Winter is over, really!

Because my last post about headlines has gone a little 'viral', I thought I should finally change the upper photo on my blog which showed Phoebe walking the paths in our snowy garlic fields last December, with her ears blowing up and back from the strong wind. Yes, it nearly the end of April and our snow is finally gone, frogs are singing, and the garlic is coming up through the mulch in all the fields. So spring is clearly here, even if we may still get one more quick snow storm before spring fully settles in.

However, sorting through photos, I saw one I could not resist sharing. Instead of a spring fling, it is like Phoebe's final winter fling as she is throwing herself into the air to chase something, which surely seems like a better way to chase a critter than plowing or trudging through the snow (we all got tired of doing that this winter!). 

This photo won't stay up there long. I'll get some spring photos taken and share one at the top of the blog soon. But in the meantime, here is one photo that shows it's hard to keep a good dog down (I got lucky with this shot)! 

One of those exceptional, gorgeous mornings when the hoarfrost covers everything. 

Ok, now it's time to download the camera of recent photos and take some more new ones, showing spring. That would include showing our chicks now full-grown, our rooster also being full-grown but with a modified comb due to frostbite (still quite handsome, just different), our garlic on its way up through the mulch, asparagus peeking up, spring beauties and other wild flowers, our thriving bee hives that (shock of shock) made it through this past winter (with uncountable polar vortexes and a record amount of snow), geese and ducks on the pond, bluebirds flitting through the farm, and on and on. 

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend, with your hands in the soil, helping spring along as you get something cleaned up or planted. 

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Happy Holidays 2013!

Winter has finally come to our south-eastern corner of Michigan, with a full snow cover today, covering up our garlic field with its white, fluffy, and warm winter blanket. The roots of our nearly 25,000 garlic cloves planted during October and November will keep growing, deep into our healthy soil, even during the winter giving us the best possible start to a great harvest during July of 2014.

Phoebe LOVES the snow and could stay outside forever. Here she is in our main garlic field where ~20,000 cloves are planted for this coming season (the overflow of ~5,000 unexpected cloves is planted back in the 2009 field). Her ears are blowing in the wind, and the snow is flying into her face and eyes as I captured this photo. What is far more fun for her is simply racing, racing, racing back and forth, up and down the paths, through the underbrush coming back with masses of burrs of all sizes and shapes, chasing a frisbee, following tracks and smells, dashing at the birds at the bird feeders, and on and on and on. Although not obvious in this 'still life' photo, her zest for life is a joy to watch and feel. :)

"Dog in winter garlic field" at The Dyer Family Organic Farm

I have just written and sent the final Garlic Friends Newsletter for 2013, which gives you more of an update on our farm plus our warmest wishes for the holidays and 2014. Feel free to sign up for our farm's newsletter at our farm's website (www.dyerfamilyorganicfarm.com). It's easy, free, and of course your email address is never shared with anyone for any reason.

Tomorrow I will make another post here with some additional updates. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying the holiday season, choosing your gifts carefully, and spending as much as possible as locally as possible. :)

I want to end with a lovely quote that is new to me, seen in a newsletter from some friends' local company in the Ann Arbor area called Nature and Nurture Seeds:

As you hold loving thoughts toward every person and animal and even towards plants, stars, oceans, rivers, and hills (along with soil - I added this), 

and as you are helpful and of service to the world, so you will find yourself growing more happy each day.   

~~   Luther Burbank

I'm smiling as I type this, and I hope you are too after reading those wise and thoughtful words. :)

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Cultivating, inch by inch, row by row

I changed the photo at the top of my blog today to that of one single organically-grown strawberry in our new garden on our farm. It looks pristine and perfect, and it is, but not without an enormous effort. :) This new strawberry bed has been prepped (cultivated) over and over, weeded over and over, the blossoms picked off these 50 first year plants over and over with a few that still escaped my attention and went on to actually become this one gorgeous berry, giving us a preview of our hopes for a huge harvest next year!

Now we need to finish the fencing around this bed, which also contains our 50 rhubarb plants, 50 asparagus plants, and the additional tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and corn that could not fit into our other family garden (because of rotational space needs). We have already found turtles, which love strawberries, and if the deer find this garden and chow down on everything before we get that fence up and electrified, that will be a very sad day. We have been stopped by rain, rain, rain and the need to finish the first attempt at a chicken coop in order to get our chicks out of the garage.

Time to get outside (now, since more rain and thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon) so here are just a few photos of the chicks and Phoebe, their guard dog:

The coop with the 8 chicks (1 rooster and 7 little red hens) all nestled in a pile together underneath their nighttime roosting spot. 

The chicks exploring their new home. After they have had a few days to get used to their home, when they start putting themselves 'to bed' each night in their coop, then they will be able to become free-range again. 

The chicks free-ranging in one of their favorite spots, kicking the leaves underneath an oak tree.

All 8 chicks are there somewhere, with the white rooster clearly visible.

Phoebe on break from guarding the chicks, hopping in my car while getting its first inside cleaning since we bought the farm

Phoebe doing guard duty. The chicken coop is just to the left out of sight in this photo. She comes running if she hears a bit of a distress call from a chick. She frightens them herself with her exuberance and herding instincts, but she is 'on guard!' She throws herself into the air if a hawk or vulture flies over our farm. I don't expect she will ever catch one, but she lets them know this is a 'no-fly zone' in her view. 

PS - I started a new tag with this post - Chickens!

Cultivate your life (even the same spot, over and over) - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

The first frenzy is done! and easy lasagna recipe

It's a mad-dash time between the days that (1) the green (early) garlic is harvested and marketed during late April to early May and (2) the garlic scapes are done emerging.

