And the winner is...

I'm publishing a blog post rerun tonight. Now, I don't normally believe in reruns, in fact I rank them right down there with tick bites and GM corn. But this may be the most exciting thing I've ever written - not for most people, probably, but for the simple fact that it is actually the first bit of writing I've ever made money on. Yes, that's right, this little blog has now been recognized and awarded through the University of Oregon's study abroad program. They asked for an entry of a blog post written about a study abroad trip taken in the last year, and I had a lot posts to choose from. I polished up one I wrote after going on one of my weekend homestays in India, and assumed I'd either pushed my luck too far in submitting an hour before the deadline or they hated it so much they didn't even think it warranted a response. Then, lo and behold, I received an email saying I'd won first place.
So, with no further ado, I give you the first ever re-run and first cash cow of NoTulips.


Spelling Lessons from Krishna

My second weekend homestay is to take place at the home of a farmer-turned-artist who is a friend of Sunita, the woman I’m working and living with during my three-month internship. She makes the arrangements that Friday and, after finding the right bus, I’m only two skull-rattling hours away from a little weekend relaxation. Luckily, I get a seat, and enjoy a stimulating conversation with two young schoolboys who quiz me on my spelling, finding my American method of spelling words like “color” and “favorite” absolutely hilarious.
When I finally get off the bus in the city of Sagar, it’s nearly dark. I approach the row of rickshaw drivers at the bus stop, clutching the piece of paper Sunita gave me with my host’s address and phone number. I tell the nearest driver where I want to go: Radhakrishna’s house in a nearby village called Banghadde. Houses don’t have numbers here, and streets rarely have names, but Sunita told me everyone here knows where this house is. Radhakrishna is an artist of some local fame and one of the prominent landowners in his village.
We take off down the tree-lined avenue, going past a giant shrine featuring lions’ heads, gods, goddesses and various other brightly colored carvings. The streets are packed with vendors, women with baskets on their heads, dirty kids, bicycles, motorbikes, trucks and automobiles. After a few minutes, we pull up in front of a fenced-off building at the outskirts of town. Sunita had told me the village I was headed to is a few kilometers away from Sagar, but I forget that fact for the moment, excited by the fact that I see a sign, written in English, announcing this as the place of Shri Ramakrishna. I pay off the driver, extract my backpack and camera bag from the back of the rickshaw, and head toward the gate.
A bunch of young men are milling around the entrance to Shri Ramakrishna’s. I hang back, uncertain of how to best make my presence known, until one notices me and beckons me into the covered porch. He pulls me up a plastic chair behind a table and urges me to sit down. Then he leans over the table, and the interrogation begins.
“From where do you come? What is your business here? Who are you?” Somehow, this doesn’t feel right. I try to explain that I’m a guest of Radhakrishna for the weekend and if I could just talk to him everything will be ok. Nothing seems to get through.
Finally, I’m ushered into a small office in a room off the porch. Inside, there are two desks; behind one sits a middle-aged man with intense dark brown eyes. Between his eyes there’s a bright red dot, signifying religious faith. He wears a powder-blue shirt with a funny short collar, and his hair and mustache are neatly trimmed. I take a seat across from him. The blue walls lit by fluorescent bulbs glare down at me. Behind the desk is a framed black and white photo of a guru, hung with strands of plastic flowers and beads.

“Who?” The man behind the desk asks when I tell him my weekend host’s name.
“I’m staying here this weekend,” I insist. When would they stop this rigmarole and take me to my room?
“You can’t stay here, madam,” the man informs me. “Our rooms are for students only.”
Much back and forth arguing ensues. All his words sound like they’re spoken through a large potato lodged at the back of his mouth, and according to him, my English is equally awful. Indians have a way of integrating English words into their native language, and when faced with a foreigner, they simply mash together all the English words they know and leave out or mumble the intervening ones. The result is, at best, difficult to follow. Of course, it doesn’t help that my accent is something they’ve never encountered before – Sagar is not a city that tourists usually find.
Eventually, our semblance of conversation unravels our mutual confusion. It turns out that I am speaking to the director of Shri Ramakrishna Residential School, an ashram for boys. The man whom I’ve utterly befuddled is Thimmappa, the director of the school. Apparently, the rickshaw driver thought Ramakrishna is close enough to Radhakrishna and dumped me here. In my excitement, I hadn’t noticed the difference in spelling either. Maybe those boys on the bus would have. A sense of panic begins to rise in my throat.
Luckily, Thimmappa finds me amusing, if somewhat of an encumbrance. He can’t host me at the ashram, but neither will he hear of my ridiculous schemes to leave, find another rickshaw, and travel to Banghadde at this late hour. It is now about seven in the evening, but according to him, it’s a dangerous trip fraught with unknown danger for a young female traveling alone – the least of which may be tigers and rickshaw accidents.
One cultural trait of urban Indians I’m swiftly discovering is that they have an intense fear of forests, darkness and unknown rural stretches. So no matter how many ways I try to insist, Thimmappa does not believe there exists in this city one rickshaw driver with the courage to take me to my destination, or even somebody with a car I could hire. Tut-tutting at my foolishness, he calls in one of the half-dozen men who are now plastered to the doorway, staring at the alien in their midst, to bring me a cup of coffee. I tell him that I don’t want any (Indian coffee is usually awful, made by boiling instant coffee, milk and tons of sugar) but I’m swiftly realizing I’m not in control of the situation. Thimmappa is already on the phone to the English teacher he’s decided I’ll be spending the night with. We can discuss the possibility of transport to Banghadde in the morning.
Thimmappa seems to think the situation is under control, but I have fears of my own. I’ve traveled before. I’ve been trained to stick to plans, avoid talking to strangers, and to mistrust unknown situations. My mind is made up: I don’t trust this place, I don’t trust Thimmappa, and I certainly don’t trust his English teacher. I need to get out.
I get firm with him, demanding that he call the real Radhakrishna, whose number is on the piece of paper that is suddenly my only lifeline. But when he calls, Radhakrishna is not home, and his daughter doesn’t speak English and is immune to my pleas to be rescued. I try calling Sunita, but she can’t help me at this point. Rickshaw drivers who don’t know their way around and overly hospitable ashram directors were not in our plan. But she seems calm, not understanding my desperation and panic. Why not just wait until the morning?
By the time the coffee arrives, my schedule has been reworked for me. The English teacher has been contacted and will be here in fifteen minutes, but as far as I could tell, no attempts were made to find a driver willing to take me to my homestay. I have now reached the pinnacle of internal rage and have to work to keep the desperation out of my voice. My coffee shakes in my hand. Somehow, the stubborn but placid man behind the desk has elicited a level of frustration in me previously only witnessed by algebra teachers and my parents when I was a teen. I feel like throwing the cup of boiling hot coffee at him. Who was he to tell me I couldn’t pay whoever I want to get me out of this godforsaken place? Why was I so stupid to get myself in this situation in the first place? Why do all Indians have such silly, identical names?

