Grad studies Essay part III

The Urban Farm

The food bank’s farm was organic. Before I really knew what “organic” meant, I would joke “It grows therefore isn’t it organic? Duh!” Like most people, it didn’t occur to me what was happening in our food production in the U.S. Until that time I never thought about what methods of pest control or fertilizers were being used or how far food was traveling to get to us. I started shopping at the local farmers market. That’s where I met Barb and Randa, owners of Mildred’s Daughters Urban Farm. They had a dream that everyone in Pittsburgh would grow their food. They own the last remaining legally zoned farmland in the City of Pittsburgh and wanted to share it! Their plan included tours of the farm, sessions on cooking and preserving the harvest, a CSA, and even a school! Barb and Randa, together with a fellow urban homesteader, Mindy, called their dream “Grow Pittsburgh”, a sort of call to action. After a couple years they hired an executive director. The first funded project was the Edible Schoolyard and I was hired as the project coordinator.

Grow! Pittsburgh

I worked with Grow Pittsburgh to help establish the first edible schoolyards in Pittsburgh. (There are currently 4 school gardens in Pittsburgh Public elementary schools) It’s so rewarding to see kids excited about growing food! They are astonished when they see a vegetable magically appear on a vine that grew from a seed THEY planted! It changes their view of plants and food in a positive way. I learned a lot about people’s perceptions of a garden, too. A parent at one of the schools found a picture from 1910 of a group of kids in a garden holding up vegetables they had grown. It was their school garden! It got me thinking about how relatively recent our disconnection from our food source is.

CHICKENS!

Our office was in the Penn State Agricultural Extension office along with the 4-H program. Like many 4-H programs, they would send eggs out to schools in March and April and for two months small batches of peeps came and went around the office. After chick sitting over Easter weekend I couldn’t resist. Most of the peeps went to local farms but I brought home 5 chickens; 4 hens and a rooster. After some research my husband and I built a coop in the back yard next to the garage. The chickens grew quickly and loved to wander the neighborhood, getting over the fence even after I clipped their wings! After 5 months, like clockwork, they started laying beautiful, tasty, huge eggs.

Discovering the Joy of Farms

The first summer after the Edible Schoolyards were established Grow Pittsburgh had the dilemma of maintaining the gardens while school was on summer break. We got funding to hire a 6-member crew of teen interns. The program was designed with a focus on workforce development but it also included gardening skills, field trips and nutrition lessons. The field trips were as fun for me as they were for the interns; we held 2-day-old piglets, ran a grain mill and even (accidentally) visited a Hare Krishna commune food farm! The following summer we expanded Summer Intern Program to include 3 garden sites, 21 interns and 3 college-age supervisors. The program was successful — no one quit, no one was fired and many of them wanted to work with us again! Unfortunately, the economy took a turn for the worse and Grow Pittsburgh didn’t get funding for the 2009 season.

Search for Garden Space

My neighbor whose yard I was using moved so I couldn’t have my vegetable garden anymore. For a couple of years, I had a spot at a shared garden at the top of the cemetery but the deer broke down or jumped over every fence I built. I managed to integrate some potted tomato plants and basil into our backyard. I joined Mildreds Daughter’s Farm CSA but I could only afford a half share the first year. They started a working member group after that, and for 5 hours of work on the farm every week I received a full share of the harvest.

Expanded Homesteading and Conservation

This past summer, being unemployed, I spent more time at the farm. I was able to work directly with Barb Kline, co-owner and main vegetable grower for the farm. I learned a lot from Barb everyday, from planting methods to soil enrichment, pest control and crop rotation. I started to think about the food I used on a daily basis and how I could grow it myself. I spent a lot of time making jams, canning peaches, tomatoes and beans, and I experimented with fermentation making pickles, dill beans, Kim chi and sauerkraut.

Over the years, my husband and I have grown increasingly aware of the waste in our lives…food, water, energy, etc. We’re big on recycling, we save rainwater and we have a compost bin. One year I received a multi-level vermicomposter for a birthday gift! We even started using our dishwater in the garden using environmentally friendly dish soap!

