Wednesday
Aug172011

The Melissa Garden; A Heavenly Place for Bees

DateWednesday, August 17, 2011 at 12:53PM

I recently spent the morning on a tour of The Melissa Garden in Sonoma County, and besides the beauty of the flowers and the natural landscape, I was impressed with how much the bees are cared for. Here is a short introduction to the garden on their website: "The Melissa Garden is a new project that began in the fall of 2007 by Barbara and Jacques Schlumberger at their home. The goal is to provide honeybees, native bees and other pollinators with an almost year-round source of floral resources- free from pesticides. Studies have found that native bees and honeybees both benefit from feeding on a variety of flowers, so season-long the garden is kept filled with an abundance of annuals, perennials and shrubs that offer attractive pollen and nectar to insect visitors. There is a mixture of plants native to California, many Mediterranean plants and others that are appropriate for the site and climate."

As the Schlumbergers have understood more about the bee's needs, they've shifted their philosophy to be more and more hands off. For example, because this summer has been so cool and overcast every morning, the bees need to eat the honey they've made to stay warm, so no one collects their honey. They've noticed the bees are happiest in the most natural hives, so as the bees have swarmed, instead of to the typical hive boxes, they have placed hollow logs in various trees, which the new colonies have happily moved into. They've been focused on the project for four years and started with one hive colony - as new queens have led their young drones to other hives, they have split into nine active hives on the property. Another discovery that seems to make a difference to the health and happiness of the colonies is having lots of space between them, in fact about a football field's worth! So, the hollow logs have been placed with just that much land between them. Of course, in tending the land for the bees, many other beneficial insects and birds are enjoying the garden, a sanctuary for bees became a sanctuary for other pollinators as well.

We were led on the tour by Kate Frey, the master gardener who designed and landscaped the four gardens on the property. She was extremely knowledgeable about the plants, rattling off the Latin and common names, telling us whether they are primarily pollen or nectar flowers, what time of the year they flower, whether they're perennial or annual, how much water they need, which pollinators enjoy them, etc. I took copious notes! We were also given lists of plants that pollinators love from both a UC professor, Gordon Franckie, who is studying urban beekeeping at Cal, and Annie's Annuals and Perennials, a local nursery that specializes in plants that attract bees.

I'm even more inspired to plant year-round flowering plants in my garden. According to Kate Frey, bees love masses of flowers, so no wonder the row of lavender in my backyard is often covered in bees. They also need flowering plants year-round. In California, we have many natives that flower in the winter and early spring; manzanita and redbud are two that come to mind.

Visiting The Melissa Garden is a wonderful experience, I look forward to going again soon. The garden certainly attracts more than insect and bird pollinators to return again and again!

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Sunday
Jul242011

Fish Too

DateSunday, July 24, 2011 at 11:51AM

Turns out I have a lot to say about ocean creatures and homeopathy, sushi, and places to buy great, sustainably caught fish. So, in order to keep the last post relatively short, I've written this one.

First of all, I was excited to learn from Wikipedia that when sushi was first eaten, it was fermented! Sushi was originally made by fermenting fish with rice, then throwing away the rice and only eating the fermented fish. I imagine it was quite tasty and full of good probiotics. Beginning in the Muromachi period in Japan (AD 1336–1573), it was made into a fast food by using vinegar to flavor the rice and no more fermentation! By the 1800’s this form was popularized all over Japan. In one area of Japan, near Lake Biwa, in the middle of the island of Honshu, sushi chefs still make it the traditional, lacto-fermented way. I'd be interested to know if any sushi chefs in the U.S. have ever offered fermented sushi on their menu!

Speaking of sushi, I came across a restaurant in San Francisco, Tataki, that was one of the first sushi restaurants to take on the concept of sustainable dining in 2008. The owners' goal is to preserve the art of sushi, and so they feel they must safeguard the health and biodiversity of our oceans by only serving responsibly sourced, environmentally friendly seafood. The chef/owners, Karen Lui and Raymond Ho, follow the recommendations of their sustainability guru, Casson Trenor. He wrote Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time (North Atlantic Books, January 2009).

