Natural Food Preservation and the Fall of Corporatocracy

This article appeared in the Sep 15, 2011 edition of the Bozone:

My sister and mom both visited at the height of our harvest season in August.  They both helped me experiment with natural methods of food preservation, which include fermenting, sugaring, salting, drying, pickling, packing under oil and cold storage such as root cellaring/garden pits. 

Humans survived our entire history using such methods.  This knowledge that kept us alive for up to hundreds of thousands of years, allowing each of us to be here, has been virtually lost in the span of just a few generations with the availability of electricity and the advent of canning.  Our modern energy grid supplies us with refrigeration and pre-made foods and we no longer need to think to ensure our food supply. 

Beyond the obvious concern of losing our self-sufficiency through dependence on large corporations such as our energy companies, there is evidence our old methods of food preservation were actually healthier since they often do not kill plants’ natural enzymes and in some cases actually create new nutrients, vitamins, and beneficial intestinal bacteria like lactobacillus, as in the case of lacto-fermentation (eg raw sauerkraut, uncanned).  These helpful bacteria and nutrients help keep digestion robust and our immune systems functioning properly - fighting cancer, autoimmune diseases and more.  While modern methods like canning sterilize our food, making it “safe”, they offer less at the same time.  Live bodies need live foods.

Packing beans in salt and fermenting fruit with my mom, I realized I did not have the ages-old benefit of asking an experienced person to pass on the ancient wisdom.  Some pockets of insight remain, with books like “Preserving Food Without Canning or Freezing,” and while we experiment with reviving and create healthy and sustainable ways of living, we will need each other as resources, learning together. 

As our carbon-culture peaks in the midst of what scientists are calling the “sixth great extinction,” there is even greater need to self-sustain.  Not only are we facing the effects of global warming – we already toll more devastating natural catastrophes this year than ever before on the planet (and it’s only September) – we are undergoing a mass extinction on the planet comparable to the dinosaur extinction when most life ceased to exist.  While our carbon output makes a hotter, wetter, and more dramatic climate (though drier in some places with higher evaporation rates) and challenges our agriculture systems, we face mass devastation of life on the planet - most significantly in our oceans - from overfishing, pollutants, and ph imbalances.   Our planet and our human population are in grave peril.  We are vulnerable, we have created this…and as ingenious and conscious human beings we also have the ability to create a sustainable world. 

Here’s one step to take – try a recipe for lacto-fermented beans:

Very tightly pack beans in a glass jar.  Intersperse salt and spices of choice, such as dill, garlic, celery seed, etc.  Use about one tablespoon of salt per quart.  The salt must be un-iodized.  Sea salt works great – our regional source comes from the Great Salt Lake.  Cover with spring water (if using tap water let it to sit uncovered for about a day to allow enzyme-killing chemicals like chlorine to evaporate).  Tannins like black currant leaves are recommended to add crunch.  I haven’t tried this but we might be able use pine needles here.  Again, I am just learning…

Cover the beans with water, making sure they are all completely submerged.  Cover the jar with a lid.  Let it sit for a few days at room temperature.  If it is bubbling, it is starting to ferment and working!  Transfer it to a cool place.  It should be ready in a few weeks and should last up to half a year.  Use your own senses.  Mold on the top can be scraped off, and I have read if a batch goes bad, it will be unquestionably evident by its horrid smell.  If it looks like it will burst from gases, it may need a cooler place and/or a looser lid.  Some people leave lacto-fermented foods uncovered.  My own first batch of beans is fermenting well and I am about to try beets next!  This recipe is not approved by the US (or any) government, which may make you more or less enticed to try it.   Have fun!   And share your experience with me or others! 

Jenny LePage is a massage therapist and owner of Bozeman Massage Therapy LLC, an eco-friendly business downtown.  She can be reached via www.bozemanmassagetherapy.com

Defining True Wealth: Priceless Traditions

This article was printed in the June 15, 2011 issue of The Bozone:

Defining True Wealth: Priceless Traditions

This spring I was invited to a branding on my friends’ ranch.   Brandings typically involve gatherings of family, friends and neighbors - weekends of work weaving community into the heart of the event.   Friends from near and far joined together; John from Alaska shared salmon he caught himself, Mary Jo’s mom brought her famous hand-cured pickles, and Andrea who now lives in LA introduced her new boyfriend. 

Brandings remind me of the time I spent in Mexico’s Copper Canyon leading trips with Outward Bound.  The now-famed indigenous Tarajumara share similar practices, inviting friends from hundreds of miles away to work events (and yes, they run these distances).  Communal plantings, harvestings, or house raisings involve debaucherous parties with tesquino (corn beer), the necessary work comingled with the best of social gatherings.

Rained out of the mushroom collecting we planned the day after branding, we shared stories by the fire.   Lindsey told us about the 10-day process her grandmother takes to make her pickles, and we joked about how her grandfather guards the secrets of his hand-smoked sausage.  We agreed it would be shame if they never pass on their wealth of knowledge.   

