Sierra College In Ten Years

I have taught at Sierra for almost twenty years.  When I began, cell phones and the internet were even issues to consider when teaching.  About ten years ago I began to see I'd need to shift how I was teaching; technology was changing the way my students thought.

In ten years, I think our students will be even more comfortable with online courses. I think the ideal course to take will be the hybrid.  That way students can experience their teacher and classmates in person and also take advantage of the online environment.  


Note:  This is a very old blog of mine I no longer use.  My new blog is www.lightcapfarm.com, a Wordpress blog.  But I didn't want to post this there and confuse my readers.   :)

Profile of Eric Botner and Earth Family Foods

Several years ago, Nevada County’s Eric Botner noticed that food wasn’t tasting that good. Even his old favorites weren’t lighting up his palate. He noticed also that his energy was a bit low, his vitality flagging. He tried some raw food and was delighted by not only the injection of energy into his body, but the taste as well. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the price, however, so he bought a case of raw goodies, divvying them up with friends and sharing the cost. That went well, so he bought a few cases. Soon his home was a make-shift warehouse for a fledgling business: Earth Family Foods. Today, the company employs twelve Nevada County residents and occupies a large warehouse on Bitney Springs Road outside Nevada City.

Nutrition and cost-effectiveness continue to be the two themes that inspire Botner in his new role as president of a super-food distributer. Briar Patch Co-Op was his first official customer, but now he ships his products to stores all over the United States and Canada. These products are raw, mostly organic, and include coconut oil, almond butter, cashews, agave nectar, hemp seeds, gogi berries, and so much more. Seaweed products are wild and not considered organic. “These are crucial foods, medicine really,” Botner states. It is Botner’s belief that everyone needs to have access to these foods that drives him to buy in large quantities, keeping the prices down for all his customers. Some foods he sells to Briar Patch now retail for less than half of what they did when he started buying them case by case. The fact that the foods he buys are not immediately perishable, but have a shelf life of a year or two, helps with cost-effectiveness as well.

With today’s focus on local foods, it’s important to remember the concept of subsidiarity, well defined in Alternatives to Economic Globalization by John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander. Subsidiarity calls for a return to local whenever possible. When not possible, as is the case with the foods sold by Earth Family Foods, it is vital to get the foods from as close to home as possible. Botner practices subsidiarity, bringing hemp seeds from Canada (it is illegal to grow them here) and coconut oil from Mexico. (Imports also come from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and from as far away as Thailand and Bali.) Another key aspect of subsidiarity is that trade must be fair, of course, and every product in Earth Family Foods warehouse is a product of fair trade. Both in its trade policies and its support of the local economy through job creation and cost reduction, Earth Family Foods offers us an excellent example of practicing subsidiarity.

Today, Eric Botner has seemingly boundless energy, and looks decades younger than he actually is. He is a walking encyclopedia about the foods he distributes, knowing with great specificity why maca root powder is beneficial to creating stamina and energy, and what the many medicinal values of cacao powder deliver to our bodies. After years of eating raw foods, though, he cautions people to be moderate in their food choices. Diet and nutrition are a “huge puzzle,” he states. “Everyone is different.” Botner recommends a diet similar to the one Michael Pollan advocates in In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Botner agrees. “People are not feeling well. Their energy is low. Practicing conscious under eating, eating mostly fresh fruits and vegetables” are keys to increasing energy and stamina,he says. Botner also cautions about sugar intake, which as we know has increased disastrously in our country in the last 60 years. “It used to be a treat to eat one cookie with sugar,” he remembers, and now sugar, or its Frankenstein’s monster, high fructose corn syrup, have infiltrated nearly every processed food. Botner sells agave nectar and coconut sugar (the most sustainable sugar harvested) but cautions his customers about overusing even these relatively nutritional sugars.

Earth Family Foods continues to grow. One of two packing rooms is already built and operational, packing dry seeds and nuts for shipment to Whole Foods. This fall, the wet packing room will also be up and running, packaging oils and nectars for a variety of customers, including Briar Patch.

Besides the healing nutritional value of super foods, one theme remains prevalent in Botner’s mind: how does he lower the costs of these foods, and how does he pass this savings on to the people who buy and need these foods? Look for Earth Family Foods products in the raw food and bulk food sections of Briar Patch, and keep your eye on the prices. They just may amaze you and go down and instead of up.

