some difficulties

This week, an article about our farm ran in the local town paper. It also had a piece about the town itself, and how great it is, including this nice little statistic: the median home price there is $945,000.

Tonight at the grocery store in my neighborhood in Boston, the youngish man in front of me in line had lots of food, almost all of it processed, full of corn syrup and sodium and chemicals and all the things that make farmers crazy. An older man behind me was buying a very few staples - potatoes, eggs, tortillas, beans. He counted change in his hand; it was heartbreaking.

A few decades ago in America, it might well have been possible for an older person on a fixed small income to grow their own food in their own space, or live by a farming community with food available and not exist on the very edge of poverty. More likely, too, that the food available at markets and stores was actually food. And that the wealth divide between rich and poor was less stark, and that open space -- land to farm -- would not be limited to unaffordable communities. Unaffordable by a MILE.