 |
A recipe for activism
Healthful diet evolves into grassroots-effort nonprofit organization02:14 AM CDT on Sunday, October 26, 2008
Peace Kitchen started simmering three years ago, when founder and activist Chris Oller decided to start eating more healthfully.
“I went vegetarian and felt better and cleaner,” said Oller. “Then I started reading about veganism, and I found Julia Butterfly Hill.”
Hill, a vegan, is famous for staging a tree-sit in a 1,000-year-old California redwood tree she named Luna. She began her protest against logging companies in 1997 and stayed in the tree for two years. Veganism is perhaps the most disciplined form of vegetarianism, with adherents avoiding all animal products — no dairy products, eggs or honey.
Looking back, Oller said, it was his choice to eat “consciously” that led him to the grassroots community activism that has made Denton the launching pad for a young nonprofit called What’s Your Tree.
Turning on the burner
Oller’s story of change began like other stories of transformation.
It started small.
Oller earned a degree in painting and drawing from the University of North Texas in 1982, and until recently he worked for the Denton and Lake Dallas school districts. He left the districts to devote his time to Peace Kitchen and What’s Your Tree. He’s a foodie, and he likes to make people happy using food. He’s as likely to recommend Laura Schenone’s 1,000 Years Over A Hot Stove for weekend reading as he would Food in History by Reay Tannahill.
Reading and reflection made way for changes in the kitchen. When Oller started considering veganism as the diet that is most ecologically sound and healthful, it led him to other books. Last year, just before Earth Day, a program called Denton Reads chose Julia Butterfly Hill’s book, The Legacy of Luna, for a citywide reading project. Oller read it, then attended Hill’s speaking engagement in Denton. Something clicked.
After her historic tree-sit, Hill founded Circle of Life, which evolved into the Engage Network. When Hill arrived in Denton, Oller said, she talked up her grassroots organizing project, which is framed as the question: What’s your tree?
“To me, What’s Your Tree is more about finding your true purpose and putting that into action,” he said.
Hill’s passion was an ancient redwood. Now she challenges small groups to meet in their cities and explore what their purpose might be. Oller followed his interest and his palate, and kept up his cooking.
Alissa Hauser, a co-founder of What’s Your Tree, said Denton felt ripe for the program.
“We had this almost-impossible-to-refuse opportunity to come to Denton,” Hauser said. “We weren’t ready to launch the program. We had no curriculum. We had no preparation to roll out this curriculum. But something was going on in Denton. The energy was there. When something like that happens, you don’t ignore it. You go for it.”
The founders launched the What’s Your Tree program in Denton. Hauser calls the city “the beta test site.”
Oller agreed that the energy was right, and he said he knew right away that he wanted to benefit from Hill’s experience.
“There’s something special about Denton, and that resonated with me. That’s why I’ve stayed in Denton,” Oller said.
What’s Your Tree is a micro-project. Groups of five to 15 people go through a process to discover their purpose. The group builds community and learns to set goals “to make a major difference in their communities,” Hauser said.
On its face, What’s Your Tree reads like a federalist’s dream. Its goal is to put influence into the hands of people to effect change in their own towns and neighborhoods.
“In the communities where social capital is higher, voting turnout is higher. People who go vote are people who go to public hearings,” Hauser said. “We’re seeing this in communities like New Orleans. Communities need to be prepared to be resilient. Having communities set up to help one another is a way to achieve that.”
Following Hill’s career as a high-profile environmentalist, What’s Your Tree also sounds like spiritual consciousness-raising. In fact, Hill recently joined Spiritual Leaders for Change, a collaboration that includes the likes of philosopher and doctor Deepak Chopra, yogis Shiva Rea and Rodney Yee and self-help writer Marianne Williamson.
Oller participated in the first What’s Your Tree workshops held in Denton last spring.
Now, he’s a regional coordinator for the Denton- and Dallas-area organizations of What’s Your Tree.
Home on the eco-friendly range
As Oller got more into vegetarian cooking, he also sought out locally grown organic food. That took him to Cardo’s Sprout Farm in Ponder, a small organic farm that supplies wheatgrass for Jupiter House, a downtown Denton coffeehouse, and sunflower sprouts for The Cupboard Natural Foods, the city’s only whole-foods market.
On Nov. 17, a fire burned the building where Rick Cardo, the farm’s owner, lived and where the farm’s manager and workers kept an office and library. The fire consumed all the wheat, sprouting and garden seeds the workers had carefully cultivated.
Farm manager Alicia Cotilla said the structure burned to the ground and smoldered for days.
“We had no water or power,” Cotilla said. “We lost our appliances and everything.”
Oller made his first trip to the farm after the house burned.
“I went out there. It was a cold, wet, windy day, and you wouldn’t have known that they had lost the house. Their spirits weren’t down. In fact, they were building an outhouse. You wouldn’t think someone would be so happy to be building an outhouse,” Oller said.
