Change Of Address

Prairie Roots has moved! Take a look at the new digs: http://prairieroots.wordpress.com/

Tip Of The Iceberg

Here's just a fraction of the cucumbers growing from my three plants. They're Mideast Prolific cukes from Seeds of Change, and despite the 90-degree weather we've been having lately, they're surprisingly sweet. Guess who's making cucumber salad for tonight's supper side dish?

This is the first batch of beans harvested. They're destined for my daughter's tummy tonight.

The zinnias are the second batch I've cut from my thriving flower patch. The first lasted nearly two weeks before wilting. That's with just plain water for nourishment. Sure can't say that about store-bought flowers. The sunflowers are from Seed Savers Exchange's Sunflower Mixture.

We've enjoyed only a few ripe tomatoes but bunches will be ready soon. Sweet corn and bell peppers are close behind.

Roots Reading

A friend recently asked me for the reading list I used for one of my classes at Regent College. Since this blog has been a little short on theology, I'll post that list here.

This was a guided study class taught by Loren Wilkinson. The year I was there Professor Wilkinson happend to be skipping a year in his usual rotation of teaching "Understanding Creation," but he graciously consented to teaching it as a small group guided study option for a few of us. The format ended up more like a seminar class rather than a first-year graduate lecture course, which was great. We first read through For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care by Stephen Bouma-Prediger. Then each of us chose a research area and presented our work to the class. I focused on developing a theology of food. Here's my reading list for that paper (I cited several other works, but these were the main books I read through completely for the course):

Brueggemann, Walter. The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2d ed.

Capon, Robert Farrar. The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection.

Jung, L. Shannon. Food for Life:The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating.

Schut, Michael (ed.). Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread.


A few other great titles I would throw into the mix for anyone wanting resources on environmental stewardship from a theological viewpoint:

Basney, Lionel. An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis.

McKibben, Bill. Pretty much anything he's written, but especially The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation.

Berry, Wendell. Again, pretty much anything he's written (including his fiction and poetry), but especially:

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture This is by far his densest, meatiest book. If you need something a little less scholarly (but certainly no less significant), check out the titles below.

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community

What Are People For?

Home Economics

Mason's: Plan B

Given the possibility that our beloved local Mason's building may never see brighter days--it has sat mostly empty for the last decade, after all--Cory and I have been trying to think of outside-the-box ideas for what could stand in its place, should it have to be razed (perish the thought!). Our latest idea: a park.

But not just any park.


This locale could remain the best "outdoor brownie-eating, people-watching, solving-the-world's-problems spot, right at one of the liveliest corners in town". With careful planning, it could be a beautful gateway to Madison's downtown. And just what would make it so distinctive? Architectural elements from the Mason's building itself. Salvaging things like the front columns and bricks would make it a dream project for any good landscape architect. (Oh, and we just happen to know one young Madison native who has a landscape design degree and a keen interest in sustainability.)


The columns could easily form a stunning park entrance creating what might literally be known as Madison's front porch. It would be a nod to stately home front porches around town like this one, which Cory and I always refer to as the "White House," since our good friends Steve and Becky White spent some of their formative years there:


It would connote neighbors getting together for a glass of lemonade (or a DQ Blizzard from right next door!) and a good chat. To enable the most chatting, a landscape architect could design some aesthetically-pleasing sound buffers. There could be great gardens, great spots for picnicking, and maybe even an area for outdoor performances. Think the Queen Bee Mill Ruins at Falls Park in Sioux Falls...only a lot less ruinous.

But that's just the beginning. The next logical step would be to relocate the farmers market here, although its current location at Library Park is indeed a lovely spot. But imagine the Mason's corner on a beautiful summer Thursday evening, bustling with locals scanning the best tomatoes from area gardens and farms. Madison musicians (and we have some great ones like Howard Hedger, Perry Killion, Mitch Villhauer, and Mike Lee) could provide outdoor entertainment. Downtown businesses could stay open late and enjoy the increased revenues that come with farmers markets located in the heart of retail areas.

What a useful, beautiful, energizing, productive, and yes, even unexpected spot this could be both for visitors to Madison and its own residents.

Update 8/3/07: More support for why this type of shared space can make Madison a more vibrant place:

New Urbanism makes shared space the organizing element of a community. Architecture physically defines streets as places of shared use. Care for the public realm adds character, builds value, promotes security, and helps residents feel proud of their community. Plazas, squares, sidewalks, cafes, and porches provide rich settings for interaction and public life (source and more about new urbanism here).

Andy Goldsworthy on Staying Put

I finally watched the 2001 documentary Rivers and Tides about Scottish environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. He does amazing, mostly transient, sculptures with natural elements like stone, leaves, and ice. I should not have been surprised to hear him say this about living in one place long-term:

I’ve lived in places for four or five years and moved on, and that is not enough time, it really isn’t enough time to understand the changes that happen in a place. You have to live on the same street in the same village for a long period of time, seeing children when they’re waiting at the bus stop grow into adults and have children of their own. There was an old lady in the village who has since died. She was quite a dour lady and she’d had a tough life. And she used to walk up and down the street that I lived in. And I said, "Since I’ve been on this street my son--well all my children were born there—my elder son was the first child to be born on that street for twenty one years.” And she said, “Well, you see only births, and I see only deaths.” From her perspective she just knew all the people who had lived in those houses and who had died. And I hope I never forget either those people who have been born and those people who have died.

