We Have Reached The End (Or The Beginning)

“Find what you love and let it kill you”—Charles Bukowski

            If I’ve learned anything this year it’s that farming can break you—and it will. It comes in crashing waves and then calls you back with the sweetest, most irresistible whisper than can only be calmed by the sweet smell of tomato vines lingering on your skin. They key, it seems, is finding a way to remember the things that call your knees to the soil. For me it is the smell of vegetables I have grown simmering in a dish that I will share with others, the long conversations over hours of weeding, the love for my brothers and sisters that comes naturally when I truly feel how connected we all are to this vast world we have grown upon and the people we have grown with. I carry these reasons at the base of my spine and on days when it doesn’t want to bend, when it cannot bend, I pull them out and let them sit around me. There are days where these words do not match up to the crop failure or the pests or the back pain, where you can idealize forever and that will not change the fact that part of your field is flooded. But so far, I always go back. Farming has an incredible way of bringing up the failures and forcing you to deal with them, forcing you to break and build again and again.

            I have learned more about myself this year than anything else, I have learned things that I love, things that don’t work for me, but most importantly I have learned what sustains me and allows my creativity and generosity to flow. I now know well the precarious balance of loving people, loving this earth, and loving myself; farming has taught me how to face that head on. And, yes, I do say this with scars from bug bites on my ankles, a back I have to ice fairly regularly, calluses on my hands and feet (I’m honestly surprised I didn’t hurt myself worse this year). It is beautiful and it is dirty and I cannot imagine living any other way.

            Now, having moved to Raleigh with the intention of being still as my next adventure, I look back on this past year and what lingers at the corners of my eyes are the people I met and the work they are doing to make this world as it was intended to be. Farming is not just about growing food, it’s about love and generosity and solidarity. It is about facing the realities of loss of topsoil, fracking, racism, bullying, war, sexism, mountaintop removal, death, to name only a few. All of these issues came up this year and finally I was in an environment where I felt like I could find a way to do something about it. It is becoming more evident to me that this lifestyle of connection to and dependence upon the land and the community around you is the way that I want to pursue goodness and change. I now face the challenge of finding how to live this way being settled in a city for an extended period of time and I think I’m up for it. As I slowly process the fact that I won’t be traveling or farming on a daily basis for at least a year it induces some panic, some excitement, and a lot of creativity to discover how to include what I’ve learned in my life here. But I have returned a completely different person with passions I had not allowed myself to hear before this trip. I cannot express how thankful I am to those of you who have supported us in so many different ways: with money, letters, food, friendship, books, housing, etc. Thank you to the wonderful people of Koinonia Farm, Green Hill Farm, McGirt Family Farm, Rabbit Moon Farms, Waxwing Farm, Edible Forrest Urban Farm, Bread and Puppet Theatre, and Blue-Zee Farm, you have impacted me more than you will ever know. I will never forget this year or anyone I have met along the way. Having experienced farming for what it truly is: hard work, community, good food, and more than anything else, love, I can say that I have found what I love.

So, with nostalgia and excitement, on to the next adventure!

–Lindsay

Blue-Zee Farm

Our final month was spent at Blue-Zee Farm in Penobscot, Maine, a beautiful little coastal area in the southern part of Maine. Blue-Zee was different than all the other farms we had worked on thus far being the most business-minded and intensive. They farm only 1 1/2 acres of organic vegetables and have several blueberry fields–which are wild low-bush blueberries, a variety I had never seen before. Farming in Maine is especially difficult because of the short season, they have to make their whole income for the year in three short months. So we went to four different farmers markets (3 of which I got to help sell at, which I really enjoyed), sold to the co-op in town, sold to what was more or less an online CSA. and several restaurants in the area. This meant the majority of our work was planting and weeding on Mondays and Tuesdays and harvesting every other day for market. They have a set schedule for the whole summer of what to plant when–they plant lettuce every week, beets every couple weeks, and so on. All of their fields and greenhouses are on a yearly rotational system–their planning was incredibly impressive. 

