Maybe you saw my state on the national news last night . . .

I'm glad red has sometimes been my favorite color, because I've been wearing a lot of it this week. I have at least two clean red shirts to go before I have to start over in the red clothing rotation. The new Republican governor of my state has decided that the best way to overcome the 137 million dollar shortfall by giving $117 million in tax cuts to corporations (because, if you've driven into my state from Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois recently, you know that Wisconsin is "Open For Business") and by busting unions. (Yes, that link is to an opinion article. But the statistic it quotes links back to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The numbers are good.) Teachers, public employees, union members, students, (news anchors? was it a coincidence that all of the local CBS news anchors wore red yesterday? Maybe so, since the Governor was wearing a red tie. And was it a coincidence that Meredith Vieira also wore red today?) are fighting back by Wearing Red for Public Ed.

As a college student in Illinois, one of the very, very few on campus who hailed from the Badger state, I was always aware of a certain reverence several of the History/Poli Sci professors had for me and my deep Badger roots. This state used to be an amazing place. This state used to be a great place for the average Joe to get a job. While we've had our share of seedy, terrible politicians in the list (Joe McCarthy comes to mind) we have also had amazing progressive leaders like Bob LaFollette who have spearheaded movements to give this nation back to the people. Wisconsin is the state that invented workers unions for state employees. And now Wisconsin is on the threshold of being the first state to take those rights away. Undoubtedly, other states will follow. Ohio will probably be next, but such a bold move will be less surprising coming from a state that voted for George W. Bush. Twice. Allegedly.

And now my governor wants to take away the rights of the citizens in favor of the rights of corporations. And, of course, he is not alone. The Citizens United case, decided by the Supreme Court in 2010, is one day going to give Wal-Mart the power to single-handedly decide the president of the United States, and to appoint all 9 members of the Supreme Court.

It is unsurprising that in addition to bulldozing the rights of workers, Gov. Walker is also willing to bulldoze right through environmental concerns to meet his objective of turning the entire state of Wisconsin into a giant big box store. A few weeks ago he unveiled an amazingly intelligent plan. He wanted to fill in a marsh near Green Bay in the hopes of luring a Bass Pro Shop store to the area. The Bass Pro Shop response? We don't build on wetlands.

(Here is the text of the article, if the link doesn't work: MADISON, Wis. -- Gov. Scott Walker has signed a bill designed to help lure a Bass Pro Shop to a site near Lambeau Field.Walker said the bill creates the opportunity for jobs in Green Bay while balancing environmental concerns.The bill would allow Neenah-based car dealer John Bergstrom to fill in about 1 1/2 acres of wetland between U.S. Highway 41 and the Green Bay Packers' stadium without a permit.Environmentalists are challenging the development and argue that Bergstrom is getting special treatment.Supporters argue the development would create jobs and that there is a reasonable plan to deal with the wetlands.A spokesman for Bass Pro Shop said last week the company had not committed to the project and would not build on a wetland")

Way to go, Walker.

Walker has previously demonstrated an inability to think a project through to the end before barging full-speed ahead into a project. He thought it would be a great idea to redesign Wisconsin's commerce department after the example set in Indiana. Too bad he didn't stop to look at the cold, hard facts. Since Indiana redesigned its commerce department, the move did not create the number of jobs that had been estimated. And the Economic Development Corporation lied about it.

"As governor-elect, Walker has discussed abolishing the Commerce Department and creating a new public-private partnership modeled on the Indiana Economic Development Corp. But that might not be a good thing for transparency. One Indianapolis television station reported that the Indiana agency would not release records to support its claims that it helped bring more than 115,000 new jobs to the state. The station’s investigation showed the agency had inflated those claims. As a result, the state's former deputy budget director - now with the conservative Cato Institute - calls the agency a 'boondoggle.'" (italics added).

In an effort to provide full disclosure, I should state that I am not a union member. I am a long-term substitute teacher. I spend five days a week educating the children of Wisconsin taxpayers. I don't get benefits. When teachers call in sick to attend rallies and the school has to close, I don't get paid.

And let me tell you something else. When the superintendent calls an emergency meeting to tell his staff that there WILL be layoffs next year, when he calls his staff together to thank us for trying to keep things together during a week of social unrest, and tells us that his best advice to preserve the fiscal stability of our families is to MOVE TO A DIFFERENT STATE, there are a lot of long faces.