As these shrinking pockets of culture living close to the land dwindle, with them we lose vast amounts of information and kinship humankind developed over millions of years.  Our planetary population nearing 7 billion (up from 1 billion just 100 years ago), large-scale productions increasingly drive our economy.  To live sustainably, real wealth must also be measured in traditions, lest we lose gifts like the pickle recipe brought to Montana from Wisconsin…and before then all the way back to the time cucumber first met dill and everyone aged their own vinegar in wooden barrels - and took the time to talk about it.   

Preserving the land itself is vital.  Walking around the ranch, we came across wild alliums (onion family), munching on spring garlic leaves and fresh scapes while contemplating the richness found in land that we hardly acknowledge in our mass focus on Wall Street, trading stocks and investing in “futures” without a real grounding to what lies beneath our very feet - dirt.   That is, if we are still lucky enough to have soil to step on.  I often talk with my friends about their efforts to move the whole ranch toward eco-friendly practices and the inhibiting challenges of doing this with a large-scale operation.  

The market drives economics – but what drives the market?  Us.  All of Us. How do we drive our whole system to value vital practices?  How do I make the time in my busy schedule to take a long weekend to help with a branding?   I make the time.  I grow a garden.  I buy local food and organic clothing.  I operate with eco-friendly business practices whenever I can on my new-business budget.  I write this column discussing green topics.  I study ancient healing arts, understanding that true health involves our natural relationship to the Earth.  I connect with others who are helping to bring our planet into balance - hoping to ignite a fire for enough people to care and take action to make a difference.   Ahem.

Jenny LePage is a massage therapist and owner of Bozeman Massage Therapy LLC, an eco-friendly business downtown.  She can be reached via www.bozemanmassagetherapy.com.

Saving Seeds for our Future

The following was posted in the June 1 edition of the "Bozone":

When I was a kid growing my first gardens, I would lie on the ground, cheek to the dirt, watching plants grow.  Once I caught a bean seedling erupting from the ground!  Another time, mesmerized by a dewdrop on a tomato flower tip, it popped open right before my eyes! 

Plants are magic.  This spring I have been eating lots of sprouts.  I watch them grow and listen to them bursting open in their jars.  The potential contained in each seed is profound.  Two halves of a shell spread open into leaves, journeying into another cycle.   When we eat them, we take that energy inside our bodies.

Humans have cultivated plants for ages.  Our entire bounty of thousands of diverse foods is due to our ancestors favoring plants - and saving seeds.  Studying sustainable agriculture in college, we wandered across the southwest desert over ancient farm fields.  Nomadic people covered agave plants with rock piles for water containment and then left them for years until harvesting and roasting them in pits.  Many of our first plants were cultivated ever so roughly, and eventually we developed complex farming systems.   

For many reasons – feeding our huge human population, greed, power, etc – agriculture has turned into an unsustainable, toxic beast.  We are losing much of our diversity of species by dangerously favoring only very few.   Worse, the terminator gene is out there in both plant and animal worlds; offspring of these genetically modified oranisms (gmo’s) will no longer reproduce.  We have to deal with many unnatural gmo’s, chemicals used in plant production, water issues, and high energy use in the transportation of food. 

What can we do?  Along with supporting our local organic farmers and becoming more informed, most of us can grow a garden.  Even if it is a small lettuce box or herbs in a pot, it is a step in the right direction.  Maybe we can venture into larger plots or community gardens.   This year I am trying lentils, kamut, fava beans, soybeans, and quinoia – cold-hardy, nutritious crops that do not need to be watered after they germinate! 

Once we grow our bounty, saving seeds is vital.  We are just building our produce base here in southwest Montana.  You may notice each year in the market new and exciting crops our farmers are experimenting with.  This is how it has always been done.  We are creating our own legacy in this bioregion.   When we save the seeds from plants with desirable qualities, we create a wealth of food sources to pass down and fine-tune for generations.  Many of us know that our indigenous cousins, the Native Americans, made decisions based on a 7-generation rule.  If it will benefit 7 generations into the future, it is good.   Though we are living in the midst of many bad decisions made before us and by us, we can change direction and create a sustainable situation on the planet.  Just plant – and save - some seeds.

Jenny LePage is a massage therapist and owner of Bozeman Massage Therapy LLC, an eco-friendly business downtown.  She can be reached via www.bozemanmassagetherapy.com

Living in Harmony with Nature

The following was posted in the May 15 edition of the "Bozone".

Lately I have been vision questing via running - enjoying the warmer weather, feeling alive as spring unfolds and searching for answers to deep questions.   Recently I went on a multi-hour run quest on and around the popular favorite Peet’s Hill.  The spot is so simple and accessible, and still so wild.  With a view of the mountains beyond and town below, the place offers powerful perspective. 

I was drawn into the graveyard, a beautiful spot covered with a thicket of lovely trees.  Feeling my dad’s death fresh in my heart and moving through big life transitions, visiting this spot helped remind me of the natural state of impermanence – and understand the precious nature of life.  After running out my tears and pausing to pay respects, I wandered into the field just beyond the grave. 

