the body of the Lord:

From April - November this year I'll be working at a small farm in Belmont, Mass. It's a CSA ("community supported agriculture") where neighbors buy shares in the winter & get a box of produce all season - some of whatever's growing.

I'm going to try to participate in a local economy and learn how to do something that everyone (including me) just assumes will keep happening: farmers growing food.

I want to write about it as I go along, to remember why I'm here when it gets rough (too early, or too long, or too far from facebook and starbucks) and to share the experience with those of you who care about local food & farms. so let me know what you think.

And, I found that I could only read Wendell Berry for so long without wanting to give it a go.

why farm? why food?

Wendell Berry, from "The Pleasure of Eating":
I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act.

Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as "consumers."

...How does one escape this trap? Only voluntarily, the same way that one went in: by restoring one's consciousness of what is involved in eating; by reclaiming responsibility for one's own part in the food economy.

...Eating with the fullest pleasure -- pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance-- is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. When I think of the meaning of food, I always remember these lines by the poet William Carlos Williams, which seem to me merely honest:

There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
and the sea, yield it
to the imagination
intact.

the body of the Lord:

2 comments:

why farm? why food?

tweets @greenelizabeth

Twitter Updates

Links & Enthusiasms:

friends

moi

Blog Archive