I have been a Massage Therapist for almost a decade now. I have earned a BS degree in Alternative Medicine and try to incorporate that information and insight into my practice. Among this information is Herbology. While I am in no way an "Expert" in the field, the study of the medicinal quality of plants lead to the curiosity and interest in growing the herbs for home use. Though plagued for years with the "Black Thumb of Death", I finally learned how to grow a plant or two, which inspired me to try to grow more plants of a larger variety. Each failure was a lesson on what not to do while each success was an inspiration as well as encouragement to try more. This is hard to sustain when you only have 10 square feet of dirt in a city apartment's back patio area, but I did my best.
While studying Alternative Medicine, I made the effort to share healthy living insights and information with my (now) husband. Much to my surprise, he developed a passion for it! So much so that when I got home from a long day of work followed by school, I saw my husband in the kitchen and half the pantry was sitting on the counter. When I asked him what was going on, he just looked at me, awestruck, and told me that all those products had High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), Nitrates/Nitrites, MSG, and/or other preservatives/chemicals "that our bodies were not made to ingest". You could have knocked me over with a feather! He had been listening to me!! This man, whom I love dearly, was eating nothing but fast food when we started dating. It took a few years of patient effort, but he slowly came around to home-cooked meals that were balanced in nature and delicious! Now, here he was, quoting some of the myriad of food health issues I had been trying to get him to mentally digest for months.
It turns out that he had seen a movie that made things click for him: Food, Inc. The film is a documentary that follows the industrialized food production model from farm to distribution to consumption and really features the unsettling truth behind the scenes of where our food comes from as well as introducing alternative production models like Consumer Supported Agriculture (CSA) and sustainable farming practices. While Hubby had family roots in agriculture, he had grown up as a city boy- completely separate and apathetic about the origins of his food. He'd had no idea about CAFOs or industrial chicken houses or the Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that impact our food supply. Suddenly, he didn't push me to hurry up when I was reading labels on his favorite foods. In fact, he was reading them too! We slowly transitioned away from most processed foods and have been selecting more whole foods that we can process into whatever we want at home. In true engineer form, he sought out as much information as he could on food production, farming, sustainability, legal issues facing the farming communities, farming equipment and how to use it... you name it! My reading focused on plant and animal care, preserving foods, networking in farming communities, and maintaining good health for us and a farm.
Since we lived in an apartment in a big city, there weren't many home agriculture opportunities available, but we did frequent farmers markets and tried our hand at growing what we could at home in our 10 feet of dirt. About this time, Hubby started to really think about the farm he'd inherited from his grandparents. It had been run into the ground by a previous owner and the home and surrounding land had been neglected and overgrown for more than a decade, but we were conviced that we could handle it if we could comeup with a plan. We read books, watched more documentaries, found farming models we would like to be able to emulate and moved to the farm a year later. Most of the viable farm land was (and continues to be) rented to a commercial farmer. When the lease was renewed last year, we took 8 acres of it to use ourselves and try to create our own homestead that we can eventually grow to into a prosperous farming enterprise.
We knew when we started this that we were in for the adventure of a lifetime. Far from family and the friends we had made, we (I) decided to chronicle our experiences. If nothing more, it will keep our family and friends apprised of our progress. It is my hope, though, that our endeavor might inspire others out there who aspire to similar goals: food worth eating and a lifestyle that is rewarding and sustainable!
Light & Love,
TNNF
