It Bites!

Yesterday at the farmer’s market on my farm in Balch Springs, several farmers and home gardeners were standing around talking about how the lack of pollination on the vegetable plants this year was really hurting production. The wildflowers and sunflowers in my pasture are missing usual pollinators except for a few native bees from time to time. The edges of the pond are not filled with thirsty honeybees or dozens of frogs and toads as in years past. The squash, melons and cucumber blossoms at my farm and in yards across Mesquite, Balch Springs and Dallas are not producing fruits as they normally should. Instead, blossoms are falling off, un-pollinated, in areas where an excessive amount of fogging and aerial spraying took place last summer - and around my farm where we lost 90% of our hives this past winter. The immune systems of the bees compromised from the intake of tainted pollen the summer before.

On tables of at least 2 vendors were handouts and flyers, mosquito dunks and bits and lots of information about the fatal plight of the honeybees, especially in light of the unnecessary spraying. Requiem for a bee. You’ve seen the story by now about the Texas Honeybee Guild’s crushing past year in the Dallas Advocate, countless other magazines, television news programs and full length feature films. Or have you been tuned out or tuned in only to the sensational media coverage of how we’ve had or first human case of WNv and they were still alive – oh, no, wait, it wasn’t really WNv after all. But too late, out come the trucks. Do you see how this all works? 

And yet, in the professionally printed full color brochure put out by the County of Dallas – no where in it does mention even once about honeybees or how ordinary citizens can help the county eliminate the habitat for mosquito breeding by using a simple, cheap, extremely effective and readily available material.

BTi folks – dump it or dunk it! Do we let standing water than can’t be dumped or drained just stand there and breed mosquitoes? Do we call code compliance on our neighbors who can’t afford to have their gutters cleaned out because they are struggling to buy food and use a walker to stand? Do we complain to our city about how bad the mosquitoes are in our neighborhood - where there are endless abandoned horse troughs, swimming pools or creek areas that don’t have enough moving water to keep them flushed out?

How about empowering the people to do something more effective than douse themselves with DEET? (The CDC even mentions other FDA approved ingredients to use on ones’ self and kids.)  We have stood up in county and city meetings time and again freely sharing hundreds of hours of research so officials don’t have to look for it themselves. And what have they DONE with this information? What has been done with the monies received for increasing the mosquito abatement budget? Testing you say? Great – and what is being done more this year than in past years to educate individuals about their role and then telling those at-risk neighborhoods they need to step it up even more when those test results start to climb?  How about a grading system so neighborhoods know how they rate when the test results come in – and sharing those results with city departments so they can be on the look out for potential breeding grounds?

How is it we can go from ground zero to ground spraying before we even hit the 4^th of July – and I’ve not received ONE SINGLE piece of information in my mailbox or on my door, or seen any mention at any cross street in my neighborhood about what we can do to prevent being doused with harmful chemicals in our homes and yards? The word is out about the dangers of the toxic chemicals. People are waking up to the fact that the media likes to scare people with inflated headlines and shocking news teasers. Children are asking questions. We are all asking more questions. Like how effective is spraying – really?

I would like to commend Scott, Zach and their outside contractor Ron, for working with me last week to improve a buffer zone around my farm’s perimeter – instead of taking a direct fogging on the north border as on the original spray map, and for dropping off literature for me to hand out at my farmers market. But what the heck new is being done this year? Where is the gambusia fish program for individuals’ ponds? Where are the new backpack sprayers or truck mounted sprayers that are capable of accepting the less toxic materials that Mr. Howard Garret and others have told officials about? What happened to all of the funding and how is it being spent in cities that pay the county to perform this daunting task of abating mosquitoes for them?

It’s time for new action folks. Our county can move faster than this. It’s time we start looking around the country and even within our own state, and adopt newer, safer and more effective ways to empower ourselves against the archaic and dangerous ways of the old days. We have the technology, information and manpower.

