Category Archives: Slow Food Prescott

Four Farms, Four Approaches

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Striving

August 20, 2023- “This year has been a doozie.”, the young farmer deadpanned, as she and her husband welcomed our tour group, from Slow Food Prescott.

It certainly seems so, given the cold month of June, followed by a blistering July and first half of August. Each of the farms we visited today experienced the June frost and hail storm in a slightly different way, and each is operated differently, while all use environmentally safe practices.

Vang Farm- This one acre property, at the southern edge of Chino Valley, is in a gated community-one of the few agriculturally-oriented Home Owners’ Associations in our area. Chris and Elaine Vang have, as you might imagine, put every square foot of this property to good use-even the “fallow” section is used for storage. They produce grapes, figs, squash, cilantro, corn, tomatoes, carrots, apples and peaches. Chickens, Muscovy ducks and Mini-Nubian goats keep them company-and well-fed. A large dog, who looked like a Mastiff/ Rottweiler mix, was on hand, when we first arrived, to let us know that we were to wait for Chris and Elaine to come outside. Once we got started, the animals were uniformly happy to have company-as were their humans. The Vangs are full-on into composting, and showed us a small urn that had decaying substance inside. Fortunately, lunch was at least an hour away, after our second stop! Elaine has a Facebook group, called Let’s Grow Together! Any sincere gardener, farmer or aspirant can check out this group. The Vangs also have space for small outdoor weddings and have made the property very welcoming, with benches in various spots and an arbor, near the goat pen.

Beverly Farm- Our tour director, Molly Beverly and her husband, Gary, have a much larger property, on the northeast side of Chino. They’ve been here for nearly five decades and have been forces for sustainability, spearheading Slow Food Prescott (Molly) and Friends of the Verde River (Gary). I first met them at Gary’s computer repair shop, Argosy West, in the early 1990s. When I came up to Prescott, to live, in 2011, Molly’s initial efforts at a Slow Food chapter in Prescott were one of the first community service organizations to draw me in.

I’ve visited this farm several times, usually under the auspices of a Slow Food activity. Today, we saw three varieties of corn: A tall field corn from “the Midwest”, and two varieties from Peru-which were brought in as food corn, and produce nutty, very edible kernels. All are sure to be tasty. There are also figs, apples, peaches, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes, foot-long beans (green beans) and potatoes.

After the tour, we enjoyed lunch, with fresh tomatoes, corn and a brick of fresh cheddar/Triscuits to add to our own brown bag items. Not on the menu- grasshoppers, though these were everywhere-at each farm, and have been the most avid “fans” of the farmers efforts. Gary and Molly are making use of some mechanization, in addition to heavy composting, a tack which suits a medium-sized, or larger, operation. They also have a concrete and black plastic lined pond, which has doubled as a swimming site. Their home, which has benefited from Gary’s considerable building skills, is a modified Spanish adobe edifice, with the courtyard around the periphery of the house, rather than the other way around.

Whipstone Farm- Shanti and Cory Rade both entered farming as adults, being drawn by their love of soil and of providing nutrition on an ever-larger scale. Whipstone started small, and has gradually grown to two properties, some four miles apart, in somewhat different areas of Paulden, a vast community eight miles north of Chino Valley. Where Chino sits in an area that was once a lake, Paulden is a series of mountain dales, with forest interspersed by short-grass prairie.

The Rades have become a major presence in the farm community-growing several varieties of flowers, which Shanti offers to selected shops around the Prescott area, as well as event venues There are a full range of fruits and vegetables on offer-green leafy vegetables (Kale, Lettuce, Spinach, Arugula) are plentiful,as are-to the extent the insect foragers allow- apples, plums, peaches, pears, grapes and strawberries. There is field corn produced here and a variety of herbs, especially basil, as well as lots of tomatoes and carrots Garlic is one of Whipstone’s signature crops, as is butternut squash.

Given Whipstone’s scale of operation, a fair amount of mechanization is needed, though the farm’s crew is of a size that allows economical hand-picking and minimal tilling. “Organic” spraying is used on a very limited scale. One of the Rades’ biggest concerns is the effect of any chemicals, even “safe” varieties, on the health of the crew members.

