Still one of my favorite movies, here’s the clip from A Charlie Brown Christmas where Linus tells Charlie Brown about the meaning of Christmas. Watched this the other day with little m.
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Do you know where your food comes from? For the better part of my life, I’ve walked into the grocery store, picked produce or packaged food based on a combination of what I wanted to eat and price, swiped my credit card, and walked out the door. When I got home, I stuck it in the fridge, the freezer, or cabinets, pulled it out one day to cook, and ate a meal. That’s it. When it comes to eating out, I feel even further disconnected from food sourcing–it just shows up on a plate or in a bag, and I eat it. Simple, right?
One of the ways God has been challenging me the last few years is to really examine the true cost of food. It’s far more complicated than it seems. In the West, convenience is key. That’s why establishments like 7-Eleven and McDonalds thrive. You just pick up what you need, buy it, and go on your way. It’s cheap, so you feel like you’re being frugal and not wasteful. But are you? There is a certain “behind the scenes” toll that this sort of lifestyle imparts on places and people that are unseen to the majority of the first world. As part of our journey into biointensive gardening in our backyard, we’ve been reading a lot of literature on the subject of food sourcing and sustainable living. One such book is One Circle: How to Grow a Complete Diet in Less Than 1000 Square Feet, by David Duhon. The premise of the book is that using biointensive techniques along with careful planning and selection of crops, you should be able to grow a complete vegetarian diet for an average adult in less than 700 square feet. That’s pretty bold. Right now, we’re working with about 300 square feet in our garden, which should theoretically, then, yield enough vegetables for half an adult, if we do it well. We’re just now stepping into a good rhythm with planning and planting, so we’ll see how that goes. But back to Duhon’s book–I think he says something really challenging in his introduction about knowing where our food comes from:
 Kale, Brussel Sprout, and Nappa Cabbage Seedlings for Transplanting I think part of living responsibly this day in age involves fighting back against compartmentalization that turns a blind eye to questions like Duhon raises. To be fair, it may be impossible in this globalized age to trace to source of everything we eat, consume, or use. However, especially for those of us with one of the most precious resouces–access to information–we ought to pursue as much as we can understanding where our stuff comes from and how we can contribute to a sustainable world. I think a good first step for us has been seeking to understand where our food comes from and trying to grow some of it on our own. Let me tell you, farming is a lot of work! There’s so much planning to be done, learning the seasons, what grows best when, starting seedlings, transplanting, tilling the soil, and fending off slugs. It’s been tremendously educational in a very hands-on way. Another step we’ve taken is to shop more often at local farmers’ markets, like the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market at the United Nations Plaza in the SF Civic Center. Everything there comes from farms within 200 miles of San Francisco, and the farmers themselves bring the produce. They even accept food stamps. It’s a pretty cool place–open every Wednesday and Sunday. I’m usually there every Wednesday at lunch, if you ever want to meet up. Finally, a good way to learn about food sourcing is to watch a documentary or two. Some that have impacted us recently are Food Inc. and King Corn. Give them a look–both available on streaming Netflix for those of you that subscribe. Or, there’s always the library. Some good thoughts to chew on…
As part of my sustainable spirituality project, I’m working my way through Graham Cole’s volume from the NSBT series, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom. It’s been a fantastic read so far–he writes well, sustains his argument, keeps it going from chapter to chapter. I’m about a third of the way through right now. I ran across a tough chapter, “The Glory and the Garbage of the Universe,” which discussed some of the great accomplishments juxtaposed alongside some very difficult things humanity has perpetrated over the years, most pointedly in the form of war. He concludes the chapter with this paragraph, which I found quite challenging and sobering:
As some of you might know, we’ve been trying to do as many things on our own these days. Marcia has crafted tons of clothes for our kids by reusing some of my old tattered shirts and sweats and making some pretty awesome sweatshirts and t-shirts. If you ever see m or o sporting an amazon.com t-shirt, you’ll know where it came from. I think there’s a lot to be said about learning how to do stuff on your own. You get to know the ins and outs of something. When something breaks, you can fix it. This applies to a wide array of commodities from clothing to computers. Over the spring, I finished a cedar patio bench that turned into a living room bench. Then came the next project–a custom-sized dining room table. Our kitchen has an open space that’s big enough to feel spacious with nothing there, but not quite big enough to put a standard width table. So, I set out on a journey to build a solid table that would seat six (and eight in a pinch), fit two place settings face to face, yet still fit in our kitchen space. It was time to get back to the power tools and make some trips to the lumber yard and the hardware store. So how was it built? It started with a plan from Ana White’s Knock Off Wood site–the narrow farmhouse table. That’s how it started at least. I was going to custom modify the dimensions to fit our size: about 28-30 inches wide and around 5.5 feet long. I picked up some great tips from the site my first time around building the bench, the coolest of which was the Kreg Jig, which allows you to join wood while hiding the connection point. Pretty nifty. The more I got into actually working with the plan, though, the more I realized it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. So I started modifying, pulling out paper and pencil, scaling things with rulers, even pulling out a couple geometry tricks or two. Pretty soon I had something that was quite different from the farmhouse table. So without further ado, here’s what I did: Part One: Materials First, my hardware and lumber list. Note that this is what I actually used in the final product, so it doesn’t include mistakes (which I made many), and prices are approximate (I can’t quite remember everything, but I’m really, really close):  Lumber in a Sedan - You can actually carry 10 foot lumber in a four-door 1×4 Red Oak S4S (for