As discussed in my last post I think we owe vegans in particular an enormous debt of gratitude. These deadly viruses originate with wild animals in captivity caged inhumanely alongside domesticated animals for human consumption in markets mainly in China, but also it has been reported Indonesia and Thailand. What will happen in future and how and if this will be monitored is another matter.
Vegans are against the use of any animal product for consumption and their choices are truly admirable. We have so many ethical food producers here and ethical and sustainable hunting practices yet unfortunately there will always be people who abuse a shared trust. Also, whenever we purchase packaged meat in the grocery store and are not connected with the hunting of the meat ourselves or the raising of the meat ourselves or by people we know in our own community (shout out to those very important and hard-working people in Pemberton now and how grateful I am to you) then we honestly cannot say for sure that the meat was raised ethically.
So if you find this all too much to process (pun not intended) then you can just go vegan. And if that is too much to process then you can at least go partially vegan. I find vegan eating particularly easy at breakfast and lunch. Oatmeal and oat milk (yay – oat milk has 4g of protein per cup!), toast with peanut butter, etc.
For lunch I like to serve bean dips and veggies and even a light lentil soup. I just tweaked a bean dip I found online that in its original posted form was bland and blah. This one is zippy and fluffy and very delish. Please enjoy and thank you again to the vegan community.
White Bean Dip with Pemberton Garlic and Parsley:
Ingredients:
15 grams of small white cannellini beans
**Method for dried beans: Soak a bag or two of dried cannellini beans overnight. In the AM, drain water and put beans in slow cooker and add water until beans are covered by two inches. Cook on low 8 hours. When tender, put 15 gram portions of beans in containers and freeze for future use.
2 cloves Pemberton garlic
4 dashes hot sauce (I like the Cholula brand from Mexico)
1/3-1/2 cup pure olive oil
3 tbs fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup Pemberton-grown parsley
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp paprika
Method: Blend all ingredients together in Cuisinart. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve with sliced cucumbers, celery, carrots or sweet peppers.
Co-owner of Laughing Crow Organics, one of Pemberton’s small scale organic mixed vegetable farms, Budgell is six credits shy of an English degree, and seven years in to his transformation as a farmer. We sat down this winter to talk shop, mutually intrigued by each other’s craft.
“In the winter time, it’s like you’re assembling this really complicated machine,” Budgell explained. “And when the season starts, you pull it out in the field and start it up. It begins lumbering forward. And you start seeing, as the season goes on, that you’ve become a part of the machine, working, weeding, watching. But this has all been planned. Every now and again, the machine will trip because of something you didn’t think of. Then there’s this extra challenge of patching things up and putting out fires. But the machine rumbles onwards forever.”
Once the snow is off the fields, and the Life Force is surging through everything, nothing is sleeping. And the farmers start moving to keep pace – a pace that will keep accelerating until they feel like they’re running. “I feel like if I don’t keep moving alongside it, the machine falls apart. You have one chance. It’s a really hard deadline, unless you can decode nature.”
Budgell is regaling me with images of his Frankensteinian creature, in part, because we’ve sat down to talk about the contrast between winter and summer. Winter is a time for planning and playing. Now that farming season is here, it’s time to get down and dirty with your creation – to fully engage in this mysterious interplay between your plans and ideas and the physical world.
I returned to this interview after listening to poet David Whyte talk about “the conversational nature of reality.” Whyte suggests that “the only place where things are actually real is at this frontier between what you think is you, and what you think is not you; that whatever you desire of the world will not come to pass exactly as you like it. But the other mercy is that whatever the world desires of you will also not come to pass. And what actually occurs is this meeting, this frontier.”
One day this winter, running alongside my own lumbering beast of deadlines and deliverables, I did something different. Instead of downing two espressos, I squandered 15 precious minutes in meditation. I sat, breathed out, and in, and out, and in, and offered a kind of prayer to the universe. This story means a lot to me, I admitted. I want to do the idea, and the people it represents, real service. And I have five and a half hours to do it. Anything or anyone out there that can help get this fully formed out onto the page right now is most welcome.