Blue-Zee was a good farm to end on, I learned so much about what it means to be a certified organic farm and the business-side of farming, and to be honest it was really hard. We had one other intern working with Lauren and I named Steffi, from Spain, which was awesome because I got to practice my Spanish, and also because she’s really cool. Over lunch one day we found ourselves already talking about what we were going to eat that night for dinner and realized our whole lives consisted of growing food and eating food (which is not a complaint at all, the simplicity there is beautiful). But so much work and so little social interaction was hard for me. There are other farms within about 5 miles from Blue-Zee that also have interns working on them, so we connected with other farmworkers and had our own little farm apprentice community that helped a lot and allowed for a change of pace. I realized while I was working there how much I need community to be the focus of whatever I end up doing, something I already knew but had not felt so fully. I’m sure that knowing it was the end of our trip had a huge factor in my whole experience in Maine. Needless to say, endings are difficult. 

But this is not meant to be the final post, so I’ll leave that part for later and just post some lovely pictures from Maine!

The ocean from Stonington, a little town where we sold our produce at the farmers market

The beaches in Maine are rocky and tree-lined, so beautiful and different from NC!

The propagation greenhouse–all of their vegetables ares tarted in trays in here

Stonington Farmers Market and classical music

This is what the barn looked like after harvesting and packaging up different orders

Found this in the Co-Op in Blue HIll, Bread and Puppet followed us

Their lovely dog, Annie, dressing up for the evening

The farmers’ daughter, Julia!

Blue-Zee Farm Crew

The barn/our humble abode

Greenhouses and vegetables

In case you were curious what a blueberry field in Maine looks like this is it! The grow wild low-bush blueberries

Our final night in Maine was spent around the fire with our intern friends and the beautiful full moon

 

–Lindsay

 

Farming and Activism

Every year Bread and Puppet has a main issue that they focus on during the pageant on Sundays. This year, the focus was on the Tar Sands oil pipeline and the definite loss of the caribou population in Vermont should the pipeline leak. This pipeline will go from Canada through the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to Portland, ME for export. I’m going to throw a few facts at you about Tar Sands Oil from Tar Sands Free Vermont:

-It is laden with poisonous heavy metals, sulfur, and other carcinogens and neurotoxins

-Removing tar sands oil from the ground has been called the most environmentally damaging project on Earth

-It is hot, acidic, and abrasive, and must be diluted with toxic additives and pumped at high pressure to be moved through a pipeline

-Pipelines carrying tar sands oil have a greater likelihood of leaks and failure

tarsandsfreevermont.org

We were invited to join in on the Fourth of July Parades and, of course, decided that we had to be a part of a production while we were there! So we were dressed up as caribou during the parade, and by this I mean the caribou were made out of cardboard for the head with a branch in the top for the antlers, and a bamboo pole with a white sheet hanging off to cover our heads and bodies.

As we walked through the parade we were supposed to walk and dance around to the circus music the band was playing behind us when suddenly the Tar Sands Monster would come and kill all the caribou. There were also people on stilts dancing around and children dressed up as butterflies with someone carrying a sing that read “Butterflies against the end of the world”.

It was such a cool experience. We participated in the first parade in Cabot, VT (where the cheese is made–yes, we did get cheese samples at the end of the parade) and then watched the parade that afternoon in Barton, VT. The difference between the parades was striking: the first was very receptive, everyone was walking in the parade and the crowd was involved; the second was pretty much just cars driving by with people waving. The entire fire department and police department were in the parade, local businesses, the Free Masons, a wrestling organization which had a float equipped with a wrestling ring, and only a few cars in front of Bread and Puppet was an oil company. Barton is a town that the Tar Sands Pipeline will go directly through, and the town is completely divided over the issue. It was fascinating to hear the woman announcing everyone as they passed and right after announcing the oil company she announced the Bread and Puppet Brass Band as the “Tar Sands End Of The World Brass Band”. I never expected to experience so much contradiction in such a small place. I was struck by how poignant it is that Bread and Puppet has chosen an issue so close to home and is informing people through uncommon avenues such as Fourth of July parades. I wonder what the audience on Barton thought about the performance and how many were aware of the issue. They have a lot of support in Vermont and they have pissed off quite a few people, and there is something really powerful about continuing to perform and participate in such a divided community.