Goldsworthy books and DVD available here.

A Walk In The July Garden

Photos taken July 16.

Learning to live with weeds.

The carrot and cilantro patch. Hmmm, looks a lot like last month's photo, doesn't it? Absolutely nothing germinated. Ugh. Must not have kept the seedbed wet enough. I tried carrots last year, too, but they didn't germinate. Anyone have tips on carrot-growing?

My three surviving, and now flourishing, cucumber plants.

Tomatoes and peppers. More tomatoes in the background. Two transplanted raised beds on the left. Cory brought them over from their previous home in our cabin's yard. Soon I'll start building soil in them for next year.

More tomatoes, plus a pepper stuck in there, and a few calendulas.

Beans and nasturtium. I lost several bean plants to bunnies.

My beans in need of taller a taller trellis. Next year I plan to build bean teepees, which should bring as much joy to our little one (who will be two years old by then) as they will to me.

The nasturtium win the Prettiest Leaf contest in my garden. I love their shape and color.

In the middle of about 25 sweet corn stalks.

More losses to bunnies here in the sunflower patch. The remaining plants are thriving. When I caught one rabbit mid-munch, I dug out the old chicken wire for a crude fence around this spot. Cory then set to work building me a more structured anti-rabbit device, which is still in process and soon will protect the entire garden.

Cory's experimenting with branches for a gateway to the garden.

Zinnias about to bloom!

I had to include a shot of this lovely spot, the public boat dock, just down from our driveway.

Support A Poor, Starving Artist

OK, we may not be starving, but Cory's headed back to grad school this fall for a Doctor of Information Systems at Dakota State University. So, our pocketbook will take a bit of a hit paying for tuition for the next three years (although that's somewhat mitigated by an assistantship).

I'm planning to get an Etsy site up and running this summer, so we can start selling Cory's art online (and around the world!). In the meantime, you can enjoy his latest paintings up close and personal at the Community Cultural Center in Brookings, where work like this (one of my favorites) will be displayed for another couple of weeks:


You can view his exhibit until July 27, Tuesday-Saturday from noon to 5:00 p.m. at 524 4th Street, Brookings, SD. His artist reception and gallery talk will be Friday, July 27, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Madison Farmers Market Starts

The local farmers market is open!

Thursdays
4:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Library Park
South side of the Madison Public Library

Brookings HFH ReStore To Open

One of my favorite places in the world--my hometown of Brookings, SD--will soon have a new Habitat for Humanity Restore warehouse. Sustainable-building-minded South Dakotans in the east central region of the state will now have two places to pick up recycled housing materials: the ReStore in Sioux Falls and the new one in Brookings.

ReStore provides a win-win-win situation for everyone. Builders can find recycled materials at reduced cost, materials are kept out of the landfill, and money raised by ReStore funds future Habitat homes.

Cory and I had hoped to get a few things at the Sioux Falls ReStore when our house was built. Unfortunately, we just didn't have the time to sort through their materials (something you'll need to keep in mind and budget into your timeframe). By the time our house was at the stage when we needed to pick up things like doors, it was the dead of winter, Cory was in the middle of the busiest time of the teaching/speech-activities-coaching year (out of the house by 6:00 a.m., not home until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m.), I was traveling to Brookings a few days each week for work, and I was eight months pregnant. However, when we get around to that strawbale greenhouse I'm so keen on, we'll definitely hit ReStore for doors and windows.

Click here for a map to the Brookings ReStore.

Click here for a map to the Sioux Falls ReStore.

While you're at it, take a look at Habitat's Construction and Environmental Resources pages for some great information on sustainable building.

Green Tour

Being an advocate for small houses, I'm addicted to Apartment Therapy. For lots of ideas on greening your living quarters, check out AT: Chicago's Green Ideas. Of note is their Green Tour of homes like this lovely passive solar cottage:

Garden State

Long overdue update on the garden. I got a late start but should still get a decent yield. Photos taken June 16.

I dug out the paths and added the extra dirt to the beds to raise them a bit. The straw for the paths insulated the outside of the north wall of our basement over the winter. We got the straw bales from neighbor, organic farmer, and sustainable agriculture activist Charlie Johnson.

Left: carrots and cilantro planted
Right: cucumbers

Cukes sprouting.

Tomatoes, paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers

More tomatoes and peppers, plus calendula planted on the right.

Beans and nasturtium


Experimenting with growing beans and nasturtium together.

Sweet corn. Note for next year: Organic Gardening tells me I should have planted it in a square, rather than in rows for best pollination.


Sunflowers


Sunflower up close.


Raised beds.
Front: spinach and lettuce planted too late (will replant in fall) and overgrown with weeds.
Middle: tomatoes and chives.
Back: zinnias sprouting.


The nifty bin made by Cory out of pallets stores grass clippings and leaves for composting and mulching. The bags on the left are full of leaves that spent last winter insulating the ground around the water pipes going into our cabin. They'll get used for mulch on the garden or put into the compost pile.


Compost bin where all of our veggie scraps go. I asked Cory to make this for my birthday one year. Yep, that's how much of a nerd I am. I asked for a compost bin for my birthday. And would you believe I didn't want a diamond engagement ring? Ah, but that's another post for another time.

Where All The Lights Should Be Bright: Part II

Economic development is a hot topic in Madison. In fact, the governor just named our fair town “Large Community of the Year” (um, that’s “large” in South Dakota terms—Madison’s population is 6,500!) primarily because of funds raised by the economic development group, “Forward Madison” and work done by the city and local businesspeople to recruit tech graduates from local university DSU.

Cory and I brought our own idea for attracting tourism along with a little economic development to the city commission and city marketing committee last summer. Without giving away all the details here, our idea was for a signature event for the city of Madison. It’s a great idea, if I do say so myself, and it was very well-received by both groups. We couldn’t get a guarantee of any immediate funding for the project, though, so we hope that sometime in the future, we’ll have the time to commit to the fundraising for it.

However, I’ve done more thinking about it lately, and I’ve concluded that before Madison tries to bring in thousands of people for a weekend event, we may need to consider the message we convey to those people when they look around town, in particular, at our downtown area.

What does the current state of this building say about our community?

I've been inspired by my recent online discovery of the mecca of downtown revitalization information: the Main Street Program, administered through the National Trust for Historic Preservation. What is conspicuously missing from our local economic development activities is any talk of revitalizing our downtown. I think this is a critical piece to our local economy. Madison would do well to initiate its own local Main Street Program.

Before I weigh in further on why all of this matters to Madison, here are a few quotes and stats from the information I’ve been poring over (since I really can’t say it any better than these people already have):

Your downtown or traditional commercial district is the most visible indicator of community pride, along with its economic and social health. It is either an asset or a liability in the effort to recruit new residents, new businesses and industries, retirees, tourists, and others to your community and to keep those you already have. Quality of life is what separates successful cities and towns from declining communities in the new millennium. Finally, your downtown or neighborhood commercial district is the visual representation for your community's heritage. The architecture of your commercial district is a physical expression of your community's history. The Main Street approach encourages forward-thinking economic development in an historic preservation context so this community asset and legacy can be passed on to future generations. (source)

The underlying premise of the Main Street approach is to encourage economic development within the context of historic preservation in ways appropriate to today's marketplace. The Main Street Approach advocates a return to community self-reliance, local empowerment, and the rebuilding of traditional commercial districts based on their unique assets: distinctive architecture, a pedestrian-friendly environment, personal service, local ownership, and a sense of community. (source)

One of the dozen reasons they list as why Main Streets are important:

The commercial district is a reflection of community image, pride, prosperity, and level of investment — critical factors in business retention and recruitment efforts. (source)

From MainStreet of Fremont, NE mission statement:

To Improve the quality of life in Fremont by strengthening the Historic Downtown as the center of the Community.

MainStreet of Fremont capitalized on the idea that the downtown is the center of community life and more than just a place of commerce. We believe that a revitalized downtown benefits the community because an active downtown is a symbol of community economic health, local quality of life, and pride and community history. The purpose of MainStreet of Fremont, Inc. is to encourage, promote, and support downtown Fremont's economic vitality as well as the image and appearance of downtown. (source)

From the "Revitalize Geneva Vision Statement" (Geneva, NE):

Downtown businesses flourish and meet the needs of local residents while attracting the tourist who wants a safe, convenient and comfortable place to enjoy the historic trappings of brick streets, appropriate lighting and landscaping. The overall revitalization of the community gives visitors the feeling that this is a place for people who make things happen. (source)

And finally, click here and here for stats on the economic impact of Main Street Programs.

I hope Forward Madison, the city marketing committee, and other like-minded residents will consider initiating South Dakota’s first local Main Street Program. They can count on me to happily volunteer my time to start making that possible.

Thoughts, anyone?

Where All The Lights Should Be Bright

Mr. Prairie Roots has referred to some posts I have brewing about downtowns (especially small towns' downtowns) and how vital they are to communities. First, though, I'll talk about this place, the old Masonic Temple, most commonly known around town as Masons on Main (the name of the restaurant that occupied the building several years ago). I finally had the chance to see the inside a couple months ago, and despite its current state of somewhat disrepair, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a stunning building. There is no place in town to rival it. As our local newspaper editor wrote recently, it would indeed be a loss to the community to allow it to fall into further disrepair.

I have no idea what Masons' new owner plans to do with the building, but I know the business I'd love to start there: a moviehouse. Now, Madison already has a movie theatre, the West Twin. As we understand it, the owners of the West Twin keep the theater open essentially as a public service to the town, and for that, I'm very glad. However, I think a movie theater can do much better than break even in Madison.

