Small bites: Ferrets, farming, and fat kid food

Show Notes

In 2021, what has brought you the most joy or taught you the greatest lessons? In part two of this "small bites" series, we reflect on these questions and more as we discuss ferrets (1:27), farming (20:13), and fat kid food (40:46). Enjoy these bite sized bits of pet shaming, futurity planning, and recipe recommendations.

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Creators & Guests

Host

R.B. Brooks

Director of Programs, Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity

Producer

Justin Drwencke

Executive Director, Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity

What is Take the Last Bite?

Take the Last Bite is a direct counter to the Midwest Nice mentality— highlighting advocacy & activism by queer/trans communities in the Midwest region. Each episode unearths the often disregarded and unacknowledged contributions of queer & trans folks to social change through interviews, casual conversations and reflections on Midwest queer time, space, and place.

For questions, comments and feedback: [e-mail]

To support this podcast and the Institute, please visit sgdinstitute.org/giving

Host: R.B. Brooks, they/them, director of programs for the Midwest Institute for Sexuality & Gender Diversity

Cover Art: Adrienne McCormick

R.B.:
Hey, hi, hello, y'all. This is R.B. and welcome back. If you're joining us for part two, but haven't checked out part one of our Small Bite series, I strongly encourage you to subscribe to the Take the Last Bite podcast or jump back into your library catalog and add part one to your queue so you can check that out later where we talk about queer animation, grief and the gay outdoors. Today, during part two of our Small Bite series, we'll be talking about ferrets, farming, and fat kid food. Enjoy these bite sized bits of pet shaming, futurity planning, and recipe recommendations on this special episode of Take The Last Bite.

[Music Playing]

Y'all we cannot do this. We cannot be these stereotypical Midwesterners. Please eat the rest of this food.

We just have these conversations every day with people like this is exhausting. I don't want to do this anymore.

Why can't we be in space with hundreds of other queer and trans folks and having these necessary conversations?

I don't know who you are, but we're going to talk by the potatoes for five minutes

Because aesthetic is the only thing keeping my dysphoria at bay. I'm broke all the time, but I look amazing.

Definitely going to talk about Midwest Nice and if that's as real as it wants to think it is.

Midwest nice is white aggression. That's what it is.

[End Music]

R.B.:
To start off our first small bite, I chat with Danielle Kropveld, our fundraising coordinator, about corralling their circus of four legged creatures at home, and how we sincerely hope that two of them won't have to get a nasal swab.

All right, fam, let's get into it. We are chatting about some small things that have been bringing you big joy, but maybe a little bit of frustration lately. Can you tell me about what has brought you joy this year?

Danielle:
Definitely. So that would be my pets. I have a menagerie of pets. I have a cat, I have a snake. I have two ferrets, and an aquarium with shrimp.

R.B.:
With shrimp?

Danielle:
Yes. With fish and shrimp, lots of little red cherry shrimp. They're very cute. They've been bringing me a lot of joy. That is correct. They've really been getting me through all the rough year, two years that we've been having. They give me a lot of joy. And like you said, a lot of frustration. The newest addition is our cat, Nora, and she's been a big old ball of energy. She's just running across the apartment at whatever hour she feels. Yeah, she's been quite a character.

R.B.:
And Nora is kind of the reason we even opted into this being our conversation, right? Because you just got Nora. How long ago?

Danielle:
Back in November. Beginning of November. So, like, a month or two ago.

R.B.:
Okay. Please tell me the story of how Nora came into your life.

Danielle:
So my partner and I were staying at an Airbnb in Ohio, in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. And as we get there, the owner has been telling the rest of the people at the Airbnb, friends of ours, that there's this cat that wanders around the property and that if we wanted to catch it and bring it to the Humane Society or something, like, we could do that. But you're probably not going to see the cat. So we were like, okay, probably not going to see it. Like, whatever. And then one day into our little vacation, we're standing on the porch of the house, and all of a sudden, here's this little cat that comes up to my partner. It's just like rubbing herself all on our legs. Yeah. She was so cute. And this was around Thanksgiving time. We had made a turkey, and we had the turkey organs left over. So we gave her one of the organs of the turkey, and she just immediately was like, I love you guys so much. Like, please never leave me. Probably because we were feeding her, and she was probably starving. So we brought her inside onto, like, this little they have a little three season porch. And we went to the dollar store because that was the closest thing that we had and bought her some food and, like, a litter box. And we contacted the owners, and they were like, yeah, if you want to bring it to the humane society, that's fine. But if you want to bring her home, that's fine, too.

R.B.:
Like, get this cat off my property.

Danielle:
Exactly. Yeah. We ended up bringing her home. And here she is.

R.B.:
I think all Airbnb should come with cats. My partner and I stayed out of Airbnb in Boston a few years ago, and I wish I could remember the name of this cat, but she was the sweetest, sweetest thing. But we were concerned we lost her a couple of times because she would just disappear into the parts of the house that we weren't staying in. But I think all Airbnb should come with a cat because it just makes it extra homey. And unfortunately, I couldn't take that cat home, though, but I'm glad that you were able to take that cat home. That's so cute.

Danielle:
Yeah. She's a member of our family now.

