Oh, the truth about Farmer John.... Last night about 40 film-goers shared the highs and lows of John Peterson's life in agriculture. The documentary, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, kicked off the third annual Feast on This Film Festival in Keene, NH. The festival continues all weekend with a total of eleven films and shorts all featuring local farming, food and agriculture issues.
We are proud to be a part of this festival because the Red Eft Project shares the same goals as the Monadnock Farm and Community Connection: inspiring dialogue and action for more sustainable living.
Farmer John's story is one of tragedy, loss, and triumph. The documentary was filmed over a span of 30 years including vintage footage of his family farm from its early heyday, before it was lost like so many farms in the 80s. The story is different than those you have heard before. The farm turns commune in the 60s as artists gather to help with the farming and experience life together, upsetting neighbors and isolating John from the farming community. The farm eventually collapses, and his debt forces him to sell most of the land his family had owned since the Depression.
I won't give it all away, but I will just tell you that John Peterson's farm is one of the first successful CSAs in the country, Angelic Organics. Seeing how he accomplished this against all the odds makes it well worth the viewing.
Our screening, hosted at Antioch University New England, ended with a lively discussion on farming led by Tracie Smith, owner of a local CSA in Fitzwilliam. Farmer Tracie shared her own inspiring story of what it's like to grow a CSA and how to make organic farming a success.
See more from Tracie on these excellent videos at Yankee Magazine.
For anyone in the Keene area, I hope you will join us for a film or two this weekend. Most of the screenings are followed by discussions led by local farmers, beekeepers, community leaders, and even a few of the film's directors!
And don't forget to stop by the farmer's market Saturday morning...
Friday, September 24, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Going Greener
The vegan experiment is a smashing success. While I can hardly claim to be vegan today, I spent 8 weeks strictly vegan with amazing sideways outcomes that are changing my daily life.
I'll explain. My choice to go vegan in January became the first of a string of actions making me more sustainable. For those 8 weeks, I challenged everything I had taken for granted in the grocery store, and in my habits at large. I started re-educating myself. I've always been a label reader, but reading it for vegan ethics is a whole other ball game. I looked for all sorts of hidden animal products, consulted many vegan websites, tasted lots of nondiary, meat-free replacement products (of which Tofutti is now one of my staples), and had to completely rethink how I eat.
My diet became my new research project. I found out pretty quickly how my body and my own chemistry reacted to the changes. I know that getting rid of dairy is part of the vegan change I'm staying with, because I metabolize food so much better without it in my system. Funny, I thought that would be the most difficult group of food to give up! A number of years ago I adopted a vegetarian diet for 6 months, but I didn't like it. It didn't feel good. I can see now that it was probably the fact that dairy was still a huge part of what I was eating - it was likely an even larger part since I used it to replace meat at the time.
I'll short cut all the details and just say that from the vegan diet I've added back eggs and fish. So, whatever you call that, it's how I eat today. I do occasionally eat other things, like when I'm eating at someone else's house. And the eggs I purchase are from local farms or are organic/free range. I need to explore the details about fish. I'll save that for another blog entry.
Going vegan opened up my eyes to the things I can do every day to help lighten my impact on the earth. I'm very excited to say that I'm spending the next year figuring out and trying out the many sustainable and earth-friendly ways I can change my life and my home. As I explore ideas and avenues for change, I'll share what I find out here, on our Red Eft blog.
Stay in touch - and let us know what you're doing to be more sustainable in your world.
I'll explain. My choice to go vegan in January became the first of a string of actions making me more sustainable. For those 8 weeks, I challenged everything I had taken for granted in the grocery store, and in my habits at large. I started re-educating myself. I've always been a label reader, but reading it for vegan ethics is a whole other ball game. I looked for all sorts of hidden animal products, consulted many vegan websites, tasted lots of nondiary, meat-free replacement products (of which Tofutti is now one of my staples), and had to completely rethink how I eat.
My diet became my new research project. I found out pretty quickly how my body and my own chemistry reacted to the changes. I know that getting rid of dairy is part of the vegan change I'm staying with, because I metabolize food so much better without it in my system. Funny, I thought that would be the most difficult group of food to give up! A number of years ago I adopted a vegetarian diet for 6 months, but I didn't like it. It didn't feel good. I can see now that it was probably the fact that dairy was still a huge part of what I was eating - it was likely an even larger part since I used it to replace meat at the time.
I'll short cut all the details and just say that from the vegan diet I've added back eggs and fish. So, whatever you call that, it's how I eat today. I do occasionally eat other things, like when I'm eating at someone else's house. And the eggs I purchase are from local farms or are organic/free range. I need to explore the details about fish. I'll save that for another blog entry.
