Just a few green words before you settle in for what I hope is a relaxing and fulfilling few days with family and friends.
And rather than drudge through some doom and gloom story of an energy crisis, rising seas or the Scrooge-like goings-on of the 110th Congress, I'd like to focus on some lighter fare.
More specifically, I'd like to talk about holiday fare--the pigs-in-a-blanket, mashed potatoes, roasts, wine and whatever else will tease your palate during the gatherings of the next week or so.
You see, all that food comes from somewhere--a hog farm in Georgia, beneath the ground in Idaho, from a slaughterhouse in Kansas or from a misty hillside in the Napa Valley.
Those livestock needed fed and watered, as did the potatoes and grapes. Then, in their own ways, each of those things had to be cleaned, processed, packaged and shipped.
And yet, day after day, we look no further than our plates as we consume meal after meal. But industry is starting to have an increased interest in how the world's food gets from field to fridge.
More and more companies are tracking food miles--the distance food travels from the time of production until it reaches the final consumer--and some European nation's have made it law to include them on food packaging.
There has also been an increased call for a green supply chain, employing everything from locally farmed organic meats and produced to transport methods using clean fuels and rail.
We'll get into ways to profit from that trend in the coming weeks. Today, in an effort to keep it light, I'm offering an essay I wrote during my senior year of college. I hope you enjoy it.
A Blind Horse
Putting food on today's table has become somewhat of a mundane event. Aside from earning the money to actually buy the food, the rest of the process has become a comedic commercial enterprise focused on ease and convenience. At any neighborhood grocery store there is a plethora of prepared foods, frozen dinners, salad and soup bars, and prepared deli items. We have become all too familiar with these daily offerings; trading the traditional family dinner for frozen Salisbury steak and grainy mashed potatoes.
The standard dinner of today normally contains at least one product boasting "easy", "instant" or "one step" on the label. Even the butcher department now offers pre-marinated or spice-rubbed chicken, beef and pork. This is a phenomenon that is testing a slippery slope toward disaster. There are, however, still some with footing on firm ground.
Hartley is town, if it even qualifies as that, in lower Delaware. There is no grocery store or gas station and, until a few years ago, no paved road to get there. In Hartley, there are more cornfields than people; but that doesn't say much, people are also outnumbered by livestock and barns. If I had to say, Hartley's motto would be this: "You only farm if you live here and you only live here if you farm."
I used to be hesitant to admit this, but I have family there. Robert Stanley, my grandmother's brother, or more easily, my great uncle, has made his home here. Kind of. He and his wife, Stella, live in the second floor of a two-story house. Well, it used to be a two-story house; some time ago it collapsed, but instead of rebuilding, they just cleared away the debris and put the second story up on cinder blocks. Now, I suppose, it qualifies as a two-bedroom ranch.
He is a Korean War vet; a bone-skinny, frail looking old man with tattered white hair, smoking wrinkles, and a huge cratered nose. He owned a towing and mechanic shop after the war and retired to his nearly three hundred acres as the epitome of a hillbilly. Robert has one horse that shares a pasture with at least fifty broken-down rusted-out cars and trucks. There are two barns and an old silo that are decorated with ancient tractors, wagons, bush hogs, tires and tools.
If you can get yourself and your eyes beyond this initial hillbilly haven, there is an entire wilderness to discover; nearly three hundred acres of farmland divided equally between grain fields and forests of oak, poplar, hickory and maple. There are paths, ponds and irrigation ditches filled with water that have now become home to muskrats and various amphibians. There is an overwhelming amount of things to experience, and after fifteen years of annual visitation, there are still paths I haven't taken, hedgerows I haven't walked.
I began coming to Hartley when I was about six years old. I would come with my father and grandfather for the Delaware deer-hunting season, which was normally one week before the Maryland season, allowing us to enjoy a few full weeks of hunting. Deer season was always a big event at the Stanleys'; even Aunt Stella got in on the action. A group of men would always gather in the kitchen around five in the morning; men I didn't know, but who my father seemed to have a vague acquaintanceship with. They all had names you would expect them to have, like Bobby, Buddy, Mike and J.R. We would all have coffee and doughnuts then head to the woods in a caravan of pickup trucks.
At the end of each day during deer season, Andy, one of my great uncle's best friends would make an appearance. He owned the farm adjacent to the back forty of Robert's; an Amish man who always came, with his dog, by horse and buggy. His horse was blind and I always wondered how it was capable of piloting the buggy. Whenever he came over, I would go outside and pet the horse's forehead and nose. I was always told to speak to the horse before I touched it, so he would know I was there. I don't know why, but I always thought he knew I was there anyway.
Andy was not your typical Amish man. I have heard him use words I didn't think the Amish were allowed to use. He entered almost seamlessly into our outsider conversations and had an outstanding sense of humor. He was not at all like the stern stereotype of Amish people that I had manifested in my head. It amazes me that with his outgoing disposition he came back from his Rumspringa, the time when a young Amish adult tries living in the outside world before deciding to be baptized and join the church for life. This way, they can make and informed decision as to the life they want to lead. Amazingly, almost no one decides to turn away from the Amish lifestyle, choosing instead to commit to their faith, family and, ultimately, the land.
Andy, like all Amish, wore no buttons because of their historical connection with the military. The Amish are peaceful people. He had a curly brown beard that hugged his jaw line and served as a sign of matrimony. His cheeks above the beard were clean-shaven as was his neck below. Andy was gentle and kind, a good husband and father. But what I admired about him most was his lifestyle; getting and making almost everything he and his family needed by hand, without everyday comforts like electricity.
I have only been to Andy's farm one time. It is nothing like my uncle's. His house sits back off the road about a quarter mile; a white two-story house with no shutters or other adornments. They have two large white barns and several fenced-in pastures with a few horses, cows and chickens. Tall pines line the driveway and the scene is one to be remembered; a tranquil place with an aura of hard work.
We had come to give him a deer. Everyone over at Robert's had already taken one and no one had room in the freezer for another. Robert told us that Andy had not yet shot a deer and that he would more than likely accept it. There was no way to call and ask him if he wanted the deer, so we had to drive over.
When my father and I pulled into their drive the kids came running up to the truck. They had a look of excitement, like they hardly ever have visitors, and especially not visitors with gasoline engines. Andy came up from the barn; we had obviously caught him in the middle of some chores. We talked and asked him if he wanted the deer. I could tell by the way he was looking at it that he wanted it; only his pride was standing in the way.
"I don't want you to think we need this," he said. "I'm not one for accepting charity."
We had to explain, almost defensively, that we knew that. It was just a simple offering. We were friends and had an extra deer; that's all there was to it. He finally accepted and nodded to his oldest boy. The boy ran to the barn to get a rope and tied it around the deer's neck to hoist it up in a tree for drying. He threw the free end of the rope around a sturdy branch and began, slowly, to pull the deer up. I went over and helped him and afterwards he gave me a look as if to say, "I could have done it myself, but thanks anyway."
I think about this event often. I wonder why Andy was so hesitant to accept the deer and how his son knew what a simple nod meant. I wonder why his wife immediately came out to give us a basket of apples when she saw us unload the deer. I don't know why I wonder these things; deep down I know it is all about pride and their connection with the earth. The earth provides for them and in turn they respect the earth and all it contains. They have a special bond that is cultivated in respect. Who else would let a blind horse pull their wagon and till their fields? There is a relationship there. One that may have been violated if he accepted the deer for the wrong reasons or thought we were giving it to him out of pity.
We were not giving him an "instant" or "one-step" meal. That deer still needed to be dried, skinned, butchered and cooked. Most people today could not even handle the cooking part, although a valiant attempt should at least be made to try. I know it is unrealistic for us all to live off the land and hunt or grow our own food. But at the same time, we do not have to alienate ourselves from the entire process. Most of us could handle cooking raw meat and seasoning it ourselves. If we want mashed potatoes we could skin, boil and whip them instead of adding water to a dehydrated starchy base. It is not that hard to stay even remotely connected to earth and what it takes to feed us everyday. Take a moment, even one day a week, go to a real butcher and get a piece of fresh meat. Go to the local grocer or produce stand and enjoy some fresh vegetables. As you cook them, think about all the processes and manpower it took to get that meat into your home. Then think about how Andy does it; right there on his piece of the earth, with just his wife, three kids and a blind horse.
Uncle Robert has since passed, and Andy and his family moved to Ohio. But I hope you can appreciate his beliefs and way of life. In the future, Andy's practices may be incorporated into our daily lives more than you think. And, rest assured, capitalism will be walking hand-in-hand with good actions, organic food, fair trade and clean energy.
Have a Great Holiday,
Nick
www.energyandcapital.com
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Excellent
i think is new, is the transport cost of food which will be factored in shortly and have an effect on our fresh food consumption --- to the good I believe.
very good essay!!
It came easy, the prior learning instilled the ability to know, with a little knowledge of what, why, and how could be applied to any computer control approach, and produced first time out working adventures. Then came the improvements here and there, but all reflected back to the beginning, makeing it work from the ground up.
I do follow education and have learned that prior to the 1990's Germany used what was called a "Bootstrap" education. Present to the masses what there was in the world to do for a future, and then select those that quickly stepped into the various roles for further direct interactive training. In the last week I have heard our American Leadership, say now only people from other lands have the ability to address our Nations needs and futures creative, and endouring future.
Knowning what I know, the only supporting rationele for this approch is because they the political inept, made it that way, not the people. So now as a Nation of people, declared "inept" or not we will have to work together once again to show the world, we are indeed as knowledgeable as any others and can indeed, make a sure, sound and creative future, for the planet and world we live in and on. Thank you for a since real world story.
Spider Rybaak
Actually makes me uneasy to see how this generation eats all this prepared, processed food.
As a young girl, those foods were not around, thank God, however, I still like to cook from 'scratch'.
Ok, I do love the pizza, ha.
Merry Christmas and the Best to you/yours in the New Year.
I usually flip through the how-to-make-money e-mails fairly quickly, but this story caught my eye.
It's a wonderful piece- I like the "remembering" of a simpler life and the reminder of how meals used to be. Thank you.
thanks for painting such a vivid remembrance of my own southern Pennsylvania childhood.
That way of living close to the land, of being responsible for one's survival and sustenance, and having at least some awareness of our dependence on a healthy earth - all that is disappearing fast. I'm not quite as hopeful as you that our civilization will ever recover that sense. But I do thank you for reminding us of what we are losing.
RJR
Great story....I have much respect for those among us who can take advantage of the simple, basic ways of life. Probably more so now that I no longer "work" outside the home.
My husband grew up on a 1000 acre ranch in the hill country of Texas and has wonderful stories about his days. I, on the other hand, grew up in LA.in the 50's-60's-very different. I have been adding more natural foods to our diets for several years now. My gardening skills are improving thanks to what I remember from my days with my grandmother.
Take care