R.B.:
So from barn cat to Airbnb cat to hanging out with you, that's perfect. Absolutely. Yeah. So at one of our recurring meetings, you realize this cat and this is all happening and da da da da, and you're like, so we also have to figure out how to introduce the ferrets and the cat, which you've since kind of done. How did that go?

Danielle:
It went okay. We've got our ferrets in a separate room of the house. They're not free roam, like some ferrets are. We just don't have the capacity to do that with our, you have to ferret proof the whole house. It would be, like, a whole production. So we brought Nora into the room where the ferrets are. And we started with one of our ferrets, Bemo because he's kind of more chill than our other one. And we let them out and we let them sniff each other and, like, Bemo sort of, sort of following her around. And, like, she seems a little scared, a little trepidatious. She's like, running away, and she doesn't seem like, angry or anything. She just doesn't really know what to make of this small little snake cat on the ground. So we're like, okay, so this is going decently well with Bemo. Let's bring out Charlie. And so we brought out Charlie with Bemo, and she immediately, uh, ferrets, the way that they play is that they bite each other. They've got really thick skin. So when a ferret bites another ferret, it's usually not a problem. But if a ferret bites a human or a cat, usually it hurts. So she immediately went to Nora's neck and started biting her as like, I think it might be aggression. It might be play. I don't know what it is. It's kind of hard sometimes to read their behavior, but Nora definitely didn't like it. She just started yelling and she batted away. We were like, okay, that's not working. We just sort of went with Bemo and Nora for the time being, because I think Charlie is just, she has too much energy. She's too rambunctious. So it went, okay. I guess you could say, I think we're going to have to do another exposure session of, like, here is each other and sniff each other and give it a little. Yeah. It's fun to see them interact with each other. Definitely. Just to see where they, you can kind of see, like, the wheels turning in their head just to figure out what is going on with this creature that you have introduced to me. It went, okay, not great. But it went okay.

R.B.:
Yeah. Just a big experiment in, like, social interaction. And it feels kind of different, too, than what I feel like you traditionally hear as the advice for when you introduce dogs, for example. Right. Like, you find neutral ground that they're not territorial over and try to introduce them. But with the ferrets, they've kind of got their own little ecosystem in their specific room. Right. So if you took them out, you'd have this other distraction, right? Where are we now? Where you brought me? What do you mean the world is bigger than this room you've kept us in forever, parents?

Danielle:
That's the thing. They know that the room is bigger, because whenever you leave the room momentarily, they'll scratch at the door and be like, let me out. I know there's more there. I know you're keeping something from me.

R.B.:
But bringing them out and saying, okay, so now you get to leave the room. And also there's this cat here. And also there's all these other things. And also, please don't bite on this. Just, like, two overstimulated ferrets meeting a cat just sounds like a production.

Danielle:
Oh, yeah, definitely.

R.B.:
Sounds like a production. Something I didn't know that you had just told me, right, is that, ferrets can get COVID?

Danielle:
Yes. This is true. This is true. So ferrets, scientists know that they can catch, like, human colds and flus. They've known that for a while. So if you're sick, you're not supposed to handle your ferrets. But I guess they've been doing some preliminary tests on ferrets, and they can catch COVID, which is super unfortunate, because right now I have COVID. And I can't be around them because I don't want to give them a respiratory illness. No, they're very little creatures.

R.B.:
Sounds very sad and maybe very expensive.

Danielle:
Right. I'm calling up my vet like, hey, I think my ferret has COVID, like, what are they going to do for me?

R.B.:
We do not need Charlie and Bemo to be, like, patient zero for the ferret version of the coronavirus pandemic. But that's so wild. It is these tiny little creatures that's just so wild, right. Because like, presumably cats don't. I think they've ruled that out. Presumably dogs can't. They've ruled it out. But I was telling you, too, that there were these hippos in Germany that tested positive for COVID, which is devastating. So it's like we have to protect the hippos. We have to protect the ferrets. Yeah, absolutely. That's just wild. And just like stressful for you when you're a human who's trying to take care of yourself and we're trying to live through this pandemic and getting these sicknesses, but then also have to be mindful of these tiny creatures who can't talk. They can't tell you how they feel. They can't tell you, like, do they have symptoms, all these different factors when we're still learning about the pandemic and then learning that it can get transmitted to rodents? That's a situation. So, like besides having to quarantine away from your precious ferrets, right. How has your entire Zoo fan at home been helpful for you since March of 2020?

Danielle:
I've always kind of been an animal person, so they really bring a lot of excitement. And I guess creativity, I guess, in my life because you constantly have to be entertaining, especially with the ferrets. They're very smart animals. So you have to be entertaining them and giving them enrichment and giving them all sorts of things to do and ways to interact with you. So that's been really fun to do as long as I've had them. But as long as the pandemic has been going on, trying to figure out what can I do with you? That is not, that doesn't involve me putting myself at risk going outside and going places that I could catch COVID at or transmit it. But what is also it's very rewarding, in a way, just to have them be around. And I am responsible for this life. And now I have to contend with my own personal whatever. And then also, I think you and I were talking about this earlier, but they don't know. Obviously, they don't know that there is a global pandemic, and they don't know. They know that I'm home more. They like that. They tend to like that. They tend to like that a little bit, but they've been really bringing me a lot of motivation, a lot of joy throughout this pandemic to really give me a reason to get up and do stuff. I have to get up and feed the cat. I have to get up and let the

R.B.:
‘Cause know if you don't.