 

 Here are a few additions to sustainable fish shopping options in the San Francisco Bay Area:

The friendly folks from Hudson Fish, Yvette and Mike Hudson, set up shop at the Thursday and Saturday Berkeley Farmer's Markets, the Saturday El Cerrito Market and the Sunday Kensington Market. They fish out of San Francisco Bay, their fish is local and seasonal, and they only use sustainable methods to catch fish that are not endangered. They have wonderful fresh fish week after week. My family especially enjoys the Maguro tuna that we cut and eat raw, sashimi style, and the butterfish or black cod. Their line and pole caught salmon is also very fresh and flavorful.

 

 

 Berkeley Bowl and El Cerrito Natural Grocery are two grocery/butcher stores that publicly source their fish. Berkeley Bowl sells some fish that isn't as sustainable as others, so it's good to read the signs and talk to the butchers. El Cerrito Natural Grocery only buys and sells fish from reliable and sustainable sources, just as they only supply organic produce in their store.

If you want the freshest and most directly sourced fish and are happy shopping from home, Vital Choice is a great web-based mail order sustainable fish and organic supplies store located in Bellingham, Washington. Their main products are fresh, wild fish packed in dry ice, that can be shipped within two days to your home. They also sell canned and smoked fish, nuts, dried berries, oils and vinegar, and herbs and teas. They very carefully source their offerings, and as they say, only 1% of the salmon they are offered for sale meets their requirements for sale to their customers. They offer free shipping for any order over $99.

On a completely different note, I so enjoy watching sea creatures doing their thing, especially when I know we’ve made a homeopathic remedy from that species. It helps me gain insight into the behaviors and sensitivities of those creatures, which I study as a homeopath, in order to see them in the people who come to me for help. When people are ill, they develop a complicated pattern of symptoms. Homeopaths correlate these symptoms to the symptoms exhibited by healthy volunteers when they took a homeopathic remedy developed from a particular animal, plant, or chemical in a homeopathic proving (this is where homeopaths discover the symptoms substances can cause, and therefore cure). One of the things I find fascinating about being a homeopath is seeing how my clients seem to have taken on the characteristics of a creature or substance ...which they may or may not relate to. By careful questioning and observation, homeopaths look for that specific remedy substance that is exhibited by our clients, and so they need homeopathically. I feel a strong connection when I have the opportunity to observe the animals of the ocean, especially when I’ve heard from my clients about their reality and they need a remedy made from octopus, jellyfish, cuttlefish, shark, dolphin, sea star, or seahorse.

The ocean is rich with a huge variety of life; homeopathic remedies are made from a small number of ocean species as well as the elements that make up the sea; Aqua marina and Natrum muriaticum are made from ocean water and sea salt respectively. There are also remedies made from many mollusks, such as Calcarea carbonica (oyster shell), Pearl, Cowrie Shell, and Nautilus. This is one of the many reasons I love homeopathy - I get to study biology, botany, and chemistry as a way to better understand human behavior.

 

 

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Saturday
Jul162011

Octopus, Jellyfish, Sharks, Oh My!

DateSaturday, July 16, 2011 at 9:23AM

 

Having spent part of the day today at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I’m thinking a lot about the many delicate, fragile, gorgeous creatures I saw and how precarious their survival is.

 Some of my favorite sea animals on display at the aquarium are the two big octopus, the many tanks of jellyfish, the green sea turtles, and of course, the amazing variety of seahorses. For me, just watching these animals swimming in their tanks and doing their beautiful movements, having evolved in so many incredibly diverse and fantastic ways, brought it home for me. 

I think of the ocean as a giant womb, full of all of the elements for life, everything in balance, allowing for the delicacy of a jellyfish and the massiveness of a blue whale, and I’m pained to think about how much we’ve done to harm it.   

Going to any natural history museum these days is a lesson in how we’re ruining the planet; the Monterey Bay Aquarium is no exception, in fact their mission is to educate the public on sustainability. Today I watched aquarium employees using puppets made from recycled materials and singing about team work as the way to solve the earth’s problems; recordings of artists who are using various media to make the plight of the ocean’s creatures more personal; and entire interactive exhibits showing the many ways we can take responsibility and have less of an impact on the ocean.  

