4-22-10

INDIGO SEEDS PLANTED TODAY

INDIGO SEEDS PLANTED THREE WEEKS AGO

JEN CAREFULLY PLANTING

SAVING AND CLEANING SEEDS

A BEAUTIFUL DAY TO SKIRT WOOL

AARON & MILES JAM

Happy Earth Day! Every day should be Earth Day, but at least people set aside one day a year to celebrate the Earth. Through farming, we honor the Earth daily and recognize the incredible importance of every action each person makes, every day. Lowering our impact will hopefully make a difference. Pray more people realize this, and soon! Until then, reduce, reuse, recycle.

We got back to Cali Wednesday morning with high hopes of entering the best part of our wwoofing adventure. Unfortunately we were let down by two more farmers, neither of whom would host us. The first one we spoke to weeks ago. Despite having significant rainfall and several other wwoofers, they promised to host us but advised us to find somewhere else as an alternative. With that in the back of our minds, we called many other farmers and found a bio-dynamic farm that sounded great. After sending an application and then not hearing back for a while, we finally spoke to this host after getting back in the car in San Fran. Unluckily, they too told us they could not have us. Without other options, we called back the initial farm to confirm our arrival, hoping the rain had ceased and some other wwoofers may have left but instead they told us they couldn't host us either. BUMMER. Rushing back after 36 hours in retrospect was the wrong decision. Had we known we wouldn't have work lined up immediately we wouldn't have taken a 6 AM flight out of Newark.

Never ones to panic, and having a bit of experience with flakey hosts, we had a backup plan: we are staying for a few nights with a family friend in Mill Valley, just north of San Fran. We have a host confirmed for Monday so we just have a few days to kill. As a result, we have been working the past two days with Rebecca Burgess, who we met through our family friend Sue. Rebecca is working to make her own clothes that she will exclusively wear for one year using local wool and locally grown plants she turns into dyes. It's not wwoofing per se, but we learned to clean saved seeds, plant indigo seeds into peet pots, water them with kelp water, mix and add horse manure to her compost, build a mini greenhouse, and learned to skirt wool.

We often think about the "true" cost of food and consider where food comes from; the average consumer may think a dozen eggs should cost no more than $2 but if you calculate the true cost it's incredible they can be sold for less than $1 per egg. Factoring in the costs of everything from feeding the chickens (more expensive if you use local & organic feed), maintaining their coops, labor for picking, cleaning, and packaging eggs, not to mention cost of delivery, it surely seems that either people are being taken advantage of or the chickens are being taken advantage of. The only way to make a dozen eggs cost $2 feasibly is to provide low quality subsidized food with chemical & hormone additives, low quality, highly confined shelter and machines to gather and clean eggs. However, we don't always give enough thought to the "true" cost of clothes. If we come across a t-shirt that costs more than $10 we might think it's overpriced. But consider the cost for growing the cotton, picking the cotton, milling the cotton, designing the shirt, cutting the pattern, sewing it all together, packing, and then shipping it off to who-knows-where. It's a miracle t-shirts don't cost over $100. Of course when they are made in huge factories where employees are treated and paid as slaves, it makes more sense they are so inexpensive. Rebecca realizes the cost to the consumer, manufacturer, and more-so to the environment and as a result is trying to do something about it. Next time you buy a three pack of undershirts for $5, ask yourself is it really fair?