Going vegan opened up my eyes to the things I can do every day to help lighten my impact on the earth. I'm very excited to say that I'm spending the next year figuring out and trying out the many sustainable and earth-friendly ways I can change my life and my home. As I explore ideas and avenues for change, I'll share what I find out here, on our Red Eft blog.
Stay in touch - and let us know what you're doing to be more sustainable in your world.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The road to sustainability.
Today I’m going public with my quest for personal sustainability. I’m halfway through my doctorate in environmental studies and the cognitive dissonance between my lifestyle and the change I want to see in the world is more than I can take. Rather than rationalizing the facts to relieve this discomfort, I choose to change behavior.
I have held on to this vision, as I suspect many of us do, that if I could just accomplish x,y and z, then I can put my energy into creating a better life, but I can’t do it from here. I’ll have to move from in town to the country, where I can have the acreage to grow my own, farm my own, go solar, or maybe even wind, use a wood stove, or pellet stove, maybe join a cooperative, and become part of a community that lives more in harmony with the planet. Use less. Produce more. Share more.
Well, it can’t wait for a move. And frankly, it shouldn’t. That’s like saying the only way for the world to become more sustainable is for everyone to move to an organic farm in the country! Ridiculous. So I don’t know how I will do it, but I’m here to say I’m going to find a way. Many ways. I have half an acre, an old 1920’s home, and I am determined to figure out the rest. I’ve already started.
Yesterday I went vegan. It was the one thing I could think of that I can do now. I cleaned out loads of out of date and spoiled items from my pantry, fridge and freezer over the holidays, and I was looking for something to change in my diet. The voice in the back of my mind that was weighing the vegan option all last year has been getting louder and more pro-vegan. I mean really, what have I got to lose? I’ve made more radical changes in my life than this before.
I went down to my awesome public library and checked out a bunch of vegan cookbooks. I went online to see what I could find, avoiding highly political and vivid animal rights websites. I don’t need to see conditions in a slaughterhouse to understand the evils of the industry. My reasons are primarily about living more lightly on the planet. I will eat honey, definitely. And I will define my veganism in a way that makes sense to me. Maybe I should call it an experiment. My vegan experiment.
I’d like to share my first discovery in the vegan experiment: saving fruit. I tend to buy fruit with good intentions and then miss the timing on ripeness. It doesn’t help that I’m very picky on the exact preferred stage of ripeness for eating. But in the wonderful land of fruit smoothies, you can throw in just-past-prime fruit and it’s perfect. I made one yesterday with a very mushy cantaloupe.
Tasted strangely fresh for January in New Hampshire!
-Dyanna
(original posting date: January 6)
I have held on to this vision, as I suspect many of us do, that if I could just accomplish x,y and z, then I can put my energy into creating a better life, but I can’t do it from here. I’ll have to move from in town to the country, where I can have the acreage to grow my own, farm my own, go solar, or maybe even wind, use a wood stove, or pellet stove, maybe join a cooperative, and become part of a community that lives more in harmony with the planet. Use less. Produce more. Share more.
Well, it can’t wait for a move. And frankly, it shouldn’t. That’s like saying the only way for the world to become more sustainable is for everyone to move to an organic farm in the country! Ridiculous. So I don’t know how I will do it, but I’m here to say I’m going to find a way. Many ways. I have half an acre, an old 1920’s home, and I am determined to figure out the rest. I’ve already started.
Yesterday I went vegan. It was the one thing I could think of that I can do now. I cleaned out loads of out of date and spoiled items from my pantry, fridge and freezer over the holidays, and I was looking for something to change in my diet. The voice in the back of my mind that was weighing the vegan option all last year has been getting louder and more pro-vegan. I mean really, what have I got to lose? I’ve made more radical changes in my life than this before.
I went down to my awesome public library and checked out a bunch of vegan cookbooks. I went online to see what I could find, avoiding highly political and vivid animal rights websites. I don’t need to see conditions in a slaughterhouse to understand the evils of the industry. My reasons are primarily about living more lightly on the planet. I will eat honey, definitely. And I will define my veganism in a way that makes sense to me. Maybe I should call it an experiment. My vegan experiment.
I’d like to share my first discovery in the vegan experiment: saving fruit. I tend to buy fruit with good intentions and then miss the timing on ripeness. It doesn’t help that I’m very picky on the exact preferred stage of ripeness for eating. But in the wonderful land of fruit smoothies, you can throw in just-past-prime fruit and it’s perfect. I made one yesterday with a very mushy cantaloupe.
Tasted strangely fresh for January in New Hampshire!
-Dyanna
(original posting date: January 6)
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