A lot of my time there was spent thinking about how I relate to their particular form of protest and what activism looks like for me. There are so many different ways to take action, and it was beautiful to see the different approaches that people took, even within that community; there were people who danced, wrote, played instruments, did puppetry, cooked, etc. The more time I spent with them, the more I realized how much I respected and loved their form of protest, but puppetry is not my approach; however, farming for and supporting people who are working more in the public eye was much closer to what I would like to do, I think it may have been the perfect set-up for me. I appreciated the way that the community would stay informed about what is happening in the world in order to find a way to respond. It has become so evident to me how important it is to have many different approaches to working for equality and peace and found myself comparing the different ways people along our trip are involved in their communities and working for this end. Farming and writing seem to be the base for me, I can envision the incredible social and environmental justice work that can be done with growing good food as the jumping off point. Not only will I be able to work with my passions through farming but I can support other organizations and people doing similar work with my produce, my land, my presence, or whatever else they might need. Everyone eats and everyone needs good food; it just takes talking to people, spending time with them, and eating with them (and not just your own food) to build relationships and community. It is incredible to me that every single farm we have worked on has some focus on social and environmental justice embedded in their lifestyle. It seems, not surprisingly, that farming encourages and fuels this kind of work.

The creativity of Bread and Puppet inspired me to find beauty in my work and respond through writing and drawing, through conversations and building relationships. This is where I see myself bringing about change, quite literally starting with the grassroots. 

–Lindsay

Puppetry and Poetry

Darlings,

We are the light

That wakes the earth from its dreams every morning,

The beautiful strangers carving footprints into the ground;

When will we remember that we were not born here?

That we have only come here to rest?

The thread has unwound from our spines –

We cannot stitch each bone back into its rightful place.

Disembodied, we float and adjust,

Not used to this weightless existence.

It is now that we realize what all we once carried.

 

Rise and come alive,

Bring along the peace of sleep,

The fog and knowing of hazy eyes,

The clarity of life held in that first waking hour,

The stillness of tired hands.

Awaken and follow the sound of trumpets,

Clanging cymbals you did not know were carried in your feet,

Reveal that you are music.

Rise and come alive.

 

Rise and come alive,

The speech of mountains lies buried in your throat,

A language waiting to fall heavy from your eaves

In a frenzy of boundless glory, uncontrollable beauty,

Spiraling with the wind,

Remember – we were not born here.

We have only come here to rest.

 

Stir gently from your sleep

With sweet dreams left hanging in starlight

And join the woodland creatures in a dance of memory,

Reliving a shared history;

You have been here longer than you think.

The rustling leaves will revive a spirit of belonging

And your shadow will lay claim to all that it loves,

Carrying with soft hands

The things you cannot hold.

 

Let the thundering sky open your chest

And swallow the fearful moments

That have buried doubt in the lining of your hull.

Know that certainty is not as great as it seems.

 

Shout because you have a voice and want to use it.

Shout because you are free and in love with the green earth.

Shout because broken can be fixed,

Because there is dirt beneath your fingernails,

Because you are full of volume,

Because the breeze moves every flower,

Because each day is full of magic,

Shout

Because all you have left to do

Is grow.

 

Rise and come alive, dear children.

Tread softly, and remember –

You were not born here.

You have only come here to rest.

–Lauren

‘How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm now that they’ve seen Paris?’

Arriving at Bread and Puppet felt like we entered a time warp. We pulled up to what appeared to be Bread and Puppet, an old white farmhouse on the road across from an old, colorful school bus, people milling about everywhere. We happened to get into a confusing turn-around scenario with a different car (of course) and suddenly Daniel walks up to our car wearing a sombrero, which turned out to be his gardening hat from the costume room. The first thing we did at Bread and Puppet was to hop in during the middle of a tour of the museum with Elka, one of the founders. The museum is full of old, retired puppets used in past shows such as an Oscar Romero puppet, a series of puppets used during the Vietnam War protests, and so on. And when I say puppets I mean life size or bigger papier mache puppets on sticks, heads that you can wear, hand puppets, puppets to be hung from the ceiling, and the like. This world of varying colors and images, some very sharp, some softer and subtler, felt so surreal—surreal seemed to be the word of choice for our two weeks spent at Bread and Puppet. Elka, short in stature with graying hair, a low voice, and a huge smile, led us through the museum with a fascination in her eyes that only encouraged my infatuation with the place. She had been part of this movement from the beginning and still finds delight in leading a tour and laying eyes on her creations from years past. She told us about the different puppet shows, the different protests, the methods behind making the puppets. Unfortunately we only caught the second half of the tour and then had to end quickly because the puppet show was about to begin. Before the summer really started Bread and Puppet Theatre had a puppet show every Sunday afternoon, and we happened to come on the last Sunday afternoon show. After that, they were showing the puppet show on Friday evenings and then having the “Nothing-Is-Not-Ready” Circus and Pageant on Sunday afternoons.