I got a feeling

It could just be me and it could be the gloomy day or maybe the fact that I feel like I’m coming down with something but I don’t have a good feeling about my job prospect. I’ve been thinking of my alternative plan which consists of either working for the county elections division training poll workers, or working for the census (they offered me a job for 2 months starting mid-April), plus doing the community garden for the Oakland Planning and Development Corp, still doing Silpada parties, working on the farm, working farmers markets for Mish Farms and becoming a Green Irene consultant. It’s a patchwork income flow but it would work. I would be working from home mostly, setting my own schedule so I’d still have free time to take Brett to work and take days off for working on the farm or canning or whatever. That wouldn’t be too bad, but I was looking forward to the security of a full time gig and the environment with co-workers. I miss a workplace, I really do. Maybe I need to get a group of work-from-home people to make a co-worker coffee group…but I haven’t heard anything concrete from the Audubon… it’s just a feeling. I hope I’m wrong!

My Take on the Health Care Law

To be honest I wasn’t sure how I felt about the health care bill. Everyone being forced to have health insurance…I just wanted to be able to see my doctor when I needed to and be able to afford it. Like a couple years ago when I had a sore throat I wanted to be sure it wasn’t strep throat. I knew my doctor’s office charged $65 for a visit and then the test and medication would be even more, so I went to one of those “Take Care” clinics in Walgreen’s. Turns out that they charge $75 if you don’t have insurance! I was thinking that $25 - $35 would be reasonable. The nurse in the take care clinic wouldn’t even LOOK at me, at my face, never mind my throat, once she found out I didn’t have insurance! It was horrible. So I’m not a big fan of what the health insurance companies have done to our medical services, and I wasn’t thrilled about all of us being at their mercy.

But a thought occurred to me the other day…they have to pay for everything for everyone. They can’t turn you down or shut you off, they can’t drop you or pick and choose what they will cover anymore. Our health is their responsibility…our health is their responsibility! The largest lobbying group in the country will have an interest in our HEALTH…are you getting it yet? They will WANT US TO BE HEALTHY! They’ll want us to eat better and get more exercise so they won’t have to pay out so much… and they will make it happen. That is my theory. All the people working to get people to eat more fruits and veggies, and less factory farmed (which is less nutritious anyway) meat, and less sugar and less fat – from Alice Waters to Michael Pollan to Morgan Spurlock – will now have the health insurance companies looking to them for guidance. This could be the best thing to happen to this country ever. Studies prove that better nutrition, like better school lunches for example, decreases bad behavior in children. Then they are less likely to become “the bad kid” in class, and they’ll have more confidence, and are more likely to succeed. They won’t turn to drugs and thuggery and won’t get arrested and will become respectful members of society. Not that those problems will completely go away, but it will not be the norm like it is today. Good nutrition could also help with ADHD and lots of other disorders as well.

Call me an optimist, but I think I’m on to something here. I don’t like the idea of someone telling me I MUST have insurance, I’d rather pay as I go, at a reasonable rate, and have insurance only for emergencies and trauma, but if this law does what I think it will do, and the insurance company’s lobbyists are more powerful than the food industry lobbyists, then Jamie Oliver will really think he’s a miracle worker with his food revolution because that type of thinking will spread in no time. Look for it in about 2-4 years. You heard it here...I think first.

Routine Pondering

OK, maybe someone can explain to me why I have such a rebellion to routine. I have my things I have to do in the morning… floss and brush teeth, make coffee, feed chickens, drink coffee, eat breakfast, do dishes, watch Ellen…some simultaneously…but then it falls apart. I was hoping to start doing regular blogging, then maybe reading – 30 minutes educational, 30 minutes for fun (a guideline my 9 year old nephew had last summer and one I think we should all have) then a little house cleaning. But things get in the way, I guess. I’m not as free as I think. Email and Internet really throw things off, then there’s the occasional assignment I’ve given myself, or proposal that I have to work on and if I have to leave the house it’s all over! I guess I’m not so disorganized, now that I write this. No one can have their day scheduled so completely that there is no wiggle room. Maybe I’m (gasp!) normal in my not wanting to have such a rigorous schedule. Some of my best thinking and ideas come from times I’m in between tasks…I guess daydreaming would be the word for it. I have my to-do list from Monday that still isn’t finished, but there are only 2 more things to be done, both of which require tape, and going to the store to buy tape was not one of them so I have to add it to my list in order to complete my list…and so that’s what happens.