After a brief visit to the “honour system” Farmstand, we thanked Cory and Shanti, then headed to Schaffer Farm. Joseph and Shaunte’ have the honour of farming in one of the coldest and windiest spots in Paulden- and are doing a masterful job. Despite bearing the brunt of this “doozie” of a year, this handsome and diligent couple, and their five children, are producing tomatoes, salad greens (lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale, mizuma and basil), strawberries and blackberries, corn, several varieties of beans, wheat and zucchini. This is all done on 1/4 acre of land, with the rest as living space-for the seven Schaffers, for their peacocks and chickens, and for three kinds of ground-nesting bees, which make use of the short-grass prairie buffer that Joseph set aside between the farm fields and the BNSF rail tracks to the south of the property. The family has some fruit trees, with the most prominent being an apple tree hedge, serving as a windbreak. This is crucial, given that this area , just south of Feather Mountain, is one of the windiest sections of Paulden.

Joseph, Shaunte’ and (sometimes) their three oldest children are the crew, not using machinery, producing organically and by no-till, an at times limited, but always high quality variety of produce. Like each of their fellows, they have plant houses. Their two are of the cold frame variety, whereas those used at the other three farms are greenhouses. For an explanation of the similarities and differences between the two, see: https://www.garden-products.co.uk/news/growhouses-and-mini-greenhouses/cold-frame-vs-greenhouses/

This will not be my last visit to these four establishments-and on the next scheduled visit, (visits to working farms should always be scheduled well in advance), I will bring a notebook and channel my inner Least Heat Moon.

An Untiring Servant

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Personal Values, School Gardens Project, Service Activities, Slow Food, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Striving

July 30, 2023- A small group of organic farmers and food security activists gathered, among the young families, street musicians and urban campers, for the purpose of honouring a man who has spent much of his time here ensuring that food security is real in this community and that the unhoused, as well as those sheltering because of abuse and neglect, get access to their daily nutritional needs.

John A. and his wife are moving to a homestead, in eastern Tennessee. There, they will have a good opportunity to continue what they have done here. A Slow Food chapter thrives in that area, as ours does here. There is substantial interest in school gardens, as there is here. The growing season is comparable to ours, as is the elevation. There is a somewhat wetter climate, so more might conceivably be accomplished.

John’s energy puts me to shame, but he is twenty years my junior, so no need to feel remorse. He will, though, be very hard to replace. It may well be that a team will form to tend to the matter of delivering food to the shelters, once or twice a week. That was John’s initial suggestion, in any case.

I have been fortunate to have worked with him, on several small projects, and to learn some building and mechanical skills that had eluded me, for many years. The saving grace, though, is that Athens, TN is not that far from Knoxville or Crossville, where I also have friends. When en route back to Home Base, from the Northeast in September, I will be sure to try and connect, at their new place.

These Happened

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Entertainment, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Striving, Uncategorized

September 24, 2022- The little girl, no more than two, came up to me while I was sitting in my “director’s chair”, at the large music festival. She tried to climb on my lap, which, as I knew neither her nor her mother, I gently declined. Her mother came over and led her back to the spot where she was preparing the child’s stroller. With mother so occupied, the girl came right back, and tried again. This time, both mother and I explained that this was not something she should be doing. There was no yelling or finger-wagging, just gentle dissuasion. Conversely, while the mother said I should have ignored her daughter, that, too, is something one doesn’t do to a person who is experiencing so much, for the first time in her life. I feel that I have a duty before the Creator to lovingly assist other people, especially children, to the best of my ability.

Earlier today, a small group of us honoured a revered community leader and beekeeper, on the first anniversary of his passing. There was a man who embodied loving assistance to all he met. Even the bank manager, who oversaw his mortgage, was given instructions on what to do with his house-upon the occasion of said passage. Hopefully, those instructions were followed and the home sold to the certain type of family who would honour its feng shui. The bees themselves were carefully dispersed to various other apiaries, prior to GK’s passing.

I went from the memorial service to VortiFest, in Sedona, particularly to meet up with a friend I had not seen in 2 1/2 years and to possibly see other friends from the Synergy/Apotheca complex. The centerpiece, for me, of the music festival, was an appearance by Camille Sledge, the scion of Sister Sledge, and her band, Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra. Camille, as it turned out, was off, touring with her mother and aunts, so PAO’s superbly talented instrumentalists managed a delightful and rousing 45 minutes of non-vocal ear candy, and got many of us, up and jumping around, much as they and Camille did, when I first heard them, four years ago.

That set was what brought about a brief encounter with a Sedona friend, that puzzles me, even as I write this. She greeted me, danced around for a bit, then spent the rest of the set alternately acting like she was scared to death of me and that I no longer existed. I will refrain from trying to explain that, other than I am aware of certain threats to her safety, from someone other than myself. He could have been around and have made his presence known to her. For a good part of the rest of the Festival, she was escorted by other men, including one of the security detail members, so who knows? For my part, I would not harm a hair of anyone’s head, much less a dearly loved friend of three years.