During those 4-6 weeks when we are in full-motion-mode, my husband and/or I have been writing weekly newsletters, contacting and/or delivering to chefs almost daily, finalizing all details for our Garlic CSA members with them coming out to the farm for their early pick-ups, finishing all details for the applications for the four farmers' markets that we attend, actually getting to our markets fully-stocked with a smile on our faces and the ability to stand up for four hours and multi-task 3rd-grade math, questions about garlic scapes, and catching up with friends (even if we only had 4-5 hours of sleep), held our CSA potluck at the farm, held a U-pick day for the garlic scapes, trying to get our own garden in (in between late frosts and freezes), getting our chicks, mentoring a dietetic student, and a gazillion other things I have already forgotten because they got done or didn't or are still in progress (like a chicken coop, more electric fencing, cutting/raking/baling the hay from our cover crops). Oh, did I mention weeding?

The last newsletter for a month or so went out last night. If you are interested, here is the link. It does have a photo of our 7 week-old hens and the 1 rooster still remaining with us.

I made a very simple lasagna for our CSA potluck dinner this past weekend. Here is a photo (below) before it was cooked. There was no time to get a photo after it came out of the oven, because it was eaten that quickly at the potluck, with people standing around it asking "Who made the lasagna?"

On a day with lots of time (not during the summer), I would make my own super-sauce, but this time I simply used a jar of the sauce that we make ourselves from our home-grown tomatoes, garlic, and herbs. Use your own favorite store-bought or home-made sauce.

Ingredients (brands mentioned for helpfulness, I get no payments of any kind from anyone):
1-16 ounce jar pasta sauce (our own)
1-15 ounce can roasted tomato chunks (I used Muir Glen)
1-1# container of whole milk ricotta cheese (I forget)
2 eggs (from our friends at Bridgewater Barns Farm - in a few months we'll be using our own!)
6 ounce pre-shredded mozzarella cheese (I used Organic Valley)
smidgeon of salt
box of baked (ready to use) organic whole wheat lasagna noodles (Delallo - I used the whole box)
5-8 garlic scapes

Directions: (this is so easy, I almost felt like I was making 'Dump Cake', a processed-food recipe using 'boxes' and 'cans' of ingredients - I've only heard about this, never made it)

1) pour about 1/2 cup of sauce in an 9x13 glass baking dish
2) combine ricotta cheese and eggs in a bowl, mix well, add a smidgeon of salt and mix again
3) layer about 5-6 pasta noodles in dish over that first little bit of sauce
4) spread about 1/2 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles
5) spread about 1/2 of the remaining sauce over the ricotta
6) layer another 5-6 pasta noodles
7) repeat 4-6
8) over the top layer of pasta, drain the entire can of roasted tomato chunks and liquid, spread to even out
9) sprinkle the package of shredded cheese over the tomatoes
10) if you are fancy and flush in garlic scapes like we are, layer several garlic scapes over the cheese before covering with foil and baking 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

I know all recipes say to let the lasagna sit for 10 minutes or so before eating. Nope, we did not do that at the potluck. It came out of the oven, I ran it out to the barn, people dove in, and then the comments started coming. That was that! Really, I'm thankful I took a photo when I assembled it early in the morning.

Our food blessing at the CSA potluck dinner was our short and sweet one, without me needing to dash back to the house (again) for our book of food blessings plus my reading glasses:

We thank all hands and hearts that brought us this meal. 

~~ Diana Dyer

So much else to do. :) Today I am taking a break (kind of) from farming and am going to clean out my car for the first time since we bought the farm. It's been four years. Kaya's nose-prints on the inside windows have been obliterated by Phoebe's and the general amount of dust, but I am going to try to vacuum and wipe off at least the top layer of everything.

No promises about when I can blog next. I still try to post short up-dates on our farm's Facebook page, so look for me there and in our farm's newsletter when it gets going again (sign up is on our farm's website at www.dyerfamilyorganicfarm.com).

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Green Heron and Green Garlic Dip

I stayed home this afternoon instead of taking our garlic scapes to our Wednesday farmers' market with my husband since we didn't really know when/if the severe storm sweeping through the country this afternoon would really hit our area in SE Michigan. If it was just the two of us to worry about, I would have gone as usual. However, with a dog that trembles, shakes, pants, and downright quivers when thunder is 100 miles away (let alone sirens for tornado warnings), we decided that one of us could stay home because the market might be slow today due to the impending storm plus one of us should stay home to be able to reassure Phoebe (since the potential storm is supposed to be particularly severe).

So what to do when I am so far behind that I'll never catch up? First Phoebe and I made the rounds of the farm and battened down the hatches so to speak outside, making sure anything that could fly away in the wind was in the garage or barn. Then I decided to download photos that were backlogged and even look at and label them (while keeping an eye on the weather outside and on the TV channel).

I finally changed the photo on the top of my blog today, showing our latest and best new bird on the farm. It is a green heron, patiently waiting for its breakfast to appear on the edge of our pond. I don't have a great camera, and I take many photos through windows, using the zoom, always just hoping for the best, meaning that the photo is not too blurry. I have seen green herons many times over the years, but this was the first sighting on our farm, so it was a special day!

In addition, here is an easy spring-time bean dip recipe using lovely green garlic, if you're lucky enough to find some at your local farmers markets. Ingredients are easy, readily available (other than the green garlic), flexible, and healthy.

Green Garlic Bean Dip

~1 can (2 cups, 15-oz) drained northern white beans

~2-3 Tbps. lemon juice

8-10 trimmed stalks of green garlic so that you are using mainly the bulb end (trim off the roots - they are edible, wash them well and save for a salad - trim off any brown tips of the leaves and then cut off most of the leaves to use later in pesto)

Cut green garlic into ~1-inch pieces, add all ingredients to a large food processor, and blend until beans are smooth and there are small flecks of green stems. Taste and add more lemon juice if desired. If it is still too thick, add just a small amount of water to thin it down a bit. Add a bit of salt and pepper if desired. 