The aquarium educates people across the country with its Seafood Watch Sustainable Food Guide, which you may have picked up at your local fish market. One can also download a free app for the iPhone or Android. They now publish them for most of the regions of the U.S. and also print a Sustainable Sushi Guide. These are small folded cards that can easily fit in a wallet and are edited twice yearly to reflect the current state of our fisheries and tell us what fish are best to eat and which should be avoided. As one of the docents explained to me today as I picked up a new one, it’s often not so much about the type of fish; it’s also about whether it was caught or farmed sustainably, and sometimes, where it was shipped from. 

I learned more about how unsustainable the sushi industry is when my family was looking for a place to celebrate my mother’s birthday last month in Santa Cruz. We were leafing through a local free paper, the Santa Cruz Weekly, and saw a review of a new restaurant called Geisha Sushi in Capitola. One of the objectives of the owner is to only provide sustainably raised or caught fish for the restaurant. He does not serve three of the most popular types of fish: Unagi, made from freshwater eel; Toro, the fatty underbelly of Bluefin tuna; or Hamachi, which is yellowtail tuna that is usually netted, because they are all overfished and endangered. Even though it is difficult as a sushi restaurant not to offer these favored dishes, the chef has found ways to get around this. He serves “Onagi,” which is locally caught catfish made with the same sauce as Unagi, and line caught yellowtail tuna, and the local’s favorite, sardines, which he brines and sprinkles with vinegar. We had a wonderful meal there and I will say felt much more informed and responsible. Since then we’ve eaten sushi a couple of times at less conscious restaurants -  we just order the fish we know is sustainable. 

 

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Wednesday
Jun222011

Eating Well Makes a Difference

DateWednesday, June 22, 2011 at 2:19PM

I sometimes wonder why my husband and I go to all the trouble we do to eat the food we do. Shopping at all the different places; the farmer's markets, health food stores, and Three Stone Hearth are activities we have to fit into our schedules. Cooking... all the cooking! From scratch! Not to mention preserving, fermenting, dehydrating, stock making. We always make lots of food, so we have leftovers, but then we have to be careful they don't eventually disappear into the back of the fridge and take on new life forms.

But why do we do this??!!! It's so much more trouble than going to Trader Joe's and opening up a frozen bag, or Whole Foods and opening up a jar, boiling pasta, throwing together a quick salad and calling it dinner. It's not like we aren't busy people - me with my own business, a 13-year-old-daughter with a very active life, my husband who works full-time and just finished a master's degree, and who is now embarking on a writing career in his spare time!

No, it's not always easy to make certain we have our meals prepared in a timely way (in fact with summer suddenly appearing and daylight so much later, we've eaten dinner at 8:00 twice this week!), and that we have the energy to make it happen at the end of the day. That reminds me, I must cook those lamb shanks today!

So... again, why do we do it? Well, because we feel so much better. We eat three cooked meals a day, always with some protein and fat (to digest the protein), as well as vegetables, and maybe rice or sweet potatoes, or soba noodles, and some fruit. We rarely have any hunger between meals, and if we do, we eat nuts or a coconut bar, or a piece of fruit or a carrot. We have plenty of energy to do all the things we do, we rarely get sick, and again, we feel good. I know when I don't eat as well, when I have to eat out and can't find the high-quality food my body is used to, I just don't feel satisfied in the same way and I want to keep eating and eating. And it's often the sweet carbs that I turn to when this happens, partly because they're so readily available (so many darn bakeries!).

I must disclose here that we don't do all of our own cooking. My friends at Three Stone Hearth know I buy at least a jar or two of their delicious soup or stew just about every week, and we've been buying a lot more of their wonderful beef and chicken stock that we add liberally to other dishes. It works out financially for us, we can open up a jar of say, Lentil and Lamb Soup with Greens, and get four good-sized servings out of it, which is a lot less expensive than getting take-out just about anywhere, not to mention how much better the local, organic and nutrient dense food is for us and the planet!

One of the best things about eating nutrient-dense foods is that we are sated with a relatively small amount of food and don't need to continue to eat. If we even want dessert, a small bowl of fruit with cream or a coconut milk dessert is plenty!

