New Life: Eating locally and food preservation

Well, it's been a long time since I've last posted but it seems as though it's time for me to do so again. It would be hard to encapsulate all of the changes that have happened in my life over this past year, for they have been varied and great. So, I think I'm going to create a few entries over the next few weeks each based on a different and important event/topic/idea that has sprouted during the months I've been away from this blog. The first of these will be about what perhaps could be considered the event that lead to or helped shape all of the others in many ways and that is my introduction into the world of farming and getting hired to work on Wright Way Farm, an organic produce farm based just outside Beloit, Wisconsin. I am currently working on a longer piece based on the whole farming season of 2014, that is more philosophically based, so I'd like to make this one more specifically on the idea of sustainable living and some simple anecdotes of the ways farming has lead me towards that goal of mine.

When one thinks about ways to reduce their carbon footprint, live more sustainably, be more self-sufficient, reduce your waste stream and the like, food is arguably the most important and crucial aspect that needs to be addressed. One can live a minimalist lifestyle restricting one's self to the most ascetic refrain for consumption possible, but food is still a daily necessity to live a healthy life. So if one's goal is to break free from the role of consumer in the modern sense, it is necessary to start growing one's own food. I was lucky enough to have that opportunity this year. I, along with a few friends and my current girlfriend Leeanna, planted from seed the bounty that Wright Way Farm would produce throughout the year. Through conversations with Denny Wright, the owner of Wright Way, as well as my fellow farmers I got for the first time and inside look at how important working toward and sustaining a local diet is to living sustainably. I was already well aware of the environmental importance of eating organically, but for some reason eating locally had always seemed out of reach and somehow less important. I laugh at the thought now because it is so obviously and clearly not.

Think about an average trip to the grocery store and think about all the times you may by. The chances are most of those items were shipped here from thousands of miles away, individually, by carbon emitting vehicles contributing to the man-made pollution problem our planet is being so woefully injured by. Now think about the fact that groceries stores all throughout our country are filled with items that undergo that same lengthy transportation process, and they are items that we consume daily! The amount of pollution from this system is simply staggering and this is not even taking into account the massive amount of plastic, non-biodegradable packaging that food often comes in that is from beginning to end terrible on the environment. So, how do you reduce your participation in this harmful system? Grow your own food as much as possible and buy from local farms as much as possible. It's as simple as that.

This year I was able to bring home food regularly from Wright Way that ended up consisting of well over half my diet during the Summer and Fall months, lessening my participation in this system and it felt amazing to do so. It also inspired me to start looking for local alternatives to the few things I wasn't able to get from the farm, like peanut butter, bread and fruit. Also, considering I live in Wisconsin and farm fresh food is seasonal, I started venturing into the world of food preservation. I would see a few fellow farmers earlier on in the spring still enjoying the food that they grew last season, reducing the amount of non-local food they had to buy. I was envious to say the least. It became frustrating to even go to the grocery store for no local food options were even available in the early parts of the season, and I told myself that I would preserve as much as I could this year so next spring I would be able to do eat locally the way in which my friends still were. So, Leeanna and I went to a food preservation class at another local farm where we learned about blanching/freezing, canning, fermenting, etc. and I felt so excited to get started. Throughout the season I was able to freeze about 30 gallons of various vegetables, make about 10 pints of tomato sauce, 16 quarts of cucumber pickles, 6 summer squash pickles, 2 quarts of pickled carrots, 4 quarts of pickled beets, 2 quarts of pickled green tomatoes, 1 quart of pickled peppers, along with about 20 pints of fermented Kimchi and 2 quarts of sauerkraut. Along with these things I was able to dry a bunch of home grown oregano and sage as well as stock up on a bunch of onions, potatoes, and squash that I'll be enjoying throughout the colder months. It feels incredibly to think that every bit of food that I saved is going to subtract that much from what I'd have to buy in the winter, being shipped from warmer regions. Also, considering the fact that all of the produce was organic and most of it was free I saved myself a lot of money on top of the environmental benefits. It was a really beautiful experience and I'm so glad that I had it. I implore anyone who would like to take steps towards living more sustainably to start with your diet. Grow some tomatoes in your back yard, shop at local farmer's markets or local co-ops, get a CSA membership to a local farm or even better yet, volunteer or work on one. The rewards are many. It will help the environment, you will almost certainly eat more healthy, you will be inspired to cook for yourself and be more creative with your meal plans and chances are you will meet some really interesting people.

As I said before I'm writing a longer, much more thorough piece on my experience this year that goes far beyond the little I've written here about food preservation and some brief advice on the importance of eating locally, but for now I'll be working on a few short entries like this to organize my thoughts on all the experiences the past year has held.

