PRODUCING YOUR OWN FOOD

Gary Entsminger and
home-grown produce

Many times when I receive an email from Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, he’s up to his neck in salsa verde or canning peaches, jams, applesauce, or other home-grown or local fruits or vegetables. His produce is usually fresh from a garden planted and tended by him and his partner, Susan Elliott, a painter and botanist, or comes from farmers in the valley below them. Both Gary and Susan are vegetarians, so when they moved into their cabin, a garden seemed an inevitable ingredient for their lifestyle.

Invariably, Gary’s e-mails arrive near supper time, and I find myself salivating over his descriptions of the salsa or sauces he and Susan are brewing in their kitchen. Since Susan is also an herbalist and knows her seasonings, the spices that are part of their recipes remind me of those in Indian and Iranian food.

I asked Gary to follow up the garden articles for which Susan supplied the texts on two of my blogs by giving me an interview about producing and canning food at home, and he supplied enough material for two blogs, which I’ll pass on to anyone who’s interested in the hot topic of sustainability.

Gary and Susan live in a rustic cabin on the Uncompahgre plateau near Montrose, Colorado year-round and balance their work of publishing books and periodicals/selling rare and second-hand books with hiking, playing musical instruments, growing and canning food. Gary dubbed this piece a “wee spiel,” but he supplies enough information to titillate anyone interested in learning to live “off the land” year-round.

Here’s the interview:

Moore: What prompted you to begin growing your own food?

Entsminger: That’s a long story. So perhaps I should just describe a problem that American consumers have when it comes to food – 1) grow and preserve food themselves, or 2) buy from someone else. Often, the buying means from a supermarket (or a restaurant). It’s probable that any food bought in a supermarket has traveled a long distance. Some estimate that the average tomato travels 1000 miles to get to a consumer. Since most food in supermarkets comes from California, Florida, Mexico, or further (e.g., many apples come from New Zealand) and especially in winter, the 1000 miles sounds accurate enough, and transporting food is expensive. Also foods harvested for transportation are usually picked earlier and are sometimes genetically manipulated for longer shelf-life. & there’s the pesticide issue.

Moore: What about pesticides and supermarket fruits and vegetables?

Entsminger: Well, you’ve heard of the Dirty Dozen?

Moore: You mean the movie?

Entsminger:  Yes, and the produce. Researchers have determined that some fruits and vegetables contain more pesticide residues than others. Those are the Dirty Dozen. Here’s a list I saw recently: apples, celery, sweet bell peppers, peaches, strawberries, nectarines, grapes, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers, blueberries, and potatoes.

Moore: Ouch. Those are some of my favorites!

Gary digging in garden

Entsminger:  Mine too. But there are alternatives. You can buy organically produced fruits and vegetables or grow your own.

Moore: So you and Susan decided to avoid supermarket fruits and vegetables by starting a garden?

Entsminger. Not exactly. Like everyone else, our diet would be quite restricted without supermarkets. But we’re trying to work around the inefficient mess of conventional farming and consumer dependence on whatever the conventional farmer and supermarket provides. An alternative is to grow the food yourself or buy locally. In most parts of the U.S., it’s still possible to grow a garden during the warmer months, and if you grow a garden, the logical follow-up is to preserve the food from your garden for winter. This was how my parents’ and grandparents’ generations went about it. There was no question of buying your winter fruits and vegetables in a supermarket since in my part of rural Virginia there were no supermarkets nearby until at least the 1950s.

Moore: My godfather used to say that the U.S. ended in the 1950s, but perhaps it was earlier for people who wanted fresh foods! However, there is a growing trend toward sustainability and people making home gardens.

Entsminger: Yes, but as with everything, there are trade-offs. For example, how to preserve the nutrition in fruits and vegetables when you store, can, freeze, etc. food for winter. There’s no question that nutrition in any fruit or vegetable begins to degrade as soon as it’s picked. Thus, a tomato that travels by truck from California to Colorado has been losing some of its nutrition along the way, and when most fruits and vegetables are heated they lose some of their nutrition. Unless you’re picking the fruit from your garden and eating it raw soon after, you’ve already begun to lose some nutrition. So, which trade-offs are preferable? The best scenario Susan and I have found is similar to the one our ancestors used:

1.                Grow what you can.

2.                Buy locally when you can.

3.                Preserve what you can from your garden or local sources.

4.                Eat what’s in season.

5.                Buy in supermarkets as a last resort.

6.                Avoid growers using pesticides.

Moore: How do you preserve food?

