Because Everyone Should Have the Right to Puke

Here in Iowa our esteemed legislators recently passed — and the Governor signed into law — what I affectionately refer to as the “Big Ag/Industrial Egg Welfare Act”.  Shoving aside less pressing concerns confronting the state and the world like climate change, pesticide resistant weeds, peak oil, trade standoff’s with China among others, this initiative tackles a problem on everyone's mind by requiring retailers who participate in the subsidized nutrition program know as WIC to carry industrial eggs (AKA “conventional eggs”) if they also commit the heinous atrocity of carrying “specialty eggs” — or “good eggs” as I like to think of them. You know, eggs produced by chickens whose chickenness is honored with good food to eat, good land to freely range, and plenty of room to flap their wings.

I can sympathize. God knows it’s hard for me to make a living selling dozens of eggs. I can only imagine how hard it must be to thrive selling millions of them.

But this new law has an oddness to it that intrigues me.  On the one hand, our Legislature never misses an opportunity to suckle and succor Business Interests in general and Big Ag in particular -- and this law unapologetically guarantees the latter a sales stream -- it is unusual that our lawmakers have opted to elbow their way into meddling with how retailers stock their shelves.  Meanwhile, though this and recent Legislatures demonstrate resourceful creativity in conceiving new and imaginatively paternalistic ways to punish the poor, this law imposes no requirement on what must actually be purchased; rather it reserves its muscles for coercing merchants into a specific mandate for what must be sold.

Like any good and concerned citizen I wrote my two legislators -- one, a Democrat, and one, a Republican.  Only the former deemed this constituent's query worthy of response so I can't speak to the motivations and/or logic of the latter.  The response I did receive defended his support of this bi-partisan bill by asserting the importance of using government monies wisely (though I can't discern how this measure accomplishes that) and lauding the fact that conventional eggs are inspected.  That last argument, of course, is almost too circular to engage.  Hypothetically, inspections sound like a good thing -- if we were to actually accomplish them.  These same legislators and their colleagues at the federal level, however, so routinely cut the budgets of such inspection programs -- in part through the protestations of the industry lobbyists who, let's face it, don't really like inspectors snooping around, alongside that elusive, Holy Grail-like quest to "reduce the size of government."  In my response to my legislator's response, I allowed as to how I had never -- ever -- heard of a "specialty egg" recall, and that he has more confidence than I do in our vaunted "inspection" system.

As if on cue, this weekend we woke to reports of yet another salmonella-tainted corporate egg recall.  Rose Acre Farms of Seymour, Indiana is recalling over 2 million eggs produced in their North Carolina factory farms and sold in nine states under numerous labels because...well...because they were making people sick.  Fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Thank goodness these things get inspected -- although it would probably be more helpful if they were inspected before they were sold.

And thank goodness we now have this helpful law signed and on the books.  It would be a terrible thing if the poor of Iowa were deprived of their own fair share of salmonella.  Everyone, after all, should have the right to puke.

We Can Wait, or We Can Start to Bloom

I no longer recall why I ordered them.  I was reading something, no doubt, that extolled the virtues of Nanking Cherries and something apparently clicked.  I do, after all, love cherries.  Never mind that we had planted several cherry trees last year that should eventually supply more than enough fruit to meet our needs, these were different — a bush, for one thing, moreso than a tree.  Requiring less space than trees and therefore more versatilely sited, they are reputed to be easy growers, not especially finicky about their surroundings, producing fruit— albeit smaller and therefore more difficult to harvest —comparatively fast.  Gathering to myself all these compelling attributes I seemingly tracked some down through an online nursery and placed an order.

I’m not proud of this horticultural impulsivity.  I'm aware that one really should be more strategic and thoughtful about such considerations, as in thinking through where such new arrivals might actually be planted, and if, despite their attractiveness, they actually "fit in".  But that said, neither am I terribly penitent about it.  We have space, we are curious and experimental, we value perennials and their fruit -- for ourselves and the wildlife and pollinators -- and we will find for them a place.

Unfortunately, they arrived during the recurring aftershocks of winter.  They would need to camp out in the greenhouse.

Cutting the tape on the shipping container I gently lifted away the moistened packing mulch and separated the bare root plants from each other.  It was then I realized that not only had I been impulsive, I hadn’t paid close attention to what I was doing.  I had ordered three — already more than we needed — but it turns out that the “three” I had ordered were bundles of three.  I’m not very good at math but even I know that adds up to nine.  Nine bushes.  We are really going to need to love Nanking Cherries.  I settled the saplings into potting soil and tucked them in to the greenhouse.

Winter has been a wearisome challenge this year.  Let me just clarify that I happen to like winter.  I will not willingly be one of those who packs the car, forwards the mail and heads off to warmer climates in an effort to bypass Iowa’s harsher months.  I like the snow, the fire in the fireplace, sweaters and flannel-lined jeans. I like snowshoeing the trails around and through the farmstead.  Heck, I enjoy firing up the tractor and clearing the driveway after a heavy snowfall.  But even I think it’s time to move on into spring.  There is a time and a place for winter which expired a few weeks ago.  Enough is enough.  We have other things to do.  It’s the middle of April, after all, and we not only had snow last Sunday, more is predicted for the coming days — never mind the 70-degree days in between.  All this back-and-forthing makes it impossible to move things into the garden, and even those sprouts in the greenhouse are yet timid about sticking their necks out very far.

Taking advantage of today’s sunny respite I accomplished some plowing and garden bed preparation while Lori spread mulch and whacked away at some dying shrubs we will be replacing.  We may or may not be able to squeeze more such preparations in tomorrow, depending on when the weather starts to deteriorate.  Weary, with afternoon hours waning, we opted to water before going inside.

For the past month or so we have been sowing seeds in flats and settling them in the greenhouse.  Thirty-six trays have so far accumulated there with likely that many more to go — trays of peppers and tomatoes, herbs and greens, flowers and leeks and now Nanking Cherries. Almost by rote now we fill milk jugs with rainwater stored through the winter, and tray by tray give everything a good dousing.

It was then that Lori noticed the Cherries.  The nine stems a few days ago had swelled proud buds, but tonight there was one thing more:  a blossom.  The glory of Washington, D.C. in miniature.  One lone blossom among nine budding stems. On the one hand there is nothing special about that. Fruit trees bloom, as apparently do fruit bushes.  But parked there in a drink cup stuffed with potting mix and stowed in the greenhouse it seemed, nevertheless, almost bankable:  a promissory note of spring, born of an impatience equal to my own; as if to say, “winter be damned, we are moving ahead with life.”

And so it was that I decided to move forward with it, living rather than waiting; blooming, which is to say making way for fruit.  Because for too many things to count...

...in the garden...
...in my aspirations...
...in this crazy, "stuck" world...

...it is simply — if not past —time.

So, yes, we will be finding a place to plant the cherries.  All of them.
As soon as the next round of snow melts.