What Challenge?

So here it is, the last weekend of May and I haven't said thing one about the Eat Local Challenge. I think that's because I'm a little disappointed in my own attitude toward the whole thing.

I do have to give Max a bunch of credit, though. He does much more of the grocery shopping and cooking around here, and he has put a lot of thought into the challenge.

Here's pretty much the way it's gone down: The first week, Max went to the Co-op and asked the produce guy what his local options were. The produce guy snickered, pointed out some of last year's potatoes and a pile of dandelion greens and told him to have a fun month. So Max decided pretty quickly to expand our definition of bioregion from a 100 mile radius to a 250 mile radius. As soon as San Francisco and some of the eastern valley areas were included, it meant that our diet didn't really change much at all.

And so there's the problem. Our diet already relies on a bunch of convenience foods, and when we opened up the radius, we allowed things like Amy's frozen foods, Newman's Organics and Maranatha nut butters. While these things are produced within our region, I doubt very much that the ingredients in them are grown nearby. I know it's a start, and if I'm going to buy tahini anyway, better that I buy the one that came from Oregon instead of New Jersey, but I just don't feel like I truly got into the spirit of the Challenge.

On a positive note, I have found a few more items produced nearby. For example, I just the other day discovered that there's a place here in Eureka making delicious tortillas. I had burritos in their spinach wraps the other night. (And let me just take a moment to say how much I hate that they are called wraps now. I guess eating a tortilla makes you one of those amnesty-loving folks who's holding open the gate and waving the Mexicans right in, but eating a wrap makes you a Minuteman. Give me tortillas any day.)

I'm also hoping that this challenge is only the beginning. Maybe after a whole season of farmer's markets (our neighborhood one starts this week!) I'll be able to store a few things for next spring, and as we develop our edible landscape, we'll be able to include a few more foods from right outside the door.

Here's one example of food from outside the door:

The beginnings of a tofu scramble with our swiss chard (aka Yard Chard)and locally made tofu, as well as bread from work.

Not surprisingly, bread from work features prominently in many of our meals. Here's a little breakfast of mine with pseudo-local almond butter and Zimmerman's Jam. Oh, how I love Zimmerman's. They are a group of Mennonites in Fortuna who make some of the tastiest jam I've had. Their seedless raspberry is the best, but I've been buying Humboldt Medley, which is billed as being made from fruit native to Humboldt County (blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and rhubarb). While we do have coffee roasted here in town, this one was roasted in Fort Bragg, about 100 miles away. I bought it before the Challenge and because I like that the profits go toward trying to end the embargo against Cuba. It's also really tasty. Oh, and the mug was made locally.

Now I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer and the abundance of local produce it will bring, as well as a renewed vigor when the next Eat Local Challenge rolls around.

Wool Takes a Holiday

A couple of nights ago I made an unfortunate discovery. It seems my tub of thrift store sweaters was colonized by moths. It was my own damn fault. They were just tossed in there, not washed, no ziploc bags (although, according to this article, ziplocs aren't a significant deterrent). There was some damage to a couple of sweaters, others looked unscathed, but rather than take the risk, I trashed the whole lot of them.

So yesterday and today I've been hauling out the whole stash for airing and inspection. I am very relieved to see no further evidence of moth invasion. I think there was so much tasty goodness in that one tub of sweaters that the moths had no reason to leave. I've also had a couple of traps around for a few weeks now and not a single moth has landed.

This little scare has taught me a couple of things.
1) Last year, when I bought myself a ballwinder for my birthday and wound ALL my yarn into balls immediately? Not a great idea. Now I'm going back and rewinding everything into hanks to make it easier to inspect and air out frequently. From now on, ballwinding is on a need-to-knit basis.
2) I have a shit load of yarn. I know it's not the biggest stash in the world, but it's still way more yarn than I require (the above photo only captures a portion). I got a little thrift-happy early on and now have lots of yarn that's in good shape, but not easily swappable, so a bunch of it is going away. I'm starting a pile that I plan to take to the next Humboldt Exchange pancake breakfast. There's a knitting crew there, so I'm sure it will find a good home.

In my wanderings through the stash, I found a couple of thrift store sweaters in a separate bag that I'd been meaning to felt and make bags with. They were untouched by moths, so I threw them in the washer to felt in the hopes that I'd get inspired to do something with them.

The prettiest one, the one I thought would make a nice new knitting bag? Well, I guess it would make one of those annoying little armpit bags that some women seem to love. Or a knitting bag to hold a very small sock...

Whoops.

But Wait, There's More...

Day two at the Sheep and Wool Festival was big family day. It gave me a chance to see some of the cool stuff I had missed while shopping on Saturday.
We saw herding demonstrations.


And shearing demonstrations. (This was a tough one. They make it look very fast and easy and humane, but this guy was showing off, not trying to crank through hundreds of sheep so he could get paid. I know the real story is not as rosy as all this.)



And there was time for a little more shopping. In addition to my sweet new Bosworth, which is making me actually like spindle spinning (see small skein on left) my brother Pete also bought me these ebony needles. You've gotta love once-a-year-visit guilt.