No one wants anyone to get sick, much less lose their life, to a mosquito bite. But we’re doing a pretty dismal job at taking the bite out of anything if we can’t move forward and empower the people and businesses to be more proactive in their role, too, without risking millions of people to the long term effects of spraying toxic chemicals on them. Let’s encourage retail counter top displays of BTi dunks and bits and coupons from the manufacturer on literature going to the public. I can’t tell you how many people at my market don’t know that BTi dunks even exist, much less that it is a safe and effective way to help them kill mosquito larvae in their yards – or tossed into neighbor’s abandoned pool.

How about a few billboards saying DUMP IT or DUNK IT! around town? Town hall meetings with neighborhoods in high-risk areas to educate people about what they can do in their own yards to eliminate the breeding grounds for mosquitoes. 

No one expects our government to be the silver bullet and answer all of our life’s problems. But shouldn’t we expect them to be a source of current information for the people and to effectively use funds to spread the word about empowering citizens to help them take care of this problem? What do you think? We can gather together for sporting events and other rallies. We need more of you to gather around city council meetings, county meetings, health department meetings – and any other open meeting that has anything to do with mosquitoes, health of citizens and accountability. There are over 6 million of us living in DFW. The 15 or 20 of us who have led the way, can’t be the whole march. Step up and do your part – please. Get informed. Get armed with the tools you need to protect your neighborhood and to eliminate the breeding and feeding ground for this pest. Protect your home. Maybe because I started this farm from the scratch more or less, I'm a bit vigilant about it, but none of us wants our homes to be prey to toxic chemical attacks.

And tell the media you’re sick of scare tactics and misleading news stories. Isn’t it time we took things back to reality? The severe form of West Nile fever occurs in 1 in 150 people showing symptoms. You’d think it was as widespread as heart attacks from eating fast food and smoking. Neither of which we do much of anything about to prevent.

Marie Eat Your Food - Naturally!

Join the Revolution - the Food Revolution!

I was asked to take part in the Dallas area's Food Revolution Day with the DFW Truck Farm co-founder and Food Revolution Day Ambassador, Donelle Simmons, over at the Texas Discovery Gardens this week on Friday. We were slated to give "real food" pep talks to invitees who came to have a real food picnic with us. The event is a spin off of the Jamie Oliver New Food Revolution show that aired a few years back where he tried to convert a school system's lunch program into something healthy, and frankly, more edible.

Well.... totally unexpected to us, a school group came up to sit at the picnic table area. I asked if they were there for the event and all looked at each other and shook their heads. Clearly, they were just on a field trip and sitting down to eat before continuing on. Several of the kids had no lunches with them though, and when I asked why not, they said that they "didn't like the school's food" with a not so shy about it look on their faces and tone in their voices. I didn't get the name of the school they were from, but it seems to be a pretty universal consensus with many school children. I just watched the film Cafeteria Man last week about another brave chef's attempt to battle the red tape of a school system's bureaucracy. 

photo by Donelle Simmons

Well then, I said to myself - I have some real food right here! I asked if they liked carrots - and they said yes, but looked at my purple heirloom carrots with a puzzled expression. So, I cut up the carrots I had brought for lunch, which revealed their orange insides and a sigh of relief (or was that confusion?), and offered to share them with the kids. I also had a few freshly picked green beans and asked if anyone had ever eaten beans fresh off the vine before. No one had, but a few quickly took me up on my offer to taste them. One by one my purple carrots were being cut up into bite sized pieces and devoured. Donelle seeing the opportunity, too, brought out some of the samples from the basket of veggies she'd picked for the event, including radishes, kohlrabi, a young garlic plant, and some broccoli. We talked about each vegetable and possible uses for them, how to enjoy them without "ranch" and why (have you ever tried to pronounce all of the ingredients on that bottle?), and the fact that you can actually use the tops of the carrots about the same way you would use parsley or to make a tasty pesto. "Really?!"

They taste tested everything we put out in front of them. It was awesome! They even conducted blind side- by-side taste tests between the purple and yellow heirloom carrots we had brought versus the little orange carrot nubs someone had from their school lunch. Hands down - the nubs were deemed "nasty"! (Their words, not mine.) Everyone agreed that the heirloom carrots tasted much better than the school issued packaged carrots - even though "baby carrots" are supposedly specifically bred to have a higher brix (sugar) rating to appeal to more people, specifically, kids.

