For New Year’s Eve, a small group of neighbors have a tradition of imposing on the hospitality of a couple who live enough nearby that driving is not an obstacle on this most celebratory of all the holidays. The mantle of “chef” has somehow settled on my shoulders for this event. This year, I was asked to prepare the “bean thing” that served for dinner last year.

I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, much less last year. What in the world could that “bean thing” have been? I’m thinking, must have been some version of cassoulet. Let’s take inventory: in the freezer, ham hocks, side of pork, sausages from Michael, goose stock and duck stock. In the refrigerator, leftover goose from Christmas dinner, plus more meat picked from the bones boiled for stock. Goose fat and duck fat. In the cellar, onions and garlic, and a jar of canned tomatoes from the garden. All we need are a couple of pounds of cannellini beans and we’re good to go.

New Year’s Cassoulet

Serves 12 – 16

2 lb. canellini beans
8 T duck or goose fat
1 head of garlic, peeled and smashed
2 large onions, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
2 ham hocks
2 lb. side of pork, cut into 1″cubes
1 bouquet garni (4 sprigs savory, 4 sprigs thyme, 4 sprigs parsley, 4 sprigs celery greens, 3 bay leaves)
1 quart jar puréed tomatoes
1 cup white wine
2½ quarts goose or duck broth (chicken stock will do in a pinch)
4 confit duck legs (we used goose, both left over from Christmas dinner and picked from the carcass after being boiled for stock)
4 lb. pork sausages (we used 4 garlic sausages and 4 jalapeño sausages from the Pepper Tree)
2 cups bread crumbs

Day 1

Put beans in a large bowl or other container, add water until water covers beans with 2 or three inches to spare, and soak overnight.

Day 2

1. Heat 4 T duck or goose fat in a large braising pan.  Add the pork cubes and brown on all sides; remove and set aside.  Brown the sausages and set aside, then brown the ham hocks and set aside.  Toss the onions and carrots into the pan and sauté until the onions are softened and translucent.  Splash in the wine, add the broth, then all of the browned meats.  Add the bouquet garni.  Bring to the boil, the simmer, covered, for 1½ hours until the meats are tender.

2. When done, pour everything in the braising pan through a colander, catching the stock in another pot.  Remove and discard the bouquet garni.  Pick out the meats with a pair of tongs and set aside to cool a bit.  Run the other solids caught in the colander (onions, carrots, garlic) through a blender until they form a paste; add paste to pot with broth and mix.  When cool enough, trim excess fat off pork chunks.  Trim meat of ham hocks and discard everything else (save the pork fat and all of the other bits from the ham hocks except the bone for the dog).  Cut sausages into enough pieces that you have at least one piece of each kind of sausage per person.

3. Drain beans.  Put beans in a large pot, cover with water, bring to boil, and simmer for ten minutes.  Drain and rinse.

4.  Return beans to pot.  Add stock, making sure beans are well covered.  Bring to boil and simmer for 1½- 2 hours until beans are just tender.

5.  When beans are done, spread ½ of beans on bottom of braising pan.  Spread meats (pork, ham, sausages, and duck or goose) on top of beans.  Cover with remainder of beans.  Cover and keep in refrigerator.

Day 3:  serving day

1. Heat oven to 300?. Drizzle cassoulet with duck or goose fat. Add enough additional broth to just cover the beans and bake, uncovered, for 3 hours.

2.  Remove cassoulet from oven.   Sprinkle with bread crumbs.  Drizzle with remaining fat.

We then took the cassoulet with us to our friends’ house to finish:

3.  Bake the cassoulet at 275° for 1 hour longer, until it is richly browned on the surface. Let rest for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Et voilà.

I think I prefer the cassoulet without the bread crumbs: instead, finish it off by baking for one hour at 325°. You still end up with a nice crusty surface.

This cassoulet was so tasty our New Year’s Eve hosts invited themselves for leftovers the next day. For me, the best is yet to come: after all the meaty bits have been picked over, the beans make for the best damn burrito that has ever passed a pair of lips.