All there is to do now is wait. Thimmappa sits back in his chair and places the tips of his fingers together. He considers me, observes my frustration with slight amusement. I stare back defiantly. It’s awkwardly silent for a moment, but he isn’t gearing up for a fifteen-minute staring contest. He’s preparing a lecture.
He quietly gestures to the picture on the wall above him.
“Do you know who this is?”
“No,” I tell him. Who cares, I think to myself.
“This is Shri Ramakrishna.” Oh. The photo looks about fifty years old and the man pictured is no spring chicken. This guy isn’t having any weekend guests.
“In 1839,” he says, repeating the date for clarity, “he went to Amerika and brought respect to the Hindu religion. He did this with a speech. In which, he call all the Amerikans ‘brothers and sisters’.” He pauses to take a deep breath, overwhelmed by the significance of it all. “Brothers and sisters,” he continues. “With this, he convince the Amerikans.”
I slowly warm up to the story. It turns out this guy Ramakrishna is the one who introduced Hinduism to the US and set up a bunch of ashrams and community centers there. He had many followers, including the Beatles and some of the more influential American yogis.
“You see,” Thimmappa continues, “Hindu religion is like an ocean. All the religions are in it. However, all other religions are only rivers. But all lead to God. Many ways, one God.” He goes on like this for a while, not preaching but explaining.
As he talks, I begin to consider the possibility Thimmappa isn’t so bad after all. I relax slightly, calmed by the chanting prayers of the boys in the next room. The crowd by the door slowly loses interest, and my unshaken coffee develops the smooth skin of boiled milk.

Before I can make a conclusive reassessment of my situation, however, the English teacher arrives. She’s extremely nice and acts like having me stay the night would be the best thing since Ramakrishna went to Amerika. I’m all ready to follow her out the door when the phone on the desk rings. Thimmappa holds up a finger as he talks, so we wait. When he hangs up, he informs me that they’ve drummed up a rickshaw driver who thinks he can manage the scary drive to Banghadde. Apparently, someone had been working behind the scenes.
A minute later, the driver is there, and I’m given the option of staying in Sagar or going off with him. As much as I like the English teacher, I realize I can’t pass up the opportunity to get to Radhakrishna’s, where they’re expecting me. More than that, I’m embarrassed at having mistrusted the ashram people and refused their hospitality. I thank everyone and climb in the rickshaw, a bit sorry to be leaving what was suddenly a safe haven.
As we rumble off toward Banghadde, I get a chance to process the whole experience. It’s one of the many times during my trip to India that I’m forced to admit I have been totally, completely and foolishly wrong about something. While I’d been scoffing at the rickshaw drivers for their forest-phobia, my fear of Indians is just as unfounded. No matter how much I’ve prepared myself for it and expected it, not a single person I’ve encountered here has tried to rob me, abduct me, or even take advantage of my confusion. And the overly cautious, callous exterior I’ve fostered is not only useless, it’s made me extremely impolite in the face of traditional Indian hospitality. While my actions this evening could be completely rationalized by a sensible need to look out for myself, there are lessons here that go beyond spelling words. Mistrusting somebody just because they happen to be male or Indian is as unfair here as it would be back home.
We’re on the highway now, the dark forest whizzing by. I can see the lights of Banghadde ahead of us. Through my weariness and feelings of being completely overwhelmed, one thought shines through: to survive my travels, I must allow myself some naievete, a healthy does of innocence. It’s the one thing people everywhere tend to forget – that although some individuals can’t be trusted, there are even more out there who just want to help. After all, as Ramakrishna would put it, we are all brothers and sisters.

Radhakrisna Banghadde, with some of his mud and plant-based paintings.

Farm Tour, part 2

Aaaaand we’re back. Moving on from the strawberry patch, we venture out into the cow pasture. Watch out for, er, manure patches.



This is most of the herd, converted from the dairy fleet that the Collins kept for thirty years. Now they’re raised for meat, which we sell along with the produce on the local market.


These are the calves that were born this summer. The black one in the middle has grown quite a bit since the first part of the tour! (That’s virtual reality for you – the time dimension doesn’t always line up.)


This is the hay field, which was just cut before the photo was taken. A neighboring farmer baled it for us and we picked it all up and put it in the barn. With the help of the Collins’ sons I learned how to drive a tractor and how not to stack hay bales, and earned myself three red blisters for the effort. Turns out lifting 100 pounds of hay by thin pieces of baling twine a few dozen times is tough on an ex-city-person’s fingers.



This is the hay field that was cut earlier in the summer, now hosting a flock of real Canadians (geese!). Behind them are three huge cottonwood trees, probably some of the biggest on the island according to some forestry people who paid a visit recently.


We just hiked all the way back across the fields and returned to the garden. These sunflowers are grown for the market, where they’re sold along with the cosmos and dahlias here. Although Andrea and I first considered flowers an almost criminally useless thing to grow, we have conceded that they really are quite pretty (and, as Ann points out, people buy them).


Tour guests Jordan and Madison, aged 7 and 4, stop for a photo with some tomatoes they found in the greenhouse before heading up to see the pigs living in the pen beside the barn.


Henrietta and Hernia, the two pigs who swam the river. They’re a lot bigger now but excitable as ever. Hernia earned his name by herniating part of his intestine through his belly button. They usually running a lap or two around their pen whenever people come to see them, and they go crazy rolling in the mud pit in the middle of their pen.












The pigs love berries, potatoes, and being scratched on the back. Turn on the hose on a hot day and they’ll go hog wild, so to speak, frolicking like pups and grunting the whole time. (The pigs are probably my favorite, so please avoid discussion of bacon at this point in the tour.)


Hernia: “Pigs are smarter than dogs.”
Carmen: “Well, at least I don’t lie in mud all day and get fat.”
Hernia: “I hear your mother has fleas. Oink.”



And that concludes our farm tour. This view is from the far pasture (where we saw the geese). The property ends here at the river. You can just make out the house, the barn and the greenhouse beyond all that grass – about 40 acres of it. I still can't believe I live here.
The farm is doing well and people are coming out to the market in far greater numbers than last year. For the time being, then, it seems this piece of paradise will stay paradisaical and continue producing food for the valley. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

A Virtual Farm Tour, part 1

Collins Farm is in the full swing of summer now. Each morning we haul in a couple flats of strawberries, a bin of tomatoes and a bucket of lettuce, and we’re barely staying ahead of the harvest. Luckily, Port Albernians have also shown up with reinforcements to buy all the goodies at our Saturday markets and even during the week.
In the afternoons, we often take groups of curious campers to see what’s “down the hill”. Kids are fascinated with the chickens, piggies and horses, and the grownups usually walk back up to the campground full of plans for their own gardens. On Sunday, I took the afternoon off of kitchen duty and followed one of Ann’s farm tours with my camera.


First stop, the barn, home to the horses, donkeys, cows and one cat.

Buster the barn kitty. No, you can’t have him. He’s mine. I mean, he’s the farm’s. We need him to catch mice and keep the cobwebs off the top of that old milk tank.











It was an exciting morning a couple weeks ago when we went down to the barn to find one of our cows giving birth. She was the last of our herd to do so this year, and the only one I actually got to see in the act.










Well, sort of. We watched the feet hang out for a little while, then decided she probably wanted her privacy and went up for breakfast. When we came back, the little guy was already wobbling around under his mom.






This is the view of the farm up by the barn. We'll look at the garden first, then the chickens (just outside the frame to the right) and stop in the strawberry patch between the two big fields. Then we'll pay a visit to the cows and head through the hay field towards the three big trees in the distance. Hope you're wearing your walking shoes.

Ripley, Phoxy and Paris, three of our Canadian horses out in the pasture for the evening.


In the garden, Ann picks some cucumbers for the tour group. Behind them, the corn has reached gargantuan heights.











Peeking under the giant squash leaves, we find these baby pumpkins - a sneak preview for Halloween.

Lettuce, carrots and beets. Behind them on the fence are the peas. We’ll get to the sun umbrellas in a minute when we visit the chickens.










Our laying hens (plus one watchful rooster) roam around in this pen, pecking at kitchen scraps and harassing their roommates, the three paranoid little ducks.

Although the ducks have their own little barn away from the chicken house, they never quite seem to feel safe and cling together like a gang of teenage girls, yakking away at each other in duck-ese. Of course, if they feel like going for a swim, they are capable of swallowing their fears and jumping in the water trough. This utterly disgusts the chickens, who would much rather take a dirt bath.


Sun umbrellas provide shade and protection from the eagles, who have been known to swoop down and steal the poultry.








The chickens share a laying box, which they enter through a door from the inside of their house.










The box has a little door on it that we open to gather the eggs.

This chicken has kindly modeled the laying process for us, but I think today she is just sitting on them. Once she leaves we peek into the hay and find…



Breakfast.



Now we head out toward the strawberry patch and cow pasture, on the way checking up on the apple trees.

These sunflowers are “volunteers”, but they make great shade when picking strawberries out here. It takes two people about an hour each morning to pick just half of the patch.









Yum. These plants are the “ever-bearing” variety, which means they started putting out berries in June and won’t quit until the frost comes. In the meantime, we’re filling up our freezers and jam cupboards.


Bees are fun to photograph, and they actually don’t sting because they’re so focused on harvesting the pollen.









In the early morning when we’re picking sunflowers for market, the bees are sleeping on the flowers and refuse to be woken up. They hang onto the flowers no matter how much blowing, shaking and wiping you do. If we were braver, we could probably just remove them by hand, but usually we just leave them on and let them fly away later – hopefully not in somebody’s house!







We now interrupt this exclusive tour for lunch. Join us again tomorrow for more cute kids and animals, this blog’s first concession on its hard-nosed anti-flower position, and yet another pretty view of the farm.

On the River

Inspired by/in tribute to Edward Abbey’s wonderful documentation of his float down Glen Canyon in the book Desert Solitaire.

When a cool breeze, a precursor to evening, rushes across the water and over your face, when you’re eye level with the water and the party downstream moves out of earshot, the river almost seems wild. I let myself believe, for a moment, that I’m here two hundred years ago, before the loggers and the homesteaders and the tourists started arriving by the boatload. It’s like squinting at someone in a hazy bar and convincing yourself, just for a moment, that he or she is more beautiful than you first observed.
Not that the river, especially on a sweltering day like today, isn’t beautiful. The sun, low in the sky, highlights each ripple on the wide, shallow expanse of water moving slowly toward the Alberni Inlet and eventually the Pacific. Trees loom on either side like living canyon walls, taking on a slightly disjointed appearance with the slanted shadow cast by the sun. It’s that long, hot stretch of summer that reaches lazily between July and August, but the river always has somewhere to go ¬– crisp, cool and smelling of high forests.

We’re close to the end of our float. Crystal and I, hot and tired after the Saturday market, had set our inner tubes in a few miles upstream of the farm and spent the past three hours taking our time coming home. This river, which runs right by Collins Farm, is known as the Somass. The salmon run here in greater numbers than any other river in North America – earning Port Alberni (the closest city to us) the title of Salmon Capital of the World.

We aren’t too concerned with salmon, though, other to watch them jump as we float effortlessly down the river. I keep one eye skyward in search of eagles, which are another common sight in these parts. Just last week, Peter and I were in the barn chatting with the horses when we noticed a crowd of vultures gathering around a glistening, translucent blob of cow afterbirth in the field. We stood on the lower rung of the fence watching, and soon an eagle joined in the feast. To us, it seemed like an undignified way for such a regal bird to get a meal, but eagles are, after all, scavengers. A second eagle landed and the vultures began to back away, and with good reason. Even from five hundred feet away, I could catch the sharp, menacing look in the bigger birds’ eyes. We stayed where we were, trying to keep still, the toes of our boots pointed firmly toward the dirt.

The Somass drifts past a shooting range, a large greenhouse, a few small farms and quite a few houses. Crystal and I get off our tubes and bask in the sun whenever we feel in need of a break. At other points, curiosity simply gets the better of us. The Field of Weeds, for example, demanded investigation. From the river, we could make out over a rocky embankment hundreds of tall, strange-looking plants. Crystal is here on the WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) program and is, like me, interested in all that grows. We park our tubes, climb up the rocks and up onto a large pasture hosting a few cows and some geese. The odd plants take up half the field, but we can’t quite figure out what they are. They grow two or three feet apart over bare ground, towering over our heads with thick stalks, huge leaves and pointy heads that bend over with their own weight. A few that have fallen over sprout three or four new heads out of the side. I express jealousy for the plant’s ability to bud offspring so effortlessly; Crystal admires its resilience in the face of potential setbacks.
Life lessons learned, we decide the best course of action will be to run through the plants with our arms outstretched, yelling nonsense at the top of our lungs and feeling the beat of hundreds of stalks against our hands. It doesn’t solve the mystery, but it gives the cows something to ponder over as they chew their cud.

***

Back on the river, I’m daydreaming with my chin pointed toward the empty sky when I notice Crystal out of the corner of my eye, floating with the top of her head in the water. I question her motives. She tells me I have to experience this perspective, so I follow suit, leaning all the way back on my tube until I’m taking in my bobbing surroundings upside-down. I have to admit that this is unexpectedly amazing. The last few of my cares and worries, already fried to a crisp in the sun, fall right out my ears. The trees look even taller. The water and sky are even bluer. I feel like Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Few experiences in life require a person to instantly begin singing at the top of their lungs, but this is one of them.