I also believe a great movie theater is an incredible asset to a small town. For one thing, it provides a great entertainment venue for kids and families. One of the real disadvantages of the current theater is that it's located on the west edge of town. That's hugely unfortunate for kids, who make up a good share of a theater's audience. Right now, if kids want to walk or bike to a movie, they have to cross the intersection of two highways to get there, and there are no sidewalks leading to the theater. The building itself is surrounded by a huge gravel parking lot--not exactly an inviting environment.

Instead, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a theater located in the heart of town within easy (and pleasant) walking/biking distance of most residential neighborhoods? (Next door to the Dairy Queen, I might add.) The Masons building, which is essentially the gateway to downtown, is a perfect location.

Here are a few of our ideas:

• Convert the main area into a single-screen theater (would have to remove the center staircase that was added when the building was a restaurant).
  
• Build a proscenium stage, so that the theater can also be used for live events like concerts.
• Get both digital sound and projection systems to allow for renting out the space for business meetings, playing video games on a big screen, private screenings of home movies and family slideshows, and other similar uses.
• Convert the fabulous front rooms of the building into the concessions area. Instead of a typical theater lobby where patrons merely purchase their popcorn and Milk Duds, though, this would be a cafe stocked with locally baked goodies like brownies and muffins and furnished with tables, chairs, and comfy couches. It would be a real gathering place for the community. We'd open it before the movies started for the day and keep it open after the last movie ended (adjusting hours according to customer demand, of course).
• House the projection room, as well as a possible additional cafe/lounge area, on the small third story. The spectacular balcony would function as additional space (also furnished cafe-style) for non-movie events.
• Spruce up the beautiful front portico and brick patio and add tables and chairs for an awesome outdoor brownie-eating, people-watching, solving-the-world's-problems spot, right at one of the liveliest corners in town.

It's pretty obvious that we'd like to run a business that facilitates interaction between members of our community. We wish there were more places in town to do that. This theater would also be a concerted effort to increase the nightime activity downtown, which is currently limited to the China Moon restaurant (which we love, and are so glad is open late!) and the "four corners" bars at the south end of downtown.

I'll get into more of the philosophy behind this type of business in upcoming posts, but I will mention now that an article in a recent issue of YES! Magazine hits on the things that draw me so much to the social commons of communities...and why I want so much for the social commons areas of my community to be better:

. . . in localities throughout the nation, there are efforts to resurrect the economy of the social commons that the corporate market has displaced. The opposition to Wal-Mart, for example, is as much about reclaiming the social productivity of traditional main streets as it is about the big box giant’s treatment of its employees. The so-called new urbanism is really the old village-ism, a rediscovery of the wisdom of traditional patterns of human settlement in which interaction is built into the flow of daily life. (emphasis mine)

And another quote:

. . . common spaces give expression to a "we" side of human nature that is both universal and deep. I have a brother-in-law in the Philippines who helped build a water system in a rural village there. He told me that the women continued to come to the common containment pool to wash clothes in the morning, even after the project was completed and the water ran to individual homes. The spontaneous social interaction was as important in its own way as the water itself, just as in community gardens the community is as important as the garden. (emphasis mine)

Fellow Madison-area residents (or former residents), what do you think?


Coming up: more thoughts plus a photo tour of downtown.

Cosy Knitting

It’s dark, rainy, and blustery this afternoon—perfect for tuning in to the world’s greatest radio station, baking up a batch of homemade brownies, and talking about knitting. I don’t intend to write much about knitting on this blog, but it does fit into my emphasis on sustainability, so I'll add something about it from time to time. I’ll start by talking a bit about the woman who taught me to knit: Cosette Cornelius-Bates.

I met Cosy at Regent almost three years ago. We were both new students, and we connected right away. I had a lot of fun hanging out with her throughout the year, together arguing the pitfalls of capitalism in our “Christianity and the Economic Order” class, and learning to knit from her.

I almost hesitate to talk about knitting because it’s so trendy right now. But Cosy knits for much better reason than trendiness. For her, knitting is a redemptive, incarnational activity. It’s about stewardship, community, and theology, things that I, too, am keenly interested in. I’ll let her do the explaining here, here, and here.

For me, knitting is about roots and sustainability, aside from the obvious pleasure in producing something both practical and beautiful. Cosy taught me to go for the wool rather than the cheaper acrylic. (And acrylic is a petroleum-based product, so wool is definitely the sustainable choice.) Every hand-knit piece I wear is one less that was produced by a machine. Often I know the person knitting the piece (especially if it’s me!), sometimes I know where the wool came from, sometimes I know who dyed or even spun the wool. I’m enamored with alpacas and may eventually own one, so someday I may even personally know the animal from which I got the wool.

My progeny wearing a square hat knit by her mama.
Pattern, recycled yarn, and hand-dyed yarn from Cosy.

I’m not blind to the great pleasures that living in a post-industrial society brings. I have absolutely no desire to make the majority of my own clothes, let alone weave my own fabric from which to make clothes. But I do think we live an economy that values speed and uniformity over true craft and beauty. Knitting is a good “focal practice” (to borrow a term from Cosy, who borrowed it from Albert Borgmann) and is therefore worth my effort. It helps me take a step out of an overwhelming industrial production cycle and makes me a bit more mindful of the creation that sustains me.