            The puppet show started out in the back yard complete with puppets, costumes, and the brass band. The first part lasted about 20 minutes and we were then instructed to follow the band to another part of the yard where a hand-puppet show was, and finally we entered a barn called The Dirt Floor Cathedral, which had wooden bleachers and the stage was the dirt floor at the front with a backdrop. The show they performed here was called “The Situation” and is the show that they have been touring with. It is about the situation we as a society have found ourselves in, and examines the rushed, detached, uncritical life we have become accustomed to. There is a sheet hanging on the side of the barn with poetic prose, written by Peter Schumann, that was read throughout the puppet show. It starts out by saying: “The situation is situated at the top of Mt. Everest and tumbles into valleys below. Every morning when the alarm clock rings it brushes its teeth and drives off to its prison job. It laughs like a fool and preaches like a preacher in high-falutin’ words as if it knew better. It slaves for money like a millionaire, gets sick and tired of itself and then dances the night through…”

            The puppet show ended and everyone was invited outside to have bread and aioli, we learned later that Peter is constantly making bread and serves it at every performance they have. So we mingled and explored, Daniel gave us a tour of the farm and the gardens, got us settled in our tent, and we ate dinner with everyone. Of course, two people at Bread and Puppet were from Boone, our college town, one of which I had seen many times at the coffee shop I frequented sitting outside with his dog. It is amazing the small world of farming and alternative lifestyles, I should have known we would find Boonies there, but it was a real treat, a taste of home so far away. On the other side of that, there were people there from all over the world: Puerto Rico, Germany, Iraq, Qatar, England, Canada, and France, to name a few. I never expected to meet so many people from abroad in rural Vermont, but it made for an amazingly, beautifully, eclectic group. As we met people they kept telling us that we came on the right day because they were having a party that night, and they were right. When it started getting dark we walked over to the circus field and at the top was a huge bonfire. People gathered, drank beer, built a fire, and suddenly the brass band got together and started playing. Everyone knew the circus tunes, such as this lovely one, everyone sang along and danced around the fire. Again, it was so surreal. I found myself completely enchanted by the music, by the atmosphere, and though I was exhausted from traveling couldn’t help but fully enjoy myself. I was instantly struck by how comfortable everyone was with themselves there, if they wanted to dance they danced, if they wanted to sing they sang, there was an air of openness I had never experienced before and found to be incredibly refreshing.

From there on we instantly jumped into life at Bread and Puppet, we ate together for every meal, sang together in the mornings, had siesta after lunch every day until 2, gardened, and went swimming after work almost every single day we were there. Shadow Lake and Claire’s Pond were our two swimming holes and both were incredibly beautiful, clear water, amazing mountains in the background. It was the most perfect way to end the day. In the evenings we usually hung out with people, we made some amazing friends, watched the sunset, sat on the porch and enjoyed each other’s company. We had no cell phone service or internet, so people actually spent time with each other instead of with their phones. I absolutely loved being there. The thing that still sticks with me is how much life there was at Bread and Puppet. All day people were being creative through puppetry, gardening, cooking, etc. It is a lifestyle that fosters creativity and care for the world around you and I cannot even begin to express how glad I am that we landed in such an enchanting place.