Danielle:
They will. They will. You can hear the ferrets in the other room, just like pawing at the cage. It's like, oh, my God. Stop that. Yeah.

R.B.:
You were saying that your ferrets know that a world exists outside the door, right? They want to follow you wherever you're going, take me away from you. But beyond that, beyond understanding that you're going somewhere that I am not, they don't understand. We go out in the world, right? And like, come back understanding what's happening. And the pets have no idea. And so I was telling you that I am convinced that the pets have started to conspire to keep us home, because now they're so accustomed to us being around, right? Like I have my own little cluster of creatures. I've got two cats. I've got a dog. And the dog ambushes out the front door when I'm trying to leave and we have a standoff in the hallway, and eventually he goes back inside. But I'm just like, I don't want to go either, buddy, if I could explain to you how I don't actually want to go where I'm going most of the time, right? Because there's so much happening that you have no idea. And then I just get to come home to this naive little house hippo who's just like, thank you for coming back.

I was telling you, one of my cats has really gotten on some bullshit because he started rushing out the front door, too, which is brand new behavior, and I don't like it because he's like a Ninja. He's not a very good one all the time, but he's a Ninja getting out the front door. So I'm not always paying attention. He slithered out the front door and I don't need him galavanting around our entire apartment building. Or then he'll either lay on top of my sock drawer when I'm trying to get ready to go, or I'll lay my clothes out and I turn around for 10 seconds and come back and you sprawled across them. They know that they don't want you to go. They know, maybe conceptually that something's off and weird because we're home so much more often, and they love that. But then the moment you try to leave, the FOMO and separation anxiety kicks in right away. I have a video somewhere of just, my dog sounds like a Velociraptor damsel in distress when we leave him. It is the most pitiful pun intended because he's a Pitbull lab mix. But, the most pitiful thing ever. And I wrote a bit about it that the pets have no idea what's going on. It's really refreshing to come home where there's these creatures that you care for, like you're talking about. I'm responsible for you. And with the exception of your ferrets, I guess, right. Like you are immune. You are unscathed for the most part, by what is happening in the world with this global pandemic specifically. And just like any other shit, like they don't stop going on. That's refreshing. That's so refreshing. You can't bring up whatever's going on on the news ticker tape to me like you'll just lay on my arm and hold me hostage in bed. But other than that, you're not causing me mental duress. That's great.

Danielle:
Definitely. Yeah. They’re a Godsend honestly, I don't know what I do without my Zoo.

R.B.:
Okay. So while the creatures are a godsend, like we talked about earlier, the attempt at getting Bemo and Charlie the ferrets, and Nora the cat to be sweet and social creatures had its complications. It seems like Bemo and Nora hit it off pretty all right. Charlie, on the other hand, was like, I'm going to bite you. That's how I'm going to say Hello, because that's apparently totally socially acceptable in ferret convention. Definitely. I guess, what's the hope between the three of them, right? What would it mean for them to be getting along? Like, what is the hope? And what do you think you're going to try take two of getting your four legged friends to be more amicable with each other?

Danielle:
Yeah, definitely. I guess the hope eventually is that we could have them all in the same room and they don't seem to dislike each other. At least some level of apathy would be nice. At least that.

R.B.:
Can you coexist without tearing each other's necks out? Got it right.

Danielle:
Right, exactly. But I think probably for next time. I think we're going to try, I think again to start with just Bemo and Nora and see how that goes again. And then maybe just do Charlie and Nora and just maybe hold them and let them sniff each other and just be really diligent that they don't hurt each other. I think we're probably going to just try it again. But just like, slightly different circumstances. We tried to have Charlie at one point, she has a little harness and a leash because we occasionally go outside with them. So we tried to have her, like on a harness and a leash so we could control her while Nora was walking around. And that didn't really seem to work out too well. So maybe we'll dispose of that for the time being and let her do her own thing. I don't entirely know what the plan is for next time, but ideally, I would like them all to be relatively okay with each other because they don't often cross paths because the ferrets generally stay in their cage unless we're in the room with them. And Nora kind of has her own part of the house where she likes to hang around, so they don't come into contact with each other a lot. But I'm hoping that we can sort of facilitate their contact so that eventually they can be friendly and we can get some cute pictures of the ferrets and the cat together. Yes, please. Yeah, absolutely. That is the goal.

R.B.:
So they don't gotta be besties, but ideally they can coexist and make their parents happy. Perfect. Absolutely. All right, fam, is there anything else that you want to gush about related to the joy that your joy and again, frustration that your little ecosystem of creatures has brought you?

Danielle:
I just love them a lot. I do. Honestly. And Nora being the newest addition, we're sort of just getting to know her. She's really just coming out of her shell and figuring out who she is and what her little habits are. It's like meeting a new friend, you know each other, and it's wonderful. It's great. I'm having a great time. Amazing.

R.B.:
Well, I hope Nora continues to bring you new joy coming into 2022. I hope you feel much better from your COVID spell. I hope the ferrets do not get COVID because that sounds like a stressful vet call. And I appreciate you chatting with me about all of our creatures. Yeah.

[Music plays]

R.B.:
In our next small bite, I chat with executive coordinator Michelle Walters about some small technologies that are making a big impact on the landscape of urban farming.