This recipe freezes well as most bean recipes do. 

Yum, yum! When green garlic is no longer available, the garlic scapes come next (which is right now in our area of the country this year - their emergence is always variable!), and they can also be used easily in this recipe! Enjoy!

Cultivate your life  - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Still no time to blog, but.......

A while ago I chimed in on a professional listserv of oncology dietitians (my friends and my professional peers) with my 2¢ regarding an article recently published pointing out the inconsistent information on the internet about cancer and nutrition information, which caught the attention of Dr. Sanjay Gupta who actually gave it some light of day (instead of having the article just buried in a professional journal).

One of the dietitians on this listserv asked if she could post my listserv response on the website for Meals to Heal, a company that provides home delivery of healthy meals for cancer patients. I agreed (with some tweaking), and it was posted up yesterday.

Please note, I am providing my readers the link to my 'guest blog post' on another website only as a reinforcement of everything I have been writing about on this blog since I started it in 2007 (I have not been paid to write this other blog post, nor am I paid in any way by that company, nor is my posting on that website a 'testimonial' for that company.) For long-time readers, it will contain nothing new (although perhaps I am a bit more frank than usual). For new readers, it will give you a very clear and succinct view of my opinions based on the work I have been doing for the oncology community at-large since my 2nd breast cancer diagnosis in 1995.

Bottom line – oncology centers need to have (more) Registered Dietitians (RDs) on staff, preferably those who are achieved the rigorous credential of being specialists in oncology nutrition with the initials CSO after their name. In fact, I had this very conversation with a friend this morning after she told me of a dear young friend of hers who has just been diagnosed with esophageal cancer at age 40.

"Tell them to get a referral to an RD at their cancer center 'asap'. Do not wait for a crisis, and do not let your friends take 'no' for an answer. Cause a 'ruckus' if necessary. Sending them a copy of my book is a good start, but this young man and his family will need much more of an individualized nutrition assessment and intervention than my book can possibly provide."

Today was non-stop filled with hand-weeding a field that is too wet to cultivate with the tractor and then harvesting, marketing, and cleaning our green garlic. Tonight it has been used as an ingredient for a catered dinner in town for many CEO's who belong to a national organization called Small Giants. It seems like a nice fit since our goal for this new farm has always been to become big enough to contribute to our community while also staying small enough so our focus can stay on "creating a healthy community".  We have tried to encompass those dual purposes in our farm's tag line/mission statement "Shaping our future from the ground up" with the choice of the word 'our' starting with our soil and working its way up to our community.

So even though I have no time to blog, I did it again. :) However, it's almost 9 pm, so now I need to quickly figure out what we are eating for supper and then get back to helping my husband prepare our chefs' orders for tomorrow's delivery.

Oh, and Phoebe had a new experience tonight while we were walking the farm for a break. She saw two turkeys and made them fly, clucking and gobbling away, high high high up and over some trees!

We should all get t-shirts or bandanas to wear that say "Life is Good". :)

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Wild weather and winter are still flying high (and more)

Just when I thought it was time to put away the winter coats and my turtleneck shirts, WHAM! comes winter roaring back again along with tornado watches, crazy wind, and rain, rain, rain, and more rain (the hail missed our farm). Our garlic is fine but the cold weather, some snow, combined with ALL the rain we have had makes it too miserable and not good for the soil to be out tromping around doing spring farm work. (Does Phoebe have sandy paws? No she has muddy paws, and belly, and tail, and nose, and is as happy as can be!)

So I am buckling down on finishing up 'stuff' on my desk and computer, knowing that soon, very soon, I will likely not be back to desk-work or paper-work (or vacuuming or dusting or unpacking) or even much computer-work for nearly 6 months. While I had been saying how much we will appreciate April, now I am saying how much we will all really, really appreciate May!

I don't accept many speaking engagements anymore, but I did recently visit Richmond, Virginia, where I was honored to be invited to deliver the opening session at The Virginia Dietetic Association. The theme of their meeting was "Steer Your Course", so I talked about my eclectic career, my various positions as a Registered Dietitian where I have been considered a pioneer expanding the professional boundaries, in which I have 'steered my course' from one end of the health care spectrum (kidney dialysis and then intensive care units focused on the extreme end of disease and treatments), to a middle ground (focused on nutritional aspects for optimizing cancer survivorship), to the far other end (organic farming focused on the other extreme of disease prevention and health creation).

I gave these RDs and students (I had the students show their hands and was thrilled! to see a big block of them in attendance) numerous, numerous examples of additional RDs who are currently working outside the box ('bok choi') so to speak, outside a 'typical' career path where they have also 'steered their own course' based on their own values. I showed them real-life examples of RDs who are also all currently pioneers also working at the far end of the health care spectrum focused on disease prevention and health creation, either right in the soil like I am or by facilitating various and multiple aspects of sustainable food and agricultural systems.

Several students came up to me afterward to thank me for everything I had to say. Since they are the future of our profession and the future of our country, I thanked them for coming, for listening, and for thinking widely about their career options. I urged them to jump in, to not to be afraid to be different, to Go Big! with their career, to be leaders now (don't wait until ________, fill in the blank), and to call me if they needed courage. Lastly I invited them to keep in touch with me to share their career plans or even to brainstorm with me if desired. It would give me great pleasure to include slides highlighting them as new RDs contributing in their own unique way to a fair food system if I do any future speaking.