The only possible threat to our enjoyment this afternoon may be an encounter with George Fleagle. Mr. Fleagle represents the crème-de-la-crème of the Port Alberni beer-gutted, tobacco-stained bachelor crowd. I’d met him a couple of weeks ago while swimming in the river with Crystal and Andre, another WOOF-er, near her farm. He came snorkeling down the river, unnoticed by us until he popped out of the water just as Crystal was lighting a cigarette, sure that she wouldn’t mind if he bummed one and oh, by the way, do you gals ever want to go tubing? We claimed a strong aversion to water, a defense that was probably undermined by the fact that we were in bathing suits, dripping wet by the side of a river. George stuck around anyway, educating us on the many pleasures of inner tubing and the river in general.
I was due back at the farm soon and decided to head home, leaving Crystal to deal with our new friend. My car was parked in her driveway at the top of the hill a short distance away. I hadn’t been paying much attention when we came down, and it was my first time there. Naturally, I assumed I would find it anyway and became utterly and completely lost in the thick brush. I ended up back down near the river, but some thirty feet away from the path I was supposed to be on with a thick patch of thistles blocking my way forward. Luckily, I could see my friends from where I stood, so swallowed my pride and yelled for direction. George, who happened to have grown up in the very house Crystal was staying in, jumped to the rescue. He gallantly escorted me up the hill, questioning my rash decision to move to Canada all by myself without anyone to help me along. Because of my embarrassment, I found myself being what probably came off as friendly to the hopeful Fleagel, who now considered himself a bonafide hero. He promised to come visit me at work.
When I told Ann and Bob about the experience, they seemed quite amused. My gut feeling – namely, nausea – about him had been dead-on. George had grown up with their two sons – he and his friends habitually threw rocks at their campground sign, picked on their kids and generally made nuisances of themselves. Fleagle was a man who lived up to his name.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen him yet, and the prospect of a redneck admirer has turned into a favorite farm joke instead of an actual threat. Still, when we near crowds of young guys on the river, I sink a little lower in my tube, ready to go for an impromptu swim.

But the waters are surprisingly quiet today. Tubing is something of a sport in this town, where most of the kids seem to have nothing to do but drink beer, smoke pot and go for a float, often taking with them giant boom boxes strapped to rafts, which shake the trees to their roots for miles around. Like many places in the Pacific Northwest, the two major industries here – logging and fishing – collapsed on themselves in the latter part of the last century. This leaves the young people with the unexciting prospects of collecting welfare checks and scrambling for tourist dollars if they wish to remain in the area. Boredom seems to hang heavy over the town. If only they could all be bussed out to Collins Farm to pull weeds. All, of course, except the pesky Fleagle.

***

Before the river meanders around to our jumping-off point at the farm, it flattens out and gets wide for a long, shallow stretch. Over the sound of water scurrying over rock we hear music – not the obnoxious thump of a tuber’s bass but a lighter melody. It actually sounds like the trees themselves are ringing.
The music gets louder, coming from the left bank ahead now. I crane my neck to peer through the underbrush. Then I spot the source. A ray of lingering sunlight makes its way through the trees and illuminates a man standing with his back to us, his arms flying across the keys of a huge xylophone, wooden mallets in hand. The chiming, stacatto music rises on the breeze above his back yard, his house, and the river. He seems to be performing for nobody but himself and the trees, completely lost in the joy of it. I stand up in the shin-high water, entranced by the sight and the sound, the sudden reminder of life’s endless mystery.

Planning for Eat-Ability

Imagine a setting in which people can live, access life's necessities without need for motorized transportation, and never worry about having adequate food or water. There are a thousand types of communities that might come to mind, but one of them is probably not a typical suburban or rural housing subdivision. Somehow, though, the majority of people in North America and other developed regions live in these kinds of developments. They sprawl like lichen on a rock across rural landscapes - without an outwardly visible source of food or water. Placed far from urban areas, with cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac of nearly identical houses and no other necessary amenities nearby, suburban and ex-urban (i.e., stuck in the middle of nowhere) developments are a prime example of bad design. They're impossible to walk through - most lack sidewalks or logical footpaths between cul-de-sacs. To access work, school, or stores, residents have no other option than to hop in their cars, get on the freeway, and find the nearest suburban center. The only remnants of nature might be found in the fake pond at the golf course or perhaps in the subdivision's name - "Willow Crest" or "Fox Hollow". And worst of all, most of these developments are built smack on top of prime farmland. From a food security perspective, this manner of paving over and occupying the landscape is fairly frightening.

Of course, some developers talk about "sustainable development" (a puzzling little oxymoron) or planning for "livability". They throw in a few bike paths and extra trees. Still, these greenwashing tactics don't solve the root problems of urban sprawl: isolation of communities and the destructin of ecologically valuable unpaved land that has the added benefit of keeping the population fed.
Thanks to rural land speculation and the cycle of decline in inner cities, this pattern of development has been difficult to stop or even slow, although the present recession is helping immensely. Still, the sight of sprawling asphalt and rows of single-family dwellings from an airplane window has the power to throw me into a funk of hopelessness for days.
But wait! Could there be a slow shift in consciousness here? I was recently mailed an article (the old-fashioned way, no less) describing the hottest trend in housing developments: organic farms. And I don't mean developers are buying out farmers and naming the subdivisions "Pesticide-Free Strawberry Fields" instead of "Shady Oak Glen". No, according the New York Times article, farms are now considered "subdivision amenities" by many developers. Instead of building homes around golf courses, they are putting in organic farms to draw in yuppie foodies or perhaps those who have ideas about living in a rural area. Residents can even pitch in around the farm and share in the harvest. Of course, the article left out some of the potential difficulties that immediately come to mind. What happens when the breeze shifts and some unfortunate homeowner realizes they've purchased the olfactory privilege of living downwind from the chicken house? Will residents tolerate the drone of a tractor disturbing the peaceful summer ambiance?

Apparently, somebody has figured out a way to make it work, because the developments do seem to have caught on. They probably won't work everywhere - not all sprawl takes place on pristine farmland with ample water - and they certainly don't cure the basic problems inherent in urban sprawl mentioned above, but I suppose if people must live in subdivisions, they might as well have a convenient, safe food source nearby. The logical next steps will be to put in a school, a few small, locally owned stores and restaurants, and public gathering spaces, eliminating the need to drive thirty minutes for a coffee fix or a new rake. Put it all together, and a sprawling city will have devolved into a cluster of small towns. Livability? Absolutely. Eat-ability? Even better.

