Long may it wave.Photo: Luigi Anzivino

Yet, in spite of the blunt reality that she is flat-out cashless until her book comes out (July 12!) — and that she lives in a country in which corporate interests threaten to trump availability of safe drinking water; in which there is neither decent, affordable health nor child care; in which fair tax laws or a reasonable minimum wage do not exist — do you know the very first thing visitors see on the wall, upon crossing the threshold of the Rancho’s cramped entrance?

Old Glory, baby. Surprise: Broke-Ass loves, and has always loved, this crazy country.

You want to wear your burka to school? Go ahead. Want to be an asshole skinhead and march through Peoria? Go ahead. Want to work your ass off as a nurse and send money back home to the Philippines? Get political asylum and start a new life in Portland, Maine? Get rescued from Nazi invasions? Done and done. You want the best hospitals, colleges, and universities? You’ll pay for them, sure as Bob’s your uncle — but we got ‘em.

What Broke-Ass most loves about this country, however, is the continuous malleability of its authentic citizenship and culture — which combines to produce its unique, inherent weirdness and heart. Broke-Ass wouldn’t trade that for all the goddamn bicycle lanes in Northern Europe.

Which brings us to bicycle lanes, Northern Europe, the eco-movement in general, and a few little stories, which will culminate in a realized, loving portrait of what makes this country great.

So, as many of you lovelies know, Broke-Ass has friendly feelings toward The Environment (even though she loathes the imprecision and jack-off-y-ness of that term). Many of these feelings are, however, motivated by the wish to provide a wholesome and inexpensively run household for her family. To tell the truth, this is pretty much Broke-Ass’s motivation to do anything. If The Environment is better off for her using baking soda and vinegar to clean; raising her own veggies; keeping her own chickens for eggs; etc.; well, then, hooray.

Because of this, Broke-Ass has been asked to write stuff about her life, and while the vast majority of the response to her humble foray into environmental writing (or whatever you’re supposed to call it) has been really lovely, the pointy barbs that have on occasion been smugly poked into her side have served as rather hurtful reminders as to why poor Americans often fucking hate eco do-gooders and Northern Europeans: They’re smug as shit. Or they sure as hell come off that way.

For example, when Broke-Ass recently wrote about feeding a family of five for under 10 bucks, she received a response chastising her for even having three children in this age of overpopulation and saying that it would be easier to feed one or two people. Oh, shoot — you’re right! Broke-Ass will definitely decide which child to feed and starve the other two: It’s the environmentally thoughtful response. And it sure will make dinnertime easier! Hey, thanks for the tip!

Asshole.

When she wrote an innocuous article on why raising chickens in the city is cheap and cool for kids because they can see that — in spite of inhabiting a rawther broke household — there are inventive ways to be self-sufficient, someone wrote in to make fun of Broke-Ass’s “ability to get so much rhetorical meat off of poor, asthmatic, miserable city chicks,” before going on to write: “What wonders could you perform with a Ostrich or better yet a Dodo?”

What wonders indeed! Oh me, you clever little dickens! Broke-Ass reckons she’ll just light up her corncob pipe, lower NPR’s “All Things Considered” a tad, and quietly strum a 19^th-century sea shanty on her artisanal mandolin as she ruminates on what a smug fucking prick you are.

Now, Broke-Ass happens to live in one of the only parts of Brooklyn that is not accessible by subway, which sucks, and she has ruined the planet by having three children, as noted. The only driving she does is transporting her children two miles to school in her junky 11-year-old minivan. When said minivan was recently stolen from her crap neighborhood, she was devastated: She had $61.25 in the bank. A Northern European friend responded thusly: “Well, now you will just have to buy a cargo bike, like us!”

Broke-Ass was dumbfounded. For one thing, those cargo bikes cost a few grand and are dangerous as hell: This isn’t fucking Copenhagen, it’s Brooklyn. For another thing, is this flip, smug, we-know-better-because-our-country-subsidizes-every-aspect-of-our-lives retort really what comes to mind when looking into the tear-stained eyes of a broke, beleaguered mother?

There is a good reason that the environmental movement in this country — and those tiny, blonde Northern countries — do not win the hearts and minds of most Americans, particularly during this economic period. When people who have no money are lectured about how they’re doing everything wrong already, and are then, in the lightning round, told they don’t have any consideration for anyone other than themselves and their appallingly bloated families — much less for “the planet” — it’s one of many daily slaps in the face they have to endure. And are then asked to be grateful for the chance at enlightenment.

Most people struggling to get by are simply trying to do what they can for their families today, and maybe, if things are going slightly better, a week or two ahead. There is no time, no mental energy — no fucking money — to consider the aerial environmental view. Criticizing people under egregious stress is not only an ineffective tactic, it frankly lacks even baseline compassion. And this, in Broke-Ass’s view, is fundamentally un-American.

Though we’ve botched it a million different ways, a keystone of American culture is grassroots community-building — in other words, helping each other out. It still happens all over our weird country, and it’s part of what gives us such heart.

But when people from small, homogenous countries who can safely rely on their government to look after them, and the relatively elite world of the American eco-movement, get involved, it somehow becomes “community outreach,” which has a richly condescending smack to it. It conjures up visions of “the community” being lured into marketing come-ons with free donuts and stale sandwiches so that they can be forced to listen to all the smart, educated people talk to them about things like “value of diversity” and “environmental impact.”

You think people don’t know what this means? It means they are, as always, being reminded that they’re so damn broke that they have to exchange their dignity for some free fucking donuts and lunch meat. They know that you don’t want to know about the realities of their lives: You just want them to shut up and do what you say.

You want to do “community outreach,” the American way? Hang out with your neighbors! Shoot the shit! Get to know them over time! Invite them over! Open your heart: Their world is very different from yours.

You might discover in due course, for example, that your neighbor grew up in central Mexico and that his
mom is a famous midwife there. He thus knows a ton of herbal remedies that you’ve never heard of but that, when he thoughtfully offers them to you, you discover work splendidly. You might also discover that he knows a fuckload about raising chickens and civil engineering and can give you a hand building coops, though he does not show up with great regularity. When you say, “So, where the hell were you?” you learn that he had to move out from the apartment with his wacko girlfriend and into a studio apartment with a ton of other guys, that he drinks too much on the weekends, that he is constantly harassed by the cops, and that because he has super long hair and his English isn’t great, they make proof-less presumptions and fuck with him because they can. You might get so mad that you start dialing the precinct and then hang up because he’s illegal, and you don’t want to get him in trouble. You tell him to call you if this happens again, and you will come bail him out.

You might grow to understand that he has several kids with a woman whom he did not treat well, and that woman is remarried and that though she has barred him from contacting his children, he also hasn’t made much of an effort. You might say to him, “Stop being such a pussy, and find a way to see your kids — you’ll be sorry if you don’t!” You might tell him you had an alcoholic asshole for a dad and that, after your parents’ divorce, he never really tried to see you and that even though he died a few years ago, you still have his number on your cell phone under “Dad.” He might then tell you about his own alcoholic, cheating dad, start to get sad, and then tell you to mind your own damn business.

But you also note that his eyes light up when your kids come home, and that they love playing with him. When he offers to watch your toddler when you have a surprise meeting and no childcare, you are about crying with gratitude, and when you return, he has the baby on his hip and is frying up eggs he collected from the chicken coop.

He might tell you that his mom’s household was like yours — lots of homegrown veggies and eggs – and that he’d never eaten anything with pesticides on it until he came to this country, that it’s outrageous how expensive chemical-free food is. You two might rant about this regularly for years to come, but in the meantime, you might tell him that the only reason you do all this DIY shit is because it’s cheaper than buying all that stuff at the market. He might tell you that you’re lucky that you have a house with space enough to pull it off, and you’ll agree.

You might tell him that if he wants to fix up the garage with your help, he can live there for free because over the past several years he’s become like a brother to you, and you want to be clear: He is not alone. He might look at you for a moment and then turn away, crying. You might tell him that if you have to eat another egg, you’re going to kill yourself — can’t he just make a cheese tamale or something? He tells you that you know he hates spicy food and that you don’t have cheese anyway. You might both howl loudly.

And you, the one in the comments, might also discover, if you open your mind, that the person you thought was a loudmouth, entitled yuppie masquerading as a dirt farmer in South Brooklyn actually never has more than $61.25 in her bank account after basic bills have been paid — and sometimes, not even then, after which the phone rings incessantly with calls from threatening creditors — and that she went though a divorce that left her all but bankrupt and that her divorce agreement precludes her from moving out of the city, though she clearly cannot afford to live here anymore.

You might discover that her own parents’ divorce impoverished her mother, that this person started earning a living as a reporter at age 18 to pay for college — that writing is the only thing she’s ever done for a living, and she loathes herself for not having learned a practical trade and for being such an errant failure for her kids.

You might discover that birth control doesn’t always work, even when correctly deployed. You might discover that stress and not-great nutrition can bring on miscarriage — or, in rare cases, the appearance of one. You might discover that when people are struggling and panicking and have no health insurance, they can’t spend days waiting in line at the free clinic because they’re terrified of losing their jobs. You might discover that when people in such circumstances learn that they are, in fact, well into their second trimester of pregnancy, they are stricken with fear and panic and a sense of hopelessness. You might learn that they are now just trying to do what they can to enjoy and support their children, to give them as dignified and industrious a home as possible — in as toxin-free an environment as South Brooklyn permits.

