end of 2010

We have a choice: to be active or passive, to believe in something or just go along, to create or to consume.

It's really that simple. The choice part anyway. Putting that choice into action is anything but simple. And if we choose the active path, well, we have to act. To change the world for the better, to the best of our abilities, in little or in big ways.

We all change the world anyway, every day willy-nilly, by our choices or our ignorance.

We can make it better with our labor and our intelligence. We can create beauty, help others, build a community. We can look around and try to see what needs to get done. Look around and see the sky, the ocean, the land and let what we see, hear, smell, feel sink in deep.

Horns of a Dilemna

Finally finished Nature - An Economic History, thanks to my mare who fell over backwards onto my right calf thereby creating some downtime. Nature is a unique book - densely argued but not impenetrable or academic, in the pejorative sense. You learn a LOT about marine molluscs along the way (Vermeij is a paleontologist specializing in fossil molluscs). More to the point, it has given me a much more powerful way to think about the interplay of natural systems and human social systems, including our economy. That we share an economy with nature is as at once obvious and forgotten. For farmers and especially for ranchers it is the stuff of everyday life: mediating the transformation of sunlight into dollars. Most of us would rather just stay in the sunlight part and forget about the dollars, but we have families, mortgages, and automobiles just like everyone else. But that's not the dilemna that I'm talking about.

It has become increasingly obvious that human civilization faces a troubling dilemna. Our success (or over-sucess) as a species, expressed by ou exponential population growth, has been largely due to certain social and cultural traits that encourage innovation. Among these traits have been competitive freedom at the individual level (free-market), and diffusion of power (democracy). Conditions of growth and prosperity breed innovation, which has led to further growth and prosperity. We have been able to innovate out of all previous limitations on growth by finding new resources to exploit or increasing the efficiency of our exploitation. Now we face global resource depletion and environmental degradation.

We will again need to innovate - socially, culturally, and mechanically -our way to a solution. Innovation requires freedom. Freedom requires growth/prosperity. Continued growth may well be fatal to our species and many, many others. Such is the dilemna.

Vermeij does not have A Solution. He does pose the question extremely well, and he does offer some interesting ideas to begin to address the dilemna . One such idea is to adapt the system of checks and balances that has, for the most part, been successful in diffusing power in Western democracies in order to limit corporate concentrations of power, and thereby increase the resilience of our economic ecosystem. Another idea is to require that corporate decision-making take into account true costs rather than simply profitability.

Performance & power

As a caveat, I should say that I'm only a third of the way through Nature: An Economic History, (by the quote earlier, you can see that it's not a book that you just zip through), but I'm thinking quite a bit about the concept of power that is one of the central themes of the book. Nature selects for performance. Performance is measured by power. Power, for Vermeij, is energy, advantage, the ability to capitalize on opportunity. It's the core of what we mean to express by money. Performance is not about dominance but persistence.
It's a very stark but very clear way of looking at the world. And yet it makes more sense than our current valuation system, which is tilted way over towards the valuation of excess, not the means of persistence. Such as childcare and families. Or the health of the ecosystems that would allow us to persist. Or knowledge of the real world and the ability to create practical plans for our peristence.
An economy built around performance, rather than greed and fear, would bring us closer to persisting.

Currently Reading

Nature: An Economic History
Geerat J. Vermeij

it rocks
It might be an idea slightly ahead of its time - I say this because to my surprise my biologist friend bristled slightly at the mere thought of the conjunction of nature and economics.
But what is real sustainability but bringing the two together?

Here's a little sample just totally at random:

In other words, actions and codes that look as if they are designed for the common good emerge because they confer on their bearers or creators not only long-term advantages, but the kind of short-term advantages which natural selection can enhance. The long-term benefits cannot be selected for directly; natural selection is very much about advantages here and now, not in the distant future. Traits conferring long-term advantages emerge because they also work well in the lives of individuals and produce positive feedbacks that enhance the economic well-being for a large number of other participants in the economy. By creating a shared common interest, selfish benefits become traits for the common good.

One could chew on that little bit for quite a while...

"Food" two ways

I had dinner with my parents the other night. When I walked in the door, my dad said, "I was going to make pork with squash." That's his code for: "Michelle, why don't you make dinner with the above-named ingredients and try not to mess it up." The pork was leftover huli-huli pig(spit-roasted whole over kiawe with garlic, ginger, and lemongrass). The squash was that long green Asian squash that I don't even know the name for. My father and brother raise pigs, and grow the squash at the edge of the pig-pens where they are irrigated and fertilized by the piggery run-off. So I cooked some rice, peeled and chopped the squash, sauteed garlic, ginger and onions, threw in the the squash for a bit before the pork, covered, cooked, stirring a couple of times for, say, 20 minutes. Totally easy, nutritious, tasty, soul-satisfying, and it all cost less than $3 in bought ingredients (rice, onions, garlic).
The next day I was in Honolulu with a little extra time to spare, so I went to Whole Foods for some market research. Whole Foods is the ne plus ultra of value-added retail venues in Hawai'i, so I like to just look around and see what they're onto. I saw my friend Lorie Obra's Ka'u coffee "Rusty's Hawaiian" prominently displayed so that was worth the trip in itself. I also noticed that WF was carrying tiny goat loin-chops. I wanted to get some gifts for the friends that were putting me up for the night. I got a bottle of wine, artisan olive bread, two bars of super-premium chocolate (one spiked with chilies, the other with bacon(!)), and marinated olives. That cost me $75. The person in front of me spent $250. The place was a-buzz with beautiful people, there was excellent music on the sound system, and gorgeous prepared food everywhere you looked.

You could hardly have two more extreme experiences of food. Both were enjoyable, although so different. The big difference, to me, is that in our dinner at home the food just came right up out of our lives as a family, the work that we do, and the place where we live, mostly unpackaged and raw. In the other case, the food was also part of a lifestyle, but it was lifestyle as an assemblage of products for the purchasing. Of course there are all kinds of other ways of experiencing food, but the contrast struck me as near the two ends of the spectrum.

agriculture as art

Really it's the first art. We've come to see agriculture in terms of production, simply because that's being the way of our civilization for the past few hundred years - to make everything more and more efficient, more and more standardized, more and more scientific, more and more technological. But agriculture was the first and most daring art, the art of taking up the materials of nature and making something out of it. Making gardens out of wild earth. Taming the beasts of the plains. And yes, turning the natural fecundity of living things to our purposes. Ranching is large-scale landscape art, among other things. And being part of the constant conversation between the soil, the grasses, the sky, the weeds, the animals, the very stones in the fields, and the people. It's just not an art that you can fit into a box and mount on your wall. It's not consumer art. It's much bigger than that.

reality based on reality

I spent a lot of time away from Ka'u in September. A week or more. It gave me a bit of distance on my favorite place. One thing that struck me was how little cognitive dissonance I experience here. I feel fairly OK about the terms of reality, even in this hellacious drought. Droughts happen, even the mother-of-all-droughts happen. It makes sense to me. Sharp contrast to last weekend at a conference at Ko'olina - the resort with a view of an industrial park. I found the presence of the industrial park comforting actually. Industrial parks are not pretty, but at least they're honest. Resorts - even the most tastefully done, culturally sensitive, native-specie adorned resort - make me slightly nauseous. They're just so fake. The fact that you can get a locally grown salad and creme brulee delivered to your room at any time of the night doesn't begin to make up for the alienation of being in an overly-constructed environment. For me, anyway. So, some people are anti-GMO, I'm even more fussy. I want the world to make sense.

Biophilia & The All Around Person

I've been reading E.O. Wilson's Biophilia, in which he makes the argument for conservation of habitat in humanistic terms. In other words we need to save wilderness in order to save our souls, so to speak. A love for living things is written into our blood and bones, our instincts and emotions. This seems completely obvious to me, living the kind of life that I do, but I know that there are many people (supposedly 90% of people live in cities) who do not have much contact with the non-human living world on a daily basis (except that they eat biologically-derived substances everyday.) Wilson reminds us that sustainability is not just a technical problem. It is also an ethical challenge. We must alter our values system so that we can recognize systems that are in balance. We have trained ourselves to value and create systems that are not in balance. That is the essence of profitability. And, ultimately - let's be honest - profitable is the opposite of sustainable.
People often say we must invest in education. We must teach our children science and math, because we are being left behind by other countries. I agree that they should learn more science and math. The best investment that we can make, however, is to teach them to be all around citizens of a living world. Science and math will help us to create a less unsustainable civilization, but these analytical skills will need to be combined with a love of living beauty, a drive towards creating living environments, and instinct for balance that draws on our creatureliness as much as our analytical skills. Organizational and leadership skills are as important as technical skills if we are to create the flexible, decentralized and yet interconnected systems that will increase resilience. We need to be able to envision a world in which we are not burning through our resources at breakneak pace, and teach ourselves to be the inhabitants of that world. We must use science and math to get there but they must be yoked to common desire for a living world.

improbable?

just exactly what is it that we need to see the way forward? why are we so tied to a life-world that is so spectacularly dysfunctional? it all operates pretty well now, as we burn through the oil supply at a rapid clip. the solution is simple, but improbable. it has nothing to do with smart this or that, thought leadership, international conferences, or non-governmental organizations of benevolent intent. all that stuff is well and good, but it involves a whole lot of time and energy spent in spinning our intellectual wheels. the solution requires everyone to get their hands literally dirty. to produce. to be both intellectual and worker. yes, it is socialistic, even communistic. they weren't wrong on everything. they were wrong in thinking you can force people to do what needs to be done. that doesn't work in the long run. there is a need for leadership, for articulating direction and organizing resources, for intellectual work. but then you have to just get out there. boots on the ground. our culture is frighteningly top-heavy and stratified. there are too many people that work out and not enough that work. people expect jobs to be created for them and not to have to figure out what needs to be done, then go do it. maybe I'm getting prematurely crotchety here, it's just that I know that we can do so much better for ourselves and for our kids. I think it's actually easier than we make it out to be. but it means taking some degree of physical responsibility for the means of one's own existence, without which everything tends to become a thought exercise. it means not following the money, but following the real things - the essentials of our sustained existence. perhaps we can re-link money to these essentials eventually. right now, our system of value/money has become severely distorted so that money is a pretty poor indicator of long-term value. but to restore real value will require a social consensus that will draw on the experience of each of us taking responsibility for our part in the making of our world.

Then and Now

While foraging on the web for info on tech "guru" Esther Dyson (of all things), my wanderings led to this collection of color photographs from the Great Depression/1940s.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/07/rare-color-photos-from-the-great-depression_n_674344.html

It is fascinating to see the difference between then and now, what we have gained and what we have lost. Here's my list:

Obligatory hat-wearing

Paint on houses

Physical work and getting dirty

The mental and physical flexibility to lie down on a wooden porch floor and be comfortable

Horses as a part of everyday life

Separation by race

Extreme rural poverty

Lack of building codes

Back

So I got through it. July was crunch month for me. Aside from generally keeping the wheels on the bus, I took Kuahiwi Ranch Natural Beef on the road to the Hospitality, Lodging, and Food Expo at the Blaisdell and the State Farm Fair at the Bishop Museum. We got lots of positive feedback on our product. Mufi Hanneman became a fan. But our biggest fans were the toddler set at the State Farm Fair. The 3-5 year olds were running away from mommy to get a second, third, fourth, and fifth sample of our beef all weekend. They licked their toothpicks off. They dragged their parents back and insisted that they buy. That has got to be the best kind of endorsement you can possibly have.

Future of Agriculture Panel

Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Gene Logsdon at Xavier University
Quirky, lovely, very level-headed stuff.
http://www.postcarbon.org/audio/94710-the-future-of-agriculture/22069-culture-behavoir

Miloli'i

I remember waiting for my father's fishing boat to come back in at the beach at Miloli'i (in South Kona). My younger brother and I would play by the boat ramp in the lava rock tide pools. Pahoehoe lava that was once flowing liquid stone, hardened into voluptuous folds at the water's edge, forming shallow basins lined with seaweed and coral, populated by tiny fish, crabs, sea cucumbers. The water, absolutely clear, washed in and out, carrying tiny flecks of seaweed, evanescent bubbles and swirls like fairy-tale hair. The ledge of tide pools dropped off into a small bay where a few boats were anchored on the pale sapphire.
In Miloli'i one felt yet the rhythm of an earlier world, that world that existed before, when we did not know there was anything else to do but simply live in it. Edge of land, edge of water. Sunlight and coconut trees. Mid-day silence.
Another way of saying it, Miloli'i has not lost its Being. It resists being real estate. It is a Being in which the lives of humans have been held for a thousand years, in the pulse of the sea on the shore, the ebb and flow of time and lives. Bones among the coral. Coral in the bones. Lava worn by sea and feet. Children laughing in the small waves on the other side of the bay.

Growth towards Equilibrium

I've been reading "Holistic Management" which is basically about sustainable ranching and holistic decision-making. I came across a sentence in a section about ecological succession that began "Complexity, productivity, and stability..." And I've been chewing on those three words for the past couple of weeks. They seem to sum up, in my mind, the direction that we need to take as a society. The frustrating thing is that there is so much work to be done and yet no "jobs." I am thinking that the idea of a "job" has become obsolete, a relic concept of the old economy. Now there is work that may or may not provide a margin at any given moment. Everyone is going to have to accept that risk and the responsibility of their own means of existence to a far greater degree than just a few years ago. There is still huge potential for us to grow but it will not be in the exponential upward curve of the old economy. Now we have to grow towards equilibrium. There is room for growth in building a stable, complex, and productive economy - but to do that we are all going to have to take on the responsibility as co-entepreneurs and not just employees. And we'll need to support each other to make it possible, and yet we cannot take away the elements of risk and freedom that keeps us honest. There is and needs to be a process of succession going on - where we move away from a simplified global economy towards complex re-localized and scalable economies.

Mind-bending

look into our possible futures...
























biology is technology: the promise, peril, and new business of engineering life
Robert H. Carlson

Organic Pt. 3

I'm trying to articulate, hopefully once and for all, the reasons for not jumping on the certified organic wagon. There are a lot of things that one just inherits from an agricultural upbringing - ways of perceiving, thinking, making decisions - that are ingrained into one's very consciousness and therefore hard to develop into words and arguments. I'd like to get it out and move on, really.
I don't want to go the organic route because the scale is all wrong for me. It seems like a micro-solution to a micro-problem. Part of the scale-thing is that we ranch on 10,000 acres, a good part of it infested with an invasive weed - the dreaded popoki - that sports poisoned talons on every milimeter of vine, twig, merest wisp of leaf. I reserve the right to retaliate in kind, even if it is bad karma. (Yes, I do have a Republican streak.)
But the other part of the question of scale has more to do with re-thinking our present paradigm. To go organic I would have to focus on technical questions, on figuring out how to do what I do with the products listed by the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute). And, honestly, we've got bigger problems coming at us like a freight train in a tunnel. Or worse coming at our kids. Organic is going to be a moot point a whole lot sooner than we'd all like. The big question for me is not whether my own deal is or is not organic, it's whether we can think through the post peak-oil, post-global structural questions with nimble wit and gutsy fortitude in time for our kids to have a good kind of world. So that's what I'm going after. And organic, heirloom tomatoes will be in there someplace, I dearly hope.

Organic Matter

"More carbon is stored in soils than in all plants, all animals, and
the atmosphere combined. Soil organic matter contains
an estimated four times as much carbon as living plants.
In fact, carbon stored in all the world’s soils is over three
times the amount in the atmosphere. As soil organic
matter is depleted, it becomes a source of carbon dioxide
for the atmosphere. Also, when forests are cleared and
burned, a large amount of carbon dioxide is released. A
secondary, often larger, flush of carbon dioxide is emitted
from soil from the rapid depletion of soil organic matter
following conversion of forests to agricultural practices.
There is as much carbon in six inches of soil with 1%
organic matter as there is in the atmosphere above a field.
If organic matter decreases from 3% to 2%, the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could double."

From Building Soils for Better Crops

Organic

People ask me all the time why don't I get organic certification for our ranch. I could probably ask for more dollars for our beef. Then again I'd probably price myself out of my local (Ka'u) market. But that's not the main reason. The main reason is that the idea of organic doesn't appeal to me. I mean I support it in general but I just can't get excited about it. Mainly I just see the certification process as a whole bunch more words to manipulate and papers to fill out in a world with way too many words and papers going around already. Something like that. But what does get me excited is soil science. Stuff like this from "The Living Soil" chapter of the SARE publication: Building Soils for Better Crops www.sare.org/publications/bsbh/bsbc.pdf Bugs, fungi, bacteria, slugs, nematodes...and cows.

Nothing

The best things about my life are not-things. I've chosen the life that I have -which is a pretty weird life compared to the average - because I can't live without those not-things. When I tell people that I live in Ka'u I often get this look of disbelief, because it is the no-where of no-where, the extreme boonies. But damn my life is so rich, I almost can't take it sometimes, and it is the stuff in Ka'u that makes it so rich. It's the community and when I say community it's just the closest English equivalent to something that tangles much deeper. It's the spirit of the land that is like endless music in the heart. It's the nothingness that lives.
Sometimes I think about trying to get other people to understand Ka'u and I feel like I have to create content to get people's attention - products, events, stories. But it's really missing the point. Ka'u is not about the content, it's about the anti-content. It's about that feeling that you'd be happy to spend the rest of your life, and several more lifetimes, if you had them, just trying to understand Ka'u. That it would take all your brains, heart, creativity and strength. That it would leave you weather-worn but complete. And that the best part of it would be way beyond words.

Crash Course

http://www.postcarbon.org/video/89646-the-crash-course-exponential-growth

All food producers should be respected

It really disturbs me that there is a tendency to bifurcate the agricultural world into bad farmers and good farmers. This mostly occurs amongst food commentators, not so much amongst actual farmers. The attention that is being placed on agriculture is a wonderful thing.
I hope that out of all of this attention a new generation of food producers will be born who will command the respect of their peers and who will help to shape a new culture that respects the land, each and every acre of it. I look forward to this new culture that is in love with the land and the ocean again. I hope that an innovative spirit will be brought to the practical questions of how we derive the most basic necessities from our natural environment sustainably and fairly. I dream of a day that we will see large numbers of highly productive and diverse farms on a human scale that can provide a good living for farmers.
I hope that farming becomes very, very cool. Even beyond that I hope that farmers become regular people again and not the slightly quaint folk that we are considered today. It is a deeply satisfying and incredibly challenging way of life. And however you manage to do it, if you can make it work, then it should be respected. Because whatever kind of farmer you are, at whatever scale, you will only make it work if you very accurately assess the place where you are farming, the resources that are available, the technology that is most appropriate, the presence and capacity of processing infrastructure and distribution channels, and not least, the audience for your product - your market, your consumers. Any farming operation has to be an accurate reflection of what is and what might be.

What's Really Going On

The politics of food is really big right now, which is just great. There's much talk of a food crisis. Seven million people watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. There's an organic garden at the White House. It's an exciting time to be a food producer. We feel like Cinderella - maybe we'll actually get to dance with the Prince at last.

But you know, it isn't really a food crisis that we're having, no, not so much...America is having an identity crisis, a values crisis that we are projecting onto food. Everybody who's ever been a teenage girl knows that eating disorders are not actually about the food. It's about all the other stuff, the feelings we can't quite handle. We're scared out of wits because everything we see around us seems to depend on burning fossil fuel. Our cars, our clothes, our food, our houses. Our entire way of life. We get that out-of-control feeling.

We're a nation with an eating disorder. Because we were and are living a lie. You actually can't have an economy based on the service sector because, hello, that makes no sense! We can't all play the stock market because the stock market has to be based on something. Monopoly money is not real, and just because it looks like food doesn't mean that it actually is.

But you know food is a very basic thing and if we can get that right, if we can remember what food looks and tastes like, if we can find some integrity there, maybe it's a start.

So there's an opportunity here for food producers to push for a food system that makes sense, to help to heal our wayward culture, to seize the moment and offer something better, and at the same time demand that our own lives and lifework be better recognized and rewarded.

Careers in Agriculture

A telling moment today. I ran into a dear friend and mentor at the airport, a brilliant educator and advocate for gardening skills as a means of hands-on learning. She mentioned that she had received an offer from the Hawaii Community Fund for three scholarships for students majoring in agriculture. She had to turn down the offer because there was no one wanting to major in agriculture. Yes, that’s how bad it is. As long as I have been alive we have been punishing those who chose a life in agriculture with low wages and long hours, uncertain livelihoods and social condescension. Yes, punishing and for decades.

A practical example

of what I was trying to get at in my last post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/28slaughter.html?ref=dining

In what could be a major setback for America’s local-food movement, championed by so-called locavores, independent farmers around the country say they are forced to make slaughter appointments before animals are born and to drive hundreds of miles to facilities, adding to their costs and causing stress to livestock.