Into the New Year

Well, it has been a long time since I last entered in this blog. Much has happened since the last post, and in fact that is in large the reason for the delay. Over the last few months I have met a few really good friends that quickly turned into band-mates. We've been writing a lot of music together and preformed our first show a few weeks ago. We are in the process of recording an album and setting up many more shows. The name of the band is The Pancake Riot, which follows suit to my opinion that all the best band names either contain opposites (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, etc.) or Food items (String Cheese Incident, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.). I've also started working harder on recording my own music. I'm currently working on two separate solo projects. The first called "Ghosts of Winter" that includes dark folk, ambient, experimental, spoken word and dark metal, to try and encapsulate what winter means to me. The other is called "A Hermit's Melodies" and that is a bare acoustic album filled with instrumentals. Both works are a work in progress, but what has been recorded so far can be found here. http://isaacevenson.bandcamp.com

Aside from music, I have started attending The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, in their International studies program. I was unexpectedly resigned to this school when through an advising hiccup I was declined admission to The University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was heartbroken at first, but after spending a little time on campus, and taking a few interesting classes my disappointment is lessening, very much. My original plan was to stay for a semester, take the classes I needed to get into Madison this semester and over the summer, and attend Madison in the fall. However, this cannot be the case because the course I needed was not offered this semester, so I'm going to be here a lot longer than expected. I am considering just getting my Bachelor's from here, as quickly as possible and then applying for a Masters Program at Madison.

Aside from both music and school, I have changed my workout routine, I am now doing the P90X workout program and I love it. I've already seen results that I didn't get from months and months of The Insanity Program. I wish it had not taken me so long to realize that Insanity was geared towards loosing weight, rather than gaining muscle mass. I am applying at a couple places for work, and hopefully will be hired in at a licensed organic produce farm this spring, which would be a perfect job for me. I've met some new people, met some girls, went to some concerts, the best of which by far was The Wisconsin Folk Festival in Madison which for the most part was astounding. I've reconnected with a very old friend that I've missed dearly and her and I are beginning to write music together again, like we did years ago. I'm currently reading a handful of different books, as always seems to be the case, though that may become limited with the massive amount of reading I have for my classes this semester. I started a new photography project as well. It is a still life project that spans a year, and by the end of the year the goal is to have 365 still life photos, that  sort of encapsulate your year as a whole. I haven't been able to do one a day yet, but when I have a little bit more free time I will make up for it by doing multiple shots in a day. The link to that project is here.  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.500762050034472.1073741841.278790102231669&type=3

This winter has been long, cold, and filled with unexpected twists and turns for me and though I've been able to stay on top, I'm very much looking forward to springtime. This entry has been aimed to fill in any readers (You know who you are) that have been waiting patiently, and now I will start blogging more often, and more specifically on ideas and musings rather than just current personal events. Take care.

Musings on a diverging human future.

Does it seem to you that not only the extremes, but the norms of human characteristics are getting amplified? It seems that way to me. Every few weeks I see some child on the news who can play flawless Mozart or Beethoven pieces, or some man who can life ten times his body weight, or someone who graduated college with a masters in organic chemistry at age sixteen, or something like that. Have you taken a look at photos of boxers, wrestlers or even "strong men" from the forties and fifties? They look like dough boys compared to the heroic physique sported by body builders today. But then at the same time, we here about how there is a rising epidemic of obesity, heart problems, diabetes, and all sorts of preventable diseases. People are becoming more and more heavily dependent on technology to make their lives easier, getting less exercise, and lowering their expectations of themselves and diminishing their own human agency. What if these trends continue, more and more as time goes on. The people who are natural driven individuals have the ability to become more so, becoming better, faster, smarter and stronger individuals while the people who have less motivation, physical or mental problems, etc. slowly become closer and closer to slaves reliant upon convenience. In this Brave New World of extremes that our modern society is bringing us, perhaps this divergence will become so great that there will be little middle ground, and their will over time become two sort of sub-species of humans; The Alphas, that border on super heroic abilities, and the Betas who are devolving into sluggish, machine-bound humans that can't do a thing for themselves. Not since the Pleistocene have there been two different hominids that have co-existed on the globe, and although the genetics wouldn't become distinct between the two in such short a time, even with lack of gene drift for a few generations, these two sub-species might create a bizarre paradigm in which there is a biological class system put in place. The needs of both would be very different, the desires of both, the likes and dislikes, the functionality of technology would necessarily be different between the two. I see this odd science fiction like future where men and women resembling comic book characters walk down the street along side sluggish sacks of flesh, hovering along on metal beds as in the movie Wall-E.

This is terribly far fetched, but it's just a musing. If it happens and I'm still alive due to nanotechnology being inserted into my body, repairing all of cells and tissue, reversing senescence, I plan to be an Alpha.

Renewal.