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Eric Botner’s Favorite Smoothie

1 fresh young coconut, w/ its water

cacao powder

maca powder

six ice cubes

blend and serve

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Carolyn Crane is a writer and teacher. She lives on the San Juan Ridge. You can email her at sierraccrane@gmail.com.

CC's Family Farm profile

This article first appeared in the August issue of The Briar Patch News and Review.

When Leon Cheney started farming chickens in the 1930s, he didn’t know he was beginning a four generation tradition. Since then, the Cheney family has gradually migrated north from southern California, to Loomis, and most recently to Penryn. Today the Cheney farm is operated by Leon’s grandson Tim and his wife Heidi. Ralph and Pat Cheney, the second generation, also live on the farm, and Ralph’s experience as a veterinarian is a treasured asset. The farm is known today as CC Family Farm. The “C”s are the initials of the fourth generation: Connor, age 10 and Carissa, age 2.

CC Family Farm generates at least 50 dozens eggs each day. Tim, Heidi, and Connor are the chief caretakers of the chickens, who are ushered out of their coop each morning at day break (usually Connor is the early riser). In the summer, the chickens scamper to a field of alfalfa, alsiki, and crimson, eating the clovers as well as the bugs. Meanwhile, nearby, the winter pasture is growing tall with rye grass. When the clover is gone, in late fall, the chickens will munch on rye (and bugs) while the summer field regenerates. The chickens’ grazing pastures total nearly three acres in all. In addition to the food available to them on the range, the chickens have continuous access to supplemental chicken food. They return each evening at dusk to protective houses that keep them safe from the chicken predators in Penryn: bobcats, coyote, raccoon, skunk, and possom.

Naked Farms profile

This article first appeared in the August issue of the Briar Patch News and Review.

Four years ago, a few miles north of Nevada City, Linda and Thomas Cofal started farming their land. They named their farm Naked Farms because their vegetables would be naked—no pesticides. They could also have named the farm Tiny Farm, because the land they work totals less than two acres. Once acre is cultivated in row crops, plus they have 1/4 acre blueberries and some jujubes. The Cofals have no tractor; they do all their work by hand. They have no farm hands, children, or interns; they alone take their crops from seed to market. And, since they both work off the land at “real jobs”, the forty hours they spend each week on the farm is not only their passion, but also their second job.

Because the Cofal’s farm is small, they cater to a niche market, providing specialty crops to gourmet restaurants and to Briar Patch. They grow Mediterranean cucumbers, for example, and they are experimenting with growing varieties of lettuce and broccoli that can thrive in the summer heat and sun. Rows of sweet basil, flowers, peppers, and tomatoes round out the majority of their crop. Their 1/4 acre greenhouse helps the Cofals extend their growing season as well as experiment with different varieties of vegetables. “Someone told us we couldn’t grow peppers here,” Linda Cofal said, waving her hand at the rows of peppers in her greenhouse. Experimenting with crops is a continuing pleasure for the Cofals, as is looking forward to the day they quit their other jobs and, as Utah Phillips once said, “call in well.”

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Frontier Angel: Profile of a SoapMaker

This article first appeared in the June/July issue of the Briar Patch News and Review.  --C Crane

Frontier Angel Covered in Suds

Down a charming lane in Grass Valley, behind a well-kept Victorian, sits a tiny workshop--blue with white trim. There, Frontier Angel’s Diane Longacre makes her soap.

 

A few years ago, Diane Longacre moved to Grass Valley with her husband and young son. Diane had made soap on a part time basis when they lived in the Bay Area. Since the move to Nevada County, Diane has grown the business into a full time job.  “I’m a down home person,” Diane says. Making soap grew naturally out of a practice of making everything she could from scratch, including her own bread.

 

Diane makes two kinds of soap: one with shea butter and one with goat’s milk. Each type of soap also uses several kinds of oils and butters as well as Diane’s proprietary blend of essential oils. These soaps are available at a handful of local stores, in one store back East, and directly from Frontier Angel.  Diane says more stores want to carry her soap, but she’s selective about what vendors she’ll work with.

 

She’s just as selective about what she puts in her soaps.  In her shea butter soap, she uses only unrefined fair trade shea butter. Only local goat milk (currently from a farm in Rough and Ready) goes into her goat milk soap. Her soap is minimally packaged in a hemp and recycled paper sleeve. And, although the proportions of her essential oil blends are a secret, Diane believes in full disclosure.  Every ingredient of her soap is listed on the label.

