Category Archives: Learning

A few of the animals that the farm keeps on-site. This timid donkey would not come any closer.

Yesterday was our last CSA pickup and I feel conflicted about it. This being our first experience with a CSA, I have new insights and knowledge that I would like to honestly share with you.

Positives about this CSA experience were:

1. The CSA is located only 5 miles (as a bird flies) from our home.
2. The CSA is part of a larger ”village” that employs, houses and interns special needs individuals.
3. All plants are grown organically.
4. Some of the selections are unique, such as tatsoi, Long Island cheese pumpkin, snapes and ground cherries.
5. It was relatively inexpensive broken out over three seasons.
6. We got into juicing so as not to waste anything and it has become a very healthy way to start our day.

The negatives were:

1. Often there was too much of a good thing. As a 2-person household, we had difficulty consuming even a half-share of produce. With a juicer and a vegan in the house, we would have items from the last pickup sitting in the fridge or on the counter.
2. Lack of choice touches on so many other problems. But let’s just say particular items are fascinating but you better find out how to use these perishables quickly. This can inhibit meal planning as you are forced to plan around them. Produce staples such as onions, garlic and potatoes were not always available.
3. There was no advance notice about what was growing at the CSA for meal planning.  The CSA maintained a blog but it is was not updated regularly. Often, I had to anticipate what would be at the next pickup and not purchase that item at the grocery store only to find it was not there at the CSA pickup. Sometimes it was available but for the full share pickups, not for the half shares.
4. Inflexible CSA pickup times (no delivery) were on Tuesdays and Fridays from noon – 8:00 pm. This became a hinderance to meal planning as I did my weekly planning on Saturday or Sunday.
5. Trying to write a cookbook about Southern vegan food using food resources provided by a CSA (and outside of my normal meal planning for a vegan and non-vegan) was too difficult a lot of times. There were too many variables to stay on top of so as not to create more waste.
6. Being a vegan became an issue. Biodynamic farming can mean many things (animals or humans or a combination of both are in farming). This label meant nothing to me in the beginning until I slowly began understand when the CSA began to talk about acquiring and using draft horses for next season (see my previous post on Bill and Lou) in order to not use fossil fuels. The CSA also has a dairy farm that sells raw milk. I didn’t see the connection about how my CSA membership was supporting the dairy until I saw a sign at the CSA sign-in sheet that read ”Meat for sale”. I found out that the retired dairy cows are slaughtered and sold to CSA members. All of these gorgeous cows in the fields would someday meet this fate. I asked the CSA about the non-bovine animals on the farm, the goats and the sheep, were they to be food animals at some point but they said that they were there to “just to look cute”. But, they will acquire pigs and “broiler chickens” next year for slaughter and sell to CSA members. This put a huge knot in my stomach. I asked the CSA to consider veganic farming and shared this highly successful and local CSA but this was met with the sound of crickets.

So, I am reflecting on this experience with a lot of gratitude. I am grateful that we were able to afford this venture, the opportunity was there, the produce was wonderful and we supported our local economy. Most importantly, it taught me the true value of our local farmer’s markets. These farmers are responsible for bringing to market what they think the general public will buy in a competitive environment. They are obligated to provide staples and offer them at a lower price than other competitors every week. I encourage everyone to check out their local farmer’s markets and support them as much as you can. Other options that we can look into are small-scale farming and veganic permaculture, something which I am still learning about. If we do join a CSA next year, we would choose a produce-only CSA and those can be found on the Localharvest.org website. In the meantime, we say goodbye to this CSA with a refrigerator FULL of produce and who cannot be grateful for that?

Five weeks ago my friends and family started on a 7-week challenge to go meatless. This program is incremental whereby participants are encouraged to go meatless only 1 day the first week, 2 days the second week and so on. The first week starts on Monday, i.e., Meatless Monday. I explained the entire program in an earlier post including the weekend challenge. Meatless weekend days can be the most challenging. During the week we can go on auto-pilot and eat whatever meals we have planned but on the weekend people are different. So, to reiterate the last two challenges on the weekend they are as follows. Saturday is “Seitan or Seeds, Nuts, Legumes Saturday” and Sunday is “Sanctuary/Shelter Sunday”. Both of these challenges will begin to make sense when I explain to you a conversation that I had with a Terri Williams, Shelter Director for Fairfield Animal Rescue in Winnsboro, South Carolina.

Princess is a 2-year old brindle pit bull who will be killed next week to make space in the shelter if an adopter, foster or rescue does not step in to save her. She is heartworm negative and has $225 in volunteer pledges towards her rescue. Contact the shelter at 803-385-6341 or e-mail @ chesterscanimalcontrol@yahoo.com or mtolbert@chesterso.com

Currently, there are five dogs on the SUPER URGENT list at Chester County Animal Control in Chester, South Carolina. Four of the five are female and two are pit bulls. Working as a long-distance volunteer for this shelter, I reached out to an animal rescue (this was number 14 of 36 that I had contacted thus far) to ask if they had availability to pull any of these dogs into their shelter and she did not because she currently has fifteen animals up for adoption, in her home, and one cat, who is her main companion animal to care for. ”Helping animals can be the most heart-breaking and rewarding work that you will ever do.” Without missing a beat, Terri described her experiences working as an animal control officer and running her own shelter. She described how people conducted dog fights in the woods which began and ended with a car horn in broad daylight. Her main complaint is how South Carolina’s laws define our relationship with companion animals as “owner”, us, and “property”, them. However, in California the term “owner” has been changed to “guardian”. While at the outset these terms mean very little to the “owner” or “guardian” but the truth is staggering in practice. Protection laws are very light when it comes to property (and it is even worse with farm animals) and she along with many others are fighting to change these laws.

Terri’s cat Duster

Terri’s companion cat is named Duster. Duster is paralyzed from the waist down due to an accident with a car door as a kitten and Terri stepped in to adopt her and then try to rehabilitate her. Her vet told her that Duster would not last past a few weeks to a few months because there was damage to her colon. Terri did expensive, but discounted, physical therapy for a while then bought Duster a wheelchair. Duster did not like it because it straightened out her severely curved spine and made her feel very uncomfortable. That wheelchair is now an expensive wall decoration in Terri’s house. Terri said, “I removed the wheelchair and Duster looked much happier and moved on about her business.”  She continued, “That’s the way most animals are. If they have a screwed-up jaw, bent tail, missing eye, any kind of physical abnormality, they don’t care. They just move on through their life with grace and dignity. That is what Duster has taught me. She has taught me about how gracious animals can be about the world. And you can see this if you just observe them and let them into your heart.”

Terri also explained how she became a vegetarian in 1977 after assembling chicken parts to make fried chicken for her and her husband. She said that she just couldn’t continue on with the meal when she started sobbing. She began to see them as animal body parts. (Side note: As I have become more involved in companion animal rescue, I am find more vegetarians among the rescue community than in my everyday life.) Terri said that in her pre-veg days she LOVED eating meat. She has not tried seitan but I sent her links to my recipe for Grilled BBQ Barbecue Ribz and other people’s recipes on the internet. There are loads of recipes using this versatile protein. She was thrilled! So, this describes Saturday’s challenge. Find a way to use seitan in a recipe for the day. It is such a good transitional protein from an omnivore to plant-based diet. If you can’t stomach it try a new seed, nut or legume.

Rescues like Terri’s need more help from volunteers to find homes for the massive amount of homeless animals that they are dispatched with. The problem is enormous. The county animal control centers also desparately need volunteers to take photos of the animals and post them on the internet, walk the dogs, socialize with them, work with aggressive animals to make them more adoptable, clean the kennels and stalls, bathe and groom them, network them to safety (what I try to do in my spare time) and ask them “What can I do to help?” Most importantly, they need fosters! Shelters everywhere are overwhelmed beyond belief.

There are many opportunities as well in assisting farm animal sanctuaries. This experience can range anywhere from sponsoring an individual animal’s care at a set dollar amount to cleaning the animals’ living quarters, conducting group tours . . . Both of these experiences whether working for a companion animal shelter or farm animal shelter will open you up to the plight of animals. So Sunday’s challenge is this. On week 7 of this challenge I am asking friends and family to seek out an animal shelter and ask them “What can I do to help?” If no conceivable opportunity exists to volunteer to help animals, then tour a sanctuary (just switch your weekend days as most are open on Saturdays on the weekend). If a tour is not feasible then please open your eyes and your heart and read an excellent book about the plight of farm animals or companion animals. Watch a documentary such as Forks Over Knives, Peaceable Kingdom, Earthlings and the Meet Your Meat video (also available to watch for free here). There are many farm animal sanctuaries throughout the U.S. and there is a companion animal shelter in nearly every county/province. Make sure to call them in advance if you would like a tour because the staff usually have limited availability and most of the time will schedule tours in advance. Terri said, “Animals are not commodities! They are not property! They are here as one of many of us put on this earth by God. We are their stewards.”

As I stated in the previous post, I have been sick for more than a week and this has given me time to reconsider how best to roll out Meatless Monday – Extended program. For those in the know, I have shared with you the program in its entirety (it is a gradual 1 – 7 day, 7 week challenge) but some people have become aware simply because of an alert from me about what next week’s program is. As it has slowly been building in its intensity a few people have become frightened about not being able to eat meat for MORE than one day and bailed on the program entirely! While this was probably not the most fair way to introduce the program, I did not want to alienate people with the thought of a 7-day challenge. Traditional Southern food is SO meat heavy and a change like this can be so drastic. There are wonderful 7-day, 30-day and year-long vegan challenges out there and in coming up with this idea, I wanted to slowly get people comfortable with eating meatless every day through a slow-immersion program. Hey, it’s only 7 weeks if you decide to commit to it. So, here is the program in its entirety and everyone can tell me if they would like to go through with it next week.

Meatless Mondays with my own personal circle of family and friends is growing and I could not be more thrilled with their enthusiasm. Some people who I was convinced were serious carnivores are picking up the challenge and running with it and I am so happy for them.  It is about a commitment to feeling better about their bodies, hearts and minds, the environment and other animals and they know it.  My own family is extremely competitive. With a “challenge” like this they can’t help but wonder how it is not possible that they can do it and I am so proud of them for it.

For vegan readers of this blog, this program it is a great introduction to encourage your own personal circle to adopt a plant-centric lifestyle as well. So many athletes are promoting a vegan diet. Veganism was pronounced to be mainstream by a certain AP reporter as of a year and a half ago. So where are we today? Still going strong it seems and it is becoming more mainstream every day. It is ironic how people bravely eat carcinogenic hot dogs and wither at the sight of broccoli.  It is humbling to remind myself that I was once one of those people and adamantly so. Well, time for a change! George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Onward and upward with the unreasonable man!