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

Market Reminder

Good Evening ALFN Members,

The market will be open until tomorrow at noon. Make sure you finalize all orders before then!

Other Reminders

Don’t forget to drop by market on Saturday. We will have Tammy of Tammy Sue’s Critters with us. She will have a display and examples of her products.

I’m excited to see all you. We still have two slots open for the early volunteer shift. You can sign up here: Volunteer Spot

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

The market is open.

Update: New Vendor & Community Market Day

We have a new vendor in the market this week. Viney Creek Farm is a dairy goat farm out of Dover, AR. The farm raises Nigerian Dwarf goats, a breed prized for their milk with a butterfat content more than cows and other goat breeds. Viney Creek transforms their goat milk into goat soap. You can find their products on ALFN’s market under Bath, Beauty & Health. Welcome Viney Creek!

Community Market Day

As mentioned in previous posts, this year we will be celebrating local ingenuity, knowledge and skill on the last Saturday of every month. This Saturday, we will have our first Community Market Day of the year. Tammy Pope of Tammy Sue’s Critters will be at the market meeting members and showcasing her products. Tammy Sue’s is a remarkable farm with an outstanding array of products. Many of you love the lotions and soaps made on the farm, but they are also known for their eggs. This Saturday, take an extra few minutes and get to know Tammy and her critters. It is an exceptional opportunity to converse with those who commune with our domesticated animals…especially goats:) During this market, we will have locally brewed coffee available. As a year-round market, ALFN specializes in providing a consistent pick-up point for regional products. However, I hope it will be enjoyable to not just pick-up, but chat for a few minutes with our local producers and thinkers during these Community Market Days. I look forward to seeing all you this Saturday. Remember, if you have something you want to share during one of our Community Market Days, shoot me an email, and we can make it happen!

For those of use washed in critter products, lathered in the butterfat of even-toed ungulates, purified by the ancient, feral Pan god, here is a poem to consider the wild, unflinching goat-gaze. May we all find ways to climb over pasture fences and sit on the knoll with this noble beast and stare back at the rush of civilization.

The Goat and I
by Robert William Service

Each sunny day upon my way
A goat I pass;
He has a beard of silver grey,
A bell of brass.
And all the while I am in sight
He seems to muse,
And stares at me with all his might
And chews and chews.

Upon the hill so thymy sweet
With joy of Spring,
He hails me with a tiny bleat
Of welcoming.
Though half the globe is drenched with blood
And cities flare,
Contentedly he chews the cud
And does not care.

Oh gentle friend, I know not what
Your age may be,
But of my years I’d give the lot
Yet left to me,
To chew a thistle and not choke,
But bright of eye
Gaze at the old world-weary bloke
Who hobbles by.

Alas! though bards make verse sublime,
And lines to quote,
It takes a fool like me to rhyme
About a goat.

Market Reminder

Good Evening ALFN Members!

Remember to finalize your order before tomorrow at noon when the market closes.

This week has brought sharp, cold air. Nevertheless, many of our growers have wonderful techniques to extend the season including hoop houses and row covers. Take advantage and keep eating like it’s October!!

Don’t forget to sign-up to volunteer during market. It is a wonderful way to help out, meet new folks, and receive credit in the market! Sign-up here: Volunteer Spot

Also, we are two weeks out from the ALFN Community Market Day. Highlight your calendars for January 30th. Stay tuned for details on what we will be showcasing!

Take care,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

The Market Is Open

Dear ALFN Members,

The market is open!

We are deep into January, but the market is still busting with beautiful produce. From Bok Choy to Cabbage to Arugula to Acorn Squash to Broccoli to Kale, there is a wide selection of fresh produce. We also have a wide selection of frozen goods that have sealed sealed summer inside.

Waste & Energy

In the same way our culture tends to hide and mask death from the living, perhaps for similar reasons, our living economy hides the waste of society in landfills seeded with grass. Waste is simply dormant energy awaiting transformation. The masses of bacteria and fungal communities are the miracle workers, but miracle workers are often viewed with the same suspicion as undertakers. Our society has cultivated a kind of mass phobia with bacteria and fungi and institutionalized discrimination towards all invertebrate communities. Yet, our unseen neighbors are what keep the revolving door of life spinning. They are resurrection workers, shamans guiding life back into birth.