Oh, turns out cassoulet wasn’t the requested “bean thing” after all. Consensus was, last year’s dinner was soupier, and served in a pot rather than a flat braising pan. By acclaim, a new tradition is born.

Can an event be called “celebratory” if everyone is home in bed by 10:00? We never even got around to opening the champagne.

Heartwarming news: the first lambs of the season were born today, January 5.

Twins, a boy (gray) and a girl (black), to a first-time momma, both strong and healthy. It’s a good day to be born, sunny and warm. Yesterday’s high was 63°, downright balmy for January. Today looks to be an encore.

It’s such a relief not to even think about harried days wasted shopping for crap. Rather, my days in December were spent peacefully in the vineyard, pruning. On Christmas day, the job was done  . . .

. . . just before lunch, in plenty of time for a nap before preparing Christmas dinner. It’s tradition at our house to host Christmas dinner for those of our friends who find themselves without family or other obligations. Nontheists enjoy eating and drinking as much as anyone, as do they enjoy joining together with dear ones in gratitude for the past year and in anticipation of the next.

This year’s group was small and intimate -just the right size for a Christmas goose to serve as centerpiece of the meal. Guests were expected around 4:00, so that’s when the goose had to go into the oven to be served an hour and a half later.

First course was squash bisque, followed by a lovely salad of mâche, fresh from the garden.

Mâche Salad with Orange and Pomegranate

For 6-8:

Fresh mâche leaves, a healthy amount, rinsed and dried
1 pomegranate, seeded
1 orange, peeled, divided into sections, and cut into bite-sized pieces

Arrange mâche leaves on plate. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds. Decorate with orange sections. Drizzle with dressing and serve.

Vinaigrette dressing

6 oz hazelnut oil (or extra virgin olive oil)
2 oz seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 t prepared honey mustard

In a bowl, dissolve mustard in vinegar. Whisk in the oil a little bit at a time until smooth and creamy.

The result? A dish of exquisite beauty and delicacy.

We got a fresh goose from Rain Shadow El Rancho. Two days prior, I prepped the goose and set it to dry in the refrigerator, first trimming off the wing tips, cutting out the neck, cutting off the Pope’s nose. For citrus, I used the zest from 8 mandarin oranges that happened to be on hand. I then immediately made the sauce: roast the giblets and goose trimmings along with a quartered onion and a few carrots in a 375° oven until well browned; pour off the goose fat (save that precious fat!), deglaze with a bit of white wine, add stock (we had some nice duck stock in the freezer – commercial chicken stock would work, too) and a bouquet garni, bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours. Pour through a strainer into another pot. Carefully spoon off and save the layer of fat that floats to the top. Bring the stock back to a simmer. Dissolve some cornstarch in cold water, whisking with a fork. Pour slowly into simmering stock, whisking with the fork. Repeat, adding additional cornstarch until the stock thickens to your liking, then let cook for a few more minutes.  Store in refrigerator until needed. When it comes time to serve the goose, all you have to do is pour the fat off the roasting pan, deglaze, add the cooking juices to the reheated sauce, stir in and serve.

Our 8½- pound goose went into the oven at 4:00, and was perfectly done by 5:00.

Roast Christmas Goose

Ingredients

• fresh goose
• zest from 4 lemons and 3 limes
• 2 tsp Five-Spice powder
• bouquet garni of parsley sprigs, thyme, sage, bay leaf
• 1 T sea salt
• 1 T freshly crushed black pepper