Here is an American story. Several days after Broke-Ass’ Northern European friend made her cargo bike suggestion, she sent Broke-Ass an email insisting on a loan of $5,000 to buy a used car. The friend would not brook a rejection, she said, because: a) she could not stand to see Broke-Ass look so worried; b) she and her husband had received help when they needed it; and c) Broke-Ass, Big Daddy, and the schmushkies had been good friends, making their whole family feel so welcome and at home in their host country.

Broke-Ass cried. God Bless America.

No matter how broke you are, chickens can help you keep some dignity about you.Photo: Stu Mayhew

A flawless observation, “jjfahl“! As it happens, Broke-Ass has so many damn eggs that, at times, she feels that she might prefer to shove bamboo shoots underneath her fingernails than to sup upon another oeuf. This is because Broke-Ass also happens to be married to Big Daddy, the man behind The Red Hook Chicken Guy: a full-service coop-building, hen-providing, and feed-purveying micro business, operated right here at the Rancho del Broke-Ass in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Now, as you lovelies know, the Rancho is already home to three adorable schmushkies, two technical adults, a parrot, two dogs (Broke-Ass had an involuntary stress-puke while picking up the new puppy, Gracie, from the North Shore Animal League, but all is well now), and a terrifying variety and quantity of dried beans. Occasionally, while laboring over her skin-flinted witchy stews and chiles, Broke-Ass fancies herself co-starring in the role of a bedraggled, middle-aged stand-in for Crazy Train-era Ozzy Osbourne, with the ceaselessly squawking parrot as bat. This reverie often materializes on the heels of Broke-Ass having wresting a piece of errant puppy shit out of her toddler’s grip above his ear-splitting resistance, ruthlessly quashing the mutinous cries of her 10- and 7-year-olds (“We won’t do our homework until we’ve gotten to watch a show!”), and stumbling over a rolling tumbleweed of rough-housing dogs.

But the chickens are, sans doute, nothing but good times: a vacation in a coop. Not only are they the only reliably productive earners around here, but everybody likes them because they’re cool and they lay delicious eggs. They’re cheap to buy, feed, and raise. Each hen produces, on average, five eggs a week. Their excreta make perfect fertilizer for other food-growing operations. The schmushkies and their buddies play with them (so long as the dogs are cordoned off). Any time people come over, or hear that the Rancho is egg-laying terroir, that’s all they want to talk about. And Big Daddy is all too happy to talk about chickens.

Big Daddy loves chickens. No matter where his kooky old life has taken him — Los Angeles, Paris, Brooklyn — Big Daddy has always raised chickens. In more than 20 years of urban chicken-raising, he has expanded his encyclopedic knowledge of care, maintenance, and coop design, winnowing down his Phasianidasic philosophy. And Broke-Ass will share its core with you, as it seems to work. (Smarter and more detail-oriented folk than Broke-Ass have written in these fine e-pages about checking to see whether your city’s municipal code allows for chicken-raising — and what to do if it doesn’t — so please read up here first.)

First, don’t get roosters. Hens, when they’re alone, just lay eggs. They mumble a bit from time to time, but it’s roosters that give chicken-raising a noisy name. And if eggs are what you’re after, you have no need of roosters’ services. So, tell your neighbors to relax.

Second, city-dwelling hens need 10 square feet of space, per bird. Smaller square footage makes living space egregiously cramped, which causes inhabitants to become antsy, aggressive, and, thus, less likely to lay productively and more likely to peck each other to death or gross injury. Furthermore, allocating 10 square feet per hen means less maintenance. If you pack hens in more tightly, you’ll have to clean out the coop poop as much as once a week; given the proper quota of space, cleaning is cut to once a month.

Third, you can make eggs extra nutritious for bubkes. In addition to regular feed, chickens can and will happily eat most any of your leftover vegetable or fruit scraps (except citrus). Broccoli stems, cereal leftovers, potato peelings, apple cores, steeped herbal tea leaves, bruised mango bits — Broke-Ass tosses ‘em in the coop! It’s not only good for the critters, but vegetables in the chicken diet also turbo-boosts the Omega 3 content of egg yolks, yielding extra-nutritious eggs.

Fourth, if you’re really cramped for space, you can make a green roof on your coop up to a depth of six inches for growing herbs and green leafies. Awe. Some.

People get all in a snit about eggs and cholesterol, and Broke-Ass supposes that this is right. Having respectfully acknowledged this, however, her feeling is that there are still many delicious, healthful, and distinctive egg-involving meals a person can devise on a regular basis. For example: frittatas brimming with summer vegetables and herbs; fresh whole wheat bread; salade Niçoise assembled with your own backyard veggies (minus the olives, maybe); turkey loaf with garlic, parmesan, oregano, and nettles; custards and cookies! The bottom line, to Broke-Ass, is that fresh eggs sure as hell beat Big Macs and other low-cost family meals.

But there’s another thing about raising chickens and growing your own stuff that Broke-Ass feels sheepish about mentioning because it sounds a little soap-boxy for her taste — but feels equally compelled to mention because it is rawther important. And that is this: when you have no money, it is more vital than ever to do whatever you must to keep some dignity about you. There is no greater demoralizer than poverty. It makes people feel like shit about themselves, and that breeds all kinds of badness — which is especially bad for children. No need for Broke-Ass to catalog more here.

The point is that, in Broke-Ass’ experience, a little self-sufficiency does wonders for the whole mood and world-view of the family ecosystem. Simply, children see that tough circumstances don’t break you. Things can change — money can come and go — but a little grit can keep life on the level and open up new ways of doing things. Which taste good and are fun. Broke-Ass always hears in her kooky head one of the last lines in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish: “Have you tried these things? Well, you should./These things are fun, and fun is good.” Fun is good. Providing for your family is good. If these things can be intertwined, it is awesome.

Making great meals from bubkes is easy when you do it the Broke-Ass way!

Back when Broke-Ass was unconcerned with saving money, she bought the following items regularly and with impunity: scones with walnuts and crystallized ginger; Eli’s Health Loaf bread; granola with flaxseed and cocoa nibs; Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products; Greek yogurt; artisanal mozzarella; rarefied iced teas; tea bags in faux Englishy-looking tins; organic fresh herbs (and beets; cucumbers; squash; green beans; eggplant; spinach; kale; tomatoes; and sundry elite lettuces); face cream from her favorite place in the whole wide world, the Beauty Level at Bergdorf’s (please, friends, when the time comes, scatter Broke-Ass’s ashes near the Jo Malone counter); fancy soaps with French everything; devil-may-care expensive hair-care schmutz; and all manner of indigenous bottled sauces from islands all over this great wide world of ours.

No más. Now, she makes or grows all that stuff at Rancho del Broke-Ass (including face cream, soap, and hair schmutz — yup). That which she cannot grow, she buys in bulk at Costco. Sorry, locavores: pantry items for broke families of five must be cheap. Olive oil is the only thing to splurge on. You’ll be bummed if you don’t.

So, herewith, Broke-Ass’ foolproof shopping list of must-have items for the Broke-Ass Pantry. If you stock these foodstuffs, you will always be able to make a nutritious, delicious meal for a family of five for under $10. What’s more, such meals will not make you feel like a loser who has to feed your children bland, junky bulls**t because you’re poor. The meals you will serve will be fashionably peasant-like. Think rustic Mediterranean. For thousands of years, the poor people of this world have always been able to make what appears to be the dregs of the food-chain absolutely mouthwatering. They didn’t go to Brown, for Christssakes. They just used their f**king heads and made do. If they could figure out how to do it, so can you.

Broke-Ass’ Pantry List:

• Raw almonds
• Cashews
• Walnuts
• Dried beans (Broke-Ass favors the white ones, but black are always good, too — get both.)
• Anchovies
• Sardines
• Whole wheat flour; baking soda; baking powder; active dry yeast; organic sugar (yes, Costco carries it)
• Canned tomatoes (whole, peeled)
• Grains (basmati rice; quinoa; wild rice; oatmeal; organic flaxseed — get it all)
• Pasta (penne preferred — it holds sauce the best)
• Dried fruit (dates; apricots; prunes. Sometimes, they have mixed bags. If not, get all these)
• Honey
• White distilled vinegar
• Butter (stick what you don’t need in the freezer)
• Chicken; ground turkey; pork shoulder (again — freezer)
• Parmesan and manchego, in big blocks
• Spices: sea salt; cinnamon; turmeric; garlic granules; oregano; basil; thyme; curry; ginger

That’s it. With greens and milk, a family of five can live off this pantry for at least six months. Why not start the first three days with a chicken?

How to Stretch a Chicken for Three Days à la Broke-Ass

Day One. Set the oven to 350. Put a roaster chicken in a big cast-iron dutch oven, and pour in whole milk to cover about three-quarters of the bird. (Attention fallen yuppies: You do not need a fancy Le Creuset. Broke-Ass bought a plain old, 7-quart cast-iron dutch oven for under $50, and it does the job with no complaints. Just season it every now and then, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.)

Now, dump into the Dutch oven a ton of peeled garlic cloves, about a half-cup of olive oil, salt, and whatever spices you like: oregano, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, tandoori, tumeric, curry, cinnamon. Don’t get too cerebral about it — just think about what you think it going to taste good and toss it in. Having said that, however, one killer app is to zest a few lemons, squeeze the juice in, the squeezed lemons themselves (you can fish them out later), and the zest. Particularly tasty with rosemary.

Because Broke-Ass is rawther witchy, she also tosses in all kinds of crazy dried herbs that she stores in mason jars: dandelion leaf, red clover, nettle. All these green leafies are foolishly healthy; between them, they’ve got vitamins A, C, D, and B complex as well as iron, magnesium, zinc, potassium, manganese, copper, choline, and calcium. If you’re too much of a pussy to pick and dry this stuff yourself, you can order them in bulk from the awesome Mountain Rose Herbs.

Anywho. Stick the whole damn thing in the oven (lid on) and get ready to wait about an hour and a half or so. Answer your e-mail, help the children with homework, get someone to rub your feet, give the milk a stir every now and then; flip the bird over a few times.

About an hour into it, add a healthy amount of some kind of grain that you’ve bought in bulk. Pearlized barley is good; wild rice; quinoa; even quick-cooking lentils. If you don’t have enough of any one item, toss whatever you have in. It’ll all work out.

By the time all the grain has cooked up, the chicken will be just falling apart-and it’s fantastically wholesome, juicy, and fall aparty. Take the pot out of the oven and pull the meat off the bones with a fork. You’re ready to serve up your delicious one pot meal! But don’t do it yet! First, put the bones into another giant pot of water, bring to a boil, and let it simmer at the lowest possible heat overnight. Babydolls, you’re making chicken broth for Day 3.

Day Two. Not even a family of five could have possibly eaten the amount of food you made last night. Which is why you saved the leftovers in the cast-iron stock pot. Now, you will convert those leftovers into a butternut squash soup that’ll make you blush.

So, get two butternut squash (squashes?), cube ‘em up, and then peel them — it’s easier that way, to me at least. Save the seeds, stick them on a piece of tin foil, drizzle with olive oil and salt, and toast them in a toaster oven until brown. Set aside. Now, bring about an inch of water to a boil in a saucepan, add the squash cubes, olive oil, salt — and again, with the garlic. Meanwhile, get your cast-iron on the stove, toss a little water in, and begin heating up the leftovers.

When the squash is squashy, break it all up with a spoon, and toss the entire mixture into the leftovers pot. Toss in a can of coconut milk in there, too (comes in a 6-pack at Costco). Stir. Taste. It should taste really f**king good. If it doesn’t, add stuff that you think it needs. Maybe some curry powder and cinnamon. That’s always good. Or nutmeg and turmeric? That could work. You’re the freaking cook — give it a try.

Serve with a dollop of whole yogurt (you can make this yourself, too, you know, but we’ll leave that for another time) and the roasted seeds on top. Voilà et voilà. Hope you remembered to put that chicken stock in the fridge!

Day Three. Start this in the morning before you go to work, or the whole apparatus will crumble before your eyes, and your children will cry that they’re starving. Dump into the stock pot about two cups, or maybe a touch more or so, of some kind of BULK dried bean: Cannellini beans are a favorite, but do what you like. Pour in enough water to fill the whole pot. Cover it up on the kitchen counter.

When you and the kids get home, you will notice nature’s miracle has been at work: Beans soaking up water! Jesus Christ! Now, the chicken stock. Take all the bones and floaters out with a sieve-type spoon and toss them. Heat up the resultant broth and dump the beans in. You know the drill: Bring to a boil, then simmer. Toss in more garlic cloves and spice with rosemary. Cut up cubes from a block of parmesan (bought at Costco), and set them aside, but take that useless rind and dump it into the pot, too.

If you’re like Broke-Ass, now is the time you’ll go out to the back yard and ferret around for some green leafy thing. I’ve got kale and chard growing in my ghetto garden. I’ll bet you have dandelion greens at the very least, and if you haven’t poisoned the shit out of your lawn, clip ‘em. Throw them in the pot! In about 45 minutes, the whole thing is ready to roll. Toss in your chunks of parmesan, a handful of walnuts (also from Costco), and you’re good to go.

Each meal costs under $10, and is unimpeachably nutritious and yummy. You’re welcome, sugar bunnies. Broke-Ass loves you.

Like the sign says.Photo: Not an Alternative

Hydrofracking — short for “hydraulic fracturing” — is a widespread technique deployed by natural gas companies in which a huge volume of chemicals, sand, and water are pumped underground to break apart rock and release gas. And it’s an extremely serious f**king problem.

The New York Times has done an amazing job of investigative reporting on this issue, and a lot of what I’m about to tell you can be found in their series “Drilling Down,” which includes this awesome interactive graphic. But here are the basics.

In a nutshell, hydrofracking requires proprietary chemicals, some of which are publicly disclosed. The companies that carry out the process will not reveal, however, which of some 350 possible chemicals will be used in any given case, claiming competitive privacy. But many of them are known carcinogens.

When hydraulic fracturing fluids leak into groundwater, they can contaminate nearby drinking water sources [PDF]. Moreover, the wastewater contains heavy metals and radioactive compounds that are naturally occurring in the shale — and that are freed during drilling.

Natural gas companies claim that the wastewater is easily treated to meet the standards for human consumption. But hear this: Pennsylvania water treatment plants have been processing radioactive wastewater 2,000 times more polluted than permitted by federal drinking water standards. To clean it, those plants must dilute the bad water with 2 billion gallons of fresh water. Easy?

Even if you’re not drinking it, this wastewater is a nightmare because there are invariably accidents in hydrofracking — just the way there are in any other drilling process. Spills and leaks can cause methane gas — a greenhouse gas 20-30 times more toxic than CO2 — to penetrate nearby household wells, causing explosions. Indeed, the EPA recently reported that methane leaks from natural gas drilling are 9,000 times higher than estimated.

And, because hydrofracking disrupts fault lines, the process can possibly cause earthquakes. Indeed, Arkansas recently ordered a moratorium on new injection wells, which may have caused 700 small earthquakes in the last six months alone.

Now hydrofracking might be coming to New York State, Broke-Ass’s and 20 million other people’s home turf. Hydrofrackiing isn’t happening in New York yet, and it won’t until they finish the environmental review process. That’s why we need to make ourselves heard about this NOW. We have until APRIL 15 to submit comments to the Delaware River Water Basin Commission regarding our serious concerns about hydrofracking. That’s LESS THAN A MONTH FROM NOW. For god’s sake, comment! Get everyone you know to comment! You don’t need to be Erin Brockovich — just go to a website and get outraged.

But also be informed. Follow the blog of Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Kate Sinding for the latest news. Visit the Catskill Mountainkeeper site. And check out the vids of Broke-Ass talking about it with her famous movie director friend, Ben Younger, who, along with his famous actor buddy, Mark Ruffalo, are fighting the good fight up in the Catskills. (Also check out the vid of Broke-Ass showing Ben around the Rancho del Broke-Ass, and this one of Mark talking about his fracking concerns.)

Broke-Ass will never be famous, but she’s going to speak up. If we can’t even drink the water, “horrendous” won’t cover it. In the words of the kick-ass Björk, “Declare independence: Don’t let them do that to you!”

Find a place, do some work, grow some stuff: it ain’t rocket science.Photo: Tracie Lee

But as she sat there listening to all the ideas about how it might be a solution to move everyone out of suburban New Jersey and convert that terroir into sustainable farmland; how it would make sense to build skyscrapers that would house crops on every story; and how irresponsible it is for people to devote their yards to anything other than growing vegetables, she found herself getting extremely grumpy. Shit, she thought, am I the only person here who is actually hungry?

It was like being the scholarship kid at the prep school all over again. Was Broke-Ass the only one who took umbrage at the proposal to build rarified eco-structures that would be prohibitively expensive — and likely be enjoyed only by yuppies interested in taking their kids there for an educational weekend field trip? What about the rest of us who live next to vacant lots full of trash and drug dealers and who stress the fuck out just thinking about how we’re actually going to be able to afford fresh vegetables for dinner this week?

Cut to: The first several months of this new year, during which Broke-Ass found herself vomiting uncontrollably for weeks on end and spending an eye-wateringly expensive amount of time at the hospital, where she was poked by three different flavors of IVs and treated to every invasive and non-invasive test in the ledger of Western medicine-culminating in tubes being ushered down her throat and up her bum. Total out of pocket, courtesy of her shitty health insurance? Three thousand dollars. Cause of illness? Stress. Three grand worth of stress.

One hears things like “stress kills” and “you need to take care of yourself” and “do yoga,” but one often hears such things from people who can afford to do something about stress. Broke-Ass suggested to the very thorough and smart gastroenterologist that if he were willing to support her through medical school so that she, too, could earn a kick-ass living, her illnesses would be cured! The doctor chuckled and wrote a prescription for Clonazepam and Zofran.

Other medical professionals had different notions. “You don’t eat right, that’s your problem,” said an emergency room nurse’s assistant named James McCrae, a fit, lean dude in his 50s with a vibe no one would mess with. Broke-Ass protested self-righteously. She’s got a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, and fruit trees — all in the goddamned ghetto of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

“Oh, yeah?” said McCrae. “I grew up in Red Hook, Brooklyn, I raised my kids in East New York, Brooklyn, I got a farm on Fountain Avenue on a vacant lot that I’ve been working on for 16 years, I teach the young kids in the neighborhood how to help out, and I give all the fruits and vegetables away for free to anyone who brings over a brown bag.”

And thus Mr. McCrae revealed himself to be possibly the most awesome man Broke-Ass has ever met.

Here’s the story: McCrae always loved gardening and farming, but he never had any land of his own to grow anything substantial. In the ’90s, McCrae got sick and tired of the trash heaped up in the vacant lot across from his house in East New York, and got in touch with New York City’s GreenThumb division, the country’s largest urban gardening program, supporting over 600 gardens reclaimed from abandoned lots throughout the city.

Between help from GreenThumb and donated supplies from people he just happened to meet, McCrae got the Green Gems farm up and running over the course of about five years of hard work. The only money spent out of his pocket has been the few bucks he pays the “drunk guys playing cards on the street” to work the soil while he’s working at the hospital. “A lot of them are from the islands, so they grew up farming, and they do a good job — and they like it.” During the spring and summer, he teaches anyone under the age of 11 to farm: “Any older, and they can’t get it in their blood.” He’s also got a small playing field, where kids can blow off steam to play ball. Today, the farm is home to about every kind of bean, squash, green vegetable, fruit tree, whatever you can imagine.

And McCrae gives it all away.

“How are you going to tell someone working 12 hours a day for nothing they should buy some nasty red pepper for $3 at the Fine Fare when they could go to McDonald’s and buy a dollar meal?” he says.

In 2003, a similar premise motivated the founders of Added Value, in Broke-Ass’ and McCrae’s stomping grounds of Red Hook, Brooklyn, to transform a city block from a run-down playground into a working farm, where neighborhood teenagers raise the crops and can eat fresh food for cheap. Plus, just about every hipster restaurant in Red Hook buys its veggies from Added Value. Broke-Ass can see the whole operation if she stands on her tiptoes in her backyard.

So, while McCrae and the IV-ed Broke-Ass were shooting the breeze about the finer points of raising chickens in the city — which is McCrae’s next project, one he’ll embark on after checking out our humble operation in Red Hook — Broke-Ass wondered what his reaction to such projects as farm skyscrapers and moving suburban populations out of their environs to make room for farmland might be. McCrae’s response was at first one of astonished expletives. Then he folded his arms and sighed.

“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to grow food in the city, and spend a whole lot of money — you just got to find the open space, ask for it, and do the work,” he said. “People think, ‘No one’s gonna let me do that, no one want to hear from me,’ but they don’t ask! People get depressed, they get lazy.”

Broke-Ass still has no idea where she’s going to get three thousand clams to pay for her gastroenterology escapade. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get un-stressed. But meeting a buddy like McCrae gave her a nice kick in the spiritual pants. Things can happen, you can ask, you can do the work — even if you seem like you’ve got nothing to work with.

Chickens can also keep your hands warm when it’s cold out.Photo: Courtesy Broke-Ass Grouch

We grow our own fruits and vegetables because we can’t afford to buy them at the market, never mind green co-ops. We make our own bread because it costs a quarter, and the good kind at the store is $4. We knit, sew, and “upcycle” our clothes because we have no choice. We could go on family vacations for what you guys spend on Seventh Generation and Mrs. Meyers cleaning products every year.

Allow the author of this bilious vituperation to introduce herself: The name is Broke-Ass Grouch. Broke-Ass does not live in the housing projects — which are around the corner from the little house in the ghetto where she resides with her three children. But with her annual income lying safely below the poverty line, she’d qualify. She also qualifies for food stamps — excuse me, “SNAP.” That’s right, revenuers, dress it up in something perky. But you try filling out impossible forms, standing in interminable lines, and being subjected to the degrading interviews of people who exact unfettered pleasure at disemboweling your financial ruin, and believe me: “SNAP” emerges as an exquisite understatement.

Friends, it sucks to be poor. Just ask most of the world. Most of us would be psyched to have a job that would pay us enough so that we didn’t have to clear chicken shit out of our yards, buy prison-sized bags of flour to make bread, and DIY every damn thing. We are the original frugavores, sans the media coverage. The awesome Gustavo Arellano, who writes the “Ask A Mexican” column for the Orange County Weekly, summed it up on American Public Media’s “Marketplace”: “When young professionals and the socially hip raise chickens in their backyards, newspapers do articles with slideshows,” he commented. “When us Mexicans do it? People call code enforcement.”

Now, to be fair, Broke-Ass Grouch is neither Mexican nor was she poor until three years ago. Like many of you good-doers, Broke-Ass was raised by middle-class intellectuals to be a middle-class intellectual, and graduated from a snooty liberal arts college. Also, like many of you, she spent her career working at high-status, low-paying, terminally insecure work.

Circa 2008, however, Broke-Ass realized what an errant dumbass she had been to have accepted the counsel of her educated, middle-class parents and teachers who said, “You can do whatever you want when you grow up, honey!” The bald foolishness of that privileged ethos became harrowingly plain when the housing market collapsed, and along with it, the economy.

Broke-Ass Grouch, like many in America, found herself abruptly cashless. Like many of the heretofore liberal elite, she had been trained exclusively in a non-essential trade (writing for a living), and thus had no marketable value in the general economy. Having lived a life of unexamined comfort and self-satisfaction, Broke-Ass now found herself with never more than $37.68 in the bank, and three little children to support (though she did count herself extravagantly lucky that her two older children’s father sent them to private school, and that her 12-year-old used minivan hadn’t collapsed in vapors — yet). She began to see the primacy of McDonald’s Dollar Meal and rifling through the bargain bins at Walmart, searching for tube socks and jeans made by 7-year-olds in Bangladesh for a dime a day.

But she couldn’t do it. Again, like many of you, Broke-Ass wanted to feed her children wholesome, unpoisoned food, and still thought that it was bad to exploit the world’s poor to increase corporate profit margins. Plus, she still wanted her children to know the virtues of the liberal arts phenomenology — the unalloyed pleasures of reading, thinking, investigating, experimenting — even though said phenomenology had dumped her by the side of the road in middle age and left her for dead.

Thus commenced Broke-Ass’ Walden Pond revolution. She did not enroll in a cooking class (no money); she did not have a fancy kitchen (she lives in a little house in the ghetto). Recently divorced and with no funds even for a damn cookbook, Broke-Ass got free recipes and followed the instructions, often shamed by such bourgeois commands as “use your mixer’s paddle attachment.” Fuck you and your yuppie paddle attachment. If you asked someone for a paddle attachment in my neighborhood, you’d be in for an ugly surprise.

Figuring that peasants in 5th century Siena used a big old spoon — or plain old hands — and everything came out okay nevertheless, Broke-Ass gave it a try. She made bread; scones, muffins, biscuits; crackers. No big deal. At all. It was money in the pocket, and her children ate delicious food that they helped make. Awe. Some.

She learned the same thing about growing fruits and vegetables: Anyone can grow shit themselves. Anyone. Broke-Ass was sick of reading about kids who just graduated from art or architecture school manning their self-righteous food-coops with heirloom everything; looking down on everyone who wasn’t raising bees on their rooftops in Brooklyn. To Broke-Ass, it all smacked of Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess with her ladies at the Petit Hameau at Versailles. You don’t need to have white-kid dreadlocks, a degree from Bennington, or any more than a passing interest in limiting your carbon footprint to raise your own crap. You just need to be hungry.

Broke-Ass was, admittedly, lucky. Her little house in the ghetto has a yard ample enough to grow a shitload of stuff: beets, kale, chard, squash, green beans, apples, pears, every herb you can think of and some she didn’t know about until she said, “Why the hell not?” The schmuskies pick produce when ripe. Broke-Ass ordered mail-order chicks to raise as egg-producers, and they worked! Now, Broke-Ass can offer turbo Omega-3 nourishment, and her schmushkies have a gaggle of farm pets that they feed and play games with, such as “Fly, chicken!” (Relax, PETA — no one is forced to fly here.) The whole situation has rendered the Broke-Ass compound into Little House on the Prairie meets Do the Right Thing.

Broke-Ass’ biggest revelation in terms of self-sustenance has been: There is no big deal about any of it. It needn’t reflect a philosophy. As Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs reminds us, philosophy is a non-issue when you’re after food, clothing, and shelter. Since Broke-Ass was raised in a household that stipulated memorization of Donne sestinas as allowance chores, she had never learned shit about the finer, or coarser, points of domestic life maintenance. But arriving in middle age dead broke with three children, she learned that feeding a family on whole grain fumes was easily as complex as a sestina — and just as revelatory — but not symbolic.

Which is better. It is real. Vive la revolution.