Finland, MN

So There I Was…

Sitting at the Abazs family dinner table in their hand-built home in the North Woods of Minnesota eating penne pasta covered in a chunky tomato sauce made from ingredients harvested from the fields outside the living room windows, now brown and gray, ready for winter’s snow cover. The steamed cauliflower on the right quadrant of my plate has been frozen since its harvest a few months ago, again from the land outside. The red potatoes came out of hiding in the root cellar and their topping of ketchup is homemade from the same tomatoes as the pasta sauce. Finally, I wash it all down with goat milk from a mason jar. If I look out the window at the right angle I might see the goat near the barn.
The independence and self-reliance of it all is overwhelming. I taste it in the potatoes, smell it in the wood-smoke from the stove heating the house, hear it in the easy, honest, stress-free conversation around the table, and see it in the fields and barns outside the window.

This isn’t my kitchen in Birmingham where the ingredients for the ubiquitous evening quesadilla travel as far as Willy Loman in a year to get to my neighborhood grocery store: flour tortilla with wheat from North Dakota, cheddar cheese from a dairy farm in Vermont, tomatoes from north Alabama, an avocado from California, and hot sauce from Louisiana. Instead, I’m at the home of Lise and David Abazs and their two boys, Colby and Tremayne in Finland, Minnesota. It’s December, thus the fields awaiting snow, and I’m working on a Try Your Hand story about making balsam wreaths for the holidays. Lise and David are instructors with the North House Folk School located an hour up the nearby western shore of Lake Superior in Grand Marais, MN. Tomorrow a group of fellow wreath novices will arrive and we’ll spend a half-day collecting materials and assembling our wreaths from the woods of northern Minnesota. I came by a day early to check out the scene and Lise and David invited me to dinner with them, as informally as if we were old friends.

David and Lise’s story begins like many married couples: meet in college and decide together where to go upon graduation. However, that’s about where the similarities end. Rather than move to the best job offer in a big city or choose the transient lifestyle of seasonal work while figuring things out, David and Lise got married and took their honeymoon on a research farm in New Mexico. The couple researched places to live that would allow them to eventually be completely self-sustained – no grid connection to public utilities, very little need for trips to the grocery store, and a stimulating and safe place to raise the children they planned to have. Lise’s family lives in Minnesota and David, after looking at maps and books, decided the Sawtooth Mountains of the Finland area would be the spot.

“Sawtooth” might be a bit of a misnomer for these mountains that border the northwest shore of Lake Superior. Relative to the gently rolling, glacially subdued surrounding terrain and the vast expanse of Superior water, perhaps the sub-1,000 foot mountains do warrant such a striking name, but the landscape is more subtle than sublime. The 40-acre Abazs farm, as do most things built with care and quality, began slowly. This part of the country is deeply rooted in Scandinavian culture, plus it gets real cold so the first thing the Abazs built was the sauna. The couple lived in a small cabin as the farm expanded to a stone and timber frame barn for the goats, sheep, and other livestock, then a stone chicken coop, a woodshed, and finally construction of their current house – Abazs children were appearing.

After almost two decades of late 20th century homesteading, including a recent conversion of their shiny new Volkswagon coup into a biodiesel vehicle, the Abazs live that rare life of progressive regression: new technology such as wind and solar power, enhanced through a purely modern system of batteries and converters allows them to live simply, pulling energy from passive sources like the sun and wind and pulling food with their own hands from the ground around their home.

It’s impressive and refreshing though I’m not getting carried away; I don’t plan to return home and plant a row of potatoes, two of corn, and tie a goat to the little dogwood tree behind my apartment building. But even in Birmingham, as in most cities and towns, I can find food that requires far less transport than the average 1,500 miles an American meal travels before reaching our plates. A good friend here, in fact, manages a 4-year-old urban farm with two sites, both less than a mile from my downtown loft. I can dump my compost in the Jones Valley Urban Farm’s pile then stop by the outdoor food market on 29th and 2nd, right in the heart of the half-abandoned industrial/railway zone of downtown Birmingham. With pocket change from the week, I spring for a bag of arugula from the Jones Valley, or a basket of tomatoes as red and shiny as Christmas ornaments from one of the numerous growers who bring their fresh produce from surrounding farms to this Saturday market six months a year.

Almost every town I’ve visited, and I travel frequently as the travel editor, touts their seasonal produce markets and many places now have revived the food co-op institution in which local food producers and growers have an outlet to sell their wares year-round (see the Web sites below to locate one near you). Of course, buying from these local markets lacks the all-in-one convenience and year-round food presence of the average grocery store, but it has more character and reality to it. So maybe I don’t get squash in May; it tastes better in October anyway. The tomatoes definitely aren’t the same in February as they are in July, so I’ll wait on those. Like the excitement of pulling out the wool sweater on the first day of fall or feeling the sun on your legs for the first time in April, the seasonal changes in food keep life interesting. A slow walk through an outdoor market or community co-op, just like a slow-cooked and enjoyed meal with family and friends, can be a giant step in developing a sense of community.

As I mop up the last of the tomato sauce with a cauliflower leaf I can’t help but laugh at the apparent paradox of the Abazs lifestyle. A 21st century family living such an independent, slow-paced life seemingly devoid of all the technologic advances of the common house. Yet technology is the reason they live this way. That and hard work, dedication, creativity, and a committed sense of responsibility to leave a small footprint on the earth. It seems so old-fashioned and radical on the surface but on a daily scale who wouldn’t want ultimate freedom (from utility demands, bosses, fluctuating energy costs), leisure time to wander in the Sawtooths, travel to the Rockies, enjoy a Friday night matinee in the living room, and an enduring self-reliance founded on diligent, quality work. Isn’t that the American dream?



For info on locally sourced food and where to find a market near you, check out:

www.foodroutes.org

www.localharvest.org