The Supremest Court nominee ever

Here I am in front of the TV set again, waiting for the Prez to announce his pick for the Supreme Court. I’m wondering what Donald John looks like—clueless as ever? He’s in such a protected environment, poor dear, that he has no idea what a sleeping giant he’s awakened. In the last weeks, two major demonstrations even in little Columbia, the tiny blue dot in the red state. And another demonstration coming on Friday when the Save-My-Care bus comes through Columbia on its national tour. Every day, my e-mail in-box is full of advice on how to talk to your congress people, whether to send a letter or an e-mail, and what issues to focus on. For me, there’s always been a heierarchy of concerns. I pay most attention and offer leadership when the issue affects my family and friends, and right now that means the possibility of a CAFO coming into my neighborhood and the protection of our health and environment. Second tier is the long list of other concerns that affect the rural community—health care, consolidation of the food business, the overuse of cancer-causing chemicals. Then, my third tier of concerns includes the general environmental and women’s issues that haven’t gone away. The best score is if you can combine issues. Like when I call a friend to go to a march and we talk and build some power around a neighborhood issue. And, of course, you’ve got to pitch in on the issues that your friends care about since you expect them to pitch in on yours. Today, I got e-mails from friends who put women’s issues in first place and a phone call from a board member of Food and Water Watch asking for help to foil the Trump nominee for the EPA. Yeah, I can help on those—in a phone call or e-mail sort of way. But my real energy is going into the first-tier issues, of course. So, it’s not overwhelming if you figure out what’s important to you. Well, here’s the Prez. Whatever he does, it’s going to cause problems. But he'll never know about the protests, Poor Dear.

Kathy Ozer

January 28, 2017 Last week, I got the news that Kathy Ozer, Director of National Family Farm Coalition in D.C. had passed away. We all will miss her greatly. When I was at a meeting one year, my grown-up daughter Heather in tow, I needed to leave a day earlier than Heather. Kathy leapt to our rescue and took Heather home with her, fed her a good dinner and plenty of conversation and made sure she got the right train home in the morning. That was how she was...nobody was stranded when Kathy was around. Here’s her obituary: Kathy Ozer - A Fighter for Family Farmers With Integrity, Knowledge and Commitment   WASHINGTON, January 27, 2017   Almost everyone in the country involved with family farmer issues knew Kathy Ozer. We also knew that she had been sick for a while and thought she was getting better. On January 22, the cancer – non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – finally took her from us. She was 58 years old. Reflecting upon this loss, however, we state emphatically that her legacy and contributions are immense. Her commitment to establish a better and healthy life in America’s rural communities, both socially and economically, will continue to resonate throughout the country and the world. The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) was created in 1986, and in the early 1990’s Kathy Ozer became Executive Director, a position she held for 24 years. The coalition has 25 member organizations and Kathy learned from and advocated for them all. She worked hard to understand their needs and aspirations to develop fair and just agricultural policies to advance sustainable agriculture and build sustainable rural communities. Kathy’s husband David Battey supported her role in the coalition and was always there for her. He ferried food and visiting members to annual board meetings and attended other local and national events with Kathy, including many Farm Aid concerts. The NFFC  is very grateful that he has expressed interest in maintaining this longtime relationship. The NFFC headquarters is in the country’s capital city – Washington, DC – which has been a blessing in countless ways. Kathy's longtime residency there, combined with her penchant for details and profound expertise in understanding the policy process, made her an effective and respected family farm advocate in both the halls of congress and the United States Department of agriculture (USDA). Even before becoming NFFC's Executive Director, Kathy helped to draft and advocate for the Agriculture Credit Act of 1987. This act of Congress allowed many farmers to renegotiate their loans and to receive other services that helped them stay on the land. Kathy took a stand against NAFTA years before many of today’s politicians understood or knew what NAFTA was. She knew that, regarding agriculture, it was created to benefit large corporate agribusiness and would have a dramatically adverse effect on small farmers in the United States and Mexico. She worked hard to educate farmers and the public about the disaster NAFTA would cause and ways to lessen its impact on family farmers. One of her most important legacies is her stance against discrimination in agriculture. Kathy helped family farmers in so many ways, but her interests lay beyond policy development, organizing meetings and lobbying Congress and USDA. Kathy reached out to diverse communities by race and culture in rural America, and brought them together. She listened to them to learn about the compelling and often disturbing issues of racial disparity that also negatively affected US farm policies. She fought against this reality in her advocacy and policy work. In spite of her brilliance, or possibly because of it, she was humble and she listened even when she didn’t agree. In the lawsuits that Black, Native American, Latino and Women farmers filed against the USDA - because of long standing discrimination - Kathy was always there as a resource and voice of support. She helped coordinate the historic 1992 demonstration on the steps of the Capitol Building and marched with Black farmers to the front of the USDA to demand that Congress fund the Minority Farmers Rights Act. This act became the first federally funded bill to assist minority farmers, and is now known as Section 2501 of the Farm Bill. Kathy was an expert on the Farm Bill process and tirelessly worked to ensure that the concerns of family farmers were represented in every Farm Bill since the early 1990’s. Embodied in Kathy was the knowledge of the history of the agriculture movement from the 1980s to the present. Like no other, she knew its details, its dynamics, its ins and its outs, along with the key players. Her detailed knowledge and rationale for and about policies left many of us breathless, but Kathy was able to explain it in ways that made our work easier and our commitment greater. The complexities emanated from her with an impressive, astute and rare ease. We always knew she had studied the issues to retain the components and rationale to share with us. Kathy didn’t just talk and study and explain. She worked! She organized! She advocated for those in need, and while we will feel her loss for some time, we are blessed she came our way. Her work will not be in vain. It will be on-going. She taught us well. A memorial service will be held for Kathy at 3PM on February 11 at Sidwell Friends School in Washington. Member group Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance will celebrate Kathy's life and legacy in Boston on February 17; info and tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rock-the-boat-for-kathy-ozer-tickets-31474848118. Help continue Kathy's work at NFFC at https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/kathyozerfund. Note:  We are grateful to NFFC board secretary Margot McMillen along with agriculture advocates Heather Gray and  Jerry Pennick, formerly of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, for their input in writing this statement. We also appreciate the numerous messages from advocates throughout the country.

