2016 National Dietitian Day – Full Circle

What can I say? I'm (very, very) late to the party, again! However, tonight as I was searching for one file on my computer, I found another file, which is called "serendipity". I took that as a nudge from the Universe that I finally needed to put other things aside and dedicate the time to do my annual Dietitian Day post, which officially was March 9th. :)

Back in 2012, I was interviewed for a very nice article in Today's Dietitian called "Get to Know Diana Dyer, MS, RD". Many articles published in Today's Dietitian Magazine have links so that they can be read on-line, but not this one. I have a copy, but I was not able to easily share the article with my on-line readers or my students. However, bingo! I actually found a copy of the article in a computer file, so in honor of a late post for National Dietitian Day 2016, I thought I would share the article on my blog. As I read through the questions and my answers, it actually covered a lot of ground, the many ways I have worked as a Registered Dietitian. 

I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope that dietetic students and new RDs find some words of wisdom as they embark on an interesting, fulfilling, and hopefully, fun career! The world urgently needs your knowledge, your skills, and your passion as you share your love of food and its impact on health in the widest sense possible with the widest audience possible, from the soil to the planet and everything and everyone in between. 

Get to Know….Today's Dietitian, July 2012, written by Juliann Schaeffer

Diana Dyer

From Cancer Dietitian to Garlic Goddess

Diana Dyer, MS, RD, describes her current vocation as  “CEO of tractor repair and weeding to bottle washer and barn sweeper,” yet looking back to her dietetics beginnings, you may never have guessed this one-time critical care specialist would end up trading in daily TPN feedings for a reign as “garlic goddess” (as named by one of her customers) overlooking a field of green. 

Dyer started out her nutrition career in the late ‘70s as a renal dietitian, then quickly took on critical care, at hospitals in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. After two decades of caring for patients in ICU's, she mustered up the courage to make her first (certainly not her last) unconventional work choice “to leave behind my comfortable and rather insulated world as a well-respected critical care specialist for the complete unknown world in real life,” to instead focus on serving the cancer survivorship community. Having survived neuroblastoma as a child and two later bouts of breast cancer, Dyer felt the message of nutrition’s role in cancer prevention and survivorship wasn’t being heard by the masses—so she became that voice. 

Through writing A Dietitian’s Cancer Story, developing the website www.CancerRD.com, and speaking to audiences nationwide after her book received widespread praise by The New York Times, for roughly a decade Dyer brought her positive message of how nutrition and other complementary therapies can optimize cancer outcomes to Americans of all shapes and sizes.

In 2009, Dyer decided to mix it up yet again, with her husband this time. The team left behind their regular paychecks and returned to their roots, quite literally, to fulfill a longtime dream to become organic farmers, establishing The Dyer Family Organic Farm just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, where today they specialize in all things garlic.

For someone who has been through so much hardship, you might think her life outlook would be a bit (understandably) hardened; this couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead of bitterness and bite, Dyer takes from her tribulations a good helping of graciousness and gratitude—and passes it on to whoever will listen. 

“I know for sure that neither cancer nor life is fair,” she says from what she’s learned from her three bouts with cancer. “So you have to figure out that in spite of the bad set of cards you have been dealt, you want to go on, you want to play this hand and do the best that you can, and that you can help write the script to your life—grabbing life, giving life everything we have, noticing everything, living everything, loving everything.”

For a taste of Dyer’s enthusiasm for nutrition and life itself, check out www.dianadyer.com, www.365daysofKale.com, or www.CancerVictoryGardens.com. 

TD: What’s your best advice for those new to the nutrition field?

Words of wisdom I have hoped to leave with new undergrads/interns:

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shore of wonder." 

–Ralph Sockman. 

I used this quote on my last day teaching dietetic undergrads at Eastern Michigan University. I took time in class to let them tell me what it meant to them. One student found me years later to tell me that meant a lot to her. 

TD: What book has most positively impacted your professional life?

Dyer: Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, which I read in 1974. This book opened my eyes to so many new ideas, vegetarianism of course, but also so many ways that food, nutrition, and social issues are related.

TD: If you could offer clients/patients only one piece of advice, what would it be?

Dyer: Please do not view cooking as ‘drudgery’; it is the deepest expression of love because it is creating a healthy body, a healthy family, a healthy home. Create and honor the time needed to cook simple meals, from whole foods, not convenience mixes or from ‘food in a box,’ and then sit down to eat a meal with friends or family on a daily basis.  

TD: What five items are always in your refrigerator/cupboard?  

Dyer: Only five? Here are eight, and I could easily list 20. Soymilk, tofu/tempeh, flaxseeds, kale, garlic, red wine, chocolate, green tea (all organic if possible).

TD: How important do you believe having a basic knowledge of farming and ‘where food comes from’ is in the battle to get Americans eating healthy?

Dyer: My ‘reaching for the stars’ wish for a new Farm Bill would be the inclusion of funding designated to have every single school in the country have a school garden with an RD—a master gardener coordinator who would lead and coordinate a grade-appropriate curriculum and activities for each school’s students that includes gardening, how good food is important (vital) for energy, learning, good health, skills for cooking, the enjoyment of eating food raised and prepared at school in groups together, and even selling the food raised by the school children to parents, local neighborhoods, etc. 

