So, come on over to my new blog. It’s just more fun…

We’re in boxes, truly preparing to move on. My heart is full of memory, hope, reminisce. My belly is full of cherries and snap peas! Not only are they in the market and the store, they’re in Blue Lake, in our back yard even. And, of course, we can’t get enough of them. Our cheeks and lips are rouged.

I’m going to slow things down on this blog as I try to be present to the friends and feelings we have during this last week in California. Not that we rule out returning. We can’t really imagine not returning. But for now, our destiny is elsewhere and we’re trying to go with that flow.  I had my second growing up in northern California, with 12 years in San Francisco before this 5 years up north. I felt like I had a remedial education here, learning deep lessons of nature, food, healing, and community.

Our community here truly feels like home. Both of our children were born in this comfy house in our sweet neighborhood. Blue Lake will always be their home.  The view of their playroom from the loft…just beginning to be dismantled.

It’s been a deep week here, with tragedy close to us, fires all around from a monster thunderstorm, and DEA agents swarming the county. So we appreciate these moments we have, full of life, right now.

It comes so quickly, doesn’t it? The wheel of the year flying faster with time. According to the Mayan calendar, as I understand it, the center of the spiral of time lands us at 2012, so by now we really are whipping around those curves speedily. It’s not an illusion.

As we’ve been talking about the solstice, I suggested to the children that this is a time to name dream their biggest dreams, to think about what they really want to bring into their lives. Isaiah wants to be able to climb trees. Miel wants her daddy.

Abundant blessings of prosperity and peace!

Some more Farm Camp reflections…

If you visited us while we were living at OZ Farm, you probably know that milking and frolicking with the goats was one of our greatest joys. We were there for the birth of 3 little kids, and we were so happy to meet this years new babe’s and greet that quickly growing herd of 12!

Of course on the camp menu was goat cheese. We made it fresh, like making paneer, where you heat the milk in a saucepan, add some lemon juice and watch the curds and whey magically separate. Strain in some cheesecloth, add salt and flowers or herbs and voila! Soft and creamy cheese. We made some crunchy olive oil crackers to go with them. The children loved getting messy with flour and dough. Every step was a mess and a joy.

Four of us mamas/teachers created and led this motley camp. Here, a well-deserved snack break in the barn with the talented musician/gardener/farmer’s wife Shauna.

Camp provides many opportunities to work out relationships of all sorts, especially among siblings. Little brother takes full advantage of bow and arrow making day.

And yeah, through it all I’ve been a little under the weather and Steve’s back is out.

And yup, those beautiful beet and rose and calendula dyes on the handkerchief Isaiah painstakingly dyed for Grandpa at Farm Camp didn’t actually last through one washing.

Which all means Grandpa is going to have to wait until we see him in person to receive his gifts. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love him from afar every day, especially on his special day…

We’ve returned from our delightful week at Farm Camp for our last 2 weeks in Blue Lake (and California). As I try to get some freelance work done, pack up our home, and attend to the children’s transition, I think I’ll have little space for my own ruminations on leaving California for parts unknown. Or maybe I will make that time. But for now, I don’t want to let the glories of Farm Camp slip by without sharing them with you this week, bit by bit.

My friend Jen of Coastal Posies flowers took so many delightful pictures of children doing art, gardening and cooking. It was a thrill to watch children discover how the three can be interwoven for fun, food, and beauty. That picture in the kitchen is from Day 1, making foccaccia with flower butter…calendula and borage. So beautiful. Isaiah and his good farm friend W made a giant heart-shaped loaf.

As we walked to the river to swim on a warm afternoon, we picked the seasons first salmonberries. Isaiah proclaimed, “It’s berry season!” After sampling the few we found, Isaiah said, “These are so yummy. I want to stay at OZ Farm all salmon season.” I love that he’s getting the season thing down.

A quick note to let you know that the conference was a huge success. We learned that there is a groundswell of acupuncturists who are interested in and passionate about treating eating disorders and a dearth of information out there. I’ll be giving you some more links soon to some other wonderful work being done in that arena, but for now tell you we are onto something.

And the weekend sans children in San Francisco was a delight…old friends, women’s bathhouse, South Indian food at 10pm, Tartine, hotel pool and hot tub…you get the picture.

We’re now at OZ Farm teaching summer camp. I’m doing cooking with the children: foccaccia and herb and flower butter, crackers and homemade goat cheese, candied flowers in the first three days. Isaiah is a happy, happy camper, trotting along with his group, participating in everything, wrestling with the big boys…LOVING it. Miel tolerates the attention and takes naps with daddy.

Gotta run…

I’m off to the CSOMA conference. Here’s the program’s description of my seminar:

The Nourished Heart: Treating Disordered Eating Patterns with Chinese Medicine
Rachel Farber, MS, LAc
The body ecology model of Chinese medicine provides an ideal framework for working with disordered eating patterns. We nourish the heart of the body, mind and spirit–essentials for healing these complex disorders. Ms. Farber outlines various types of disordered eating patterns, including binge eating, bulimia, anorexia nervosa, and chronic dieting, and presents TCM diagnoses and innovative treatment strategies, also exploring the biomedical triangle relationship of mood, hormone imbalance and nutrition. Ms. Farber shares clinical tips for working with people who suffer from challenging combinations of conditions including low self-esteem, poor digestion, anxiety, hormonal issues, and addiction patterns.