Liberal? Conservative? Focus on your issues!

January 24, 2017 Not too long ago, somebody from town said to me, “Margot...you are pretty liberal for someone from a rural neighborhood.” Quite frankly, I had never thought of it that way. I am surrounded by rural neighbors. We all have opinions. They watch TV. I watch TV. We watch different stations. But I don’t see our opinions falling into neat categories like liberal and conservative. When we talk about who we vote for, I guess we could label each other that way, but when we talk about issues, the Trump voters and the Hillary voters are mostly on common ground. Nobody satisfies us. We’re all politically active, but not with certain parties. Sometimes I think that’s a mistake, and I should go to the party meetings. Or maybe become a Green. And I have gone, but I’m always disappointed. They’re all so intent on divisions. Personally, I’m more about sticking together. At the women’s march, I saw a lot of my friends and neighbors. In fact, I wrote a letter-to-the-editor at our newspaper, which some people think is waaaayyy too conservative and other people think is waaaayyyy too liberal. Here’s my letter, but I’ll replace the names with XXX and YYY since I didn’t ask if I could put them in my blog: Dear Editor: Callaway and Cole Counties were well-represented at the January 21 Women’s March in Columbia. I went to the march to express my support, and I ended up seeing friends and neighbors everywhere I looked! According to the “Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles” of the march, the event was planned for Washington, D.C. and spread worldwide. It was created by women’s groups committed to working together for women’s rights, indigenous rights, minority rights, LGBTQ rights and the rights of all to clean air and water. Many of the marchers, including some from Cole and Callaway, wore “Pussy Hats,” which are the pink hats with cat ears that caught on to express solidarity with women’s issues. The hats were inspired by a remark from President Trump. Estimates of the number that marched in Columbia varied from 2,000 to more than 3,600. The signs carried by marchers varied from passing the Equal Rights Amendment to addressing climate change to saving the Affordable Care Act. Jefferson City’s xxx attended as a member of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the world’s oldest organization for peace. WILPF founders, including Jane Addams, began the organization before women had the vote. xxx told me, “I don’t think anyone had the insight to see that all across the globe there would be the turnout that there was. We had hoped to get our WILPF group together, but with the immense crowd that assembled that became impossible.” My friend, retired Westminster professor yyy, added, “It was a day of renewal and new beginnings, and it was encouraging and inspiring to be surrounded by so many people committed to finding ways to move forward positively and productively.” Westminster professor zzz (political science) told me about the need to reform the electoral college, saying that because some states have more electoral votes in comparison to their population, a person voting in Wyoming gets 3.6 times the weight of a vote in California. Another Fultonian, aaa, said, “The solidarity shown at the rally and march renewed my sense of purpose.” And, from the Guthrie area, bbb said, “Anytime there is an opportunity to promote justice, equality and inclusion, I want to take it.  I walked for my wife, daughter, and granddaughter – they should live in a world where gender makes no difference in their ability to be treated as equals, to be respected,  to live in a protected ecosystem, and to have their voices heard.” At an open-mike session after the march, twenty groups took the stage to talk about what they were doing. The audio was handled by KOPN 89.5 fm—a community radio station in Columbia. So, here in mid-MO, it was all about community. In Washington, D.C., more than half a million people flooded the National Mall for the Women’s March. So many people turned out that by midday the entire planned march route was filled with people. Sincerely yours, Margot McMillen And, here’s a note from my internet feed today: “Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday are still trickling in, but political scientists say they think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history. . . According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 500 US cities were attended by at least 3.3 million people.”

