Hey Mother Nature

You could feel that spring had come to the Berkshires after a long and gray winter. Wherever we went around Great Barrington, farmers and gardeners were hoeing the ground, planting seeds, adjusting water lines, patching up chicken coops, or moving livestock between pastures. By noon on Saturday, many of us congregated at the Route 7 Grill near Great Barrington, to sample and discuss the foods and brews unique to the Berkshires, and ponder what they meant to our society as Earth Day of 2008 loomed before us. We sipped hard cider made from heirloom Baldwin Apples, nibbled at freshly-picked spring greens, passed around Berkshire blue cheese, and savored barbecue sandwiches from brisket smoked not fifty yards from where we were sitting. As the warm sun poured down upon us and the first daffodils broke out into flower in the pasture beyond us, I drifted off into a reverie about folks were eating when the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970.

I remember that day because I had taken a “leave of absence” from my freshman year in college to work as a cartoonist and cub reporter at Earth Day headquarters in Washington, D.C. Like many times before and since, I was essentially playing hookie from my normal responsibilities to engage with others in promoting a somewhat novel way of looking at the world around us: we wished to have all human inhabitants on this little planet understand how their actions and consumption patterns affected the entire biosphere in which we lived. But while we worked fourteen hour days writing newsletters and press releases in a little office on DuPont Circle, we were oblivious to the fact that our own eating patterns might be contributing to the planet’s problem.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Know where your food has come from
through knowing those who produced it for you,
from farmer to forager, rancher or fisher
to earthworms building a deeper, richer soil,
to the heirloom vegetable, the nitrogen-fixing legume,
the pollinator, the heritage breed of livestock,
& the sourdough culture rising in your flour.

Know where your food has come from
by the very way it tastes:
its freshness telling you
how far it may have traveled,
the hint of mint in the cheese
suggesting what the goat has eaten,
the terroir of the wine
reminding you of the lime
in the stone you stand upon,
so that you can stand up for the land
that has offered it to you.

Know where your food has come from
by ascertaining the health & wealth
of those who picked & processed it,
by the fertility of the soil that is left
in the patch where it once grew,
by the traces of pesticides
found in the birds & the bees there.
Know whether the bays & shoals
where your shrimp & fish once swam
were left richer or poorer than before 
you & your kin ate from them.

Know where your food comes from
by the richness of stories told around the table
recalling all that was harvested nearby
during the years that came before you,
when your predecessors & ancestors,
roamed the same woods & neighborhoods
where you & yours now roam.   
Know them by the songs sung to praise them,
by the handmade tools kept to harvest them,
by the rites & feasts held to celebrate them,
by the laughter let loose to show them our affection.

Know where your foods come from
by the patience displayed while putting them up ,
while peeling, skinning, coring or gutting them,
while pit-roasting, poaching or fermenting them,
while canning, salting or smoking them,      
while arranging them on a plate for our eyes to behold.
Know where your food comes from
by the slow savoring of each and every morsel,
by letting their fragrances lodge in your memory
reminding you of just exactly where you were the very day
that you became blessed by each of their distinctive flavors.

When you know where your food comes from
you can give something back to those lands & waters,
that rural culture, that migrant harvester,
curer, smoker, poacher, roaster or vinyer.
You can give something back to that soil,
something fecund & fleeting like compost
or something lasting & legal like protection.
We, as humans, have not been given
roots as obvious as those of plants.
The surest way we have to lodge ourselves
within this blessed earth is by knowing
where our food comes from.

Gary Paul Nabhan, January 2007
On behalf of Renewing America’s Food Traditions

1 Comment »

Sit down at the table with your countrymen & friends
And ask your lips, tongues, minds & bellies some questions,
Questions that remind us that our bodies & spirits
Are either nurtured by place
Or swallowed up by tasteless placelessness.

Ask aloud: Just what exactly is it
That we want to have cross our lips,
To roll off our tongues & down our throats
To be transformed & conjured into something
Altogether new by thousands of gut microbes
To surge into our bloodstreams
To be carried along with insulin for one last wild ride
& to be lodged within the very cells of our bodies?

Just what do we want to be made of?
What do we claim as our tastes?
& what do we want to taste like
When we, in our own turn, are eaten
by wolf, vulture, raven, condor, coyote or bear?
 
I, for one, & perhaps you as well,
Wish to taste like the very country in which I reside:

Like great plains bison wallowing amidst the prairie turnips,
Like salmon running up a cold and clear mountain stream,
Like gators crawling into a swamp stewing with sassafras leaves,
Like wild rice hand-harvested from the azure waters of a northern lake,
Like maple syrup gleaned from woods where Robert Frost once walked,
Like cactus fruit falling off a tall saguaro into a handmade basket below.

These plants &animals are asking us
to pledge allegiance to what is local, what is loved,
to what is seasonal, what is unique to each American place .

If old Walt Whitman were sitting at our table,
Supping with us today, he’d be celebrating
That wild old slumgullion stew that all of us together make,
Singing a song that goes like this:
“Taste America’s uniqueness, taste this earth,
Taste our terroir, savor its worth,
And by tasting, you will see!

Gary Paul Nabhan, Renewing America’s Food Traditions

No Comments »