In addition, I believe all gardening, but particularly vegetable gardening, is the most all-encompassing ‘alternative or complementary strategy’ for achieving health after cancer. This awareness led me to develop my www.CancerVictoryGardens.com blog, but the concept is probably equally applicable to the treatment of all chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc.

TD: Local or organic? 

Dyer: Local AND organic is the gold standard. In addition, knowing the practices of your farmers/beekeeper/animal raiser/etc is even an higher standard, platinum perhaps? Know your farmer, know your food.

  

TD: What foods do you crave?

Dyer: Would you believe kale and other, even more bitter, greens? Yes, I do.

TD: How has cancer changed your outlook on eating? 

Dyer: Oh I love eating, I love food, but food is so much more than nutrients. Because of food, I also love life. I knew all of this before my 1995 cancer diagnosis, but only on the surface.  Now I know all of this viscerally, even more deeply, because I believe it, I live it, I grow it, and I teach it. When we sell our garlic at the local farmers’ markets, we sell a food grown for flavor and grown with love. We sell a story of happiness and all ‘food with a story tastes better’  (Wendell Berry).

TD: Your best farming tip that can also be applied to life?

Dyer: Our farm’s mission or ‘tagline’ is “shaping our future from the ground up.” Take care of your roots, your soil, and your foundation and you will grow healthy food, a healthy body and spirit, and be part of a healthy community. The word “our” in our tagline is meant to be very large and continuous, from our soil to our community and everything in between. 

*****************************

I enjoyed re-reading this article. In fact I found myself smiling so many times, realizing that even though this was written 4 years ago, I can hear myself saying many of the same things today! 

One aspect of what I do on our farm not mentioned in the article is my enjoyment from having dietetic students and dietetic interns work on our farm as part of the School to Farm Program that I wrote for the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. These future dietitians learn first hand (with their hands in the soil) not only where food comes from (and the challenges) but that the starting point for health is "We are what (and how) we grow" versus the more typical "We are what we eat". 

I would like to share a few of their words as they have reflected on this experience: 

• It was not until I began working on the Dyer's farm during my dietetic internship that I realized I do not often think about where my food comes from. I now urge my patients to know where their food comes from, to ask questions, to get to know their local farmers, with farmers' market shopping being a great first step. 

• I learned the importance of dietitians being advocates for a fair and healthy food system along with viewing food, nutrition, agriculture, and health in a connected, holistic way. 

• "Lessons learned"........Where to begin? I learned so much, about taking care of the land's health plus the importance of being very connected with the local food community and constantly nurturing that relationship. 

• My experience on the farm opened my eyes to the "big picture" of health which I will apply during my career as a Registered Dietitian. 

• I left the farm with many bricks in my career's foundation plus the courage and inspiration to be a leader.

• I learned the critical elements of a healthy and sustainable food system and left with the desire to promote diets for my patients that contribute to human health and well-being plus ecological and planetary health. 

• My time spent at your farm shaped my career and the path I am taking in more ways than I think I even know. I reflect on our conversations almost daily! I am now confident about my professional choices and excited about the changes I can make in the communities I serve. 

And these words from a dietetic intern coming to our farm this summer:

• When I started the search for an enrichment site, I was looking for a unique experience that would challenge me and broaden my understanding of and perspective on the field of dietetics. As our world continues to change, a sustainable diet for both our planet and our bodies will become more and more crucial. I feel strongly that it is the responsibility of the dietetics field to be the leaders in this movement, and I intend to focus my career efforts on this goal. Farmer-poet Wendell Berry once said "Don't think you can fix all the problems. Learn as much as you can and then work with it to increase the chance that you will make a good example." During these upcoming two weeks, I am eager to learn as much as I can and hopefully, someday, use this new knowledge to create a good example of my own. 

I am very humbled as I read through the full "lessons learned" from these students, some are short, some are essays, all are heart-felt. I have only taken snippets from what they wrote me. 

I am also very hopeful as these young people embark on their careers, sharing their passions by connecting the dots in all possible ways between food and health. Quoting Wendell Berry again "To be interested in food, but not food production, is clearly absurd". My students have clearly learned that individual health begins with healthy soil, teeming with helpful microbes as the foundation of a healthy soil food-web in order that the food we eat is both nutrient-dense and healthy for us, our community, and the planet. 

I look forward to hearing what interesting, challenging, and meaningful work they are doing as they go forward in the years and even decades to come! 

I hope it is not another full year before I post again on this blog, but that is possible and likely. 

Feel free to keep up to date with our farm via our farm's website, including information about our farm's new book Get Going with Great Garlic: Recipes from your garlic farmers' kitchen (ordering info is at the link) and our farm's email newsletter. Recent shorter updates (with photos) about what is going on at our farm are regularly posted up on our farm's Facebook page and Instagram. So in the meantime, feel free to check us out there, too. 

Lastly, to come full circle, most of my readers likely follow me because of my advocacy work (that began back in 1997 with the publication of my book A Dietitian's Cancer Story) to include nutrition assessments and information from a Registered Dietitian who is an oncology nutrition specialist (CSO) as a proactive and individualized professional service of true comprehensive cancer care, from the day of diagnosis forward to optimize treatment efficacy, survivorship health, and overall quality of life. 

Short story, I (and many others) am still working on that goal. It is a long road, but the need for and benefits from this goal have been given some long-overdue national attention at a recent workshop held at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, DC on March 14, 2016. All of the presentations from the full day-long workshop are available to the public to view on-line along with the slides. 

Although I was not involved with the planning committee for this workshop, I was involved in other ways behind the scenes. In addition, I was deeply honored to be invited to speak at this important workshop as an advocate, representing everyone who has had a cancer diagnosis along with all Registered Dietitians working with this patient population. My remarks were brief (less than 10 minutes) and can be viewed within the Session on Models of Care, moderated by Kim Robien, PhD, RD. They start at approximately 57 minutes into this video. 

This workshop is a step, an important first step. If you are at a point in your life where you can speak up (with your oncologist, the medical director of your cancer center, your insurance company, your place of employment), please ask when the professional services by a Registered Dietitian are going to be included as a component of comprehensive outpatient cancer care along with payment coverage that professional care. Feel free to be the squeaky wheel......we need all voices, all hands on deck, and don't take "no" for the final answer! :)

So yes, while I am now farming full time, I am still involved with cancer, right where I started back in the 90's, working now with more of a focus on prevention of cancer and other food-related diseases (versus my previous focus on cancer survivorship) by growing healthy food to nourish and educate my community. 

My message to my students: no matter how different our various paths and efforts as dietitians look, or the places where we work, my vision is that we are all working toward the same goal, which is the creation of healthy communities. I will end my 2016 Registered Dietitian Day post with a Swahili word that I (try to remember to) teach my students and have surely used in past blog posts:

Ujima - a Swahili word meaning "collective work and responsibility"

To build and maintain our community, to make our brothers' and sisters' problems our own, and to solve them together.                                                                                        

Two thumbs up for healthy communities, shaping our future literally from the ground up! 

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

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Catching up!

As tomorrow is September 8th and I have not posted anything since late April, I want you to know I am still here, still standing, still doing well, still overcommitted (again, LOL, what else is new?), and thus going to share just a very brief update.

Highlights since my last posting?

(1) Actually going through the organic certification process and coming out the other side with that USDA Organic Certification!! Finally!! It is not an exaggeration to say that we are still very excited about finally having our farm officially certified. We chose our farm name (Dyer Family Organic Farm) very intentionally back in 2009. We never dreamed that our process would take so much time (for so many reasons), but here we are, five years later. We proudly hang the USDA Organic symbol from our market tent. At some point over the winter months, we'll do a better job of having it inserted into our farm website, market banner, business cards, and other materials.

(2) Having the pleasure and privilege of both sons and their wives live with us for many weeks during this past summer, as they were between chapters in their life, between leases, and we welcomed them with both open arms and an open heart. We put them to work on our farm, of course, and we were busy beyond busy, but having them here was enormously helpful and enjoyable for us (and I believe for them, too). Again, I repeat, having our grown sons and their wives live with us was both a pleasure and privilege that I could not have seen in my future as I struggled through the various times I was undergoing chemotherapy and/or recovering to rebuild my life after all cancer therapy was completed.

Gratitude. Pure. And. Simple. 

(3) Although I don't have time to post on any of my blogs at the present time, I am still writing our farm's newsletter, which is weekly when we are in the marketing season. If you wish to subscribe, that is easy to do on our farm's website, and if you only wish to browse previous archived newsletters (there are lots of photos), you may do so at this link. In addition, if you want to follow daily updates for our farm, you may do so two ways via Facebook: a) Facebook feeds are visible at the bottom of our farm website's homepage without joining Facebook, and b) on Facebook itself (find and Like The Dyer Family Organic Farm/Dick's Pretty Good Garlic). Many customers stop by our table at the markets to say how much they enjoy reading the newsletter, even if they do not need garlic or honey that day! Awww…….I confess that I enjoy hearing how much they enjoy the newsletter. I look forward to writing it, just as I always have looked forward to writing on my blogs! :)

I don't know that there is any one photo that captures the summer perfectly. So I will include one of the first sunflowers we have had on the farm (planted by one of our summer interns). I have enjoyed looking forward to seeing them finally bloom, which only happened this week. And only this week did I first read a quote by Helen Keller that fits with my happy sunflowers:

"Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadows. 

It's what the sunflowers do."

I know that each of us has challenges, and shadows, but I hope your summer has had some healing R&R, some happiness, and some sunflowers. I hope you are looking forward to fall. And I also hope that you can keep life's shadows behind you. Addendum: The wind during a recent ferocious storm flattened these sunflowers after I took this photo but before I got it posted. A few days later, they are now doing their best to stand back up, with their faces still facing the sun. I'll just bet that the vast majority of my blog readers can relate. :)

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

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Yes! It's Official!

Life begins the day one plants a garden.