My newly re-connected friend served as a reality check on the whole matter, cautioning against personalizing the incident, in any way, shape or form. I followed her advice, knowing that forming a narrative, based on incomplete information, is worse than a fool’s errand. So, I headed homeward, ahead of the mass exodus that was sure to happen after the last set of the festival. Even having parked in a smaller lot, across the highway, I would have been stuck in the scrum of traffic, had I stayed to hear the last, excellent band.

Besides Afrobeat, there were two other fabulous bands that I did encounter: One was the festival founder’s group, simply named “Decker”. The other was a group called “G-Love”, which offered several peace-themed tunes, that were nonetheless rousing, and which had what seemed to be 2/3 of the audience standing and bouncing, in front of the stage. I chose to sit for most of that set, getting up mainly to take video of three friends who were wearing lighted costumes and were engaged in performance art. There was a third band, which performed well, but their vibe was a bit on the angry side. Turns out, they had a shortened set, due to some misunderstanding with the festival organizers. The final band, Arrested Development, a hip-hop group, also performed well, though I heard their offerings only as I walked back towards my vehicle.

So, that was Vorti-Fest, and my Saturday. This is also my 3000th post, on this platform. Goodness and ill abound in this life, and I do not hesitate to bring you both, in the right measure. My feelings right now are well-covered, if obliquely so, by Paul Simon’s “America”.

The Great Outdoor Soup Kitchen and A Pellet Gun Outburst

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Spiritual, Striving

September 18, 2022- The line at Courthouse Plaza snaked around to the south side of the Courthouse, and for nearly 3 1/2 hours, people came to purchase a fresh ceramic bowl, and fill it with one or two kinds of soup. The Empty Bowls Project is a worldwide effort to raise money for food security, at the local level. It began in 1990, with a ceramics teacher named John Hartom and his friend Lisa Blackburn, to provide a means to food security in their community in the Detroit area. The concept quickly spread across Michigan and Ohio, then spread across North America. It is now a yearly event in several countries. https://emptybowls.com/

I joined this year’s event, the first since 2019, as part of Slow Food-Prescott’s crew. About twenty people, including several Girl Scouts, prepared and served 10 gallons of piping hot Minestrone Soup, with potatoes instead of pasta. The crowd that attended seemed smaller than in 2018, when I last joined the effort, but there were more vendors this time, so maybe the line was just moving faster. I was one of three “ladlers”, along with a local naturalist and the chef herself. It was truly a joyful event, bringing all parts of the Prescott area community together.

We finished the cleanup, at the catering kitchen where the soup had been prepared and cooked, around 3 p.m. Chef was kind enough to give me a lift home, as I’d walked downtown to the event, but the kitchen was 2.5 miles from Home Base. As we approached the neighbourhood, we saw that my street was blocked off by several police cars. I got off at a parking lot near the neighbourhood and walked down the alley across from Home Base, passing four police cruisers, with several officers searching a connecting alley.

It turned out that they were seeking a disturbed individual who had been firing a pellet gun, at one point blowing the rear window out of a neighbour’s vehicle. He had taken off to the south end of the street, and it took the officers another hour or so to locate and subdue him. Fortunately, there were no human injuries.

It was surreal, to have found peace and camaraderie downtown, only to return to my normally sleepy neighbourhood and find such commotion. As I write this, the police and the perpetrator have left, with peace returning.

Keeping It Together

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food Prescott, Spiritual, Striving

March 17, 2020-

Hope all who wanted to have a festive St. Patrick’s Day, did so.  I was occupied with helping someone by giving him a safe space, for a day or so.  We ended up being among the relative few who enjoyed a meal at our local Texas Roadhouse.  That will be my last dine-in experience, for at least the next few months.  I will still use such take-out and delivery options as remain available,

There are lots of other changes.  My meetings with Baha’is, the Red Cross and Slow Food will be virtual.  My inchoate connection with Prescott College’s Sustainability Club will remain on hold, until some means are found to also connect online.  Work is suspended, though we may well be compensated, somehow.  Travel?  Only for family emergency, or to explore some of the Southwest’s wonders, in an unobtrusive manner.

I am approaching the end of my last physical Fast, ever.  Future Baha’i Fasts will find me praying for those who are abstaining, not eating or drinking in their presence and performing acts of service, as they present themselves.

