a little something about this little something

   There is something new happening, as there always is I suppose, but this something new I feel lucky enough to be a part of.   Within the United States, there is a national effort on the part of some to reform the way we produce, access, and consume food.  Just a few months ago, I shed many of my urban concerns, habits, and consumption patterns and migrated to a small-to-mid-scale organic farm in Maine’s Mid-Coast region.

The process of joining this team and then working on this farm (and previously working in the food /nutrition/hungry non-profit world in a wide-variety of capacities), has given me great food for thought (that will be the only time I use that pun I swear) on the recent swell of attention to the food we eat, and the somewhat isolated lifestyle of farming has left me with a desire to commune it with others beyond the few I see on a regular basis.  Thus the beginnings of this blog.

I am calling this blog “Our Growing Seasons” for a number of reasons. Firstly, I find the idea of a growing season to be wonderful; it is cyclical, repetitive, and bounded by our environmental surroundings, yet results in bounty and is (literally) fruitful.  I chose to use the language “Our Growing Seasons” because it is inclusive.  There is a lot of discussion about eating seasonally and locally, and yet little little attention paid to the wonderful variation that such a goal entails, both on a micro-scale (it seriously varies mile to mile) and internationally.  Lastly, I see this experience as one in which I am certainly growing as a person, hopefully with a movement that will change some of the practices of production within our country and that fact deserves some cheesy, metaphorical attention, and so, “Our Growing Seasons.”