Stuffed Zucchini or Summer Squash

It's the age-old summer "problem" of gardeners: too much zucchini. We have them in droves, along with patty pans, which are a neat UFO-shaped squash. It's probably the only thing a vegetarian might take one look at and think "Boy, that would look beautiful stuffed".
This is a very flexible recipe, and I've changed it to accommodate various diets over the years. A vegan version would probably be possible by either substituting the eggs and cheese with some replacement product, or simply leaving them out and having a more crumbly final product.


Stuffed Zucchini or Summer Squash

4 medium zucchini, summer squash or patty pan (or one giant one)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 egg
½ cup minced fresh herbs (parsley, oregano, basil and/or sage)
1 tomato, chopped
1 cup bread crumbs (can also use part cooked rice or quick oats)
1 cup grated cheese (cheddar, swiss or mozzarella)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

2 cups tomato sauce (to top)

1. Prepare the squash. Halve zucchinis lengthwise after cutting off ends; slice the tops off patty pan squash. Scrape out the insides and set aside. Arrange the shells in an oiled baking pan or cookie sheet with edges.
2. Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil a large frying pan until onion just begins to brown. Grate or finely chop the insides of the squash and add to onions. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove the pan from heat.
3. Meanwhile, precook the squash shells. Add about a half inch of water to the baking pan and bake in a 375° oven for about 10 minutes, until shells are tender but not soggy. Drain the pan before filling the shells.
4. To the cooked vegetables add herbs, chopped tomato, bread crumbs, cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Fill the squash shells with the mixture.
5. Bake the squash at 375° for 20-30 minutes, until tops are golden brown and filling sizzles. Serve with heated tomato sauce and enjoy.

No-cheese (low fat?) version:
Add one more egg, and increase the bread crumbs (or rice or quick oats) to 2 cups.

Carnivore version:
Omit bread crumbs, decrease cheese to ½ cup. Add 1 lb cooked hamburger or turkey burger to filling.

Harvest

We start early, before the temperature begins to creep up and everything – the harvest and those who pick it – starts to fade in the midday sun. Vancouver Island is at a high latitude, so the sun comes up around 5 AM and doesn’t go down until about 9 in the evening. Luckily, the light doesn’t keep me from sleeping all the way till 7, when I wake up to CBC (the Canadian version of BBC) on the radio and stiffly move myself out of bed. The going is slow because I started learning to ride horses on Wednesday. It feels like somebody’s taken a rake to the muscles of my inner legs. (As far as my progress in riding goes, my instructor summed it up nicely after the first lesson: “You did good today,” he said. “You showed up.”)
Aftermath of my extracurricular activities aside, harvest day is probably my favorite time around the farm. So I stretch carefully, shower, and head up to the campground office to make myself some breakfast. Because the office is open from 8 in the morning till 9 at night, we hardly do anything at the house but sleep (and write!). I savor my berries and yogurt as I sit with Ann and Andrea, who are already laying out the game plan for market this week. Market is on Saturday, and instead of hauling our produce all the way into Port Alberni, we simply hold it here, where we have a somewhat captive customer base (campers) and the space to make it an event. We hold a pancake breakfast and hayride; the kids play with the goats while their parents take a stroll by the river.
But that will all take place tomorrow. The produce is the main act, and it’s still waiting in the garden for us to retrieve it. We finish our coffee, gather up some buckets, and head down the hill, border collies herding us along.
Crystal is already in the garden and Connie arrives shortly after. We are an all-girl vegetable-picking machine. Andrea heads to the potato patch – she loves digging around in the dirt. I grab scissors and start on the kale and swiss chard. Connie hits up the greenhouse for cucumbers and tomatoes, and Crystal pulls the netting off the long rows of carrots. Half an hour later, I’m still lost in the brilliant red stems of the chard, feeling slightly overwhelmed and mentally full. Every time I pick vegetables my mind moves immediately to washing, chopping and cooking them, in any way I know how and a few I don’t think are possible (chard muffins?). After thirty or so chard plants, I get the dizzying feeling of there simply being too much food here for any one person to eat. I guess that’s the only way I can part with it come morning. As I fill my last bucket with greens and throw up my hands, Crystal comes walking down the row, a bright orange, freshly washed, perfect carrot in her outstretched hand.
“Second breakfast?” Indeed.

It’s getting late in the summer, and the garden is in full production mode now. This is only the Collins’ second year growing produce for a local market, but there is certainly no lack of variety. By the end of the morning we have the truck loaded up with greens, potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, squash, cucumbers, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, peas, rhubarb, strawberries and flowers. We unload in the office – which also houses a small commercial kitchen – and start washing and bagging. The unfortunate side of the local market is nobody seems to want to buy anything that’s not in a bag. If we do leave it in baskets or buckets, they’ll bag it themselves before they buy it.
I excuse myself from this somewhat depressing process to start making lunch. I have a little challenge going with myself to use the most vegetables in one meal as possible. With a little storebought ginger and soy sauce, I squeeze seven into a giant stir fry (record: eight veggies). We take a bit of a break and eat outside on the deck in the last bit of shade. It’s getting hot – the thermometer reads 30 Celsius. Up until a week or so ago this meant nothing to me, and it actually made the heat easier to bear. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. In India, nobody ever really knew what temperature it was, so there was no complaining. Well, my mother was kind enough to email me a handy conversion chart and I now know that when it’s 30, it’s not just below freezing but in fact 86 in the clunky old Fahrenheit system. And when it’s 30 at noon and just getting started, it’s going to be a hot day.
Back inside, it’s time to switch the A/C on. With the freezers, refrigerators and oven going all day, it can get hotter inside than outside without the aid of this wonderful little invention. Feeling more comfortable now, I start on the bread and spend the afternoon registering campers with floury hands. Breads are my experimental addition to the farmers’ market, and so far, it’s been a mild success. The best part is, we keep the ugly loaves and whatever doesn’t sell. Contrary to popular belief, breadmaking isn’t actually that difficult or time consuming. You just have to be able to hang around the kitchen for a few hours, so campground management actually is a good side activity.
Campers are an interesting lot. They fall into three main categories: those who are on vacation and so are determined not to fuss about anything so that they can have a good time; those who are on vacation and so are determined to be completely picky about everything so that they can have a good time; and teenagers who come from town to throw parties at the campground. Any afternoon will produce any combination of these types. I had the good fortune to be eating dinner while some partying teenagers came and rented a couple sites. We’re all pretty tired of the loud music, piles of trash and general obnoxiousness that comes along with these customers, but Ann and Bob were ready this time. They raised three kids and can be pretty scary. Sitting in the corner, absorbed in my bread and cucumber salad, I even felt a little shaky in my boots as the two of them loom over the group of would-be rabble-rousers.
“Now, you’re not going to have a large group of people down there, are you?” Ann asks, though it’s more of a statement than a question. The kids are wide-eyed and innocent.
“Oh, no.” Having been in their shoes more than once only a few years ago, I know that deceptive tone all too well. I can almost see the thought bubbles resting above their heads, and they don’t contain words but pictures of beer and thumping stereos. Bob sees them too and walks over to the counter.
“No music down there,” he tells them.
“None at all?” they whine.
“Absolutely not. You don’t want us to come down there at three in the morning to tell you to shut it off, got it?” A mafia contract killer could not have sounded more threatening. They’ve got it. They shuffle out. Yet another crisis averted – we hope.

