Like a Rolling Stone...



Not even snowstorms in Ohio can dampen my delight in road trips.


I love road trips.* I love them for a lot of reasons. The sense of independence I have, for example, as I barrel down the the open road. The thrill of travel and new experiences. The hours of reflection. The ability to catch up on my poor neglected, backlogged podcasts. And let's not forget the food.

Something I've recognized recently is that I have long associated road trips with food. Specifically, Cracker Barrel (still a guilty pleasure, I'll admit) and gas station pickings. This is largely due to the road trips of my childhood, during which I would purchase Mountain Dews and Snickers Bars by the fistful during daylight hours and gorge myself on the Country Ham Dinner Plate with Fried Okra and Country Corn every evening.

Now in my mid-20's and in charge of my own culinary destiny, I still recognize in myself a desire that manages to surface, no matter how deeply buried, to feast on the gleanings of truck stop and rest area fare.

One way I am extracting myself from this pastime is to fully stock my car with an assortment of goodies. Apples, pears, tangerines, cheese, crackers, smoked oysters... my parents' pantry was ransacked and pillaged, and I have been enjoying the spoils for the past six days.

But the crown jewel in my collection of healthy road trip snacks is my homemade granola. Crunchy, studded with juicy raisins, salty and sweet in equal measures, bursting with spices and flavor, this is easily the best granola recipe I have ever tried.




I didn't follow the recipe exactly, due to the bareness of my pantry in a few key areas - *cough* coriander. Regardless, I was very pleased with how it turned out. The original recipe (scroll down to "Indulgent Granola") also makes about 10 cups, so I halved it.

Indulgent Granola, Road Trip Style

Ingredients

4 cups oats, rolled (not quick or instant)

1 cup raw nuts, coarsely chopped (I used almonds)

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

pinch of nutmeg

1 tablespoon white sugar

1/4 cup honey

1/3 cup butter

Dried Fruit (I used raisins, but feel free to be creative) 

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and move the oven rack to the middle. Prepare a large baking sheet by lightly spraying with cooking spray or lining with parchment paper. 

Mix the first seven ingredients in a large bowl.

In a small saucepan, mix the sugar, honey and butter and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Pour the liquid over the oats mixture and toss until thoroughly coated.

Spread the granola evenly on the baking sheet. Bake until golden brown and fragrant, about 30 minutes. Rotate halfway through.

Remove from the oven and cool completely. Add dried fruit after it has cooled and store in an airtight container.

Note: I like to use the cardboad container that the oats came in to keep my granola. It's handy, and you get points for recycling.

Road trip update: I am currently in Pittsburgh, enjoying tea at a very cute cafe and preparing questions for my visit to Chatham University tomorrow. So far, I would label this road trip quite a success! I'll update more fully later.

Lastly - in the spirit of road trippin', check out one of my favorite road trip songs of all time... albeit one of the stranger music videos.

*Interestingly enough, while flipping through a copy of Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast at a bookstore the other day, the first thing I opened it to was "Road Trips". It's like they know me.

Snowpocolypse 2011




Thanks to the "storm of the century" that has been ravaging the Midwest for the last couple of days, my carefully planned itinerary, originally chock full of grad schools and farm visits and friends, has been shot to hell.

Well, mostly. I was originally planning to drive to Pittsburgh on Monday, where I would visit Chatham University and check out their brand new Food Studies program on Tuesday, but the ice storm had other plans. The storm continued unabated, forcing me to also cancel my visit to White Rose Farm, a biodynamic farm in Maryland I'm looking into.

However, I spent a good hour this morning pouring bucket after bucket of hot water onto Sylvester, my trusty Toyota Echo, and eventually managed to clean off three inches of accumulated ice.

According to Itinerary 2.0, I leave this afternoon and arrive in Perry Point, Maryland tomorrow, where I will visit with several AmeriCorps friends (which one can portmanteau to Ameri-friends, incidentally), then continue onward to Brightwood Vineyard and Farm in Virginia on Friday, visit a friend in Virginia, then catch Chatham University on the drive back that following Tuesday.