–Lindsay

 

“God sleeps in the Gaza Strip and man alone’s left alone to live with it”

There are no words to describe the sadness I feel today after listening to the news and hearing more about the current violence happening between Palestine and Israel – mostly death tolls – no words to express the heartbreak and fear I feel for the beautiful Palestinians I have met and heard tell stories of their lives and the struggles they face living as refugees on their own land under the oppressive regime of the Israeli Army, no words to categorize the sense of injustice that burns my throat as I harvest vegetables freely in the sunlight of beautiful coastal Maine and think about Palestinian farmers who build caves underground to prevent destruction of their buildings and have their olive trees – the very tree that grows a peace offering from its branches – repeatedly cut down and demolished by the Israeli regime, only to continue living with spirits of peace, perseverance, and undying hope. There are simply no words.

As humans, it is right for us to be affected by the tragedies others face simply because we are all people. I feel this human connection today very heavily and shed tears for those who have wept their whole lives and have no tears left to shed. I know that there are people in both Palestine and Israel who wish desperately for a peace that has not come. Why war exists will always be a mystery to me, but I do know this: hate is a choice and can therefore be un-chosen.

I was talking with a friend recently about how difficult it is to hear all of the devastating news stories about violence, oppression, war, injustice – atrocities that happen throughout the world every day and seem endless, unstoppable. We were discussing how to deal with the feelings of depression and overwhelming helplessness that accompany an awareness that the world is not as it should be. We decided that first, it is crucial to be aware and second, it is crucial to maintain hope. The quest for peace begins in the heart and mind of each individual. To combat hate, we must love. To combat destruction, we must create. To combat oppression, we must uplift. To combat fear, we must interact. These individual victories count for something – they have an influence, a positive impact, perhaps resulting in the softening of a hard heart; kindness is extremely powerful.

In light of the current situation and stories of ongoing fear and hate, the ever-wise words of Macklemore seem an appropriate ending to this post: “Whatever God we believe in, we come from the same one. Strip away the fear – underneath, it’s all the same love. It’s about time we raised up.”

 

–Lauren

How We Ended Up In An Alternate Universe

Lauren and I spent the past two weeks living in the woods at Bread and Puppet Theatre in Glover, VT. It’s somewhat amazing that we ended up there, a strange turn of events that I’m so thankful for. While in Norristown our plans for the rest of our trip kind of went to hell: the first farm in Maine we were supposed to work on forgot about us and Jaimie’s grandmother passed away and she decided to go home, and so it was just Lauren and I with no idea what to do for two weeks. We sorrowfully got Jaimie on a train from Philadelphia to Raleigh and had one week left in Norristown. Our friend Daniel, who we met at Koinonia, the very first farm we worked on, is now managing the gardens for Bread and Puppet Theatre, and knowing we were going to New England we had mentioned the idea of visiting him. So I sent Daniel a quick last minute message asking if he needed help for two weeks and sure enough he did. So, fate took us to Vermont.

The final week in Norristown was great and sad and too fast, we had a huge harvest for the CSA, built trellises for the cucumber plants, weeded a huge portion of the garden,

and had some insane adventures with our wonderful hosts. Our second to last night we were escorted all around Philadelphia to eat vegan Philly cheesesteaks, vegan ice cream, a bowling alley with a bar where we sat around a fire on a very warm night, and then capped it all off with a few hours of dancing at a local Mexican restaurant (which Lauren wrote a poem about in her last post). We left Saturday morning after goodbye breakfast and being serenaded by a yodeling friend–who owns an awesome business doing permaculture based landscaping in Norristown called Feed the Burbs, check it out. Slightly disoriented, we hit the road.

The drive from Norristown to Vermont was a very strange one, the first leg of our trip without Jaimie, leaving people we had grown close with, going to a place where we had no idea what to expect. It felt like limbo, honestly, everything in the past week happened so quickly. All we had heard about Bread and Puppet Theatre was from our friends at Koinonia who said: “Daniel is working at a puppet farm” whatever that means. Lauren got a text asking what puppet seeds look like, and the jokes continued. After a little bit of research we found that Bread and Puppet Theatre was started about 50 years ago in New York City putting on puppet shows about local issues such as rats, unfair rent, poverty, etc. They then moved up to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (yes that is what it’s called) and began making bigger puppet shows of protest starting with the Vietnam War and continuing with new topics every year. It turns out that this theatre is the most well known of it’s kind, and we stumbled upon it. But even with this little knowledge about it we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We arrived right before their Sunday afternoon puppet show and were instantly welcomed and thrown into the world of puppetry. Here are some pictures so you can get an idea of the alternate universe we inhabited for two weeks:

This was one of the puppet shows we saw only about an hour after arriving

The sign in the bathroom

Daniel giving us a tour on a lovely evening

My view from the shade spot by the garden

View of the outhouses and beautiful mountains from the garden

The garden across the road, otherwise known as The Flats

Backyard Garden

Another part of the puppet show on our first afternoon

The ‘Nothing is not Ready’ Circus

The Apple Orchard

Blue Mama puppet in the pine forest

The pond we swam at almost every day

The magical pine forest with memorials to puppeteers who have passed away

 

–Lindsay

Dancing Together

Last night, along with a series of other wonderful adventures throughout Philadelphia, we went to a local hispanic dance club. We have been planning to go the whole time we’ve been here because a friend of Joel’s invited us when we first arrived in Norristown, and we finally got the chance. Having never really been to a dance club, I had no idea what to expect. The minute we arrived, everyone there was extremely welcoming and happy that we had come to join them. The men and women were eager to teach the members of our group what kind of dances went along with the music that was playing and were very patient as we tripped over our own feet. I really liked that for the most part, everyone danced with everyone else, switching partners throughout the night. They simply come together every week to have a fun time, socialize, and dance. My appreciation for the kindness and acceptance that was extended to us grew throughout the night. Everyone there was an amazing and experienced dancer, yet they stopped dancing with their friends who knew how to do all the fancy twirls and footwork to invite those of us new to the scene to dance with them, to learn, and to be a part of their group. We were even later told by the DJ that he had played more music than usual because we were there and seemed to be enjoying ourselves on the dance floor. It did not matter that they didn’t know us and that we had never met – we had come to join them, and they were glad we were there.

It is quite an understatement to say that relations between different cultures within the US are fraught with difficulty, misunderstanding, and sometimes even hate. On a large scale, the problems that – for whatever reason – tend to arise seem far too complicated and deep for reconciliation and acceptance to ever occur. That’s why I think that healing occurs in the small things – on a personal level. There are so many topics, issues, etc. that we tread upon very lightly or simply skirt around. Where there seems to be no answer, no solution, the simplest course of action is to form relationships with individual human beings. It seems so basic, so obvious, but how often do we find ourselves immersed in cultures that we have not grown up in and therefore probably do not know much about? Stereotypes and generalizations result from a lack of understanding. Human beings love to categorize things, including other humans, into boxes that make sense in our heads – it is how we organize and understand our world. The problem comes when our categorizations imprint us with negative or derogatory impressions of what other people are like. For some reason, people find it easier when they do not know someone to group them in a way that they are comfortable with, often associating their depictions with either fear or superiority. Obviously, this is a terrible way to decide what you think of other people, especially because if we hold on to our loose perceptions for long enough, they become our truths. So what’s the simplest way to re-create your perception of someone you do not know very much about? Spend time with them! When barriers are broken down or crossed over and everything is laid bare, people are just people. Differences are how we learn; they are what makes life wonderful. If we want to know each other, we have to come together. And what better way to come together than to join one another in the beautiful art of dance?

 

I was inspired by last night’s experience to write this poem. For me, it speaks to a lot of things, but especially to the hope and revival that I find in the wonderful magic of dancing.

If dance overtakes you,

Then let it come.

Let it move you.

Let it wash and make you free.

Let it bend your stiff bones into an unrecognizable shape,

Unfolding in your marrow the deep yearnings of your hollows,

Mending the silent cracks you tiptoe along,

Trying not to wake the ghosts

That keep you company in your sleep.

Put to rest the roaring lions

That claw the flesh behind your tongue –

You are not the soul they mean to destroy;

They are only passing through.

Your swiftly whirling feet

Have finally returned to the light they were born into,

Gliding inside the mouth of honesty,

Full of movement that came without question,

That stole in through your edges

And smoothed their sharpness with the rough grace of its hands.

You are mending the world with your restlessness.

