The Market Is Open

ALFN Members,

Welcome to another weekly rotation on ALFN’s market. Despite the 70 degree weather, we are still in deep winter. Nevertheless, our market is full of fresh produce.

Updates/News:

1. We had a wonderful Community Market Day with Tammy Sue’s Critters yesterday. I know many of our members walked away with a little something extra from Tammy. Beyond simply a “show-and-tell” opportunity, it was a chance to make a connection with an individual in our local economy. Whether it is body butter or purple-top turnips, our consumption of products puts us in relationship with a larger economic body. By making those connections personal, we humanize our economy. Furthermore, we transform mechanical consumption into thoughtful consumption.

Thank you Tammy for taking the time to hang with us on Saturday!

We will have another Community Market Day at the end of February. If you know an interested musician, or have a mini-workshop idea, please let me know!

2. There are two evening classes at Pulaski Tech that many of you may find interesting. This Thursday, there will be a Kombucha class offered for $20. You have to sign up my Monday night. Here is the link: Kombucha. There will also be a class on February 11th covering sauerkraut. You may also find this post on Kombucha to be interesting. The author is the instructor.

Small Random Acts of Slowness

Every morning, I grind my coffee with a hand crank grinder. I spoon the beans into a small opening, close the lid, place the grinder between my legs and begin to churn. The churning usually causes me to look up into thin air. Depending on my state of mind, I either stare blankly into my kitchen, or…ah, let’s be honest, I typically just stare into space. Grinding my coffee isn’t a daily chance to sit under the Bodhi tree. But, I have resisted a mechanical grinder for years now. My father once asked why I refused to move to a more efficient way of prepping the morning brew. I could have argued that cheapy electric grinders can burn the beans, these same grinders can’t adjust the grit size, but I didn’t find those reasons too compelling. In the end, I only had the past as the reason for my present behavior. In Mozambique, we grew some of our own coffee and purchased some of our coffee from an ancient Portuguese man who only grew _Robusta _bean. Coffee beans were precious, but not artisanal. We lived off solar panels. Consequently, our use of electricity was always intentional. So, I always hand-cranked my beans. I’m swimming in electricity now, but I persist to grind those beans with arm power.

I think my persistence has more to do with my own stubbornness, than philosophical or environmental reasons. In fact, there are days where I don’t want to grind my beans. I’m in a hurry or just want to press a button. But I’m afraid of the electric coffee grinder. It’s purr threatens to lull me into less-remembered life. The hand grinder jolts me awake AND rejoins disparate threads of my life. It slows me down and it helps me remember. Culinary traditions work in similar directions. Kitchen smells are incense; culinary practices are liturgical movements that bind our past into the present. As direct connections to memory, slowing down and doing things with less efficiency often provide mental space for deeper living. Whether it is the way momma did it, or whether it reconnects us to people and memories, the artifacts of our edible life offer a way to humanize a mechanized world.

Manifestos can be precocious, but read this Slow Food Manifesto as poetry.

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.

We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.

To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.

A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

Be well,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager