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| Our garden is not a riot of food yet. More like a small, but promising disturbance. The radishes are really shaking things up. |
I have never experienced a food riot, although in the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008 my food store looked like there had been a riot prior to my arrival. For the first time since I can remember, shelves were empty of staples. What was there was disheveled and picked over.
It was scary not knowing if things would get worse. Was this it? Was this the moment everything changed? Would the food riots I was reading about in the news come to my own city? Or was it different here?
It kind of was, and wasn't. The store soon returned to normal, although food prices have been steadily increasing since then. Now there may be lots of cauliflower on the shelves, but you may not feel like paying the price the grocer wants for it.
Either way, I would rather experience a riot of food than a food riot. And the way to ensure that is to grow a garden. That is what we are doing this year.
Although our garden got off to a slow start, we are off and running now. When our first planting of beans and peas did not go well, we planted again. The second planting was more successful - our perseverance paid off.
What a joy it is to be tending a garden again. It is a total immersion in nature, in life, in growth. And most importantly, it is to experience hope for the future. Hope that you can take to the food bank and share with those around you.
There is a huge surplus of grain that is produced in the world each year, that is then given to animals,this is a highly inefficient process and if stopped would eradicate world hunger.
ReplyDeleteI think that our ability to grow food hints at a deeper spiritual role that both embraces and cultivates nature and this has fundamentally become out of balance. We are lucky where we are because we have a local farmer who brings organic vegetables to market that he grows himself and is also cheaper than the supermarket. Alex.
We have to start doing what makes sense rather than what is most profitable. And profiting off of the Sickness Care industry is the worst. Companies make money making us sick, then they make money selling us "cures".
DeleteYou are fortunate to have access to a good local organic farmer. We need more of them. We need to BE them.
Such delight in growing your own food. Garden looks great!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Terri. Linda and I are so loving our new growing space, and are looking around to see how we can expand it. More boxes, perhaps plant some raspberries and asparagus in the field bordering our yard. An apple tree, too.
DeleteYour photo made me smile Gregg.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine.x
I love watching the sunflowers tracking the sun from sunrise to sunset. They are amazing. It would be a bonus to feed the birds, and have some seeds for ourselves.
DeleteWe've already been enjoying the bounty from our local farm stand. I may not be able to garden myself anymore, but feel fortunate to live in an area surrounded by farms.
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