Adam Edell
Adam came from the earth a while back, and now lives in Oakland, CA. He tries to eat 5 to 9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day. He now flosses regularly, a feat unseen in previous years. He occasionally shares TMI, and at your request, will refrain from doing so.
You Can Count On A Squash In Every Box
Be open-eyed to the great wonders of nature, familiar though
they be. But men are more wont to be astonished at the sun’s eclipse than at its unfailing rise. - Hayyim Luzzatto
I’m watching the lunar eclipse at this early hour, 3:00 am PST, as I put together this week’s newsletter for the Berkeley Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA. 18th century kabbalist and astrologer Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto reminds us that witnessing rare shifts in the cosmic gears gives us a lot of bang for our buck, but that there is power too in the regularity of the 24/7 revolution.
Consider our attitudes as we greet the contents of our weekly boxes. They can have the ability to inspire gasps of awe with a new arrival (concord grapes!) or remarks of displeasure as one pushes past the old standby (oh look, zucchini…again). Believe me, with all my aphid- and ant-infested corn, water-stressed eggplant and bitter cukes, I’m actually quite grateful for my indefatigable squash plants, who have churned out a steady crop unscathed by pestilence all summer long, k’naina hora. As sure as I can count on a new crookneck poking out from underneath those broad leaves the minute I turn around, oh constant squash has sustained me through the diminished returns of other crops I’ve grown less successfully.
No Comments »Contemplating the spiritual in your Biostack
Rabbi Ben Bag-Bag used to say of the Torah: “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Pore over it, and wax gray and old over it. Stir not from it for you can have no better rule than it” - Pirke Avot 14:25, Sayings of Our Fathers.
Whether we stir or not, though it definitely helps to stir, compost happens. We are all witness to the irrefutable process of decay in varying degrees of time, as benign as the gradual whither of a solitary banana left in the fruit bowl too long (alright already you know who you are: you cannot continue to ignore that mealy brown banana in your kitchen any longer…it’s bordering on neglect now…time to make a decision…turn brown ‘nanas into ‘nanabread!), or perhaps more tragically, the swift demise of those raspberries that hosted a mold convention—several different molds—within a day of being washed and refrigerated (I have a strict policy of having no “wounded soldiers” by eating any berries I buy on the way home).
Half a week at the beach and I got a farmer-tan
At the opening plenary of this year’s Eco-Farm Conference held at Asilomar Beach, CA, which brings together farmers, environmental justice advocates and policy advisors, organic certifiers and buyers, academics, foodies, permies, and all around hamish people for four days of workshops, panels, and networking, an older gentleman and longtime organizer, welcomed the hundreds of attendees with a self-admitted, unusual gusto.