OK so we all go through this, right? I guess I’m at a point in my life where I can sit and think about it, and ponder it, and learn from it. And that’s just the way it is, so now I can think about something else!

Prairie Days

I would love to live back in the day before grocery stores. Where you had a goat and made your own cheese and bread (from the wheat you grew) and saved all your own veggies that you grew and had chickens and pigs and just provided all your own food. I’d miss running water, but I’d love to have a composting toilet. I’d miss TV, but my husband cracks me up so much, and we’d be so busy with life tasks anyway. And there are books! Wood burning stove, great! There are a lot of things that would be lacking, but so much of our life that we leave outside would still be the same…the birds, the wind and the sky. The stars and the sun. The bugs and the plants and the mice and rats. Some things we’d rather pretend aren’t still there, but they are! And they have their place, whether we like it or not. You can spray, poison and kill but they’re out there and they’ll keep coming back.

I think most of the items of convenience I could find a reasonable substitute for, trash bags, Tupperware, to-go mugs, even cars (I’d have a great horse!) but you know what I’d miss? Sharpies! Yes, the marker! They are so handy for so many things! You know you can write on something and then get it wet, take it anywhere, leave it in the basement for years, and you’ll still be able to read it and see what’s in that jar, or bag, or container. Yes, if we were shot back to the prairie days, I’d want to take a sharpie! Oh, and probably toilet paper…that’s a pretty good invention, too!

Long week

OK, again, I fall down on the job of blogging. But I’ve been busy! I had a meeting on Monday that secured a gig with the Oakland Planning and Development Corp. then helped transplant seedlings at the farm. Then Tuesday I started a booking contest with my Silpada team, so felt guilty doing anything but making calls and trying to get parties. Wednesday was my big second interview at Audubon…I think it went very well but I’m still trying to brace myself for disappointment...not possible, if I don’t get it I’ll still be devastated. Yesterday I spent the entire day at the farm, transplanting and cleaning out the greenhouse to put the seedlings in. Its so nice to be growing stuff. I picked carrots and lettuce from the hoop house and turnips right out of the field…they are so good! And tons of them! Took me hours to clean and get them ready to roast, and the Kim chi I started on Sunday was neglected until last night, too! So finally got that finished and on it’s way to tasty fermented goodness! But I do have a lot to say so I’m back on the blogg. And I’ll make several posts today to make up for a lazy week (blogging wise, that is!)

OH, my prospective new boss, Jim (Hi Jim! Hire me!! :) reads my blog…not sure if he’s a fan or just read it once, and I’m not sure when, so have no idea if he read the entry where I assumed my unemployed life is over, but whatever he read, he got me. In my second interview, when asked how I would separate my work life and personal life, particularly on social media, I said there is no separation. At this point in my life I’m hoping to be doing something I love, and something I can share with everyone. You, my friends, know what I mean. When I’m involved in something you know about it. Everyone with in a 10 foot radius of me knows about it. That’s just the way I am and I like it. I’m an open book with nothing to hide…which is why I have a blog…and also why I won’t run for office! I hope there is an organization out there that can appreciate that about me and we can be happily ever after!

Grad studies Essay part II

The Big Move

When I was 10 years old we moved to Fountain Valley, California. We drove across country in our Jeep Wagoneer, all 3 kids in the “back back” for over a week! We played and slept and watched as the landscape changed from grey, damp hills, to mountains, to vast green and brown plains and endless sky. The moving truck broke down every day, which gave us time to see a lot of the countryside. We picked cotton that was growing along the side of the road. I didn’t believe my mom’s explanation that it was really cotton…it was too dirty and full of sticks and seeds.

When we got to our new home, it was such a dramatic change! I spent my teenage years climbing over the concrete walls that surrounded every house in southern CA to get to the fruit trees. There was so much fruit that people would use only as decoration! We ate fresh pomegranates, oranges, lemons, limes, avocados and bananas. I’d never seen a pomegranate and it was so exotic to me! We didn’t have a vegetable garden in California, but the flowers, foliage and fruit were very significant to me.