There is something about this time of year... something that brings fourth feelings in me that are nearly impossible to describe. Feelings of focus, of purpose, of growth and of focus that begin now and last throughout the winter. It is somewhat like the inverse of the seasonal cycle I live in. As the world around is growing cold, as the flora begins to die and the fauna begins to sleep, it feels as though some resolve in me is slowly turning into stone, and I grow stronger. I have so much inspiration to take on the challenges that stand between me and the person I want to be, and throughout the colder months the world transforms itself into my temple for training, of all sorts. This is the time when I am inspired to push my body further than before. I am starting new, more intensive work out routines, it is the time I hike for long hours through cold wind and before long banks of snow as the the woods become monochrome. This is the time when I read classic novels and the works of philosophers. It is the time when humor gives way to inquiry, when excuses give way to determination and when I shed my skin my summer skin and don cold stone as dwindling light gives way to the long, dark nights of winter. These are the days I most feel alive, and I yearn to loose myself under snow laden limbs. This is my renewal.

Life, in a breath.

I was recently studying some teachings by Alan Watts, a philosopher who heavily studied the traditions of East Asia, and he focused upon an idea, very briefly, just in passing, that clicked with me very well as an effective analogy that I've thought about and further expanded upon. That is, life (and the four noble truths of Buddhism) in a single breath.

The Noble truths are that life is suffering, suffering stems from attachment and the desire for permanency, that you can be released from suffering, and how to do it is to follow the eight-fold path. The release from suffering is Nirvana.

Now, what does Nirvana actually mean? Well, we generally have this picture in our mind or an eternal state of bliss, or some people even envision a place, like heaven. But, what the word Nirvana actually means is to extinguish. If we think of a candle, the flame being suffering, the extinguishing of that flame is the release of suffering. So, blowing out, that release of our breath, is that "putting out", or extinguishing action. So that release of the flame, and the release of the breath are one in the same, metaphorically. But, what Alan Watts mentioned in passing was that breath, as an analogy, works for the entire Four Noble truths, and our problems in life.

First, we inhale. This is the suffering. We are pulling in, more and more and more. A collection of air, just like a collection of possessions, a desire to gather, to claim, to hold. It may not even be conscious, but it occurs throughout our lives. It is an inward movement of taking, of claiming and possessiveness. Just like during the inhale, we are collecting, taking and claiming the air around us. Now of course this is not a negative thing. It is never the possession that causes us pain and suffering, just like breathing in the air around us doesn't hurt us. It is the next phase of breath, and the next noble truth that causes the suffering. This is attachment, the desire to hold things, claim them as your own in a world in which nothing is permanent that causes us pain, because in the end it is impossible to hold on forever, and if attached we hurt when we loose the control we thought to have. This is as if after taking a large inhale we simply stop, and try to hold onto the breath. For a moment or two, nothing seems wrong, but as we all know in a matter of moments the tension in our chests begin to build, we start straining to keep it in, it hurts, more and more until we feel we must explode because we cannot hold onto this breath any longer. Then comes the end of suffering, the release. When we realize that we can let go, and must let go of our desire for our control because it is futile, the release is uplifting, freeing and beautiful. The attachment is severed, the pain is gone, it doesn't control us anymore. This is the exhale after the long-held breath, that relief. And with the exhale comes the extinguishing of the flame, realization that extinguished the suffering, and the awareness of that necessary peace that the exhale had created. The blowing out of the flame was the blowing out of the breath, and the "blowing out" that is Nirvana itself.

It's an analogy that I like, and I look forward to working on developing a really nice, cleaned up version of it.

Live by example.

So, the last week or so has been pretty busy. Started school again, and talked to some people to initiate the creation of a Terracycle center at the school. I have a meeting with the dean soon to finalize it and after that it should be good to go. I worked for an old friend on Saturday for awhile, doing some yard work on lake Koshkonong and on Sunday I said a goodbye to someone else who I have cared about for a very long time, who is moving cross country. That was a very trying day, but I've been trying very hard to be positive lately, and it's definitely making a difference in my life. I am starting to feel unshakable. Even when negativity strikes, I'm able to confront it, accept it and push it aside in favor of positivity , passion and personal progress. I think that alliteration is going to become a personal motto for myself. I feel like I'm really starting to become a good person, or rather, a person that I'm proud of being. I think I'm a long way off from hitting that goal, but I feel as if progress is being made. I feel as if I'm pushing myself, through personal projects, academics, physical exercise, art and relationships to others I am starting to become the person I want to be, and I hope others should strive to be as well.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I get frustrated with people who teach something, preach something, or advise something that they do not follow themselves. I understand that one may learn a lot about something, yet have no personal experience "applying" it, but still may be knowledgeable, but it calls into question their motives, passion and sincerity to me. I have criticized myself on this many times. I value physical fitness, but am not at my peak physical goal yet, so I feel I have to push myself harder. I value positivity, but have struggled with depression, so I strive to correct that. I value living a life that leaves little negative impact on the environment, but I take short cuts sometimes, so I have been pushing myself to go out of my way further and further to do know what I know is right, regardless of the inconvenience. I bring this up though because I am taking a class titled "Human Impact on the Environment" and on the first day I noticed a handful of things about the professor teaching said course that are easy examples of negative human impact on the environment. For one, he is not a vegetarian, and for anyone who wants to "go green", going vegetarian is one of the most effective ways to go about it. Another thing was, in a class in which we could do everything from a website, he printed off packets of information onto paper and handed them out to the class. He said he drives all the time (instead of biking), uses Styrofoam cups, etc. All things that someone that was trying to "go green" would change about themselves presumably, yet he did not. Yet... he teaches a class about human impact on the environment. It makes me wonder if I can take his course seriously. I feel it would be like walking into a class on biological evolution that was taught by a creationist. My point being, I feel like if you are going to teach something to others, it should be something that you believe in enough to practice in your own life. It's all about sincerity and honesty, two qualities I hope to build toward exemplifying. So, In light of this, it once again just made me want to try harder at becoming what I want to become and I hope others try hard to do the same.

