Voices of CEI

You don’t have to be a committed locavore to appreciate Maine’s seasonal bounty. In the fall there are piles of pumpkins and bushels of apples, not to mention gallons of cider. If you’re a hunter or lucky enough to know someone who is, a little later there might be some venison. As the freezer and the root cellar start to look a little sparse, maple sugaring season heralds the end of winter, with spring greens soon to come.

For a continuing joyful celebration of what Maine can produce, summer is the season. And while the list of local produce includes everything from asparagus to zucchini, I mark the passage of summer by the succession of berries – at roadside stands, in my garden and yard, and in the wooded acres near my home.

In June, the native strawberries turn red and sweet – so intense and juicy that you wonder how those California berries can even share the name. We try to harvest daily to beat the slugs and birds, and freeze a few quarts for a winter pie or smoothie, or just a taste of springtime in the breakfast cereal.

Just as the strawberries have gone by, the signs by the side of the road switch to raspberries, and we compete with the Japanese beetles to pick our fill. There’s something miraculous about a just-ripe raspberry when it falls off with a heavy plop into your hand.

And then come the blueberries – fields of the tiny wild ones, quarts piled high at the farmers’ markets, some to eat our fill right now and more for winter pancakes, pies and muffins.

But you know that summer’s almost over when the blackberries appear. I go foraging in August and September with my buckets in a backpack. I try to remember to wear jeans and boots, but somehow I always manage to come home stained with blood and blackberry juice. Picking is an art that requires patience and a receptive eye – just when you think you’ve exhausted a patch, a handful of perfectly juice-swollen berries will appear out of nowhere. These berries are my favorite, as they seem to hold a season’s sunshine in their plump, dark fruit; their taste, too, bittersweet like the end of summer.

On Sunday I’m standing in the yard with one of the goats – Zing, who is very large and white, and who had been assisting me with a little weeding. Contrary to popular belief, goats are not indiscriminate mowing machines, but they do like to browse on bushes and thorny plants and the kind of out-of-control five-foot-tall grass that surrounds my garden area. So I’d put Zing on a tether and let him go to town for a couple of hours. When he seemed to be done, I took him for a little walk through the yard, and that’s what we were doing when the pick-up truck drove by, then backed up.

It was a shiny, late-model extended-cab truck – also very large and white.  The driver got out of the truck and picked up something that I couldn’t see. He was young-ish, maybe a lobsterman or a carpenter, and when he spoke there were at least a couple of generations of Maine in his cadence.

“Where do you want me to put this?” he asked me.

“What?”

“This turtle. I was afraid someone would run him over. Which side of the road should I put him on?”

“Well,” I said, “which way was he going?”

The turtle had been heading for my property, as it turned out. “Put him on this side, then,” I told the Samaritan, “so he won’t turn around and try to cross the street again.”

The young man gently put the turtle down, away from the road and facing the mill pond. Then he got into his large white truck and drove off, leaving me standing there with my large white goat.

Last weekend there was a welcome break from the seemingly endless rain, just in time for Mother’s Day and my family’s annual spring party. The party was Saturday (conveniently scheduled so that if there was any cleanup still to do the next day, I’d have an out), and the weather was exactly as ordered.

We made five gallons of homebrewed beer and smoked the last of the turkeys we raised last year. I made a salad with early greens from the garden.  Friends brought German chocolate cake, cheesecake, salads, crab claws – a delicious abundance. One friend brought a big bag of fiddleheads he’d picked along the – well, I can’t tell you where he picked them; sorry.

The food was tasty, the sunshine welcome, the drink plentiful, the black flies few. But the best part was the music.

Many of our friends are musicians, as are we. When we moved to the midcoast, we worried that it would be hard to meet people and hard to find other musicians to play with. There was no need to worry – we very quickly found ourselves surrounded by music-makers. If you throw a rock in my neighborhood, you’re pretty much guaranteed to hit a fiddle-player. (Not that you should.)

We started playing at three in the afternoon and some of us were still jamming at 11 at night. There’s a special thrill in finding just the right harmony with the voice of a friend – or a stranger – maybe in a song you haven’t heard before. It’s a collective endeavor – taking turns to lead a song, and working out the chords and accompaniment to others’ songs. Like the homebrew, it’s not always smooth or perfect, sometimes it’s a little flat or sharp, but the more you make it, the better it gets.

Senator Olympia Snowe’s bombshell announcement Tuesday that she would not run for re-election got me to thinking about politics in Maine and the remarkable access we Mainers have to our elected officials.

I moved here from Massachusetts, where I was involved in community development work for nearly 20 years; I certainly did my share of advocating for programs and resources and made plenty of calls to Congressional and Senate offices. In my former home state, those calls were to faceless staffers who politely recorded my opinions and went on with their daily work.  I did know a couple of Congressmen well enough for them to remember who I was (or put up a good pretense), but I never met either of our Senators, nor did I know their staff. Of course, there are plenty of folks in Mass. who enjoy closer relationships and more direct access, but I think for the most part they are engaged in political work day-to-day – they’re part of that world.

Here in Maine, with a delegation of four, it’s commonplace to see our Representatives and Senators on an airplane, at any number of public events, even in the supermarket. And their staffers go out of their way to get to know constituents and representatives of agencies, organizations and businesses. I have Sen. Snowe’s housing staffer on speed dial and in my email contacts, because he’s knowledgeable, accessible, and always willing to listen. All of the members of Maine’s delegation have worked hard at various times for programs important to CEI and our constituents – and when they don’t agree or have concerns, they ask questions and they listen.

I’m a lifelong registered Democrat, but I think that Senator Snowe’s departure is a loss for Maine. I admire her balance, her openness and her courtesy, and it makes me sad to think that partisan gridlock is what drives her out of office. I’m certain, though, that at least here in Maine, our elected representatives – including whoever succeeds Senator Snowe – will maintain their open doors and open minds.

Another deep pleasure of winter comes when I give myself permission to open the seed catalogues and begin to plan for this year’s garden. I don’t make my New Year’s resolutions on December 31. I set my year’s intentions while taking inventory of last year’s leftover seeds and greedily browsing Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Fedco.

As I consider which seeds to buy, I plan my garden. It will, I resolve, be the best yet.  This will be the year that my crop of melons grows large and sweet, and the sweet potatoes fat and plentiful. This year, my careful timing will make the hoop house work to produce greens all winter long. In 2012, I’ll keep excellent records; I’ll test the soil in all the different parts of the garden; I’ll get scientific about compost. I’ll produce a winter’s worth of squash, and I won’t let any of it freeze or rot. There will be a bumper crop of cauliflower, free of green worms and fungus.

I love to thumb through the pages and dream of my perfect garden. It’s a time of such hope and eagerness – long before the battle with the quack grass and the hornworms commences; months before the spores of late blight settle upon the tomatoes; a long season away from the inevitable failures and disappointments. Right now, I contemplate only the certain triumph: the juicy, sustaining and delicious bounty that will feed my family and friends all year long.

Just lifting my head after a long bout with a grant proposal, and I look around to find that winter has finally arrived. The Maine winter for me brings great outdoor pleasures, especially downhill skiing.

I spent the long weekend in Rangeley, skiing at Saddleback with my 13-year-old son. There’s a special pleasure in spending time with Jesse right now; who knows how much longer he’ll be willing to hang out with his Mom? As it is, I’ve had to work hard on my skiing skills - and my courage - just to keep up with him. It’s worth it beating my body against the mountain for three days to watch my boy zooming with such confidence and glee ahead of me.

Saddleback for me is one of many special places in Maine. To begin with, of course, Rangeley Lake and the whole mountainous region are spectacular in any season. Looking out over the lakes from anywhere on the mountain offers a broad sweep of land- and skyscape that puts our puniness in perspective. But as a human endeavor, Saddleback is also special – family-owned and unpretentious, the mountain offers every kind of terrain, from the easy, view-studded curves of Hudson Highway, to the terrifying, adrenaline-pumping headwall of Tight Line, to the challenge and beauty of skiing in the tree-studded glades. Saddleback’s owners are conscious of their footprint on the land, and are doing what they can to be green (the warming yurt they added at the base of the Kennebago Steeps a few years ago has composting toilets).

It’s been a tough winter for snow-lovers so far, but flakes were falling this morning and there will be more in the mountains this week. Enough, I hope, to blanket not only the mountain resorts, but also our home hill, the Camden Snow Bowl, just 25 minutes away and offering its own incomparable vista of the Camden Hills and the long, island-punctuated stretch of Penobscot Bay. Some may be longing for the end of winter; I’m hoping for just a little more.

These are dark days for many. These days the work of CEI and others trying to create jobs, provide housing and health care and save homes, can feel like pushing water uphill. With Congress focused on drastic budget cuts, the Supercommittee stalled, and foreclosure maintaining a steady creep across the housing landscape, it was hard to feel hope this Thanksgiving. It's tempting in the face of these challenges to just crawl into a comfortable hole and wait it out. So I'm moved and inspired by those who are refusing to hibernate through this economic winter. Here are some examples:

•      The Occupy Wall Street movement, and Occupy Maine. I admire those hardy souls who are camped out in the cold to broadcast their message about economic and political inequities that have brought this country to an unsustainable place. I'm heartened when I see the encampment in Portland - glad to know that activism is alive here, and in Augusta and Bangor. I'm hopeful that the energy generated from this movement can spread and grow in strength until all of us - workers and farmers, politicians and bankers - are moved to work for a change.
  
  
•      Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and his brainchild, Create Jobs for USA (http://www.createjobsforusa.org/). This initiative, a partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) provides a way for ordinary people to be part of our economic recovery. "Create Jobs for USA pools donations from Starbuck customers, partners (employees) and concerned citizens into a nationwide fund, held and managed by OFN, for community business lending. Donors who contribute $5 or more will receive a red, white, and blue wristband with the message 'Indivisible.' The wristbands are individually handmade in the U.S.A. and all component materials are manufactured by U.S. suppliers, so the effort is also helping support American manufacturing jobs."
       Starbucks seeded the project with a $5 million contribution along with the pooled donations, is being channeled to community development lenders like CEI that invest directly in credit-strapped job-creating businesses. One hundred percent of these funds go directly into loans. I'm wearing my wristband with pride.
  
