The Urban Homestead

The calendar may disagree, but spring has arrived in Colorado.

And so begins a new season of work for the homesteader, urban or otherwise. Gerard and I were talking this morning about cycles (not the bi- or motor- kind). Successful athletes train heavy, punctuated by periods of active rest or "back-off" sessions. Most nutritionists agree that periods of fasting or, at the very least staggering you caloric intake, can help keep you lean. Even the concept of weekends offers respite from the daily grind, a cycle of work and rest. And so too the farmer and backyard gardener must stir from winter's rest to begin the planting that will end with the harvest. Nature, indeed everything I can think of, runs in cycles of on and off periods. Maybe that's why I get so much pleasure from abandoning "fresh" tomatoes in January and savoring them only during the summer months when they can be grown in my back yard. It just feels natural.

Of course that's not the only reason, but I have to say I have a much greater appreciation for some of the things which are most mundane to the average supermarket shopper. (I know, I was one of those supermarket shoppers most of my life.) Never before was I as excited about the warm months as since I moved to a place where winters are long and intense. Never have I looked upon a ripe red tomato or dark crisp vegetables with such adoration as I have since I gave up the supermarket. Never have I savored a hot slice of bread slathered with butter as I have since I started baking my own bread and churning my own butter. Why? Because I now know how wonderful these things really are. I no longer take them for granted because they aren't granted to me anytime I want them. I know how precious they are and how much work it takes to get them. When I was a child my mom told me how, when she was a little girl growing up dirt poor, for Christmas they would sometimes get a little fruit and it was a big treat. I remember I snubbed my nose and thought what a lame Christmas that must have been! Of course I was spoiled by her childhood standards. We weren't rich, but anything I wanted to eat was in the kitchen any given day of the year. An apple or an orange meant nothing to me. I wanted armloads of plastic toys. Can I honestly say my childhood was better having had the "luxury" of caring about an abundance of plastic toys more than a few pieces of fresh fruit? Life seemed so unfair if my mom wouldn't (or couldn't) buy me a toy I demanded. I never knew what it was like to long for something that could actually impact my life, like food. How might that have affected me as an adult? How might that today influence my ability to deal with the curve balls life throws?

My quest to be self sufficient, local, healthy and as free as possible from corporate overlords has taught me a lot of exciting and difficult lessons. It has taught me a lot of skills that are lost on most Americans but that at one time were quite commonplace. It has given me an entirely new perspective on the world, a much greater appreciation for the things in my life, and a sense of wholeness and joy that no amount of material things could ever bring me. My most recent conquest: bread. I've been baking my own bread for a couple of years, but until recently I was still a slave to the little plastic packets of commercial yeast. Obviously, those are new fangled products invented by someone who wanted to make a buck. Specifically, it was a man named Charles Fleischmann who introduced pre-made yeast packets to the world in 1876. Yet people have been baking bread, even leavened (risen) bread, since the stone age. How did we manage all those millennia until yeast packets became widespread in the 20th century? One answer: sourdough. After a few failures and months of digging, I finally was able to cut through all the myths and misinformation floating around the internet to discover the delightfully simple formula for bringing this ancient culinary wonder into my home. Mix flour and water and feed it daily for two weeks. That's it. At the end of two weeks you have a jar full of strong sourdough culture that can be propagated indefinitely. How amazing is this: the very organisms you need to make a fluffy loaf of bread live in abundance in the air and on the very flour that will become your bread. All you need to do is coax them into a dense symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast with a little bit of food and warm water. With your sourdough starter you can make all sorts of delicious, nutritious breads and pancakes, no mass produced industrial plastic packets of genetically modified superyeast is necessary. That, my friends, is an every day miracle.

So it was on this sunny Sunday morning over my first batch of fluffy sourdough pancakes, slathered with home churned butter and preserves made from last summer's peaches, that Gerard and I discussed the cycles of our lives. Though I gave up church and organized religion many years ago, I suppose this is our way of honoring God or the Universe or the Great Spirit and all the true wonders of this world. Our church is our chemical-free home, stocked with clean foods grown by the loving toil of real people, our neighbors. Our tithe is the labor we invest in growing, preserving and preparing the nutrition given to us by the rich soils beneath our feet and the warm sunshine that shines on our faces. And our prayers are understanding the miracle of it all and never taking for granted the luxury of having so much good food to eat.

Eckhart Tolle believes that all the beauty of nature spanning the vast expanse of space and time was unknown until humans, in all our sentient complexity, came along to tell her how beautiful she is. I suppose that's another reason why I spend so much time figuring out how to churn butter and make sourdough. It's my way of honoring the beauty of nature and saying I acknowledge that I am part of her and her endless cycles.