A Different Way of Life

In college I studied art and spent a semester in Bratislava, Slovakia (Czechoslovakia at the time). It was a simple place and it really opened my eyes to how out of touch Americans have become with each other, with their wastefulness and with their food. Food shopping was hard to get used to because every product was sold in a separate store! Meat at the butchers, vegetables (when you could find them) at the open markets, bread at the bakery, cheese and milk at the dairy shop and eggs at what I can only describe as the Chicken store, with freshly harvested chickens hanging all around and lots of eggs. The open market was full of home-preserved items like dried meats, sauerkraut in large wooden barrels, even wine and beer!

“With Bowl and Spoon”

I was invited to a party my first week in Bratislava. The invitation said “…with bowl and spoon”. It was an art show so I wondered what they would do with all those bowls and spoons…and since I wasn’t able to read the invite myself I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a joke on the American girl: ”Oh look, she did it, she brought a bowl to the party!!” Once I got there, I realized that it was simply practical. They were serving goulash and bread, and since there were no disposable plates or silverware, and there were no catering companies, everyone brought their own. In most of Eastern Europe, there was no “to-go” food or drink either, so any time we wanted a coffee we would have to go to a shop and sit. At first it made me crazy, but I grew to appreciate the slower pace.

Cooking

When I got married I started cooking for two every day. No cereal-for-dinner-because-I’m-too-tired-to-cook meals. I discovered that I like cooking! I started reading about different kinds of diets, learning about “perfect proteins” and nutrition. I was intrigued by wild edibles and took a class at the Frick Environmental Center. I bought a book and started identifying edible and non-edible weeds around my neighborhood.

Intro to Nutrition

Around this time I opened a juice shop in downtown Pittsburgh. I did a lot of research on the benefits of juicing as well as vitamins, minerals, general nutrition and health. Raw whole food seemed like such a luxury! There was no grocery store in downtown Pittsburgh at the time and when I closed my shop I realized that the residents, many of them senior citizens, would have no place to buy vegetables, so I worked with the Market Square Association and created a Farmers Market…the first time vegetables had been sold in Market square in almost 50 years!

A Yard of Our Own

In 1999 we bought a house and I took an office job. The house had a little backyard that was overgrown. We spent the first summer removing plants and weeds from the yard and I spent the winter going through seed catalogs, picking out plants and planning for the spring. We put in lots of perennial herbs and flowers, which I loved, but also because we wanted a low maintenance garden. A vegetable garden was out of the question in our small space. I did manage to integrate peas and some salad greens, but the slugs didn’t leave much for us. I explored my interest in herbal remedies, attended garden swaps and took every opportunity I could to get my hands in the dirt.

A Real Farm

My employer participated in a “Day of Caring” and I had the opportunity to volunteer at a food bank farm. Our task was to dig potatoes. It was magical! My coworkers thought I was crazy being so excited about potatoes, but the thrill is still there to this day every time I harvest potatoes! I enjoyed my day at the food farm so much that I started visiting with my husband. The farmer was an Irish man named Patrick. We would spend cold Sunday afternoons walking the fields, pulling carrots in the snow, carrying wood, playing with the dogs and goats, and riding horses. He was the first real farmer I ever knew, and by that I mean I learned a lot about the realities of the land from our visits. The dogs ate moles and voles right in front of us and when the rooster was violent one too many times he ended up as dinner. In the spring Patrick forced a hen to brood by keeping her and a pile of eggs in a 5-gallon bucket with a brick on top! He let her out a couple times a day for food and water and then back on the eggs. A few weeks later we watched a baby chick hatch!

A Garden of My Own

Since we didn’t have room in our yard for a vegetable garden I started a garden in my neighbor’s yard just a few doors down. He was in his 80’s and had to hire someone to cut the grass every couple of weeks, so as long as I maintained the area he was happy. That summer I created a garden with a group of neighborhood kids whose ages ranged from 4 – 11 years old. They helped me with some tasks but mostly asked questions. I grew everything from seed either directly or under grow lights. I learned about companion planting and had tomatoes with marigolds and basil, sugar snap peas with nasturtium and spinach, pumpkins and beans in between corn plants that made up a swirl across the entire yard. I transplanted some of my perennial herbs and flowers to pretty up the yard and used the “Lasagna Gardening” method to make my life easier! It was interesting to see how the parents reacted to the fresh veggies. I’m not sure all the produce I sent home got eaten.

Almost the end of an Era

I’ve been thinking about the fact that my 18-month vacation may soon be over. I do want a job…being an independent direct sales person of jewelry doesn’t seem to move me enough; I’m quite happy with what unemployment gives me and I am not motivated by gobs of money. In the time I’ve been unemployed there have been a few jobs I really wanted, so few I can count them on two fingers. This one is the third.

Since I’ve learned to live on such little money, at one point I had a thought – make a pile of money with the sales skills I have and then take a few years off. So I looked into medical sales, pharmaceutical sales and other sales type jobs that I thought would make me some money…not cause big bucks motivated me, remember, but because I had a bigger picture in mind. I considered going back into politics again, and really building myself a political fundraising business, since I’ve seen what qualifies as a kick-ass fundraising team and I could be there in a year and have all the big guns asking me to join them…but I’d have to want it, and politics is more than a full-time job, and I like my life.

So, after a bit of panic and putting feelers out there and not getting a lot of positive responses I took a step back and decided to just keep looking and not very actively at that. I committed to Bioneers (like pioneers, but with the environment…I’m working on their local branding) and to Mildred’s Daughters Urban Farm for the May Market, and a friend referred me to Oakland Planning and Development to do a community greening initiative.

Then the job at Audubon was listed. They have a Native Plant Center that was started when the highway to the north was built. 279 ran right through some undeveloped wilderness where they found quite a few rare and some undiscovered plants. People from the Audubon Society of Western PA got a group of volunteers together and went out and dug up the specimens, and started propagating them. Now, almost 10 years later, they received funding for a staff person for the center. And that will be me!

The position will be mostly out and about, visiting prospective clients and organizations that we want to partner with and spreading the good word of using native plants! Some of the job will be in the greenhouse growing plants, working with volunteers and making sure there are enough supplies. Totally a job I would love!

However, I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that the things I do around the house at a leisurely pace will, when I am employed full time, be done on the weekends or before or after work, or they’ll not be done. I’ll have to plan meals better, and ahead of time-we haven’t eaten out more than once a month in a long time! Brett will be assigned to dishes again, and he’ll be left with the house to himself all week. My farm hours will be in the evenings and my jam making will be limited. I’ll have to get out of bed in the morning and actually have a routine. Weekends will be special again, and Monday will be the beginning of my week.

On the upside, I’ll have money! I can save up my money and get a new car; I can buy some much-needed clothing and shoes. I’ll have medical benefits so I can go to the doctor and dentist for regular check ups. I’ll have a routine and get more done…that’s usually the way it goes. I can participate in fundraising dinners and make donations to organizations I like. I can get a membership to the museums and conservatory, and support local artists. I can save up money and take trips to places like Mexico, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii, Peru, Australia, etc.

The one thing a job and money can’t give you is time…so I’ll have to come up with a balance. But I’m definitely looking forward to a change of pace...I think…

Love and death

Today I ran into a woman, a neighbor of mine, who I’ve known for 10 years. She is on the public safety committee so we worked together a couple times and we give each other moral support. Her husband died suddenly on Feb 10^th. I’ve been meaning to call her or stop by or send a card or something but just didn’t know what to say. Well, today I saw her in the plaza where Brett works and I got out of my car and ran after her to tell her how sorry I was. She is still a wreck! I didn’t know what to say. But she agreed that there wasn’t anything to say. She’s just so sad and everything makes her cry…even the sales people at the mall. She’s sad that she doesn’t have him to grow old with, that she has to take care of the dog he only knew for 2 months, and his birds (he had lots of bird feeders) and his sunflowers when they come up, and everything reminds her of him. She’s not ok and she won’t be. And as cruel as it seems, that’s how it should be… I never met Spiro but I heard about him and his typical crazy Greek ways. Sounded like quite a character! But what matters is that Jan is lost with out him, and there is nothing anyone can do. We all should hope to love and be loved like that in our lifetimes.