Alright, fam, let's get into it. You wanted to chat about some lessons that you've been learning, not just this year, right. But just kind of over the course of your time at your place of work. So do you want to talk a bit about where you're working and what's so interesting about it?

Michelle:
Yeah. So I work at an indoor hydroponic farm. I technically am not a farmer. I do people operations, so training new hires, making sure payroll gets run a little bit more the office side of things. But I have learned quite a bit about farming in my time there. I have done some of the tours for interested parties and also will roll up my sleeves and work alongside the farmers as well. So they put me to work. But yes, an indoor hydroponic farm built out of shipping containers. So what we're doing is growing things like herbs and leafy greens, lettuce mixes, that kind of thing. And we are doing it on the walls inside of shipping containers. Basically, the way it works is the towers all have this mesh inside them that holds all the plants in place in the wall, and then the water and the nutrients trickle down through the top of the towers through that mesh, collect at a trough at the bottom, and then it gets filtered and used again. So it's just a really more water sustainable way to grow food. And then also, I'm at the one that is based in the Midwest, where we do not have a super long growing season because of the weather. So it's a way for us to have fresh local produce all year round without the carbon footprint that comes from shipping from further away locations with a better climate. And also when you're shipping from a far off location, there's a lot of nutrient loss that happens in the process. So it's a way to get local and healthy nutritious food into the community.

R.B.:
When you said, roll up your sleeves. Right. I feel like I've heard you talk about yeah, I helped with the farm yesterday so I’m kind of sore today. So it wasn't until, and I was just telling you this, right? It wasn't until a few weeks ago when I was doing a bit of research to prep for our chat today that I dissolved my previous mental image. I'm assuming that you were at this very traditional, tilled, expansive Midwest dirt farm with the red barn and everything. Right. I was just like, oh, my gosh. I had no idea that you were actually talking about this very brick and mortar, if you will. But outside, like, very concrete-esque set up. And I don't know how I missed that. But I do think that the set up that you're talking about with the shipping containers is something that I've not seen or witnessed. I think it's something really interesting for the Midwest, especially, like you're saying that has very short growing seasons or has very complicated weather. That's being further problematised by climate change. To think about how you can do very small batches of indoor growing without taking up a bunch of space. And I was curious, right. How does this model differ from other models of, like, urban and indoor farming? And is this relatively new and an emerging method for growing?

Michelle:
Yeah, definitely. So the majority of farms are still very much exactly what you pictured of outdoor barn type style. So the hydroponics industry for food growing is relatively new. The only reason that we have enough, all the technology we have for hydroponics farming is because of the cannabis industry. That's why the farm hydroponics industry has taken off the last couple of years is we've been able to use the technology being developed by the marijuana growers. This is just kind of funny, one of the crops we grow is dill and dill, I didn't know this until I started working here and we started growing dill, but I guess that when you cut a lot of dill, there's, like, some sort of a chemical in it that can cause chemical burns. So we had to get these cloth sleeves for the farmers to protect their arms. And they all have, like, pot leaves on them, because that's what they're for. It's for cannabis growers to protect them from the oils and stuff. So we do borrow from them quite a bit.

R.B.:
Oh, my God.

Michelle:
The other way. It kind of differs from the other hydroponic farms that are out there, is, a lot of the hydroponic farms that are growing food are doing it more factory farm style, where they'll get like a big warehouse. And it'll be just a huge warehouse full of just different crops and all that. There's a bunch of different ways to do it, too. There's deep water culture, which is like where you have a big pool of water that you're growing your plants in. And all the plants are in these little rafts. There's aeroponics where there's no water involved. They're growing in like, these air pod things. I'm not as good with that. That is like outer space stuff. And then there's also aquaponics, which is like a hydroponics farm. But then there's fish in the water. So then they're also selling fish like tilapia, usually. And so the fish will fertilize the plants, the plants clean the water. It's like a closed loop system.

But with these big factory farms, the issue that you have is the biggest cost in hydroponic farming is the heating and the lights. A lot of the heat comes from the lights. But these big factory style ones, it takes a lot of energy to heat up an entire warehouse to proper growing condition. So with using shipping containers, one, shipping containers are generally single use. They get shipped in with whatever cargo that they have in them, and then they don't get used again. So that's why you've also seen a big pop up in a bunch of people buying tiny homes and things too. There is a surplus of shipping containers to be had, except for right now when we've got all those supply chain issues. But normally, that's a whole other tangent.

They're already insulated, basically, is the thing that's really nice. So they keep the heat in really well. And because they're all very modular, you can control the environment much easier. And then also, the thing that's nice with the shipping containers is if you do get pests in the farm, it does happen, even inside bugs do find their way in. It's very much something that you can seal off. And it doesn't ruin all of your crops. Where these big warehouse farms, if they get pests in there, they're in there. And either they need to use pesticides, or they're going to have to wipe their whole crop and start over. So that can be really expensive. So we don't use pesticides because we could do it very modularly. If we do get pests in a container, we can just crank the heat up really high, like a day or so and then wipe out all the bugs that way. So a lot more sustainable to do it on a smaller scale with the containers.