Additionally, as of ten minutes ago I have a phone interview scheduled Monday morning with Kettle Pond Farm, located in Berkley, Massachusetts.

Time to pack up and ship out - let the good times roll!

Sylvester, post-ice storm

The Farming Internship, Part Two

Now that I've changed directions (again), I find myself back to square one. And as I mentioned in my last update, a lot of my considerations for WWOOF-ing transfer quite well into the realm of farming internships - the desire to travel, task variety, learning about organic agriculture and sustainability, and so on.
I've come up with a handy little To Do list that's helped me stay organized as I wade through the scores of farming internships that are out there. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

Research. Using sites like ATTRA, Tilth Producers of Washington, Back Door Jobs, the Sustainable Food Jobs blog, Google, and personal recommendations from friends and acquaintances, I've managed to acquire a tidy little list of farming internships that seems to fit the bill. These are farms that match my list of requirements - a blend of learning opportunities, including work with livestock and produce; room and board included; at least a small stipend to cover my student loan payments and stuff like toothpaste (I take oral hygiene very seriously); some company in the form of a couple other interns; and not in my usual stomping grounds, a.k.a. the Midwest. Setting these parameters helps to narrow the field considerably.

Despite their similarities, the farms have a lot of differences. Their locations, housing (Camping? Cabins? Yurts?), benefits, and to a certain extent,  how their internships operate are all wildly different. Some farms have very detailed, organized internships, with the growing season broken down week by week according to what they'll be doing. Others describe themselves as "learn by doing", which I interpret as a more "by the seat of your pants" approach. Some farms have years of experience with interns and apprentices... others, not so much. Some work with other organizations and farms to give their interns a broader education.

Bring on the email. After I'd filled out my WWOOF Farm Internship spreadsheet, I started contacting each and every farm on there. For the most part, this involved something to the effect of, "Hi, I've never farmed before but I'd really like to learn. How do I apply to your lovely farm?" I started this part over a month ago, and I'm still getting responses from farmers who were on vacation, or perhaps just don't check their email that often.

For the most part, it involves sending them my resume and three references, so once I had those updated, it's a pretty simple process. In some cases, their websites had instructions for the application process, in which case I went ahead and sent them in without peppering their email with questions.

To date, I've sent in applications to (I think) one farm in California, three in Washington, three in Maryland, one in Massachusetts, and one in Virginia, with more to come.

Visits and Interviews. This is the step that I'm just beginning. Thanks to the weather (we're smack dab in the middle of an ice storm), I had to cancel a visit to White Rose Farm in Taneytown, Maryland that was supposed to take place tomorrow. I should be able to make it to the Brightwood Vineyard and Farm in Brightwood, Virginia on Friday, however. For interested farms that I can't visit, hopefully we should soon be setting up phone interviews. Naturally I will post the results of my visits on here.

Start the internship. The sooner, the better!

And that's that. I'm continuing to research and apply to farms I find interesting, and following up with those who haven't gotten back to me yet.

Look for an update next week, detailing my road trip out east, with pit stops in Perry Point, Maryland to visit some AmeriCorps friends; Brightwood Vineyard and Farm; and Chatham University in Pittsburgh, where I'm checking out their new Masters program in Food Studies.

The Farming Internship, Part One

I started this blog in order to document my WWOOF-ing adventures. I know this. But that does not change the fact that sometimes, circumstances change.

It is my duty to now inform you, dear readers, that you have been misled. This blog will no longer be the blog of a WWOOF-er. I accept full responsibility for the deception, and will attempt to make any repatriations necessary for those who feel hoodwinked. But I must be allowed to state my case - then, and only then, can you take me to task if I have been neglectful of my duties as a blogger for and devotee of the organic and local food movement.

Basically, it comes down to what I feel will serve me best as I attempt to educate myself about small farm operations. I think WWOOF-ing is wonderful, and it's still something I'd like to do in the future - possibly for some months next year as I wait for grad school to start. But in the meantime, I am directing my attentions to the ever-useful Farming Internship.