As we were cutting things up and just sitting there talking veggies and gardening, one of the girls exclaimed "This is the best lunch I've ever had.", and I nearly cried tears of bittersweet. If I had even a thought that there would be kids there without a lunch, I'd have brought a whole bag of carrots and beans to share. All they had eaten was one little bunch of carrots and a handful of green beans, with that chopped up assortment of other things that couldn't have amounted to much of a snack for one person, much less a full meal for anyone. Anyway, Donelle and Marilyn, her mother and partner in the DFW Truck Farm, and I all agreed we could not have planned this much better - other than to have brought more food - and that this type of exchange was what the Food Revolution was all about.

The ladies that had come out specifically for the RFR event shared stories of their own food quests, gardening experiences and a few had direct contact with school kids and the "system" that doesn't seem to understand the important connection between education and nutrition. We all agreed that gardening should be part of every school's curriculum along with some basic home ec and industrial arts. Like "back in the day" when I was in school up north, and we walked uphill both ways in 2 feet of snow..... Junior High school included a semester of each class. At least when we left we knew some basic sewing (buttons, simple machine work) and how to do some basic cooking - besides putting something in a microwave oven - of which didn't exist when I was in school. And in wood shop, we made cutting boards - oh my, of WOOD? Yep - back in the day when a wood cutting board wasn't evil.

Our kids are missing out on an important link in our very survival. Sure there will always be a 24-hour drive-in window open somewhere. But those girls who were sharing a table with me the other day were just as happy to snack on some real food - and rather chose to eat nothing, than what they felt was inedible school lunches. That speaks volumes, because if they're not exposed to fast food or highly processed food, and rather are raised on real, fresh, flavorful foods, their palates won't develop for the other and their more likely to turn to it less often - if ever! I'm sure fast food chain and pharmaceutical company owners and investors don't want to hear that, but if we don't do something to break the chain of childhood diseases caused by the "nasty" food we're feeding this and future generations, we're going to have a lot more sickly people on our hands to take care of in a few decades. Don't they deserve better?

Group of grade school students experiencing real food!

Make it known through your PTA and school boards that your kids deserve to eat at least as well as the teachers and administrative staff do. Would they eat in the kids' cafeteria? If not, why not? And if not, how can that be changed? Why can't they incorporate at least some of the school grounds into a working garden? If Paul Quinn College can rip up their football field to do it, so can a grade school eliminate "lawn" somewhere kids aren't using it to play on. Take a note from Mark Painter's local school garden area over at Stonewall Jackson where the community funds much of this program - outside of the school's budget. Or check out any one in a number of the Edible Schoolyard projects around the country. There's no reason - no excuse - not to do this in every single school across the country. Start one in yours.


Marie
Eat Real Food - Naturally!

My Mom and My Life on the Farm

Mom and I With My "New" Farm Truck in 2010(?) - That She Bought For Me

My mom and I may have different views of what makes us happy, but, indirectly, at least, my mom can take credit (or blame, depending on the circumstances), for how I found my way into organic farming. Now she may not think she is a large part of it, but it was my mom who encouraged me to play outside ("I said, "Go out-side!"" LOL).  But seriously, as one of my Girl Scout leaders for many years, she both took me camping and sent me camping several times a year, which really awakened my love for nature and being outside; unless it was snowing. She wasn't altogether confident at first of my decision to venture into farming, ("You're not going to quit your full time job, are you?"), but today she is my biggest cheerleader and she says, she couldn't be prouder. Probably so long as I don't need to keep borrowing money from her.)

My mom kept a small garden in our mostly concreted backyard - and I mean small. There was a strip of dirt about 3 feet wide by about 20 feet long where she managed to grow a vegetable garden. It was capable of producing a wide enough assortment of veggies, that there hasn't been many of them I have met that I haven't liked. I can also recall her coaxing peas to grow on the chain link fence along the dang alley! I would eat those peas right off the vine on my way out of the yard, without ever thinking about how amazing it was she grew them in about 4 inches of dirt. Got to love that Midwest soil!

So not only is my mom large in part responsible for my addiction to playing outside in the dirt, she is also highly behind my obsession with trying to eat high quality, delicious and simple foods.

