Fresh Veggies!

Cyndi and I bought 1/2 share of this season's crops from Finca Cielo Verde, a local community supported agricultural collective. Their website: http://cieloverdepr.blogspot.com/
I've heard of these types of arrangements before, but never had the opportunity to get involved, so when our friend Katka emailed us some information, we were very interested. The produce in Rincon is generally very good. We have a small market less than a mile away, La Placita, that sells locally grown fruit and vegetables, but it's really just a roadside stand so the variety isn't so great. I buy tomatoes there when they have them and avacados as well, but the prices can be high also. The regular market, Econo, in town sells plenty of produce, but much of it is from other countries and for all sorts of reasons we are trying to limit our food purchases to local sources as much as we can.
So the chance to invest in a local farm, they're in the hills above Mayaguez, about an hour away, will keep us eating local and fresh as the deliveries come weekly. The first delivery was 2 weeks ago and in it we had Mesclun greens, Scallponini squash, eggplant, mandarins, cilantro, mustard greens and Pac choi. The 2nd weeks delivery was similiar but included some starfruit and different greens. We've been making vegetarian pastas and stir-frys, but also eating these straight from the farm veggies raw. The flavor and freshness is incredible and doesn't compare to something bought back home from a Ralph's or Vons where some of the vegetables are shipped in from defferent states and can take days to make it to the produce counter.
If you have an opportunity to go, Finca Cielo Verde also sell at the Rincon Farmer's Market. And if you don't live in Rincon, chances are there is a farm near you that has similiar arrangements, seek them out at Farmer's markets and support local growers and the local food movement. The consolidation of the farming industries is something that should trouble us all, small growers are being forced out by large companies whose growing practices and pricing strategies threaten to shut down small farms everywhere, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Less is More

Our lives in Los Angeles were pretty simple. I worked 4 nights at a restaurant downtown and Cyndi drove to Laguna Beach 2 days per week to work with massage clients. Neither of us had alot of responsiblity or stress in our schedules and other than the 2 dogs we had, there weren't many things to take up our free time. So we walked the dogs alot, worked around the house, watched movies and spent time with our parents.

Of course it wasn't always this way. I worked managing restaurants for over 20 years and finally grew tired of the 50 to 60 hour work weeks and seemingly unending ways for the corporate higher ups to create even more work. I genuinely enjoyed being at the restaurant and taking care of the guests who chose to dine there, but I didn't enjoy sitting in an office and sending daily labor and food reports to some bean counter at the corporate office. I know that the secret to a restaurant's profitability lies in the number of people at its tables, and probably has a direct negative correlation to the number of staff at the restaurant's corporate headquarters.

Cyndi worked for IBM as a network engineer, but the corporate politics and cubicle life closed in on her and she decide to pursue a career in massage therapy. Her story is similiar to mine so when we met again in 2005, (we graduated from high school together), we realized how much we each valued our time so much more than things.

I know we aren't the first of our generation to step off the treadmill, I also realize that without kids our options are much more open, but at the moment of enlightenment, the moment when you understand how precious your time is here, it takes courage to act upon and I saw that courage in Cyndi as she must have in me.

Here is a link to a book that makes this point much more clear than I ever could: http://www.billmckibben.com/deep-economy.html . Its really about questioning the more, more, faster, faster ethic we've been taught to cow to. Cyndi and I have come to appreciate the simple acts of living; making our own meals, tending our own gardens, being a positive and social member of our neighborhood. The phrase, " think global, act local" got a lot of play in the environmental movement, but the "act local" part is the key. As the world gets smaller by the minute, and the costs of energy and transportation rise and corporations gobble up and spit out small business, the only way to exert control is to seek out local merchants and products that haven't been shipped in from half way across the world.

It was this pursuit of a simple, localized lifestyle that led us to Rincon, (ok the nice waves and warm Caribbean water also came into play). There has been so much talk about global warming and carbon footprints, green living, reduce, re-use, recycle, I think sometimes people get overwhelmed into doing nothing and pretending they don't care. Cyndi and I have made a conscience effort to be a part of the localization movement, but trips to Costco and Home Depot are inevitable. We can't live in palapas and eat bananas all day, but we can seek out local meat and vegetables, eat the fruit of our own trees and try to buy most of our things from the small markets here in town.