About the Presenter:
Rachel Farber, MS, LAc, has specialized in treating disordered eating patterns for the past 8 years. She has taught workshops, led support groups, and worked with hundreds of individuals to help free them from the constraints that food addictions, mood disorders and body image issues have created. Her program combines yoga and Chinese medicine to help people heal their relationships with food. She currently teaches and is in private practice in Arcata, California.

After the conference, we’re off to OZ Farm, where I’ll teach yoga and cooking for our inaugural year of Farm Camp! Strawberry goat milk ice cream, anyone?

The children are being cared for, I’m putting finishing touches on my presentation, running around a little crazed preparing to share my work with acupuncture colleagues and leave the children with papa for 3 nights, and what do I find myself doing? Cooking…at 11 am…dal with coconut milk, prepping bok choy for a quick saute, soaking garbanzos for hummous, marinating local beef for beouf bourgoegnon. Why? Two reasons. Actually, three. First, how can I leave my family without nourishing food to carry them through? Such a Jewish mother! Second, I’m stressed…it’s either cook or eat and cooking good food to eat feels a whole lot better than stressed out snacking. And last but definitely not least, our CSA opened today. Horray for Redwood Roots. As I loved my juicy bok choy, fondled the sleek white turnips, nibbled my favorite peppery arugula, I gave thanks for farms and farmers who provide us with this perfect food. Especially “our” farmer, Janet, and her radically gorgeous farm and veggies. Perfection and delight.

I noted Isaiah’s t-shirt he wore at the farm. One his favorites, his “New York City” shirt. I realize his love of cities and of nature is parallel to mine. The other day, in his pre-moving attempt to grasp our travels, he told me how we’ll go to The Soup, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and then come back and live in San Francisco with Uncle Jimbo for the “rest of life.” He knows where the action is!

As I’m preparing for my conference, I’ve compiled a list for colleagues of helpful books for transforming disordered eating into sustainable living. I’m sharing this with you in case you or someone you know might find it helpful.

Recommended Reading

Kim Chernin, The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness

This book is at once a personal and intellectual reflection on the depth of obsession in our culture over food, weight, and body image. A transformative read.

Susie Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue

Another classic that helps women discover that what feels a solitary suffering is connected to a cultural epidemic.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

This book is just a plain good read, exploring being an eater in this world of complex food systems. Filled with facts and stories, in the end Pollan encourages us to stay close to home and close to the land, keeping our diet open-ended and mostly vegetables.

Carol Emery Normandi and Laurelee Roark, Over It: A Teen’s Guide to Getting Beyond Obsessions with Food and Weight

From Over It, this list of suggestions for parents to support eating disordered children is also applicable to practitioners when working with eating disordered patients:

· Have compassion for yourself, your child, and your family.

· Educate yourself.

· Get support for yourself and your child.

· Model self-love and acceptance.

· Stop unnecessary dieting.

· Support your child’s natural physiological cues of hunger and fullness.

· Give your child the responsibility to select his/her own food.

· Teach self-esteem from within.

· Help your child identify, express, and resolve feelings.

· Be an activist in your community.

Christina Sell, Yoga from the Inside Out: Making Peace with the Body through Yoga

This book uses the practice of Anusara yoga to help readers discover that each of us is enough and just right exactly as we are. The practice teaches self-acceptance and joy.

Ronna Kabatznick, The Zen of Eating

This book introduces readers to Buddhist precepts and navigating The Middle Way, through their relationships with food.

Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter, When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies

This book encourages women to feed themselves on demand and to attempt the radical act of accepting their bodies at any size.

Patricia Foster, ed., Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul

This collection includes essays on various types of body issues, from disordered eating to cancer to aging to injuries. Especially relevant to the topic are essays by Pam Houston and Sallie Tisdale.

Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

This cookbook/manifesto/research tome disseminates information and recipes inspired by the whole food nutrition of the Weston Price Foundation, including fermented food, whole raw dairy, grass fed meat and the importance of high-quality fats.

Sandor Katz, Wild Fermentation

Another information-filled cookbook about using fermented foods in the diet for health and good taste

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

In her characteristically entertaining and insightful writing, Kingsolver tells the reader about her family’s experiment to grow all their own food for a year and, in the telling, shares a lot of information about the local food movement.

For practitioners:

Julia Ross, The Diet Cure

This is a fantastic book in which Julia Ross presents a clear plan for using nutrition and nutritional supplementation for physiologically treating disordered eating patterns. Although it is accessible to the layperson, I would particularly recommend this for practitioners. People who are suffering from obsessive, impulsive food issues could find the diet-book tone to be possibly triggering to compulsive behaviors, though they will also find it useful.

Susun Weed, Healing Wise: Wise Woman Herbal

Master herbalist Susun Weed offers empowering and practical herbal advice from the Wise Woman tradition. This is a delightful book for herbalists and laypeople alike. Susun communicates in the voices of the plants, making for an entertaining read. Particularly helpful for those struggling with food are her nourishing and tasty recipes for incorporating important herbs into the diet.

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