With all the choices of diets, places to buy food, and ways to prepare it, it may seem crazy to spend as much time and effort to eat well, but in our house, it is so worth it. My husband and I think about it as a health insurance plan that we actually use. We want to live long lives and feel good well into our 80's. We are so happy to see how healthy our 13-year-old is -- no need for braces with her beautiful set of teeth -- and her strong body. The more we eat well, the more likely our bodies and minds will function well. Even if we spend more than the average American (who, by the way spends less and less of their income on food, while Europeans continue to spend about the same percentage they always have!), in the long run we'll come out ahead in so many ways.

 

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Tuesday
Jun212011

Our Access to Quality Foods 

DateTuesday, June 21, 2011 at 11:44AM

"All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860)

Lately I've been noticing the phenomenon that, as alternative movements become more popular, they become more threatening to the mainstream. When these movements are recognized for the threat they may or may not be, officialdom often steps in to squelch the movement. Usually there is money involved, or power, which is tied in with politics and bureacracies and agencies and rules, some of which may protect us, some of which protects large businesses that are concerned with continuing to make huge profits.

This happened to homeopathy in the late 1920's in the U.S. - as homeopathy went into decline for the next 50 years, pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry did very well, profit-wise at least!

Now that homeopathy has become increasingly popular again the quack-busters have come out of the woodwork and homeopaths have come under increasing attack, especially in England, where there was some question about it continuing to be part of the National Health System. Please read this article if you'd like to learn more:http://www.counterfire.org/images/documents/a_check_without_balance.pdf

Homeopaths are learning ways to counter this backlash while continuing to be the second most widely used medicine in many parts of the world. As long as the public continues to demand it, there will be more and more acceptance, and eventually we'll understand just what a valuable system it is.

Our organic, local, high quality food suppliers are being faced with this kind of threat, as more and more people are demanding raw milk.

On the outskirts of San Jose, California, a small goat farm has been ordered to "cease and desist" the sharing of raw goat milk and other goat products. The owners, a retired couple, thought they were within their legal rights to provide the dairy products because their clients have signed contracts stating that they are herd share owners. Here is an announcement from their farm:

"Unfortunately we have to inform you that we have been contacted by the San Jose District Attorneys office and told to cease all production and supply of raw milk products.
This is despite our very hard efforts to become a legitimate Goat Share business providing Goat Share Owners with boarding services and a share of the milk from their goats. We are being told to completely close our operations until we can become licensed as a raw dairy supplier by the CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture).
Licensing by the CDFA requires new certified equipment and facilities and will take time and money we do not have right now. We will proceed as they request but will need help and financial support as well as legal assistance to get through this. CDFA standards are not affordable by small dairies that can quickly go out of business trying to comply with standards written for large dairies.
As you may know Evergreen Acres has become our retirement business as we are too old for re-employment in the technology sector. If we lose this we will lose all our investment in our farm and have no jobs to go to so this is a desperate and stressful situation for us that can quickly leave us homeless and unemployed."

Mike and Jane Hulme
Evergreen Acres Goat Farm
408 644 8048

Please visit their website or give them a call with any support you can give - they are lovely people who provide all kinds of services to their community.

At the same time, small food operations, ie: family farms, all over the U.S. are being raided and their animals seized, their families terrorized, and their livelihoods threatened. Farmegeddon, a new film by filmmaker Kristin Canty, tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Here is a description from the Farmageddon website:

"Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four children turned into an educational journey to discover why access to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small family-operated farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of focusing on the source of food safety problems — most often the industrial food chain — policymakers and regulators implement and enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing safe, healthy food, but buckle under the crushing weight of government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.
Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive."

There are limited screenings so far in various cities, and please let your friends know if they live in any of them, but we want to see it here! If you'd like to see it in San Francisco, please jump to

http://www.nourishingourchildren.org/Farmageddon.html

and fill in the number of people you know who would like to attend the screening.

Meanwhile, continue to support your local farmer, rancher, milkman or woman and know that they are in a very precarious situation if we continue to allow our government agencies and politicians to be so influenced by big businesses such as Monsanto! Join and support The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, whose mission it is to defend the rights and broaden the freedoms of family farms and protect consumer access to raw milk and nutrient dense foods.

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