Moderation in all things...

including moderation. attributed to Mae West

Two articles in this Wednesday's New York Times have prompted me to do a little preaching on this theme.

The first article is about organic and related movements among grape growers and wine makers. "When the Wine Is Green" discusses the movement toward sustainability in the vineyards. Since I live in the wine country and care about the health of the land, I am all in favor of sustainable grape growing. I think sustainable is actually more progressive than organic, though it's generally understood that sustainable is a label used by those who don't want to go through formal organic certification. What I mean is - if you are organic and haul in manure from miles and miles away, that's not necessarily sustainable.

What I think is outlandish is "biodynamic" grape growing. I do know, having grown up on the Farmer's Almanac, that those who work the land have traditionally planted and done other tasks according to the phases of the moon. I think at some level this may make sense - though I don't know why. Since the moon does have a measurable effect on any body of water, it can affect weather patterns, etc.

But doing all one's gardening astrologically has to come under the heading of woo-woo science.

Steiner, who brought us biodynamic gardening, also brought us Waldorf schools. I love the fact that they teach knitting, but find their spirituality questionable, and wonder why any Christian parent would send their child to a Waldorf school. But then, I know many church folk aren't very reflective or questioning about pop spirituality in its various manifestations.

I'd also like to file a comment about organic wine. Organic grapes, si; organic wine, non. Organic wine is like home canning, only more risky, and someone else is doing it and expects you to pay a premium price for it.

The other article was on the locavore movement. Or loco-vores or yokel-vores as I learned are variations. If you can't get local grains or flour, and you like bread, go ahead and buy some. Do no be like the woman described in this article who bought local grain even though it had mouse droppings in it, and sieved them out. My word, hasn't she heard of hanta virus? dangerous strains of E.coli?

When I attended the local harvest fest in Willits last fall, I overheard someone say, "After all, the spice trade has been going on for millennia." Amen. Do as much of your food sourcing locally as you can, give up the produce flown in from Chile in winter - but if you need to buy salt or flour or whatever, just do your best to find out where it's from and make your peace with it. This is about consciousness, not about purity codes!

One other thing I was reminded of in Willits: preserving food is a lost art, but we would all have a lot more variety from our local sources if we revived it. A member of the LDS church, where, especially in rural areas, such traditions have been kept alive, had some demos and lots of information there in Willits. And while some may say, "get a freezer" I'd like to point out that freezing is the most energy intensive method of long term food preservation. Freezing requires energy inputs from the beginning of the process until you take the fish you caught last summer out to thaw. Canning and drying are energy intensive at the beginning, but then not. And properly canned foods last longer than frozen.

It's not practical for most of us to do pressure canning, and animals really do best, at least for modern tastes, with freezing (well, maybe drying/smoking works for some of it). But I regularly can applesauce and tomatoes, make the occasional batch of ketchup, and make jams, butters, chutneys of unwanted fruit. It's easy, and it sits on the shelf not requiring anything until I use it to liven up dull meals in seasons when there's not much variety in fresh produce.

I was fortunate to have a grandmother and mother who knew how to do these things, and to be around rural elders working for the church in Nevada who did, too. If you don't know how, find someone to teach you before it's too late.