Surprises at the Market: South Korea

This post was written by a former classmate of mine, the engaging Kelsey Hotle. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a bachelors in nutrition and dietetics, she moved to South Korea to teach English. She produces podcasts about the adventures of people living aboard, which you can find at Frolicking Foreigners.

The professor of my food culture course advised us to never make assumptions. "When it comes to other cultures," she said, "it is always best to ask." She told us thousands of things that semester, but that stuck out as solid advice. Yet for some reason, I still held on to an assumption that all produce in South Korea was local.

In this case, I didn’t get off without a lesson. I bragged about the produce situation to the wrong person and wound up with a writing assignment. My goal: obtain actual information about the farms in Korea. 

My first year as a teacher in South Korea gave me high hopes about local food. I lived in the middle of a farmer’s paradise, aka nowhere, called Seosan. Elderly Korean women sat on the steps of my high-rise apartment sifting though piles of produce, removing stems and such. Occasionally they tugged on my shirt and pantomimed until I pulled it into a makeshift bowl for them to fill with their seasonal produce. I’d usually post pictures of my unsolicited goods to Facebook in hopes that somebody could identify it. 

Dropwort?
Photo by Kelsey Hotle.

My second year in Korea found me far removed from the little farming community.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Another product of cleaning out my in-box: a webinar hosted by the America Farmland Trust, an organization working to save farm and ranch land across the county.

farmland.org

This event was the second in a series entitled Planning for Food and Agriculture: Taking a Systems Approach that highlights success stories from which others can learn. The first webinar focused on the state and region level, and the one I attended looked at community and county activities.

The four speakers each presented a wealth of information specific to their communities (Sacremento, Iowa Corridor, King County in Washington, Multnomah County in Portland). A couple items stuck out to me, which reinforced how one size does not fit all when it comes to local food systems.

First, from Sacramento, the urban-rural edge. This is where farmland abuts city land. The "softer" the edge - that is, the more urban and rural land is mixed together - the more likely the farmland is to lay fallow. The likelihood increases because that field is closer to traffic, pets, invasive plants, and vandalism or theft. And the urbanites might not be too chuffed about the farm next door because of spraying, dust, noise, and odor. Furthermore, land near developments is ripe to be developed itself; so, farmers may find the land more valuable sold than farmed.

Ways to address these potential points of conflict include buffer zones, Right-to-Farm laws, and ag parks.

Wait - what parks?

The Sunol AgPark in San Fransisco

Ag parks! According to the Sacremento Region Rural-Urbans Connections Strategy, an ag park is "a combination of a working farm and a municipal park that is located at the urban edge;" Sunol Water Temple AgPark is the model. Given an ag park's modest acreage and proximity to the city, it can be a good option for small farmers looking for a bit of land.

So that was the first item that stuck out to me. The second was King County's drainage and floodplain issues. Did you know that the ditches draining agricultural areas are often swum by endangered salmon? Neither did I! Maintenance of these ditches is understandably highly regulated to protect the fish and the water quality.

Also, farms in Washington's floodplains are liable to, well, flood. Did you know that some farmers build "farm pads" or "critter pads" to elevate their livestock above Base Flood Elevation? Me neither! The pads require permitting to ensure negligible impact on the floodplain, and can also be used to elevate houses.

Always something new to learn.

Seed-Saving Wordy Wednesday

My Year of Meats. I snickered when I saw the title of Ruth L. Ozeki's debut novel. A colleague (can I call the assistant director of the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute that, now that I've graduated?) had mentioned Ozeki's work, which includes her second title, All Over Creation.

I read them both, one after the other, in a rush to find out if the infertile women get a baby in the end, if the public realizes what American meat/potato production is all about, if the minor character finds happiness, how the main character deals with her Japanese heritage.

And along the way, I ran across some unfamiliar words. The following are from All Over Creation, a novel that deals with Russet Burbank potato farming and seed-saving in Idaho.

Imagine you are a seed... And then imagine the triumphant moment when you crack the crumbly crust, poke your wan and wobbling plumule head through the surface and start to unfurl..." (3, 4)

A plumule is the rudimentary bud of an embryonic plant. The 3,000 acres of Lloyd Fuller's farm would look pretty vast to such a structure. Later, said Lloyd Fuller helps his wife, Momoko, pollinate her squash.

Momoko located one of the taped [male squash flowers] and plucked it, severing the stem several inches down the peduncle... Lloyd watched as the [untaped female] flower began to unfurl, a blooming in slow motion, but of course it wasn't slow at all. Just the opposite, because the wrinkled petals, once freed, spread far more eagerly and rapidly than was normal in nature and within minutes had billowed into a raggedy-edged corolla. Inside, revealed, were the plump quadrant lobes of the stigma, sticky and receptive. Lloyd was transfixed." (115-6)

A peduncle is a stem that supports flowers. Clear enough. And a corolla is, collectively, the petals of a flower. Corolla is Latin for "little crown" and was selected as the name for a line of Toyota's compact cars because of the tradition of using variations of "crown" for their primary models, according to Wikipedia.

This procedure was carried out before "Momoko's garden was nothing but spectral stumps and stalks and mounds of tumular snow, like the site of ancient burial" (81). Latin tumulus, meaning "mound." I see of lot of that in the Twin Cities right now.

red, white, and black
Originally uploaded by mosippy

What I'm Excited About #1

Includes the following:

• Tour of the St. Paul Public School's central kitchen this Thursday


• Lesson plans I'm designing, aimed to increase cruciferous vegetable consumption


• Heirloom beans I purchased yesterday from Paula Foreman (Jacob's Cattle Gold and Orca)


• Order I got last week from Whole Farm Coop (pretty soon I won't have to shop at all!)


• Focus group I'm attending next week that's NOT organized by me


• An Eat4Equity I can finally attend!

And last, but not least, Mike Mason's Halloween party.
Photo of orca beans by Ataradrac.

Where have I been?

Allow me to give you a glimpse into my life this semester, 6 of 6 at the U of M. Fourteen credits divided among five classes and nineteen to twenty-seven hours divided between two jobs take up the bulk of the week. Two ongoing volunteer gigs fill in the cracks, and relevant conferences and presentations sometimes displace class or homework time.

Thankfully, the credits are either interesting or not taxing. My week starts with the one-credit Capstone class, which walks us future RDs through the Dietetic Internship application process. Nutrition and Metabolism follows on Capstone, a writing- (and quiz-) intensive, in-depth look at carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism in humans. Here's where my work in Biochemistry pays off.

I get a break for lunch before Medical Nutrition Therapy I. As I've stated repeatedly this fall, it is NOT a good a idea to take MNT II first, as I did. I'm bored, despite Christine's engaging lectures.

Photo from Cornercopia's Web site.

Another break ensues, and it's usually a struggle to get out the door to go to the my 4 o'clock class, but I'm always glad I did. Albert "Bud" Markhart teaches HORT2031: "Organic Food - How to Grow It, Where to Buy It, and Can It Feed the World." His lectures on organic matter, composting, and season extension are even more engaging than Christine's on acid-base disorders, the nutrition care process, and metabolic stress, if you can believe that. Plus, he brings in (edible) props, like a whole kale plant, an enormous crookneck butternut squash, and pea shoots. Yum.

Can't forget Nutrition Education and Counseling! The now-familiar Dr. Teri Burgess-Champoux returns for another semester of well-put together 115-minute class sessions, while Dr. Cynthia Meyer teaches and facilitates practice of skills such as primary empathy and self-disclosure. I especially enjoy the counseling portion.

So that's what my last semester of school looks like.

Revised 7/22/12.

Wordy Wednesday - It's a long road

I stayed up later than I should have last night, reading Keith Stewart’s It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life. Stewart put together an informative and entertaining collection of essays about nearly every aspect of his farm in New York that you could think of, from “The Driveway Rabbits” to “The Unweeded Garden” to “A Man and His Tractor.” He also uses some big words. Help from Merriam Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary.

From “Working Man’s Mesculin:”

The leaves that don’t pass muster are thrown to our flock of chickens, who devour them with much clicking and gallinaceous enthusiasm.

gallinaceous: of or relating to an order (Galliformes) of heavy-bodied largely terrestrial birds including the pheasants, turkeys, grouse, and the common domestic chicken.

From “Kuri,” Stewart’s first and best loved dog:

In less than a year [of heartworm treatment], he was back in fine fettle, ranging across the fields, chasing raccoons and woodchucks, and generally exhibiting his great enthusiasm for life.

fettle: state or condition of health, fitness, wholesomeness, spirit, or form. From Old English fetel “a girdle, belt.”

Photo from Wikipedia.

Beans for Hungry Bellies

My classmate Kelly Wilson is interning on Voss Farm in Paynesville, MN and she's working both in the field and on marketing. One project is Beans for Hungry Bellies: for every dollar you donate, Doug and Beth Voss will donate 2 pounds of organic pinto beans to Second Harvest Heartland.

Here's the backstory: Doug and Beth grow pinto beans and have for last 2 or 3 years. Last year, the crop yield was lower than expected and they ended up with a semi-load and a half of beans. The elevator bought the first load, but wouldn't take the half. As a result, about 20,000 lbs of lovely organic pinto beans have been sitting patiently for about a year on their property.

So Doug and Beth looked for a solution and came up with the idea to donate them to people who really need it through Second Harvest Heartland. They've teamed up with Grace United Methodist Church to raise funds to cover cost of production and transportation, and one dollar just barely does it. The pinto beans will stay in the area, going to food shelves in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

How do you give? You can send a check, payable to Grace United Methodist Church with "Beans for Hungry Bellies" in the memo line to

Voss Farms
27725 Hwy 23
Paynesville, MN 56362

Or, talk to me. I'll be collecting cash and sending a check at the end of August.

Childhood (Mis)conceptions

Every morning this week, I've showed up at the U of M's student organic farm. I stick around for a couple of hours, helping out with the tasks at hand: transplanting pansies, harvesting chives and cilantro, weighing the produce, thinning the turnips.

My mind often turns to images formed of farming in my childhood by the Little House on the Prairie books and even The Boxcar Children. Of course, we've got a Prius and more water sources than you can shake a stick at, but I hoof it an awful lot and watering, although it doesn't involve lugging water buckets, can still be tedious.

And then there's thinning plants. You may recall that in the first Boxcar Children novel, back when they were actually living in a boxcar, the Alden children do yard work for Mr. Henry. One task was to thin the carrots. I really had no idea what this meant: I imagined Jessie pulling out a carrot, running it between her fingers to "thin" it, and putting it back in the ground. Why would anyone pull out perfectly good carrots? When Jessie asks to take home the pile of thinned carrots (apparently they didn't all make it back into the ground), I always imagined a heap of pale, pinched roots, ready to wilt at a second glance.

The reality is less laborious. Thinning involves only the removal of the smaller plants, no size-reduction at all. We ended up with a healthy pile of turnip greens that destined for the Campus Club. No humble junkyard stew pot for these organic roots.

Photo source: http://mysticdomestica.blogspot.com/2009/07/boxcar-kid.html

Purple Asparagus

My mission this summer is to get my hands in some land and grow some food. Today I took one small step toward that goal.

One of the options I considered for the internship component of the HECUA summer program was working on the U of M's student organic farm, Cornercopia. The program coordinator, Courtney Tchida, invited me to help out during class time.

I trekked toward the far northwest corner of the St. Paul Campus until I spotted a group of people hoeing and wrestling with hay. Courtney put me to work right away: I planted Brussels' sprouts and cauliflower, and mulched. Then she asked for volunteers to harvest asparagus and spinach. I was by her side in a flash.

The asparagus was planted in a large V and I had to look carefully for the clumps of purple shoots growing among the other vegetation. I snapped off likely looking stalks of all heights and thicknesses - stalks as thick as a quarter and as tall as my palm, stalks as thin as a pencil and almost up to my knee.

Each was astonishingly juicy and the ends that I popped into my mouth were as tender as anything. It hardly seemed like the same vegetable as what I'd get at the store. I felt like I was in the garden in Narnia, where all the fruit tastes infinitely better than the best you'd ever tasted. Everything I picked was destined for the Campus Club. Lucky ducks.

Photo source: http://www.jungleseeds.com/SeedShop/StemFruit.htm

Urban Ag in Brooklyn Center

It's all very well and good to read about urban agriculture in Oakland or New York City, but a key to the good-food movement is locality. So that's why I was pleased to see this video from Fourth Sector Consulting, based in Minneapolis.

Urban Agriculture in Brooklyn Center from Fourth Sector on Vimeo.