real food.
This is what you get when you play with your local farmers* kid (not just a kid, but a beautiful and vibrant and wise little three year old being) while they work at bringing their community fresh food.
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This may not be a big deal to you, to accept food straight from the hands that cared for and planted the seed, the hands that loved and tended and sweat to bring the seed to life, hands that are strong and dark with the stain of the Earth. To be in the same space with their bodies, strong and sore from bending and weeding, fingering and gathering the divine produce is like part of my life dream fulfilled. Farmers are rock stars to me and my family. Good food is my life and there is no good food without the love and time from real people who grow it. I grew up with stories about farming from grandpa, he came from a goat herding and farming family back in the Old Country, he spoke with respect and reverence about his family who showered his whole village with food. My parents and oldest siblings walked up the street in our hometown to the now defunct farm to collect produce and milk eggs. I now live in a place minus the big box whole food organic stores, here we have co-ops and public markets which offer smaller yet just as satisfying services without all the ’sex’ appeal and certainly without all the imports. But there is nothing, nothing at all like the hand of an outstretched farmer with a bunch of radishes and carrots, emerald greens and spicy onions, vibrant brocoli (the best broc i have ever tasted, made a raw tahini dip and dipped all day long. yum!) succulent berries and the sweetest snaps peas ever standing in your kitchen, offering you this real food, filled with love and hope.
So as a PSA: run, don’t walk, to your nearest small family organic farmer and offer to play with their kids, weed, clean their house, or pay them cash. Do whatever you can so they can continue to change the world one seed at a time. Because this is what it takes.
*if link does not work, please check out my friend’s farm blog: 1smallseed.blogspot.com
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on a side note, i leave tomorrow for a 10-day long trip. dropping of the big girls in our desert home away from home while i continue on to NY where i will be preparing real food for my mama while she continues her journey through chemotherapy. i uncook for her (raw foods) and a mix of macrobiotic menu. i vacuum, gently brush her thinning hair, hold her hand, keep her company, work in her yard, and mostly just hand over the baby dove, because that baby heals her heart and soul, she is my offering to my mother who gladly accepts (the big girls can’t come, their pre-school germs aren’t allowed near my mama’s compromised immune system. will try to write on the road, but if not…enjoy the juiciness of summer in a berry or a melon and pitcher of hand squeezed lemonade.