I started thinking about farming internships as an option after a friend/co-worker directed me to the ATTRA website (also known as the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service... nothing close to "ATTRA," now that I think about it), which has quite a detailed and informative directory for farming internships and apprenticeships in the US and Canada. You can search by state/province, city, farm name, or keyword. After perusing a few descriptions, I started thinking about whether an internship was for me. And...I decided it was.

Two words: "Learning Experience." The whole point of WWOOF-ing (apart from the travel, the adventure, and the free food, of course) is that I want to be learning about organic agriculture - I want to network with farmers who rely on it for their livelihoods, I want to learn about issues in the field*, and I want to pick up lifeskills like plucking chickens, canning tomatoes and making things grow out of a field without managing to kill them in the process.

Yes, WWOOF-ing can and does expose you to these things, but internships are designed to put education first. A lot of the internships I'm looking into have relationships with other farms and organizations that allow interns to visit and learn about other types of organic ventures, attend workshops, take classes, etc. And the whole point is to educate people like me, who have barely a scrap of farming experience.

Also, as a WWOOF-er you might have some say in what you do. It probably depends on the farm and what they need, how many WWOOF-ers they have around, and how much experience you have. But your chances are better with a farmer whose intention is to teach you, rather than just have you do whatever work they need done.

Money and stuff. Not to be too crude about it, but while WWOOF host farms give you room and board in exchange for your work, you're on your own for any other expenses. A lot of internships have stipends - not much, but if it pays for my toothbrush and soap and gas for my car, then it certainly helps. And actually, a lot of the stipends I've seen pay as much (if not more) than my stipend as an AmeriCorps NCCC volunteer. A couple even provide health benefits, although I think that's outside the norm. Who knew?

What about travel and adventure and being a free spirit? So I'll be in one place for six to eight months instead of traveling around that entire time - my experience will be all the richer for it. I'm not saying you can't make good friends in a month or six weeks, but I like the idea of really getting to know the location, the other workers/interns, and the farmers who are teaching me. And it's not like I won't be traveling - as you'll see eventually, I'm applying all over the US... although my home territory, the good ol' Midwest, isn't receiving any love. Not that I don't love Indiana, but I want to travel, and that means going away. Far, far away.

And like I said, I still see myself WWOOF-ing in my "off months". By then, I'll have more experience under my belt, so maybe I won't be stuck picking grape tomatoes for seven hours a day.

And what about trying new things, learning different skills, and not getting stuck with one job? I'm glad you asked. According to my recent bedtime reading partner, a small family farm is a tightly contained, sustainable organism in a way. It doesn't produce a monoculture of just one crop - corns, soybeans, wheat - because not only is that unsustainable and terrible for the health and chemistry of the soil, but no one can survive on just corn or soybeans or wheat. A local, small, family farm has its fingers in a lot of pies - it grows a variety of produce, it puts up jams and jellies and canned goods for winter, and it often has livestock such as poultry, sheep and/or beef running around. The crops are rotated every year, since different crops require different nutrients and the farmer doesn't want to deplete the soil; the poultry eat pests and scratch up the soil, helping to prevent weeds; food waste goes to the pigs, and manure from livestock is in turn used to fertilize the growing produce. Also, if one crop (say, tomatoes) goes kaboom one year, Mr. Farmer isn't royally screwed for not growing anything else.

My whole point here is that working on one farm for an entire growing season doesn't mean I won't get the opportunity to do a variety of jobs. In fact, that's something I've taken into account as I've researched farms. I'm only applying to places that grow produce and keep some variety of livestock, with the hopes that I will get the chance to do a bit of everything.

Join me soon for Part Two, in which I struggle with deciding..... WHERE I SHOULD GO. (dum dum dummmm)



*This pun will never get old for me. And if you don't like puns, don't read this blog. And don't ever meet me.

