Farmbrarian

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In her book Plant Seed, Pull Weed, Zen Buddhist teacher Geri Larkin tells of achieving spiritual goals through simple acts of gardening. She specifically focuses on the teachings of the ancient text The Ways of the Bodhisattva—which discusses generosity, enthusiasm, patience and other attributes.

The book is much more about Zen than gardening. In each chapter, Larkin uses lighthearted prose to illustrate ways to nurture your soul and improve your outlook on life. Some stories focus on gardening, but many others are about miscellaneous topics.

Plant Seed, Pull Weed is an enlightening read about finding joy in everyday events that gardeners and non-gardeners alike will enjoy.

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Woody Tasch’s Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in sustainability. While he does present some fresh ideas, the intent of the book is largely to summarize the current status of social investing, small food enterprises, local food systems, sustainable soil quality, and other topics. The author provides history, presents current research and developments, quotes others extensively and gives his own analysis of what some of this means.

Tasch shows a clear concern for the direction of our society and hopes that by bringing together pieces of the slow money puzzle he will advance the cause. Hopefully this new idea of slow money will encourage discussion and ultimately lead to new ideas, businesses and responsibility among consumers.

I have long been asking myself the question “What can I do?” in regards to sustainable agriculture and personal responsibility as a consumer. Tasch succeeds in answering this question. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money will help you understand the problems, so you can find solutions, sooner.

Read this book if:

• You want to know how you can help
• You wonder what’s happening with our current economic mess and the direction it’s going
• You’d like to learn about the concepts of Slow Money/Slow Food

Want more information? The Wall Street Journal recently discussed this title in their article “Forget Conventional 401(k)s; Think Goat Cheese and Fennel.” The Huffington Post also featured a review of the book; and Civil Eats writer Jerusha Klemperer interviews the author here.

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Gary Paul Nabhan’s book about his year long local eating experiment gives readers good insight into Nabhan’s personal life, but surprisingly little information about his local eating foray. For one year, Nabhan plans to prepare 80% of his meals using foods grown within a few hundred miles of his Arizona home. This is certainly a noble act, but I found myself continuously asking how he actually did it. Sure, he tells of gathering traditional food from a local desert, slaughtering turkeys he raised and eating peaches from his own tree. But we’re talking about a thousand or so meals, which would require a lot more local food than he discusses. This omission left a lot to be desired for me.

Aside from information about Nabhan’s wife and other local eating acquaintances, he briefly discusses food politics. Here the reader encounters some interesting information, but is still left thirsting for more.

Nabhan has good intentions, however the book is neither informative nor inspiring enough to be compared to other tales of local eating, such as  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

For those of you looking for short but interesting reads, check out the following articles from The New York Times: “The Farmers Are Local, the Products Exotic” and “Field Report: Family Heirlooms.” Both pieces tell fresh, personal stories of farmers growing unusual crop varieties such as Roman mint, Iroquois white corn and jostaberries. Some of the farmers featured are also raising rare livestock breeds. “They’re more rare than pandas,” Kris Spence says of the American Guinea hog piglets being raised on Spence Farm in central Illinois (Field Report).

Applaud the Times for spotlighting crop diversity by reading the two articles. And if you have time for another, read the tale of city-girl Kim Severson’s ‘haycation’ on a New York state farm also printed in the Times and available here.

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As a society we should abandon the industrial food system and eat food in its natural form, as put forth by mother nature. This is a strong conviction of Nina Planck, who spells the idea out over 352 pages in her book Real Food. Her arguments are convincing and very closely mirror those expressed by the recently famous journalist Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire).

Real Food presents a strategy on eating based on unprocessed food that is sensible and will be beneficial to those who implement it. Planck essentially places no restriction on foods as long as they are in their pure form. Pie made with lard in the crust and topped with cream? Certainly. She claims that the rise of health issues in Western culture parallels the rise in processing our food (many people however have drawn similarly competent, yet different parallels to the rise of Western diseases). She goes on to refute the longstanding idea that saturated animal fats and cholesterol lead to heart disease and obesity. Planck is not alone in this stance as there is a growing contingent in the field of nutrition who have shifted blame away from so called “bad fats” and cholesterol.

This book is a great read for anyone interested in nutrition and will likely encourage you to improve your diet. I strongly suggest you balance her views with those of other authors (new and old), because her ideas are far from scientific fact.

This book was sourced from the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Notable quote: “If beef and butter were to blame for heart disease, heart disease wouldn’t be new. We’ve been eating them for too long.”

Read this book if:

• You are concerned with the shortcomings of our industrial food system
• You enjoy the work of Michael Pollan
• You are a vegetarian or vegan and would like to hear a contemporary and somewhat compelling argument against your diet

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Alice Waters is widely known as the creator of California cuisine, which aims to prepare delicious food by utilizing the freshest local ingredients available. And Chez Panisse is recognized as one of the best restaurants in the United States. In the first authorized biography, Thomas McNamee triumphs in telling the intricately woven story of the famed restaurant and its renowned proprietor.

McNamee chronicles the early years of Waters’ life, the experiences that led her to open Chez Panisse, and the many “romantic, impractical, eccentric, ultimately brilliant” events of the years that followed. This is also very much the tale of the chefs, waiters, farmers, cooks, foragers, friends, mentors, lovers, and countless others who form the Chez Panisse famille.

McNamee’s conversational tone and inclusion of lengthy dialogues will make you feel like you’ve occupied a cozy corner in Chez Panisse since its inception. By the end of this captivating and inspirational story you’ll feel like a genuine member of the family.