In the meantime, I am also trying to finish reading a book recommended by a young woman I recently met, The Icarus Deception: How high will you fly? by Seth Godin (actually my new friend recommended the author, and this book, one of many he has written, was available at our library). IF I had read even part of this book prior to speaking at the Virginia Dietetic Association, I would have added it to my resource list, urging all dietitians to read it and think deeply about what is keeping each of us from thinking outside the box, expanding the boundaries of our careers, what is keeping each of us from being leaders?

Read this book for courage.

This book has finally given me validation that my work, particularly my work advocating for cancer survivors via my book, my website, my blogs, and my speaking has been my 'art' for nearly the past two decades. I already had come to that understanding without the language or the realization that other people also thought like this, that one's work can be and even should be viewed as an expression of art. I remember being bewildered several years ago when a copy of my book offered to a local silent auction was rejected because it was not considered 'art'. Huh?

Godin pushes out the edges of defining art and artists by saying "Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground by choosing to do something unpredictable and brave (deep breath here), making connections, and working without a map. If you do those things, you are an artist, and you are making art, no matter what is says on your business card." (slightly paraphrased by me)

I repeatedly find myself saying a quiet 'wow' as I am reading this book, wow for validation of what I have been doing, yes - we all need or at least appreciate validation, but also for a deeper understanding of how my work, yes - my art, has continued to develop and evolve. In addition, this book also highlights the vital nature and importance of connections to the creation of art, to our new 'connection economy', and to our sense of purpose.

It's a short book and an 'easy read', except that it's not. It's challenging, it's affirming, but it's mostly challenging. I have begun reading bits of it to my husband (always a sign of a good book!). The author has posed questions that we are thinking about together as we go forward with our joint 'art', i.e., our farm, our work.

It's also a hopeful book, which is important to me, as I read far too many depressing books about our many broken systems, even ones that try to end on a hopeful note.

This may be my last blog post for a while although I will be having several dietetic students on the farm over the next several months for the School to Farm Program sponsored by The Hunger & Environmental Dietetic Practice Group so perhaps I'll have them develop a blog post or two during their time with us. Thus I invite those of you who wish to stay connected to "Like" our farm's Facebook page so that you will automatically receive the short updates that my husband or I post there. For those of you who are not Facebook members, the very same short updates can be seen at the bottom of our farm's website www.dyerfamilyorganicfarm.com.

It's now been 18 years this month since my second breast cancer surgery, and it's been 16 years this month since my story as a Registered Dietitian/cancer survivor was written about in The Detroit Free Press, which was the article that first pushed me out of the trenches into the wide, wide world.  So even though both wild weather and winter are still 'flying high' here during April in the upper Midwest this year, I am grateful beyond measure to also still be 'flying high' as a multiple-time cancer survivor with the opportunities before me to 'make a ruckus' (another of Godin's mandates!), to do something 'interesting' (yet another of his mandates), plus to be making art that is ultimately helping to create healthy communities.

Have a great spring and summer everyone! I'll check in when I'm able to carve out the time (I don't ever stop thinking about this blog and its readers). In the meantime, we have to get ready for our newest venture "Dick's Chicks!". We have 30 baby chicks arriving on May 16, and no, we are not ready for that steep learning curve yet. :) Interesting for sure, and perhaps even a neighborhood ruckus to boot since 50% of them are likely to be baby roosters!

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,                                                (and peep, peep, peep, too!)

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Easter Sunday Photos

The rain and gray clouds from this morning are almost gone, the snow piles are almost gone, the ice on the pond is almost gone, there is not too much mud :), we have no flowers blooming yet, but it's warm enough to walk around the farm without a winter coat.

No matter the weather tomorrow, no matter what jokes may be in store for April Fool's Day (actually for an early joke my fingers automatically typed April Food's Day!), no matter if we still get a late snow, we will really appreciate April's spring and renewal this year!

Here are a few photos, just a few from this afternoon.

Photo: The 2013 garlic field at The Dyer Family Organic Farm, where yesterday I walked through the field to straighten (or find and replace) the stakes marking the end of each section for our 40+ varieties. Deer walk through the fields all winter at night without out any regard for carefully walking on the paths between our raised beds (Walking 101), or an even more advanced concept, walking in the designated sections between the varieties (Walking 201). Not too many deer signed up for either class! As a matter of candor here, neither did Phoebe. :)

Photo: Two years ago, our 2013 garlic field was covered with scrub/overgrowth, all of it 10-30 feet high, most of it invasive species. We saved as many good trees as we could. Here is one being tapped for our maple syrup in a sumac copse that had significant ice damage this winter (like a good deal of our farm) and still needs clean up. 

Photo: We have debated and debated about cutting down this box elder tree, which is on the east side of our 2012 garlic field and on the west side of our 2011 garlic field . It is considered a 'junk tree', but this single tree (a member of the maple family) is our largest sap producer. We actually have two taps on this tree and fill that 5 gallon bucket almost daily. The sap is not as concentrated as that produced by a sugar maple tree, but it is still delicious! Besides, for two years we positioned our wooden swing to be in the shade during the heat of the day so we could sit down once in a while for a short rest when harvesting our garlic in July. I think the debate is over and this tree will stay!

Photo: Our pond, the ice almost gone, looking to the west with our grape arbor in the foreground. It has taken us (mostly my husband) three years of careful pruning to: 

#1) find the number of vines that had been planted, 

#2) find the base of each individual live vine, 

#3) cut out the dead and excessive vineage, 

#4) remove all the other vegetation that was in there - awful rose bushes, buckthorn, honeysuckle, autumn olive, and red-twig dogwood, but we saw no poison ivy!, 

#5) untangle the vines from and take out the old welded wire fence, 

#6) put in the correct support, which is two 8-foot cedar posts supporting a two-wire arbor and one 6-foot t-post at each plant, 

#7 tie up and prune the remaining vines, and 

#8 now we are waiting for blossoms (there are buds) and grapes!! 

