Feeding the family

Yes, that's lettuce friends! A huge crop of greens that came from MY garden! The first successful thing I've ever grown. I cannot tell you how fun it was to serve this to my family for dinner... and have enough for seconds! This, after the one strawberry I harvested and shared as our fruit one night a few weeks ago (and not including the lone raspberry I snuck the other day.) 

I've been inspired by Seattlites, committed to knowing where their food comes from and supporting local economy thru farmer's markets and coops. One friend introduced me to raw milk, which I believe kept our family healthy all winter long. Another wants to buy chickens... 

But lately, my inspiration comes from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It's a year in the life of her family's commitment to only buy what they can find within 100 miles, with a few exceptions. She tells of her 50th birthday party to which they invited 150 people. She and a friend called up all the local farmers to see what they had, and devised a menu from their ingredients. Imagine that! Starting with what you have available, in season, locally, rather than starting with what you want and basically importing it from some other place on the globe so that you can have it. 

This runs deep for me... I spent 7 years whining about what I didn't have. Complaining that the produce wasn't pretty or round or shiny. Frustrated every time my cucumbers went bad just 2 days after buying them. Hello! Preservatives people! Can I get some chemicals around here!? But at the time I was ignorant enough to not know I was asking for toxins. I truly had no idea that Turkey was offering me fresh, non-preserved, delicious produce... albeit oddly shaped. 

I was knee deep in the "I want what I want and I want it now" mentality of food consumption. So I brought in my seeds of sweet corn, cantalope, asparagus, snap peas... determined to grow what I missed so desperately in this culture that didn't import from all over the globe at all times of the year... and it failed miserably! Vines and weeds suffocated each other in my impatient haste to have without any attempt to learn how to garden or bother to cultivate.

This year I've gone slow. Really slow. And I've committed myself to a garden coop to learn the art of raising a crop. And in the process I'm learning that there is a rhythm to life and the way we were meant to eat. What a joyful lesson!