R.B.:
Is there a level of safety conditions that are enhanced when you're doing kind of these modular, smaller scale, nonindustrial non high manufacturing spaces, whether it's traditional farming, the way that we're talking about, or even some of these warehouse style places, I just imagine that it doesn't feel nearly as ominous to step into a cargo container with a bunch of leafy greens latticing up the side versus some of the contraptions that you see being used in large scale, like agricultural farming.

Michelle:
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely still some level of precautions you take proper equipment and all that doing kind of the HR gig I'm very big on. Please be OSHA compliant. Do not make me have to file workers comp. I would like you not to be injured, but yeah, we don't use pesticides. So, like, the chemicals that we are using those might be irritants, but they're all like food safe sanitizers. Sure. So there's much less chemical usage going on for harvesting. We're not using tractors like tillers and things like that. We have a pair of shears, and I've certainly cut myself with the shears before, but that's a lot less dangerous than a tractor accident or something.

R.B.:
Right. I can do that at home, just trying to cut open an ice cream container, which I recently did. So again, we kind of laid the scene for the type of space and environment that you're at on a regular basis as your job, and it feels just so forward facing in terms of thinking about things like the localization of food, creating access to not only food, but who can participate in food production. Right. Like thinking about, I will never be someone equipped to do a tractor or any of the other equipment that they use in a large scale farming. But it doesn't seem something out of the realm of possibility to participate in something like what you're describing. So what have you seen as a trend and kind of who's participating in either at your place of work specifically or in this larger shift towards very localized, very modular, small scale food production.

Michelle:
When you think of a farmer, I think probably the first stereotype that everybody is coming to everybody's mind is some old guy out in the field that's lived there like his whole life kind of a thing. It's like kind of the stereotypical kind of old McDonald's farmer.

R.B.:
Overalls, overalls and a straw hat.

Michelle:
Maybe a little American Gothic, So that is like the big demographic in farming. And right now, the average age of an American farmer is 50s or 60s. The bulk of the folks that grow our food are going to be retiring in the near future, which means we've got a little bit of a problem on our hands of, like, who can produce the food once those folks retire. So what I've been seeing is a lot of young folks getting into the urban farming movement and the indoor farming movement and in particular, a lot of queer and trans folks. And that has been a really cool thing to see even the last couple of years, the amount of queer and trans employees at my company has increased a bunch in the last year, which has been really exciting and awesome to see all those young people getting into the industry and finding something they're super passionate about.

R.B.:
That is really exciting. And something that I am hopeful, right turns into kind of more like commonplace, colloquial conversation around, where does our food come from? Who's capable of growing food, right? I was super stoked about having this conversation because I got into gardening for the very first time this year, and I didn’t know what I was fucking doing. And I live in a downtown grid in a fifth floor apartment with plenty of space indoors, but not really the capacity to do a lot outdoors. There's not really any green space. There's no immediate gardens downtown where I live. So I was like, well, I can do some herbs, and I bought this self watering, like plant box, nothing terribly large to do some peppers. Right. And I was just like, I'm already exhausted. This is actually a lot, right. And I think I harvested all of six bell peppers, and the basil didn't work, and the mint was outrageous. And I don't even like mint that much. So it's just like I didn't understand what I was signing up for, but I learned a lot just in that window of time.

But I don't really know when we're thinking about climate catastrophe, and we're thinking about the state of the world in this moment and just everything else. That's what I told myself. It just feels really vital, not even as a cute quirky hobby, but as like a survival tactic at this point, to be more equipped to either know how to grow food, know where to find food that's naturally growing and be able to identify food that can be eaten. And so I don't know that there's a question tucked in here necessarily. But I'm just thinking about how do young folks, younger folks be part of this naturalizing of the conversation around foraging, finding, you know, growing, disseminating food, because we're going to be at a place where the old folks are going to die out and we don't own land, we can't afford it. And what are we supposed to do then? Well, we have shipping containers and we have other materials, and we can be really creative. So, like, I think that's really exciting and also terrifying at the same time, because six peppers was one meal for a party of two that's not going to sustain a lot of people for a long time.

Michelle:
Yeah. And you mentioned, too, how hard work it was to grow six peppers. And so I do want to quick plug how impressed I am by our farmers because I will periodically go help out for a day when they're short staffed or something, and they just run circles around me. They're all about a decade younger than me, too. So that doesn't help. But I say every day is leg day at the indoor farm because we're growing on the walls. So it's like, okay, let's do a squat to get the bottom of the tower, and then I'm kind of short. So then, okay, let's do a leg lift to get the top.

R.B.:
Getting your workout in. See, it's a multimodal experience. You're growing your own food, you're getting a workout. Everything's great. I'm thinking, too, about my experiment and how that was a very personal task. Right. And again, it's not something that could become I mean, me having this self watering box that I put on my roof. I was thinking about, how does this localized food shift, right? Become more accessible? Right, to anybody to say, you don't have to be the person who buys the vehicle very expensive hydroponic tower that I've seen all over Instagram, and I want I desperately want, but it's in the realm of, like, $300 to $500, which as a personal purchase is quite a bit versus like having a shipping container that maybe me and my apartment building and three other apartment buildings somehow pool resources to work towards getting our less high tech version or pushing towards our municipality and our city government to invest in something like this or whatever the case is. Right. How does this become the conversation where we are looking at urban spaces to say, we might not be able to put green space here, but we can put a shipping container here, or we can use the storage space that's not as large as a warehouse that's small enough to be able to maintain more sustainably and just kind of have this become this very kind of self sustaining thing? What's next? Where do people start to make more collective choices while also getting really hype about planting their herbs and getting their starters and getting the mushroom kit, which is all fine. But it doesn't seem like it's going to carry us into a place where we're feeding hundreds of people.

Michelle:
Yeah. So I think that the shipping container model is really feasible for different communities. So one of our locations is in New York City, and we literally have containers in a parking lot in the middle of the city. All you need is, just, you have to have a hook up for water, electricity and a drain. In a city, there should be plenty of that available to hook up to. So communities finding a way to pool resources to be able to purchase one of these. There are companies out there that make prefab hydroponic growing shipping containers that you can buy all set up with all the stuff in it, and you just pull your resources together to be able to do that. The one limitation is the kind of crop I would say in a shipping container, because hydroponic industry is still so new and developing, and it's how much money are you going to spend putting lights and all the light and the water and the nutrients into stuff versus how much crop does it yield. So, say, growing a fruiting plant, it would take way more resources than lettuce and herbs and things like that. But you do see a lot more salad mixes and things like that in the hydroponic space for that reason. But there are, um, Japan, in particular, has a ton of research going into other crops. There's a company based out of Japan that is doing hydroponic strawberries, but I think it's like $16. Don't quote me on the price. It's really expensive for this little teeny tiny package of strawberries. Okay. So I think it's a little bit more of a novelty at this point, but it's possible. So just as the industry continues and like, the technology gets better, what we can grow becomes more feasible.

R.B.:
So as we're wrapping up on a personal level, right. Like what has been either one of the greatest lessons from your experience being in the setting or just something that's been personally rewarding that you've learned during your time in hydroponic urban farming settings. Yeah. So I think the thing that was the most shocking to me was really learning how the food system works and all of the challenges within it and the lack of fresh produce that we have in the country. So that's been really eye opening. And the more positive note, the thing that has been really meaningful to me about this is because I do people operations, and I'm one of the people that interviews potential employees and all that is being able to create avenues for young folks who have never farmed in their lives or maybe just dabbled as a hobby, like just similar to you growing something on the roof, creating avenues where they can turn that into a whole career and go out there and change the world.

R.B.:
Anything else for the good of the small bite that you want to add, pitch, push, promote?

Michelle:
Well, I'll share some resources that we can throw in the show notes here, but I found a site that has a really nice compilation of LGBTQIA plus farmer resources. Okay. So it includes different farming networks to connect with, books to read, all sorts of really great resources for people who are interested in farming and learning more.

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R.B.:
So for this small bite I’ll be chatting with myself. And I wanna talk about an experience that’s been both joyous and educational. And that’s been cooking at home.

There’s two major reasons that home cooking rises to the top of my 2021 reflections list. First of all, I’m a self-proclaimed fat kid– I love food, I love sharing meals with other people, I have little burn marks on my stomach ‘cause I’m not always attentive to where my literal fat is moving when I’m working over the stovetop. All my life I’ve navigated my fatness while also viewing food as a medium for creativity, connection and expression.

The second reason that home cooking is so prevalent to me this year is because in December 2020 I tested positive for COVID, which you must remember was before the layout of vaccinations, so I had a pretty rough go of it. I completely lost my taste and smell, which deeply impacted what I wanted to eat. So for a while I was eating pretty bland foods, prioritizing healthier things like soups full of veggies as my body continued to recover from the virus or things that were simple to make because it didn’t really matter to my palette.

But then about three months later, so around March of this year, just when I thought things were improving and my taste might be coming back, my absence of taste and smell turned into a phenomenon called parosmia– which describes the distortion of smell and taste. This distortion manifests differently for those who experience it, but for me everything tasted synthetic, things like onions smelled absolutely rancid, milk chocolate tastes like dirt and certain aftertastes of one food would suddenly take the place of other foods as the only thing I could taste.

So, to say that I was miserable was an understatement. And I’ve been battling with these changes in my taste and smell ever since. Even right now, over a year after my original infection there are foods and scents that are different, unappealing or hardly discernible. So this year has been an experiment in finding ways to stimulate my taste buds, avoid things that suddenly taste terrible, and reconnect with food in ways that don’t make mealtimes a disappointing experience.

One of my goals for 2021 was to learn how to grow and harvest my own food. I started with a very audacious list of crops I wanted to plant using an existing, sizeable garden plot at my partner’s grandma’s house– we were gonna grow potatoes and peas and green beans and all kinds of herbs. We had it all drawn out on a piece of newspaper. But after the unfortunate passing of my partner’s grandfather in February of this year and working through the grief in the aftermath of this loss, the large gardening project seemed less feasible and I resolved to do a smaller project at home– in our fifth floor apartment located in a downtown urban setting without access to green space.

Having never planted anything before, I wanted to keep it simple. We decided on two herbs– basil and mint. And one vegetable– bell peppers. Obtaining all the supplies, and probably more than I actually needed, for this adventure was fun– I got this self-watering planter box for the bell peppers and put it on the roof level outside our window. This seemed brilliant until my six foot tall fat self realized I would have to contort myself out the window each time I wanted to tend to my planter box. But having everything I needed set up, the only thing left to do was wait and see what would happen.

