Late Summer

The Joy of Uncertainty

I don’t think I would have had the confidence to start Seed Change Strategies with Ellie and Will if I hadn’t hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT is a 2,650 mile footpath that runs contiguously from Mexico to Canada. Each year about 700-800 people attempt a thru-hike, with only about 15% completing the whole thing. In 2022 I took a four month sabbatical from work and hiked about 1,700 miles of it, carrying only what I could fit in my backpack. The experience would prove to be the absolute best and most challenging of my life.

Or it could be a bear, a forest fire, a swarm of mosquitos, or a 100 mile stretch of ankle-twisting volcanic rocks. But no matter what each day brought, the only thing there was to do was put your best foot forward, keep on trucking, and hope for the best. When forest fires knocked me off trail again and again and again, I had to think on my feet, rely on my friends and the kindness of strangers, and adjust my path accordingly. 

A few months back I heard an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, the Gray Area, titled the Joy of Uncertainty. Author Maggie Jackson described that we humans, like most animals, have evolved to have a stress response when we face uncertainty, and so, naturally, we tend to have an ingrained fear and dislike of the unknown. But neuroscientists are beginning to understand that when we are dealing with uncertainty some pretty incredible things happen in our brains. 

“The uncertainty of the moment, the realization that you don’t know, that you’ve reached the limits of your knowledge, instigate a number of neural changes. Your focus broadens. Your brain becomes more receptive to new data. Your working memory is bolstered… that’s the moment when your brain is telling itself there is something to be learned here. By squandering that opportunity or retreating from that discomfort, we're losing an opportunity to learn, because your old knowledge is no longer sufficient.”

In the first eight months of Seed Change it’s felt like my brain is working differently. I’ve experienced a kind of curiosity, creativity, and openness that reminds me a lot of how it felt to be on trail. As someone with a brain that tends to be a little overly anxious, I’ve learned that when I let go of trying to control my situation and instead embrace an ethos of “what can I learn here,” something shifts in a way that feels so invigorating.

If the last ten years have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t take anything for granted; that the future is anything but certain. Working in the field of sustainable regional food systems means that we are working to shift our economic systems, our ecological systems, even our culture in some pretty fundamental ways. That means working to create a future that we may not even be able to fully imagine from where we stand today. As we look ahead to the next three months before the election, as we prepare for lives that will no doubt be profoundly shaped by climate change, I keep reminding myself that there is a chance that the uncertainty that lies ahead might actually be a lot more exciting, creative, joyful than the certainty of what’s behind us.

Your friend, 

Elizabeth

Photo: Sunrise, my second to last day on trail.

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Photo: Will Gray, Sandwich Connoisseur

Ellie:  Not to be outdone by my intrepid business partners, I delivered a pretty top notch BLT with amazing sourdough from Seylou Bakery in DC (check out Eastern Food Hub Collaborative member Common Grain Alliance to learn about their sourcing and milling!) that I pan fried in butter and then rubbed with a clove of garlic. I added cucumber and chopped calabrian chilis to mine, which Will and Elizabeth immediately copied. For dinner, I went with an Italian option known as gnudi or strozzapreti depending on which region you’re in. It’s pretty much just ravioli filling with no pasta (gnudi means naked). It’s easy and fun to make and still looks pretty impressive. The sauce was just more calabrian chili mixed with melted butter. For dessert, I kept it continental and made a clafoutis with plums from the tree in my front yard! It’s great with any fruit and easier than a crumble or a cobbler in my opinion. I added some lemon zest to the mixture cause why not. It was also excellent for breakfast the next morning. 

Eastern Food Hub Collaborative 

This fall, our work with the Eastern Food Hub Collaborative will focus a lot on research, in addition to continuing to facilitate peer learning spaces for these food hubs. With support from the USDA Local Food Promotion Program, we’ll be working with food hub operators within and beyond the EFC to dig into their hub-to-hub trade strategies and better understand H2H as a building block for collaborative food systems development. 

Bensley Agrihood 

In Richmond, VA, we’ll be partnering with Happily Naturals and their founder, Duron Chavis, as he leads the assessment and design of an agrihood in the Bensley neighborhood of the Commonwealth’s capital. By conducting a local market assessment for the community members that will be served by the project, we’re helping to build the case for intentional and equitable community building through food and housing projects. 

Food is Medicine

Seed Change is excited to be gearing up for a new project starting this fall that will design a pilot to use food hubs to connect local farmers to healthcare customers. More details to come soon, but in the meantime, we’re hoping to connect with other folks learning about and working on Food is Medicine initiatives. Does any of that sound like something YOU want to talk about? Drop us a line. We would love to connect.

We’ve decided to up the difficulty level on our playlist-making. Rather than just a standard summer playlist, we created one that evokes a particular summer feeling. So - you know when you’ve been in the sun all day, tubing or swimming or having a picnic or in the ocean with your friends, and you get home and are just exhausted in your bones but still aren’t quite ready to quit hanging out? Well, now you have a playlist for that moment. Dance, sit on the couch, have one more ill-advised beer, just don't forget to drink some water. 
Playlist 👉 listen now on Spotify

Photo: Wet Hot American Summer

We took summer off from our book club so we could focus on playing outside. Instead, here’s a taste of the shows, books and podcasts we're loving in 2024. We’ll get serious again in the fall, pinky promise.

Best movie or show you’ve seen this year?

EA: Surprisingly, it’s a tie between two very different movies - National Anthem and Thelma

EB: Silly, sweet, hilarious, and a little gross, my top pick this year is Extraordinary. Come for the quirky superhero satire, stay for the exploration of belonging and self love. 

WG: Scavenger’s Reign. Beautiful, creepy, fascinating. No notes. 

Best book you’ve read so far this year? 

EA: Doppelganger by Naomi Klein - Ok so I know this is very much a book du jour, but there’s a reason for that. It is this most lucid articulation of the sociopolitical moment we are all living through that I’ve heard, and like most great nonfiction seamlessly zooms in and out between micro- and macro- systems. I highly recommend that you read this book, and even more so that you listen to the audiobook, read by the author. 

EB: While waiting for Doppleganger to be available again at the library so I can finish it, I’ve been doing what I always do and reading books with magic in them. A recent favorite is The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s a story that’s ostensibly about knights and dragons but actually it’s about the relationship between love and memory. Can someone else please read it so we can talk about it?? I also re-read one of my all time faves this spring, Heartburn by Nora Ephron, and was re-charmed by its irreverence, wisdom, and simple, punchy recipes.  

WG: Gotta be Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s excellent storytelling and it deserves all the love that it’s getting. It made me feel all the feelings, including a desire to dust off my a couple SNES favorites and cast myself back to simpler times. You guys wanna eat Mac ‘n’ Cheese and play Chrono Trigger?

What is your go-to podcast this year? 

EA: Since the pandemic and the last presidential election, I’ve tried to get most of my news and current events from podcasts. Trust me, it’s way healthier than doomscrolling through the New York Times. WNYC’s On the Media is a weekly podcast that not only covers what is going on in the world, but how the ways in which these stories get covered inform our world view and public discourse. 

EB: City planning nerds assemble! I’m listening to 99% Invisible’s deep dive on the Power Broker and having so much fun learning about how Robert Moses’ brilliance and ruthlessness shaped the way modern America lives and moves around. You’ll never look at suburbs the same way. 

WG: The part of my brain focused on being a new dad is thrilled to get to hang out with the part of my brain focused on being a new business owner in listening to Business Dad. Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit, interviews a bunch of other cool, accomplished dads and explores their experience with fatherhood and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Just some food systems nerds, hiking in Shenandoah