On giving thanks 🧡 + news!
Friends,
Happy almost Thanksgiving! I imagine that today many of you are busy making grocery lists, confirming plans with family, or looking up new recipes. I hope that this activity is delightful for you, but I know that some people are experiencing complicated feelings about this holiday, the state of the world, or strained relationships. That seems to be the challenge with our fall and winter holidays — they can bring great joy yet also come with baggage for many people.
For various reasons, I grew up without any of the more difficult associations or complicated origin myths behind Thanksgiving. As a family, we always observed it at its face value: a day to give thanks near the close of the year. We didn’t have family living near enough to share the meal with, so we often spent it with friends, most of whom were immigrants to the U.S. We were a motley crew of different accents making conversation while we broke bread together every fall. For us, it was a quiet occasion, an opportunity to be still, relax, and — yes — give thanks.
Perhaps as a result, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays now, and more so as each year passes. I stubbornly embrace this holiday, even if my interpretation of it may differ from its meaning and importance to others.
Here’s why Thanksgiving is valuable to me:
We gather to give thanks. Expressing gratitude and thanks is one of the best ways for us to be humans in the world. We spend much of our lives being concerned with what we don’t have yet (personally and as communities), and I do think this is important, as it’s how we ensure we do the basic work necessary to keep life functioning. It’s like how physical hunger ensures we do the work of eating three or so meals a day to keep our bodies fueled — to be alive does require us to show up and make things happen.
But just as we should appreciate the feeling of satisfaction we get after eating, so should we also appreciate all the gifts the world and other people have provided us. The gifts are vast, and they range from the profound (life itself) to the minute … although when I try to think of examples of minute gifts, they all seem big too.
I realize there are times in many people’s lives when it can be legitimately hard to feel like we have enough to be grateful — when illness, loss or struggles overwhelms us. But I am betting that for most of the people reading my newsletter, most years are abundant with gifts if we take the time to acknowledge them.
In her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about understanding the world through the lens of a “gift economy,” where the food and goods we receive are gifts rather than something we pay for through commerce. If we understand everything to be a gift, then we respond with gratitude. And further, with reciprocity. The economic system we live in works very differently than this in practice, but even if we work for pay and then use our earnings to buy food, we can still approach our life from a standpoint of gratitude.
I will admit that I am a person who has to consciously choose to feel gratitude and give thanks. I am a striver, a worrier, and a carer who often feels keenly the pain and losses in the world. It can be very easy for me to let all those things consume my days and my inner mind, from working toward my next goals to feeling anxiety about perceived challenges to feeling my heart break for all the truly intense pain in the world. I don’t think there is anything wrong with these things — they are also important ways to experience and move through the world — but I know that I need to balance them with daily gratitude. I need to remember how much has been given and received and accomplished. I need to see and appreciate the beauty and joy that is truly all around me. How powerful for us to have an opportunity to do this together.
On Thanksgiving, we pause. Really pause. First of all, I want to acknowledge how very much work goes into making Thanksgiving dinners happen. It’s a lot to prepare, especially if hosting a larger crowd! However, as a whole, there are only two days in the United States when the vast majority of workers do not go to their paid place of employment — Christmas and Thanksgiving. Obviously, emergency workers and a few others still show up to keep the basic necessities operating, and I thank them! But there is a special feeling when the world (briefly!) quiets commerce and activity for a shared day.
I could be cynical and focus on how this is just the quiet before the commercial storm of holiday shopping (it’s true), but it’s still a rare and special pause in our modern world. There is something very unique about having a day to be with friends or family knowing that much of the community is doing the same. I read once that in the early days of the U.S.S.R., the party tried to offset people’s days off to provide continual operation of factories — workers strongly resisted this idea! It turns out that a day off just isn’t the same if it isn’t shared with others. Of course, many of us now have lives that don’t allow us days off with others. So to have two days a year when MOST of us get to pause feels very special.
On Thanksgiving, we eat seasonal foods! In a society where grocery store shelves rarely reflect any of the changes in the season, traditional Thanksgiving foods have been a small way to remember that this is the end of the harvest season and there are special foods available now. Even people who might not understand the connection between the menu and the season might still fill their Thanksgiving table with winter squash, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and cranberry sauce.
Likewise, even though fewer of us in the Western world worry about winter starvation than in the past, Thanksgiving remains a harvest-festival inspired holiday and connects us to our ancestors who very much did think about the quality of the harvest as cold arrived. It wasn’t just one odd group of settlers in one part of New England who worried about harvests and celebrated abundance as a stalwart against winter starvation.
This is one of the big stories of humanity. Even though today less than 2% of Americans farm for a living, humanity has long been deeply invested in growing, hunting and gathering food. Times of plenty were celebrations. To me, Thanksgiving is our small way of keeping those celebrations alive, of remembering the long line of ancestors behind us who gave thanks for the gifts of the world.
So, this week, regardless of your feelings about the official holiday and all its associations, I hope you have an opportunity to give thanks, pause, and enjoy some wonderful seasonal food.
2024 Calendar now available!
My 2024 “Around the Green Wheel” calendar is now available! You can learn more and buy it as a digital download on my website here. Or, if you live in my region of Oregon, you can find a print copy at Alchemist’s Jam in McMinnville, Chapter Books and Coffee in Newberg, and Local Faire in Lincoln City. (I’m working to get a Salem location soon too!) New this year: I added a page with information and use suggestions for each of the monthly plants!
Drawing my calendars has become an important yearly ritual — an opportunity to reflect on how the natural world of plants (both cultivated and wild) reveals new marvels every month here in the Pacific Northwest. May these simple pages help you see more too. Happy planning!
From left: Edible in a display at Third Street Books; me giving my presentation at the McMinnville Library, a screenshot of Edible in the New York Times’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide!
Edible update!
On October 24, my first book was released here in the United States! Edible: 70 Sustainable Plants That Are Changing How We Eat co-authored by Kevin Hobbs and Artur Cisar-Erlach and illustrated by me!
The first two weeks of Edible being in the world were such a whirlwind! The work of illustrating (and writing) is done mostly alone. When working on Edible, I sat with my iPad for countless hours just drawing plants. Just me and my drawings. When doing that work, I considered my audience to be the co-authors and book editor. I really couldn’t let myself think about who else might someday see my drawings because it would have been too overwhelming.
But now the book is out and the audience is MUCH bigger than just our friendly little book team. Friends have sent me photos of it on shelves all across the country! I’ve visited local bookstores and seen it in displays next to the most amazing books. It’s fun and super surreal! Here are some highlights:
My library book launch event was so wonderful! Thank you to everyone from my local community (and beyond!) who came to help me celebrate the book and hear more about my journey.
Edible was included in The New York Times’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide in the “coffee table book” category! HOLY MOLY this was a surprise! I still can’t really wrap my head around it.
Edible is also featured in the PNBA’s Give Books 2023 holiday campaign and catalog! That means that any participating Pacific Northwest independent bookstore will be sending out emails featuring Edible and including the physical book in gift giving idea displays. So fun!
Two local media outlets wrote articles about me and my work on Edible: Oregon ArtsWatch and our local paper The News-Register. It was really sweet to have folks in my area see how cool this opportunity was and help mark the moment with the wider community.
Edible has also been short-listed for a Gourmand World Cookbook Award for the category “Future Foods.” (Final awards will be announced later this month.) We’re in amazing company on their list of honored books from around the world!
I’m a little overwhelmed by much of this news! Surreal is truly the right word. But I will say that I am so proud of the book we created and forever grateful that Kevin and Artur and the team at Thames & Hudson invited me to participate in the project. Edible is an easy book for me to promote because I love its hopeful premise that plants and biodiversity matter. And I love knowing that their message is being heard across the country and around the world.
If you don’t yet have a copy of Edible or would like to buy one or more for gifts, here are places where you can purchase it:
For folks local to me, I encourage you to buy from Third Street Books in McMinnville, Oregon. (I will be signing all the copies they sell there, so you can also order from them and have a copy shipped if you aren’t in my area!)
If you are not in my area, and you’d like to further support my work, you can pre-order using my affiliate link on BookShop.org. (I will get a bit of extra if you buy that way, and you will help support independent booksellers too! Thank you!)
And of course, I’m sure your local bookstore would love to order Edible for you too!
And, another upcoming Edible event in PDX!
5 - 7 pm, Thurs December 7
Vivienne Culinary Books
4128 NE Sandy Blvd Portland, OR
I will be talking about my story and my work on Edible, followed by Q&A, book sales and signing. Join us! You can register online now here.
Order now for holiday gifts!
Hoping to order a vegetable-themed mug, shirt or stickers for holiday gifts? Order by December 10 to ensure that they can be made and shipped to you by December 24! You can see the full line of offerings at my website’s store here.
I know there are many great retailers, makers and artists out there with cool offerings, and I’d be honored to be a part of your seasonal gifting this year.
Either way, I hope you consider how you can help make a positive difference with your holiday dollars by buying from local and/or small businesses. This final month of retail spending can represent a make it or break it scenario for small businesses. If there are businesses in your community who you want to see thrive, please visit them and spend your dollars there this season! It truly doesn’t have to be me. I just ask you to be intentional so that your giving has an even wider positive impact.
Fresh podcast interviews
Since my last newsletter, I’ve had two new Growing for Market podcast episodes drop:
Lyn Jacobs (La Finquita del Buho), Polly Gottesman (Pumpkin Ridge Gardens) and I talk about their decades long farmers market collaboration and the friendship that grew up and around that shared work. We talk about flowers, record-keeping, marketing strategies, and more.
Sophia Nguyen Eng (Sprinkle With Soil) and I talk about her Tennessee farm and forthcoming cookbook, The Nourishing Asian Kitchen: Nutrient-Dense Recipes for Health and Healing (coming out December 7 from Chelsea Green Publishing). We talk about how the pandemic changed everything for her and the role of family in shaping both her farm and her cookbook.
You can listen (and subscribe!) on any podcast app or go to the GFM website to listen or get more info from the show notes for each episode. New episodes are released every Tuesday — my co-host Andrew’s interviews are also fascinating!
One final thanks …
Have I said “thanks” enough for one newsletter?! Just in case, I want to offer one last big thank you to everyone who has encouraged or supported me in my journey over the last few years. It is both an incredible privilege and also a weird experience to spend a lot of my time alone making random things to share with the world — they’re messages and images I think are important and valuable, but it’s not always easy for me to believe that until I see them living in the world around me.
And thank you to everyone else who is also out there striving to make cool stuff to keep us engaged with the world in positive ways. There is a lot of heaviness in the world right now, and it’s essential to see and acknowledge that so that we can act and always strive for a better world. And yet I also hope we can each provide each other support in life so that we see the gifts too. Little bits of joy.
Take care, my friends …
With (what else?) gratitude,
Katie
