Spirit in Action
The Local Eating Challenge - Ann Hippensteel
Inspired by the Local Food Challenge of SustainDoor.org, Ann Hippensteel has gone the past year eating food grown and produced within 100 miles of her home, and it's been a year of discovery, attuning to the land and dealing with global environmental issues, right at home.
- Broadcast on:
- 07 Jun 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we're heading to Central Wisconsin just outside of a small town called Rushalt to a camp maintained by the Wisconsin Lions Club. Each year, about 300 Quakers descend on the camp for three days, the Northern Yearly Meeting Annual Session. In addition to the rather typical camp dining hall, there's another dining option called Simple Foods, cheaper but also more eco-friendly. One of the participants of Simple Foods this year is Anne Hippensteel. And she caught my attention because she is nearing the end of her year on what is a radical change to the diet. Anne took the 100-mile food challenge and has limited her intake to food grown within 100 miles of her house. Given that the average food item on an American table has traveled about 1500 miles, eating local means a dramatic savings in energy used for transport, and it switches dollars to local farmers from food conglomerates and other middlemen. But one of the biggest associated changes is the quality and the flavor of the food, and the sense of place that brings. To get you in the mood for food and a visit for Anne Hippensteel and her journey with local food challenge, let's listen to another Wisconsin native, Clay Rhinus, and his song about home cooking, Victoria's Kitchen. Victoria's Kitchen is a place I like to go. Lots of healthy things down there, don't you know and let me tell you this. It's a good thing. She keeps lots of great things, they're a little baby jar. Stuff on the counters and the keys to the car and let me tell you this. It's a good thing. Sometimes it sings of fresh breads, sings of old. Plenty of molasses raising and apricot muffins. It's where she makes the cookies and dries the wild chives. It's up to coffee and keeps it alive on the oven. Victoria's Kitchen will be my kitchen too. But when the time comes to paint it, I say honey, it's all up to you and let me tell you this. It's a good thing. Food for the dogs who's on the floor in the corner. Sure knows how to handle this tired old before, let me tell you this. It's a good thing. Sometimes it sings of fresh breads, sings of old. Plenty of molasses raising and apricot muffins. It's where she makes the cookies and dries the wild chives. It's up to coffee and keeps it alive on the oven. Victoria's Kitchen got a good share of grease. Ain't no complaining when that smile is on my face and let me tell you this. It's a good thing. There's one to hug about the window and tell her that I love her. Talk about the window and there's white snow covered, let me tell you this. It's a good thing. Sometimes it sings of fresh breads, sings of old wheat. Plenty of molasses raising and apricot muffins. It's where she makes the cookies and dries the wild chives. It's up to coffee and keeps it alive on the oven. It's a good thing. Victoria's Kitchen's got the liquor in the cabinet. Cleans are in the sink and a bread of a pomegranate. Let me tell you this. It's a good thing. There's a clock above the stove and a good set of pans. I must be near the fridge and now he's in the trash can. Let me tell you this. It's a good thing. Sometimes it sings of fresh breads, sings of old wheat. Plenty of molasses raising and apricot muffins. It's where she makes the cookies and dries the wild chives. It's up to coffee and keeps it alive on the oven. On the oven. On the oven. That was Victoria's Kitchen by Clay Rhynus and I agree. It's a good thing. Let's turn to today's spirit and action guest, Ann Hippensteel, and her experience with a year of eating locally. And thank you so much for joining me for spirit in action. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for asking me. I actually heard through your daughter that you're going through a year of eating locally. She engaged in the experiment with you, although she's dropped out, but you're going for the marathon run. It's a year long thing that you're going to do. That's correct. She and I started at Summer Solstice last year to eat only local foods. I pledged to go for a complete year until Summer Solstice of this year, 2009, and she pledged to go as long as it made sense to her. She lasted five months, and the two of us worked together on putting food by in anticipation of going through the winter and spring eating only local foods. So different people have different definitions of what is a local food. What is it for you and how do you actually know that something's local? Well, it required a lot of research on our part to find out who in our area was producing the foods we felt we needed, and our intention was to eat healthfully so that we had all of the nutrients we needed. I need to say that we were inspired to do this local foods challenge as a project of Sustain Door, which is an organization that I belong to in Door County. It's an organization, it's a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), whose mission is to promote the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of Door County using the natural step framework and process. Those are the exact words of the mission statement. So one of the things that Sustain Door promotes is sustainable agriculture. And sustainable agriculture, almost by definition, requires local production of foods to be consumed by localities because it cuts down on the need for transportation of foods across states, across country even, which is a heavy polluting activity. And