Susan Elliott and onlookers

Entsminger: We preserve by canning or sun-drying, and we store root vegetables (potatoes, beets, onions, garlic) in cool areas. Root cellars are ideal. Apples can also be stored all winter if kept in a cool place. My parents had a cellar where we kept a winter’s supply of apples, potatoes, and onions. We grew the potatoes and onions, and we bought the apples from a local orchard. Susan and I are also experimenting with other methods as well, but we rarely freeze produce because of the energy it requires to maintain a freezer. This too is a trade-off because frozen foods can retain a bit more of their nutrition.

Part II of the interview with Gary Entsminger about Producing Your Own Food will be featured in a subsequent blog.

Photographs by Susan Elliott and Gary Entsminger

AN ORGANIC PRAYER GARDEN

Ora et Labora

In the Benedictine Rule, physical work is a part of the daily discipline the Religious follow, for St. Benedict, who was touted as the founder of western monasticism, knew that a person couldn’t spend every hour of a day studying and praying. He felt that monks, nuns, brothers, and sisters should perform tasks like baking bread, cleaning up the kitchen, cooking, or working the ground to produce food that would sustain the Order and the needy who came to the doors of the monastery. This work wasn’t isolated from worship and was communal in context. Also, St. Benedict expected the Religious to be good stewards. He believed that a person could find God in work, and if that individual used his hands to carry out a physical task, he’d be involved in the act of praising God. Esther de Waal, renowned author of books about the Benedictine way of life, writes:

 “So that in all things God may be glorified is the common end of all work in the monastery. If the only point of reference is self, then work can easily become all engrossing, sometimes fulfilling, sometimes destructive, but either way is a barrier from God…”

And she tells us that those who followed the Rule approached work in the same way that they approached their possessions for “what we have and what we do belong to the life on loan from God…”

At St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee, where we worship when we sojourn on The Mountain, the Sisters of St. Mary observe the Benedictine Rule in the same manner as St. Benedict’s early followers – praying at prescribed times during the day and studying scripture. And in the realm of work, they cook, preserve food, clean the kitchen, offer hospitality to those from the outside world who worship with them, (as well as to dogs and cats) and raise vegetables and fruit for their table and for the tables of the needy. They have always maintained a garden, and at one time, their work included raising cattle.

Just last week, The Sisters were awarded a grant by the Jessie Ball DuPont Foundation to support a project called the Organic Prayer Project, a joint effort between the Center for Religion and the Environment at the University of the South and the Sisters of St. Mary, Sewanee. Under the direction of Michael Thompson, a Benedictine oblate, the grant will allow the Sisters to expand their vegetable and meditation gardens by providing funds for a well, drip irrigation, and for seeds and plants.

“The grant will allow us to upgrade our kitchen so we will be able to can garden produce on a greater scale and to make a meditation trail/wildlife sanctuary on our property off St. Mary’s Lane,” said Sr. Julian, sister-in-charge of St. Mary’s. In 2013, the Sisters plan to maintain a pasture and a barn, and to provide feed for sheep, alpaca, and, perhaps, goats.

Healthy late summer crop 

“A goal of the Organic Prayer Project is to generate love and respect for God’s creation and to look at ideas such as sustainability and good stewardship of the earth,” Sr. Julian added. “The project will provide hands-on experience for students involved with the Center for Religion and Environment and hopefully for the Episcopal Service Corps. It will also provide opportunities for individuals and groups, such as seminary students, to prayerfully encounter God’s creation. We plan to use the site for formal retreats.” Another goal of the project is to generate income from sale of canned goods, wool/yarn, and cheese.

“We hope to widen our involvement with, and service to, our community of Sewanee and the wider world, and at the same time provide a solid financial structure for the convent,” Sister Julian said.

For those of us who aren’t savvy about organic gardening, the phrase means to improve and maximize the health of the garden soil and to produce healthy plants without using synthetic commercial fertilizers, fungicides, or pesticides.

Congratulations and kudos to the Sisters for obtaining this grant and for making all of us in the post-modern world aware of St. Benedict’s Rule regarding the stewardship of the earth.