Getting in the habit...

OK, clearly I need to develop a habit of writing on my blog…or is it writing in my blog? Either way, the act of sitting down to write is not a habit for me yet, so I need to work on that. I will try the 21 day challenge. I’ve put it on my calendar…wait – OK, now I’ve put it on my calendar for the next 21 days. I’ll make it a habit eventually!

Essay for Grad School Part 1

For your reading pleasure, I am posting the essay I wrote for my grad school application to Chatham’s Food Studies program. Haven’t heard yet, but I’ll let you know!

About Me

My name is Shelly Danko+Day and I moved to Pittsburgh 21 years ago. I’ve been married to my husband Brett for over 15 years, I have a BFA from Slippery Rock University and I love gardening. I’ve been looking for work for over a year, and most of the jobs I’m seeing don’t entirely appeal to me, although I have applied for many. When I saw Chatham’s ad about the new Food Studies program, something just clicked in me. It’s a passion that I have not recognized until recently and I’m very excited about the possibilities!

I feel connected to the past, my past and the future through agriculture … planting, growing, nurturing and harvesting are all major parts of my life. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it has always been a large part of my life. Even when I didn’t notice, gardening was influencing me. From one end of the US to the other I was affected by nature in ways that shaped who I am today. It’s hard to imagine a time when I wasn’t growing something but there were many years when I was disconnected from it. Now I am fully engaged in homesteading activities. I raise chickens, have a small home garden where we grow herbs and tomatoes, and I’m a key member of Mildred’s Daughters Urban Farm working group in Stanton Heights.

First Dig

Until I was 10, my family lived in a small town in northeastern PA. I was a pretty intense kid and in addition to spending large chunks of time watching the minute hand on a clock move or staring at the sun as it slowly disappeared behind the hill, I spent countless hours playing in the un-planted areas of our garden. A favorite thing for my sister and me to do was dig for worms in the spring. We would go out with flashlights and get the juiciest night crawlers for my dad to take fishing.

One of my first memories was of picking scallions; they were the first things to come up in the spring. We also grew potatoes, carrots and garlic, and our neighbor had a big old rhubarb plant. My father made sauerkraut in a huge wooden barrel, and once he ground his own horseradish by hand.

Green Granny

Both my grandmothers had gardens, too, and were very green by today’s standards. My Grandma Morley was always doing “crazy” things like throwing coffee grounds on her plants and saving her food scraps and paper in a milk carton on the sink…even tissues! She had a makeshift rain barrel, and she saved her bath water to flush the toilet! My favorite food at Grandma’s was macaroni and tomatoes made with elbow macaroni and canned tomatoes from her garden…she made special batches without seeds just for me.

Happy as a Clam?

Are clams really happy? I mean, what do they have to be so happy about. Lobsters taste good, they should be happy, but I guess their lives are pretty stressful…I’ve seen them in the ocean and they’re pretty skiddish…backing into their hole at the bottom of the sea when we’re just lookin’ at them! Clams have that hard shell, so maybe they just appear happy. No one can see them and we think they’re all content sitting there in their shells. But I guess that’s one reason to be happy, they’re safe. There are few incidental predators that can attack them. They’re pretty secure, and they see tragedy all day with other creatures getting eaten right n front of them. Like little fish and shrimp, even sea urchins with their big spines get eaten. The clam just sits there, filtering out his food from the sea water that floats by. But then again, they aren't so happy when the sea otter comes by. Or if they’re in a tide pool and a raccoon grabs them! Who’s happy then? Not the clam!

I was just thinking, of course, that I’m happy as a clam. I’m very content with life. Not sure how I’ve made it through this year + being unemployed (oh, yea, unemployment benefits!) but I have and I’m not stressed. Today I was offered a job, just for 5 weeks, but it’s something I really love to do, so I took it. Doesn’t start until April 16^th, so I’ll still be able to get some stuff done that I wanted to before I go back to work. The list was made back in October 2008 when I first was officially with out a job. I can’t let the second winter being unemployed go by without finishing that list. And since there are only 20 days left, I better get on it! I’ll update, I promise.

Oh, as for the gap in postings, I was a resolution, and as most resolutions go, I broke it. Sue me!