In addition to the trio of crops I had started up at home, my partner and I also decided we would sign up for a CSA, or community supported agriculture which is like a food subscription box but everything in the box is sourced from local farms and foodmakers. We opted into a veggie box and a bread box. Each time we picked up our box, it was like getting a surprise gift because even though we technically picked out the veggies we wanted ahead of time, the size and amount of produce varied and the bread selections for that week were a mystery. So sometimes we got bread loaves filled with dried apple, which made for an amazing french toast breakfast and other times we got freshly baked scones flavored with chai or lavender.

Getting these boxes every other week during the summer reinvigorated my enthusiasm around food. Thinking about what I could do with the veggies we’d be getting was like a game and prompted a lot of googling for new recipes and trying out produce I never would have thought to grab at a store. We regularly added microgreens to our box, which was an easy way to add more greens to an omelet or rice bowl. And for the first time in my life I ate and cooked a delicata squash, which I roasted up with simple seasonings and layered into a crockpot lasagna with vodka sauce, lentil-based lasagna sheets, and ricotta.

So between my impacted taste, gardening at home, getting a CSA, and still working remotely, there was a lot of time and motivation to experiment in the kitchen and outside it. One week we got ears of sweet corn in our veggie box, which inspired us to grill on our mini- mint green BBQ pit where I also added two marinated mushroom caps and made those into a stellar sandwich. I upgraded my go-to chilli recipe by adding the leftover corn we’d grilled and the base of the chilli was made from stock I’d made from accumulated veggie scraps, including the stripped corn cobs. Using food in such a cyclical way added so much depth of flavour to a dish I’ve made dozens of times and reminded me that even the most tried and true recipe can be improved.

What has also been pretty entertaining about trying out all these new cooking experiments has been having someone to try the concoctions coming out of my little test kitchen. I recently asked my partner, out of all the things I made this year, what was your favourite, he told me it was the, quote, feta pasta. This dish is also known as the Tik Tok feta pasta recipe which is where it rose to influencer fame. All you do is plop a block of feta cheese in the center of a baking dish, surround that with cherry tomatoes, cover everything with seasoning and oil, cook that up until the tomatoes are blistery and the cheese is melted, add in your favorite pasta and some basil, mix that shit up and ta-da. I’ve made this dish many times since our first attempt, often putting my own spin on it by adding peas or green beans or even swapping out the pasta for spaghetti squash. I know I have the ingredients in my fridge right now to make this for dinner soon and know this isn’t something I would have been immediately drawn to without having access to fresh basil, tomatoes and even the feta through our CSA box. And again, it’s also something that my omnivorous partner loves.

I am definitely the cook in the house, my partner would probably liken me to Chef Ramsey from Hell’s Kitchen with the way I can commandeer our kitchen, but it’s important and rewarding for me to cook for someone else and learn their food preferences so I can provide them something that caters to their tastes. I am still trying to master the art of cooking an over easy egg, which is how my partner likes his cooked, but there’s been plenty of food experiments that he’s been skittish about trying that he’s ended up really enjoying such as when I used some of the fresh mint I grew to toss together a watermelon, feta and mint salad and he went from doubting he’d like it to finishing off the entire bowl.

Not to be hyperbolic, but having someone else who can also put the food I'm trying to eat into their own mouth has been a safety thing for me. Especially early on, but even still now, I’ve had to ask my partner to smell check items in our fridge to confirm they were still good or to let me know if something has the right amount of seasoning without being inedibly salty just because I can’t always tell. Our relationship and cohabitation has been a vital component to me understanding what scents and tastes I can decipher and what I’m still missing out on. When we had unprecedented, massive wildfires in northern Minnesota this summer and the air quality was deemed so unsafe to breath the you shouldn’t be outside, while others in my town were talking about how potent the smell was, I could just barely make out the smell– it was hardly any different to me than when I’ve smelled nearby bonfires. Having someone else in my home who can inform me if something is burning, whether it’s coming from the stove or the building, is really important. I don’t know how long I will be disabled by the long-term effects of COVID, but I am regularly reminded through my relationship with food that I have to be careful and mindful that what others can smell and taste that could offer them cues about safety are ones that I could miss.

This holiday season, I was happy that my taste was at a place where I would be able to enjoy it and crafted menus for my partner and I which mostly included things I’ve made before– pumpkin cheesecakes, tofurkey roasts, mashed potatoes. But in the spirit of foods I’ve been missing out on, my spirit compelled me to revisit holiday dishes from when I was younger. Due to a toxic relationship with a parent, I don’t do holidays with my full family anymore and while I don’t regret that, because it’s important to hold boundaries, I’ve found something powerful in the petty act of putting my own spin on some of the holiday foods I grew up with. I felt a deep sense of accomplishment making an awesome stuffing this year using loaves of bread from our CSA box that were full of grains and dried cranberries, I cooked down some mushrooms and onions with sage and thyme and relished in being able to smell all the earthy goodness without wanting to gag because onions finally don’t smell rancid anymore. And for the winter holidays, I did a vegetarian rendition of the grape jelly meatballs I remember eating around new years as a kid, making a thick savoury sauce out of a bourbon bbq sauce and grape jelly, tossing that on top of some garlic butter linguine and making do with nearly none of the ingredients I remember, but making rye bread toast with soyrizo, vegetarian chorizo sausage, covered with velveeta. Which are apparently also called hanky panky but I don’t know anything about that.