AmeriCorps NCCC: A Retrospective

My last post was on...October 20? Yikes. A lot has happened in that time.

I'm not sure where to begin - the Acres USA conference, which I attended in December in my hometown of Indianapolis? I saw speakers, attended workshops, bought books, met farmers. My progress in farm research, perhaps - I've applied to six internships in the last week, from Washington state to Virginia, and I'm researching dozens more. Maybe a book review; I'm continuing to voraciously read, and have several new purchases/gifts I'm drooling over, including Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes; Food Politics and What to Eat by Marion Nestle; Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry... the list goes on. Or maybe I could discuss my many culinary adventures over the holiday season. Or maybe talk about volunteering at the Indy Winter Farmer's Market. Or one of a dozen more ideas ricocheting off the inside of my skull.

These are all things I hope to get to eventually. But what I think I should devote this post to is the culmination of my most recent adventure, AmeriCorps NCCC.

I've mentioned the program before - AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, a team-based, fully residential leadership program for young people ages 18 to 24. I served at the Atlantic Region, based out of Perry Point, Maryland. I was a Corps Member in 2009 (a member of the infamous team known as "Kill Squad"), and the Community Relations Support Team Leader in 2010. In NCCC, you travel around your region with a team of about ten, doing community service projects lasting six to eight weeks. In return, you get room and board, a modest living stipend, uniforms, health benefits, and an education award of that you can use to pay off loans or help pay for college or grad school.

It staggers me, thinking about who I was when I joined in February of '09, and who I was when I left a couple of short months ago. When I joined, I was a fairly recent college graduate, 22 years old, with degrees in Theatre and Drama and Germanic Studies under my belt. I was pale from holing myself up behind stacks of scholarly journals during the Indiana winters, researching and creating color-coded outlines as I sweated over research papers. And although I loved the student life, I knew that after graduation was my best chance to get out and do a few years of service work, before getting saddled with too much debt from grad school.

I remember sitting in the airport on my flight to Baltimore, thinking about this new chance to be reinvented. I wanted to cast myself in a mold befitting a worldly do-gooder: I would no longer be the listless student, tracking down annotations, corralling post-it notes and organizing my books by spine-height. In my mind's eye, I saw myself pulling victims from F5 tornado debris, administering CPR to grateful half-drowned people, and bonding with like-minded individuals from across the country as we took on the beasts of poverty in our left hands and inequality with our right. My idealism burned with the fury of the thousands of wildfires I knew I would soon be fighting.

It didn't take long for certain realities to give my naïveté a good drubbing. While most of the people in NCCC were there because they wanted to help people, I don't know that I would call all of us "like-minded". It definitely didn't take me long to understand that "diversity" is a complicated word, and it means a hell of a lot more than color, creed, socio-economic status or where you went to school. Forget about so-called "cultural differences"... my team argued about whether to get skim milk or 2%.

The shock of being thrust into this entirely new scenario, so different from anything I had dreamed up, quickly shattered all my pretensions of wanting to be "reinvented". It was all I could do to hold on to the person I thought I was. And as if it wasn't enough to be in a new place, surrounded by new people, doing things I had never done before, they went and gave us all uniforms so we all looked the same - little grey-shirted clones running around, getting things done for America. This was definitely not what I had imagined. As the months rushed by, I let go of my fantasies, and focused on the all-consuming task in front of me - helping the communities where we were assigned. Which is what I'd signed up for, after all.

Although we all go through periods of wanting to transform into new, better versions of our former selves, I credit NCCC with showing me the truth about myself that exists deep down where nothing can uproot it. It was with some surprise that, my very last weekend, my fellow Team Leaders told me over and over how they admired me, how great that I wasn't afraid to be myself, that they'd never met anyone who was so proud to be the person they were. I thought, ".......Really?" But as I thought about it, I realized they were right. It had kind of snuck up on  me, but I had grown into myself in a way I hadn't thought was even possible.