And when he announces that there will be no school because teachers have to stand up for ourselves and attend rallies designed to stop our governor from forcing a bill through the legislative process before anyone has even read the entire text, people cry. Aides cry. Interpreters cry. Elementary school teachers cry. Middle school teachers cry. High school teachers cry. Secretaries cry. Men cry. Women cry. Principals cry. Superintendents cry. No one is happy that the situation in our state is this grim. No one wants this to be happening. But we all know it needs to happen in order to make our voices heard, and in order to preserve the future for our children.

(Contrast this type of school closure to a weather-related school closure, where teachers try to stay calm and keep kids from blurting out "there's not going to be school tomorrow" because everyone knows this will jinx the situation, and teachers are hoping just as hard as students that schools will, in fact, not be open tomorrow. Then, when school finally is closed for the day, everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief and enjoys the free time. Very few people cry over snow days.)

While this political situation seems very grim from the perspective of a brand new teacher who is really hoping to find a permanent job next year, I do want to point out that we are primarily arguing about money here. While the $6,000 combined pay cut that my husband and I face next year IF we are lucky enough to still have jobs teaching in Wisconsin will be tough, we live in a peaceful country and there will be an opportunity to right this wrong in a few short years. We do not live in Egypt where our very lives would be at stake every day due to political upheaval. It is good to keep things in perspective.

This private sector, big-box, huge corporation mentality cannot be a good thing when it comes to getting healthy food to my table in this Dairy State. Consequently, in an effort to make this world a better place one person at a time, I have had to take matters into my own hands. While I have been a full vegetarian in the past, I also enjoy eating meat, and have been eating meat for a while now. I have pledged to myself (and so far have only forgotten my pledge once during a trip to Culver's after a trip to the gym, the second day of my pledge) that as of last week I will stop ordering meat at restaurants unless I know that the meat comes from animals that have been raised in humane, natural conditions. I have struggled with buying "regular" meat at the grocery store for a long time, so I have pledged to stop that too (although I haven't been buying much of it lately anyway). I am still eating meat, and enjoying it. I have two containers of beef pot roast in my fridge from last Sunday's meal, which I have been heartily enjoying at lunch with my co-workers, dressed in red. But this particular roast came from a grass-finished steer in Argyle, Wisconsin. If I wanted to, I could visit the farm and watch the animals chew their cud. I feel good about that.

So there are things to feel good about in Wisconsin these days. We're not in Egypt, and we have access to grass-fed meat, if we're willing to drive to Madison for the Farmers' Market. But, hey, we were going there to protest anyway, weren't we?

Eating my words, and good vegetables too.

In the middle of December I got an email from the farmer who runs the CSA we joined last year. I put "thinking about joining a CSA" on my list of things to get to eventually. Yesterday I let my dad pour over my Seed Savers Exchange catalog for a while. He pointed out that the huckleberries I want to plant are described as "tasteless" (unless you make them into mock blueberry pie or preserves) and he picked out a couple of varieties of peppers to plant (I don't like peppers) but other than that he seemed to approve my choices.

Nevertheless, I'm hungry for a little more than we can grow in four raised beds and a sprawling melon/squash patch. So I started thinking about CSAs again this morning. At first, I thought we'd rejoin the CSA from last summer. Sure, it's out of the way, but I could get a worker share and we could eat for free (and a little sweat and hard work). When I checked out the worker shares, though, I discovered that they won't work with my spring and fall schedule. Last summer, too many workers were high school students who could only work on the weekends during the school year, so this year all of the workers have to pick a time slot sometime between 8 and 5 Monday through Friday, and they need to stick with that slot all summer. That might be fine if I were in a different profession, but I can't ask my high school students to have English class in the evenings so I can work at a farm in May and September.

I thought about writing to the farmer to see if we could arrange a different schedule. This farmer is a great guy, he has access to amazing sweet corn, and if I could have found a few more interested buyers, he would have hooked me up with a freezer full of grass-fed beef. Oh yeah, and he sells eggs and maple syrup too. He's a good guy. So good, in fact, that last summer he recommended that my husband and I join a different CSA that is a little closer to home. Because the worker shares didn't seem to be working for me, I looked up the other farm, and sure enough, they have a pick-up on Tuesdays that is approximately five blocks from my house. Their half share is also cheaper than my old CSA's. And while I'm a little too shy (and inexperienced) to sign up for a worker share at a farm I've never been to, we can go to their farm events this summer, like we did at Forest Run Farm last summer, and get to know people. Then maybe I can get a worker share for next summer with the new CSA - Luna Circle Farm.