That’s how Peace Kitchen started. Oller saw that the workers had no way to cook — the kitchen had burned.
Oller had a mobile kitchen, something he developed to cook outdoors. He started setting up the kitchen to cook for the crew on Sundays and then on other occasions.
The farm hosts community days each Sunday. Visitors can tour the garden plots and take a peek inside the retrofitted shipping containers where the workers grow the wheatgrass and sprouts. They can also help weed and work the farm.
“I love cooking outdoors. I love cooking for people,” Oller said. “I just pack my kitchen in my car and head out there. They were really happy to have me out there cooking, too. They’re a great group of people.”
Oller makes hot vegetarian dishes, and he likes to use the food grown at the farm when it’s ripe and ready. He’s learned more about vegetarian cooking, and he said he’s learning a lot about cooking vegetarian meals for large groups.
Cardo’s Sprout Farm fits neatly into Oller’s philosophy about food, the planet and human health.
It’s a small, green spot in Ponder managed by Cotilla. Brandon and Shannon Weist live on and work the farm; Shannon cares for the chickens. Sashenka Lopez also works the farm. Cardo, the owner, still lives and works at the farm, but his day job takes him to Irving, where he works with children with disabilities.
Cotilla’s mission is to use organic techniques to grow crops and keep the soil healthy.
The farm avoids chemical fertilizers and pesticides, preferring instead to incorporate chickens into the composting and biodynamic farming methods, which align planting and growing with moon cycles and seasons.
The farm uses “chicken tractors” to prepare plots for planting and growing. The chickens move through the compost — decomposed plant matter — looking for food. They scratch and defecate in the compost, enriching it for fertilizer. The chickens are moved around to different “scratching” plots in an enclosed space, or “tractor.” In the meantime, they lay eggs.
Cardo’s Sprout Farm is a model for organic farming. Cotilla walks the rows and snaps off vegetables for visitors to taste. For all the chickens and dogs that have the run of the place, the farm smells fresh — almost herbal. The foliage might not be as green as its chemically treated counterparts, but the produce is bright and flavorful.
The farm is also a laboratory for “green” living. The outhouse, built in a spiral shape, is clean, comfortable and fresh-smelling. Cardo lives under a large tent, and two hose systems are fixed under the topmost tarp.
Cotilla turns on the shower, and without gas or electric heating, the water gets hot using heat trapped in the top part of the tent. It’s not the steadiest of heat, but it works.
The workers have also experimented with a sandbag shelter. An igloo-like structure is built out of bags full of “rammed earth,” Cotilla said. The dome could be a storm shelter, or the practice run for a house that could withstand high winds, and maybe even fire.
Cooking up change
In September, Oller traveled to California to a leaders retreat for What’s Your Tree. There, Hill gave a $500 matching pledge when the national leaders raised the same amount to make Peace Kitchen a permanent part of Cardo’s farm.
“For now, we’re going to start with Chris’ portable kitchen. The vision is to have our own range, our own oven, our own sink and a way to put food up,” Cotilla said. “We want to be able to have workshops to teach people how to make salves and tinctures.”
Oller plans to have cooking workshops at the farm, too, and feed visitors who come to community day. They also plan to have workshops for children and families.
“That’s one of the joys we’ve discovered — bringing children out to the farm. For a lot of them, it’s their first experience on a farm,” Oller said.
Eventually, Oller said, the $1,000 will start building the permanent Peace Kitchen site and will pay for materials.
The labor is donated. Oller said fundraising will continue to add to the kitchen. A donor is giving utensils, and Oller said Peace Kitchen will accept other donations to complete the kitchen.
“This has changed my life. I found out that what really lights me up is cooking for other people,” Oller said. “I’ve decided that my purpose is to show and work for peace, love and respect. How we treat our neighbors and animals and the planet is all part of that.”
Cotilla said What’s Your Tree has nudged Cardo’s Sprout Farm into being more evangelical about responsible farming and consumption.
Cardo’s is a commercial farm that distributes sprouts and chicken feed, but Cotilla said the crew is considering launching a nonprofit foundation to further the farm’s mission.
“The beautiful thing about this is that we really want the farm to be a community place,” Cotilla said. “Peace Kitchen gets us closer to that.”
LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.
Find your tree
The next Denton session of What’s Your Tree will begin in January. Participants must commit to the seven-week program. For more information, e-mail Chris Oller at chris@whatsyourtree.org. The program is free.
On the web
Create A Screen Name
Screen names can only consist of letters and numbers.
Your screen name will appear to everyone.
NOTE: You cannot change, delete,
or edit your screen name once you hit "Save".
RSS
E-Mail newsletters
You must be logged in to contribute. Log in | Register Now!
You are logged in as screenname | Log Out
You are logged in, but do not have a "screen" name. Create a Screen Name