This is a problem that I deal with everyday. It's a part of what I mean by saying that it's not enough to buy local. Is it the farmer's and rancher's responsibility to create the infrastructure necessary to get the food all the way onto the plate? Do farmers have the millions of dollars and more importantly, the time and stamina to get through the regulatory hurdles of putting this infrastructure into place? We are trying to get it done, but the obstacles are daunting. We could really use some help, and not just in the eating part.

Where to begin?

There are some things that have been swirling around in my head for some time now, but difficult to articulate.
I spend most of my time these days trying to build a supply chain from my family's ranch to consumers via farmer's markets, restaurants, and stores. I'm literally a poster-child for our local "buy local" campaign and can rattle off the arguments for buying local passionately. And yet I feel slightly hypocritical when I do so. The local food movement, the organic food movement are admirable things and I support them. But all the while I know that just buying local is not near enough. I thnk about the statistic that every farmer in the US feeds 120 people. 120. That is a heavy load to bear. I think about the producers that I know of, and the worry and frustration in their eyes. The worry is not just for our individual lives and businesses. It is about the system. We are very capable people - strong, disciplined, creative. But we can see that we cannot bear the load. That the burden is too great. That we cannot do what needs to be done with the resources of time, money, and energy that we have to offer. We can see that most people do not begin to fathom the social and physical infrastructure that makes the basic necessities of life available to them. We were all brought up to take our the necessities more or less for granted. We were brought up to work within a highly hierarchical system with jobs specialized and ranked. To get to the top of the food chain. To pick a career with the highest possibility of the highest wages. Nobody told you to think about where those wages were coming from. If it paid a lot of money then it must be important and necessary. And the necessities would be taken care of by paying other people to take care of them. Of course. So we have built a culture around the faulty premise that value will be assigned rationally. That the most important and necessary things will be valued the most. But that hasn't happened, not exactly. And so when the logic falls apart what will happen? That is the worry.

The frustration comes from the same source. Farmers and ranchers know that the more basic and necessary the food stuff, the less viable the business. We are frustrated that we are preyed upon by our own society. That none of our businesses quite "pencil out." That we bear the burden of a system that has evolved into nonsense, ignorance, and frivolity. These are bitter words and it pains me to say them. But they are true, I think.

And so what is the answer then, if buying local is not enough. It is to take responsibility at a deeper level. To help to make our world make sense again. To fight for the right to contribute. Not just as a consumer, but as a producer, a builder, a maker. And there is all the poetry and beauty in the world in that.

Secrets of the Mountains & Oddities of the Farmer's Market

This Dr. Seussish-looking plant is a rare native called opelu, like the fish. It was growing in the ravine that we hiked through in the forest (nearly a month ago now, it's scary that the months flash by like days). It is called opelu because the underside of the leaves have a silvery irridescence like the fish flashing in the water. It is the mauka incarnation of the makai fish body, in the Hawaiian poetry of names and things.

Last week I turned up at the Na'alehu farmer's market and there on my neighbors table (she sells jewelry) were four Buddha's hands, a variety of citron celebrated in Chinese culture for its fragrance. What are the odds of that? Supposedly there are only two trees on the island, and those four hands are the entire crop this year for one of those trees. I bought two. My friend Lorie Obra, the coffee grower, kept asking me "What do you do with it?" Lorie is Filipino and I'm half-Filipino, and that is the quintessential Filipino question. We are very pragmatic. My explanations about the Chinese aesthetic of qikuai or strangeness, was not satisfactory to her. So after appreciated the weirdness of my Buddha's hands for a few days, I chopped up the less weird one into little bits and candied it. Very yummy. I'll take it to the farmer's market today to reassure Lorie that I have not betrayed my Filipino values.

Tomorrow

I'm going up into the mountains to beg the gods for water.

OK, I'm going to go up in a Toyota Tacoma with a bunch of guys to map out a waterline from a spring deep in the mountains, and the actual gods that I have to appease are a bunch of bureaucrats in Honolulu, but still it's going to be a primal day of slithering around in the mud and the ferns literally searching for the source of all goodness and life: fresh water.