I learned a lot in AmeriCorps NCCC. I learned how to swing a hammer. I learned how to mud and sand and spackle. I learned how to shop for food on $4.50 a day. I learned how to live with seven other people in a tiny apartment where we shared one bathroom. I learned how to send a kid to time-out. I learned how to do "controlled interior demolition" on flooded homes. I learned how to write a killer press release.

I also learned a lot of things that are harder to explain on a resume, like when to talk and when to listen. To not sweat the small stuff. That people sometimes act like dicks just because they're uncomfortable, or sad, or scared, or lonely. That it's okay if you don't always know where the road is taking you. That sometimes it's best to just close your eyes, feel the sun on your face, and go with the flow.

More than being just a learning experience, I've come consider AmeriCorps NCCC a living experience. It's an experience in starting each day anew, in accepting change with an open mind and an open heart. I think I can say with confidence that, more than anything else, I learned how to do just that.

One last thing, before I sign off here. As I think back on the last two years, the days that stick out to me aren't always the easy ones. They're sometimes the days where I thought I couldn't keep up. There were days when we dragged ourselves back to the house with mud and crap in our hair, under our shirts, even in our underwear. There were days when I cried, because of something someone on my team said, because I was homesick, because I hated the job I had to do, because I thought I would never get everything done I needed to. There was the day my grandmother died, less than three weeks before graduation, when I still had to complete the yearbook, round up everyone's final paperwork, finish the end of year slideshow, write speeches, and help finalize details for the awards banquet and graduation ceremony.

But what sticks out to me about those days was not how terrible I felt, or how unfair it all seemed. Ultimately it worked out, because the team came together, because my friends and co-workers helped me out, because someone gave me a hand or let me talk about what was going on. These days stick out to me not because they were bad, but because I got through them, and they made me stronger.

I'm sure it sounds like a huge cliché... probably because it is. But the funny thing about clichés is that they tend to have a lot of truth behind them. And I speak only the truth when I say that everything AmeriCorps handed me that I thought was too hard to handle ended up making me a stronger person in the end.

Lions and Tigers and Grad School, oh my - Visiting Boston University

While WWOOF-ing gives me something to plan for in the short term, what about one or two years down the road? Unlike Mr. Adam Greenman, I cannot afford to spend a decade WWOOF-ing the world, as much as I'd like to.

What I plan on doing is attending grad school. I'll probably apply, at the latest, next fall. Getting my Masters degree (and eventually, perhaps my doctorate) has long been a dream of mine. No, not even a dream, to be honest... I've always just taken it for granted that it would happen. It was just a question of finding the right course of study. And I've researched a ton of them, from Dramaturgy to German to Arts Administration to Non-Profit Management to Environmental Policy. Enough to know, certainly, what I was getting myself into by delving into a new area of post-baccalaureate investigation.

But I lucked out. Food Studies is an emerging academic field, and relatively few schools have programs devoted to it. Those few include the Steinhardt School at NYU, Tufts University, Boston University Metropolitan College, and Chatham University, to name a few. (Incidentally, the Association for the Study of Food and Society has a pretty comprehensive list of such programs, which is not limited to the United States.)

While I feel I can cross a few of those schools off the list (for example, Tufts University seems to have a decided scientific bent, which is not really what I'm going for), I am now in the process of starting a more intensive round of research... visiting them. And I had my first grad school visit last week, at Boston University.

To be honest, I didn't think I would like BU's program, which offers a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. It was started by Julia Childs and Jacque Pepin in 1989 (I think), and I figured it would be a more "culture and history" oriented kind of deal. Au contraire. I left the campus quite impressed with the diversity and scope of their program, as well as the changes that are coming down the pipes to make the degree more applicable to a wider range of Food Studiers.

For example, in my meeting with Professor Rachel Black (the woman who runs the program), I asked whether she felt that being in a city hampered students' ability to learn about agriculture and the more 'hands on' aspects of Food Studies. She told me about her plans in that direction, saying that she would be teaching an Urban Agriculture class next summer, which would be followed by an Urban Agriculture conference at the college in the Fall. She says she also encourages students to get internships at farms during the summer (as evidenced by an article about farm internships taped to her office door, with a note that said, "See me for more information!") She's also looking into working with BU to get land for the Gastronomy department to use as a garden, and/or creating an urban rooftop garden on top of one of the dorms.