The Women's March

January 22, 2017 A good friend reminded me that the January 21 march wasn’t about the ACA or climate change or peace. It was a women’s march, kicked off in reaction to the comment that Trump made about grabbing a woman’s pussy "without their consent,” because “when you're a star, they let you do it.” Well, it’s true that women’s rights were the first issue, but the march became so much more. I looked up the Women’s March on Washington “Guiding Principles,” developed by the organizers. Rather early in their journey they discovered that all social justice and environmental issues are women’s issues. Their vision brings together all kinds of people “to affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold messages of resistance and self-determination.” At the march, people carried signs of support for lots of issues and causes, from women’s issues like saving Planned Parenthood and stopping violence to working on climate change. All of these are women’s issues. And although the majority of marchers were women, there were many men in the crowd, there to support women’s issues or to promote their own. Among the signs I saw and comments I heard: Keep the Affordable Care Act. Save Planned Parenthood. Fight Global Climate Change. End Racism! Stop Factory Farms. End the Death Penalty! No More Wars! Help Palestine Survive! Peace! Peace! Peace! And which of those, I ask you, is NOT a woman’s issue? None of the above.

The post-inaugural march

January 21, 2017 The post-inaugural march should become a regular thing...maybe a yearly thing! It was amazing to see so many people come out in Columbia, Missouri. People from all over Boone County, Callaway, Jefferson City...an estimated 2,500 people! Nobody could remember seeing such a crowd for a political activity...maybe there were some that big in the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam War era. But even that is doubtful as mid-MO wasn’t a hotbed of political activity. I went mostly in the spirit of community building. Truthfully, I don’t think Trump’s going to be able to follow through on his promises. And if he does—that’s when we really need to protest and support each other. As one of the signs said, “Resistance is not temporary.” But the march today was a good chance to show sincerity and see who’s going to be engaged. Our group—Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom--or WILPF—had a good showing of members and I also saw a lot of my Callaway County pals. Barb had created a “float” which consisted of a wheelchair with a large paper cutout woman inscribed “Affordable Care Act Dead by Presidential Decree.” On its toe was the tag “D.O.A.” It was a great concept and had the extra bonus of giving her something to lean on as she walked. And it was a pretty long march, so that was good. All afternoon, my phone blew up with texts from friends at other marches. John, James and Eli were in Oakland CA. Patty and Sam were in Madison WI. Holly was in D.C. D.C. was the biggest march and the media is saying “hundreds of thousands” appeared. I bet the phone companies made millions from all the people sending selfies and texts to each other!

The military vs. the stand-up comic

January 19, 2017 With the inauguration of Donald Trump tomorrow, the news feeds are full of one question—how did he do it? Democrats are baffled by the low turnout numbers after the high numbers of Obama voters. Republicans seem almost equally confused by their win. My husband Howard and I were chatting about this. He was reading an article from the New Yorker about how Trump benefited from stand-up comedy, using some of their techniques in his speeches and also benefiting from the comics who have mocked him. Since we have a kid who’s a stand-up, we thought we’d run the idea past him but haven’t gotten it done yet. Then, I thought I had it all figured out when we tripped into the idea that so many of our rural Missouri Trump-voting neighbors are veterans. We know that military service makes deep impressions on the kids. More than anything else—maybe excepting religion—the experience of being separated from family at a young age, thrown in with a bunch of other similar folks, taught to take care of each other, kept separate from society for a couple of years changes folks, especially in the area of responding to authority and forgetting how to think for themselves. So I googled the voting map and the military recruits map and put them side-by-side. Well, it didn’t help at all. Florida, Georgia and Maine were the major contributors to the military world, and all of them voted for Trump. But North Dakota and Utah have the smallest number of recruits per 1,000 and they went for Trump also. OK. No pattern there. Maybe it’s the stand-up comic effect after all. http://ijr.com/2015/02/251918-data-shows-highest-numbers-united-states-military-come/

January 16, 2017 I came home dancing on air after a meeting with the young owners and crew of Vicia Restaurant, soon to open in St. Louis. They will be working with the already-well-known Union Loafers (Bakery) to create fabulous locally-sourced breads for their fabulous locally-sourced vegetable-centric meals. As Michael described the menu, it will feature vegetables with meat on the side rather than a centerpiece of meat with veggies sort of an afterthought. And of course veggie-centric means in-season veggie-centric. Can it be more delicious? These kiddos have roots in St. Louis but have traveled to the coasts and become educated on the best strategies for converting eaters into health-conscious, flavor-conscious eaters. Michael and wife Tara took jobs at Stone Barn in New York’s Hudson Valley where a lot of NYC money has made it possible for small farms to survive. Another of the crew worked in Berkeley at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’ mecca of locavore chef-erie. If that’s a word. But the thing I liked best about the meeting was the respectful way they talked about farmers. The truth is that the system has made farming so risky and farmers so indebted that they have to take on more and more acres to make ends meet. They have to make the equipment pay its way, see? Equipment alone can run into the millions of dollars. And processors want CHEAP inputs, so the poor farmers are squeezed from both ends. High debt and low prices when they sell their products. To break this cycle, we have to create more markets! And that’s what Vicia and Union Loafers—and a bunch of other young entrepreneurs—are aiming to do. So, at the beginning of this blogging I said my blog would be about rural culture. The more I think about that, the more I see that debt is a big part of it. It ain’t right but it’s so. As one of my bluegrass musician deejay friends used to say, back when there were live deejays on the radio.