A one-line item on the the 'to-do' white board in the kitchen has been a 100-step process and taken three years, but we are very near the finish line - whoo-hoo!!

Photo: Our pond with the ice almost gone, photo taken from the back of the garage. The 'bare area' in the center of the photo actually does have lawn grass and clover planted and growing. This is the area that was wet with water flowing back into the house due to poor grading, poor drainage, poor planning, etc etc. There are still sections where cattails growing although they are not clearly visible in this photo. Someday (maybe this summer) we'll start developing this low area behind our house (and where our walk-out basement is) into useable outdoor living space. We have such grand visions and in fact we bought this whole mess because we had those grand visions of what care and love could bring to the sadness that overcame this land and house. :)

Happy spring everyone! It won't be long now before I'll have to put blogging on the back burner as we move into our outside focus. Phoebe can't wait!! She has already had to have one emergency bath at the pet store as she found something to roll-in that was just glorious in her view of the world and just downright awful in ours!

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row, or trim out vine by vine!

Diana Dyer, MS, RD 

A new favorite dog photo!

I am finally taking a morning to download, view, sort, and label photos that have been in my camera for weeks and weeks. I won't get them all done this morning, but I found this one of Phoebe taken the morning of February 27 as we waded out into our last 'big snow'. We had 'only' 6 inches but it was on top of 2 inches of slush that came down first, so it was very challenging walking, and when I used the word 'wading', that is rather what it felt like.

We did lose power, but fortunately not for days and days. We can heat part of our house well enough with wood heat, so we were fine, and it was a great morning to be out looking at what the storm did to the trees on our property. Needless to say, we have lots of clean up to do, but thankfully, not too much major damage to living trees. Everything that came down will become fuel for the next time we need wood heat.

Phoebe just had a wonderful time, what else can I say? She was really disappointed when I finally needed to go in to warm up my feet (even without power or heat in the house). I'm so glad I snapped this one pix when her head was not down in the snow, so I could remember how she looked in motion. I'm both surprised and happy that it came out fairly in focus! I put this photo on the top of my blog this morning but within my post today so it stays in the archives, too. Yes, this post gets tagged under 'Dogs'. :)

Phoebe, Snow Dog!

I started this session of photo sorting this morning with the goal of getting the photos organized that I took yesterday when we tapped our maple trees for the first time! We don't have any sugar maples but we do have several good size healthy red maples. Their sap is more dilute than that from sugar maples, so it will take longer to concentrate into maple syrup, but first up is using the sap to make some beer. I have already tasted it. It is very clear, it looks just like water, and is just sweet enough for me with a vegetable smell to it! It was very refreshing, and just to experiment, I actually used some to make coffee this morning. I never sweeten my tea or coffee, so this was an experiment. By using only ~1 cup of of the sap with about 3 cups of water, my coffee was "just right", different, but not too sweet. 

So look for more photos to come. I'll post a few here and when I really do get organized, I'll post more of them on our farm's Facebook page. 

Here is a quote from the top of our farm's website that seems pertinent today:

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow (like maple sap in your coffee!) - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

"Get a border collie!"

From the comment section following today's NYTimes article about the benefits of a Mediterranean diet for reducing risk of heart attacks is this precious sentence from a woman named Carole who is in her 80's: 

"I have my own remedy for avoiding the "grim reaper" as long as possible. It's called "get a Border Collie", and make sure he or she gets enough exercise!! Be sure you keep up with the dog!"

I gave that comment a 'thumbs-up' rating! 

Phoebe, half Aussie and half Border Collie, keeps us on the run, being both faster than we are and also smarter than we are. 

Garlic, kale, mostly locally grown foods (no olives grown in Michigan), cooking, no (minimal) junk and processed foods to eat, our farm, family and friends, and our dog are our 'secret' to happiness and hopefully will also contribute to our longevity and a rich quality of life. (big smile here.........)

Ok, Phoebe, let's get outside and run, even with the rain, sleet, and the snow on its way today!

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD 

Sunrise on the farm

.......with Phoebe in the lead. Our snow melted during a January thaw, but really cold weather is now back with the ground frozen and Phoebe running over the property each morning searching out traces of the night time animal life, all of which she views as intruding into her ordered domain.

I know that the details in this photo are difficult to see, but if you can't initially see our dog Phoebe, she is standing in the driveway leading up to the barn.

She now has so much underfur plus fur between her toes on her feet that I do think she could stay outside all day and all night and does not understand why I feel I must go inside to warm up my hands and feet (tonight it is 4 degrees right now and last night went down to approximately minus 10 degrees in our area - brrrrr, yes, brrrrr, the house has been cool all day today).

Sunrise with Phoebe is worth the process rolling out of bed, getting bundled up, even if I am still in my PJ's underneath my down coat and warm boots and hat and gloves and scarf and..., and..., and...  I am SO slow getting ready to head out when Phoebe is already dressed and ready to go! Good thing that I am pretty sure she loves me and is (sort of) patient. :)

Cultivate your life – you are what you grow, inch by inch, row by row, 

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

New Favorite Proverb

I read a short proverb last night that might become my new favorite, at least for the next three months:

"One kind word can warm three winter months." 

