Growing the Good Community

"A Declaration of Food Independence such as I suggest would foster and be dependent upon a deeper and more profound declaration of interdependence - and a new economy. A nation made up primarily of garden farms would mean a realignment of people into smaller and more local trade complexes. This "distributive economy" to use the phrase popularized in the 1930s and 1940s when many people began questioning both capitalism and socialism, would be based on personal contact between consumer and producer, and upon biological technologies more than on machine technologies -- the economy of Eden, in other words. Then humans would understand that people mattered, and not only people, but all living things upon which people depend. Common interest and self-interest would become one, and that is the definition of a real community." (Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Gardening, pp. 3-4)

 When Lori and I became interested in locally grown produce a few years ago, we liked the idea of "shaking the hand of the farmer" who was feeding us.  In the case of one of those farmer families, we have done more than simply shake hands.  We have sat in their living room, eaten around their table, and most significant of all, have learned from them.  In the course of such interactions, we digested more than their harvest; we took into ourselves something of their passion for the goodness and healthiness of their labor.  They go to bed each evening tired, but with the satisfying clarity that what they are doing is important.  And they, along with many others, have convinced me.  

This small farm work is, I believe, important not only for nutritional reasons.  To be sure, locally grown vegetables are simply better.  Their taste is certainly superior, and I don't mean to discount the fact that, having been allowed to mature "on the vine" instead of "in the truck," their nutritional value is, indeed, richer and more mature.   It is, however, this human dimension that has moved me more than the physiological one.  I am intensely conscious of the fact that I am indebted.  I have come to know them and their labors.  I have come to understand their reasons for farming the way they do -- the logic of it; the history of it; the intent of it.  And I have come to employ much of it in the still smaller emulation of their work I have begun in this new endeavor on land of our own.  It is, however, less the science of it that compels me than the humanity of it.  The humanity, and indeed our interdependence on everything around me.

This blessed, holy work, I am coming to understand, does indeed have the capacity to remind us humans that people matter -- growers and consumers; teachers and students; planters and pickers; cooks and eaters -- grateful, with each handful, notebook, pot and mouthful, for the awe-filling blessedness of the "other" who makes it all worthwhile.  Self-interest and common interest simmered into the broth that is the base of all things good.