the aprons) - 14 feet @ $0.95/foot = $13.30 Total (including tax): $180.25 Look at any furniture catalog, and there’s no way you’ll find a table that is solid wood and built really well to be anywhere close to this price. There were some mass-produced ones from Pier One Imports for $299 or $399, and other solid wood tables from places like Pottery Barn or West Elm that cost close to a grand. Of course, I had to put in the time, which all told was about two and half months, almost exclusively on weekends while the kids were napping. Toward the end, I started getting up at 5 in the morning to really power through it and get some woodworking in before work, but all told, it was worth it. Part Two: The Tabletop The five 1×6 pieces were meant to be joined together, lengthwise, to form the tabletop surface. A lot of tables you see out there today are either plywood or cheapo particle board (think of that IKEA desk that you screw the legs onto, the VIKA something that yes, we have). But I wanted to build a super sturdy, long lasting solid wood tabletop. It was gonna be around six feet long and around 30 inches wide, so that meant getting five boards that were 6 inches wide (in reality, about 5.5 inches even though they’re called “1×6″) that were each six feet long. 30 feet of red oak is really heavy. I was originally going to join them with pocket screws, but after talking to an experienced woodworker, Greg, he told me that biscuits–small pieces of wood that slides into slots created in the side of the planks and clamped with glue–were the way to go. So I borrowed his biscuit joiner, some biscuits, and a whole mess of clamps and got started. My buddy Remy came over to help me with this (no way could I have done this part solo–thanks Rems!). Here’s what it looked like:  Biscuit Slot  Biscuit Slots Cut, Preparing for the Join  Glued, Joined, Clamped, and Drying After the tabletop was dry, I had the edges trimmed on a table saw (thanks again Greg!), and then I sanded it like nobody’s business. Even though the biscuits hold the boards relatively in place and each board was technically the same thickness, they were still slightly off. So I took my 1/3 sheet pad sander with 60 and 80 grit sandpaper and sanded it. It felt like hours. My hands were buzzing after each session, but I had to keep doing it to make it a smooth tabletop. I worked much harder on the side that had the fewest imperfections because that would end up being the top facing side. The top ended up being 65 inches long by 28 inches wide. Next, I had to do something about those edges. Since this was S4S wood, the edges were sharp! So I had to round them off. I toyed with the idea of doing this manually with a sanding block, but quickly realized how much of a pain that would be. I had to learn how to use a router. No, no, not one of those Linksys things, but an actual woodworking router which has a bit that spins really, really fast and can custom shape wood. I took a 1/4″ roundover bit to all the edges and smoothed them off, following it with a coarse to find sandpaper treatment just like the top. Things were shaping up. Part Three: The Base The base consists of a few simple components: four legs, four aprons (the piece of wood connecting the legs to each other), two cross braces, and four corner braces. I cut all of these to size, based on my final tabletop size of 65″ x 28″, leaving a one inch overhang from the aprons. In addition, the aprons were set 1/4″ away from the edge of the legs. I routed all the edges of the legs, all the downward facing edges of the aprons and cross braces, and mitered the corner braces at 45 degree angles. (Additional thanks to Anthony for helping one afternoon with some routing and sanding). Each of the aprons had two Kreg pocket holes drilled into them so they could be attached to the legs. The corner braces also had two 1/2″ holes drilled into the center for the hanger bolts, which would be used to attach the corner braces directly into the leg at a 45 degree angle, adding some super support. Each of the corner braces were also drilled with a countersink bit for the #8 3/4″ screws that would affix them into the aprons. Perhaps this would make much more sense with a picture (note my little helper m still in her pjs):  Dining Table Base You’ll see some additional biscuit slots cut into the inner sides of the aprons and cross braces. These are for the table top fasteners, which allow the solid wood tabletop to breathe–simply sticking screws from the bottom into the top would trap the top. Over time, solid wood tops expand and contract, and the screws would impede movement, causing it to crack. Thanks to Greg for alerting me to this! Part Four: Polyurethane Coat  Between Polyurethane Coats Next up, I had to seal and coat this thing. I didn’t want to stain it, since I like the natural look of oak and our kitchen cabinetry was also a very natural (or slightly golden tinged) oak. I assembled the base before doing this, but I coated the top and the base separately. So I set about with some polyurethane and a whole bunch of foam brushes. To get this right, I had to apply three coats on all surfaces, with a fine sanding in between coats, gradually increasing my grit with each coat (first coat, then 320 sandpaper, second coat, then 400 sandpaper, third coat, then 0000 steel wool). For the tabletop, I ended up doing six coats, since it would have the most exposure to things like pasta sauce, apple juice, and soup. This took way long. I had to wait at least 4 hours between coats, and probably longer because San Francisco is so damp! So to do six coats on the top, well, you can imagine, was spread out over the course of many days. But in the end it was worth it, because even after some spills and use, the top is still pretty resilient. Part Five: Assembly Now that everything was coated and ready, it was time to assemble the thing. First off, I had to get the two pieces upstairs from the basement. Mind you, red oak is very, very heavy. It’s nothing like pine that most people have probably worked with before. It’s unbelievably dense. On top of that the base was already assembled, and the top was almost 30 feet of wood glued together! I wasn’t sure if I would make it, but I did. I don’t want to do that again. By the time I got it upstairs, it was too late to assemble it because it was bedtime for the kids. So I set up the pieces, and then got up at 6am to get it all assembled before the kids got up. Here are the final stages:  Corner Brace Fully Attached  Tabletop Fastener Attached  Tabletop Attached to the Base Drove in the final screw just as the kids were getting up. And here is the dining table on its birthday, October 20, 2011:  Red Oak Dining Table And another shot to see the side detail:  Side Apron Detail It was worth it. I comfortably typed this whole post on this table. |
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