New West Network

My Page: Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Making extra-virgin olive oil (the best of the olive oils) is a time intensive and expensive process. For millennia, growers have monitored olives, waiting for the precise moment of invaiatura when the succulent drupe turns from green to black. Only then are olives harvested by hand and pressed for oil.

The time intensive and expensive process was made financially attractive in 2004, when the FDA announced that olive oil reduced the risk of coronary heart disease. In the United States, the attribute was a financial boon to the industry; the American market continues to grow by ten percent each year and is worth some $1.5 billion.

The expense of production paired with an increase in demand has led to fakes, corruption and scandal in the olive oil industry. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, farmers and ranchers spend about 6 percent of their expenses on energy. The amount depends on the crops grown and the region, but most energy is used to run motors that propel irrigation and provide lighting. These estimates from the organization's 2005 report do not include the energy used to produce feed or fertilizer, which is often petroleum based. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for 29 percent of agriculture’s energy use.

Farmers and ranchers can now use the internet to estimate farm energy use for things such as irrigation and nitrogen at the USDA and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) website where the USDA and NRCS encourage farmers to reduce energy use by changing farming practices. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Local food advocates often contend that local food is fresher, tastier and healthier. While the first two claims are rather easy to prove with a warm tomato from the garden, the human health aspects of local food tend to remain obscured.

Few studies have been done on the effects of local, fresh food on human health, but the idea that such food is better for us than the marathon grub that travels 1300 miles has become a reality for one Lakota man from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, who ate local food and got healthy.

The Argus Leader recently reported that Beau LeBeau has lost 60 pounds by eating buffalo, wild game, soy and flax seed and fresh fish found close to his home.

As a 35 year old man, weighing 333 pounds, LeBeau decided to change his life in order to keep it. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

In 1995 a privately owned company out of Colorado called Xanterra Parks & Resorts took over ownership and management of hotels and restaurants in many state and national parks in the United States. From the Everglades to Yellowstone, the company prides itself on following a tradition of hostelry established by Fred Harvey who made it easier for 1870s travelers to eat well and travel comfortably in the raucous west. But these days, Xanterra also believes that such comfort and tourism should not come at the expense of the environment.

By 2015, Xanterra plans to reduce its fossil fuel use and gas emissions in the 25 parks, resorts and conference centers it is affiliated with by thirty percent while diverting fifty percent of all solid waste away from the landfill. They also plan to increase "sustainable cuisine" purchases to fifty percent of all “companywide food expenditures.” In their 2005 Sustainability Report, the company states that it made $1.4 million in sustainable cuisine purchases in 2004, up from $22,765 in 2001. While most of this money was spent on dairy, about $52,000 went to purchasing bison and elk. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

This is not the decade of global warming or even climate change. It is one of ensuing ecological destruction.

When the energy runs dry, all of the systems we have so carelessly created to gulp that energy down will be worthless. We can build tiny houses (less than 100 square feet), rip up our lawns for edible estates, drive a Prius, sell carbon credits on the Chicago climate exchange, or refocus our energy policy on biofuels and ethanol, but as Wes Jackson from the Land Institute argues, “We aren’t going to invent or grow our way out of this thing.” No amount of human innovation can stop the ensuing ecological destruction. To even begin to do that, humans will need to cut their energy use in half, in just ten years.

This was the sobering theme of the 2007 Sopris Conference: Innovative Ideas for a New West, held in Missoula this weekend. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

This week at the Missoula Farmer’s market, I walked up to the smallest booth where cucumbers were four for a dollar. The sign exclaimed that cucumbers were “usually three for a dollar!”

“I’ll take eight,” I told the three young girls behind the table. Then, as if we were at a farmers’ market drive-thru, one of the girls said, “Want sorrel with that?”

Her sense of commerce and the “upsell,” seemed fairly well developed for a ten year old. But I declined, mostly because I had never heard of sorrel.