A Chicken in Every Pot--recipe!

There’s a guy on the Clean Water Commission that votes for more CAFOs, always with the apology that he knows they’re bad but where else will we get the bacon we need? Well, of course, that’s a false dichotomy but it’s been so long since the poor fellow has had good meat that he thinks it’s normal! His declarations must make sense to him, but if he weren’t so brainwashed by the industry and its advertising, he’d know that the meat that comes from well-managed family farms is so much better than the meat that comes from CAFOs. Case in point is my neighbor Luke’s chicken. He raises it outside on pasture and moves the chicken wagons (he calls them “chicken tractors”) every couple of days. To fight predators, he has big dogs prowling through the pasture. It’s a great system and it produces wonderful meaty birds that are delicious right from the crockpot, with a bonus amount of delicious broth for gravy or to freeze for soups. OK. Here’s the how-to, but it’s so simple I know you can figure it out for yourself! Take one whole chicken from the freezer. Unwrap it and rinse with clear water. Put it in the crockpot with 1 cup of water. If you have favorite seasonings—garlic, rosemary, sage, onions—add them now. If I have the time, I use a little salt and pepper and chop a clove of garlic. Turn the crockpot on low. Forget about it for 6 hours or more. If you are around the kitchen and want to add some potatoes, carrots and onions, add them for the last hour. I like to throw some broccoli or kohlrabi in with it, big chunks! After the hours have passed, check for doneness by wiggling the chicken leg. If it wiggles freely, it’s done. Since it’s usually quite pale, you might want to brown the skin and crisp it up by putting it on a broiler pan and browning it under the broiler for a few minutes. Then you can carve and serve it! I usually freeze the broth to use for soup. Cooking a home-raised chicken is the best way I know of to convince yourself that CAFO meat is not worth eating!

On media—and a correction, dang it!

January 14, 2017 Yesterday’s post drew some comments from rural friends about the lack of media in rural areas. One commenter said, “systematic disenfranchisement of rural communities. No newspapers, radio, TV (cable only), no internet, cell phones and in recent years disappearance of many local post offices. Almost unbelievable in 2017. Almost. “My mother is in a care center in a small town. Never, ever has there been cell service available for miles in those surrounding areas. Some internet with super slow DSL is available but pretty awful.” Another said, “it seems to me that the organizations that once provided collective political power for rural areas have either been preempted by corporate power or disappeared. Farm Bureau and Grange come to mind...” Those comments reminded me of conversations in the last years with fellow farmers and members of National Family Farm Coalition. One Ohio friend told me they were fighting in the legislature for the right to keep phone lines in rural Ohio. A bill had been proposed to allow phone companies to quit delivering phone service. Another friend, from Wisconsin, had been ruminating over co-operatives, which were once essential to the dairy industry. With a co-operative, farmers could buy tanker trucks to stop at each farm for milk, then take it to a central processor. But as time went on, the farmers handed the bookwork over to clever fellows from business schools and those clever fellows eliminated farmer services as too expensive. It was cheaper to service fewer farms or create fewer products...all about fattening the bottom line. So now the system is all about bottom line and not about the farmers. In fact, prices paid to dairy farmers have gotten so low they can hardly pay their feed bills. So they’re going out of business. And industry’s answer is to import MPCs, milk protein concentrate. So, guess what, we don’t know where the raw materials for cheese, ice cream, sour cream and so forth come from. What a crock! And here’s the correction part: one alert friend corrected my statement in "Jefferson City Trippin'", that the Clean Water Commission votes of 3-3 and 2-2 didn’t mean that the CAFO issues are dead. The issues have been tabled until there’s a full complement of 7 members in attendance...so the can is kicked down the road. And in the case of FORAG, next stop is the court of appeals…

January 13, 2017 Funny that yesterday’s blog ended with KOPN radio. Today I’m more grateful than ever for local media. Partly, I guess, because the media had been hyping a sleet storm that was supposed to begin at midnight last night and it was nice to know ahead of time. I spent time yesterday hauling hay to the sheep, making sure they had a snug place to weather the storm. And even though the storm hasn’t come, I was glad to have it all taken care of. But today I have become doubly grateful as I’ve been trying to place articles about Missourians for Local Control in the media of people who were there. Columbia and Fulton were no problem because we still have functioning newspapers. But many of the participants are farmers from small towns. Some of those towns (and their counties) have no newspaper or radio! So of course you have to wonder how folks can get informed about things going on close to them. I assume they get some kind of TV news. Or are they getting all their news from Facebook? That would mean paying for a computer—and internet hookup. Another expense for folks that might not have much money. It’s interesting to think about whether they know what’s going on in Washington. Do they know that Congress is working to cancel the Affordable Care Act? Do they know who the candidates are for Trump’s cabinet? Well, we’re lucky here in Callaway County to have a local daily paper! A daily! And even though we don’t always agree with them, they DO follow the local stories. Here’s the story on the CAFO hearing at the Clean Water Commission last Wednesday: http://www.fultonsun.com/news/local/story/2017/jan/12/clean-water-commission-still-tied-callaway-farrowing-operation/656920/

Jefferson City Trippin'

January 12, 2017 The last days have been intense! On January 10 (Tuesday), a group called Missourians for Local Control hosted a meet-and-greet event at the capitol in Jeff City and it was a great success. The timing was perfect—the morning after the inauguration of our new Governor Greitens. So the legislators and senators were all in a great mood and came to our donut stand with big smiles. We were able to explain to them that “local control” means the government closer to the people—city governments and county governments. In other words, we are saying that the laws they pass shouldn’t interfere with the ability of counties and cities to govern themselves. Missouri, after all, is a very diverse state. In St. Louis County, there’s little agriculture, and with land super expensive there won’t be much in the future. So they don’t have to worry about the pollution and expenses of industrial agriculture that hits rural counties. But, on the other hand, in rural counties, we don’t have to worry about the pollution and expenses of intensely dense populations. So, obviously, state laws need to leave local control alone! All the lawmakers on my list—Rs and Ds—were enthusiastic about our message AND about our donuts! The next lobby day will be February 14, Valentine’s Day, and I’m looking forward to giving out heart-shaped cookies with “We love local control” on them! Then, on Wednesday morning, the Clean Water Commission met and discussed the case of Friends of Responsible Agriculture against the DNR. I have to admit that I don’t breathe during these hearings and court cases—is that a sign of stress? I am completely involved in the arguments of the lawyers and policy wonks for and against Concentrated Animals Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to the point that I don’t hear or see anything else. So, at this meeting, one commissioner (out of seven) was absent and two had to recuse themselves from voting on the CAFO permit because of a judge’s order. So that left four commissioners to vote. They voted 2-2 to deny the permit. That meant that the process fails because the law says it needs a 4-person vote. So, perhaps, it will be taken up in a future meeting. But Callaway Farrowing, the Iowa company that wants the CAFO, has already filed for an appeal case in Missouri Appellate Court. So we'll be back in court soon... Another permit—R N R—was voted on and the two recused commissioners could vote on it but the end was 3-3, another failure. So, bottom line, there were two turn-downs even though there had been no CAFO permits turned down in recent memory. In fact, when I asked DNR what group had asked for a hearing last, they checked their records back to 2002 and found none. So, able at last to breathe, I drove to Columbia and took up my usual Wednesday—playing music with my friends and hosting a radio program on KOPN 89.l5 fm. I would definitely link to the article that was on the front page of the Fulton Sun tonight, but I can't find it on=line yet! When it comes on, I'll link to it...

The End of COOL

January 9, 2017 Another thing I forgot to mention is how and why Americans can’t tell where our meat comes from. This detail has to do with the loss of country-of-origin-labeling, or COOL, that we lost just last year. Beginning in 2002, with the 2002 Farm Bill, USDA required labels that told where the meat was born, raised and slaughtered. So, at the grocery store, there were signs and labels. My favorite store had a big sign that said, “U.S.A.” over the beef, pork and chicken case and then the details on labels on each piece. But the WTO said that was an anti-trade label and our neighbors in Canada and Mexico threatened to sue or put sanctions on us if we didn’t stop that anti-trade labeling. Those two neighbors send a lot of meat into the U.S., and they didn’t want American consumers picking all-U.S. products. The WTO ruled against the labeling program four times. Canada and Mexico threatened $3 billion annually in sanctions that would put extra costs on our imports of wheat, wine, furniture and (gasp) chocolate! Some of the big commodity groups supported repeal, because of course there’s more profit in selling meats from other places rather than paying American growers a fair price. And those commodity groups are managed by the big corporations now. So, bottom line, I emphasize that you need to find a local grower for your meats if you want to have a clue where it comes from. Your local grower can tell you all about his/her growing strategies and even take you to the field where your critters (and future meatballs, t-bones or chicken breasts) are grazing!

The best meatball recipe ever!

January 8, 2017 We've had a week of the new year and no recipe. Or, more accurately, no “how-to.” Because I think recipes get in the way but I DO believe in explaining how to cook something. The problem with recipes is that you feel so obligated. 1 # of ground beef….well, what if you don’t have ground beef but you have ground pork? 1 red onion….well, what if you don’t have red onions but you just bought a sack of white ones? And what if your garden is bursting with, say, oregano or sage or basil but it’s not in the recipe? So my how-to is just an outline of what you can do with the basic ingredients. You might try it exactly as it is written the first time, then add or subtract flavors you don’t like. The only real demand, at least for MY kitchen, is that the ingredients are traceable back to the farmer's hands. I want beef from my neighbor, onions from the farm across the county that I meet at the farmers’ market, eggs from my other neighbor and bread crumbs from the organic bakery that my daughter helped start. So, since I began the year with meatballs, here’s the how-to, a recipe that serves four, but is very forgiving. You can double it, triple it...and freeze your meatballs in a freezer bag for another meal: 1# ground beef (or pork, lamb, turkey) (if you don’t have a farmer, trust your butcher!) 1 egg (again, labels don’t mean much—find a farmer) ¼ medium-size red onion (if you have white or yellow, go ahead and substitute!) ½ cup bread crumbs (ONLY from a baker you trust. Ask where the flour came from!) Chop or dice the onion as fine as humanly possible and do the same with the bread. Sometimes I dry the bread out in the oven, then grate it with a cheese grater. If I’m making a lot, I’ll chop the onions in a food processor, take them out, then chop the bread in the same processor. Sometimes I just crumble slices of bread, making sure there are no chunks more than about 1/4” in any dimension. Next, put the ground beef into a bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Break up the ground beef and it will be easier to mix the other ingredients. Then, break the egg in, add the onion and bread crumbs and mush it all together. If you’re squeamish about mushing things together, or if you’ve just had a manicure, put on disposable gloves for this part. When well-mushed, take a meatball-sized chunk and roll it into a ball. I usually like my meatballs about 2” in diameter, but sometimes I want tiny meatballs, so I make them smaller. Whatever you decide, put the meatball on a baking sheet. Repeat until all the meat is rolled into tidy little balls and ready to go into the oven. Pop it into the oven, set the oven at 350 (don’t worry about pre-heating for this) and leave them for about 10 minutes. Check after 10 minutes. When they’re brown, pull them out. You might like spaghetti sauce but I like meatballs in a cream sauce, which you can make in the 10 minutes you’re waiting for the meat balls. The sauce recipe for this many meatballs is 2-2-2. In other words: 2 T. olive oil or butter; 2 T. flour (I use organic whole wheat from the mill in my county); and 2 cups milk. Heat the oil or butter, add the flour and stir in to make a paste (called “roux” and pronounced “roo”) and add the milk a little at a time, stirring it into the roux. When it’s all blended, turn down the heat and let it stay warm. And, oh yeah, bring on the noodles—the big fat kind from the noodle-maker at the farmers’ market. Just boil a big pot of water and drop them in for about 15 minutes. Pull a noodle out every so often to test for doneness. That’s good eating!

Acceptance Doesn't Mean Surrender

January 7, 2017 In the last few days, I’ve gotten some interesting feedback on this blogging. One friend sent me a booklet—26 pages—on how to be a citizen lobbyist. It’s a great summary, and includes pages on how to find out about issues at the capitol, how to find your representative, how to make an appointment and visit, how to write letters—the kind of establishing-a-relationship-with-your-elected-officials stuff that we all need to know. It was, as I said, a great summary and something I’d send on to lots of friends BUT it begins with a solid 4 pages of angry rhetoric against the president elect, against voters, against the whole system. Knowing that the guy who sent it is angry, but a friend, I kept on reading until I got to the good part. But nobody I know would be that patient! And many of my neighbors were voters for Trump and are looking forward to big changes in the things they think need to change. Here’s how to win: Work your issues. Figure out what you’re passionate about, find colleagues and like-minded folks, and move forward with them. If you know you have differing opinions on some things, shut up! More than thirty years ago, a bunch of us started working to build back the local food system that once thrived in America. The facts are there’s plenty of land in the Midwest and plenty of water. But, people had abandoned the vegetable gardens that were part of every city lot. Folks were growing lawns! Poisoning dandelions! Dumping fertilizer to make bluegrass grow under trees! What a hoot! Today, community gardens and urban farms are sprouting up even on rooftops in all the big cities. Farmers’ markets are bringing good meat to a city park or blocked-off street near you (I hope). I've attached a picture of delicious local food and an adorable kid at a Missouri Rural Crisis Center meeting. And that progress has happened as political administrations changed—the Rs, the Ds, the Rs, the Ds. Despite the political scene, single-minded people pursued their single-minded goal and didn’t dwell on their differences of opinions. So let’s not make the same mistakes the conservatives made when Obama was elected. We don’t need the nation to be further divided. I wrote about this in a Progressive Populist column. Brilliant editor Jim Cullen came up with the title “Acceptance Doesn’t Mean Surrender.” Here’s the link: http://www.populist.com/23.01.mcmillen.html

they're appealing the judge's decision--FORAG will fight

Just after finishing the book Sharing The Ocean, I realized that the ocean we're fighting over here in mid-Missouri is the ocean under our feet--the aquifer that we drill into for fresh water. That enormous ocean has taken care of our households, farms and towns since settlement. In some places, it bubbles up to the surface in natural springs, although we've taken so much from it that many of the springs are dry. Then, yesterday, I heard from Friends of Responsible Agriculture, our neighborhood group for education on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. They said that Callaway Farrowing is appealing the judge's decision that would keep a major Iowa hog facility out of our neighborhood. The judge's decision, which comes after more than two years of meetings and court decisions, says that a 3-2 vote by the Clean Water Commission should stand as a vote against the CAFO. The law requires at least four votes for the facility to be built. It's interesting to see how big corporations move into neighborhoods like mine, or into waters around fishing villages like those featured in Sharing the Ocean. FORAG has won battle after battle but the corporations use our wins to go to the Missouri General Assembly and change the laws, closing the way for future neighborhoods to win. The GA started meeting two days ago and already there are dozens of bills filed to change laws that helped us in years past. The good news is that citizens are waking up. My e-mail in-box is full of announcements about progressive organizations meeting and building power. It's a sloppy process, but I think the numbers are on the side of the progressive populists! Here's a picture from The Golden Lane, a 1916 women's silent protest in downtown St. Louis. It was during the Democratic Convention and it changed the fight for suffrage! We can win!!

the culture part of agriculture

January 4, 2017 The news of the kids’ deaths in Amarillo has fallen off the radar, as is typical with U.S. media. Maybe that’s why we don’t get tougher regulations on dangerous chemicals—we forget how dangerous they are. And some other drama takes over the air waves—today it was mostly about Donald’s tweets that apparently stopped Congress from gutting the ethics commission. That flash-bulb attention span that Americans have developed has stopped us from doing many good things, and allowed bad things to slip through unnoticed. Drip drip drip, destroying our democracy, our integrity, our culture. Because, no doubt about it, Americans have a culture, just like the peasants in South America. Ours always had a lot to do with government—the importance of voting, respect for the law, belonging to a caring community, a sense of public service that enhanced the worth of the individual. That’s a summary of American rural culture. Not too many people have written about the culture part of agriculture. Even though it’s the most important part of farm life. It’s common to find nostalgic writers launching into descriptions of the old family home place where they grew up, but that doesn’t nail it for most of us. Now we’re in a time and place where people move every few years and don’t really have a sense of their community. Closest I’ve seen in a while is a description from why people in fishing communities want to keep on fishing. It’s page 11 in a book called, Sharing the Ocean: You think about growing up in a family and community where fishing is all you know. As a kid you loved the kind of freedom you felt only on the water and you want your children to have the same opportunity if they choose it. The fishing life is rough and dangerous, yes, but with hard work it can support a family and maybe send your kids to college. For you, fishing is what makes sense of the world, it is the foundation of your identity… Substitute the word “farming” for the word “fishing,” and you’ve got it.

Amarillo by morning

January 3, 2017 The terrible news from Amarillo—4 kids killed by rat poison—isn’t any better because it was accidental. Apparently, the rat poison—aluminum phosphide--was under the house and somebody tried to wash it out. The water created a chemical reaction and the rat poison turned to a gas, seeped into the house and killed people. Googling “aluminum phosphide,” you find out that it’s a commonly used poison in grain storage areas (hello, wheat industry!) and a killer used in fighting bed bugs. It is also blamed for the rash of farmer suicides in Northern India and here again farming, food and politics collide. Like many so-called “undeveloped” areas, northern India had a complex culture where people in small towns lived an agricultural year, raising small patches of crops typical of their ecosystems and developing traditions, celebrations, religion and foods around those crops. The many types of Indian foods with their unique flavors and spices were developed over centuries by these little pockets of distinct flavors. If you like Indian foods, you know there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of kinds of curry. You could link each one with a particular village if you wanted. On their own, the microbes and earthworms, the seasons and the farmer traditions kept this land productive. Not over-productive. But enough production to get by. Then, about thirty years ago, American agricultural scientists came to the areas to improve them. Basically, that meant taking over large swaths of land, using machinery and chemicals, and turning in monster amounts of crops. Mostly corn. You might have seen pictures of grinning peasants holding weirdly huge ears of corn. If you haven’t, look at Monsanto’s website. Taking over ancestral lands and plowing it with machinery is nothing new to America's agricultural heritage and we’ve taken it global. BUT we ignore the ecosystem and the complicated cultural traditions that underpin life in those places. Long story short: The peasant farmers and their governments have ended up selling their land to the machinery owners or they have ended up buying machinery and chemicals, borrowing money for the new system. Either way, the peasants lose their culture. And, like in Midwest America, the deep plowing and chemical use resulted in land that cannot produce without American-style management. The microbes and earthworms are diminished, and maybe even extinct. Debt is constant, just as it is in the U.S. and there’s no easy way out of the system. To escape, farmers have killed themselves. It happens. In India and here in America.