~~ Japanese Proverb

I have had time to read our holiday letters from friends while they came in this year, and now I am reading many of them again (there are still a few to come - I know who is late, and I am looking forward to your letter!). There are years and years of kind words and deeds contained in the memories of these friends, both long-distance and here in Ann Arbor, all of which convey a very warm feeling indeed, like being snuggled up in a quilt with each square being the memories of a friend, more than enough warmth to carry me through our winter months where this year it is actually cold and snowy and dark like winter should be in Michigan (yea!).

Almost all of these friends have in some way come into my life or stayed in my life because of my cancer diagnoses, with the help they gave me or due to the the path their support put me on. Every cell in my body feels the warm of that quilt I'm snuggled in, the gratitude I have for where I am today with the opportunities I have to pay these years of kind words and deeds forward.

I hope each of my readers has had this feeling from hearing a kind word and has also been able to share their own warmth with those in need. This hope seems like a thoughtful way to start and share another new year together.  

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

PS - the new photo at the top of my blog shows Phoebe in her orange vest, which hopefully tells everyone that she is not a deer nor a coyote and also helps us keep track of her as we roam our farm in the snow. She is in her glory being outside. Her undercoat of fur has grown in thick and sticks out all over like a wild hairdo. She could stay outside all day and does not understand why we ever have to go inside to warm up my fingers and toes!

PPS - Here is the favorite poem by John O'Donohue I replaced with this Japanese proverb. I like it too, and don't want to lose it.

“Unfinished Poem
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

Soil Day follow up

This morning was an unplanned 'lazy (rainy) morning'. Of course there is work to do in the barn (and I could always vacuum up the dog fur in the house - smile), but my husband and I both agreed that the barn work was not urgent, and the fur will also need vacuuming tomorrow, so instead I did some reading from one of the books that I requested this week from our library.

I am always on the wait list for a 'slew' of books that sound interesting to me, and obviously to others in my community. I was lucky, this book had no waiting list, and to be honest, I was surprised that our local library even had a copy of this book. (I very frequently need to request books from other Michigan libraries, including books that only are available to borrow from our many universities and colleges.)

I am reading For the Health of the Land, previously unpublished essays by Aldo Leopold (author of A Sand County Almanac which I cited in my previous post about World Soil Day), edited by JB Callicott and ET Freyfogel (1999). Every time I read Aldo Leopold's words I learn more about his views of 'land health', which can be illuminating, satisfying, and unsettling, particularly because the farmer is the focus of most of his later writings. To give these insights time to percolate, I began perusing my blog stats, looking for the recipe with the most views. I only took the time to look back through my posts in 2012 and found this one for Kale-Mushroom Strata (I hope I have put this on my kale blog, too), which has a ton of views for some reason!

I do remember making this dish and loving it, however, what struck me as I re-read my post was how I ended it, with this quote, which brought up a deep memory of happiness:

When we put on the apron, we are nurturing. 

This is not work; it’s love. 

Carol Nicklaus - Danbury, Conn.

(from her Letter to the Editor, New York Times, Sept. 25, 2011)

As I think of cooking and farming, they are both love, not work, at least not 'drudgery'. Both involve nurturing our various communities, including our 'land community' to which Aldo Leopold addresses much of his writing. Both take time and intention, both take a spirit of adventure and curiosity. There may be guidelines but there is no real definitive 'cookbook' for either pursuit. To be successful at each in the deepest sense requires that the 'product' not be measured only in terms of 'yield' but the contribution to the commons, the common good, the commonwealth, commonweal, or our common health. 

I hope that the preparation of all the recipes on this blog contributes to your community's health, indeed your commonwealth. 

Here are the other books sitting in a pile to read (books on my library list always seem to come at once!):

A Time to Plant: life lessons in work, prayer, and dirt by Kyle T. Kramer (foreword by Bill McKibben)

American Earth: Environmental Writings Since Thoreau, edited by Bill McKibben

The Gourmet Paper Maker: handmade paper from fruits and vegetables, Ellaraine Lockie

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Launching (lift-off) is near

My website www.CancerRD.com went live in early 1998, way back when I was one of only a handful of Registered Dietitians (RD) to have created a presence in the enormous world of 'cyberspace' with an individual website. My website went up before websites were available for the American Dietetic Association, American Cancer Society, American Institute for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, you get the idea. In fact, both my website as CancerRD and the now enormous and popular website WebMD went up virtually simultaneously, and I have always loved the 'coincidence' of the timing and the similarity of our names.

However, as time has marched on, I have not 'kept up'. I have two, no three, problems. My webmaster from the 90's 'left me' (yes, I was jilted!) several years ago, leaving me with a website 1) I could not manage myself and needed very expensive 'maintenance' because the coding was so old, 2) a website that looked old (so old that in fact I have now been called an 'accidental hipster' because apparently the 90's look is coming back - haha!),  and finally 3) ever since I started my dianadyer blog in 2007, added my kale blog and cancer victory garden blog in 2009, I feel like my brain is both jumping up and down and back and forth. I am unable to keep up with or track of myself!

When writing and publishing my book A Dietitian's Cancer Story in 1997 (yes, way back to the 90's again), way back when I had no idea what I was doing because I was an 'accidental author', I made the decision to trust the Universe that the help I needed with this book would come my way. Thus my job was two-fold: 1) to recognize that help and then 2) invite it in to my life. I have had lots of practice developing that skill.

I forget the exact straw that caused me enough (too much) frustration, leading me to finally put out 'the ask' a while ago, seeking help with a better sense of 'place' on the internet and a more settled place in my mind. A clear answer did not come overnight, but when I finally looked at and tried to understand all the responses I was receiving, I was able to see that all roads were leading to same person.

The process of bringing the various interests of my life (at least those I share on cyberspace) to one place, under one roof, to one home has been easier and more fun than I dreamed it could be. I'm told that we are almost ready to have an open house, that my new website is almost ready 'to launch' and that I need to start reviewing, reviewing, reviewing everything we have done to date.

