Edie Fifield

Years ago when I was just beginning to understand the importance of eating healthily, I would drive down the river road and browse the aisles of the New Morning Co-op, smiling at my fellow granolas, invariably wearing tie dyed shirts and bandanas, to pick up my organic oats and beans. The organic food movement was beginning to gain strength and little food co-ops sprang up in towns and cities all over the place. Though I loved the drive in my VW and it felt really cool, I did have to go out of my way to find and take advantage of this choice.

Today, grocery stores have done a wonderful job of providing choices for consumers. You can find gluten-free pancake mix, organic dairy and meat, fair trade coffee and chocolate in most any store and many now carry a house brand of organic products ranging from tomatoes to butter. Cost conscious consumers (and who isn't?) are finally able to easily find an excellent selection of high quality environmentally friendly foods and goods at reasonable prices while shopping at their local market.

But, have you ever wondered how reliable that organic label is and what other labels claiming free range, biodegradable, etc, mean exactly? Our consumer challenge at this time is to wade through all the hoopla and rhetoric to find those with substance. Take the claim ‘Organic" for example. On the Consumer Reports Greener Choices website the term organic has three levels; ‘100% Organic', ‘Organic' (95% organic and 5% approved on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances), or ‘Made with Organic Ingredients' (70% organic and 30% approved on the National List). Nothing with less than 70% organic ingredients may use the organic label, which for food is highly regulated. The GreenerChoices.org website has an easy to use catalog of all the possible labels you may come across covering every product from wood to laundry detergent. Here you may discover that Free Range chickens need only be let outside for five minutes a day. However, you can trust a Fair Trade label and any organic certified label as meeting rigorous standards. The term natural as applies to beef and chicken means no artificial ingredients are added, but the USDA does not monitor for antibiotics or hormones under this labeling. Buyer beware!

In the quest for full disclosure and transparency, not to mention ease of use, we may soon have an unlikely partner, Walmart! Walmart has begun the process of creating a ‘Sustainable Product Index' which will be required for all of the products it carries, affecting 100,000 suppliers. The company has provided the initial funding for a ‘Sustainability Index Consortium'. Composed of multiple universities, the consortium will analyze data on the environmental impact of every product from raw materials to disposal and come up with a rating system that will be user friendly. The consortium will be coordinating with governments, NGO's and businesses all over the world. The great thing about this is that when ready the information will be an open platform and available to any company that wishes to use it. In a few years we may be able to look at a product tag and be able to make a much more educated decision without having to do independent research or wonder if the label means what we think it does.

If you don't feel like waiting the few years for the consortium and maybe don't trust the corporate world at any rate, there is always the best and most fun option of buying local. It's a win-win situation where you have the best of all possible outcomes, knowing and supporting your fellow Cheshire County producers and getting great products that are made or grown close to home. And maybe if you are lucky, you can drive down a road by the river to get there.

The lazy days of summer are here again and I hope to take some time to slow down and enjoy them. My schedule heats up radically at this time of year as we plant gardens, raise chickens and turkeys, and prepare to cut hay and wood for the winter. It is such a pleasure knowing where my food comes from, how it was grown, anticipating the progression from the preparation of the bare soil to a garden bursting with green and scrumptious life. On the whole many people are disconnected from these cycles and I think we are missing out on a richer, slower life.

There is growing support for the Slow Movement (check out slowplanet.com) which advocates decelerating your life. You may be aware of the Slow Food movement, the antithesis of fast food. Eat locally produced organic foods, support local farms; good for you, good for the farms, the environment and local community. Take this concept and apply it to travel, schooling/learning, home building and you get the idea. Not that there is anything wrong with fast. Some things need to be done quickly, but the idea is to take life at the right pace. Paying attention to quality instead of quantity and enjoying our connections with work, family, food, our homes, and living our daily lives more consciously.

John Brown's website theslowhome.com defines a slow home as one built around the concepts of simplicity, openness and lightness. He compares suburban cookie cutter designs to a hamburger and fries, mass produced and lacking individuality. A slow home is simple, economical and meets the occupant's needs without wasting space or resources, and remains affordable over time. It is about re-using materials and refurbishing old buildings. That's the core of green building design.

What can you do this year to slow down your house? An energy audit would be a good place to start. A few cities in the U.S. have started to require them for sellers putting homes over 10 years old up for sale. At a cost of around $300 the report will let you know what the critical areas for improvement are. You can then take advantage of the tax credits for making energy improvements.

How brave are you? You may want to try slow driving. Taking it easy on the accelerator and maintaining a steady but moderate speed is the most powerful thing you can do to improve your mileage as much as 35%! Caution: this may induce not so nice feelings from fellow drivers.

Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness, has a wonderful blog page at carlhonore.com about taking time to enjoy life. I especially like "Unplugged" pondering whether unplugging from all our various gadgets is the new ultimate vacation. It seems incredible that some of our necessities were only just invented a few years ago. Technology continues to change our lives. Wasn't it supposed to give us all more time off?

Slow travel is rethinking how to get there from here. Choose a walking or bike tour, train travel, longer stays in one place, staying closer to home, pooling resources, use your imagination to come up with economical ways to get away while saving money and resources. Ecotourism.org has excellent tips for reducing your carbon footprint while vacationing.

Some of the benefits of taking things slower are obvious, like saving gas and better health, others are less so. Living slower is about creative problem solving and looking at the world from a different angle. Using all our senses and being present with whatever we are doing allows us to savor the precious time we have here, creating a richness that otherwise might pass by. So take five and sit on the porch a little more this summer and enjoy life in the slow lane.

In case you missed it...on Friday Jan 23rd there was a great party going on at Stonewall Farms in Keene NH, put together by our own (Monadnock Sustainability Network members), Amanda Costello, Bonnie Hudspeth and Jen Risley. In a beautiful post and beam building with a huge stone fireplace (as well as beer, wine and dancing!) warming the participants, a huge group of farmers and people dedicated to the Local Food scene gathered to share a meal and winter cheer with each other. It was an amazing, joyful experience of community. Community coming together in appreciation of each other's role in growing and consuming food grown close to home. The room was filled to overflow with kids, elders, farmers, market gardeners, consumers, cooks, and musicians. A long buffet table with delicious foods took up a whole side of the room, with a line of adults stretching around the corner and red cheeked kids darting in and out to snatch another favorite. There was a constant throng milling around the back table where the owner of Candia Vineyards was pouring their award winning wine and Elm City Brewery beer was consumed by the glass full. One young farmer brought his own brew of hard apple and blackberry cider. It's hard not to like a crowd that thinks work boots and wool vests are high fashion. After the storytelling about singing rattlesnakes and non-singing chickens it was time to move the tables aside and prepare for some contra dancing, THE dance of choice for farmers and rural folks for many generations. This style of dance was almost lost for a while, but has made a big comeback in the underused grange buildings of today. It's simple enough for the young and old alike and excellent fun for a crowd. An alemande here, a do-si-do there and all inthe middle with a whoop and a holler! As I watched the dancers smiling in each other's eyes and rounding the floor I couldn't imagine a better world. Thank you Amanda, Jen, and Bonnie for creating such a fun way to bring folks together. You gals sure know how to party!