I have the application all filled out, but we're waiting to send a check until I find out that they do have a share available. (I think they do, or their website would say their shares are all sold out, but it seems silly to send $300 off into the void without making sure we're going to get something in return.) I know I said last summer that I didn't think we'd do a CSA again, but it turns out I just can't help myself.

Good food is all around. Yesterday my mom and I went to the indoor farmers' market and I brought home some frost-sweetened spinach (that my mom bought), some raw milk cheddar cheese, a bag of organic carrots, two bulbs of garlic, some gluten-free cookies for the teacher I share an office with, and a roast.

My dad also sent me home with part of a roast he'd been marinating for some buddies, and I have some ham thawing in the fridge for Worms, so we're going to be eating pretty well this week! (The roast I bought is in the freezer, waiting for a time when we have a little less ready-to-eat food in the house.)

Right now I need to go make a loaf of bread, and get back to school work.

Beef Soup for the Soul

Life has been a little hectic lately. Mostly in a good way, but still hectic. Which is why beef soup that I made in September has been coming in very handy. I also pulled some kale soup out of the freezer, which I made in July. I got the recipe from our CSA farmer's wife, and that soup is delicious! It has a neat blend of spices in it that are different from my usual Betty Crocker spinoffs.

I also have many containers of chicken, turkey, and beef stock stuck away in the freezers, so I can make more soup when I have time and fresh veggies from the indoor farmers' market - where I think I'll be headed this weekend!

Yum!

Go Packers

Out with the Old, In with the New

Goodbye 2010!

Overall, 2010 has been a good year for me - although at times it did not seem like it. I finished student teaching, became a licensed teacher, and then sat around for too many months waiting to find a teaching job. Fortunately, many other employment opportunities came my way while my teaching dreams were on hold. I started the year the way I have for the past several years - working at my dad's tax preparation business. I won't be able to give my dad as many hours in 2011, but I expect I'll find myself assembling a few tax returns come March. Near the end of March, as the taxes were rolling into their final weeks, I was finally hired as a substitute teacher, just in time to take a trip down to Indianapolis to visit my quite-pregnant sister. I had my first substitute teaching assignment on April Fool's Day - a half day of school before a long weekend - and I survived somehow.

In May, I took a week off from subbing and headed to Indianapolis for the birth of my niece. On that trip Adele helped me shell peas from the garden, and even ate a few peas for dinner. She decided, without any prompting, that the large peas were "man peas" and the tiniest peas were "baby peas." The morning after her sister was born, Adele woke up and came down the stairs asking, "My baby sister came out last night?" We're not quite sure how she knew, since her mom was in the bathtub when Adele went to bed, and the baby was not born until Adele was fast asleep. We got home from the hospital around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I don't think anyone woke Adele up to tell her. However she came to find out about it, I am still awed that my sister allowed me to be in the room to watch the whole birth (except the epidural) and will never forget that the nurse mistakenly gave Anna to me before her dad had a chance to hold her. (In my defense, I did not realize that Brian hadn't held his daughter until she was already in my arms.)

In July, my nieces came to Wisconsin for a visit, and I got to have a very special sleep-over with Adele! She ate Memaw's raspberry jam, shelled a few more peas, and went for a walk along the river.

I was disappointed not to get three teaching jobs over the course of the spring and summer, but spent four hours volunteering at a booth at the county fair hours after learning that Michael's uncle had undergone a successful liver transplant, and ended up meeting a new friend and getting a job where I actually had the opportunity to do some teaching, albeit in a museum rather than a classroom.

Over the course of the spring and summer, my dad and I grew a fairly productive garden (although the tomato crop could have been more successful) and I canned and froze a substantial amount of produce, which has been a godsend in the recent weeks when I've been too tired to cook when I get home from work. Dinner is as easy as thawing out a container of grass finished beef and garden turnip soup I made in July.

As the summer came to an end and the farmers' markets and museum closed up for the season, I was fortunate enough to get another job (for which I had not applied) at a small law firm in town as my dad recovered from knee surgery. The weekend after I started that new job Michael and I headed to Indianapolis again - this time to serve as godparents for Anna Kate. We had to rush home after the church service, so I missed seeing Anna Kate dressed up as Raggedy Ann, but she brought the costume to show me for Thanksgiving.

