Summertime, and the Living Is Busy
Growing More Than Crops
by Gowan Batist
Spring crops are being harvested at the break of dawn, and fall crops are going in the ground. The beaches are territory ceded to the tourists for the time being, and the nights are short and precious.
The canner starts to rumble as we put away pickles and the first salsa. It will build in intensity, a propane dragon on the damp fall porch, until the frost drives it into hibernation. But for now the kitchen work is limited to an occasional batch on a warm evening.
This is the time, ten years ago, that Eat Mendocino started to feel less like a survival project and more like a fun exploration of the bounty that exists in this county. We are blessed with a diversity of growing conditions here—the coastal fog keeps greens sweet and abundant and roots tender, while the inland heat starts to crank out peppers and tomatoes. We can really have it all here, and that starts to feel not just obvious, but luxurious in the summer. Meals no longer mean raiding the pantry for jars or the freezer for packages, but consist of the smallest possible amount of effort, sparing the time for the field. We eat fresh-made herbed cheese scooped up on chopped spears of cucumber, carrot, zucchini, and fresh snap peas. Tilting on the balance point of summer solstice, we are taking very little out of the pantry and putting very little into it, but living happily hand-to-mouth in the garden.
The process of getting to this moment in time has not been easy. I have to admit that I initially felt some smugness, looking at the rows of glass jars like jewels in the pantry, the four chest freezers, the security of stocked bins of dry goods, and the unbelievable luxury of the MendoLake Food Hub delivering local produce to our door. I thought that this spring and early summer would be easier, and it has been in the sense of abundance of food stores … we wouldn’t have made it otherwise.
Ten years ago I loved food with all my heart, and I believed in it. My problem was logistics and storage, the amount of calories saved, the budget to buy food, and the space to grow it for myself, on top of the program I was managing. This year, I have had a well stocked larder, but I hated the sight and smell of food for months. This was especially hard at the crucial stage of mid-spring, when the new produce had barely come in and the storage produce was on its last legs, with long tendrils of green sprouts emerging from the onions in the bin, as if they were making a break for it.
The first crop I ever grew, and likely the last I ever will, is winter squash and pumpkins. They represent beauty and abundance and security to me. They are wild flowering vines in summer, impossible to see through in their density, until they suddenly swoon dramatically with the changing season, dropping their green robe to the ground and revealing the fruit in all their glory, glowing orange against the gray ground, brighter than the low sun. That is several months in the future from now. We are still in the thick of the green jungle, in the place of verdant wild promise, but not fulfillment. Nothing is certain yet, nothing is ripe except pollen for the bees. I’m in the same way as the pumpkins—due in October.
Being pregnant during Eat Mendocino has presented some distinct challenges. Instead of diligently cooking for the family every day like I had planned, the first part of this year left me at times unable to even open the fridge without running for the bathroom. I had nausea and food aversions so intense that I resented the fact that I had to eat to live. Most of what I forced myself to swallow wouldn’t stay down, and it wasn’t even clear how much good it was doing me. I would have lived on sunlight like a plant or filtered plankton like a coral if I could have—I longed to stop thinking, seeing, touching, smelling, or tasting food. I cried when I had to eat more than once.
That’s a bit of a conundrum when my creative, social, and professional framework for this year was tied to food as the center of life. I became pretty severely hypoglycemic by 10 weeks. My hands and feet were always cold, I shook, and I was miserable with an unstoppable cycle of nausea. My midwife sternly but gently told me what I had to do. The cure for what was ailing me was to eat, preferably protein, every hour.
This seemed like an impossible, tortuous task. The meals we make require preparation. We don’t have snacks. We don’t even have a microwave. I struggled. My body was telling me two diametrically opposed things at the same time—that every food, no matter how much my conscious mind knew I loved it, was disgusting and unsafe, and also that I urgently had to eat. The advice given to people in my situation was ridiculously inapplicable: Keep saltines next to my bed? My neighbors, Cam and Megan, made me crackers with Mendocino Grain Project wheat, our salt, and Leu’s rendered goat fat. Carry around string cheese? Clara and Noah made me little round pucks of salty chevre. Eat nuts? I’m allergic to walnuts, some of the only nuts available in Mendocino County. We bought a bag of almonds while traveling through Yolo County, and whispered a little apology to their aquifer. The nuts really do help. We found some workable solutions, and through it all, my partners Morgan and Hunter were there, feeding me patiently, picking up my chores, tending to the things I was finding increasingly difficult to do, and loving me.
Projects like Eat Mendocino tend to draw some criticism for not perfectly encapsulating whatever a given person’s perception of food culture should be. It seems easier for a lot of people, whatever the issue at hand is, to critique how someone else attempts to solve a problem or explore a concept. Ten years ago I was in my early twenties, and I wanted to explore what existed in this county and see how far I could push myself. I had no idea that there was a double whammy waiting for me—people eager to put me on a pedestal and then try to knock me off it, sometimes in the same breath. People expected me to be a perfect ideal of whatever they thought a Mendocino farmer should be, yet many were eager to ferret out the ways I wasn’t. I responded to this scrutiny by sticking perfectly in all ways, at all times, to the letter of the law—if I couldn’t eat only from Mendocino County, down to the salt and oils, I would just fast. I was strong and could do that. This didn’t stop the criticism; the vocal minority just moved the goalposts. Instead of calling me a hypocrite for lacking perfection in my diet, people called me a hypocrite because I drove a car. Or used shampoo. Or didn’t eat coconut oil, which they interpreted as shaming vegans. I hadn’t committed to anything other than what I said I would do— explore Mendocino’s food scene by putting my body on the line. I hadn’t said I would become a neo-peasant. I hadn’t said I would go off-grid. I never told anyone else what to eat or not eat. I hadn’t said I would embody purity in any way, according to anyone’s else’s standard. I committed to one thing, and I did it with all my heart and might, and sometimes the “what-abouts” still followed me around.
What I learned from that experience is that there are two ways to deal with the inevitability of human frailty in the public eye. One is to be absolutely brutally committed at all costs, and still face a certain amount of sneering from the sidelines. The other way is just to own the imperfection of our humanity. This project is important to me, but so is surviving and having a healthy pregnancy. I’m taking prenatal supplements. I’m going to drink the disgusting glucose beverages they make you chug before a series of blood tests for gestational diabetes. I’m eating cottage cheese from Sonoma County. If we had a Mendocino dairy I could easily get it from, I would, but we do not. That in itself is data. After nearly passing out at an event from low blood sugar, my partners brought me a bagel from the potluck table, and I ate it. I have no regrets. I’ll do it again if I need to. I have experienced what commitment on that extreme level feels like, and I don’t regret doing that either, but it’s a new decade, with new priorities. The first one of which is our baby.
Coming to the understanding that I would flex the commitments I’d made when it was necessary for me to do so gave my midwife a huge sense of relief, and gave me a new capacity for gratitude. Coming out of survival mode, I can focus on appreciating what we are doing—growing a new part of this community, from the land and the hands of all our neighbors. I have praised the Golden Rule Garden every day of this year for their decision to grow ginger last season. Our store of honey ginger syrup is used in hot water for tea and in ginger ale made with fizzy water from our carbonator. I bless them every time I sip it. We took the leftover ginger pulp from the syrup production, dehydrated it, and cut it into little chunks, which made all-Mendocino ginger chews. They have kept me alive some days.
My friend Ana let us pick lemons from her place in Ukiah. Added to water to make it more palatable, they have kept me hydrated. Ruthie was incredibly generous with her time, her expertise, and her butcher shop, which has kept us in bone broth, keeping nutrients flowing when we were exhausted. My neighbors have fed us and helped us with chores. The land has grown the nettles and raspberry leaf that are the important tonic teas for pregnancy, and the sea has made salt with water and time.
Summer is the time of busy abundance, but not yet the fulfillment of harvest. It is a time of action and celebration and physical energy, but a time of risk as well. We are doing the work that we hope will yield a positive result for the winter, but we can’t know the outcome yet. There are long months of uncertainty and struggle ahead, as well as doctor’s appointments and screenings, before we bring the harvest home. Every step along the way is a privilege and a celebration. Gowan Batist of Fortunate Farm is a Post-Industrial Pastoralist working towards regeneration on landscapes her ancestors devastated. She is seldom seen, but sometimes glimpsed out in the fog or the oak savanna propagating native plants, spinning wool, hand shearing sheep, or sprawling on the ground with dogs.
Gowan Batist of Fortunate Farm is a Post-Industrial Pastoralist working towards regeneration on landscapes her ancestors devastated. She is seldom seen, but sometimes glimpsed out in the fog or the oak savanna propagating native plants, spinning wool, hand shearing sheep, or sprawling on the ground with dogs.