It has been many, many days since I posted last, and I have an apology to make to all of you. I started this blog with the express purpose of conveying how wwoofing affected my thoughts on food systems and on the greater chains of food . However, I have felt myself getting so caught up in adjusting to a totally new environment and totally new people and totally new experiences that I have become less aware of my own ideas and have acted more like a sieve, letting my experiences pass through with some attention but not how much they deserve. As such, I have not kept to my purpose for this blog either for myself or for you. As always, it's a work in progress.
SO. I have told you all briefly about the market that Sleeping Frog sells for. I have told you about Joe the tea man, the cases of natural product that I had never heard of before (royal jelly?!), the feeling of hearing people praise the work of Sleeping Frog. I haven't, though, told you this: it befuddles me to no end. The clientele of the market are (on the whole) kind, generous, amicable folk; they have hobbies like backyard gardening and maintaining raw-food diets and being on the board of the local co-op. They spend their Saturdays going on farm tours or perusing the native seeds store or other totally noble endeavors. However, they are all ... rich. They are all rich and white and liberal and live in the nicest part of town, they all bike to the market on high-end, fully-equipped road cycles. All of our customers can afford to spend $4 every week on a bag of spinach, and they represent the smallest of niches in Tucson.
I don't say these things to slight any of them -- I see them every week and greatly enjoy the regularity of their presence. However, I can't help but ask: what about everyone else? The basis of my interest in food systems is in how to connect local farms like Sleeping Frog to the people who can't reach healthy food outlets on their own -- the non-English speakers, the non-wealthy, the ones who have to work the third shift on a Friday night. They deserve healthy, fresh food as much as anyone else and yet have the least access. So on the one end you have this imposing problem of food security, and it is incredibly easy to blame the local farmer for not making their produce more accessible. Then again, working here has shown me the other side of the coin -- farm security. The pressures of starting, maintaining, and operating a local farm are immense. The farm's most profit-making customers are high-end restaurants, but they make an effort to emphasize the market to get their produce out to the community. As it is they are barely making ends meet; how would the farm be able to operate if it sold at a market in a lower-income part of the city? What exactly is the barrier standing between farm security and food security?
[Clearly, grad school will be very good for me. I can't wait.]
Alison and I have stumbled through this problem a few times, and I just don't know what to think. By no means do I have a full understanding of the farm side of the issue, but working on a small, young, and ambitious farm has definitely illuminated the nuances of it much more fully. Comparing this market to the Carrboro one has been a perplexing thought process, and if any Chapel Hillians can offer their perspectives, I would love to talk about it more!
Now: onto more silly fun things. Alison and I have been the only two wwoofers here for about two weeks now, and the atmosphere has changed significantly. Surprise! -- I like the smaller scale of things much more. We have been planting onions, tearing up old rapini beds (very satisfying, rapini is a very picky plant), feeding the goat ladies daily (I've come to know Bella's smile), and harvesting a new batch of purple and yellow carrots. CJ and Adam acquired 11 new hens and 3 ducks (so cute!) last week, adding to the weekly egg supply. This time of year seems to be a big transition in terms of the plants -- many of them are on the way out, and just as many are coming in. Alison and I are ending our time at Sleeping Frog just as this transition is taking place, which is an interesting way to conclude our experience here. We make for Portland on Thursday and stay there for a jaunt until we join our next farm in mid-March. In honor of that end, we had a community dinner a couple of nights ago to commemorate the south -- complete with buttermilk biscuits, collard greens (picked from the garden), and black-eyed peas. This afternoon we're making our own ginger beer, which should be ready to drink by the time we leave.
And now, of course, some photos to highlight the more random happenings here:
- saw an elf owl (the world's smallest owl) at the Desert Museum
- Ramona killed a chicken and sat in a cage with it as punishment
- went to the Tucson Gem Show, where they sold spectacular books like this one
- released ladybugs into the garden to eat up aphids
- have watched Gosh get better! This is him nuzzling with Elvis, his brother.
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