In a nutshell, everything will be in one place, all three of my blogs, ALL of my recipes, all the relevant content from my CancerRD.com website, all easily found and navigated from one homepage at www.dianadyer.com. You will still be able to subscribe to each blog on an individual basis. Not interested in kale? No problem! Only interested in kale? No problem - that is the only blog you will receive!

Oh this makes me nervous but excited. I hope there are not too many glitches, I hope I love 'the look' and 'the feel' when it's official, that I love it as much as I have while creating it. However, guess what, Diana? Remember this new website is a home in which I can move the furniture around, I can repaint the walls (all wallpaper is gone, gone, gone - woohoo!), bring in cut flowers from the wilds of our property and put them in a special spot for a day or two and replace them with something else. I am being metaphorical here of course, but you get the idea. I can update at will or leave one room to be the 'comfy' room where updating is not needed.

Please do not expect me to finish all the reviewing to be ready to 'go live' tomorrow. I still have such a long list of 'farm things' to do, and of course, my patient dog Phoebe really wants me to be done with this thing I sit in front of (my computer, of course) at the dining room table while she gazes outside through the sliding glass doors at the pond and fields where she would rather be exploring.

However, it is close, close, close, and I want my readers to be ready and maybe a little bit excited, too.

PS - This new website creation is not 'the opportunity' I mentioned in my last post that needs a decision. I will bring you up to date on that when the time is right, and I can find the time to collect my thoughts. :)

PPS - Also in that previous post, I added in some photos and text about my own white-crowned sparrows to complement what I wrote about Julie Zickefoose's white-crowned sparrows in her book Letters from Eden.

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

2012 - National Dietitian's Day #5!

I had to be reminded that today is National Dietitian's Day by a dietetics student who wrote on our farm's Facebook page! I am a little embarrassed about needing to be reminded, not having a blog post ready for posting, and I suppose I have plenty of 'excuses', but I cannot hazard a guess how any one of them would stack up on being 'good enough'. So I'll let you decide. :)

Let's see - what did I do today? What distracted me from knowing that today was the 5th National Dietitians Day and posting so late in the day?

1) I got up to take our dog out for her morning romp chasing away any deer who roam the farm at will during the night.

2) I had breakfast, a shower, and then checked my personal email (not Facebook)

3) I read Messenger, the first poem in Mary Oliver's book Thirst - thank you Elaine for mentioning it in your kind comment - tomorrow I will re-read it, thinking about it with another day's perspective. :)

4) I then re-read the poem Swan and also Lark Ascending in Mary Oliver's book Swan - especially these lines in Lark Ascending:

.....'and singing at the same time
joyfully, and yet
as if his heart would break'......

I often feel this, even though I do not understand it. Are joy and heart-break/heart-ache two sides of the same coin? Do they need to travel together? Maybe, I don't know, but I will try to keep my focus on the side of the coin that is joy, keeping the inevitable heart-break, the chronic heart-ache, on the back side, at least in the background, as long as possible.

5) I re-read the essay Letting it Go in Julie Zickefoose's book Letters from Eden - I love Julie's style of gardening, doing it as much for the white-crowned sparrows as any hope for an heirloom tomato. The white-crowned sparrows just love the mess in our 'landscaping', too. :)

Two late photo additions and text: My first white-crowned sparrows showed up at our farm last spring, loving our 'au naturale' landscaping (i.e., a delightful, wild-looking mess). There were 5-6 of them, just slightly bigger than the other small ground-feeding birds, looking and acting just like a tiny-tots hockey team, all suited up and stuffed into their padded uniforms, wearing a great-looking helmet, racing around and chasing the other birds and each other all over the 'rink', i.e., under the feeder. Watching this display after the white-crowned sparrows arrived, day after day, until the American tree sparrows and the juncos left their previously comfortable winter home for their northern summer homes, was one of the funniest things I have ever seen! And then one day, I realized the white-crowned sparrows had left for 'up north', too. I was sad to see them go, because I loved their 'antics'. I was eager to see them return in the fall, and now I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing them again for a few weeks this spring!

(I know this photo is probably fuzzy because it is 'blown up' too much. I still love looking at the great 'white crown' on this bird). 

6) I began designing the front and back labels for the Chive Blossom Vinegar that I will be selling at our farmers markets. (slow work, fun work, playing around with design) I chose and ordered the glass jars on Monday, they were delivered on Wednesday, I began designing today after getting a full visual feel for how large of a space I have to work with)

7) Had a great phone call with a friend, fellow (no, 'sister') farmer, ranging from high-energy dogs to my dynamite daughters-in-law. Oh yes, some talk was about garlic, pigs, farmers markets, and how to market (i.e., sell) our products for a fair price that leads to a living wage, too.

8) Drove to a play date for our dog Phoebe, with her former owners and their dog. (no lying around cooling off in the ponds today - she got WAY too smelly and needed a full-soap bath yesterday, which wore me out - ha! - maybe that is my good excuse for not being ready with a Dietitian Day post today!)

9) I weighed up some garlic for a friend who swung by, through our circle drive, with a beautiful sleeping baby in the car - no visiting - must keep baby sleeping. Phoebe, stop barking! I remember those days so long ago now!

