Monthly Archives: March 2012

freaking out.

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I know, I know, I’m working on it, Sam. 

Have you enjoyed the summer weather in March lately? I did, sort of… sometimes with one eye over my shoulder, wondering when Old Man Winter was going to sneak up again. Other times (much more frequently), I posited that we were going to be absolutely screwed when July and August came around if it was already 80 degrees in March in Pennsylvania. Global warming a myth, my Aunt Fanny.

So I’ve been quietly freaking out lately – which I do about everything, more or less. I’m not an easygoing person by nature, not someone who easily gets their zen on (as my yoga instructor will undoubtedly attest). I suspect those people I know who compliment me on my competence don’t realize that I first have to go through a massive freakout before I can get down to bizness. If you don’t believe me, ask my husband. And this wonky weather has not been helping my freakouts about my garden.

Here’s a (partial) list of my garden freakouts in the last few weeks:

  • the aforementioned weather freakout, where I worry about global warming, if the seeds I’ve directly sown will germinate at all when it’s so warm, and whether or not I’ve started my ‘tender annual’ seedlings soon enough to take advantage of this warmer weather.
  • the flipside of the weather freakout, where I worry about snow coming from now until Easter (it has happened in my lifetime, you know – probably when I was a kid, but I know it’s happened), the speed at which we’re constructing the cold frame we decided to build on a whim to make it worth our while to have made the darn thing. Oh, and whether or not I’ve successfully stripped the five gazillion layers of paint off the old windows we bought at Construction Junction so my kids won’t get lead poisoning from the paint flakes when they eat the vegetables. Not that my kids are actually eating their vegetables these days.
  • of course, the tangential freakout to this issue is the one that involves freaking out about the leaded glass windows we bought for the cold frame. Research shows us that we should be ok encapsulating the canes with polyurethane, but come on. Part of my job involves dealing with home rehabilitation. Did I have temporary amnesia when I saw these windows and forget about 1978? Not my finest moment.
  • similar cold-frame related freakouts involve the sourcing of the wood for the frame, how it sits on the ground (and how we need to dig trenches for it to sit in the ground so as to not get cold underneath, thus negating the viability of said cold frame), and how long it took us to get the ground ready for the cold frame at all.

That’s just what I can remember in five minutes of typing. Yes, I need a therapist. Once I get through the rest of my to-do list.

However, in the spirit of fairness, I feel the need to crow about my progress a little. I am not completely hopeless when it comes to starting seeds (as I feared I would be, add that to my freakout list above). Then again, as I told my husband this week, if growing plants were that hard, humankind would not have turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Not sure what that says about me, but there you go.

In the past few weeks, I have:

  • mapped out my garden to date so I don’t have to keep everything in my head. 
  • documented progress on the cold frame project (a joint venture between me and my husband, which could go either very well or very badly. So far, so good). Yes, this picture was taken at night. Don’t ask. 
  • make seedlings grow in containers that were not originally designed for this purpose. With the volume of veg we’re planning on growing this season, this is definitely a Good Thing. 
  • and successfully thwarted several attempts by my dog to sabotage the seedling process. Thankfully, I have no picture of that family mutiny in progress.

All in all, I think we’re coming out ahead. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

And now, the numbers (I know, it’s getting a little unruly):

Not too bad, for getting pretty much all the seeds I said I would get at the beginning of this challenge. I’d say this is a decently stocked produce department. Remind me of this moment of zen when I’m freaking out about drowning in produce in August.

ew. gross.

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I’m hanging out with pink slime over at the Digging Deep Campaign this week – and am thankful that I just bought 100 lbs of beef from my favorite local farmer (which was from a cow that I had met personally). 

I briefly note there that, although the uproar over pink slime is fantastic to see – it’s amazing  to me how much people don’t know about the industrial food supply, and when they do start to learn, they are disgusted enough to do something about it – you can’t just call it a day when the USDA caves a little and gives school districts the choice of not buying ground beef with pink slime (The Lunch Tray explains why). Because the main reason the USDA buys pink slime for school lunches is because it’s cheap. And if school districts (cash-strapped already, at least in this state) still have to operate under the same reimbursement standards for the school lunches, we’ll see something else cheap sneak its way into the school lunch program.

I don’t usually quote myself, but in this case, I think it’s important to reiterate what I said earlier in the week at Digging Deep:

Here’s why – reimbursement rates. How much money do schools get reimbursed per child for the food in school lunches? Not much. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) lists the current year maximum reimbursement rates as $2.79 for free lunches, $2.39 for reduced price lunches, and $0.28 for a lunch fully paid for by the child. Can you cook on an industrial scale for less than three bucks a meal? I sure can’t. And don’t forget the much-touted change in rules to the National School Lunch Program, thanks to Michelle Obama. Don’t get me wrong, doubling the amount of fruits and vegetables children are served in school is fantastic, and way overdue. But until the Farm Bill stops overwhelmingly subsidizing grains and starts leveling the playing field for fruit and veg, they’ll be more expensive. Which means the other food in each school lunch needs to be less expensive. Enter pink slime.

Yep, it all goes back to the Farm Bill. Which, as it happens, is up for reauthorization this year (because, thankfully, the Secret Farm Bill crap didn’t work last year). So work to make your voices heard – catch up on the particulars with the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Bill Policy Plate series, and consider the Community Food Security Coalition’s talking points when you contact your elected officials. Because you know the food-industrial complex is whispering in their ears. The least you can do – especially for the kids dependent on the school lunch program for their nutritional needs – is to do the same.