There seem to be so many
things to take care of these days. I have four email addresses, three bank
accounts, two houses where I spend my time, notebooks for home, notebooks for
the road, the facebook, a blog, a magazine where I write stories, a website for
the farm, a facebook page for the farm, a journal with nightly inventories, a
phone that connects me constantly. Amidst all of this I am expected to eat
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am not the only one. Nobody is making me do
this. I am not even complaining. This is the way the world is today. But does
it have to be?
What would the Nearings think? Helen and Scott’s
journey as documented in The Good Life shows two people who foresaw what the fast paced, profit-guided new world would
produce and chose instead to live an ascetic self-sufficient life in the
country. They left New York City for a forest farm in Vermont in the thirties. Those
of us who still dwell in cities have been removed from the source of our food
for a lot longer than I would have guessed. In the early fifties, kids were
brought from a progressive school in New York City to the wholesale vegetable
market around Washington Square. The teacher asked them where they thought this
wide array of produce had come from. In unison, the answer came back, “From the
A & P, of course.” I had kids at CRISP Farm who thought my tomatoes were
apples because tomatoes are supposed to be red. These same kids were blown away
when I roasted sunflower seeds from sunflowers I grew. Xavier asked me to grow
Ranch sunflower seeds next time. I told him I’d try. Then his brother Malik
said, “You can’t grow ranch. You got to make ranch.” So we do know some things.
Too often I hear people say that eating organic, whole
foods is more expensive. As if the alternative is actually food. In America, and
throughout the world, we put value in quantity and shop for volume rather than
nutrients. Sure, you can get four plastic cups of apple sauce for three or four
dollars, but these apples are pasteurized, injected with ascorbic acid, and
while the packages tout no sugar added,
you’ll see that the third ingredient, after apples and water, is often high
fructose corn syrup. Compare this to two apples at the same price. Which is
giving the consumer more value?
The pharmaceutical companies bring in billions of
dollars each year while our citizens continue to get sicker. It is not in the interest
of these CEO’s to become proponents of fruits and vegetables that are not
filled with chemicals. There is no profit in this. There is no profit in a
citizenry of white-eyed thinkers who pursue their passions without fear. Moreover,
it is of the benefit of major corporations to keep us sick, reliant on the
illusory health insurance provided by the cattle mills they call companies.
Doctors no longer deduce symptoms by taking the whole into account. They are
like the absent-minded mechanic who fixes a client’s bumper with a coat hanger
and uses duct tape to keep the rear view mirror intact while assuring the
worried driver, “Just keep pouring water in the radiator. It’ll be fine.”
“Food processing, poisoning and drugging is undermining
the health of American people as well as yielding large profits to the
individuals and corporations engaged in processing, poisoning, and drugging.
City dwellers, no matter how large their incomes and how much they can afford
to pay for quantity and quality of foods, can escape the resulting dangers only
by taking extreme precautions [read: extreme] in regard to what and how they
eat. Even country folk will fall prey to this health menace unless they are
able to raise their own food organically and reduce processing and poisoning to
a minimum, or else find a means of securing fresh, whole foods, free from
chemical poisons.” (Nearing, The Good Life, pp. 133) This was written sixty
years ago.
As an individual, I can grow my own food and help
others to do the same. As I learn, so will they, and as they learn, so will I.
This is the circle.
Coming soon: Humanure: Thoughts on Black Goats atop a Mountain in South Korea
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