10) Tried to catch up (haha!) on another friend/author's blog. I highly recommend that all cancer survivors read any of the well-written books by Wendy Harpham, MD and visit her blog On Healthy Survivorship. Wendy's blog is her 'labor of love', and I confess that I was a little bit relieved to see that some of her posts are as lengthy as mine can be. Wendy's writing is the reason I still subscribe to Oncology Times. Frankly, I get weary and find I am decidedly uninterested in reading anything about new treatment protocols, etc, etc, etc anymore, unless they are talking about providing services for cancer survivors (or cancer prevention, but not much, if any, of that in The Oncology Times). Instead, I look for Wendy's articles about being a long-term survivor, both struggling and easing her way through life after cancer and life with cancer, life that has included big doses of uncertainty and loss but also joy. Her articles for Oncology Times describe her experiences and thoughts during her cancer journey while wearing the dual hats of patient and doctor, written for oncologists, trying to give them a glimpse with some tools to be the best healer they can be. I also have started a heart-felt note to Wendy, but I need to create a special time to finish it. Notes like that are not just a 'dash it off and be done with it' type of note. :)

11) I decided I have spent way too much time (years) reading about science and food and 'current affairs' (i.e., politics - arghhh) and not nearly enough time reading poetry. I am still dwelling on 'how could I have missed Mary Oliver?' and who knows who/what else, so I signed off of a couple of blogs that make me grit my teeth most of the time, even when I basically agree with their views. (I remember mentioning that I finally stopped listening to the radio, even NPR!, last summer, choosing to spend any time in the car listening to favorite music CDs.) Instead I signed up for Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Thus when I start my day at the computer, I will read a bit of poetry and other literary tidbits, rather than those blogs or reading serious and stupid headlines (like which celebrities wore the same dress and who wore it better? omg - who cares? - sigh.......).

12) Head down to the basement with our dog after first tracking down my husband out in the barn to sit out a tornado warning in the safest room in the house, our brewery and canning room. (Being Midwest born and bred, plus seeing The Wizard of Oz at a vulnerable young age, I have had a life-long healthy fear of tornados and refused to even look at a house more than once that did not have a basement while we were farm-hunting!) While racing in from the barn and to the basement, my husband thought to bring everything we needed for the two of us to finish shelling the popcorn we harvested last fall. During that hour, I got a call on my cell phone (who is checking on us?) expecting my mother. Instead, totally unexpected, it was the farmer who won the poetry slam at the MOSES Organic Farming conference, just letting me know his winning poem was now up on Facebook. His poem brought me to tears, as did last year's winning poem. I'll write more about this later.

13) Tornado warning still in effect for 5 more minutes, however, now the thunder is really close and we get to see how our new dog is shaking, panting, and laying on our feet, her head in our laps, curling up small instead of in her usual stretching and sprawling completely relaxed repose. We're done with the popcorn, time for a beer (for us) from our supply of home-made and locally-brewed beers in the brewery.

14) So much to do, so much needs my attention. So many choices to make between what I need to do, what I want to do, what I love to do. What will I choose to do? Will I make my life crazy-busy, choosing to accept an 'opportunity' that would cause any 'sensible' dietitian to jump up and down with crazy delight or will I pass it up/pass it off? This sounds rather vague, I know that :), and hmm, hmm, maybe just maybe, this pending 'opportunity' that has been 'occupying' Diana's mind for the past month is the reason I am ignoring National Dietitian Day! Too much to think about, too few hours in the day that I don't need to sleep, too few brain cells for effective and chronic multi-tasking (age and late/lingering 'chemo-brain' are both a part of my life), too much of a desire to explore poetry and my birds and have my hands in the soil. One way or another, I'll let you know some of the details, yes, or no, big or little, what is appropriate, when the time is right, what I decide, how I decided, why I decided what to do about this 'opportunity'.

15) Ok - back to a tornado watch for our area until 11 pm tonight - ok - I still don't know what we're having for supper, being rather interrupted late this afternoon when I would typically be starting to think about possibilities. At least we still have power (this is a big concern because power outages happen often with storms/wind due to so many dead and still-waiting-to-fall ash trees, stripped of their beautiful life and brought to their knees by the non-native and invasive emerald ash borer), so scrounging up something will be easy to do. Popcorn! We have plenty of that - just kidding, but that is an option for later tonight if supper is skimpy.

16) So off to think about supper, my husband is off to the barn, Phoebe is still at/on my feet. I'll make a call to check on my mother again in a few minutes, upstairs where cell phone reception is better. I'll close up shop with my computer for the day, make sure Phoebe has one last chance to tell the deer 'scram!', read a bit for pleasure before falling into bed, sleeping well (unless of course those tornado sirens fire off again during the evening).

17) Let me just end by saying that I don't know if I am 'retired' or not as a dietitian. I still pay full dues, still do a lot of volunteer work at the national level for subgroups within my professional organization (The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is the new name this year for the former American Dietetic Association). I am speaking next month at our Local Food Summit, billed as a Dietitian - Farmer - Author, so that sounds like I am still a dietitian and definitely not retired! I have three types of favorite emails to see in my Inbox: 1) from our sons/their wives and friends, 2) from dietetic students, interns, and other RDs, and 3) comments from my blogs, all of which I write as a dietitian. So, since 2 out of 3 of my favorite emails have something to do with being a dietitian, I think that means I am not retired.

I see I didn't even list checking Facebook. It was sometime in the late afternoon, before the tornado warning. I take that as a sign that I have very likely forgotten to include at least a dozen more things I did today, things that filled my day but clearly distracted me from focusing on National Dietitian Day. Oh right now I can remember one more - I washed the walls in our mudroom and kitchen where Phoebe had done artwork with her lovely feathery but muddy tail.

Just for fun (and if you have time) here are the posts I have written for the past 4 years on (or near) National Dietitian Day. Someday, I'll re-read them again myself to see how my thoughts may have evolved during these past five years.

2011  I'm Late Again
2010  It's All About Change
2009  There and Back Again
2008  Celebrate National Dietitian's Day (the first!)

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD