From the Southern Table

A few weeks ago, we sent our baby out into the cold, cruel world. No, not Patric, I’m talking about the baby we like. (And besides, Patric doesn’t start school until Monday.) No, I am talking about the manuscript for our first book. After three years of gestation, we have to wait another month or so to see if other folks think our baby is ugly.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. No one is going to say that our baby is walleyed or anything like that. Instead, they will say things like “it needs to stand up straighter” or “it mumbles too much.” Those are criticisms that we can work with.

To be a bit less metaphorical would be to say that our manuscript is in the hands of two readers who will give feedback to us and to our editor. I am looking forward to hearing the feedback. We went through a similar process when we were pitching the book to the good folks at UNC Press. Two outside readers gave us feedback on our proposals that, along with excellent suggestions from our editor, helped us get off to a good start on the manuscript.

With that good start and with all the hard work we’ve put in, I know this is going to be great.

Man, I hope they don’t say our baby is ugly.

When Walt showed me the letter he and Jan had received from the state of Tennessee, one of the things that really stood out was the threat of criminal charges. Really? Criminal charges? For selling butter?

I guess one of the first images that popped into my mind on seeing that was a SWAT team raid on the Evergreen Dairy truck where officers would go in with guns at the ready only after tossing in tear gas to keep those dangerous raw milk people under control. But that would never happen. Our law enforcement personnel have a lot more truly dangerous criminals to worry about. They have to prioritize these things, and raw milk should be very far down the list.

And then I saw this. Wow. Really? This really happened? Unfortunately, it really did. I tried to tell myself that at least this happened in California instead of in Tennessee. But then again, California is a lot more liberal state, so if this could happen there, maybe my SWAT team image wasn’t so far off base.

The story from LA also brings up an important point about why people might want raw milk, other raw milk products, and other “dangerous” raw foods. Which foods have been in the news repeatedly over the past few years due to recalls that affect huge segments of the country? Which foods have been behind reported epidemics of food-related illness? They’re not raw foods. Instead, they’re the foods that we’re being told are “safer,” because they’re produced in regulated, industrialized facilities. And there are no criminal charges pressed against the people responsible after these recalls of millions of pounds of food.

The issue here isn’t really about raw or unprocessed versus pasteurized. The real issue is about small versus large. If raw milk were produced in the same conditions that pervade the industrialized food system, it would be dangerous. These recalls are proof of that. Small farmers like Walt and Jan are a lot more likely to be truly careful with the sanitation. They’re not depending on the pasteurization process to take care of sanitation shortcomings.

Large versus small has another facet as well. Small farms don’t have representation at government levels. Large farms do in the form of the politically powerful dairy industry. The industry can hire lobbyists. The industry has the money to present a front to uninformed politicians. The industry has the money to fix its problems, but it uses it more often to hide them.

But what this really comes down to is choice. My choice, your choice, to decide what we want to eat, what we want to feed to our families. Personally, I don’t like being told that I’m not intelligent enough to make that choice. I don’t like being told that big business and the government know what’s best for me better than I do. I don’t like being told that foods in which I see both a taste and health benefit aren’t mine to choose.

Sure, the state says that as an owner of a cow share at Evergreen Farm, I still have the right to buy raw whole milk from them. But what the state fails to explain is how that whole milk is any bit safer than skim milk could be. It doesn’t explain why butter, yogurt, half & half, whole cream, and buttermilk are dangerous when whole milk is not. If it’s a matter of processing and safety within that process, why can’t the state inspect that the same way they have to for large dairies where the same processes take place?

According to the wording of the letter sent to Jan and Walt, I can’t even use raw milk to make those products in my own home. That’s right. I can buy raw milk, I can drink raw milk, but I can’t do anything else with it. If I want to break out my Kitchen-Aid and make butter myself and drink the buttermilk that’s leftover, I’m committing a crime. If I want to make homemade yogurt with it, I’m a menace to society. If I want to take it as far as making my own cheese, I’m buying a one-way ticket to jail. If the state has the time to worry about me, that is.