While this remains something of a concern of mine, it's heartening to see the steps the department is taking. Plus, one of the big reasons I plan to WWOOF is to get practical experience, after all. Rather like an extended internship of my own design.

At any rate, I think it's safe to say that Boston University is in the running for me. More than in the running, really... I think I would be quite happy there. But more grad school visits are in the offing - I have plans to drop by Chatham University on my way home from AmeriCorps NCCC in November - and who knows how I will feel about them.

The Game Plan

So now that I have decided to actually WWOOF, the next year and half or so are starting to loom in a rather alarming way. I've made the big decision (What do I do next?) and now I have to start making those annoying little logistical ones (So... how do I actually do this?).

Frankly, the task is a daunting one. Let's start at the beginning: first and foremost, I need to decide where the heck I'm going. There are 195 countries in the world, give or take one or two (do we count Taiwan? What about Vatican City?), and 99 of those host WWOOF-ers. But while I would love to backpack my way across international organic landscapes, learning how to say "permaculture" in seventeen different languages , there are two big reasons why I won't.

First: the money. I do not have much of it, and I would like to not spend all of what I have. Second: I am interested in learning about the issues surrounding the agricultural systems of this country, where I intend to live and work and play and eat for all my days. So it makes sense, financially and for my future career, to stay here in the US of A.

Not that this simplifies things, really. I go to the WWOOF USA website and what do I find but a giant map of the Fifty Nifty United States. Fifty. Five-Zero. That's a lot of states, people. And while I may pretend to be whimsical and happy-go-lucky in my day to day meanderings, there is no way I'm pulling a Doctor Doolittle and going wherever my finger blindly falls in the atlas.

Rather than approaching this from the outside, I think I need to take it the opposite direction, and examine my own needs. What are my reasons for WWOOF-ing? What do I hope to gain? If I identify the "why" for myself, I can use that to whittle away at the myriad farms and organizations out there, and find the ones that address what I'm specifically interested in.

So here are my thoughts, such as they are:

Variety is the spice of life. I don't just want to plant corn for a year (although I do love corn). I want to sample a broad swath of what's available the organic agriculture horizon, working in a multitude of different areas. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Ranches (or anywhere with livestock, really)
• Dairy farms
• Orchards
• "Traditional" farms with your average produce
• Winery
• Apiary (a.k.a. a bee farm)
• Wherever I can tap trees and make maple syrup

Being skilled and savvy. Related to the above is another list, which grows longer daily, of skills I'd like to learn along the way. How to make cheese. How to can tomatoes. How to build a fence. Increase my upper arm strength by chopping wood. Learn the basics of gardening. Dry herbs. Milk cows. Collect eggs from chickens.

Increase my organic know-how. Well, that's the whole reason I'm doing this, after all. Ultimately, I want to get my Master's in Food Studies (more on that eventually). What better way to learn about the issues facing today's organic farmer and the industry of organic and sustainable agriculture than to actually go out and do it? By WWOOF-ing, I will meet people who are invested in this industry and this movement. I can talk to farmers and the future leaders of the organic initaitive, make connections, and learn first-hand what is out there and what needs to change.

Gotta sow those wild oats. I'm young and limber (ish). I can handle sleeping on the ground and spending a few weeks bent over a row of beets. Plus, I need stories to tell my grandkids.

So - new game plan:

• Make list of the types of farms I want to visit and learn more about (started above)
• Defile the snowy-white screen of my untouched farm spreadsheet with information about interesting-looking organic farms
• Contact farmers and learn more - what kind of accomodations are available, what tasks will I do, are there cows around (I like cows), are there cats (I like cats too), etc.
• Create a loose itinerary that takes into account all of the above