“Give her a taste,” nudged the other girl. “It’s so good.”

"We have a recipe for sorrel soup too. It's very good and easy," she nodded.

She tore a small piece off the green leaves that looked a bit like thin, floppy spinach. “It’s good,” she repeated.

They watched as I took one bite and smiled politely when, quite suddenly, the clear taste actually hit my tongue. I stopped smiling in complete amazement. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

On scorching summer afternoons when it’s too hot to garden or eat, there is nothing better than sipping iced tea, dipping your toes in the creek and reading a good book. In the last few years I have amassed a library of foodie obsession. From the lyric to the didactic, I have a few favorites...

David Mas Masumoto’s classic Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on my Family Farm is as sensual as its lodestone fruit, artfully and lovingly relaying consumers' declining interest in the Sun Crest peach, which "tastes like a peach is supposed to," and the farmers' work that "remains unrewarded."

The lesser known, similarly lyric anthology, In Praise of Fertile Land, is a beautifully arranged book published by Whit Press. The book's poetry and short stories about the land, the work and food of agriculture provide engaging snippets, and all royalties from the sale of the book provide financial support to farmland protection programs. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

When I was six, my mom found me sitting at the edge of our suburban home, where I was grabbing fistfuls of soil, and eating it. She washed my face and warned me that soil could be dirty; there were very bad things in it that could make you sick. But it turns out that urban soil may not be as disturbing as we might expect. Even with so much human use and waste filtering through it on a daily basis, urban soils might have more fertility and variety than we think.

According to the current issue of Baltimore Ecosystem Study, found that while some soil was obviously disturbed by the urban environment, such as through construction or deconstruction, other soil had characteristics of soil that would be found outside the city limits. While the physical characteristics of samples were similar, the chemical make-up varied depending on the history of use, location of the site, and any buildings, asphalt, turf or concrete that may have covered the site at one time. Calcium rich concrete for instance may have elevated the calcium levels in the soil, making it more alkaline. Such levels are important to understand because they can impede plant growth.

But to their surprise, the researchers found that elevated levels of heavy metals in the soil appeared to be related to geology rather than the city's history of industrialization. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Recently, a few politicians have been living on food stamps.

In April, Oregon’s Governor Theodore R. Kulongoski put away the preferred local salmon and Cascade mountain mushrooms. They were too expensive for his $3 a day food budget.

For a short stint, the governor joined Oregon’s Food Stamp Challenge to reiterate that hunger remains a major issue even while the 2007 Farm Bill, which includes funding for food assistance and hunger programs, threatens to cut food assistance programs.

According to the New York Times, the Bush administration has proposed reducing funds to the food stamp program, including taking stamps from 185,000 people who receive other non-cash government assistance. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

While much of the Rocky Mountain West is rural, our urban spaces are the areas that are most inhabited and quickly growing. As these cities expand though, we have the fortunate ability to look at other examples of urban growth and the effects that growth has had on the environment. While urban sprawl is the commonly discussed disruptive and destructive form of growth, urban densification (the concentration of buildings in a small area) presents its own problems.

Many of the issues of densification are directly related to the flat roofs that become the ceiling to a city, and raised surface of the earth. The space on flat roofs is often a hot wasteland of blacktop and brick, which absorb and retain heat. Roof tops with little space between them form an island of heat, creating the heat island affect and causing city temperatures to be six to eight degrees hotter than surrounding rural areas. Hard roof surfaces are also meant to be impermeable and rainwater runs off into streets, often draining pollutants into the watershed. In the process, habitat loss has resulted in the decrease in biodiversity in urban centers.

These issues are seen worldwide as dense cities become the place where most people live. But the rooftops that seem so problematic remain underused spaces that could be the very source of greenspace that urban centers (residents and wildlife) desperately need. In order to increase urban biodiversity, and mitigate the effects of habitat destruction, the flat, heat seeking black top roofs can actually become gardens. [more]

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>