Tacoma's downtown version of the
Farmer's Market returns today and that's good news for anyone looking for healthy locally grown produce. I've been reading my way through
Michael Pollan's great books about plants, farming, the follies of monoculture and the industrialization of the food chain. His trilogy of titles,
In Defense of Food,
The Omnivore's Dilemma and
The Botany of Desire explore the gross misstep's of our government's handling of the U.S. food chain. The problems of Iowa's reliance on the monoculture farming of corn, the push by industry for seeds that can't reproduce naturally (thus insuring a ready market for next year's planting), pesticides and the vast cities of penned-up cattle, hogs and chickens are all looked at from several different angles by Pollan. The story of what we eat, when we eat it, and how it gets to us is mesmerizing. Its not often that books stop me in my tracks, but there I was looking at a box of crackers in the grocery store and was just struck dumb by the packaging and claims on the box. The information is correct but as Pollan points out it's the process of how the contents get there that matter most.
His premise is that grass is king and the underlying nexus of our food problems. He visits farm that respect grass, the process of the pasture, and plan accordingly. The grass grows, cattle eat, drop manure which chickens then peck apart and process starts over again. It's a process that harkens back to the tenants of Rodale's Organic Gardening. Pollan also brings up the thoughts and agricultural concerns of Wendell Berry. An early proponent of localized food sources and the relationship of sustenance, people, and the land, Berry explains the importance of the short food chain and how we're all interconnected. Intoxicating reads and worth considering as the farm season warms up.
Jane Yolen, the great children's author, has just come out with a great new young adult title, Sea Queens - Women Pirates Around the World. Yolen brings us to Artemisia, the admiral-queen of Persia in 500 BC; Grania O'Malley, the Irish "pirate queen" who challenged Queen Elizabeth I's British ships; Madame Ching, who sailed the South China Sea in the early 1800s; and then other female pirates on their ships, in battle, and in disguise.