~~ Chinese Proverb

I have waited almost six months to be able to share this exciting news with my blog readers. Good things often take time to work, to emerge, or to fully develop, rather like rising bread, planting seeds, etc., and are well worth the wait.  

The brief backstory. A friend visited our farm last summer, telling me of her recent research focused on gardening therapy for cancer survivors. As I listened, I had one of those proverbial "light bulb" moments with racing thoughts that translated to: 

1. Wow - What a great project! 

2. Why didn't I think of that? 

3. How can I help her get as much data as possible from this study?

We talked a bit, I made some inquiries, and long story short, the 2014 distribution from my endowment at The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) will be able to provide the additional funds this researcher needs to do the critical biochemical analyses that were included with the original grant proposal but left unfunded. (Note: My endowment at AICR is funded by individual donations - thank you! - plus the amount I annually contribute from the sale of my book A Dietitian's Cancer Story.) 

For this study (called "Harvest for Health"), University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) cancer researchers plan to introduce 100 breast cancer survivors in a 5-county area in Alabama (see below) to a new kind of therapy — gardening, while pairing the breast cancer survivors with a Master Gardener from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

“Studies have shown a link between diet and cancer, and between physical activity and cancer. We want to see how cancer survivors respond to this gardening intervention, how it affects their diet and exercise behaviors, and their health-related quality of life and physical health status,” said Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., R.D., professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences and associate director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

“Harvest for Health” builds on a successful pilot study conducted by Dr. Demark-Wahnefried at UAB where Master Gardeners worked with a smaller group of cancer survivors over the course of a year to establish a vegetable garden.  At the end of that study, the published results showed that many survivors not only improved their diet and exercise behaviors, but 90% of the participants also demonstrated significant improvement in objective measures of their strength, agility, and endurance. 

This larger study had hoped to expand those findings by not only having a larger study group, but also by measuring several biochemical parameters that are frequently used as biomarkers of successful aging, i.e., telomerase, sVCAM, and d-dimer, at baseline, the 1-year mark, and the 2-year mark after the start of the study. While The Women’s Breast Health Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has generously provided the bulk of the Harvest for Health research grant, my endowment at AICR will fund the last piece to complete the study with as much data collection and analysis as possible. 

Dr. Demark-Wahnefried (who has led several previous pioneering research studies on cancer survivorship) has noted, "With advances in early detection and treatment, many cancers are now being cured; however, it is the side effects of cancer and its treatment that are often more of a problem than the cancer itself. Thus these biomarkers are important to measure because they tie into longevity and improved physical functioning much more so than cancer itself."

UAB provides tools and seedlings and will either prepare a raised bed in the yard of a survivor’s home or provide EarthBoxes® — large gardening containers on wheels — that can be kept on a porch or patio. Master Gardeners visit with the survivors twice a month for one year, offering advice, expertise and suggestions, while answering the questions new gardeners have. 

The Master Gardeners, who have completed a rigorous certification process from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, are all volunteers. “They are very excited to be making a difference in the lives of cancer survivors and their families,” Demark-Wahnefried said.

If the larger study shows the same improvements in healthy eating, increased exercise, and physical functioning, plus the biochemical signs of successful aging, it is hoped that the program can be offered to cancer survivors throughout Alabama. 

Special Note: The Harvest for Health study is still actively recruiting participants. If any of my readers are breast cancer survivors from (or know someone from) the following five Alabama counties (Cullman, Mobile, Blount, St. Clair or Walker) and are interested in participating in this study, you may call the following telephone # 205.996.7367 for more information. 

Dr. Demark-Wahnefried is a gardener herself. I asked when she had her original inspiration for this innovative research approach for cancer survivors. She told me it happened a while ago during her previous years as a researcher at Duke University's Cancer Center while she was conducting research - the Black Churches United for Better Health Project - in which Master Gardeners helped the churches establish Victory Gardens as a way to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among their members. 

That project was successful, so fast forward to 2014, hoping the same will be true for cancer survivors.  I'm not sure if my friend's great idea happened in a "flash" like mine did during our talk this past summer, but in any case, here is another example of a great idea that needed time to develop, to be nurtured, to grow, before finally blossoming. 

Thank you, Wendy, for your decades of high quality, pioneering nutrition and cancer research, for your dedication to the needs of cancer survivors, looking for nutritional and lifestyle strategies that will optimize their odds for both the extension and quality of life after cancer. 

I have been honored to contribute to each research project that my endowment at AICR has funded since 2001. However, I must confess that funding Harvest for Health in 2014 also gives me deep happiness, I suppose because this study brings together so many of my long-standing professional interests, friendships, and deeply-held personal values. 

As a long-time gardener myself, I have always loved the following quotation:

A garden is the best alternative therapy. 

~~ Germaine Greer

Now here's another great idea - let's change the quote above to simply say that a garden is the best therapy period, without being "alternative", providing multiple, far-reaching benefits for all cancer survivors, no matter the individual diagnosis, no matter where one lives, in fact for everyone, cancer diagnosis or not. :) 

And another great idea, i.e., words of advice, which my long-time blog readers have heard me say many times before - don't wait, don't wait, don't wait for this study to be done  to _________________ (fill in the blank); in this case, don't wait to get your garden started. Why? I'll repeat the quote I used to open up this blog post:

Life begins the day one plants a garden.

~~ Chinese Proverb

Ready to start? It's not too early to start dreaming, planning, or even planting some seeds indoors. Need help? Find a gardening friend, find a Master Gardener in your county (yes, they are everywhere, not just in Alabama), find, cultivate, and begin a new life. Yes, you are what you grow. :)

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

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Book News

In yesterday's post I promised another update. Long-time followers of my blog, which I began in 2007 (along with my website www.CancerRD.com beginning in 1998), know that my frequency of posting has been gradually decreasing, and this year I found myself more behind than ever in everything. My hope is that I am learning to handle this reality of being chronically so behind in ways that are helpful.

Being behind means that I am always looking at various aspects of my life in order to prioritize, reduce, and also eliminate some things, even those things that are meaningful to me.

The biggest (and difficult) change that I am going to make in 2014 is to phase out the print copy of my book A Dietitian's Cancer Story, which I first published in 1997 and has been in print continuously since then. Nearly 100,000 copies have been sold (no small feat for a self-published book), with all copies having been managed by me, hauled in my mini-van, stored in my garage, shipped out by me to individuals, book warehouses, and bookstores around the country and world with the help of my friendly and supportive UPS, FedEx, and USPS drivers over the past 17 years. I have also done all the book-keeping on this book (there was a time when I had three employees to help me manage everything I was doing, too!), all the updates (I did a major update and re-write in 2010), and marketing (including speaking all over the country since 1997), arrange for and approve the editing, printing, cover art, etc, etc, etc.

Everything I have done has been an amazing adventure that I could not have predicted nor have given any credence to if someone had been able to see into the future back in 1995 and told me that this book would become my life while I was undergoing chemo the second time and so weak and ill that I could not feed myself. Nope, I would not even have had the energy to laugh at such a preposterous thought! :)

I am my own best case example when I have told people over the years that "cancer can take you places that are both unimaginable and wonderful". I also have told people to "never, never, never define your future by only looking at your past". Again, I am a perfect example of that picture. No one from my past, and I mean no one, would have ever picked me as 'future author'. My book found me (somehow I found the courage to say 'yes') and helped me grow immensely as a person.

I hope I have met some of my blog readers over the years and that I have been able to inspire you and others (cancer survivor or not) to take the leap of faith and both dig in and spread your wings as you move forward in life facing challenges known and unknown with a wildly beating heart. I have used the phrase "Active Hope" for years to describe what I have done by taking my poor odds into my own two hands to add maybe only a few percentage points to the outcome.

I am so completely busy with my farming now that I do not know if I'll get around to ultimately putting my book into an "e-book" format. I have not ruled that idea out, but it is not on the front burner at the moment.

In the meantime, A Dietitian's Cancer Story is still available from:

• The American Institute for Cancer (AICR) where I have donated proceeds from the sale of my book (English and Spanish editions) since 1999. You may order on-line or by calling 1-800-843-8114. There are discounts available for orders of 10 books or more.   
• Amazon.com (of course, both English and Spanish editions are available there, search by the book title or my name)
• All bookstores may special order it for you, although I have stopped filling orders to their 'middle-man', so hurry if you want to order from your local independent bookstore
• Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor, MI has personally autographed copies that she will mail out to you or to anyone you specify as a gift. Just call the bookstore and Nicola's friendly staff will take your order over the phone. (734-662-0600)

If you have enjoyed reading my book in the past, please consider ordering a copy to donate to your local library or even your own cancer center's patient resource library. Proceeds will continue to be donated to AICR to fund research focused on identifying nutritional strategies to increase the odds for long-term survival and/or improve quality of life after cancer. I already know which project I am  funding in 2014, and I can't wait to tell you about it when I can officially spill the beans. It is my favorite project of all the great research I have funded since 2000. 

Although I will not stop blogging, I want to end this post with the same short quotation I used on my blog's first post back in June 2007. It is still one of my favorite quotes, precisely because it conjures up a blended sense of responsibility, caring, and wonder in my heart.

"No one could make a greater mistake than he who

did nothing because he could only do a little."

~ Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

If our paths cross in the future, please introduce yourself. I am inspired by my readers, the challenges you've gone through, your accomplishments, and what you are doing today to cultivate your life, to grow. While I am a full-time (plus) farmer now, I arrived there while traveling a cancer survivorship journey along with you. We have so much in common as fellow Earth travelers, and I enjoy feeling and thinking about that. :)

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

The Big Leap :)

Today's weather forecast was for a high of 65 degrees with 0% chance of rain. Current temperature is 50 degrees with increased heaviness of rain since around noon or so. We LOVE and need the rain, no complaints about that. And in fact, having an unexpected cold and rainy day has been just perfect for doing an unexpected inside job, like quickly filling out responses to questions required for our farm's nomination for an award!

