the body of the Lord:

last things, I hope, that I'm going to post on the tomato blight.
- op-ed in the NYT from a New York chef who works with a local farm, explaining some things about why the blight was so bad & what some solutions could be ("A tomato plant that travels 2,000 miles is no different from a tomato that has traveled 2,000 miles to your plate.").
- piece from a farm intern in Western Mass. on the death of her farm's tomato plants.
"Now more than ever, Northeastern farmers need the support of their customers. They need CSA members with the grace to accept why their tomatoes are missing this year and market-goers who understand the devil’s bargain many farmers were forced to make. This is a year that can teach young agrarians humility and restraint and gratitude, if we can bring ourselves to seek it."

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:

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why farm? why food?

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