Square Foot Gardening
Ok, I don’t know how the formatting of this post is going to work but I wanted to post the beginnings of my Square Food Garden for this Real Food Wednesday. This year I started about 90% of my plants from seed, which I now realize is a big part of the work of gardening.
Community-Supported Agriculture
Back in April, and throughout last summer, I talked all about my lovely CSA through Sun Gold Farm. A CSA is Community-Supported Agriculture and it is an ultra-local way of getting quality food directly from the farm. This is just a friendly reminder to begin thinking about possibly joining a CSA, because chances are, sign-ups are already beginning and when spring comes around chances are it will be too late!
Disturbing….
In a fascinating post by Ann Marie, one of her readers, “Craig” makes a very astute and somewhat disturbing comment that really brought it home for me:
“Our politicians fake their sympathy for the cost of health care, “food” and
the price of gas, yet over 70% of all the costs of health care are related to
industrial food sources, regulations and restrictions have forced local farmers
out of business and dried up support for them in favor of industrial
agricultural companies (same ones mentioned above, who now have the power and
money to lobby for anything that they want), and 50% of the gasoline
used in this country is used for fertilizing, growing and transporting
industrial food (what’s wrong with locally grown food?).
Wow! That last point is particulary disturbing for me. It makes me realize that striving to purchase local, organic food isn’t some elitist, food snobby thing to do. It seems like the most socially responsible way to vote with our dollars and begin a grass-roots revolution that will truly begin to solve our nation’s health care crisis and our world’s energy crisis. Just think! I could go on and on, but I will save that for another rant!!!