Preparation

1. Calculate the cooking time (see tips, below). Check the inside of the goose and remove any giblets or pads of fat; pat dry inside and out. Using a sharp knife, lightly score the breast and leg skin in a criss-cross (this helps the fat to render down more quickly during roasting).
2. Grate the zest from the lemons and limes. Mix with 2 tsp sea salt, the five-spice powder and pepper to taste. Season the cavity of the goose generously with salt, then rub the citrus mix well into the skin and sprinkle some inside the cavity.
3. Rub the inside of the goose with the zest/spice mixture and the herb sprigs inside the bird and set uncovered on a rack in a pan in the refrigerator, preferably for 1 or 2 days (this dries the skin, which helps it turn crisp during roasting).
4. Heat oven to 240C (450F), turning the heat down immediately to 190C (375F).
5. Place the bird in the roasting pan, breast side down. Allowing about 7 minutes per pound for roasting; check with an instant reading thermometer as the end approaches so as not to overcook. Turn the goose over (breast-side up) halfway through.
6. When the goose is done (~160° internal temperature, measured at the thickest part of the thigh near the body), remove from oven, take out and discard the bouquet garni. Leave goose to rest for ~30 minutes, covered loosely with foil – the bird will be moist and much easier to carve.

Carving

Take a sharp, long thin-bladed knife and separate breast meat from breastbone; carve breast meat into slices. Detach the legs, then slice off the thigh meat.

Here’s the result.

As an accompaniment, we served mashed potatoes and sauerkraut – and of course, pinot noir and Irina’s bread.

Sauerkraut with apples and pears

2 lb sauerkraut
1 large shallot
1 apple
1 pear
2 T butter
2 t Five Spice powder
12 juniper berries, crushed
1 bay leaf
½ cup white wine (Riesling is perfect)
½ cup chicken stock

Rinse and drain sauerkraut in fresh water 3 times to remove all the curing salt. Chop shallot; peel and dice apple and pear. Sauté shallot in butter until softened and translucent. Add apple and pear and cook for a few minutes. Add sauerkraut and toss well. Add white wine and stock, then add seasonings and bay leaf. Bring to boil, cover, and simmer for ~1 hour.

Dessert was an assortment of traditional German Christmas cookies and stollen, from recipes brought by Irina from the old country. Those are recipes for another time . . .

It’s been a tough year for many of our friends: body parts giving out; sometimes without health insurance; parents becoming frail and forgetful, and even dying; enduring a job with low pay or no benefits, or enduring a job only because it offers the chance to buy health insurance; periods of underemployment or unemployment, with benefits running out;  accidents or unanticipated and expensive repairs that sap limited and dwindling cash reserves. The fraying of our nation’s social fabric is evident in the lives of those we love. Yet there remains beauty and awe in the very mystery of being. As Tiny Tim observed at the end of A Christmas Carol, God Bless Us, Every One!

My sister complained that last week’s missive didn’t have any Thanksgiving photos. Hey, gimme a break – I was trying to get the newsletter out before the event. Anyhow, here you go, Peg!

Here’s the noble bird, before being sliced and served.

That’s a 20 pound, free range turkey from Joe and Karen’s Rain Shadow El Rancho, processed right on site at their own facility that does poultry other area producers as well (including our ducks). The turkey was Joe and Karen’s contribution to the dinner. Isn’t it wonderful to be part of a great community?

The photo shows the beer drinkers’ table. As you can see the beer is pretty local – Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter from just over the hill in Bend, smooth and creamy, perfect on a cold day while relaxing snug and toasty by the wood stove. Never fear, the La Ferme Noire Pinot Noir was flowing freely as well.

Each of the 20 guests brought something – in particular, I thought Kim’s chocolate chili was killer, even if it’s not what one might associate with Thanksgiving. It deserves to become a La Ferme Noire tradition – we’ll have to ask Kim for the recipe.

Irina made the beautiful orange soup in the photo.

