The Great 08 Veggie Adventure

As I've written about before, this summer I am participating in not one, but two CSA programs. One, Arctic Organics, is local. The other, Full Circle Farm, is based in Carnation, WA.

Every Tuesday I meet with three friends on my front deck for the Veggie Divide. We split two Arctic Organics shares between the four of us. It's been an interesting exercise in sharing and compromise. We've adjusted for scheduled and emergency absences. We've worked around differences in styles and tastes. And through this weekly practice we are getting to know each other more deeply than we could with conversation alone.

Every other Thursday I pick up a small box from Full Circle Farms. FCF allows its members to swap out up to five items each week, so I adjust my box contents with Arctic Organics in mind, choosing apricots rather than kale, blueberries rather than mixed greens, and sweet corn instead of broccoli.

It is still more than the two of us (plus the dog) can keep up with, but even when the collard greens wind up in the compost pile, I am glad that I'm part of both programs.

A Creative Solution

Kim Sollien's new blog on the Anchorage Daily News website had record numbers of comments when she raised the issue of Full Circle Farm.

Full Circle is a new breed of CSA. Perhaps "Concentric Circles Farm" would be a better name for it. Subscribers receive produce first from Full Circle's farm in Carnation, WA, then from farms in the Pacific NW, then the West Coast of the US, then farther afield. All of it is organic, fair trade, etc. As the circles get wider, of course, there's less control over how organic, how fair, but that's a leap of faith you choose to make if you subscribe.

Business is booming for Full Circle Farm here in AK. It amazes me that they're delivering to places like Dillingham, Kotzebue and Bethel.

Kim's blog raises the question of whether the success of FCF in Alaska takes business away from local farmers. The discussion was thoughtful--and sometimes hot!

For me, I like the flexibility and diversity of FCF. I am cautiously in awe of their marketing success. And I want to keep going with FCF through the summer.

But I also want to return to Arctic Organics. I believe very strongly in supporting our local Alaskan farmers. And FCF's produce just can't match the freshness of local veggies.

Solution? Four small families, including mine, will share two subscriptions from Arctic Organics. Two of us will continue with FCF, while the other two are complete CSA rookies. We plan to meet each week on my spacious front deck to divide up the bounty.

Who knows? Perhaps even more interesting community-building will come from it. Maybe we'll even decide to preserve the harvest together.

It's All About Trust

During the recently concluded legislative session, I helped out with the effort to legalize raw milk in Alaska. Somehow I found myself emailing updates and action alerts to more than forty people, all of whom were passionate about access to raw milk.


They are a diverse group. People from Delta and Homer, Palmer and Anchorage, Wasilla and Eagle River. Conservatives and liberals. Religious people and people without religious affiliation. Some who wrote long, impassioned pleas and others who simply emailed me their names and address. Folks for whom the issue is about health, and others for whom the issue is about freedom.

What holds these disparate people together, I believe, is the effort to rebuild civic trust. Betrayal has been so pervasive, on so many fronts, that many of us are standing just a few feet from total disillusionment, trying to figure out how to walk back in the direction of hope.

It's not easy figuring out who to trust. We just watched the documentary Libby, Montana, and it was so painful to hear the stories of workers at the WR Grace mine, betrayed by members of management who were leaders in the Libby community, in local government, in local churches. Betrayed by people they interacted with on a daily basis. Betrayed by people they trusted.

A spiritual director once told me, "Trust everyone a little. Trust no one completely." It would be nice if we could let down our guard and relax, but unfortunately we cannot afford to walk through life naively. We have to be alert, conscious, vigilant, thinking people.

politics v. Politics

Tonight I had an odd dilemma: get to Mountain Mary's to pick up my Full Circle Farm box, or get to the Democratic caucus. But cilantro was calling me, so Barack lost out.

I have never seen so many folks participating in a caucus! This Gen-Xer has a hard time wrapping her mind around a primary election causing a traffic jam.

Nagoonberries

At the Wildflower Garden Club's annual plant sale this year I bought a nagoonberry, mostly because I liked the name.

I brought it home and tried to learn more about it. You can start your own search here, at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_raspberry.

The nagoonberry is local to the Pacific Northwest, including Alaska, and is moderately aggressive. Its berries are small and not very abundant, so gathering enough berries for jam would require an inordinate amount of persistence.

All in all, an excellent symbol for the challenging task of pursuing a locavore life in Alaska.