Snow
It’s snowing today in Amsterdam, following a very cold snap.
Just when I thought weather patterns might be returning to something resembling normal, the weather in the last week or so has been pretty extreme for here.
Of course extreme weather has been hitting most of Europe, among other things leaving 2000 passengers stranded overnight half way between the UK and France in the channel tunnel. Traffic choas is being reported all over Europe. Also in the news is a snowstorm hitting the US north east.
Where I’m At
You’ll have to pardon me as I reflect on my past a bit here. I grew up in Chicago, and while I haven’t been there since I was young, decades ago, I still like to have a little smile at people’s accents there from time to time. Maybe it’s particularly fitting now that I speak a couple of other languages besides English, I appreciate how special regional accents can be.
Where you at? [sic]
Anyway, this is the local question, as people sometimes ask it there. Given it’s context, it can mean just about anything. It can refer to location, mental state or even how much money you have. By design, it’s totally ambiguous.
So I’m going to let you know where I’m at.
I started blogging almost exactly 5 years ago. Right away I started talking about the extreme loss of biodiversity the world was facing, and I encouraged people to start growing their own food, as well as saving and sharing their own seeds. I spoke out sharply over the years about Europe’s oppressive seed laws, above all trying to educate people that these laws exist. I spoke out about the GMOs the seed companies were spreading around the world, which wasn’t a secret to anyone.
This year, the president of the United States announced he was going to tear up part of his lawn and plant a mostly heirloom vegetable garden. To say I was astonished is a huge understatement.
Seed laws in Europe are beginning to fall apart. Denmark started allowing sales of unregistered seeds under certain circumstances, and a number of other countries started with low cost registration of varieties. Because Europe is fragmented in the way it is, it’s sometimes hard to get information on what’s going on in other countries, but it’s clear the tide is changing.
While it’s too soon to let our guards down, the indications are GMOs as they are presently available, are simply not going to be accepted by consumers, and are being phased out.
It’s too early to say we are reversing the losses to agricultural biodiversity, but things are looking a lot better than a few years ago. The number of gardeners trading and saving seeds has become phenomenal!
I’ve spoken out against aspartame sweetener, and there’s now increasing awareness of the dangers associated with this product.
Even in the US, high fructose corn syrup seems like it’s on the way out.
As one of the more popular gardening blogs writing about these topics, it’s been an emotional and stressful time. It’s made me realize I was both doing a good job predicting the future, but also playing a role in the changes as they were occurring. People were listening to me, telling others and things were changing.
At the same time these things were changing, the popularity of my blog was increasing. You have to understand, it’s the nature of the Internet, popularity of this nature does not occur with a few extra readers at a time. It increases exponentially. When readership of my blog increases, it usually does so by doubling over the course of a few months, and continues to do this over and over. It’s worth pointing out that it goes down sometimes too.
As the popularity of my blog increases, I can quickly find myself dealing with a lot of responsibilities all at the same time. Answering emails and comments, fielding requests for seeds, planning events like the meeting in Oxford this year, and so on. These kinds of things can lead to hours of work per day, and when they are increasing at the same rate as the readership of my blog, something eventually has to give.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I value these things all as an important part of my blog, but I haven’t found a good way of automating and managing the growth of them yet.
Aside from all of this, I have a personal life too and other responsibilities to deal with too.
So all of this came to a head a few months ago, and this is why I’ve been so quiet lately. An unexpected holiday as it were. Lots of people have been waiting for things from me, and have been disappointed. I have stacks of unanswered emails, and lots of seeds and other plant materials waiting to go out.
I hope to start getting back into the swing of things over the holidays, and I will soon contact as many of you as possible who are still waiting for me for some reason. If I don’t get in touch with you, please contact me again. I’m sure a lot of things have just fallen through the cracks.
I’m now faced with the task of totally reinventing things, both because the world has changed so much and I need to find other topics to write about, and because I need to priortize better and figure out ways of managing the Internet growth cycles. I thank you in advance for your patience, and also appreciate any suggestions you may have.
Above all, thank you everyone for reading this blog and caring about what have turned into some of the most important topics in today’s world.
Expat Bloggers Meeting in Amsterdam
Last Friday there was an expat-blogger meetup at a local bar. Better late than never when it comes to posting about it I suppose.
I don’t know how many people reading this are really interested in English speaking expats in Amsterdam, but we did meet some interesting people and their blogs are worth having a look at.
The bar was really crowded! So crowded in fact, that I couldn’t really move to the other side of the table to speak to the people there. Maybe another time I’ll get a chance to meet and chat with all of them. I also intended to bring my camera, but forgot, so I don’t have any of my own pictures. Some of the other bloggers there did bring cameras, even one person brought a video camera, so you can look on other blogs for the pictures.
As an expat of now almost 20 years, it was strange to meet people who mostly have only been here a few months. It brings back some distant memories. In many ways it seems like they are jumping into the deep end at the moment, as the atmosphere of being a foreigner living in the Netherlands is not the best and jobs are hard to come by. Steph and I had it easier when we came.
Like I said I didn’t meet everyone, but as far as I know, these were the bloggers there that evening:
Amanda of Amanda Blog and Kiss
Andy of Andy in Amsterdam
Angela and Mats of Amsterdamned
John of John does Amsterdam
Haley from Texaantje
Lizzy of Lizzy Goes Dutch
Anita of Greetings from Holland
Hanna of Jandals
Jason of Hanson World
Did I forget anyone?
I hope we organize more get-togethers, the expat community in Amsterdam needs more cohesiveness!
Guest Post, Guardian Gardening Blog
A guest post of mine just showed up on the Guardian Gardening Blog.
Have a look at How to save tomato seeds.
Amsterdam Pure Markt
Steph and I went to the Amsterdam Pure Markt (website in Dutch) today. I have only recently ever heard of it, it’s all the way on the other side of the city from us and it’s only held once a month, so it’s not going to be a regular thing for us to do. A number of stands had home made looking sausages hanging up like this one:
The stated goals of the market organizers are:
- Delicious Eating and Drinking
- In Season and Local Products
- Handmade with Quality
- Creativity
- Environmentally Sustainable
- Healthy
There were several cheese stands, like this one that appeared to be selling cheese from their own farm.
Lots of food was available, mostly in the form of small inexpensive snacks. Some of the stands selling delicatessen products were happy to sell them on a paper plate with a plastic fork for no extra cost.
A local microbrewery was selling ’samples’ of their beer for €1 per glass. Wine was also available per glass, together with many other non-alcoholic drinks. Most of the stands seemed to be offering free samples of their products.
This board is offering crepes, sweet on top and savory on the bottom. It says the savory ones are made with buckwheat flour.
While a lot of the products were very regional, there were also a number of farmers who came from farther away, like this Italian looking guy selling organic Sicilian olive oil for €10 per wine bottle full.
This market may be the only place you will ever see Dutch wine for sale, like this stand below:
This stand sold smoked garlic and related products:
This stand wasn’t clearly labelled, so I can’t say anything about it for sure, but it appeared to be one of a number of stands that were selling products that came from a single farm or farming cooperative. In this case what they were selling looked like it came from Spain:
This stand was selling home made mustard products (and by the looks of it pickles too):
For 2009 this market is only the last Sunday of each month, up to and including October, from 11:00-18:00 (11am to 6pm). It’s not a difficult walk from the Amstel train station in Amsterdam, but taking bus 15 for a few stops, or maybe a taxi, is probably a little easier. Tram 9 from Amsterdam Centraal Station is also a good choice. It’s just about in the dead center of Park Frankendael, and if you walk be sure to have a good map with you as the streets are a little complicated in that area. Try using Google Maps to search on ‘Pure Markt Amsterdam Netherlands’.
If you’re a tourist coming to Amsterdam, looking for local food products, I think it’s a great place to come. For some reason their website is not in English, in fact they don’t seem to be doing a lot of promotion at all, so it’s probably mostly unknown to most tourists. It wasn’t very crowded like our local food market can be, and the surrounding park can be a nice place to spend the rest of the day after a visit to the market.