AUTUMN SQUASH BISQUE WITH GINGER

Ingredients

2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cups sliced onion or leek
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2 inch cubes (= 4 generous cups)
2 pears peeled, cored & diced
2 gloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped (or 1 tsp powdered ginger)
½ tsp thyme
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup plain non-fat yogurt (Greek yogurt is best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat
2. Add onions (leeks) and garlic and cook, stirring constantly until softened, 3-4 minutes
3. Add squash, pears, ginger and thyme, cook for 1 minute, stirring
4. Add broth and water; bring to a simmer
5. Reduce heat to low, cover pot and simmer until squash is tender, 35-45 minutes
6. Purée soup, if necessary in batches, in a food processor or blender
7. Return soup to pot and heat through. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice; stir
8. Garnish each serving with a spoonful of yogurt

My contribution was to cook the turkey. Here’s how:

 Two or three days before cooking:

1. Trim off wing tips, the neck, and Pope’s nose.
2. Dry  turkey inside and out and rub skin and cavity with a mixture of about 2 T coarse sea salt and 1 T of freshly crushed black peppercorns.
3. Put turkey on a rack inside a pan and then uncovered into the refrigerator to dry (this helps the skin to turn crispy during roasting).
4. Right then make the sauce. Throw turkey trimmings and giblets into a roasting pan, along with coarsely chopped carrots, celery, and onion.
5. Roast in a hot (~400°) oven until well browned and caramelized.
6. When turkey bits and vegetables are all well browned, removes from oven and place roasting pan on a burner. Splash in about a quarter bottle of dry white wine (an open bottle of pinot gris was handy) and scrape brown bits off the bottom of the pan with wooden spoon until they are dissolved in liquid.
7. Add chicken or other poultry stock (we had a couple of containers of chicken and duck stock in the freezer – a good quality store-bought stock such as Kirkland is okay, too) until turkey parts and vegetables are immersed and you have enough liquid for your sauce.
8. Add herbs and spices:  parsley, thyme, and bay leaf from the garden, a couple of whole cloves, perhaps a piece of star anise.
9. Bring to a boil and simmer for three hours or so.
10. Strain through a colander into another container and let cool.
11. When settled, spoon off the fat layer on top.
12. Refrigerate stock until ready to use. Having the stock finished on Monday means a lot less fussing when company is around on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day:

1. Take turkey out of the refrigerator in the morning to warm to room temperature before going into the oven.
2. About two hours before serving place turkey, breast-down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Add ~two cups of prepared stock. Put into a pre-heated 450° oven, immediately reducing heat to 375°.
3. 45 minutes later, flip the turkey so it’s breast-side up.
4. About an hour and a half after going into the oven, the turkey will be done. An instant reading thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the flesh where the thigh connects with the body should register 150°. The result: a beautifully browned, tender, moist, and juicy bird.
5. Remove turkey to a warm platter and cover loosely.
6. While the bird rests a bit before slicing, bring the prepared stock and juices from roasting pan to a simmer.
7. Thicken sauce (I like to thicken with corn starch rather than flour – it’s easier to control and I think results in a more refined texture). Put a couple of heaping fork fulls of corn starch into a small container, add cold water, whisk with a fork until dissolved, then drizzle into the simmering stock while stirring. Let cook a couple of minutes until stock thickens.  Repeat until you get the texture you want.
8. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For ease of carving and serving I first remove the hindquarters from the carcass, and then each breast in one piece.

Then the turkey is a snap to slice. You had to be quick: all the dark meat disappeared first.

And of course we had plenty of Irina’s famous bread, fresh, warm, and crusty from the oven.

Party animals that we all are these days, we had cleaned up and were in bed by nine.

The next day, the turkey carcass and all the leftover bones and trimmings went into the stock pot, along with aromatic vegetables (carrots, onions, and celery), fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaf), and a couple of whole cloves. A couple or three hours later, I strained the stock, set the bones aside to cool a bit, and put the stock back on the stove. I added a handful of barley (grown by our friends Paul and Nonie), sliced leeks, and diced carrots and turnips, all from the garden. When the turkey bones had cooled enough, I picked off the meat and added that to the pot, and then some diced potatoes. Simmer a bit more, until the potatoes are tender. Et voila! Turkey soup!

We’re now in to December, and we’re still harvesting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower from the garden – in fact, we have a new crop coming on, from the seedlings we transplanted out in August.