I found myself just 10 yards from two grazing deer.  Maybe they sensed my raw and peaceful state; after an initial startle they returned to grazing.  Captivated, I edged my way toward them playfully.  They did the same.   We became so close I would be among them if I took just a few more steps.  As I did, the stone-still herd watching nearby rose and alerted the whole group to run.   Those two lingered, looking back.  One even remained for a minute, the two of us curiously meeting eyes, until it too finally fled. 

These are the same animals I help my friends butcher every fall, whose lean local meat nourishes us throughout the year.  I respect each life we take and feel connected to these creatures through eating them.  Their life force allows mine to continue.  This is the cycle of life and death that we are all part of, whether we are eating plants or animals. 

I was so moved I wept again under the setting sun.  It struck me that the web of life - this whole earth - is one integrated organism.   The clouds and the mountains themselves are alive, just as indigenous cultures have always said - each tree and rock and bug a part of the whole.  Including me.   But I don’t entirely know our true place within this whole. 

Under the rising moon, I made my way back to the trail.  Something seemed so wrong about the blaring lights of the hospital, the paved town below and beautiful old trees carved around electric wires.  Where the trail winds to the road I came across another deer – this one limping by the pavement, freshly hit by a fast-moving vehicle.  I vowed then and there not to take one more step in the direction of devastating this planet or causing needless injury.   I don’t know what the full picture of harmony looks like, but I am doing all I can to create it.   I encourage all of us to all join together and find a way for humans to co-exist on the planet peacefully.  It is, after all, a part of us, and therefore harm to one really is harm to all.

Jenny LePage is a massage therapist and owner of Bozeman Massage Therapy LLC, an eco-friendly business downtown.  She can be reached via www.bozemanmassagetherapy.com

Green: A Shift in Consciousness

The following was posted in the May 1 edition of the "Bozone".

At a recent Bioneers Conference, keynote speaker Paul Hawken offered his vision for the environmental movement.  We need to look beyond the environment to social, political and economic movements - all are interconnected and cannot happen without one another.  And ultimately, he boldly stated, we need a spiritual shift.   Our very consciousness intertwines with all other things, and to really move forward, we need a critical mass of people to wake up.

In my Shiatsu training in massage school, we learned that any healing happens on all levels - Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual (PEMS).  All things are connected, and to truly heal, one cannot treat just one level even if mainly addressing one.  The same principle applies to our entire planet and way of life.  When we talk about the green movement, really we are talking about a paradigm shift that includes all parts of us.  And all of us.  Not only do we need a shift in consciousness, but we need to shift our consciousness collectively.  We are one species and one planet, already intertwined energetically whether we sense this or not.  The meridian and other energy systems form webs within our bodies and without, connecting us all.  

The planet itself is a giant energy point, connected with larger points and lines of energy in the galaxy and beyond. Yes, I know - whoa.  We are swimming in a sea of energy – a matrix, so to speak – and everything we do, every thought, emotion, and action, affects everything else. The butterfly effect is applicable on all (PEMS) levels.  It naturally follows that we help others and the planet when we see we are one.  Like synergy in an ecosystem, when we join together we create a whole that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  The only way we can tap into our true power is collectively.  Best of all, it is easy. 

To start, take a simple breath this very moment.  Remind yourself you are alive.  We are animated, conscious stardust - literally!  How wild, magic and profound!.  Through this inner reflection, we can extend outward and realize how amazing it is that others are alive as well and that our entire ecosphere of life exists.  Of course we want to heal it.  Reaching out to others becomes easy with this awareness.  Simply smiling at a neighbor, or even a stranger, can be surprisingly powerful.  More effort creates more results. 

A couple years ago I met my graphic designer while volunteering on an organic farm for our CSA, and likewise she met a massage therapist.  She introduced me to a local eco-friendly printing company, and recently she handcrafted beautiful artwork highlighting green aspects of my business.  By stepping into the world in a direction we believe in and connecting with others, many doors open, we inherently inspire each other, and all our lives deepen.  This movement starts with each of us nurturing our own awareness and contains the power to strengthen infinitely when we join together. 

Jenny LePage is a massage therapist and owner of Bozeman Massage Therapy LLC, an eco-friendly business downtown.  She can be reached at www.bozemanmassagetherapy.com

Soon to be Revived...

I promise I will post again soon - and regularly.  The first year of a new business really is as busy as everyone says it is!  Between finishing the signs (they're up since last week!), planning the opening party (stop in! Monday, March 21 on the spring equinox), contributing to two magazine articles in the past 2 months (AMTA's Massage Therapy Journal - THE feature article for eco-friendly business practices, and an article on the rotator cuff in Outside Bozeman due to print March 21) and bit by bit finishing the website, the schedule has been really full.    

Check back soon!

Feature on Green Marketing TV

This is so cool. Our business just got featured on Green Marketing TV for our green massage therapy practices. And I just stumbled across this!  Click here to link directly to the original post.

Bozeman Massage Therapy, located in Bozeman, MT, offers a variety of massage services, including Deep Tissue Massage, Sports Massage, and Pregnancy Massage. Massage oils are based on 100% pure organic grapeseed oil and can include a customized mix of aromatherapy scents based on essential oils. The sheets are bamboo and organic cotton, and the office was built using green building materials such as recycled blue jean insulation and natural cork flooring.