also when we buy local foods from local farmers, we're supporting our local economy and we are also more aware of what kinds of maybe chemicals might be used in terms of fertilizers and pesticides and that sort of thing. We can speak directly to the growers of our foods and ask them whether they give their cattle hormones or whether their chickens are kept in cages and we can do all that kind of communication. So what was the specific definition that you and were using local foods? How local did it have to be, right from your town? Well, from Sustain Door came this challenge for people to sign up to do a 100-mile food challenge, meaning I think it was identified that it would be 100 miles from the borders of our county. Now our county, Door County, is this peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan. And so when you take 100 miles from the county seat, which is Sturgeon Bay, you get a lot of water. So 100 miles, I just went to a map then and took a compass and scribed a circle around Sturgeon Bay. So it's 100 miles as the crow flies in my definition. The challenge from Sustain Door was very open. It said that the rules were kind of whatever you made it to be. You could go a complete year eating only local foods or you could do one locally sourced meal per week for the three months out of the summer that the farmers market was in session. Or you could do whatever you wanted to do. But the idea was to challenge oneself as an individual and to support local agriculture and sustainable agriculture. So my daughter, Sally, and I chose to do as close to 100% as we could. We have exempted salt, yeast, and other leavening. So we eat salt and we, you know, we make our bread with yeast or my cornbread has baking soda or baking powder in it. Other than that, everything else is local, all of our dairy. She's a vegetarian, so she doesn't eat meat, but we eat cheese and eggs. We have our own chickens for that. But all of our produce, all of our fruit, we live next to a cherry orchard. They also grow apples and plums and pears, I think. So we got things like that to put by for the winter. And really there was quite a sense of bounty after the end of the growing season. But Ann, does that mean you didn't include spices? What about, you know, your cayenne or your cumin and all this kind of things? Where did you get those or did you just not use those? You've gone spiceless for the year. There were some sacrifices made along those lines. I would say we didn't use cinnamon. We didn't use cumin and chili powder and that sort of thing. However, we did do a lot of drying of herbs. We had basil and thyme and sage and mint and parsley and celery. Celery leaves, so we had quite a few. There were mustard seeds. We even harvested queen anselate seed, which is a wild carrot seed. It's kind of furry and a little bit strange, but it was kind of a nice addition to like a cauliflower soup or a squash soup. So yeah, there were some sacrifices made along those lines, but we weren't exactly eating bland food. There were plenty of ways to spice up our food. You mentioned Ann that one of the alternatives was you could just do one local meal during the growing season here, during the farmers market season. And it makes sense to me that this would be a reasonable, easy enough thing to do during the summer. The thing that I think I would dread, which I had go with some fear and trepidation toward, is trying to do it through the winter because Door County, Wisconsin, is not a tropical paradise where you can pluck something off the tree. So does this mean that you had no fresh foods during the winter? We did rely heavily on that, which we had frozen or canned, but I would say I can name you some fresh foods that stored well. We had potatoes and onions and squash. We had a cabbage that lasted probably to December. I had apples. I had carrots. I grew sprouts on my windowsill. I had grown some aduki beans that my friend Kathleen Plunkett, Black, saved from her seed-saving operation, and used those instead of bean sprouts. And I also had good success sprouting collared seeds, buck-choi seeds, kale seeds, dill seeds. I can't think of any other at this point. I also attempted to grow lettuce in flats in a sunny window, but there just wasn't a lot of sun, so I had meager salads throughout the winter. But at the wild, when I went by loin' blue, I'm as warm as a gelato. Made with dough. There's peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. Well there's a root cellar, flute cellar down below. Watch your head down and down. You go peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. Well maybe you are with me and you don't give a damn. I bet you never tasted her blackberry jam. Peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. Oh she got magic in her, you know what I mean. She puts the sun and rain in with her bees. You go peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. What with the snow and the economy and everything. I think I'll just stay down here. I need until spring peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. When I go down to see Grandma I gain a lot of weight with her dear hands. She gives me plate after plate. She cans the pickle with sweet and milk. And the songs of the whipper will end the morning too. And the evening moon I really gotta go down and see her soon. 'Cause the canned goods that I buy at the store ain't got the summer in a minute more. You bet Grandma that sure is your barn. I'll take some more potatoes and a thunderstorm. Peaches on the shelf with potatoes in the bend. It's up already everybody. Come on and taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Taste the little of the summer. Grandma put it all in jar. Ah yes. Grandma put it all in jars. That's by Greg Brown. I'm Mark Helpsmeet. And my spirit and action guest today is Anne Hippenstil who took the Eat Local Food Challenge. So she did put the summer's bounty in jars and in the root cellar and ate locally all through the long Wisconsin winter. A reminder, this is a Northern spirit radio production. You can always play our programs via our site, NorthernSpiritRadio.org and you can also subscribe via iTunes. We'd love to hear from you, so please post a comment when you visit our NorthernSpiritRadio.org website. Anne, you're closing in on the year of having eaten food grown and produced within 100 miles a year home. Which forced a lot of changes, maybe limitations on what you ate. What was your experience? Was this feast? Was it famine? Was it in between? Did everybody lose weight? I mean, was this a family effort by the way? No, not really. Well, there's three of us, my husband and Sally and I left at home. And so it was just Sally and I, however John eats what I put in front of him. And so he ate a lot of local foods because that's the way I was cooking most of the time. It was some feast and some famine and there were times after Sally dropped out of the program where she didn't want to eat my food as she called it because she wanted it to last for me through the whole year. Yet she really missed it. She missed the cornbread I made or she, I'm trying to think what else she maybe missed. The pickles. We have some really good pickles that some friends of ours made with some vinegar that I, I don't know, created myself. I didn't really do anything but leave it open on the counter for several months and it first fermented and then soured into vinegar. But those pickles were really good and she refuses to eat them even though she really likes them. So in that way it's kind of famine and I have to say yes I missed the chocolate and I miss my Earl Grey tea and there are things I really miss. Christmas was hard for me because there were all these wonderful things around that I couldn't eat but I am very glad that I didn't eat them. And I've lost 15 pounds. It would be nice if I kept those 15 pounds off. I don't know if that's going to happen or not once I allow myself to eat non-local foods again. But mostly the foods I eat are wonderful. I really like the bread I make from the local grain that grew on the field in my neighborhood and I grind it myself and then I make the bread and it's wonderful bread as all homemade bread is. And the cornmeal also is ground from corn that I grew. It's a Hopi blue flower corn. So it's the one that makes those blue corn chips that you see. And so that makes a wonderful cornbread and chips and things like that. Tell me a little bit, Anne, about the process you went through to identify where things come from because some of it comes from your neighboring fields or the orchard right next to you and I think that's pretty easy. But there's a lot more ingredients which I suppose are a little bit harder to trace. I did this take hours, weeks, days, years of research in order to be able to eat local. I don't know that eating local is completely obvious. Well, when you define your local area as 100 miles, you'd be surprised what you can find. I'm not eating any refined sugar at all, which is a good thing and accounts for my weight loss. But I can get maple syrup and I can get honey. And there's a man down near Elkhart Lake who grows sorghum in processes sorghum into sorghum syrup, which is delightful. It's an acquired taste, I think, but it reminds me of maybe liquid brown sugar or something like that. So that's what I use primarily because we bought a lot of it. Yeah, we did a lot of research ahead of June 21st last year. We started anticipating it in March. And so I just had my antenna up for anything that was local and I learned there's a man in Chilton whose parents collect hickory nuts and crack them and pick them and make them available. And those have been wonderful additions to my cracked wheat breakfast or just in a salad with dried cherries or, you know, it's wonderful what one can make. I really miss salad dressing, olive oil, for instance. The only way I really make salad dressing is by taking a local cream and putting my local vinegar or pickle juice in it. And sometimes I will put onion and garlic and dill maybe in it. And it's pretty good, but it's not, it's tiresome. But, you know, my salads have dried tomatoes in them. And so there's some good things there. It's just kind of repetitive. Did you end up learning new recipes? Did you have to acquire and change your recipe stock in order to be able to do this year of eating locally? No. I mean, there were things that I had never done before such as making the vinegar that, you know, I needed to have a new recipe for. We made and canned spaghetti sauce and green tomato chutney. That's really nice. And we made ketchup. I had never made ketchup before. We made salsa. I've done that before. Pizza sauce. I've done that before, too. So I really didn't have new recipes. It was just making sure that the ingredients that I used were ones that had been locally produced. For quite some time, when we first began Sally who drinks milk didn't have milk because I was not aware of a place that I could get milk. And I would go to local farmers to ask them if I could, you know, buy milk right from the cow. And they were very reluctant to let me do that because it's, I guess, it's illegal. But it just seems unusual and kind of inappropriate to me that a farmer would sell his or her milk. For, I don't know, a $1.80 a gallon and then have to turn around and buy the milk for their own consumption at $3.80 per gallon from the grocery store. Likewise, another commodity that seems odd to me that's not available is oats. They grow in our county easily and they are grown as a cash crop. But there's no way to prepare them for human consumption because they have a hull on them and you need to de-hull them. Unlike the wheat, for instance, that I can buy right off the field and just go ahead and grind that and eat it. So a farmer would grow the oats and sell them for a certain price. But then if the farmer wants oatmeal for breakfast would have to go to the grocery store and buy some oats in a cylindrical box with a Quaker on the front. And it seems just almost bordering on absurd to me. Was the absurd part the Quaker on the oats? No, that's just an inside joke. The absurd part is that farmers can't eat that which grows on their land. I've read somewhere that the average item that's coming to our table has traveled something like 1,500 miles and that's kind of amazing. So you've cut that down to 1/15th of what it takes normally to do it and with all the resultant reduction in pollution and so on that you've added to this. Clearly, you're concerned about the quality of the food you eat. You're concerned about the environmental impact that you have. Why is this a big deal to you? This is a big deal to me because I see some threats coming down the pike here. They include not only pollution but a scarcity of fossil fuels which our whole society is dependent upon. And also, of course, there's the threat of global warming which frightens me because I have children and I hope to have grandchildren someday and I want them to be comfortable and to be able to live in ways that I've been able to live which is happily and comfortably. So sustainability is a big deal to me and it's why I'm heavily involved in Sustain Door in my county. Besides supporting local agriculture and being concerned about the healthiness of my food and the healthfulness of my food, I just wanted to see if it could be done because I wanted to know if it would be possible in Door County for our entire population to be more self-reliant, at least in terms of food because if it gets really bad, we're going to need to rely on one another in a local, in a communal kind of way, in a community way. We are heavily dependent on trucks because of our geography being a peninsula. The truck traffic comes every day and brings everything we need almost to our county and the degree to which we can be self-reliant is dependent on how we can support each other in community and do for ourselves, provide things we need with local resources. So I just wanted to see if it was possible to survive on a completely local foods diet, not that we would never have things traded into the county, but you know, just, you know, in an emergency, could we do it? And I believe that we could, but we would need to prepare ourselves in five basic ways. We would need a grain mill that would grind grain for human consumption and it would include a de-huller for de-hulling the oats so that we would have a variety of grains to provide a variety of nutrients for our basic breads. We would also need, I believe, an oil press operation of some kind because right now what what a local for needs to depend on in Door County would be butter for fat or also, I suppose, animal fats like chicken, lard or whatever. So it would be really nice if some of the, say, sunflower seeds that are grown in our county could be pressed into an oil that we could use here. That would be very nice. We have some friends who live in Surgeon Bay who have a little greenhouse right attached to their home and they have citrus growing in their greenhouse including lemons and key limes and calamans and come quads and on occasion they would bring me some lemons and it was such a treat. I didn't throw any of it away. I eat the rinds and everything in some capacities. So it was very nice. It seems to me that we could ramp up our greenhouse capacity to extend the production season on both ends of that season and also to grow a variety of things that wouldn't otherwise grow in our climate like the citrus and maybe some other things as well. This same couple that has the citrus in their greenhouse just recently and it's May only brought me zucchini and some cucumbers. So it's possible. I know of some greenhouses that are for sale right now in our county and it would be so nice if somebody could pick up that business and contribute to our local economic development to support local foods, local sustainable agriculture. So that was three items. What's the fourth and fifth? Well one of them is a distribution network would be important because we have growers that would like to sell their local foods and we have restaurants and grocery stores that would like to buy local foods but neither of those people have the time to go and find each other. So we need some sort of a network that is set up to help get the local foods from the farm to the restaurants and to the groceries. And there is some effort in our county to do that. Our local agricultural extension agent is working on that and there have been some sort of summits where the producers and the restaurant owners have gotten together and talked about what they're willing to do and what they can do. There's movement in that direction but it would be very very important and if I think of the fifth one I'll let you know. So you said Ann that you took this on because of environmental concerns. I'm assuming that this is part of a pattern of your life and that I'm assuming under it because I've known you've required a while that there's a spiritual component. You didn't mention anything specifically about that. You were talking really about fairly practical things. Can you say anything about how this fits in the pattern of your life, spiritual, how you see it? I mean it seems to me that eating locally feels different in a way that's non-tangible. Well when one is connected to one's food in a way that I have been in the last year one is always aware of the provider. And by that I mean not only the farmer that grows it and I don't mean the distributor necessarily and I don't mean the cook either but I mean that entity that provides for all. You know we say a grace before we eat our local food of course and that is a grace of gratitude to the provider that provides everything for us. I can't really define it much more because it's so vague for me. Sometimes that provider is we can name that provider Mother Earth or sometimes we can name that provider God or sometimes we can name that provider creator. But there is always an awareness that these are gifts to us and there is a sense of gratitude all the time when we are connected to the food in the ways that we have been this year. Yeah and I do talk mostly practically about it but when we're talking sustainability it's not just about environment and we struggle sometimes with that definition. Sustainability is also about local economy which I've talked to that aspect of sustainability a bit but it's also about providing for the needs of our fellow human beings. Because you can't have a sustainable community a sustainable society unless the basic needs of everybody are met. So it becomes an ethical sort of consideration to talk about a sustainable society because we're talking about right sharing of resources and we're talking about not just basic needs like food and shelter and water but also that which sustains us spiritually and it could be what could we name that happiness contentedness love. All those things are needed for a sustainable society and there's been some research done that supports the natural step framework for sustainability by a man who is in South America. He has made an inventory of the human needs that must be met and there are good 12 needs that must be met but only one of those needs are those basic food shelter, water needs and the rest include all of these other affect sorts of needs that human beings must have creativity. So it's important to meet human needs beyond even those that are required to survive and sustainability includes all of that and so there's a basic ethical effort involved in sustainability which appeals to me. So and if somebody went into your house would they somehow immediately identify that you're a local for that you're concerned about sustainability does it jump out or do you just look like every other house on the block. Well we look like every other house on the black however if that person sat down to the table with us and shared a meal they might notice that our bread is rather coarse and that we're eating things out of jars you know that we've canned ourselves. So they would notice that otherwise we look like anybody else I think. Are there other aspects of your life besides the food that would give them a clue that you're connected with sustainability are all of your clothes home zone who knows I mean there's so many ways that one can be connected with the land. Yeah we try and I'm basically a homemaker by trade we have raised our children in a simple manner I believe our clothing is mostly secondhand clothing. There's so much clothing available and I believe that we could survive on the clothing that exists right now in our county if suddenly the truck stopped running for instance we just share. But yeah we make our living actually as a we have a renewable energy design build engineering firm. My husband is a registered engineer in Wisconsin and he designs renewable energy systems mostly photovoltaic that is solar electric and solar thermal systems but also some wind electric systems for residences and farms and commercial enterprises. So that we are able to make our living that way and it feels good to us because we know it's something important for a sustainable future to be able to not rely so heavily on non renewable resources. And is your power your home all self generated are you on the grid or how does that work for you. We're connected to the grid and we do generate all of the electricity that we need well I should say we are a net producer. There are times when we need to draw from the grid if the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining for many days on and we would take from the grid but we are a net producer meaning. Mostly we give back to the grid because of all of the renewable energy that we have installed at our home. You know you are an alternative and for me to interview instead of calling up Barbara Kingsolver. She wrote her book with her daughter animal vegetable miracle and that title caught me because she's included the thing miracle in there. And I'm just really wondering if there were the moments when you transcended because of this you're eating locally and all of a sudden something different happened the miracle happened. Has that enlarged for you because of this experience have you felt this special spiritual change or is it pretty much just a you know it's a 12 month program that you know I'm getting through a month 11 and now we can go to this food. I am probably less spiritually involved than some people but you know markets it's always a miracle to me to put a seed in the ground and have it performed the way it's intended by creation I guess to grow into something that is beautiful and nurturing and sustainable. I mean just just the fact that that happens is a miracle it's a miracle that our bodies function the way they do you know that you consume food and it does what it needs to do and gets all of the nutrients needed in all the right places to all the right cells in the body and then the waste