It’s pretty nice not to be dependent on the supermarket for vegetables, even in December. And really nice not to have to drive, or to travel at all, to get them. They’re right outside the door, fresh as can be.

Eating locally can do a lot to cut down on energy usage in the food system. But not for the obvious reason – savings on transportation energy. Rather, it’s mostly because you’d be eating real food. That’s the lesson to be gleaned from the report Energy Use in the US Food System, published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Energy is used throughout the U.S. food supply chain, which is divvied up into seven stages:  farm production and agribusiness (agriculture), food processing and brand marketing (processing), food and ingredient packaging (packaging), freight services (transportation), wholesale and retail trade and marketing services (wholesale/retail), away-from-home food and marketing services (food service), and household food services (households).

The processing stage seems to be where most of the low-hanging energy-saving fruit is to be found. Michael Bomford in an article titled Beyond Food Miles at Post Carbon Institute explains:

Buying from the local farmers’ market offers great opportunities to cut down on food system energy use, but it’s not because the food there has traveled less than the food at the grocery store. It’s because the aisles of a typical grocery store are mostly filled with highly-processed and packaged food, while farmers markets offer mostly whole or minimally-processed foods.

The energy intensity of our food system keeps getting worse rather than better. During 1997-2002, per capita energy use in the United States declined 1.8%, while per capita food-related energy use in the United States actually increased by 16.4%. As a share of the national energy budget, food-related energy use grew from 12.2% in 1997 to 14.4% in 2002 and is still growing, from 14.4 percent in 2002 to an estimated 15.7% in 2007.

Transportation is a small fraction of the food system energy budget.

However, the energy intensity of food transportation in the U.S. food system is growing. Food shipments are increasing in volume, at the same time average shipping distances are increasing significantly. These food-mile increases translate into substantial growth in energy use by food-related freight services.

A big culprit in the increase in energy usage in the food system is replacing human labor with machines. About half of the growth in food-related energy use between 1997 and 2002 is explained by a shift from human labor toward a greater reliance on “energy services” across nearly all food expenditure categories. The report blames “high labor costs” in the food services and food processing industries, combined with household outsourcing of manual food preparation and cleanup efforts through increased consumption of prepared foods and more eating out. Replacing humans with machines is also responsible for the increasing energy intensity in the “agriculture” stage.

Household operations – which is defined to include energy use for major kitchen appliances, auto use for food-related trips, and related energy flows for home food preparation and serving equipment – account for the highest food-related energy use. But food processing shows the largest growth in energy use, as both households and foodservice establishments increasingly outsource manual food preparation and cleanup activities to the manufacturing sector, which rely on energy-using technologies to carry out these processes.

The obvious way to cut down on energy usage in the food system is to cut out as many of the intermediate stages between “agriculture” and “household” as possible: buy directly from the farmer, cutting out processing, packaging, transportation (remember, your trip to the farm is already included in “household”), wholesale/retail, and food service entirely, or at least as much as possible. If we want a more energy-efficient agriculture we will have to reverse the historical trend and begin to once again employ people rather than machines.

Michael Pollan sums up everything we need to know about food and health in seven words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

“Eat food” means to eat real food – vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, and meat, too, as livestock are an essential component of an ecologically sustainable food system.  Eating food would not only be healthier for us. It’s the only means to a healthy economy and a healthy planet.

A new study by Eben Fodor shows that growth isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Communities are often better off without it.

The study, titled Relationship between Growth and Prosperity in 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas, examines the relationship between growth and economic prosperity in the nation’s largest cities. It finds that faster growth rates are associated with lower incomes, greater income declines, and higher poverty rates. Unemployment rates tend to be higher in faster growing areas. The 25 slowest-growing metro areas outperformed the 25 fastest growing in every category and averaged $8,455 more in per capita personal income in 2009.