How do farmers get paid?

January 2, 2017 One thing I want to get across with this blogging is a sense of what farmers do. After all, it’s easy for farmers to see what city folks do—it’s all over the media. But it’s hard for city folks to get much more than a surface view of rural culture. First thing to understand is that all farmers are business people who are not on a salary paid by the boss. Every farm you drive by on your way from City A to City B is a business. We have to sell what we raise. And the income usually comes from the international market, with prices set far away. Unless we sell at the farmers’ market, or another small, specialty auction or such, we have no control over how much we get. But, in general, it’s a fraction of what you pay at the store. Most of the price of, say, a can of soup or a box of cereal, goes to processors. Those processors are giant corporations, mostly, and when they buy raw ingredients they want to pay as little as possible. That means that the farmer is squeezed. Worse, for consumers, there’s very little incentive for farmers to raise their raw products in a way that’s better than anyone else. Unlike most independent business people, they don’t get paid for being better than their competitors. If you're selling grain, it just gets dumped into a humongous bin with everybody else's grain. There might be a little bonus depending on your region, or a bump if you bring in really gorgeous Angus cattle instead of scrawny holsteins, but, to the processors, ingredients are ingredients. Certainly not the way the average business would charge for services—think of your lawyer, your cable tv company, your masseuse, your favorite artist. Some farmers think they can game the system by teaming up with corporations and setting up Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. It turns out to be a lose/lose proposition because the corporations don’t give up their profits to their captive labor. But, going into it, the CAFO guys think they can beat the independents. So, what is it that keeps us on the farm, when we have so little control over our income? Habit, I guess. Or, maybe, the view.

Happy New Year 2017!

Back in 2011, I made the New Year resolution to blog every day during the year. I intended to write mostly about my rural neighborhood, rural life and how politics connects to food. I was struggling for language to communicate to urban folks what's going on here. And, of course, starting on January 1, 2011, I had no idea what the year would be like. I thought I'd talk a little about the weather and how it affects my diverse farm and ecosystem--vegetables and livestock, mostly, and better-than-organic when it comes to management. Surrounded by neighbors raising soybeans and corn, mostly GMO. I am a locavore, and I thought I'd put a few recipes into the blog. But, OMG, what a year it turned out to be! Egyptian Spring! Occupy Wall Street! And here in the Midwest...Occupy St. Louis!! It was a great year, citizen-action-wise, and the protests were mostly peaceful. I'm a big fan of peaceful demonstrations and have written a lot about them. For more on the peaceful protest during the St. Louis Democratic Convention, 1916, see my book The Golden Lane, How Missouri Women Won the Vote and Changed History, published by the History Press. It may have been the first silent protest in the world, and it changed the fight for suffrage. The Golden Lane turned the tide and eventually moved men to give women the vote. Anyway, with the excitement of 2011, my locavore hints and recipes were thrown under the bus and I got completely swept away by the politics, the democracy of it all. Now I'm going to try blogging again. With recipes and hints this time. And with politics. I'm inspired after a fun evening last night with a bunch of local musicians, college guys, who came over for a supper of yummy meatballs with my husband, the fiddler, and me. They loved the meatballs, then hung out and traded tunes for hours while I indulged in the musician-wife secret pleasure: lounging in a cozy corner with a good book while wonderful live music and chatter drifts through the house. So that's the hint on how to spend New Year's Eve and here's my meatball secret: Don't buy that nasty ground beef from the big-box store. It's bad. Even if it's marked "organic," it might come to you with all sorts of environmental or social-justice bad baggage. I buy from a neighbor and I watch how he handles his animals and his pastures all year long. He takes it to my local processor, I pick it up, pay for it, and know what I'm serving my family and friends. And, yeah, I also buy for my friends, so they can enjoy the same good stuff that I do. So if you don't know a farmer, buy from a farmer's cousin. The point is that you want to have complete traceability back to the pasture. Here's the politics: A couple of months ago, consumers lost the right to know even what country our beef comes from. There had been a rule called Country of Origin Labeling--or COOL. Farmers and ranchers fought to keep it because COOL meant that consumers could tell if they were buying meat from the U.S. or from another country. South America is big on beef raising. South America's economy is pretty much in ruins. They're eager to export and they'll sell it cheap. Our processors like to buy cheap. So there ya go presto change-o. The beef at the store becomes NOT beef from the U.S. but beef from (mostly) South America. The next link in the evil chain will be the end of the small-farm beef industry in the U.S. If they can't compete, they'll be selling out and the big growers will be around to buy. As the industry is consolidated, we'll see fewer cows on pasture and more in feedlots. And more land in the hands of big growers. Meaning less land for the young farmers. OK. That's all for today. Much love and happy new year!!