I’m pretty slow to start the new year with my resolutions for change. It seems that each year, I am completely burnt out after the growing/harvest/preserving season then jumping right into the holiday season that by the time the new year begins, I only desire to sit and do nothing (ok, I want to chat on Twitter or take naps). And cook yummy food from all that I’ve put up!
I’ve been reading about what several others have been saying their resolutions are and for me, the only major things I need to change in my life this year is to get more exercise and more sleep! I have no problems eating what’s in my pantry as one big challenge I’ve seen people participate in. In fact, I try to live this way year round and am nervous we are going through our canned tomato and sauce supply way faster than I thought we would and I am trying to make the home-canned supply last til next summer! I’m sure it won’t at this rate.
I don’t need to challenge myself to do a 3 week jumpstart your diet challenge which is another big one I’ve seen written about to detox your body on a plant based diet. I eat a plant based diet and occasionally the very nutritious eggs from my own backyard chickens so this is a way of life for me, too. I also like to wait until springtime to do a liver cleanse, it’s too cold for me in the winter to do cleanses like that.
No, what I need to do (and began doing this past week) is something I saw written up on the Huffington Post called “Sleep Challenge 2010 – Women, It’s Time To Sleep Your Way To The Top, Literally.” Once I read that article, I knew I had to do it. I was resistant at first, I like going to bed between 12-1 am and sleeping in a bit in the morning but with an almost 6 year old boy as my daily alarm clock, I rarely get to sleep past 7 or 7:30 and that’s late for him. So I was getting around 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep each night. I have been dragging and some days, I’ve only gotten about 5.5 hours at night and that puts me over the cranky edge so I can’t function the way I want and need to.
I realize I have to get a minimum of 7 hours of solid sleep at night and preferably 8 hours of sleep every night to feel well. My son sleeps through the night for the past few years and even in his own room now. The only time he wakes us up at night is if he’s sick or had a bad dream. After suffering through several years of extreme sleep deprivation because of him, I should want to go to bed early and get 8+ hours of sleep every night! Why my resistance I wondered? I realized it’s because it’s “me time” for several hours in the evening. After we eat a family dinner, my husband does the bedtime routine with our son then has his guitar playing hour (or more) every night and I clean up and have things I catch up on, books I am reading or tv shows on Tivo to watch! I wind up waiting for my husband to watch certain shows with me and we seem to go to bed too late because of this. He always says he does better on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep and if he sleeps longer than that, he’s dragging. I’m the other way around so I don’t believe him! Who can function well on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep every night? Not me!
He is sort of doing this sleep challenge with me because consistent, solid sleep is so beneficial for your body in so many ways and he’s recovering from several weeks of some funky virus invading his body and doing strange things to him. Solid sleep also helps to prevent getting run-down and sick in the first place. Your immune system works better, you have more energy, you look younger and your mental state is in a much better place, too. There’s also evidence that not getting enough sleep makes you gain or retain weight and sufficient sleep helps you lose it! There really is not one downside to getting your “beauty sleep.” It is quite a challenge for me to get up to the 8 hour mark. I’m working on cutting back on my evening activities and getting more things done during the day.
This past week I’ve been aiming for 7-7.5 hours of sleep each night (by counting backwards from my 7 a.m. wake up time) and I feel good but still tired and dragging at some point in my day. Clearly a sign I need more sleep! Who knew? This week, I (and possibly Michael) will be trying for 8 whole, glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep each and every night. If I can do this, I will feel like superwoman and will be able to really increase my workouts and pretty much revolutionize my world! I like the info in this update from Arianna Huffington about what happened to her after finally getting those 8 hours of sleep each night.
I encourage anyone reading this to give this sleep challenge a try. Lawd knows we all need it!
I love hearing about tv shows promoting really healthful and beneficial information that can truly help people. And very economically and fast, too. Dr. Oz is a doctor who does just that. He’s explained to people about alternative medicine, yoga, nutrition – especially from plants – what a standard American diet does to our bodies, how our organs look when we die from different diseases, etc. Now he has his own show and he put a meat-lovin’ cowboy, Rocco, on a 28 day vegan diet to reverse his bad heart disease and diabetes. No meds were involved, just plant based foods and exercise. Rocco decided to follow the program for the month because his only other option would be to do nothing and die relatively soon from having 97% plaque build up in his arteries. He’s a 53 yr old man walking around with the heart of an 85 yr old!
Well, the results in just 28 days are astounding! You have to see this follow up clip of Rocco’s results:
See? We don’t need to be drugged up and spending a fortune on prescription meds that barely keep the health problems in check and that would have to be taken for the rest of our lives (not to mention the scary side effects that come with the drugs) when a simple, earth-friendly and very economical change in diet coupled with some exercise (Rocco walks) can do the same thing and do it permanently. This way of eating REVERSES these diseases over time!
