On Earth Day like on any other day most of us eat 1-3 meals. Eating a meal, this humble ritual, affects not only our own physical health and well-being but collectively, as a human community, it is arguably the most important activity affecting the health of our planet.
Most of us “Eaters” are so removed from the actual practice of growing and raising food that for the majority, food is nothing but a commodity– expecting it to be there when we want it, continuously produced on some unknown farm, by unknown farming practices, performed by unknown people.
Food for the most part is an abstract idea until we physically take it off the shelf or see it on a plate in front of us. This state of alienation has welcomed an industrialized food-system, focused on producing large quantities of food for the highest profit. It in turn has lowered the quality of the food we eat, diminished our quality of life, and degraded much of the natural environment that sustains us.
What nourishes our passion for farming is to share the results of our efforts as we pack them into CSA shares, offer them at the farmer’s markets or provide them to local stores and restaurants for people to enjoy. There is an inherent sense of gratitude and pleasure when it’s time to pull a mature carrot, red beet or potato out of the soil. The same is true when it comes to tasting a sweet strawberry, tomato, raspberry or apple picked fresh off a plant.
As a farmer I like all who enjoy the fruits of our efforts to know that growing plants for food, starting from seed, is a complex biological process governed by nature’s variable and often unpredictable conditions. To encourage a better understanding of farming, it has always been a guiding principle to open the farm to our community to experience and understand how and where their food is grown. It is why over the course of the season we offer many educational events and festivities to experience the seasonality of the crops.
I am ultimately hopeful that the way we choose to eat, building healthier relationships to both land and food, will make a meaningful difference in the well-being of our own lives and that of the planet.