The animals were an endless source of fascination for the kidlets.



And so were the bleachers.



The sheep and alpacas get most of the glory at these events, along with the angora rabbits. But who else can claim the honor of the Llama Song?

Ra! Ra! Sis Boom Bah!

We all have fears that keep us awake at night. Me? Mine's mold. Sounds crazy, especially for someone who makes her living off the action of tiny fungal spores, but it's true. My fear emerged one fall in New York when the weather was particularly conducive to mold growth. Many houses in our area were succombing to dangerous fungal outbreaks. Our home suffered a modest one, but it was enough to freak me out. I had to throw out several pairs of shoes, wash everything in the closets or get them drycleaned (which I absolutely hate - evil chemicals and all that) and bleach the walls and floors. Our bedroom was in the dankest corner of the house, and I could smell mildew as I drifted off to sleep at night. The season passed and there was no real damage, but it was enough to make me fear and respect the spores.

I didn't fully understand that a move to Humboldt County meant a move to Mold Central. It should have dawned on me when I saw how successful the breweries, wineries and sourdough bread bakeries are, but it didn't. I didn't understand until the onset of our first rainy season here. The books we had yet to unpack began to grow green fuzz, as did everything else we were storing in our spacious new garage. Max moved pretty quickly to unpack the last few boxes of important stuff, but several boxes of "miscellaneous" remained. All through the winter I would try to ignore those boxes. When the fear started to get to me, I would run the dehumidifier for a few days, but it always felt like a losing battle, and it wasn't doing the energy bill any favors.

I started to imagine mold growing at breakneck speeds inside my walls, eating my house from the inside out. Stories of Louisiana homes being consumed by mold fueled my imagination.
Temporary breaks in the rain seemed to help, as did the visit from the handyman who said we had a good, solid house, all redwood (yes! redwood! tannins! back, mold, back!) But the fear continued to gnaw.

Then, a few weeks ago, a remarkable thing happened. The rain stopped. I began overhearing snippets of conversation about the end of the winter rains. Every day I wake up expecting to hear rain gurgling through the gutters, but I don't. Could this be it?

Today I ventured into the garage and hauled a few of those boxes outside, under the restorative rays of the sun. A bucket of soapy water, some UVBs and UVAs have helped renew my sense of peace. I don't think I'll truly be satisfied until the funky living room carpet is hauled out and I've investigated a few other suspect areas, but I'm already sleeping just a little bit easier. I've been thinking a lot about the long, rainless summers here and what it will mean for the garden. It makes me miss those big summer thunderstorms back east, but I'm beginning to think that a summer drought is just the thing to help me bear the long, wet winters here.

Excuse me now, while I step outside to thank the sun.

Decompression

I'm in the back yard on a cloudless day with a cup of tea and two dogs basking in the sun. It's a nice way to figuratively decompress from my big weekend away while the wool does so literally on the guest bed. Not that the weekend was terribly stressful, mind you (though the wool might disagree after being unceremoniously stuffed into a duffle bag for the flight home). I had a really great time, but a full day of travel on either end is a bit of a drag, and my sleep patterns were a little erratic the whole time (only partially due to the fact that my four year old niece woke me up at 7 am on Saturday so we could take our much talked about trip to Treasureland in outer space).
One of the things I took away from this weekend is total amazement at what parents are willing to do. I adore my nieces. They are smart, fun, good kids. The four year old never stops talking, making up amazing stories and scenarios. The two year old is a force of nature, doing everything with tremendous gusto, whether it's laughing at the dog or playing with rocks or screaming at her sister. But I spent four days with them, with plenty of time on my own, and I'm exhausted. My brother and sister-in-law are committed to that lifestyle for several years. I don't know how one does it without becoming at least a little resentful. At some point I would be sure to scream "Just leave me the &%#@ alone!" I can occasionally do that with the dogs and they don't seem to get permanently scarred. I can also shut them in the garage. It's nice.

Anyway, on to the other purpose of my visit:

I hit the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on both Saturday and Sunday. My brother Pete showed remarkable patience and generosity by driving me there from D.C. both days. On Saturday I made the rounds of all the vendors and did the bulk of my shopping. I think I got enough to keep me busy for a little while.

Beautiful silver-grey mohair from Peavine Hollow Farm.

They had brought along their angora goats.


Some colorfully-dyed mohair/Romney roving from Liberty Ridge Farms, along with my new Bosworth drop spindle. (As if it weren't enough that my brother Pete drove me to the festival each day, he bought me this Bubinga wood spindle as a belated birthday present!)


Hemp sliver from Dzined.


The only yarn I bought - Knit One Crochet Too's Wick from Uncommon Threads. It's 53% soy and 47% polypropylene and rumored to be very good for socks.


And the big kahuna: One pound (turns out it's a little over 19 oz., but her scale wasn't working and she said what the heck) of organic combed merino top from Greenwood Hill Farm. It is luscious.


On Sunday, we all went back together: me and two brothers, one sister-in-law, and three nieces. I'll post more about that and the rest of my weekend at a later time. Right now my hot pups need some water.