I've been up to this spring perhaps a half a dozen times in the last 15 years. Although it's marked on any number of maps, it is still a little tricky actually finding the living, bubbling thing in all that forest. We want to bring a little of the water down to help the ranchers of the area survive this El Nino winter, but the spring is located in a conservation district and the layers of bureaucratic permitting that shield it from even the most innocent use are forbidding, to say the least.

Actually it's not really a spring either, as it was created in the twenties and thirties by the sugar plantations. Work crews dug a horizontal shaft into the mountains at the meeting point of a porous layer of lava stone and an impervious layer of volcanic ash. Where the water filtering through the rock met the thick ash, fresh water would flow sideways creating a potential water source.

One of the unforgettable moments of my life was the day we hiked up into the mountains, past the known spring in search of a half-remembered one, into a deeper wilderness of moss-thick ravines shaded by hapu'u ferns and came upon, in all that brown and green, a straggly red rose-bush with a single bloom struggling for light where some long-dead tunnel diggers had planted it near their camp as they searched the mountain's layers of rock and ash for the hidden streams of water.

Kuahiwis in the city

Here's the link to the wonderful article that Wanda Adams of the Honolulu Advertiser did about a beef tasting that Alan Wong put together. Dan Nakasone likes to stay under the radar but he has been doing so much for local agriculture, and much of it out of absolute aloha, that he really deserves a medal of honor from all of us in farmers and ranchers for making it happen. And Alan Wong has brought along so many farmers, putting up with our beginner's mistakes and learning curves as we figure out product, processing, packaging, distribution - and how to act in the big city. He and his crew make everyone they come into contact with feel like they are the President of the United States. Big Mahalo, Alan, Dan, Wanda!

Beef, au naturel honoluluadvertiser.com The Honolulu Advertiser

Wild Read by a Wild Woman

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Ex-vegan radical feminist anti-pornographer born-again farmer from the city etc. My boyfriend is getting sick of me referring to him as "the patriach" but that's just my geeky sense of humor. Lierre Keith has done a lot of very interesting research, which she turns to very provocative use. She calls veganism "part cult, part eating disorder." You go, girl!

Hard but Good

One of the books that I have been dipping into is James Herriot's "All Things Wise and Wonderful." It's another 25 cent book. Definitely not the latest thing. Herriot relates his experiences as veterinarian - pre-penicillin! - in the English countryside in the 1930s. What is striking is the richness of the lives of the people and animals he writes about. There is bitter cold, rain, and war, dirty barns and deep snow, but there is also the deeply satisfying beauty of open countryside, and the unpredictable revelations that come from living with and among other species. There is also the unrelenting labor that comes with making a living in agriculture. "Them were hard days," says a retired farmer wistfully, "hard but good." Herriot also describes unflinchingly the characters who have been ground down to dour rancor by too many hard and hopeless days. That is one of the reasons that so few people today are in agriculture. You don't have weekends, holidays, or guaranteed sick days. You don't have much time or energy for philosophizing or art. And yet your life is art, but it's not the kind of art that is clean and shiny and for sale. It's unpredictable, often quite grubby, and just as often blazingly glorious. It is not something that you can buy at Neiman-Marcus, ever. You find your art in your hard but good days, in the poetry of making.

Ua on Big Pharma

My daughter, Ua, who is 8, said something hilarious, and sad, last night as we were driving home. She said thoughtfully: "I don't know about these "doctors", they are making up all these drugs and nobody wants to buy them." I laughed. Undeterred, she continued with her business analysis: "Grandma and Grandpa use Tylenol and Advil, so I guess they are doing OK, but Symbacort and all these other ones that have ads on TV, nobody wants them. But they just keep making more and more ads."

The Power of Limits

"To hard-core nationalists and neoconservatives, the acceptance of limits suggests retrenchment or irreversible decline. In fact, the reverse is true. Acknowledging the limits of American power is a precondition for stanching the losses of recent decades and for preserving the hard-won gains of earlier generations going back to the founding of the Republic. To persist in pretending that the United States is omnipotent is to exacerbate the problems that we face. The longer Americans ignore the implications of dependency and the longer policy makers nurture the pretense that this country can organize the world to its liking, the more precipitous will be its slide when the bills finally come due.
A realistic appreciation of limits, on the other hand, creates opportunities to adjust policies and replenish resources - perhaps even to renew institutions. Constraints subject old verities to reconsideration, promote fresh thinking, and unleash creativity.

Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, 174.