Conventional urban planning and economic development strategies, which pursue growth of metro areas to supposedly advance the economic welfare of the general public, may be misguided. Our “growth is good” ideology presumes the negative impacts of growth to quality of life – such as increased traffic congestion, environmental destruction, loss of farm and forest lands, and loss of amenity values (such as tranquility, sense of community, or open space), and higher taxes to fund the cost of the new public infrastructure (roads, schools, sewer and water systems, etc.) – are outweighed by the new jobs and economic prosperity that are assumed to come with growth.

But this study suggests the presumed link between growth and prosperity is nothing more than a myth. The real consequence of growth is degradation of the quality of life.

Rural life is extremely energy intense, especially in terms of oil. Exurban living – people living “consumer lives with prettier views” – depends on very long supply lines. Alex Stefan at Worldchanging explains why the exurban lifestyle is not only not “green”, it is at risk in an environment where energy prices can go nowhere but up.

[W]e know that big, dense cities are greener; that the energy used in shipping food is a small portion of its overall impact, that transit is more energy efficient than driving (and indeed, that cars are the largest contributor to climate change), and that the benefits of urban living in compact, walkable, wired communities can extend far beyond living in smaller homes, served by more efficient infrastructure and not owning a car, to include a dramatic overall drop in one’s environmental impact. What’s more, we know why these things are so[.]

Unfortunately for people living in rural areas, we know a lot more about how to live a prosperous-yet-low-impact urban life than we do about how to live a rural life of equal prosperity with a small ecological footprint. Rural areas are poorer than urban areas, and offer fewer opportunities. Envisioning how people in rural areas  will be able to prosper and live decent lives  in an environment bereft of cheap and abundant energy is a challenge that has yet to be faced.

The planet is beset with a number of unprecedented crises that, as Dennis Meadows points out, are symptomatic of an underlying problem: exponential physical growth in a finite world.

At Countercurrents.org, Helena Norberg-Hodge makes a compelling case that “going local” – shifting economic activity back into the hands of local businesses instead of concentrating it in fewer and fewer mega-corporations – may be the single most effective thing we can do to begin to tackle the problem.

Norberg-Hodge points to food as a clear example of the multi-layered benefits of localization.  Local food systems can help reinvigorate entire rural economies and have social and environmental benefits:

• While globalized agriculture demands monocultural production of cash crops, a food system oriented towards local and regional markets gives farmers incentives to diversify.
• Diversity creates many niches on the farm for wild plant and animal species.
• Diversified farms can get by without heavy machinery or heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
• Most of the money spent on food goes to the farmer, not corporate middlemen.
• Small diversified farms employ more people per acre than large monocultures. Wages paid to farm workers benefit local economies and communities far more than money paid for heavy equipment and the fuel to run it: the latter is almost immediately siphoned off to equipment manufacturers and oil companies, while wages paid to workers are spent locally.
• Local food systems provide better food security.
• Small-scale, diversified farms have a higher total output per unit of land than large-scale monocultures.

Agribusiness interests dominate at the state, national, and international levels. For example, the Agribusiness Council is upfront about its aspirations for dominance of the global food system:

The Agribusiness Council (ABC) is a private, nonprofit/tax-exempt, membership organization dedicated to strengthening U.S. agro-industrial competitiveness through programs which highlight international trade and development potentials as well as broad issues which encompass several individual agribusiness sectors and require a “food systems” approach. Examples of such issues are commercialization of new technology/crops, environmental impacts, human resource development, trade and investment policy, natural resource management, and rural development.

touts its incestuous relationship with  the U.S. government:

Initiated under Federal government auspices by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, The Agribusiness Council was formed by a group of business, academic, foundation and government leaders in order to facilitate American agribusiness participation in agricultural trade and development programs with developing countries – and represent private-sector agriculture interests to Federal government decision-makers.

and makes no bones about its objectives:

As an organization with international linkages, The Agribusiness Council seeks to strengthen the U.S. agricultural sector’s international outreach through stimulating private enterprise trade and investment solutions in Third World agro-industrial development.

Agribusiness interests may be too entrenched and government too corrupt to change. But we can change. We have the power to opt out of the global food system and to begin to grow local food systems, from the ground up.