I also believe that anything that teaches us to pay attention is worthwhile to consider taking up as a regular practice. Since I first read the following quote several years ago, I have tried to take on practices like knitting and gardening that teach us to pay attention:

The French philosopher Simone Weil saw that the everyday studying that students do—learning math or grammar or history—can form in them rich capacities for attention. Indeed, she suggested, this is study’s most important purpose, for those who learn attention in this way become able to give attention also to other people and to God. They become able to be present to those who are suffering, and they become able to pray [Bass, Dorothy C., Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), p. 36].

Our culture does not teach us to pay attention very well. In fact, we have so much that seeks our attention (cell phone calls, e-mails, media, advertising, etc.) that we learn to pay very little deep attention to anything. Knitting, like gardening, is an antidote to my culture's absent-mindedness.

Among the places you can find Cosy (her blog and her shop) will, I hope, soon be a bookstore near you. She has a knitting book in the works, for which I am very happy to have been able to test a pattern (see pic above). If you're a knitter and interested in adding some lovely new patterns to your stash, keep an eye out for Knit One, Embellish Too: Hats, Mittens, and Scarves With a Twist next spring.

In the Beginning

This is my favorite method for germinating seeds. If memory serves me correctly, I got it from Dr. David Nelson, my philosophy prof at SDSU.


Set individual seeds on cotton balls or cut-up cotton balls and place in a plastic container with a lid. Spray the cotton with water so that it's fairly wet but not sopping. Keep the container in a cupboard or other warm, dark spot until the seeds germinate. With the lid on the container, the cotton shouldn't dry out. As soon as the seeds sprout, plant them in small containers (I reuse yogurt cups) and set them in a sunny spot where they can continue to grow until ready to transplant into the garden.

And the Winner Is...

...not me. I'm not the grand prize winner of the Go Green on Gather Contest (read the winning entry here). Alas. As a finalist, however, I do have $100 in trees from the Arbor Day Foundation coming to me. Good thing I love trees! Since I was a kid, I've wanted a weeping willow. The Arbor Day site says that they're not good for our zone 4, but I've seen a few around here. And since they thrive where there's lots of water, I think we can get one to grow. We have a spot where rainwater tends to collect and a little Cottonwood grove has taken root soaking up the water. Might make a good weeping willow spot, too.

Since the contest is over, I'm posting my entry here:


Practicing Permanence

Recycling, composting, driving less, buying and consuming less, installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs, xeriscaping, organic gardening, shopping locally. All of these are excellent and necessary steps to take in earthkeeping. But I agree with Alan Durning and Wendell Berry that striving toward sustainability starts with being rooted in a particular spot. Durning speculates in his book This Place on Earth, “There may not be any ways to save the world that are not, first and foremost, ways for people to save their own places . . . begin with place, and specifically, with one place.” I think he’s onto something. So, my resolution is a quiet, simple action. I’m staying home.

My husband and I have decided to do everything we can to stay in one spot for as long as possible—we hope for the rest of our lives. That particular spot is on the shores of a little lake in the midst of the farmland of eastern South Dakota. We’ve chosen a spot already familiar to us. It’s where my husband grew up and it’s 50 miles from where I spent most of my life.

Deciding to let our roots continue to grow here is both frightening and liberating. It can be frightening, because we’re in a rural/small-town area, and finding like-minded people here is often challenging. Always in search of community, I sometimes feel the sting of isolation and miss the times in my life when I had near-daily contact with close friends. Then there’s the job market. It’s not bad for a town of 6,500, but it certainly doesn’t carry the potential of the more metropolitan areas of our region.

Our decision, though, is also incredibly liberating. We have dreams of an organic demonstration garden, some market gardening or a CSA, a straw bale greenhouse, and a straw bale art studio. Someday we’d love to open a café supplied with food produced as locally as possible, maybe even from our own garden. Will we accomplish all this? Probably not. But staying here for the long haul means we have the freedom to think about plans like this. Acting on those plans means caring more and more about our place and our community each day.

For a person like me, who often finds more excitement in the contemplation of an idea than in its execution, practicing permanence is real discipline. It curtails my tendency to dream about greener pastures: where there are more people with similar convictions, where there are more and better jobs, where it’s possible to live car-free and buy local food at huge farmers markets.

Of course, staying in one place can lead to provincialism and isolationism. That’s why it’s important to invite outside influences, to experience other cultures and places. I’ve enjoyed and treasured my times away from South Dakota and appreciate what I learned while in different places. For instance, we recently spent eight months in Vancouver, British Columbia, a city that is the polar opposite of our little town in so many ways. There we learned the discipline of living without a car. We walked to the grocery store, rode our bikes to work and class, and navigated the public transit system. I took an organic gardening workshop at the City Farmer demonstration garden and learned about community kitchens.