Even the heinous products we forge can often be deconstructed and reconciled back into natural ingredients. I’ve been obsessed with fungi for a couple of years now. Mycologists continue to discover new fungi as well as new ecological functions of fungi. Scientists have found certain strains of fungi can breakdown oil and transform the long carbon chains into benign material. Or check out this video: Training Fungi to Eat Cigarette Butts. As the great “lovers of waste and death” (saprophytes), fungi take waste and recycle the energy back into ecosystems.

Do you know what else recycles energy in waste? Gardens. Our small, urban gardens take the substrates of waste and transform it into food and drink. The compost bin is both cemetery and birthing center. So, roll the stone away from our economic dead end, and let life come back from the grave. The gospel of gardeners suggests life comes from decomposition.

While I’m thinking about urban gardens, check out this Kickstarter for a community project called Earth Garden.

Have a great week and don’t forget to sign up for a Volunteer Spot

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

Good Morning ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your orders for this week’s rotation by Wednesday at noon. We are still busting with fresh produce and local goods in the market.

Waste Revolution: Thinking in Circles

There is a great opportunity to meditate about modern waste this March 12th. The annual Keep Little Rock Beautiful event will take place in the morning until noon. You can either organize your own neighborhood area to clean, or volunteer to help clean the Fourche Creek Area. Check out their website…you may even see a picture of one of our growers on the front page:)

Picking up trash is necessary, but I’m also interested in thinking deeper into our own waste system. Our current economy extracts natural resources and then transforms them into products (usually with the addition of chemicals) and then eventually streams these same resources into permanent dumps. I have a good visualization of this problem. Take the Christmas tree. I’m sure you’ve seen them on the roadside lately. No problem here. The city can pick them up, mulch them and cycle them back into the soil. However, I’ve seen a more Americanization of this lately. I’ve observed a number of Christmas trees with the lights still on the tree. Our linear economy does this to many natural products. Natural resources are processed with various non-biodegradable substances that render these products toxic and true waste. So much of our waste is based on efficiency instead of resilience and regeneration.

What’s the tagline here? Think in loops. Consider how all your economic actions can be regenerated back into systems based on transforming the dormant energy in waste back into the top of our food and production infrastructure. The hard part to all of this means we are bucking a system based on efficiency. It may slow us down a bit. But hey, we are part of a slow food movement, right? Slow it down and think about waste streams…and take lights of Christmas trees:)

Wastefully yours,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

The Market Is Open

Sheesh, wasn’t it 75 degrees a couple of days ago? Maybe I really will need to get out my winter clothes this year:) Welcome to another week of food. The ALFN market is open for ordering!

News & Updates

• We had an great market on Saturday. Thanks to our awesome coordinator and volunteers who pulled off a feat. The internet wasn’t working on Saturday, yet the team was able to pull through with few hiccups! Well done! I’m reminded of how integral ALFN members are to our weekly markets. I was also reminded of the importance of food infrstructure. This weekend, planned food convoys to Madaya, a city under siege in Syria was delayed until Monday after reports of death by starvation have been growing. It is hard to fully conceptualize the importance of food systems and infrastructure until they breakdown. Yet, how unique is it to take part in a locally governed and managed food distribution system? To take part in a democratic, horizontal system of local food is refreshing and empowering.

• On January 30th, we will have our first Community Market Day. Are any of you interested in sharing a skill, recipe or talent? Do you have a friend you would like to coerce? Shoot me an email!

Waste

I went off on plastic last week, so I thought I would stick with the theme for a bit. Afterall, January is about cutting back the excess anyway, right?

I know many of you compost your kitchen scraps. In our home, we feed them to our chickens and worms. I’ve had a growing fascination with microbes that do all the dirty work AND the microbial waste they emit as they compost our trash. Afterall, it is microbial waste and flatulence that gives us fizzy drinks and alcohol. In Mozambique, I was always looking into systems that tried to capture the gas from decomposing waste for cooking fuel. From cow manure digesters, to food digesters surround by composting wood mulch, scientists have found ways to use the excess gas for cooking and powering cars. A couple of entrepreneurs have set up a pretty slick system for families. Evidently, the Biogas system will provide 1-3 hours of cooking gas from residential kitchen scraps. Check out their video here: HomeBiogas. Alas, Christmas is far away from now:)