I am finding that there are multiple requests for assistance, mostly emotional support, and that they come in clusters of two or three.  Thankfully, I have been able to meet the needs, with a minimum of difficulty.  My main job now is to keep myself together, physically and emotionally. With all that I’ve been given in this life, it has not been hard to do.

Stay focused, and be thankful for what is, and what will be again.

Soup’s On

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Posted by on in Personal Values, Slow Food Prescott

March 10, 2020-

The Nineteen-Day Fast has just passed its midpoint.  So, it’s a good time to look at what sustains this soul, in my last go-round with total abstinence from food and drink during daylight hours.

The key, at least this year, has been hot soup for breakfast.  It helped me knock out the cold that had lingered inside me, for nearly two weeks and has kept me hydrated during the daylight hours-along with two glasses of water before sunrise, and one at sunset.

There have been several soups that filled the bill.  Two were my own concoctions:  1. A beet soup, with the bulbs hitting the crock pot first, then taken out and sliced.  Next, the beet greens were cut up and added.  Sliced scallions came next, with oregano oil, chili powder and turmeric added to the water (no soup stock).  The mix simmered for four hours, and sustained me for five days.

2.  Last Saturday’s Slow Food Prescott potluck called for another soup. This one used fresh cut-up spinach,  a cup of bolete mushrooms, a cup of mixed lentils,  2 sliced dried sugar chilis, turmeric, a pinch of pink Himalayan sea salt and cumin.  The soup was fairly well-received at the potluck and I had enough left over for two more dawn meals.

Since then, there have been a cream of mushroom soup (2 meals, from a vendor at Prescott Farmer’s Market, and a sliced carrot and quinoa soup, from Ms. Natural’s (1 meal).  The rest of the Fast will see more such delights, getting my day off to the right start.

Soup makes my winter sizzle!

Sustainable

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Striving

January 30, 2020-

I have long felt a connection with nature, in its deepest and purest forms.  This may be a matter of genetic memory.  The forest and the ocean have been places of comfort and affirmation, since I was a very young child.  That this connection should have been gradually extended to desert, prairie and alpine mountain is only a logical progression.

With such a tie to the natural world, connection with those who embrace an ethic of sustainable cultures, of various forms, also comes naturally.  I have been gradually moving away from “throwaway” living, since 1981. It has been a process fraught with fits and starts, but recycling-at least-has been ingrained in my life, for nearly that long.

This evening, I made good on a promise to myself and some members of the Baha’i community, and joined a small group at Prescott College:  The Sustainability Club.  I was the only person over 25, in that gathering-but found a genuine welcome. The group is finding its way, and plans a clean-up on Sunday, which I’ll join.  Other plans include improving the composting arrangement on the small campus, a clothing recycling effort and the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, in mid-April.

My plan is to join the Sustainability Club’s efforts as often as possible, and to help them network with like-minded groups in the area, particularly Slow Food-Prescott and other environmental organizations.  There is much I can share with the youths and much that they have to impart to me, as well.  This semester, and next, will be a fine time for building a solid sustainable community.

And It Was….

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, Hiking and Nature, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

December 31, 2019-

It was a time of loss.

The decade took Penny, my wife of twenty-eight years and nine months, both her parents Norm and Ruth (“Bunny”), two of her aunts Averala and Helen (“Honey”), two of  her cousins, Tom and Jean, and a cousin-in-law, Richard.

It took my maternal uncles, Carl and James,  Carl’s two children-Keith and Carla, and our cousins Ronnie and Lorraine.

It did not spare my father’s side of the family, either, taking Uncle George, Aunt Adeline (“Sissy”) and her son Bob.

It brought several others to the Life Beyond, friends all:  Christie Serino, Drew Crotty, Larry Silipigni, Alan and Rick Belyea, from my hometown of Saugus, MA;  Alison Sipes, from Indiana; Mildred “Mildoo” Forney, who, along with her daughter, made my visits to Oley, PA an annual pleasure; my American Legion comrades Bob Wittmann, Dennis Young, John Mortimer, Sue Chambers, Al Tercero-among several;  a host of Baha’i  fellows- Ali and Violette Nakhjavani, Nancy Coker, John Cook, Firuz Khazemzadeh, Avid Navidi, Dick Sloman, Moses Nakai, Russ Garcia, Chester Kahn, Roy Dewa, Tom Smith, Keith John Manybeads.

 It was a time of change.

It saw me get out of town, leaving Phoenix, after ten years.  Prescott, once more, became Home Base.

It saw our son, Aram, follow in the footsteps of many of his forebears, on both sides of the family and enter the service of his country, serving in the United States Navy, for nine years.

It saw him enter into matrimony.  Having returned to Korea, the land of his birth, as part of his service, Aram met and married Yunhee, a superlative addition to our family.

It saw us honour two of my nieces, who preceded him down the aisle, also bringing spouses who add luster to the Boivin brood.

It was a time of growth.

It brought in fourteen new members of my Grandniece/nephew Club and some new additions to my Greater Tribe.

There were a couple of good years, working full time, at Prescott High School, and several others spent substitute teaching.

The decade brought me the joy of giving back- with the American Red Cross, Slow Food, school garden projects, and the Farmers’ Market, as well as American Legion Post 6 and the Baha’i community.  It has brought me many new friends, members of my Tribe, who consistently make this life a thing of beauty.

Then, there were those journeys- annually to see family, on the East Coast, in the South and in the Midwest, which is never “Flyover Country” to me; my first solo visit to Europe, partly on my father-in-law’s behalf and partly because  I wanted to connect with the lands of my ancestors;  I returned to Korea, to  fully embrace my son’s wedding and to recap our life in Jeju; Hawaii welcomed me, in advance of the Tiger Cruise from Honolulu to San Diego, as Aram & crew returned from a Pacific Rim deployment; I fulfilled some of the dreams I shared with Penny, and explored the Pacific Northwest, a bit of British Columbia; southeast Alaska and eastern Canada; California, Nevada, Texas and Colorado were constantly seeing my face-largely to spend time with far-flung members of my Tribe.  Shorter, but no less meaningful, jaunts around Arizona, Utah and New Mexico filled in the blanks.

Now, the sun has risen on a new decade, for much of the world and the year, which once loomed as a pinnacle in my life, has a remaining shelf life of nine hours, here in the Mountain Standard Time Zone.

This decade of joy, sorrow, gain, loss, advances and setbacks will soon give way to another, likely much more of each.  Happy 2020, one and all!

A Pre-Trip Trifecta

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Posted by on in Community, Inspiration, Personal Values, Slow Food Prescott, Social, Spiritual

November 10, 2019-

The past three days have featured a  wondrous series of memorable events, here in Home Base.  The first of these will long stay with me:  The wedding of one of my best friends’  youngest daughter.  I have already paid homage to this wonderful young lady, who will continue to show the world just how much can be accomplished by knowing that one is able to achieve, and that one has the unconditional support of one parent, who is, in turn, greatly loved by family and friends.  L has been very dear to my own heart, for several years now, and will remain so.

Saturday evening, I headed over to a planning meeting of Slow Food Prescott, that was to be preceded by a vegetarian potluck.  It turned out, I was told the wrong time of the event’s beginning, so as I entered, the planning was in mid-session and there was enough food for one other late-comer and me.  We got the gist of the planning, and enjoyed a pleasing meal.

Today, before setting out for a few days in southern California, I attended a memorial service for a restaurateur who had established, and built up, three restaurants here in Prescott, as well as two pizzerias in the Palm Springs area.  His widow, child and successors in business were all in attendance.  Many had delightful stories, and though I never met him in life, I feel like I know his goodness, based on my satisfying experiences in his restaurants here in Prescott. The name “Bill’s” in front of an eatery’s name has come to signify quality. I promised to stop by at least one of his namesake pizzerias, on my way back from the coast.

Thus, a busy and very crucial sets of events set the tone for my mini-break in “SoCal”.

NEXT:  A Veteran’s Day with No Parade

These Changes Keep On

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Posted by on in distraction issues, Personal Values, Slow Food Prescott, Striving

August 12, 2019-

I rose and shined, this morning, to crickets from the Sub Service (it’s only the second week of school) and a notion that it was time to simplify further.  After a laid back morning, I took more magazines and unsolicited 2020 calendars to the Veteran’s Hospital, got rid of some red t-shirts and parted with an old swivel office chair, two mismatched crutches-and my microwave oven.

It’s time for this supporter of Slow Food Prescott to put my money where my mouth is. Having heard every other naturopathic doc on the planet talk about the disruptive effects of this common feature of convenience and having used it less and less, I made the change.  The toaster oven, slow cooker and regular oven will work nicely.  I also have a solar oven, in the back, so there we are.

There may be other changes in the wind, but I can’t say for certain, as yet.  I just know they are at the door, when I feel their presence.  It’s supposed to be hotter than “double hockey stick”, from So Cal to Georgia, over the next two weeks.  We may get some rain, towards the end of August.  Until then:  Sun up, sun down.