I’d long been intrigued by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert’s theory of creativity, famously disseminated in her TED talk. Her insight is that there are Muses, a kind of “other” energy that works through us. A big part of doing creative work, maybe the biggest part, is consistently showing up so the forces know where to find you.
She came to that story as a kind of medicine to her huge commercial success and the weight of creative pressure that followed. Excavating an ancient understanding of Muses was her way of letting the air out of the pressure cooker of her Next Big Project; saying, look it’s not all on me. If I just show up, some other magic will meet me there.
It intrigued me, but it felt a bit passive, like she meant opening yourself up as a channel or a medium, letting something use you to flow through and onto the page. Writing hadn’t ever felt like productive sleep-walking to me. But when I sat in that moment of pause, inviting mysterious allies out of the cosmic woodwork, I suddenly saw it as a much more dynamic process – profoundly collaborative. Co-creation. Something might work through me, but it had to work with me, with my brain, my thought patterns and habits of language, and I would be shaped by the flow, just as I might allow it to help shape the work.
It was a new frontier.
It may be that some kind of meeting took place that day. But I began to let my fear and overwhelm subside at the responsibility of what I was tackling, trying to pull stories out of the ether, alone.
Photo by Audrey Thizy
Every spring, when the freshly plowed fields are full of scribbles and half-thoughts, Budgell feels the weight of the beautiful responsibility he has shouldered to feed hundreds of people. “We always freak out! We worry: is it going to grow this year? Is it going to happen? Are we going to have food? All through April and May and June. And then right around July, it’s like this crazy revelation. Oh my God! It worked again! Nature!”
Photo courtesy Laughing Crow Organics
“There is a chemistry to creative work that is about two parts miraculous to one part sheer effort,” reads a quote tacked above my desk. The precise effort-to-miracle ratio may change, but both are indispensable. We keep fumbling back to this. It’s on you, but it’s not all on you. It can’t happen without you, so show up and do the very best you can but make space for the not-knowing, the magical, the forces that keep the plants growing and the words flowing, and whatever else needs human hands to manifest in the world, in this earthy gritty sweaty dimension, where revelation happens.
Mother Nature is neat. She gives and she takes: it comes down to how we choose react to each facet in our open relationship with her that matters. Seems odd to me that we’re becoming more accepting the smoke shows each summer and that the map of BC resembles the Lite-Brite I used to play with as a kid. Yet, there are still folks out there that say climate change isn’t real.
This is only one of the reasons why I feel so strongly about the importance of growing our own food, saving seeds, choosing local and preserving. By teaching people easier ways to manage what they grow we can prepare for any surprises thrown at us, have a taste of summer all winter long and make difference.
We are so lucky to live in a valley rich in good dirt for growing and farmers that know how to use it. Every time I pedal out the meadows for a meander I am in awe of the beautiful fields full of vegetables. The Slow Food Cycle that is hosted here every August come rain, shine or smoke is great for educating us on who grows what and other local goods available. Every year there are new and exciting vendors showing us what’s possible if you experiment a little in your backyard. But it’s in these simple connections where the subconscious is fueled with ideas and relationships are forged.
So buy a big bag of carrots from Helmer’s, buy a bag of pickling cucumbers from Laughing Crow, go to the garlic festival this weekend, fill your growlers up at the breweries, stop at the food stands on the side of the road, heck, why not just join the Pemberton Food and Farm Facebook page to see who has surplus of fruit and veggies and take full advantage. Stock your freezer, stock your pantry and feel good about where your food has come from. You can definitely believe if it’s come from anywhere in this valley it’s grown with love and that my friends will leave the best taste in your mouth.
I am grateful that I love to garden (and seem to be good at it) and have the want to share my knowledge and I am so in love with this community… and, I am very grateful for Hazy IPAs on hazy days.
Traced Elements 