I finish eating and walk down to the house to read a bit. Before bed, I help Bob move the “chicken tractor”. This ingenious little pen, which holds all our meat birds, is open at the bottom so the chickens can scratch at the grass. It gets moved once or twice a day, so they can fertilize a new patch of soil while getting some fresh grubs to eat – a win-win situation.
After the moving is done, Bob heads out to the pasture to move irrigation pipes. I walk up the hill, worn out and not sure where my farming mentors get the energy to work the 15-hour or more days that they do (Ann is still up at the office). As I pass the barn, I hear a friendly but demanding “meiow!” It’s Buster, the friendly black-and-white barn cat. He proves irresistible. Instead of going inside, I sit with him on an old picnic table that overlooks the farm. From here, we can see the garden, the pasture with the horses and cows grazing, the forest beyond and Mount Arrowsmith towering above it all. It’s a view that takes my breath away still after almost a month living here. I watch the sun turn the mountainside pink and gold, the cool evening air taking away some of my fatigue. Buster relaxes on my lap, his purr rumbling against my fingers. It’s one of those perfect moments that seem to arise so easily in this place. Despite all the work that goes into planting, watering, weeding and harvesting produce, I still can’t help but find it miraculous that so many good things come out of the simple inputs of soil, manure, seeds and water. As long as that formula continues to work, we’ll never go hungry here. And that’s a pretty good feeling.

First impressions of the farm

It took about six hours to reach Port Alberni (the town on Vancouver Island closest to Collins Farm) from Seattle. Shortly after crossing the border, I arrived at the ferry terminal just south of the city of Vancouver (just for the sake of confusion, apparently, the city of Vancouver is not actually on Vancouver Island). I missed the midafternoon ferry so waited around for the evening one, entertaining myself at the food court/mini mall/casino placed on the dock just in case passengers don't feel broke enough after paying the $60 fare to get a car across the water. The ferry trip took about two hours, gliding comfortably across the grey water under a grey sky. It started raining shortly after we departed, but when I arrived at the other side and drove off the ferry, things started to clear up. I shot the above photo just off the highway on my way to Port Alberni. My car and I felt like we were in some sort of ad.

The view off of my new front porch at the Collins' farmhouse. In the background you can see the faint outline of Mount Arrowsmith, the highest peak on the island. Just below that are three huge cottonwood trees, rumored to be the largest in the region. Most of the farm acerage is either forest or campsite, but the fields visible in this photo provide fodder for cattle, donkeys and horses (five thoroughbred Canadians and one Belgian mare). The Collins ran a dairy operation for many years but changes in the laws that used to protect dairy farmers ran them out of business. Diversification is their current survival strategy: The garden beds are planted in carrots, cabbage, squash, corn, peas, radishes, kale, chard, artichokes, flowers and a few other veggies. In the middle we have strawberries and potatoes in large number. The foreground? I'll give you a hint: get ready for a deluge of blackberry recipes.


Here comes Jessie, the Belgian draft horse. She's 18 hands with hooves the size of dinner plates, but don't let her size fool you - she's a big softie who loves a belly scratch.


The two Canadian stallions, Paris and Ripley. Listen closely, you can just hear it... "Eh?"

This is the Arrowvale Campground office and cafe. We mostly serve up coffee, pie and ice cream, but the kitchen has become my fresh produce laboratory and personal bakery. The cafe is also the location of our Saturday pancake breakfasts in conjunction with the farmers' market we host. The rest of the week, it's sort of a farmhand break room and second home for Bob, Ann and me.


The view to the north, off the deck of the office. The river is just below.


On Canada Day, Crystal (another girl who helps out on the farm part-time) and I went to town to see the parade. Canada day falls on July 1 and is Canada's equivalent of the US' Independence Day. The parade featured dozens of horses, even more 4X4 trucks, some old tractors and logging equipment, and a ton of cute kids. After that, we watched them cut a gigantic cake in the form of the Canadian flag, ate some overpriced Chinese food at the "International" festival, and retreated back to the countryside where we decided we're better off.


The Stamp river, which flows into the valley's main river, the Somass. It floods regularly and rarely runs low; salmon migrate up and downriver each season to the delight of fishermen and bears. We pump irrigation water straight out of the river, no water right required. It's a very different picture from Oregon and the rest of the American West, where, as Twain famously said, "whiskey's for drinkin' and water's for fightin' over."


Crystal washes vegetables for market on Saturday. We sell the fresh produce outside the office, where farmers from across the river also sell eggs, herbs and vegetables. There's also a Saturday farmers' market in Port Alberni, which we view as a good sign - enough people are forgoing Safeway's offerings to be able to support two markets in the coummunity.


Some people get crop circles, we get alien carrots.


Full moon from earlier this week over the farm. Andrea, our full-time garden manager and my personal farming mentor has been interested lately in planting and harvesting by the moon. According to this school of thought, the moon influences plant life cycles just like it pulls the tides in and out. It all has to do with water and gravitational forces. Anyway, since the moon is full, we seeded new carrots today (root vegetables, which grow best when the moon is waning). I'll be sure to post an update on our celestial gardening. Speaking of the moon, it's probably up now and time for me to hit the hay.

When Pigs Swim

We crash through the thick forest in a single-file line: Andrea, Ann, Carmen and me. Carmen, the border collie, is sniffing out the bushes. Ann and I are shaking buckets of grain and calling in what we hope is a beckoning tone: "Heeere, piggy piggy piggies! Good piggies!"
Despite this effort, no soft oinking noises can be heard in the shrubbery. Ann suggests we make our way down to the river bank to look for tracks. The thought hadn't yet occurred to me or Andrea, another woman who works on the Collins' farm. We're having a hard time comprehending how the pigs got themselves lost over here in the first place. Three weeks ago, they bolted from their pen at the Collins' farm, which is just across the river. Granted, it's not a huge river, but they're not very big pigs, either. Still in disbelief that they actually swam over here, I gaze up into the tall branches of the cottonwoods surrounding us. You never know where a highly mobile pig might hide.

This Tuesday-afternoon swine hunt takes place on my second day as apprentice at Ann and Bob Collins' farm on Vancouver Island. Because agriculture hasn't been profitable here for many years, Ann and Bob also run a campground that provides extra income from tourists willing to pay to pitch a tent or park an RV on the farm's non-agricultural land. What that means for me is that a typical day might have me running the register, preparing food, cleaning the two campground cottages, pulling weeds, feeding animals and of course harvesting the organic bounty. Pig hunting, on the other hand, was not in the job description. I considered it a bonus activity.