We are in the midst of a time of great uncertainty about the future. Peak oil threatens to disrupt not only global financial systems, but also “the economy” as we have come to think of it as an engine of inevitable growth. Even more serious but perhaps longer term, global warming and climate change threaten to disrupt the 10,000 year period of climate stability that allowed human civilization to emerge and the ecosystems within which all species on Earth – including humans – are enmeshed.

For all species, including humans, nothing is more critical than food. Jason Bradford in a post at The Oil Drum argues that reliability of food production in the face of change requires resilience rather than efficiency. A food production system capable of surviving disruptions and failures and of responding quickly to changing circumstances is essential.

Our existing food system is not resilient. As a result of government policies, financial pressures, cheap fossil fuels, and market trends over the past several decades, our food system has become dominated by a relatively few large players. As a result, our food system has become rigid and brittle.

The key to resilience in social-ecological systems is diversity. Biodiversity plays a crucial role by providing functional redundancy. Social and economic systems are no different.

Bradford sketches out what a resilient farm might look like:

A resilient farm has diversified operations to buffer against volatility. The benefits of diversity accrue in many ways.

Organic and especially agroecological farms are less dependent upon outside inputs that can change in price rapidly and unpredictably. Crop rotation plans include many species of plants and animals that are complementary in functions, such as legumes fixing nitrogen, grasses building soil carbon, and animal manures making nutrients more readily available to plants. Instead of buying mechanized services or fertility inputs, the farm integrates the functional diversity of life to create synergies.

Inherent diversity means no single crop failure will ruin the farm, and soil imbalances are prevented. The focus is on soil health, with all fields going through periods of planting in perennial and deeply rooted species to build soil organic matter and mobilize minerals such as phosphorus from deep layers. Fungi associating with roots locate source rock and solubilize minerals that are trans-located to leaves. Topsoil fertility is therefore built from below.

Landscape structure is created to provide habitat for native and naturalized species that participate positively in the farm food web, such as pollinators and predators. No need to buy pesticides when raptors have homes in the trees, predatory wasps have nectar sources, frogs can breed in clean water, and ground beetles have zones of refuge from tillage, for example.

While the emphasis is on letting the biology do the work, renewable energy infrastructure also creates resilience. Farms are often ideal places for wind and solar technologies, and on-farm biofuels are likely to have positive energy returns.

A resilient food system requires in the farm economy as well. Creating healthy and resilient rural economies requires transforming the entirety of our food system.

What might healthy and resilient rural economies look like? Again, Bradford sketches an outline:

It will be organized akin to an ecosystem, or food web. Farms and renewable energy infrastructure occupy the level of primary producers, with businesses acting as conduits for feeding omnivorous humans. In contrast to our current food system, which is linear in structure, the future food system will cycle nutrients back to the farm. This structural constraint will mean that much more food is grown for local populations.

Farms might be more self-sufficient, producing a wide variety of products, for trade, barter, and gifting as well as cash sales. This is a strategy many of our friends are already pursuing, seeking to diversify their income sources and means of support as a way to increase their personal financial resilience.

There structure impediments to our markets which inhibit building resilience. For example, the best and often the only use for much of Oregon’s farm land – even in the Willamette Valley, especially where irrigation is not available – is  as pasture. Grass-fed livestock avoids the health and environmental problems associated with grain-fed livestock and feedlots, while recycling nutrients back into the soil. But the lack of inspected slaughterhouses and butchering facilities means that marketing is a challenge, especially for small-scale producers, as access to retail customers is restricted to the big players.

Similarly, the dominance of giant chain supermarkets makes it difficult for local producers to find outlets for their goods. Buyers for the chains can’t be bothered with small producers. You have to go to independent locally-owned markets like the First Alternative Co-op in Corvallis or to an online marketplace like Eugene Local Foods to find locally grown produce, local cheeses, or locally raised meats and poultry.