materials can be used to continue the cycle of life. It's just an excellent design and you know I can't think of a single engineer who could design a system so complex that would function it's quite amazing that way. I'm wondering about the role of community in this. Let me start with one of the things that was a potential problem I'm assuming when you're associating with other people you want to have a shared meal and they say okay meet me at the restaurant well I think that doesn't happen anymore for you. I think this has been eleven months of restaurantlessness probably no potlucks did this mean that your social life went to hell? It was a barrier I suppose but there are ways to get around it and those people who understood what we were doing were very able to adapt and you're right I haven't been to very many restaurants. There are a couple of restaurants in Door County that can do local foods and do on occasion and they're striving to do more of that. But the potluck thing did happen actually and all last summer we hosted once a week a potluck picnic at our home and it was very nice it was a local foods potluck picnic and it was explained that it was about local foods. So people would try to figure something out and bring things and it was delightful to see what they came up with and there were a lot of good things shared. Also people brought extra produce from their gardens that they had too much of so there were some exchanges and sales as far as that so we had sort of a midweek farmers market at our house. But the community thing is so so important because we did the research we met new people we got better acquainted with some of the producers in our area and I like to think that we are friends as well. I don't think anybody could do it in a vacuum we'd have to do it in community I told about my friends who had the greenhouse and they just thought ahead of me even what I might need and what I might desire for variety and they would bring me things that could be used for spicing up the food and that sort of thing. We had friends who lent us the grain grinder that we're using which when I look back on it now I'm very very grateful for because I had a hand grinder and tried that for a while and I thought this isn't going to last very long but this other grinder that we have is a champion juicer with the grain grinding attachment to it and it's pretty slick. It makes it a lot easier but right the community part is so important there was a young man who grew garlic and then there was the couple that did our pickles for us and another woman did some vegetable juice kind of like a V8 juice only it was only a V7 juice for us and it was so nice to be able to count on these other people to do some of the work that was involved in stacking my shelves because even though we enjoyed the work and spending time with my daughter was just very wonderful it was nice that other people could help us out with that. [music] [music] [music] We used to go out of heat and that's for sure but there's nothing that home grown tomato won't cure. Put them in a salad, put them in a stew, you can make your own leryomes and motto juice, you can eat them with eggs and eat them with gravy, you can eat them with beans and or navy. Put them on a side, put them in the middle, a home grown tomato on a hunt, a little home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes, what'll life be without home grown tomatoes, holding two things and what it came by and that's true to love to home grown tomatoes. [music] If I had to change this life I'd lead you could call me Johnny the Mato Sea 'cause I know what this country needs, home grown tomatoes and every yard you see. When I die, don't bury me in a box in a cold, dark cemetery out in the garden would be much better 'cause I could be a pushin' up a home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes, what'll life be without home grown tomatoes 'cause only two things and what it came by. [music] If I had to change this life, I'd lead you could call me Johnny the Mato Sea 'cause only two things and what'll life be without home grown tomatoes. [music] A little taste treat from John Denver. The song was home grown tomatoes. If you just tuned in, this is Spirit in Action and I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. This is a Northern Spirit Radio production and one of the things that that means is you go to our website, northernspiritradio.org. You can listen to this program and all the other programs that we've had over the last several years. You can post comments on them, you can find links that'll help you connect with things like the natural step and about sustainability. You'll find those kind of links on my site and you can find about the people that we're talking to. So, please visit northernspiritradio.org and post a comment too about these programs. We always welcome your suggestions. Today, we're visiting with Ann Hippensteel. She's taken the local pledge for this past year, eating locally within 100 miles per county for this past year. She's almost there ending with the summer solstice. You said, Ann, that this grew out of an organization that's doing the natural step in your area. What's that organization again? It's called Sustain Door. People who are interested in it could go to our website, which is sustaindoor.org. If they wanted to know more about the 100 Mile Food Challenge and read some of the comments of people who are undertaking the 100 Mile Food Challenge, they could click on the page that is called 100 Mile Food Challenge. There's a blog there and a forum that has comments from people that have been experiencing this project. But there's other information about sustainability efforts in our county there and some links to other places too. Yeah, Ann, that was one thing. I was wondering how many people took this pledge with you. I assume you maybe have some kind of support committee. You get together, check with each other once in a while. Most of our communication was through this forum on the website, but there were at one time 10 people that actually took the pledge. And I'm not sure if they were going to do it for the entire year or if it was just a one meal a week thing. But most of the support we had for each other was through this forum. And one of the questions I had about how you do this local eating, you're here at this gathering, Northern Yearly Meeting, a three day, quicker gathering. And I'm wondering if food is a challenge for you here. I mean, Joan, who's organizing the simple foods, she lives more than 100 miles away. Is this okay to eat her food or did you have to bring everything with you? Does it make connecting with the rest of the world difficult, even in a place that is very organic and local food friendly? I didn't require of myself that I eat local foods when I traveled outside of my 100 mile radius. The logical thing would be to eat the local foods, the foods that are local to the place that I'm visiting. However, the research required to find out what foods are available would have been insurmountable, I think, for any kind of trying to manage that eating locally. But if I were to move to another place, I would certainly do the research to see what was available there. So you've got just one month to go on this challenge, this local board challenge that you've taken. What do you plan to do differently once the 22nd of June arrives? I mean, does this mean that you're going to go right out to McDonald's? Does this mean that you're going to start to have your first banana in a year? What caused you and what will you keep from this past year? That's a very good question. I have done some thinking about it. There are things that I'm doing now because of the 100 mile food challenge that I want to continue, I want to continue making my own bread. I probably won't continue grinding my own grain. I'm putting in a garden this year, but the urgency to put in a large garden with a major variety of things is just not there this year. It's a more leisurely feel to it, to the gardening thing. I'm going to add vegetable oil back into my diet and not fry so many things in butter, which is because I think that will be more healthful and I'll make my salad dressings with oil as well. But I will continue to support our local farmers. I will continue to try to find ways to make it possible for our county to sustain itself on local foods. I think it's really important for our economy and for the health of our society and just to prepare ourselves so that we are not so vulnerable in case of any kind of disaster, whether it's a truck boycott or a terrorist attack or a pandemic or just, you know, global warming. I think survival is going to require that we look more to our local communities for support and survival. So one last thing and can you wholeheartedly, full spirit, recommend to people to give this kind of thing, give it a try, give it a do the experiment. Is it worth it? Is it worth it for virtually everyone? Yes, of course it is. Wherever one is living to support local agriculture, to eat more healthfully is a good thing to do and I would highly recommend it. You know, even to do the one meal a week makes a huge difference to local farmers and by the same token, it cuts down on that pollution and that absurd transportation of food from cross country by quite a bit. So yeah, it's really important and I would recommend it. I don't know that people need to go a whole year at 95% as we have done, but it's possible. Well, I think it's been a great experiment you've been doing. It heartens me to hear that you've done it. You've done it well. And losing the 15 pounds. I can imagine doing this for a lot of years and still being bigger than I need to be. So it sounds to me like it's got a great promise to it in that respect, too. But anyway, thank you so much for the spiritual inspiration of it, the practical, the care for the earth, great work you're doing. Thank you for asking me. I've got a turtleneck sweater in my favorite shade of blue, and a crapping fire to warn me when a cold front's coming through, a window for unconditioning, and the shade of a maple tree. I've got enough, enough, enough is as good as a feast. I've got a tattered book of poetry that's filled with all the grace. Dickens said on Robert Frost, Angel Owen Yates, at old piano for music, and a song that plays for free. I've got enough, enough, enough is as good as a feast. I don't need a mansion or a genie to grab me a wish. I believe that he who knows me has enough is rich. Out back there's a garden that blesses my spring with peace. Later on in the summer with tomatoes and beans, sweet Williams and cosmos, and fragrant peonies. I've got enough, enough, enough is as good as a feast. I don't need a mansion or a genie to grab me a wish. I believe that she who knows she has enough is rich. I've got a couple of good friends and a place I go to pray. I love of which I'm certain and I thank God for each day. A place to watch Orion and the sunrise in the east. I've got enough, enough, enough is as good as a feast. I've got an apple tree and I've got honeybees. What else do I need? I've got enough, enough, enough is as good as a feast. We ended that spirit and action visit with Ann Hippensteel and the 100 Mile Local Food Challenge with a song by a woman called Earth Mama. Her song was "Enough is as good as a feast." The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit and action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.