The two pigs came to the farm about three weeks ago, before I arrived. They were only in their pen a couple of days before they got spooked by the donkeys and took off through their electric fence. The last anybody saw of them, they were tearing through the woods toward the river. Thinking they couldn't have gotten too far, Ann and Bob called all the neighbors (excepting those across the river), but nobody had seen them. Ann figured they were dead; Bob, a fiction writer, imagined them building a raft and setting off for an adventure, Huck Finn style.
Then, Monday night as I was washing up the dinner dishes, the phone rang. I picked up. It was Georgina, across the river, asking when somebody was going to come pick up the pigs that had been hanging around with her cows the past two days. I told her we would let her know and hung up, scratching my head.
When Bob and Ann returned, I told them about the call. They were thrilled. "Can pigs swim?" I asked. "Sure," Bob said. I still wasn't sure if I believed him. "We'll go pig hunting tomorrow," he added. Proof was on the way.

The next morning, we loaded up the buckets of grain in the back of the truck, attached a trailer to haul the pigs in, and drove through town and to the other side of the river. Bob stayed with the truck while Ann, Andrea (who once lived on this side of the river), Carmen the border collie and I started to comb the forest. As we looked, we discussed whether we should have brought a lasso or if it was even possible to catch a pig on the run. But Ann was confident: The pigs had to be hungry after their long adventure. Luring them into the trailer with a bucket of grain would be a piece of cake. We just had to find them first.
The river bank held no tracks. Using our tracking skills, we deduced that they had been borrowing through the forest underbrush, but not even Carmen, a professional animal herder, could sniff them out. I began to feel a little silly and hung back with Ann at the water's edge, pulling thorns out of my shoes and trying to think like a pig. Then we heard Andrea yelling. She'd found the fugitive pigs!
We broke out into a trot and met up with her at the cattle pen. For some reason we hadn't thought to check there, but there they were, darting around under the bellies of the cows, who were going crazy at the sight of the grain in our buckets. The four or so cows began leaping about, long strings of drool coming from their mouths. Finally, the little hairy black pigs got over their fear of us and slipped under the fence, heading nose-first for the grain buckets. We let them have a sample and then started heading back to the road, continuing to shake the buckets. The pigs followed, their minds no longer on escape but on food. Ann led them straight into the trailer and shut the door. Carmen and I brought up the rear, she more disappointed than I that we hadn't actually needed to chase or herd anybody.

It didn't strike me until later that what the Collins are trying to do here - preserve the farming community and build a market for local foods - is quite similar to catching pigs. I'm not comparing people to chubby livestock, but I have noticed over the years that food is a strong motivator for the human type of animal. Screaming kid at the grocery store? He just wants a candy bar. Squabbling family at the holidays? A tray of cookies does the trick. Angry drunken party getting out of control? Order a pizza. The same principle applies to getting people excited about things in a more positive way. Talk to them about agricultural subsidies, the Farm Bill or food miles traveled and their eyes will glaze over, but put that glaze on a fresh fruit tart or a roast ham and the whole issue becomes a lot more relevant. As Alice Waters said, "food is the one central thing about human experience that can open up both our senses and our conscience to our place in the world." A person who experiences the freshness and flavor of a locally produced vegetable might not go out right away and plant a garden, but they might think a bit differently about food from then on.
Unlike Eugene, Oregon, Port Alberni, BC hasn't quite been hit yet by the local foods craze. I see this as a good thing: There's a lot of room for community education. This weekend, I showed a few campers - one mom and three little girls - around the farm after one of the little girls begged to see the horses. After stopping in at the barn, we walked around the pasture, garden and chicken coop. I'll never forget the look of amazement in the girls' eyes as they examined the three fresh eggs, one of them pale green, waiting in the laying box. I let them keep the green egg, object of much fascination, on promises that they would come back for market day the following weekend.
Most food in Port Alberni is purchased through major grocery chains, and most of the farmers have disappeared from the valley, unable to support their businesses. I don't have illusions about seeing this trend turn around while I'm here, but I think one-on-one interactions that farm visitors get can help spark some sort of change. We don't need to catch people, we just need to show them the better option. After all, if the bucket of grain is tasty enough, even wayward, river-swimming pigs can be led back home.

Penne with Kale and Lentils

Today we are a food blog.
One of my projects over the past week has been figuring out new ways to use the abundance of kale the Collins Farm garden has provided us with. This recipe was adapted from one I found on Epicurious.com (awesome site), but I changed it enough to warrant calling it my own. My plan is to come up with a few more kale tricks before the farmer's market on Saturday so I can hand recipes out to puzzled customers who seem to regard kale as some sort of alien lettuce.
So, with on further ado, I present:

Penne Pasta with Kale and Lentils

Kale is a highly nutritious and sweet-tasting green that is complimented well by the earthy taste of lentils, which add protein and fibre to this dish. The cheese is optional but gives it a bit of delicious creaminess. Add fresh garden herbs like oregano, basil or parsley for your own twist.

1 lb (fresh!) kale, cut into strips
2 lbs penne pasta, or any other short pasta (regular or multigrain)
1 cup lentils (any type)
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (use more as you desire, of course)
4 T olive oil
3 oz (85 g) parmesan or other hard cheese like asiago, grated
Salt and pepper
Red pepper flakes (optional, for added spice)

Cook lentils in 2 cups water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, steam kale for 7-8 minutes, or until tender. Set kale aside and keep the water boiling. Add the pasta to the boiling water, stir, and cook until al dente (10-12 minutes). Drain and return pasta to the pot. Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until onions are translucent. Add to pasta along with the lentils, kale and grated cheese. Stir and season to taste.

The Amazing Shape-Shifting Blog! Plus, the next chapter.

Blogs are funny things. I haven't actually kept up with many since the whole craze started, but my limited observation of them tells me that, unlike with books or even magazines, it's okay to change tone, intent, format and content entirely from post to post. Some are updated hourly; some - like mine - tend toward neglect. Still, it's a project I enjoy, even if my purposes are not entirely clear.
With that in mind, I'm going to ask this blog to take yet another leap, and I hope this old faithful multimedia horse can keep up. What started as a class project two years ago turned into a venue for my rants, then a travelogue when I went to India. I believe the next stage in its evolution (or perhaps devolution) will be some sort of combination of its previous functions. I've changed locations again, and I'm feeling rant-y. I also have quite a few stories to relay. There are many pictures and recipes to post, and I've started trying to write more creative stuff which I may be brave enough to share. Now that I'm no longer required to think like a journalist (just the facts, please!) I'm trying to approach writing in a new way. Adding a dose of fun, hopefully, with less concern over word counts and marketability.
All of this re-evaluation tells me that this blog may start to have an even more confused identity than it already has. It's taking a form of its own, one that I haven't really pinned down.