Think Local First, an organization that promotes locally-owned businesses in our county, has created its  first 'Indie Awards', and our farm has been nominated for The Big Leap Award, which is for a business that 'took the leap' and successfully created new idea, model, or solution despite all the risks. Of course we are both delightfully surprised and honored to have received an email on Friday with the news that we had been nominated (wow - good thing one of us quickly scanned our farm's email account on Friday night), but truth be told, I am not sure we would have squeezed in the time to fill out the tough (but good) questions except for the fact that today (the deadline for submission) was not a day for outside farm work although I weeded during the early afternoon until I was starting to get cold and was also tired of 'dripping'.

The questions were great. They made us really think about our farm and what we are doing here. We had two friends (a fellow farmer and one of my dietetic students who is working with us on the farm this summer) help us brainstorm concepts on Saturday over dinner, I let things percolate in my brain while weeding yesterday, and then I word-smithed some answers this morning. My student helped catch omissions and repetitions this afternoon, and then my husband gave it the final review and finishing touches before I pushed 'submit' a few minutes ago.

Winning is not important to us. However, we are touched to have been noticed and nominated. And yes, I can appreciate anyone who has made a 'the big leap' after evaluating the risks, taking a deep breath, finding the courage to do something hard, and choosing to try to fly high into the unknown instead of staying low in the safe, known, and easy spot.

My father was an entrepreneur, ultimately taking an idea from nothing tangible to a company doing international work. I wish I could ask him if retrospectively he wishes he had kept his company small, doing great work focused in a community/regional area instead of spreading out nationally and to the world. I'm currently reading the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, which discusses companies who have done just that (such as our local Zingerman's Community of Businesses).

Our farm's business goals are the same as many of those companies featured in Small Giants:

• to be economically profitable and thus sustainable,
• provide the best place possible for us to enjoy working every day (along with any potential employees or volunteers), 
• to help diversify and revitalize our local economy with organically-grown and produced food, 
• to grow and provide the highest quality garlic and garlic products to our local community, 
• and through the care of the soil, land, and water under our stewardship to ultimately contribute to the creation of a healthy and thriving community. 

Here are the responses to the questions we were asked, which really made us think. Frankly, answering them was not quick; it took me all morning. I hope you enjoy reading them. (Every time I cut and paste, the formatting seems to get weird. I do not have time to re-type everything, so I hope the transfer is not too bad.)

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Tell us about your business:

We are a small specialized farm, growing 40+ varieties of garlic using organic growing practices. Although we could easily (and more profitably) sell all of our garlic via the internet, we intentionally sell ~100% of our garlic to our local community (shipping only to our two sons and a small number of friends and relatives who live across the country). We also intentionally sell our garlic to eaters across the full economic spectrum within our community, being as happy to sell our garlic to people using food assistance programs at 4 local farmers' markets within 12 miles of our farm as we are to local chefs at high-end restaurants.

Define success for your business:

Success........yes that it hard to define, as it is different for each business. We'll state right up front that we are close but not yet making a profit (which is only one measure of success). The start-up costs for our farm (i.e. our barn, our tractor) have been huge. However, while a profit is our goal and is necessary for all small farms to be sustainable and provide a reasonable quality of life, we have other measures of success:

• we have enjoyed the creative (even artistic) process of working together to start a business from an idea and watch it develop, 
• we both enjoy growing food and working outside as farmers, 
• we have enjoyed the learning curve of taking the big step up to commercial production (i.e. market gardening) versus home/hobby gardening, plus 
• we truly enjoy being food educators as we introduce and bring both awareness and discovery to our community of the "wide world of garlic". 

Success can also be measured by the large number of repeat customers we have, the number of customers who heard about us from their friends, the large number of customers who drive over an hour to buy our garlic, the large number of people who ask if they can volunteer on our farm plus the large number who sign up for our farm’s email newsletter, the legion of customers who tell us they can ‘never go back to store-bought garlic again’, and the fact that it was our customers who suggested we start a Garlic CSA.

The goal of our farm is to be a contributor to a healthy community, attaching the word 'healthy' to many outcomes (physical, economic, environmental, social, cultural, spiritual, and likely more). We sleep well every night living our values and knowing we are hitting many of those high notes, while caring for our land as we literally and figuratively sink deep roots into our community. 

Describe your Big Leap

Going from being long-time vegetable gardeners who have been gardening together even before being married (our first date as undergraduates was Dick asking Diana if she would help him weed the beans in his vegetable garden on Purdue's campus), we became 'old-new farmers' at age 59 when we bought 15 over-grown acres (and a foreclosed house in need of major repairs) to start a small specialized garlic farm. There are many ways in which this 'leap' made sense to us, it seemed the natural thing to do, but we can understand how our serious lifestyle change would appear to be a HUGE (and maybe crazy) leap to most everyone else. :)

Here is what our Big Leap looks like in bullet points:

• We became 'old-new farmers' at age 59.
• We started the first garlic farm in this area.
• We jumped from a small community garden at County Farm Park with Project Grow to being market gardeners at four local farmers' markets. (we were growing 500 garlic bulbs of 10 different varieties in our Project Grow garden, 5,000 the first year on our farm, 10,000 the next year, to now planting ~20,000 garlic bulbs annually of 40+ varieties)
• We went from being very private people to being very public people who are still surprised but enjoy it when someone sees us around town and points out to their friend/family "There is our garlic farmer!".
• We have both professionally leaped from being focused on the treatment end of the health care spectrum to the wellness/prevention end (Dick led various drug discovery teams at Parke-Davis and Pfizer. Diana is a Registered Dietitian who previously worked at St. Joe’s in the Medical Intensive Care Unit and is still an advocate at the national level for the inclusion of oncology nutrition services as a proactive component of true comprehensive cancer care)
• Instead of always wondering when and where we would be moving along (neither of us grew up in Michigan nor were we educated here), we made the big decision to stay in the Ann Arbor area forever. 

Describe the catalyst for your Big Leap

Dick lost his job as part of the “Pfizer fall-out” during an earlier phase that was not announced in such a public way as when Pfizer actually pulled out of Ann Arbor. At that point we began to take serious stock of what was to be next for us, i.e., “What are we going to do with the rest of our lives and where do we want to do it?” Of course this was an opportunity, but there is nothing quick or easy about answering that question when it happens as abruptly as it did for our family. 

It took us several years to sort through the opportunities, options, challenges, and constraints to answer this question. To make a long story short, Dick wanted to ‘garden out the back door’ and Diana wanted to ‘create a healthy community’. Combining those desires with our love of being outdoors listening to the birds, growing food, cooking with garlic, and doing our market research at several local farmers markets to see that no one else was providing garlic as a specialty crop, led us back to an early dream of starting a farm. It is still easy to procrastinate and not make the leap, however, one day Diana had the ‘epiphany’ that “we are as young today as we are ever going to be so if we want to start a farm, let’s get on with this!” We did. :)

What makes your business unique?

We are a specialized garlic farm, growing 40+ varieties of garlic. Nearly every aspect of production is by hand and with love. We are not really exaggerating when we tell people that we sell ‘hand-crafted garlic’. 

We sell green garlic in the spring to local chefs and our CSA members, garlic scapes from 20+ varieties at four local farmers markets in June, and then our 40+ varieties of garlic plus garlic braids, garlic gift boxes, garlic sampler bags, “40-clove” bags, dried green garlic and dried garlic scapes, with more plans in the works, at local farmers markets during August and September until sold out. We offer a Garlic CSA to those people who want ‘first choice’ and just cannot get enough of our delicious garlic. To our knowledge, we offer the only Garlic CSA in the country. 

How does your business support the community?

We sell 99% of our garlic to our local community: to chefs and caterers (Arbor Brewing Company, Bona Sera, Tammy's Tastings, Juicy Kitchen, The Ravens Club, Jolly Pumpkin, Moonwinks Cafe, Zingerman's Deli, Zingerman's Roadhouse, The Grange Kitchen & Bar, Cafe Japon, and several more), food product producers (Granny's Garlic Salt, The Brinery, Nightshade Army Industries, Delicious Diversity, etc), and to garlic lovers at 4 local farmers markets (Ypsilanti Downtown Market, Ann Arbor Wednesday Evening Market, Ann Arbor Westside Market, and the Dixboro Market) and Lunasa. 

We happily accept all food assistance vouchers (SNAP, WIC, Senior Fresh, Double-Up Bucks, etc etc etc) at our local farmers’ markets. 

We work with various Farm to School programs in the area to ‘talk garlic’ and the importance of sustainable farming with various age school children (King School, Greenhills School, Honey Creek School). 

We have also offered our garlic products to many local non-profit organizations (Growing Hope, Habitat for Humanity, etc, etc) as a fund-raising item at their silent auctions. 

We’ve helped other farms put up their hoop houses (Growing Hope, The Farm at St. Joe’s, Capella Farms, Green Things Farm). Dick is on the market committee for Ann Arbor's Westside Market at Zingerman's Roadhouse. Diana is on the committee that developed and maintains the Dixboro Farmers' Market in addition to be on the Advisory Committee for The Farm at St. Joe’s. 

We LOVE LOVE LOVE co-marketing through Facebook, our website (www.dyerfamilyorganicfarm.com), and our Garlic Friends email newsletter for other companies who purchase and use our garlic (i.e., The Brinery, Nightshade Army Industries, The Grange Kitchen & Bar, Zingerman’s, etc, etc, etc). 

Lastly, Diana works adjunctively with several local and state universities by providing their dietetic students and interns with opportunities on our farm to get their hands in the soil as they learn that the starting point of sustainable food systems is not ‘we are what we eat’ but instead it is ‘we are what we grow’ (University of Michigan, EMU, Madonna University, MSU, Western Michigan). These dietetic students are also given the opportunity to work on other area farms and with non-profit organizations such as Growing Hope and The Ecology Center’s Healthy Food in Healthcare Initiative in order that they may obtain a wider view of the community benefits provided by a local food system.  

Is there anything else you would like to share about your business?

We almost dropped out of our graduate school programs in the mid-70's to start an organic farm near Madison, WI. For a variety of good reasons, we did not do that, so we are both happy and grateful that we have had the opportunity to finally (at last!) come back to one of the first dreams we had as a young married couple. 

The tag line for our farm is 'Shaping our future from the ground up', where the word 'our' is very large and inclusive, starting with our soil and then working its way up to our family, our community, and our society at large. We are passionate about being stewards of our farm's soil, its land and water, plus nourishing a healthy community. We feel that passion and those goals are captured in the following two quotations: 

"Land is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy that flows through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals."

~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1948)

"Soil is the tablecloth under the banquet of civilization."

~ Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth (2002)

We will end by repeating that we are beyond grateful and happy to be 'old-new' farmers. While our customers may think they are buying garlic, we are really sharing this gratitude and happiness with them. 

Dick & Diana Dyer

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Now I think I may take a short nap, another perfectly acceptable activity for an unexpected cold and rainy Memorial Day holiday afternoon. 

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

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

National Dietitian Day 2013

Last year I was so busy at this time that I had to be reminded it was National Registered Dietitian (RD) Day by one of my young friends who is an "RD 2B". Thanks Dayna! :)

This year I've been thinking about it a bit ahead of time, instead of after the fact like last year.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I consider myself fortunate beyond words to still be alive, and also alive and thriving, after my multiple cancer diagnoses and medical problems that have all been related to late effects of my various cancer therapies. Sometimes I do feel as though I might be duct-taped together, but be that as it may, I can also say that my husband and I started a farm at age 59 and we are still here after four years of long hours and daily hard work, appreciating and relishing the opportunity to sink roots into and nourish our community by growing and selling healthy food locally at four farmers markets within 12 miles of our farm.

Our greatest joy is having our family, i.e. our two sons and our daughters in law, come home to the farm. In addition, having friends (from both near and far) come visit the farm also gives us great pleasure. We may or may not be 'cleaned up', and we may hand you gardening gloves or some type of tool to help us, but you can be sure that we'll always end the day with something delicious to eat and some of my husband's home-brewed (and award-winning) beer.

Next up is the pleasure of having dietetic students and dietetic interns come work with us. Some come for an hour or two, some come for a day, some come regularly, and some also come to live with us for several weeks participating in a program called The School to Farm Program developed by The Hunger & Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group, a sub-group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association). I confess that I enjoy feeling like the student when we work together, as I learn so much from them, from their questions but also their answers to my questions.

Although we could easily recruit young people from a wide variety of backgrounds and a wide variety of future careers who would like to work on an organic farm, I have felt a special dedication to 'recruiting' the students in my profession, to give them an opportunity to move backward a few steps from a traditional starting point of our profession which has always been 'we are what we eat' to instead develop an understanding and appreciation for a starting point of a food system to be 'we are what we grow'.

I hope that through the wide variety of experiences I try to provide for them within the community (they never weed with me for two straight weeks, even though that is a very very important job on our farm) that they also develop a profound and urgent awareness that the dietetics profession along with society as a whole must switch its current focus on paying (or not) for treatment of disease (Hello! That expensive horse is now out of the barn) to investing in strategies the lead to prevention of disease (especially chronic diseases), even better yet, using food and nutrition to create health and wellness as the primary and life-long achievement.

I certainly don't have all the answers for how to do this, but the main point I want these dietetic students to understand by working with me on the farm (and in my community) is the profound influence their future professional recommendations as RDs will have on individuals, on families, on communities, on organizations and institutions, AND on our agricultural systems and natural resources, which are the foundation of our food systems and the health of our communities. 

My long-time readers know that I enjoy ending my blog posts with quotations that I find meaningful. Today I will finish with a favorite quote but first I would like to share a new word I recently learned that I feel encapsulates an image I have for the future, with both purpose and feeling. I cannot describe it any better than that, except to say that when I recently heard this word with its meaning, I said to myself 'That's it! That is what I see for our future, and that is what I am trying to convey, instill, and nourish within my profession and particularly these students who are our future.'

The word is Ujima, a Swahili word that means 'collective work and responsibility'. 

Adding to that short definition, one can say Ujima means "to build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our own and to solve them together." Bingo! Thank you, Malik Yakini, Founder and Director of the Detroit Black Food Security Network for giving me language to convey my values and what I hope to share with my current work as one small part of the needed change on the path of developing food systems that will provide 'good food and good health for all'.

I think every Registered Dietitian I know became an RD in order to work as a health care professional with the fundamental desire to create and nourish healthy communities, which must start with protecting, creating, and nourishing healthy soil in order to produce healthy food. Thus my final words are directed to all RDs and RDs 2B:

"Soil is the tablecloth under the banquet of civilization."

~~ Steven Stoll, The Larding of the Lean Earth, 2002

I have used this beautiful quotation in previous blog posts. I consider these words, and the image they convey, to be a touchstone for me.  I never tire of reading and imaging with these words. I still love the image of our precious fertile, healthy, life-supporting topsoil being the tablecloth under the banquet of civilization (read the book Dirt: The Erosions of Civilizations by David Montgomery for an in-depth view of the importance of soil to the rise and fall of entire civilizations throughout history). That image gives me both joy and purpose while working every single day as an RD - Organic Farmer - Community Member.

More information about the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group's School to Farm Program is on HEN's website. Come work with us while we are contributing to the health of our local community. We welcome you! Please note - you will work. Just ask the students who have already been to our farm. :)

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

Diana Dyer, MS, RD