Food Adventures

i am getting to know the weeds very well. there is the amaranth and the mallow, which are huge and domineering but come out quite easily, occasionally requiring a 2-handed pull. theres the grassy things, that can be quite annoying as the leaf sometimes separates from the root. there's a vine-y thing with little berries, and then there are all these random little things. and of course there is purslane, my favorite edible weed, although i have not actually harvested any to eat here. the weeds are our project and i come at them with an affectionate vengeance, a dance of squatting, sitting in the furrows, or sometimes getting serious and standing up with the back-bending yanking. everything goes to the sides of the rows and will dry and then become OM for soil. we got through the sweet potatoes, so now those lovely little plants have less competition and more sunlight access. whee! earlier this week, i got to spend some quality time with the celery, and with the smell of chicken poop....

i have been thinking about waste and my notions of it. as in most all of the food experiences i've had, we have excess produce here that doesn't end up getting eaten. my conception, and one of the things that stresses me out most about our food system, is how much food goes to waste– especially because there are definitely people who could eat it! while i still strongly think that we need to rebuild our food systems to create better production and DISTRIBUTION practices to prevent this waste, i am also trying to challenge my notion of waste because i realize it is informed by internalized logics around the need for natural resources to be utilized and produced for consumption and this feels like some deep ingrained capitalism or something so im like WHOA lets take a step back. i think my appreciation of flowers this summer, seeing the beautiful dahlias and marigolds and sweet peas at Slide this summer was the start of my 'waste' reimagining. we do not eat these flowers....

 the beginning of a new adventure! i am spending a month WWOOFing on a farm in Salinas, living in Marina with the family. Marina is an interesting town, and I'm curious to explore more. it is a mix of sand dunes and housing development type residential areas, but i have easy access to the Fort Ord National Monument trail system from the house, so morning run prospects are great! it is fun exploring this new ecosystem. i also want to make it out to the beach and dunes there, which is just a short drive from the house. the meandering paths of the residential area makes for good walking, and im pleased that the air quality has improved so that i can get back to my morning run, afternoon walk routine. how nice to be outside again! the academic portion of the Harvest Corps is basically a speaker series! this week's theme is soil and microbes, so we've heard about composting systems on a farm in New York and urban garden in the Bronx, and also talked to a mushroom guy -he's a...