No one may have ever told you

That being still will break you.

Dance –

Press and draw the air around you into a frenzy,

Shaping the wind with the pull and heave of your lungs,

Feel it as it holds you,

This child of moon and earth,

You are skin stretched over soil and bathed in sunlight;

This is how you grow.

Seeds will fall from your limbs

as you sway and flow, you beautiful tree –

What you plant along the way

Will outlive you.

They will try and tell you that because your roots are deep,

You are confined to a place.

Prove them wrong.

Let your choreography transcend lines

That before may not have been visible.

There is no line that is set so deep

It cannot be erased

When spoken to

In the language of dance.

 

–Lauren

The Dumpster Provides

Dumpster Diving is a way of life here at Edible Forrest Urban Farm, they go once or twice a week and feed themselves as well as some neighbors and friends off of the food that is salvaged. For those of you who are unfamiliar with dumpster diving, it is the practice of jumping into dumpsters and taking the food that is not bad out of it. Now, before you completely freak out, let me explain that the food is in bags, so it’s not just open in the dumpster and grocery stores throw out food for all kinds of ridiculous reasons before it is bad. Dumpster diving is a pretty common practice and is often a criticism of the food system as a whole and the insane amount of food waste in this country (about 40% of the food in the US goes uneaten into landfills which then releases methane, the worst greenhouse gas). There’s a really great documentary called Dive! that goes into the lives of dumpster divers and their philosophy behind what they do, you should check it out it’s very well done. Stores will throw out food if it is near it’s expiration date (even cans and packaged food that will take ages to go bad), if there is a case of bottles and one breaks the whole box will get thrown away, if there is a case of tomatoes and one is moldy the whole case will get thrown away, etc. I think you get the picture.

Since we’ve been here everything we’ve eaten is from the dumpster, and it is amazing how well we have eaten–they even have really fancy apple beer imported from Belgium. Once someone goes dumpster diving the next few hours and the next day we take time processing, freezing, and sorting through all of the food salvaged. They have an amazing pantry downstairs of canned goods they have salvaged and the refrigerator and multiple freezers are full of good food. This is a picture of a breakfast I made one morning (I know, so hipster of me) in hopes of showing how much good food is wasted in this country: potato pancakes with tomato, onions, peppers, and avocado on top along with a blueberry, banana, strawberry smoothie.

Now tell me that dumpster food is gross!

Last week after realizing that two different groups of us had planned to go dumpster diving at the same we decided to have a contest. I went with Caleb and Stacy to one of their regular dumpsters while Lauren, Olivia, and Joel ended up going to Delaware for another plentiful dumpster. None of us knew what we were getting ourselves into, we hit the jackpot. We got bags full of different kinds of chips, cases of hummus, boxes of tomatoes, cases of soy yogurt (especially exciting for the Vegans of the adventure), tons of strawberries and peaches, to name a few things.  Here are some photos of the abundance:

 

With the excess of fruit, tomatoes, chips, and hummus we decided to have a smoothie, hummus, salsa, and chips party. Caleb invited the couch surfing community in Philadelphia and we got to have a lovely night of meeting new people and making them food. Couch surfing, for those of you who do not know, is a website/database of people in each city who will let you stay on their couch if you’re traveling or travelers looking for a place to stay. Every host and every traveler is rated based on past couch surfing experiences, it’s a pretty cool network. The couch surfing community in Philadelphia is really active and welcoming, Caleb and Joel host travelers fairly often, and there are always meet ups around Philadelphia for the community. It was awesome to meet everyone and hear their stories. This was a night of everything that I love–good food bringing people together. It’s amazing what abundance and community an excess (or waste in some peoples’ eyes) can create.

The dumpster provides good food–and even friends!

–Lindsay

Tent of Nations Update

Tent of Nations Update

When we were at Koinonia I wrote a blog post about the Tree of Life Conference held about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We were lucky to have to chance to meet and talk with some visitors from Palestine including Daoud, whose family owns Tent of Nations. Recently, the Israeli army came and tore down all of the olive trees on their farm. They continue to fight for peace and for their land. It was good news to see that the BBC wrote an article about their struggle, click the link above to view the article.