I suppose this was to be expected with the recent changes that have come about in my own life. I'm no longer a college student. I participated in two graduation ceremonies (running, with tassels flapping in one hand an high heels clutched in the other, from one ceremony to the other, thanks to some bad scheduling on the UO's part). I'm now qualified to serve up a double dose of BS (that's Bachelor of Science, thank you): Environmental Studies and Journalism. I packed up my four years of accumulated junk and put the into my newly acquired automobile. I said goodbye to beloved friends, apartment, and bicycle. And I let out a big WHOOOHOOO!! as I crossed the border into British Columbia.

At the same time, I had no idea what to expect once I got here. I knew very little about my next stage in life as I zoomed up the I5, only that I was ready to get out of the city and try something new. A few months earlier, realizing that I wasn't ready to launch a "career" straight away, and also that I had absolutely no reason to (no heavy debt, no dependents, no desire to own a yacht in ten years), I decided to look into other options. I thought about what I like to do (other than write, which I can do anywhere): eat, cook, garden, educate people about where food comes from. It didn't take me long to start looking for farms.
WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) is one organization that has gained attention along with the whole organics movement. SOIL (Stewards of Irreplaceable Land) Apprenticeships operates under a similar structure, but lists farms only in Canada. After spending a couple of weeks on both websites, I had my choices narrowed down to a few farms in the Pacific Northwest. I sent out emails and applications. I kept my fingers crossed.

When Ann Collins called me from Vancouver Island, BC, what she described sounded perfect. She told me that she and her husband had been farming for 30 years on a fertile piece of land by a river in the Alberni Valley. They grew vegetables and kept goats, chickens and horses. Securing the local food supply was their priority. As an apprentice, I would get to help out with all aspects of their farming operation, plus cook to my heart's content and spend my free time on the river or in the abundant forests surrounding the farm. Worried that I was drooling into the telephone, I told Ann I'd think about it. I then spent the next week or so trying to come up with a reason I shouldn't just go for it. I failed. I sent them an email and said to expect me post-graduation.

So here I am, typing in my bedroom at the farm house, my laptop resting on a handmade quilt. There's dirt permanently under my fingernails and I'm completely blowing my new early bedtime in order to finally update my poor blog.
Pictures and more tidbits from the farming life to arrive shortly. In the meantime, check out the farm website. (Who would have thought those two words would ever go together? Ah, the digital age.) The short update is this: So far, I'm having the time of my life.

Class of 2009: The Earth is Hiring

The author Paul Hawken gave a speech at the University of Portland’s graduation ceremony last month, which beautifully sums up my thoughts on finishing my bachelor's in what some are calling the “worst year ever to graduate.” I highly recommend reading the entire thing, but here are the parts that really struck me (emphasis mine):

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.
...

This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

Before I read this speech, I knew I wasn’t going to take the typical career trajectory that most college graduates shoot for, even if they don’t make it. I just can’t see myself getting much joy out of – or helping many other people by – finding a 9-5 job in something I’m marginally interested in, going into debt buying a house and starting a family, and doing pretty much the same thing for the rest of my life. I know this is a route many people find great satisfaction in, but I think I’ve always known it’s not me, even if I temporarily allowed myself to believe, like most college students, that my degree would privilege me to this kind of future. The American Dream. Take it or leave it.
But now it seems that even if I’d wanted to do all that, this status quo – working purely for personal gain, keeping to our private family groups, expecting the next generation to fix the problems we create along the way – is no longer what we can expect maintain as a species. I think this is what Hawken is really saying, but in a nicer way: Wake up and smell the coffee, kids. The times, they really are a-changin’ now (with apologies to Bob Dylan).

Not too long ago, after returning from India and realizing the long stretch of time (yes, six months can seem like an eternity) before graduation, and waking up to hear news of the economy’s death throes every morning, it was a little tough to actually get out of bed and go to class. I actually felt sorry for myself: What, oh what, will I do with my seemingly useless journalism degree? How will I ever find a job and not disappoint my family and everyone who has sacrificed to put me through college?
Luckily, in the intervening time, I’ve gained a little perspective. That is, things are never as bad as the media would like you to believe – and a journalism student of all people should know this. As Hawken says, “We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant.” No kidding. In fact the situation’s gotten so bad, the best and brightest graduates this year appear to be steering away from Wall Street and financial jobs, applying their efforts toward endeavors that actually generate something for society other than cash – becoming doctors, scientists, and researchers, people who can bail us out of the jam we’re currently in. That was according to a New York Times article I read but can’t seem to find now.
It’s almost ironic: for decades, we’ve had a brain drain, similar to what countries like India are going through. There, smart kids succeed by going to study engineering and medicine at Western schools, then they never come home to apply those skills where they’re needed the most. In this country, those who are passionate about social justice, the environment and helping the needy go almost by default to the “developing” world. Every time I tell somebody about what I care about these days, they suggest I join the Peace Corps. As if there’s no poverty or need in this country. Sunita Rao, my India mentor, is on a Fulbright visit to the US, and she observes what she calls a “poverty of hope” – a problem just as severe as her country’s financial burden.
Here are a few facts I unearthed while writing my thesis: The percentage of farmers under 35 dropped from 15% in 1954 to 7.8% in 1997. Today, less than 1% of Americans work as farmers, a number so insignificant that the US Census threw out farming as a distinct employment category. In 2002, 77% of farm workers surveyed were foreign-born, and 53% lacked authorization to work in the U.S. Farm family members accounted for 69% of farm labor in 1998, but the average age of farm owners was 54.3, indicating that the next generation of family farmers is quite smaller than the one currently at retirement age.
So here we have two sides of the same problem: Too many people who want to participate in the second-tier level of the economy, activities like finance that are not directly related to survivability, and too few people focused on providing the very basics like food. Although we rank ourselves superior to the “third world,” our society is, in the words of S. S. Wilson, “overdeveloped.” Which way to turn?

A couple of months ago, I quit sending applications and resumes to floundering newspapers in my area, stopped gazing hopelessly at job listings (and the cost of rent) in cities like Portland and Seattle. I started looking into doing things that, as my father woefully points out every time I speak to him, I could have done without a college degree. And I started getting very, very excited. Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF), which connects people with internships and volunteer positions with farms around the world, is a wonderful program, as is its Canadian equivalent, SOIL Apprenticeships. After contacting several sites, I found one that fit my interests up on Vancouver Island, BC. I start later this month. Although I wish I had found a way to do this in my own country, have no doubt that I will return triumphant, a practical education under my belt, pitchfork in hand. And I have to say, Dad, that I’m not sure I could have done this without my liberal arts degree: Nothing else could have made me this idealistic. Or maybe it was just that darn trip to India. Either way, I’m excited and hopeful about the future. This could be the best year ever to graduate.