Work at the law firm was fairly stress free, interesting, and manageable, but I kept applying for teaching positions, and was shocked when I finally got a call, many weeks after the interview, asking if I could come in right away to start a long-term subbing position teaching English an hour and a half from home. And later that same day, I was just as shocked to get a call inviting me to interview for another long-term substitute English position - at a school only 20 minutes from my house.

I am halfway through the six weeks in Beloit, and was hired to begin in Pardeeville at the start of the second semester - so I will have exactly one weekend (during which Adele will turn 3) between jobs.

2011 is shaping up to be a good year. I will be employed full-time as a teacher until the first week of June, I have resources about companion planting and food preservation (and a new rack for my water bath canner!) and I am excited about growing a years' worth of food in the upcoming summer.

Until the garden starts growing, I have a freezer full of fruit and jam, vegetables including peas, green beans, asparagus, corn, zucchini, and tomatoes, cupboards with jars of pickles, cranberry preserves, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and one last lonely jar of applesauce. I have many pints of chicken, beef, and turkey stock, much of which was produced using all or mostly local food.

I never got around to making resolutions for 2010, but I'm pretty proud of the way I was able to use local, real food sources for so many of my meals. One of my goals for 2011 will be to continue my efforts to wean myself off of processed, highly-traveled foods. I also want to be able to talk to other people in a coherent way about why I am making the food choices I'm making - not just so that I can be understood (right now I tend to ramble endlessly without making a lot of sense) but also so that I can introduce many of the people that I know to a much healthier, earth-friendly way of living and eating.

I am sure this post could use some significant editing, but I need to go get ready for this party! (My plan is to come back and update this post with pictures when I have time.)

Happy 2011 everyone!

Raspberry Jam Revisited

While I was inspecting my freezer earlier tonight to make sure I won't have to buy a bunch of processed food that comes in boxes while I deal with a long commute, I discovered many, many jars of freezer jam that have been waiting to be eaten.

That reminded me that I haven't posted a few Thanksgiving pictures yet.

Remember this little girl who had a big sleep-over at her aunt's house last summer?
I think I've discovered the key to making sure she'll come back again.
She allowed me to drape her with a towel on Friday so she could eat applesauce for breakfast, and the same technique worked for her raspberry jam on bread.

It didn't stop her from getting a little bit messy, though.
First she decided she was Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.

But then she turned into a clown.
Isn't she sweet?

Her sister's pretty adorable too!

Changes

Just when I had finally gotten settled into a routine working as a substitute teacher some days and as a law clerk the rest of the week, things had to go and change. On Friday morning, nine minutes before I had to be at work at the law firm, I got a call from the school district where I had interviewed several weeks earlier. The interview was so long ago that I had recently said to my husband, "obviously I didn't get that job." The assistant principal who called me started the conversation by thanking me profusely for the thank-you card I sent to her after the interview. (For the record, I also sent a thank-you card after my previous interview with this school district, and it didn't seem to help, since I wasn't offered that job.) I listened politely, planning my response to her inevitable rejection speech. She thanked me for a while, then told me the teacher who needs the long-term sub had had her baby, and then eventually got around to telling me that she was offering me the job. She wanted me to come in that day. I was sort of stunned.

Her desire to have me get in the classroom on Friday was slightly awkward, since the law firm was expecting me in five minutes. Eventually she indicated that it would be okay if I came in on Monday (tomorrow) instead. So I told her I'd be happy to take the job, and made arrangements to talk to the personnel department later. I went to the law firm, and awkwardly told my boss that this was apparently going to be my last day. (How convenient that I had arranged to bring in the leftover spice cake from Thursday's book club - what had been just a "Friday treat" could now be called a "going-away treat.") He was very gracious, and congratulated me on getting the job. (Basically my boss at the law firm was an all-around good guy who displays the complete opposite traits from all of the other lawyers I have ever worked for. Your standard, run-of-the-mill lawyer would probably say this guy gives lawyers a bad name 'cause he's not a complete and total jerk.)