I really have no problem with this, as it has served me well, so far and on most days, anyway. It can be a bone of contention between us at times, however, as it seems that with no kids at home to cook for, she slipped out of some of the good habits she instilled in me. As the good health of my mom is very important to me, and having watched what a poor diet did to my late father's health, this has led to more than one or two colorful conversations about food, eating and the state of today's food industry. She is discovering some of the things that I have shared with her on her own now, and with my constant hint dropping and nagging. Role reversal, without the authority, I guess. She is sure to let me know when she finds a source for this or that organic something or another. Way to go, Mom!

But my mom in many ways isn't that much unlike many people today of her generation. When she went to the grocery store to buy food for us growing up, there was nowhere near the selection of what Michael Pollan refers to as "food-like substances" as there are today, nor did we know the extent of the dangers and long term effects of many of them. Unless you are obsessed with, or perhaps make your living from, food, you may not really ever realize much has changed. That is unless, of course, your daughter grows up and somehow decides to become a farmer in her mid-life. Then you hear ALL about it, sometimes ad nauseum, when all you want to do is enjoy your diet coke. Sorry Mom, I am calling ya out on that one. I am sending you a 6 pack of Zevia cola one of these days - when I can figure out how to get it there without exploding on the mailman.

Now I have my own personal food skeletons that come out from time to time. I am no stranger to the fast food world. When I was a teenager, in fact, my first "real" job was at a fast food restaurant 2-doors down from my house called Yankee Doodle Dandy, (think the early years of Jack in the Box). We fried frozen "potatoes" in a vat of hot grease, broiled "beef" hamburgers" on a conveyor belt, and even made "milk" shakes in 3 different flavors. I wouldn't have known better to have questioned ingredients at that time. It tasted like what a teenager's taste buds wanted I suppose and there weren't any decades of historical data showing the detrimental effects of eating this stuff. I can hardly believe us kids would go to BK for the broiled burgers and then across the parking lot to Micky d's for the fries. Although nowadays, just driving by a place like that during a busy time when it fills the air with its trademark stench, my nose reflects upon it with not so fond memories. (And just for the record, my folks split up about the time of the fast food explosion, and my mom had no idea how often I ate there. I am sure she never would have approved.)

My mom was a "stay at home" mom and I grew up on 3 square, home made meals nearly every day of the first 14 years of my life. That is something for which I will forever be both grateful and fortunate. None of us is born with a taste for cream filled pastries, chocolate covered candies, greasy and mostly water filled "meat" burgers or corn chips, (now, genetically modified). We ate these kinds of things so very infrequently as little kids, that we never really developed a "taste" for them, much less an addiction. For me, it was a treat sometimes or for holidays. That would be the candy for holidays, you know like Halloween, not the fast food. My mom made the most wonderful holiday meals, from scratch, and to this day some of those food traditions are my favorites.

Mom and I in 2011 at Bolsa - a Dallas Foodie Haunt of Mine

So things are coming full circle it would seem. My mom's early teachings did not fall on deaf ears. I may not have human children of my own, but I feed my critters as well as I can with what is available out there, and I teach my customers, of all ages, a lot of what my mom taught me, only with more information than she had available to her. I speak passionately to whoever will listen, about known dangers and unknown consequences for under tested experimental products passed off to the masses as food, and I am quick to share articles and reports, hopefully from reliable sources and not just alarmists, so as to help others learn and make more educated choices than the ads, commercials and pretty pictures on the containers would lead you to believe. There are just so many choices out there now, it can be overwhelming - and surely our government wouldn't allow anything bad for us on the store shelf, would it?

So my advice on this Mother's Day is to keep it simple and eat basic ingredients that you blend together, and not some scientists who are paid to create something you "just can't have one" of. Be a good example to your kids for eating healthy and good food habits, because even of they like to sneak over to some place with greasy fake food, made faster than it could ever be cooked if it was real and longer lasting than any living organism known to man, know that some day, with a little luck, they will probably look back and admit it, "Mom, you were right. Junk food gave me zits because it messed up my hormones worse than puberty was already doing." Or they might say something like that anyway. And who knows, maybe they will grow up to be a farmer, too. We can hope!

Thanks, Mom. I love you.


 Marie Eat Your Food - Naturally!