 

One of the ingredients listed is sodium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide is lye. Diane uses lye when she makes soap. “You can’t have soap without lye,” Diane expains, “Lye + oil + water = soap.”  Soaps that do not contain sodium hydroxide often contain alcohol. If a soap melts, it’s not real soap. Some soap makers try to hide the fact that lye is used in the process, Diane says, “but I like to be honest with my products.”  In order to make soap, the ingredients must be heated and mixed together; the lye loses its caustic properties during this process.

 

When she’s busy in her workshop, Diane can put up a 65 pound flat of soap in a couple hours. Since she cuts the soap into 13 gram bars, 65 pounds go a long way! She usually has at least a half dozen soaps out in stores at once. Some rotate seasonally, while others, including High Sierra, are year round favorites. Meanwhile, her workshop is also her laboratory. She consistently experiments with new formulas for her soap as well as works on inventions for other skin care products. “It takes years for me to perfect a recipe,” she explains with a smile. She doesn’t mind, though, because Diane Longacre clearly and simply loves making soap.

 

Diane writes articles about soap and keeps a blog for her customers at www.frontierangel.com.  Her articles about shea butter and lye can be found at http://www.frontierangel.com/shea_butter.html and

http://www.frontierangel.com/why_lye.html respectively.

 

 

 

Delicious Sips of Peace

This article first appeared in the June/July issue of the Briar Patch News and Review.  --C Crane

Delicious Sips of Peace 

 

A coffee cooperative in Uganda has found a way to put peace in every coffee bean it produces. No, this isn’t new GE technology—rather it’s an alliance between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian farmers all pledged to producing Mirembe Kawomera—Delicious Peace Coffee.

 

One man, a Ugandan coffee farmer and musician, dreamed up the project. In 2004, JJ Keki began approaching his friends from different faiths with a new business model: begin working together to create a peaceful alternative to the present day religious conflicts that hurt and grieve so many on the planet. Five years later, the cooperative has grown to more than 1,000 coffee farmers.

 

Musician and activist Laura Wetzler, hearing of the mission of the cooperative, called Fort Bragg’s Thanksgiving Coffee and shared details about Mirembe Kawomera. Long known for its activist stance with fair trade coffee, Thanksgiving Coffee offered the collective four times as much per pound as it was currently receiving. The California coffee company also sends additional funding to help with community development in Uganda.

 

American customers have more than doubled, but the cooperative’s supply remains abundant. As the cooperative’s customer base grows, its message has inspired independent producers at JemGlo Productions to create a film about Mirembe Kawomera (search on You Tube for “Mirembe Kawomera Documentary Trailer”) . The filmmakers traveled to Uganda to film the cooperative in action as well to interview the farmers about their experience. Farmers and community members talk about the vitality that this peaceful, interfaith enterprise has brought to their society. 

 

 J.J. Keki is at work on a c.d inspired by the cooperative. He also remains at the heart of the cooperative by serving on its board of directors, which is made up of one person from every group represented by the coop: Christian, Jewish, Muslim. A woman too, is on the board to ensure that the voices of women and youth are heard.

 

“The story will not be lost on the shelf of a grocery store,” says project director Jenais Zarlin of Thanksgiving Coffee Company. Mirembe Kawomera is not only proving that a cooperative business template can be effective, it is demonstrating that a new paradigm of peaceful cooperation can literally be delicious.

 

 

Mary Moore: Quilter in the Mountains

This article was first published in the May 2009 North San Juan Volunteer Fire Department's biannual newsletter. --Sierra C. Crane

Writer’s note: On April 24, artist Mary Moore treated me to a trunk show in her home. A trunk show, traditionally, is a show a quilter gives a person, all the quilts making it out of the trunk for display.  In the two hours I spent in her sunny loft, I saw photos of dozens of quilts—and at least a dozen quilts out of the trunk.  Each one has a rich story stitched into it. Moore is also a weaver and a painter. A woman of seemingly boundless energy, she shared her art with me with the enthusiasm of a girl just starting an inspiring project. Tempering her enthusiasm is a lovely, quiet wisdom.  It was an honor to spend this time with her. Here are a few things I learned from Mary’s trunk show. –Carolyn Crane

 

On most days, when Mary Moore needs to sew something up, she uses a Red Eye, a treadle Singer machine she picked up in Nevada City for $75.  It’s worked great since that first half hour greasing she gave it, when she patiently turned the treadle and the wheel while the oil seeped in. It’s one of five sewing machines she has, and by far the simplest.