In a book entitled, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things the authors argue our economic system, sparked by the Industrial revolution is a linear system that drives from extraction to waste disposal. The authors, McDonough and Braungart, suggest that Industrial Revolution birthed a system that:

• puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year

• produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations

• results in gigantic amounts of waste

• puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved

• requires thousands of complex regulations—not to keep people and natural systems safe, but rather to keep them from being poisoned too quickly

• measures productivity by how few people are working

• creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying or burning them

• erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices. (pg 18)

From this bleak systemic reality, the authors argue for restructuring an economic model that loops back on itself. Waste returns to the beginning point as raw material. Thinking in circles may be poor thinking for a logician, but it is ecological thinking for environmental scientists, and it should be the way new economists and engineers think. As eaters, it doesn’t take much to see the loops in our own household economies. From food to waste to soil, there are numerous pathways to put energy back into the system instead of flushing it down.

Have a regenerative week!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Volunteer Spot

Hey ALFN Members,

We still have one slot open for the first shift tomorrow. Sign up if you are available: Volunteer Spot

Thanks!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

Good Morning ALFN Members!

The market will close tomorrow at noon. There is still plenty of time to order what you need. Here are a few updates on what is available:

1. Willow Springs is offering fresh Wasabi leaves for sale this week. They are good and spicy, but the spice cooks out. A pesto recipe is even included with an order!

2. Los Tacos will be with us this Saturday. Make an order on the market and come down for tamales!!!

3. We still have three spots available to volunteer this Saturday. Sign up here: Volunteer Spot

See you Saturday!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

The Market Is Open

ALFN Members,

The market is open for another year of rain and sun. Though it is January, we still have loads of fresh vegetables with plenty of meat and eggs.

Refurbished Website Categories

As mentioned in a previous weblog, we have slightly changed the market categories on the left side of the page. For the most part, categories have remained the same. Foods are separated into kind with prepared foods in various sub-categories under “Locally Produced Goods.” I hope the new organization will simplify and clarify your shopping experience. As usual, you can see the sub-categories only if you click on the main category link. Please let me know how they work this week!

Plastics

I remember the first goat we had die due to eating plastic bags. We were living in Mozambique, trying to get a small goat project up and running with a small village. The goats ranged throughout the surrounding fields of the village, and it was impossible to find all the plastic bags littered throughout the area. As a satellite community of the nearby capital, the village suffered with an influx of cheap plastic bags used for everything. When we cut open the dead goat, I pulled out plastic bags from his intestines. The bags could have been washed off and used again.

The turning of numbers seems to offer ways to calculate and quantify. So with the turning of 2015 to 2016, I thought it would be interesting to count plastic. A new study has found 3-10 times more plastic in the world’s oceans than previously thought. The study only quantified microplastics that could be measured with nets and did not consider the heavier plastics that sink to the bottom of the ocean. Americans throw away 185 lbs of plastic a year on average. These plastics spend decades in landsfills or migrate to the oceans where they break up into millions of pieces which are often ingested by the marine biology of the oceans. Consequently, there is a good likelihood, actually studies suggest a one-in-four chance, that the fish we eat has plastic in its body.

Plastics are petroleum-based products and carry the same burden on the world’s ecosystems as the fossil fuel industrial-complex. What if the city only picked up our trash once a year? What would our plastic load look like? For the locavore movement, such long-term problems can be hard to handle. Should we be concerned about random bits of plastic in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? I don’t know how to translate this concern into viable action except through personal behavior change and a deeper philosophical conversion. I can reduce and even try to cut plastics out of my lifestyle.

I’ve been watching the Arkansas River rise over the last few days. Inevitably, the floating trash along the margins, caught in drifts, captures my attention. Water runs down. A locavore with a global awareness realizes that we are located on a specific point within a larger watershed. All my trash drifts down the watershed into the great planetary basins of the world. And we all learned the hydrological cycle back in 5th grade. We are on a huge conveyor belt. Call it Karma, or call it cause and effect.

As we continue to cultivate our own local economy, we should also find ways to regenerate the bags which hold our local goodness!

Come volunteer this Saturday! You can sign up at Volunteer Spot.

Thanks

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager