Today, I am purchasing a book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barabara Kingsolver. Not only do I have a voice as a consumer, but I have a voice as a mother. I hold the ability to teach my children (voting members of tomorrow) that our earth is a special place, just like their bodies. Gathering food grown from the earth (by their own two little hands) will NEVER be seen as backward or barbaric. Not if I can help it! What a sacred gift we have as mothers. We have the ability to shape a new generation. A generation that one day, will move on and into the land of tomorrow. A land that we will never see.
Here is an exerpt from the book that I saw on Amazon. It has me excited! May it inspire you to make a difference in your life, and in those around you.
"
where many different languages assign
similar scorn with the phrase “dirty work.”
My generation has absorbed an implicit
hierarchy of values in which working the
soil is poor people’s toil. Apparently we’re
now meant to rise above even touching the
stuff those people grow. The real labors of
keeping a family fed (as opposed to the
widely used metaphor) are presumed tedious
and irrelevant. A woman confided to me at a
time to cook anymore? My daughter will
probably grow up wondering what a kitchen
is used for.” The lament had the predictable
blend of weariness and braggadocio,
unremarkable except for this woman’s
post at the helm of one of the nation’s
major homemaking magazines.
This is modern thinking. Even keeping
house does not dirty its hands with food
production. Sorry, but we have work to do,
the stuff that happens in an office or agency
or retail outlet—waiting tables, for instance.
Clicking a cash register at the speed of light.
Driving a truck on a long-distance haul. We
have risen above the muddy business of an
agrarian society, heaven be praised. People
in
So, what are we going to do about this?
Being a native San Franciscan, an urbanite, somewhat cosmopolitan, though I summered on the Russian River with a local family there, I loved upon farmers as backward. I loved nature, but did not consider farming as "nature. City mouse versus country mouse.
ReplyDeleteThat changed during my hippy days, somewhat. Then I began to realize that modern farming, as opposed to sharecropping, is an increasingly sophisticated, technical business, especially organic farming.
UC Davis, for example, offers the latest knowledge and advice to these farmers, arborists, cheesemakers, olive growers, orchardists, wine growers and vintners, horticulturists, vegetable/fruit growers, and grain growers.
Raising my own organic herbs and ornamental plants in my small garden makes me appreciate all those that soil their hands in the earth or have soiled them in the past.
The book looks like a good read.
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