These great experiences, however, didn’t convince us to pull up our South Dakota roots. We deeply love our place and can’t imagine planting ourselves anywhere else. We know there is work to do here. There is prairie to restore. There is a regional food network to build. There are people to encourage along the way. So, we’ll do something profoundly counter-cultural: stay put. Choose place above career. Integrate our vocations with our place. Practicing permanence will allow us to learn much more about the land here, its creatures, its ecology, its people, and its history. I hope that practice will help us care for the land more deeply.

Ultimately, I believe what Wendell Berry says in his last poem in A Timbered Choir: “There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way but a place.” That day has come for me. The way to a more sustainable life indeed is a place.

Food for Thought

In a recent article for Books and Culture, Bill McKibben mentions a couple of the reasons I like farmers markets. They're good for building community and positively impact the local economy.

. . . the deepest questions about postmodern food have as much to do with community as they do with taste.

A local farmers market, for instance, is not only about providing fresher food than a supermarket can offer (and doing it with much less use of energy, an increasingly important factor in a world starting to fret that long-distance food plays a more-than-trivial role in causing climate change). It's also about rebuilding the local agricultural economy so that small farmers no longer have to sell their products as commodities at prices set by the most efficient, largest operations. And it's about rebuilding communities: one sociologist last year followed shoppers around farmers markets and supermarkets, and discovered that they had ten times as many conversations at the former. In a lonely society, that's an encouraging statistic.

Finalist!

I'm one of five finalists in the Go Green on Gather writing contest! My entry, "Practicing Permanence," is the featured piece for the Living A Sustainable Life group all day today. The grand prize winner will be announced May 1.

The contest asked for original entries outlining an action toward living a more sustainable life. Mine is all about staying home. Read it here! Take a look at some of the other entries while you're at it.

Go Green on Gather Contest

American Public Media and Gather.com are holding an online writing contest on sustainable living in celebration of Earth Day. I can't post my entry on this blog until after the contest, but you can read it here.

Step It Up

I'm listening to Bill McKibben and Cal DeWitt, two of my favorite Christian environmental writers, speak on NPR's "Weekend America" at the moment. Today is Step It Up's National Day of Climate Action. I found out about this too late to organize anything locally, but it's on my radar for next year.

Read all about it!

Get Your Yard Off Drugs*

Local newspaper editor Jon Hunter wrote about local water quality issues on the same day we received an ad in the mail for a chemical lawn service (which will remain nameless--no need to give them free advertising). Hunter writes the following in his 4/11/07 op-ed piece:

Lakes, streams and wetlands in Lake County all deserve attention, especially concerning excess phosphorus and sulfates. There are several sources of these challenges, including livestock operations, cropland, residential lawns and sanitary sewer systems. The city of Madison intends to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant. Lake development associations have formed task forces to improve water quality. And farm organizations are working to find environmental solutions for ag operations.

So, fellow Lake County residents, throw out (better yet, recycle) those chemical lawn service brochures and consider switching to natural lawn care. The city of Vancouver's website offers some great information to get you started, as does City Farmer. I know these aren't local links, but I know about them from my brief time living in Vancouver, a city that is making great strides toward sustainability.

Don't forget that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are petroleum-based products, so eliminating them from your lawn care not only improves our area lake water quality, but it's also one way to combat our dependence on oil.

*Post title flagrantly stolen from here.

Local Eating in South Dakota

Keep your eyes out for the May/June issue of South Dakota Magazine, which promises a story about South Dakota farmer's markets. More posting later on my thoughts about eating locally....

House

Cory and I began our marriage in the 480-square-foot lakeside cabin he had lived in for several years. It was originally a double garage on another site and was eventually trucked to the lake and turned into a summer cabin. Later Cory and his dad renovated it, adding a sleeping loft with big south-facing windows and making it a year-round home.

A couple years ago, with our first baby on the way, we decided it was high time to move out of our cramped quarters and look for a house. We decided on having a new home built at Lake Herman for a number of reasons. We had settled on living in either Sioux Falls or at Lake Herman. We found out that the housing market in Sioux Falls was mostly out of our range, despite our having stellar credit, zero debt, and a nice chunk of savings for a down payment (but we planned to live primarily on a teacher’s income, since Cory supported my decision to stay home with the baby). So, that left Lake Herman. It was where Cory had grown up, and he loved it deeply. I wanted to live in one place for a long, long time and carry out land stewardship plans, and Lake Herman seemed like a logical place to do that. Cory’s parents gifted us with the land to build on, which was the only reason we could afford to do so (and because we built frugally, it ended up being less expensive than buying a house in Sioux Falls).

We would have loved to build our house in a much more environmentally conscious way than we did. Our budget and time constraints meant we had to build a mostly conventional house. So, no straw bale construction (doesn’t quite meet the requirements for the SD Housing’s first-time home buyer mortgage rate), no solar panels, no wind turbine. Those all will have to wait.