  
•      The foreclosure prevention counselors here at CEI, who worked with Bank of America to organize customer outreach days this Friday and Saturday (December 2 and 3) in Portland and Bangor, where borrowers facing financial difficulty can get direct, one-to-one assistance (click here for details).
       The counselors at CEI and other counseling agencies are overwhelmed daily with a never-ending stream of Mainers in crisis, but they took the time and the initiative to urge Bank of America to come to Maine to resolve homeowners' financial issues in person. We expect as many as 500 participants. For many, this may be their best chance for an affordable loan modification or another solution to their crisis.

For the past couple of weeks, a lyric from Bob Franke's "Thanksgiving Eve" rang in my head: What can you do with your days but work & hope/Let your dreams bind your work to your play. If we can all just keep working and hoping--together--we will get through these dark days. Together, individuals, not-for-profits and mission-minded corporations can put people back to work and help to save their homes. Maybe we can even be part of a movement to create more sustainable economic systems and close the gap between the 1% and the 99%.

Monday morning at 7 I’m out doing my farm chores – milking the goat, feeding the chickens, ducks and turkeys, in barn boots and pajama pants. On Tuesday I’m in a basement room, cleaned up and in business attire at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., with about 40 other people interested in promoting access to healthy foods for low-income people. We’re talking about financing strategies, the best ways to understand where the need is greatest, the need for supermarkets in some areas and farmers’ markets in others.

Traveling to D.C. makes me feel disconnected. I spent the weekend preserving the last of my fall vegetables – making sauerkraut and kim chee and stowing beets in the cellar – and making goat cheese and sourdough bread. Now I’m in a windowless room shuffling papers and a PowerPoint presentation, having arrived, as Wendell Berry puts it, “By a sustained explosion through the air/Burning the world in fact to rise much higher/Than we should go.” [*]

But the discussion is rich, and really, the connection is clear. CEI is part of a growing movement that views the links between the food we eat, where it is produced and by whom, and human and economic health, as inextricable. We’re lucky that, in this time of shrinking resources, the federal government has set aside some resources to strengthen these connections. I’m lucky to live in Maine, where many people are connected to their food. My friends and neighbors grow vegetables, meat, milk and eggs, or purchase them from farm stands and local Community Supported Agriculture programs. We can and preserve and pickle.

Not everyone is so fortunate, though – certainly in more urban states and in big cities, but even in Maine. According to the US Department of Agriculture, Maine ranks 9th in the nation in “food insecurity” – a measure of how certain residents are of their ability to afford their next meal. We have the highest per-capita use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (better-known as food stamps) in the country.  Not everyone has the land, skills or time to plant their own food, and folks with little disposable income may not be able to afford a CSA share or fresh local vegetables from a farmer’s market. The sad truth is that, calorie for calorie, sugar-laden processed food and fast-food French fries are much cheaper than the healthier stuff.

CEI is part of a larger effort to redress the food balance. With a recent award from the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, CEI will be able to invest in small and medium-sized healthy food retail businesses, including groceries, general stores, farmers markets, CSAs and other farm retail businesses. A smaller portion of the award can be used to finance non-retail food businesses that help to connect farms with retail and institutional markets, or help to make healthy, local food affordable to people with low incomes.

Financing, of course, is only a small part of the picture. We need education for consumers and federal and state policies that provide incentives for healthy eating and local production of fresh, healthy foods. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree has proposed some of these policies in a recent bill, and CEI will be working to support them. We’re committed to staying in this conversation and in this space. For me, it’s even worth leaving the farm once in awhile to be a small part of this movement.

It's an irony of community development that places with the leanest economy can produce the greatest innovation--extreme need equals immense boldness and creativity. An August trip through Washington County, Maine confirmed this principal. Along Rt. 1 in East Machias we noticed balloons, festivities and a newly renovated industrial building with a wind turbine and solar PV panels. We'd stumbled upon a celebration for the Downeast Salmon Federation's new home. Inside this "green" building alongside the East Machias River, endangered Atlantic salmon were being reared for return to these waters, their nascent home. High schoolers from Washington County Academy, just up the hill, were here too. The biology of salmon restoration is now part of their curriculum.

The hatchery also happens to border the Washington County Rail Trail and on this Friday afternoon in high summer, it, too, was humming. Cyclists sped past or pulled into an adjacent and busy convenience store/gas station. Also converging on the trail were ATV enthusiasts carrying tents and coolers, heading off for a weekend's exploration. In this scant acre was renewable energy, fish rearing, habitat restoration, commerce, recreation and ecotourism, one atop another. Who could have expected such a buzz of thinking and doing at a rural crossroads?