Moore started quilting over forty years ago. “My hands need to keep busy,” she explains, so working as a librarian and starting a new family weren’t quite enough for her ambitious fingers. The young woman had been making sweaters, but fabric was much cheaper than wool, and times were tight. “My hoop wasn’t expensive. Sears Catalog still sold fabric by the pound and you didn’t know what you were going to get! That was so fun!” Her first quilt showed an array of scenes from her favorite children’s books—books she was looking forward to reading to her newborn son. Her appliqué was primitive but she was on her way. The project also gave her a sense of permanence in the whirlwind of working-young-motherhood.  “However many stitches I put in, they stayed in at the end of the day. Whatever else happened with the baby and the house and trying to get to work, was a little spot of something I finished.”

Since then, Moore has finished hundreds of quilts. She has matured into a quilting teacher and designer. Her quilting has become part of the emotional glue that holds family and community together.

During her career as a librarian, Moore and her husband Paul (a high school English teacher) worked and lived near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernadino Mountains.  When they retired several years ago, they moved to the San Juan Ridge. “We’ve always lived in the mountains,” Moore explains. They moved to Sierra in order to be closer to their son and his family, and built most of their home on Cruzon Grade by themselves. As soon as the roof was securely overhead, they began to volunteer. “At one point I was volunteering at every organization on Tyler-Foote that would take a volunteer,” she remembers.  Paul was doing the same.  Today, each one is a treasurer for a local cause: Paul for the NSJ Fire Auxiliary, and Mary for Malakoff State Park.

Up here on the Ridge, it only took a few months for Mary’s passion for community to meet up with her passion for quilting. Five years ago, Moore’s quilts stepped in to continue the long tradition of the Auxiliary raffling a quilt each Mother’s Day. The process was familiar to her. Nearly as soon as she began quilting, she began donating her quilts to raffles and auctions.  “Because there was no one else doing it, I was the best there was,” she recalls. One particular donation was healing for Moore. “Our first baby did not live long, and she was taken care of beautifully in a hospital in the next town.  I had never gone to thank them, because I couldn’t bring myself.”  Months later, Moore remembers, a woman came into her library looking for the woman who did quilts. She was searching for an auction item for the very hospital that cared for Moore’s daughter. Handing over a quilt to St. Bernadine’s was a comfort to her. Quilting also became a daily ritual for Moore and her mother in the last ten years of her mother’s life.  Mary taught her mother how to quilt (she was by then teaching classes regularly), and her mother went on to win numerous awards, including the honor of displaying three of her quilts at the grand opening of the Ronald MacDonald house.

During her years in Lake Arrowhead, Moore was active in a quilting guild that grew to 65 members. The guild supplied hospitals and other charities with hundreds of quilts, many of them quilt-of-the-month or challenge quilts. Here on the Ridge, Moore is working on the Ridge History tapestry project in addition to her many hours of volunteer time.

During the forty years she’s been quilting, every aspect of her technical skill as a quilter has steadily improved. From the first simple appliqué of the story books destined for her son, Moore developed sophisticated appliqués that utilized shadows with human shapes and three dimensional objects. At the same time, Moore studied the variations of quilting designs.  She traveled to Norway with quilters, taking with her a watercolor quilt she’d made with fabric from 35 countries.  The quilt, while in someone else’s hands, disappeared in either Switzerland or Russia.

Moore considers this year’s quilt, a Welsh design, to be the culmination of her practice and study thus far. Welsh quilts are a departure from the American and English designs, she explains. Typically quilts are made from small pieces of fabric; they evolved as an economical way to create a blanket out of scraps, and from there an art form developed.  In 19^th Century Wales, however, quilt design grew out of the emerging middle class. Suddenly, women could afford swathes of gorgeous fabric, and they were loathe to cut them up in tiny pieces. They also couldn’t bear to cover even a half inch of the fabric with a border, so there is none.  The women would select the fabric and create the design, then hire a quilter to stitch the entire piece.  The quilter worked with the solid back of the quilt, never looking at the fabric on the front. The design the quilter creates is its own art. “I’ve never had so much fun quilting!” Moore says. She free-quilted a variety of designs, including paisleys, hearts, and, for fun, specific objects such as sewing scissors.

Moore keeps a piece of paper handy in her sewing room. It’s a list of her future plans for quilts, and she hopes to raffle them off to support her local firefighters.  Her future quilt dreams include a crazy quilt, a theme quilt about a fire department, and a quilt depicting local Indian baskets. Since she works on her quilting a minimum of three to four hours a day, her neighbors won’t have to wait too many years to witness first hand the continued evolution of a true artist and philanthropist.

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