The Five-Finger Challenge

Being vegan has become too easy. That is, my decision not to eat any animal products was intended as something that would force me to make a conscious choice about everything I bought or put in my body. But after more than 4 years of veganism, my label-reading and purchasing choices have turned into a routine. I already know what brands and products I can buy at the grocery store, and exactly what I can order at nearly all the restaurants in town. I stopped caring about ingredients with names I can't pronounce, and even about shopping local in order to put food in my belly and make sure I can pay my rent. I have become a penny-pinching vegan robot.

But my friends, I am about to be reprogrammed. Starting today I have resolved to eat only local, seasonal foods. Sounds impossible, right? No salt, no pepper, no curry, no bananas, no olive oil? Not exactly. I'm going to start small, with one 90% local meal a day, and build from there. From my experience with a vegan diet, I know that this locavore imperative will only get easier. I propose for myself, and anyone else who wants to join me, the Five-Finger Challenge, named so because my "local" foods will be defined by having come from within the lower peninsula of Michigan, and everyone who's ever been to Michigan knows that us residents seem to associate our state and where we're from with the palm of our hand.

And so, the Five-Finger Challenge begins.

Avalon & Project Grow

Through a my friend Kris at the Southeastern MI Permaculture Guild, I got involved as a site coordinator in a community organic gardening project at Avalon Housing communities. Avalon has partnered with Project Grow the create Edible Avalon, a program that provides residents with everything they need to organically grow food and flowers, as well as a coordinator (or two) who help out with building, planting, watering, weeding, checking for pests and diseases, answering questions, and providing programming. I'm super pumped about my site, Parkhurst, because there are TONS of kids there, who seem even more excited than most of the adults. We are trying to arrange for the older kids to get a stand at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market, and actually be able to sell what they grow.

At any rate, Kris, the project coordinator, said the garden was going to be along the side of the building, but we decided to change it to a sunny area at the center of the courtyard. The space on the side is still all set to go, and I'm hoping to fill it in with native wildflowers and see if I can't share some of the knowledge I pick up in my medicinal herbs class with the residents! At first I thought incorporating some kind of faerie theme would be cool, but that could be a bit much. Maybe a lot of kids don't dig that sort of thing? Hopefully, more on this later!