Developers push “destination resorts” as a boost to rural economies. But destination resorts don’t do anything for the people already living there – rather, they are pretty much self-contained units, alien invaders that remain distinct and disconnected from the local rural economy. For an idea of a model of tourism that is immersed in the local rural economy looks like, look to France and gîtes ruraux – accommodations at a private farm that can be rented for a week, a weekend, or a short stay.  Gîtes foster a real relationship between the owner of the property, the visitor, and the surrounding countryside. The additional income goes straight to farmers and other residents of the rural area, adding resilience to the local rural economy. In France, gîtes are vigoroulsy promoted by the government.

So here’s an impromptu agenda for beginning to build healthy and resilient rural economies: allow and encourage local processing of poultry and livestock; encourage independent, local markets; and authorize and promote direct rural tourism.

More ideas, anyone?

In overwhelmingly approving the report of its Peak Oil Task Force, the Bloomington (Indiana) City Council,  has endorsed a truly revolutionary idea:

Recognize the need for, and the inevitability of, a steady state economy – one that is not predicated on ever-greater amounts of energy and materials throughput, but recognizes the limits of the biosphere.

The Task Force report – Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience - calls for a reduction in community oil consumption by 5% per year in an effort to realize a 50 percent decrease in consumption in just 14 years. The targeted rate of decrease in oil consumption is along the lines laid out by the oil depletion protocol.

Suggested strategies for achieving the reduced fuel consumption goals include:

• Explore new energy sources, greater efficiencies and conservation opportunities for the following energy-intensive municipal services: water and wastewater treatment; law enforcement and fire protection; heating and cooling municipal buildings; and trash removal and recycling. Immediate attention should be given to off-grid water production to meet minimum community needs.
• Promote economic relocalization. Our community’s reliance on a steady supply of inexpensive goods from as far as halfway around the world makes us vulnerable to a decline in inexpensive oil and/or shortages. Producing and processing more goods within the community fosters greater security in a post-peak world while strengthening the local economy.
• Intensify the City’s emerging focus on form-based development, so that residents can easily live within walking distance of daily needs, such as grocery stores, schools and pharmacies.
• Increase home energy conservation and aim to retrofit 5 percent of housing per year.
• Establish community cooperative rideshare programs.
• Advocate for greater local, state and federal funding for public transit.
• Accelerate local food production by training more urban farmers and removing legal, institutional and cultural barriers to farming within the city.
• Plant edible landscapes throughout the city.

The Task Force’s vision is for a city where “most residents live within walking distance of daily needs; most of the food required to feed residents is grown within Monroe County; residents can easily and conveniently get where they need to go on bike, foot or public transit; most of the community’s housing stock is retrofit for energy efficiency; and local government provides high-quality services to its residents while using less fossil fuel energy.”

That actually sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? A post-peak world need not be dismal.

Here’s a great idea from Portland: a tool lending library. The Oregonian has the story:

If you need a table saw, a 10-foot pipe clamp or a 20-foot pruner, you’ve normally got three choices: Buy it, rent it or borrow it from a neighbor.

Portland is fast becoming a leader in a fourth way: checking it out for free at a tool lending library.

The city’s first nonprofit tool library, founded in 2004 in North Portland, is up to 2,300 members. Its second, in Northeast, has already drawn 800 members in 16 months and just expanded to a far bigger space. A third, in southeast Portland, is scheduled to open this spring, which would make Portland the only U.S. city with a trio.

The volunteer-run tool libraries offer low-cost home and garden lessons as well as tools. They help people save money and connect to their community.

Imagine: guys would no longer have an excuse to stuff their garages with every tool they see at Home Depot. Of course, that wouldn’t stop them. On a positive note, divorce or death (as males mostly croak first) coupled with the surviving spouse’s desire to sweep away the past means a good portion of these boy toys might eventually end up in the library:

About 900 of the more than 1,100 tools at the Northeast Portland Tool Library were donated, helping give the library a hardware store’s worth of inventory.