My birthday, starting school and preparing for the adventure of a lifetime.

Well, today is my birthday. Another year passed by. I think about all that has happened since this time last year and I can hardly believe it's only been a year. It was one of those years where when looking back you realize that it was both more of a struggle and more of a joy than you would have ever expected. It was one of those years that tests your mental and emotional resolve and where definite changes have become noticeable in your personality and place in life, even if it is not apparent to others. In short, last year was a heavy one, and I'm expecting this year to be the same but full of opportunities. I turn 23 today.

I start school tomorrow. Finally, my last semester at The University of Rock County. I'm taking four classes, and tutoring three more, so it will be a heavy semester. I'm also going to be working on some personal projects through the University. I'm going to be trying to get the school to start a Terracycle collection, as I mentioned in the previous blog, and I'm going to be working with one of the philosophy professors on doing research and writing a philosophical essay on Veganism. If anyone reading isn't familiar with philosophical essays, they are not like the essays you would write in an English class. They are very in depth, use the form of a logical argument aimed to deliver a point of view and defending it against critique. So in short, it will be a lot of work. After this semester, I will be transferring up to The University of Wisconsin-Madison. From everything I hear, it's a great school with fantastic opportunities, great groups of people, great classes and great growth potential. So, I'm looking forward to it, very much so. I'm just finishing up my application and will be sending it off in the next couple days.

Now, onto what I really wanted to write about. When I look back on this summer, although I've been productive in light of some difficult situations, I didn't get to do the one thing I really wanted to do which was travel. I wanted to go somewhere and go backpacking and/or camping for awhile but because of financial limitations I didn't get to do so. It brought me down a lot. There are so many great places I'd like to see, especially on the west coast. I've been reading "My First Summer in the Sierra" by John Muir, and the way he describes his treks through the mountains around Yosemite Valley is really inspiring. Then the other day, I read an article about a man who set a new record for the fastest time hiking the entirety of The Pacific Crest trail, a trail that runs through the Sierra Nevada, a trail that John Muir himself once frequented. The person who set the record was another Vegan too! Doing the entire trail in about two months. And then it happened, it hit me all at once that this is what I was supposed to do. Hike this trail. It would get me out in nature, REAL nature for months at a time, I would be able to see beautiful places that would probably amount to 50 or more normal vacation trips, I'd be able to push myself much, much farther than I ever have before, and really find the truth of who I am. So, I'm starting to plan for the trip next summer. I'm going to leave immediately when school gets out and try to hike the entire thing before school starts again in the fall. I'm starting to collect funds for it now. I'm going to look around and see if there is anyone or any company that might sponsor my trip. The Vegan that did it in record time was sponsored by an energy bar company and raised money for an animal rights group. So, I'm going to look into seeing if I can find something like that to do as well to help me out.

To give a little information about the trail, it starts at the Californian/Mexican border and goes all the way up through California, through Oregon and to the Washington/Canadian border. It starts off through arid, desert like mountains, goes into the Sierra mountains, through the Sequoia forests and Redwood forests, (and a bunch of other lesser known but amazing forests and state parks) right along lake Tahoe, through the wooded country of Oregon, over the Columbia river, and past Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier in Washington and then into some amazing mountains near the border at the end of the trek. So, it's ambitious to say the least, but I can't think of anything else more deserving to work hard for than to spend a few months in such beautiful places. To walk amongst the world's largest trees, to sleep on mountain tops, to swim in the ocean and in beautiful lakes like Crater and Tahoe, and know that I did something really great...that's what I'm striving for. It would be one of those things that if I have to sell everything I own to fund it, I will.

So, there is the post for today. Might be a few before I post again because of school starting but I'll try and hop back on. I think the next post is going to be something more philosophy related again, instead of just updates. So, take care until next time.