the body of the Lord:: beans, 2010

These were some dry beans we grew this year - varieties are Jacob's Cattle, Autumn Harvest, Hutterite, and Black Turtle. Gave some away for Christmas presents. Aren't they beautiful?

We planted them in the late summer. They grow just like fresh green beans, on a bush, but you let them die on the plant and then clip the whole thing and let it dry. We put them in the upstairs of the barn for a couple months. Takes a while to shell each pod (this is why people have threshing machines), but then, there they are. Ready for the soup.

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:

beans, 2010

1 comment:

why farm? why food?

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