This is my granddaughter sitting on the sweet potatoes that my daughter and son-in-law grew on less than one tenth of an acre. They were just named "Farm Family Of The Year" by the local Chamber of Commerce.
This picture also represents one of the best movements going on in this nation. Educated young people are taking to the soil in ways that we have not before seen. They are growing healthier food, and equally important, healthier families--both physically and emotionally.
We can see in the horse what happens when we force a lifestyle on him that is completely different from that which he evolved. Wrecked health and behavioral vices are the cost we pay for doing so.
Humans come from many millennia of hunting, gathering and, eventually, farming. We have lost a great deal in terms of our emotional and physical health with every step that we take away from the soil. I doubt that this nation has ever faced time in which its middle class, which can afford healthy food, has been in poorer health. We are a people both physically ill and emotionally exhausted. The situation is even worse for kids coming along today.
That baby is sitting on a big part of what we can do to regain what we have lost. The other need, the opportunity to work the soil, must also be met. Over the years I have had a few families bring kids out to the horse lot, not to ride, but to work.
Those kids have wise parents.
Sweet 'tater on the sweet 'taters..
ReplyDeleteIt never ceases to amaze me, just how many people would like to grow their own food, or part of it, and never take the first step..almost anyone can raise some tomatoes in a cantainer on the porch...and most garden veggies can be growin in containers. Last winter I grew potatoes over the winter in the living room..mostly because I had a nasty sprouted potato in the fridge..so I stuck it in a pot and on the window sill..big pretty thing grew out of it, and I ate the four potatoes it produced.
The movement back to the soil is huge today..people are burned out and fed up with corrupt government and giant agriculture controlling their food. Who is anybody to tell me I cannot buy a gallon of real milk from the farmer up the road? Who exactly believes they have the right to tell any of us what we can or cannot know about what we eat?
The fastest way to control a populace in through it's stomachs..everybody fights the gun control issue, but there are far, far greater concerns to be dealt with, and ones with exponentially farther reaching consequences of inaction. One cannot eat bullets, money or hot air..
In an earlier post on this blog, I wrote about our greatest generation passing, go ask them what it is like to not have a clue where the next meal to feed your kids comes from...a more modern approach, go sit and talk to homeless people, and get their perspective..hungry takes one's humanity and mangles it.
We can fix it, you and I, it takes a little work, but it can be done..This week past, I and my little family put a hog in the freezer that weighed between 125 and 150 lbs. hanging weight (without the gutz..) Of that weight, probably a hundred pounds was pasture fed pork like you have never tasted, it will net me around forty pounds of cured bacon and ham, ten lbs of loin or so, (which was shared with neighbors)and the balance will be sausage (go look up the cost of organic pasture raised pork..the math is an excercise for the student)..It will eventually be served up with duck, goose and chicken eggs from our own yard, and probably potaotes and other veggies from our own gardens..there is no feeling of independence like eating a meal that you have grown yourself, or grown and traded for. Sure it is hard work, but then, you were just about to head out to the gym to lose some weight anyhow, weren't you?
Freedom and independence do not necessarily equate to being able to do just what you want to when you want to, it does mean being secure enough in your life to not have to rely on the rest of the world for every morsel you get.
If you literally do not have the room...I would be willing to bet there is a community garden near you..if there is not, there is a telephone near...and community government to petition to get it done..
The young lady above is sure being raised right. Right along with the corn and beans!-Lloyd