On a typical day at the law firm, I would arrive to find my desk full of files covered in post-it notes reading, "See me on filing Complaint in X case" or "Legal Research on Economic Loss Doctrine." I would have a brief meeting in which he would explain what he needed, and I would get to work. On Friday, he started out in this fashion, but began setting files to the side in cases he knew I wouldn't get to in my last 8 hours with the firm. As he was starting to tell me about a task I could complete, my phone rang.

It was the personnel department calling to tell me to bring official transcripts, my social security card, and my drivers' license on Monday after I go to the Occupational Health Services for my drug screen, my TB test, and my physical.

For the record, I don't typically answer my cell phone while working, but I figured I should pick up on Friday in case it was the school district calling back about Monday. So when another unknown number called me a few hours later, I figured it was the school district calling again. I was partly right. It was a school district - a different district with a long-term sub position calling to schedule an interview. They want to interview me on Monday the 13th. I told the lady who called that I am planning to take a different position but said I'd be happy to interview for this position as well. She was not deterred so I went ahead and took the first interview slot she had.

The job I have been offered is an hour and a half from my house, during good weather and not at rush hour. I will be waking up at 4:45 in order to leave my house by 5:45 so I can get to school by 7:15-7:30. Just this week I though to myself how thankful I was that my job was within walking distance from my house, and that I did not have to wake up before 6 a.m. to be at work on time. Ha. The interview that I will have on the 13th (if I don't cancel it) is for a half-time position that is 20 minutes from my house, and I believe this position will last the rest of the school year, whereas the position I've been offered is only for 3 months.

Furthermore, there is an English teacher in town who is expecting to go on maternity leave sometime between now and April, and she has recommended me to the principal as her long-term sub. I've been trying to get a one-day subbing job for her for the last month (she's posted three but someone else was always quicker to schedule the job), and finally got one - for a couple of weeks from now, which I will likely have to cancel. In a perfect world, taking this current job will not mean giving up the opportunity to sub for her. In a less-than ideal world, I may have some hard decisions to make in the next few weeks. And that is something I have never been particularly good at.

To top this all off, it snowed on Friday night, for really the first time this season - just in time to remind me how hazardous it may be to drive those 85 miles to and from a limited term job every day. I've been a little bit stressed out, trying to figure out how I'm going to feed my family real, local, non-processed food while I'm doing all of this driving. I've really enjoyed being able to take nice homemade meals to work. But when am I going to have time to make these meals now that I'll be spending three hours a day in the car? I'm trying to remember what/when I cooked while I was student teaching, but I'm kind of drawing a blank.

I went out to check the freezer a few minutes ago. I have four six-cup containers of vegetable beef soup, two four-cup containers of Kale soup, two four-cup containers of early vegetable soup (turnips, zucchini, and I'm not sure what else), several cups of chicken stock, and two f0ur-cup containers of beef stock in the freezer.
Plus, I finally got around to making turkey stock from my Thanksgiving turkey today. (The carcass had been hanging out in my freezer since my dad carved it. I don't have pictures, but I did require my husband's help to get the whole carcass into my stock pot.) It is still simmering on the stove, but I think it will make a couple quarts worth of stock. I also have many quarts of tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce both in the freezer and in my cupboards, along with half a dozen bags of sliced zucchini, at least a dozen bags of corn, and an assortment of other frozen vegetables.
We are not going to run out of food, but we might get a little bit sick of spaghetti with zucchini and tomato sauce.

The main problem with doing any more (real, local) food shopping in the next three months is that the farmers' market that is open in the winter is an hour away. It is still possible to go, since it is on Saturday mornings, but I know that the absolute last thing I'm going to want to do on a Saturday morning is get up early and drive an hour so I can go shopping.

Clearly, I have mapped out all of the negative elements of this job opportunity. What I need to focus on, instead, is how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity! In the past few months I have received several great employment opportunities. I am grateful for all of them. While there are a few drawbacks to this job, and while I might be inclined to stick with my still-new routine, which has become comfortable over the past few weeks, I recognize that this is an incredible opportunity for me. I was so disappointed not to have gotten a teaching job this summer, when most of the people I went to school with did find jobs. I was told by a veteran English teacher here in town that I needed to add some long-term subbing assignments to my resume so that school districts would know I had experience writing units and doing long-range planning. Now I have the opportunity to do just that.

So tomorrow I go in for the health screenings, and by Friday I should be set up in the classroom.
If it doesn't work out, the attorney said I'm welcome to come back to the law firm any time.