No one is forcing me to buy Jan and Walt’s products. No one is telling me that I have to feed these things to my family. Tell me the risks behind choosing them. Hell, have me sign a waiver that I accept those risks. But don’t insult my intelligence, don’t tell me that I don’t really know what I want. Don’t tell me that I can’t make the things I want with the products I buy.

I want to choose.

We’ve been noticing an unusual phenomenon occurring in our home lately. Apparently the words that we speak and the words that our son hears are not the same. I’m really starting to believe that we may not be speaking the same English. Paul and I think we’re speaking English, and we understand each other, but there seems to be a void where our words somehow change before they reach Patric’s ears.

That void is most likely called “the teen years.”

A yes or no question leads to an extended explanation on why yes or no would have been the answer to give instead of a litany of excuses/reasons that led to the question in the first place. Requests for other information seem to warp into a circular morass that never actually makes it to the answer we were needing.

We’ve been watching Dr. Who lately thanks to Netflix, and we just finished season 2. We learned about the void between worlds, and it so perfectly describes most conversations with our fifteen-soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old that we just had to share it.

So how does this relate to food?

Well, one of Patric’s chores for years now has been to make tea. We’ve tried very hard to make that a simple task. We bought one of those iced tea makers that no one really needs, but it seemed like a good way to make the process of it a simple chore for a kid. You pour in the water, you put in the tea bags, you hit the button. In 10 minutes or so, you have tea. Then all you have to do is transfer the tea to a pitcher that can go into the refrigerator, rinse out the pot from the tea maker, throw away the tea bags, and unplug the infernal machine and put it away.

Here is where the void comes into play.

Example 1: We don’t like the thought of the ink on the tea bag tags ending up in our tea that we’re drinking. They’re simple to remove, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. What we thought we said was, “Please pull those off and throw them away before you make the tea.” What he heard was, “Pull those off if you think about it and either leave them on the counter or just scatter them all over the house.”

Example 2: Part of the whole process is to put the tea into the refrigerator. What we thought we said was, “When the tea is finished, put it in the refrigerator.” What he heard was, “Put the tea into the refrigerator. Unless you don’t want to or forget to or just don’t see the point of doing it. Then you can just let it sit on the counter until we notice and pour it down the drain.”

Example 3: Another part of the process is to throw away the tea bags before putting the tea maker away. What we thought we said was, “Throw away the tea bags when the tea is done.” What he heard was, “Throw them away if you think about it, or you can just leave them in there until they either become sentient life forms or our really strange cat figures out that they’re still in there and steals them and ends up scattering damp tea leaves all the way down the hall.”

You see, the void. It’s the only sensible explanation. We will work on a translator, but until then… Well, we just don’t know. I guess we just have to learn to traverse the void.

Paul and I found out today that one of our favorite farmers market vendors won’t be around any more in the near future. Due to legislation designed to protect consumers from listeria decades ago, raw milk (unpasteurized milk) has become a touchy issue in Tennessee, and in the US as a whole. Farmers had to sell it in Tennessee labeled for pets only until the law was amended to allow consumers to purchase cow shares which would enable them to buy raw milk. Cow shares are exactly what they sound like. Think of it as timeshares that actually don’t suck. When you but a cow share, you essentially buy a very small percentage of the herd. That way you really are getting milk from cows that you own.

At the time that the original law was passed, it was necessary. Sanitation statutes in dairy operations weren’t strict enough or inspected frequently enough. And that’s where listeria comes from. Today’s dairies, even small dairies, are clean and safe. The milk sold by these dairies, even raw, won’t hurt you. But if it’s going to cause problems, why wouldn’t a farmer just pasteurize the milk and keep selling? Well it’s not as simple as that. Pasteurization equipment is expensive, think anywhere from car to house expensive. For small farms, it’s not an investment that they can afford without getting loans that they’ll have to repay, and when they already work on tight profit margins, and they might actually lose some customers if they weren’t selling raw milk… Well, you see where that’s going.

While the amendment to state law (the amendment that allows cow shares) covers raw milk, it does not include raw milk products like butter, buttermilk, kefir, whipping cream, or half and half. While a farmer can sell whole or skim milk, skim milk is unprofitable because the cream removed to make skim milk is useless and becomes a waste for the farmer. Unless of course, you want to buy whole milk and skim it yourself and make your own butter and buttermilk. Yeah, I didn’t think so.

On a large or diversified farm, not being able to offer all of the extras isn’t that much of an issue. While selling the milk alone doesn’t generate much profit, the other products they can offer make up the difference as well as drawing in other customers who want the health and flavor benefits that raw milk offers. While farms always work on tight profit margins, for small dairy-only farms, a significant portion of the profit required to keep the farm going comes from those value-added profits.

In Memphis farmers markets at both the Botanic Garden and downtown, Evergreen Farm has done really good business because they could offer more than just milk. If you’ve had their butter, you know that it’s a completely different product from anything you can buy at any store. Their buttermilk isn’t the cultured kind you can buy there either; instead it’s real buttermilk that’s a by-product of making butter. But the state has decided that those products aren’t legal to sell in Tennessee. After all, they’re not covered by the amendment or protected by any federal law.

Evergreen Farm is a victim of this. We’re losing them because of financial reasons. Tight margins are one thing, but not being able to sell the more expensive products puts the farm in the red. We’ll be able to enjoy what they sell for a month or two while they’re finding buyers for their cows, but after that, they’ll be gone. In the announcement on their web site, they give their customers some options, but for those of us who live in the city, having a family cow at our house just isn’t feasible no matter how much we might like the idea. And yes, considering that I am the crazy chicken lady, you know I want one, but I really doubt that the city would go for the organic lawn mower and compost angle.

So what can we do? Well, the sad part is that we can’t do a lot, at least not in time to save Evergreen. You can send emails to your state legislators asking them to further amend bill HB0720. There’s a federal bill that could protect farms like Evergreen, but being a federal bill, it will take time to go into effect as law even if it’s passed. This is bill HR778, and there is an online petition that you can sign. I know, I don’t usually like online petitions either, but this is something that directly impacts me, our city, and some very nice people who had a great idea that a lot of people liked.

Jan and Walt Haybert are just that. If you’ve met them, you like them. They’re the kind of people who make friends easily. They definitely don’t seem like dangerous criminals or even scofflaws like those of us who drive 9 miles over the speed limit or drive for a couple of days with expired tags because we didn’t have time to wait in the inspection lines. But that’s not how the state sees them. Jan and Walt could basically ignore the call from the state that they received, but getting an official cease-and-desist letter was not something that could be ignored. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And so, they’ll be gone, not because people didn’t like or want what they sold, but because an outdated law says they can’t be a successful small farm.

Yes, this pisses me off. It’s stupid. It’s pointless. It’s irrational. But that doesn’t matter. I’m one person, and I can’t make a difference in this no matter how badly I want to. But maybe I’m not the only one, and a group of people can accomplish things that one person can’t alone. It’s a pain to send emails to people who probably won’t read them or to sign online petitions that probably won’t matter, or to make comments on state and federal websites that are probably going into the ether, but when it comes to something legislative like this, it’s really the only way.

I’ll miss Jan and Walt. I’ll miss the opportunity to enjoy the products they sell. But most of all, I’ll miss my friends.

I’ve confessed things on here before, but this is an actual thing. In case you didn’t know it, I’m bipolar. It’s not as bad as a lot of people think, but it does make life, well, interesting.

To be honest about it, you can probably tell by blog posts when I’m having manic time. Things like this happen. Or I don’t write at all because I can’t trust what I might say, or it is too rambling for anyone to have to read. We just don’t have enough readers to risk alienating people.

When I’m manic, I get a lot done. It’s unfocused sometimes, but sometimes it can be useful. I’ve cleaned the kitchen to the point of taking a toothbrush to the underside overhang of the granite counter top. That may have been a little too much, but the kitchen was very clean. I’ve cooked all day for days at time to freeze things to eat later. I’ve had really great ideas of what to cook but been totally unable to focus enough to cook anything. Along the same vein, I’ve thought about things to cook, but then by the time I get around to doing it, I can’t remember what it was.

It also makes for interesting writing. If I’m not just writing for me, I have to keep that rambling instinct from coming through (I’m lucky enough to have Paul to edit me). Sometimes I let it come through enough to be humorous, and that’s ok. That’s just the way I am. Sometimes writing is very difficult because I get ideas on what I want to write about, but I get too many ideas, and then, just like with cooking, nothing gets done.

I do write a lot when I’m having happy fun manic time. I can crank out 5 1,000 word short stories in a single day. I can get huge chunks of larger works done. (If you’re actually interested in what I’m working on, shoot me an email, but we’re not going to talk about it on here.) I don’t sleep; it’s not that I don’t need to, but I really can’t. I’ve gotten to be great friends with sunrise. I’ve stayed awake much longer than 24 hours. Paul and Patric can tell pretty easily when that’s happened even though I do always say, quite honestly, that I’m not sleepy and I’m ok.

Then there are the bad parts. So many things come into my head that my head actually hurts. My tinnitus turns into background music (never good music, though) that only I can hear. Lights seem to dim and then brighten again. When I close my eyes, I see patterns behind my eyelids that look almost like letters, and I would be able to read them if I could just get my eyes lined up right. I know this is not good, and I am working with my doctor on getting these things under control.

But just like with the manic parts, the depression parts of this tend to go a little too far. I don’t cook, not because I can’t focus well enough to cook one thing, but because I can’t make myself get motivated enough to get up and make anything. There are times when it actually seems pointless to cook. I either don’t sleep again, or I sleep too much (16 hours solid has happened). The thoughts don’t come into my head at all, and writing is very hard. I have to try not to be melodramatic; I have been known to actually cry when I write something that wouldn’t normally get to me. Of course, I can also cry just because I’m breathing.

When I’m on the depression end of the spectrum, I don’t care about much of anything. I don’t care about the fact that I don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t watch TV, don’t write much, don’t get out of bed even if I’m awake. The cats don’t get fed as often as they would like; the dogs end up spending more time in their kennel than they deserve; Paul and Patric end up fending for themselves. My productivity goes from 150% to about 5% on my good depression days. Less than zero on my bad days.

I’m luckier than some. Paul understands and will talk me down into sleep when the mania is bad. He will get me to get up and at least shower when the depression is kicking my butt. Patric sees the signs. He will say that sometimes I’m more fun when I’m manic. (He doesn’t so much care for it when it gets to toothbrush cleaning the kitchen level, though.) If I’m depressed, he makes real efforts to cheer me up.

The point of this is not to ask you to excuse it when there are dry spots in blogging here. It’s not to make you feel sorry for me–I don’t need or want sympathy. I talk about this because I’m far from the only person out there who goes through this to one degree or another. While I’ve told you what it feels like for me, it’s honestly a very personal experience; some people may have some of the experiences I go through, some may have none.

Those of you who don’t go through it or personally know someone who’s been willing to talk about it, can possibly understand a little better about why a co-worker, friend, relative, or someone you deal with on a regular basis isn’t always the same. I wouldn’t recommend that you try to talk to them about it; if they haven’t talked to you on their own, they may not feel comfortable with it. Or that may not be what’s going on with them at all. But it’s not always something that they can help. It’s not always even something they’re always aware of–I didn’t know that’s what had been going on with me for a long time until earlier this year.

Just don’t make assumptions. If someone does talk to you about it, even elliptically, understand that it doesn’t mean they’re crazy. It doesn’t mean that you should stay away from them or push them out of your life. Sometimes we can be difficult to deal with, but there are rewards. We tend to be creative people. We tend to be interesting. We tend to take on careers and projects that make us stretch our minds. We really are just like you.