We were, however, able to do a couple of things with the house right away. Almost anyone who builds a new house can do the same. For one, we built a relatively modest-sized home. Ours is slightly over 1,200 square feet (two bedrooms, two smallish bathrooms). Even though we don’t live in a high-density area, we still believe in small house footprints, at least by American standards (it's a palace by world standards). We felt this was enough room for the three of us, and if our family size increases someday, we’ll be perfectly capable of making due with the space we have. Afterall, going bigger means heating and cooling more space, buying more furniture to fill it, and generally using up more resources than we really need to.

We also thought carefully about where the house would sit and oriented it to take full advantage of the sun. The long side with the most and largest windows faces south for as much passive solar heat as possible. This little action works surprisingly well. The house warms up quite nicely on a sunny winter day. In the summer, we get some shade from trees in the nearby shelter belt, and we’ve planted trees on the south side to eventually provide more shade. We’ll soon build a trellis over the deck and plant climbing vines to further shade the south-facing patio doors.

Another small step was to install compact fluorescent light bulbs in the new house. Right now about 98% of our light bulbs are CFLs.

Of course, our place isn’t anything close to this. We’re starting with small steps, but we hope to do more. I’d love to install solar panels (and I welcome any advice from those of you who have done so on your own homes), but those aren’t financially feasible for us at the moment. I’m interested in the idea of a bike generator, and we may be able to tinker around with that soon. Although a bike generator doesn’t produce that much energy, I’m intrigued by the concept of converting the energy I produce with my own body into electricity we can use in the home.

In the meantime, we’ll remain conscious of the energy we do consume and commit to using as little of it as we can. We’ll resist the rampant consumerism in our culture that tries to convince us we need to buy new stuff all the time. We’ll keep asking around and researching renewable energy sources for our home. And we’ll keep inching toward better stewardship of our energy resources.

Straw Bale at SDSU

My alma mater may not have an organic student farm...yet, but I'm thrilled to find out that it is starting research on green building. SDSU will soon have a straw bale house. Progress! The SDSU Collegian reported a couple weeks ago on the construction to be completed this summer. McCrory Gardens will be home to the straw bale building, which will also have a living roof. Read all about it here.

Construction of the building will be the result of an SDSU class this summer. I won't be able to take the class, but I'd love to hear from someone who does. At the very least, I'll snap some photos and post them here later.

Sidenote: Ever the stickler for grammar and spelling, I noticed the glaring word usage error at the beginning of the Collegian article (editions/additions). Journalism students, spelling does matter!

Seeds

Yesterday I ordered the seeds for this year’s garden. Here’s what I’m getting.

From Seeds of Change:

• Black Seeded Blue Lake Pole Bean
• Kurota Chantenay Carrot
• Stowell’s Sweet Corn
• Mideast Prolific Cucumber
• Butterhead Buttercrunch Lettuce
• Butterhead Four Seasons Lettuce
• Looseleaf Thai Green Lettuce
• Jericho Romaine Lettuce
• Cal Wonder Bell Sweet Pepper
• Ed’s Red Shallot
• Chadwick Cherry Tomato
• San Marzano Paste Tomato
• Costaluto Genovese Slicing Tomato
• Genovese Sweet Basil
• Slow Bolt Cilantro
• Greek Oregano
• Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
• Garden Sage
  

From Seed Savers Exchange:

• Blue Solaize Leek
• Yellow of Parma Onion
• America Spinach
• Calendula Mixture
• Sunspots Morning Glory
• Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory
• Starfire Signet Marigold
• Golden Emperor Nasturtium
• Johnny Jump-Up Viola
• Benary's Giant Zinnia
• Sunflower Mixture
  

SSE is raising funds to purchase an additional 716-acre property and to “implement numerous projects involving genetic preservation and ecological restoration” (SSE 2007 catalog). Thus, they’ve raised the price of their seed packets by 25 cents. If you’re looking for heirloom and organic seeds, consider buying from SSE. The little bit of extra money you spend will be put to very good use helping SSE expand both their property and the scope of their activities.

It’s easy to get carried away ordering seeds, but I have to remember that I’m still a beginning gardener, so better to not get in over my head (plus, with a toddler around, I have limited amounts of time for concentrating on any one task). I’ve only planted a couple of very small gardens in the past. I’ve had success with sweet corn, tomatoes, and herbs. Lettuce is a cinch to grow, but I still manage to get it too bitter. I may try planting it in the shade this year, or just planting it in the spring and again in the fall to avoid the high heat that’s causing the bitterness. Ideally, though, I’d like to have it available continuously throughout the summer and fall, so I may just have to be religious about watering.

Husband holding the first fruits of last summer's garden.

I’m looking forward to growing several of the ingredients for one of my favorite recipes for Fattoush, a Syrian salad. I got this recipe a couple years ago at a Community Kitchens workshop in Vancouver.

Fattoush (Pita Salad) - 4 servings

Toss together in a colander:
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cut into ½-inch cubes
1 teaspoon salt
Let stand to drain for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Open on a baking sheet and bake until crisp and lightly browned, about 10 minutes:
Two 7-inch pita breads
Break into bite-sized pieces. Press the excess water out of the cucumbers, rinse quickly, and blot dry.