It felt good to reclaim these dishes that I remember from growing up in Saint Louis but don’t really see in Northern Minnesota or dishes that I can’t expect to ever get the recipe card for because of a fractured relationship and being able to make new memories around this food that I’ve cooked for myself. The most blissful food moment I had this year was at the end of summer when it was finally time to harvest the bell peppers. Because of the restraints on fitting myself out the window, I do think I watered the plants less than I could have and we had a couple random frigid overnights early in the summer that may have stunted the overall growth. But I ended up with a yield of seven red bell peppers and they felt like the most precious peppers I’ve ever held. Because I’d spent this entire summer tending to them, picking out weeds, yes weeds, with a pair of tweezers because dandelion spores had blown up from the park next to our apartment up into the box and took root, plucking out peanut shells and other debris dropped by birds and squirrels, and after all this tedious little labor, I had food. I had food I grew from a little sprout that I could then make into delicious food that I could happy fat kid dance while eating. I roasted those peppers, blended them with the remainder of the basil I’d grown, heated it up in a saucepan with ricotta and tossed it with some cavatappi pasta and topped it with some of the roasted delicata squash I had leftover. At that moment, I was gastronomically and philosophically satisfied– I had not only achieved my goal of growing and harvesting food but was able to taste it enough to appreciate what I’d done for myself. I was sad when my bowl was empty, but had taken plenty of photographs of both the plant growing and sauce making process to document the accomplishment– which is actually something I started doing a lot more of this year, taking videos and sharing some of my food experiments as I rediscovered what made my mouth happy.

As I’m sitting here recording this, I have a large mug of earl gray tea next to me which is something I wasn’t able to enjoy for most of this year because it just tasted bitter, like musty water. Some time in the last few months, especially as the winter drew back upon us, I figured I’d try it again and was thrilled that I could make out the bergamot and differentiate honey from any other sweetener. It’s not quite the same, but it’s improved. There’s a lot of people who’ve been impacted by this particular long-COVID symptom– either losing their taste and smell for a few weeks, maybe months. And those of us who are a year or more into our taste and smell being disrupted. I’ve read articles and watched videos of folks really emphasizing how depressing this experience is, how it’s causing them to lose weight or make them sick in other ways because they’re not eating enough or getting certain nutrients. There’s no immediate cure for the parosmia, it’s basically a break in communication between your smell detectors and your brain and it only improves when those connections are reestablished.

All I’ve been able to do and what I may encourage others who are experiencing fucked up smell and taste tod o, especially for prolonged periods of time, is to literally play around with your food. I’ve worked in different vinegars and soy sauce, liquid smoke and smoked paprika, switched to a different type of table salt, anything to create a sensation in my mouth even if I couldn’t quite taste what I was eating. Samin Nosrat wrote a book and hosted a Netflix series called Salt Fat Acid and Heat, and throughout the pandemic actually co-hosted a podcast that I listened to every episode of called Home Cooking which talks about a range of things including what to do with the bulk ingredients people bought at the beginning of the pandemic but weren’t sure exactly what to do with or how to cook for roommates or how to be COVID conscious when cooking food to share with neighbors. There was even an episode where a listener asked cooking advice after having lost their taste and smell and Samin was able to address this from a knowledgeable place because she had family members who experience anosmia, which is the complete or partial loss of taste and smell, due to other illnesses or viruses. So when I think about her book, she’s impressing the point that all good food really boils down to is the salt content, the fat content used to cook something in, like butter or oil or ghee, the acidity and the heat level. And for me that’s been a guiding light this year for figuring out how to not completely lose my connection to food when things I used to regularly eat tasted downright disgusting. I mean, as a vegetarian there’s so many things that are cooked in or flavoured with onion and that was one of the worst tastes for me. But when I toyed around with different ingredients that maybe I already had in my cabinet but didn’t use very often, it made it I could find food I could enjoy through this discovery process while also testing our new techniques as someone who has always enjoyed cooking.

My absolute favourite writer adrienne maree brown, in her book and theory of Emergent Strategy, says, what you pay attention to, grows, and while I had to pay a lot of attention to my COVID symptoms as I figured out what recovery looked like, I paid ample attention to what my body needed and through that attentiveness, a new relationship with food, an enhanced sense of what it means to feed and nurture oneself and literal food grown by small planter boxes on my roof were all able to grow.

I’m excited for more food experiments in the new year, I definitely intend to sign up for a CSA again this summer, and I’m hopeful for more opportunities to cook for others and enjoy home cooked meals in shared space without the worry and weight of the latest wave of COVID transmission. If you’re interested in any of my food experiments, I’ve posted a lot of the dishes mentioned in this episode on my instagram and also have a highlight button aptly titled “Fat Kid” with years of yummy things I’ve made before and after my taste changed. You can find me at tranzwrites, which is T-R-A-N-Z-W-R-I-T-E-S. Here’s to a new year of happy eating, ya’ll!

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Our inbox is open for all of your insight, feedback, questions, boycotts, memes and other forms of written correspondence. You can contact us at [e-mail]. This podcast is made possible by the labor and commitment of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity staff. Particular shout out to Justin, Andy and Nick for all of your support with editing, promotion and production. Our amazing and queer as fuck cover art was designed by Adrienne McCormick.

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