only solidifying the truth that this person disappointed me and negatively affected my experience? OR did I want to hope for a healthy, happy, peaceful life for this person who maybe did not have the presence of mind to care about my package?

By saying “yes” to caring about the individual, I did something for myself. I released myself from reliving the idea that I am a victim, that I am merely the object of someone else's circumstances. By changing my thoughts, I freed myself from recreating a negative reality (“Why did you do this to me?”), and instead, retrained my attention, my thoughts, onto a mental picture of “I wish you well.”

An interesting inner shift. It might not change the reality of this other person, who I don’t know, but it has changed mine by giving me a more compassionate vantage point, and a softer, more humane point of attraction. So, for that, I thank the postal worker who left my package out in the rain.

PS Suggested flower essences to support our best self in this kind of situation to come soon!

Flower Essences: Calm Down, Catch Up

As a busy editor who also works in various other sectors of publishing, I wanted to share the following flower essence combination with any of you who are also multitasking your way through the world, and at times find it all to be a bit too much. Typically a remedy is taken on an as-needed basis as acute situations arise by putting 2 drops into a glass of water and sipping it throughout the day, or for ongoing situations, 2 drops, 4 times per day is a standard recommendation. Remedies can be purchased at local health food stores, or ordered over the internet. I can do a session with you over the phone, drop me a line if you are interested. christy@accessky.net

Elm

Elm is the remedy for those of us who take on a lot of responsibility, but then begin to feel that the responsibility is too much, and who feel that our confidence begins to slip. Thoughts such as -- how can I ever accomplish all of this? I am on over my head, and I am not going to be able to do a good job with all of this, I’ve overcommitted myself and the quality of my work is going to slide -- are indicators that Elm is in order.

Elm will help to bring about a sense of balance, and a renewed sense of feeling as though you are on the right track, and the work load will be placed in its proper perspective. Mechthild Scheffer notes that the stress of the Elm state is the higher self calling for moderation, and on some level this stress we are experiencing is a warning to us -- we are not meeting the demands of our own soul.1 It is helpful during times like this to visualize or picture a task completed, this is especially effective at bedtime, right before sleep. When we sleep we connect with spiritual beings who assist us on the astral plane and help us work out our problems. Our impatient and doubting ego is out of the way, and all the voices that say “I can’t” are quieted during the night. When you wake up in the morning, quietly pay attention, and notice if you are receiving a solution or resolution to an issue from the pervious day, or sink in to the sensation of knowing you are capable of meeting your responsibilities. This exercise enhances the effects of Elm.

Hornbeam

Hornbeam is for when we feel mentally overwhelmed at the thought of all that we have to do. Where Elm will help us regain confidence with our responsibilities, Hornbeam will bring about an inner strength and knowingness, an enthusiasm. For it is with enthusiasm that we can accomplish great things.2 We can accomplish things with sheer mental will, but this is not sustainable. When the intent behind our actions is lined up with the mission of our higher self (one of love and service), a strength comes from this, and we can trust in the outcome of a plan larger than ourselves.

Once we trust in something larger than ourselves, we can relax into our daily demands, and know that each situation is bringing about the best for our highest good. It is helpful to pick on or two doable actions, and without further contemplation, just do them--this sets a flow in place where momentum can build on the feeling of having actually accomplished something. This sets off a domino effect where things seem to become accomplished on their own, or with very little effort, a person you are waiting to hear from calls you, a project is approved with no hassles, people are early on deadlines--there is an ease and a flow to the tasks at hand. Activities that takes us out of the mind like exercise, yoga, mediation, and time in nature are additional remedies for the Hornbeam state.

Chestnut Bud

Now, this is interesting. On the surface, Chestnut Bud helps those who continue to make the same mistakes over and over, and fail to learn from the lessons that life, God, the universe is trying to teach. But, when we go a little deeper, and look into why it is that we are met with the same kind of repeated lessons again and again, we see how this is often an issue of attention, of paying attention and of awareness. So often, we don’t move through life in an awakened way. If we are too busy and as a result too scattered, we aren’t fully incarnated into the moment, we skim the surface, going through the motions, while in our thoughts we have already moved ahead to the next task. This can quickly spiral out of control, not only do we not get the most out of our experience, we never feel fully alive because we are concentrated not on the NOW, but on the future, which doesn’t exist yet!

Chestnut Bud cultivates the inner experience of being in the moment, and the simultaneous experience of higher self awareness (our higher self is the part of us connected with that which is eternal, so when we let go of our worries of the past and future, the part of us that is constant can live in our consciousness). Deep breathing and stretching are both helpful body-based ways to help us slow down and integrate into the body--a solid representation of the now.

When we are filled with enthusiasm, balance and self-awareness, our thoughts are free from angst, stress, judgement (you get the picture). Our thoughts then vibrate at a higher level, which means that all of our bodily molecules are vibrating at a higher level. The result? Our gifts to the world are more evident and generous, we shine, and the world begins to shine back on us. The resistance which kept us apart from that which we were trying manifest, accomplish and attract has now dissipated.

—Christy Korrow

1. Scheffer, Mechthild. Bach FlowerTherapy: Theory and Practice, Healing Arts Press, 1988, p. 83.
2. Steiner, Rudolf. Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association, 1993.

For those not so familiar with flower essences, here is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of LILIPOH magazine, “Flower Essence Therapy: Blossoming to Wholeness with Plant Energies” by Elizabeth R. Mackenzie, PhD.

FET: The Inside Perspective

From the point of view of the FET practitioner, the essences are all about energetic vibration. According to [flower essence practitioner] Rhoni Groff, “Flower essences are made in water and begin with prayer.” Practitioners point to the unique properties of water, which is known to be an excellent conductor of electrical energy, as the reason the vibration of the flower is able to extracted and stored. They cite the work of Masaru Emoto, the Japanese researcher who demonstrated that water crystals appear to reflect the attributes of positive or negative words as evidence that water transmits energy.

FET practitioners believe that the spirit of the plant transfers to the water, which can then be preserved as a tincture, and that when the client imbibes the tincture, the energetic essence of the blossom interacts with the client’s vibratory field to catalyze changes in consciousness. Groff puts it this way, “Flower essences carry a high vibration, and through the process of resonance they raise vibrations with our chakra system.” As with the idea of entrainment, similar vibratory fields are drawn to one another, so that a person attracts people and events based on his or her vibratory rate. The basic idea is that a person with a relatively low rate of oscillation will end up surrounded by other persons with low vibrations, and vice versa. In this worldview, raising the rate of vibration becomes an obvious good for all with important healing implications for both the individual and the collective.

For most FET practitioners, the main goal is to use the energetic healing forces of the plants to help clients free themselves from habitual patterns and beliefs that no longer support growth.

¹ See www.hado.net.

² See www.GiftoftheFlowers.com. Rhoni Groff works with clients by telephone as well as in person.