Combine the cucumbers in a medium bowl with:
3 medium ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, diced (optional)
6 scallions, white and tender green parts, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh mint

Whisk together in a small bowl:
1/3 cup olive oil, preferably extra virgin
juice of 1 large lemon (about ¼ cup)
1 clove garlic, crushed
¼ teaspoon salt
Pour dressing over the vegetables and toss well. Add the pita toasts, toss again, and serve immediately.

Lettuce Growing

From the "In Season: Organic Gardening Newsletter" a good short article on growing baby lettuce.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here?

A bit of background. I’m a Midwestern girl through and through, born in Nebraska and raised in Brookings, South Dakota. I’ve made brief sojourns to a few places—a college trip to Spain, a few months on Long Island, and a year of grad school in Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as trips to about half of the 50 U.S. states. I always keep coming back to the plains, though. Despite an intense affection for various mountainous areas, the prairie is definitely home.

While I grew up in the most agricultural state in the country, I had a limited connection to the land. It wasn’t until college at South Dakota State University that I began thinking more deeply about the environment and the biblical mandate to care for it. That all came about through a special topics class, “Philosophy of the Land,” taught by Dr. David Nelson, for which Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America was our primary text. I wrestled terribly with Berry (future posts may describe more) but, in the end, found most of what he said in that book to be right and, consequently, found myself with a new set of convictions about earth-keeping.

Almost a decade ago I took a brief break from South Dakota to spend a few months working temp jobs on Long Island, NY. I remember a particular moment one fall day when I was debating just what to do next in life and where to do it. Stay in New York? Go home? Go somewhere else? It dawned on me that I actually did care about South Dakota—its people and its landscape—and that no one else around me at that moment did. After all, it probably took someone growing up in South Dakota, knowing both its beauties and foibles, to truly care for it. I figured that South Dakota might actually need me (and maybe I needed South Dakota). So, I moved back.

I described that realization to my husband while we were on our honeymoon in 2002. We took a leisurely road trip out west and ended up in Taos, New Mexico, new territory for both of us. We immediately fell in love with Taos with its artsy culture and beautiful landscape. While we ate dinner one evening and contemplated living in a place like Taos or Boulder or Moab, I recounted my New York moment to Cory. We both instantly understood that we had to stay in South Dakota. We loved it, cared for it, and our work was there. Of course, that wasn’t much of a stretch for Cory, who grew up at Lake Herman and had almost every intention of staying there forever. After that conversation, though, we were both certain.

Together we took another short break from South Dakota while I groveled at the feet of some excellent theologians at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. We’ve been back home since April 2005. After having a baby and building a house, we’ve settled in on a couple acres just uphill from the shores of Lake Herman.

Lake Herman on a stormy November 2005 afternoon

Deciding to let our roots continue to grow here is both frightening and liberating. Living here is not easy on a number of levels. Madison has its share of problems. The job market isn’t spectacular, and there’s a fair bit of typical small town politics. But our decision is also incredibly liberating. We have dreams of an organic demonstration garden, some market gardening or a CSA, a straw bale greenhouse, a straw bale art studio, and maybe even a small intentional community. We’d love to open a café someday in Madison supplied with food produced as locally as possible (think the Farmer’s Diner), maybe even some from our own garden. Will we accomplish all this? Probably not. But staying here for the long haul means we have the freedom to think about plans like this. Acting on those plans means caring more and more about our place and our community each day.

When I expressed similar sentiments to my friend David W. last year, he responded with this:

In your e-mail you wrote: "we intend to be here for the rest of our lives." Reading that reflexively made me sigh a sigh of rest and peace and home. I'm so glad that you are doing something and speaking something--being rooted--that is so important in our mobile, disconnected, fragmented, homeless world. The very fact that you say "we intend to be here for the rest of our lives" oozes hospitality.

Exactly.

SDSU College Farm: Why Not?

Any ideas on why in the world South Dakota State University, home of the state's only College of Agriculture, does not have a student organic farm?

Anyone? Anyone?

Raison d'Être

I have far too many Post-It Notes, bookmarks and scraps of paper scattered around my home. They contain various bits of information: the number of people one acre of land can feed, a couple good community garden websites, the title of a new book on strawbale building. It’s time I organized all of this, so I can actually find the information when I need it. Behold, the Prairie Roots blog.

On the surface, this blog is my online bulletin board, filing cabinet and garden journal. Deeper down, it’s all about roots: growing literal roots as I strive to become a sustainable food-growing expert (I’ve just started down that path) and metaphorical roots as my husband and I send our roots ever deeper into this place that, for one reason or another, we have chosen--although it might be more accurate to say that it chose us.

The content of Prairie Roots will focus on place and the land, specifically this place and this land—living on it, caring for it, digging into it, loving it—along with a bit of theology and philosophy about it thrown in. I’ll gradually gather all of my land stewardship-related paper scraps, articles, and bookmarks here (and maybe even a favorite recipe once in awhile). My hope is that the Prairie Roots blog will be a resource for like-minded people in this little corner of the world. Check back from time to time if you’re interested in gleaning from the information here. If you feel like it, send me your comments, questions and, of course, gardening advice.