I love the summer so much because I enjoy growing things in the garden and being outside in nature as much as I can. This was our first full year with our expanded garden space as well as the additional garden beds added all around our house and using our greenhouse in warm weather. And chickens! Who lay eggs! It’s been an amazingly fun summer for me because of all of this! I don’t know if others would think it’s so fun, it does require quite a bit of work to upkeep a large organic garden and some livestock even if they are a small backyard flock. But this type of lifestyle resonates with me and I work hard for its success.
Now we are officially in autumn with the bulk of the harvest coming in and preparing & planting the garden beds for fall/winter gardening under the hoop house and inside the greenhouse. It’s a joint effort, both my husband and I have a shared vision for all of this, we secretly want to be full time farmers because we enjoy it so much. Real farming is such hard work, though! I feel part of the homesteader lifestyle even living here in the ‘burbs once again since my mindset is always about self-sustainability. I have learned so many skills to enable me to be self-reliant these past 15 years living this way.
I’ve been doing all methods of food preservation throughout the season and especially my most favorite method of all – canning. Some people find canning tedious but I still totally love it – both water bath and pressure canning. Looking at my various shelves filled with jars of produce picked at the peak of freshness ready to be eaten especially on a cold winter evening fills me with a sense of security, really. I know what’s in my food, who prepared it and the fact that it’s there means we won’t starve if ever there was a catastrophe of some kind. Most importantly, it reminds me that I’m self-reliant – one of the most important traits of a true homesteader.
I’ve been freezing and dehydrating lots of produce and prepared dishes, too so I have both a packed upright freezer as well as jars of dried herbs, fruit leather, dried fruit and powdered dried veggies (to add to soup or other dishes for flavor and nutrition) in jars on my shelves or vacuum sealed and stored in closed bins in my basement “root cellar” – a cold, concrete closet in my basement.
I try to process the produce as the season progresses, making lactofermented pickles & sauerkraut as we harvest it (or get some great deals on organic produce from local farmers), making a vinegar dill pickle and dilly beans (that requires no canning), bread & butter pickles, harvesting root crops to store in the “root cellar”, dehydrating some of the many greens we grow to powder them, drying herbs (always dry everything at low temps to preserve the most nutrients), freezing chopped fresh herbs with water in ice cube trays (and store cubes in freezer bags), freezing fruit, juicing veggies and fruits and freezing in ice cube trays for use in smoothies. By mid-October, we make cinnamon applesauce which is great to use in vegan baked goods. We also make pear sauce (but not for baking).
I especially love to make and can tons of tomato sauce – so much so that for our 10 year anniversary this past summer solstice, we got ourselves a ginormous pressure canner that can fit 14 quart jars at one time! Now that’s a lot of sauce done in one shot! A huge improvement over our little pressure cooker/canner that could only hold 3 quart jars at a time! Besides canning tomatoes either as sauce or as whole, peeled ones, we make & can jam throughout the season as the fruit comes in (I made lots of very low sugar plum, blueberry & peach jams since PB&J is my son’s favorite sandwich now), we can tomato salsa, tomatillo salsa, fruit salsa (just made some great peach salsa!), canned veggies like beets (some are pickled, too), carrots, hot peppers, etc. I can go on, there are so many ways we preserve the bounty and I look forward to doing it every single year!
Living this way is not only very inexpensive over a 12 month period but it puts me so in touch with the lifecycle of the plants, the Earth, the seasons, the feeling that everything is connected from the stars to the bugs. I’m part of the cycle, too and I can feel it in the high vibration of the food I eat whether it’s fresh and raw or preserved at the peak of freshness for future eating. It does require a lot of planning and effort during the growing season but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
After hearing about the recent passing of actor Patrick Swayze from pancreatic cancer, I wanted to pass along this link to a great website called The Cancer Project. It has lots of clinical research info on the disease but it mainly focuses on the details about how a correct diet can help you to prevent cancer in the first place. There is also really great info for all the survivors to follow to never have it re-occur in your life again.
I know first hand about the insidiousness of pancreatic cancer since I watched helplessly as my father suffered and died from it within 4 months of being diagnosed. I was 22 at the time and it really rocked my world. When he first got sick, I was living on the other side of the planet on a kibbutz in Israel having a great time. I came home to be with him and researched as much as I could about cancer and the nutrition connection since I had just graduated from college with a degree in nutrition. This was before the convenience of the internet so I relied on textbooks, alternative health magazines, the library and talking with various doctors like I was a reporter. No one really had the answers I was looking for.
The only book in print on the subject of cancer at the time was a recent book by Dr. Bernie Siegel called“Love, Medicine and Miracles.” It explained the mind/body connection and visualizing cancer cells being destroyed as well as the concept that “Love Heals.” Such a wise doctor he is!
I think the power of the mind over the body is second to none but when people are in a deep state of fear and wondering if they will live, it is difficult to keep the focus needed to apply these techniques. My father and I both read the book and he applied the techniques only to have various doctors at the time shoot down the idea when he mentioned that he was visualizing his cancer cells being eaten by Pac Man (remember that video game?). I can’t tell you what choice words I had for the docs (and others) who made him doubt what he was doing! So frustrating!
I would have LOVED a site like the Cancer Project (or a publication since this was pre-internet) so he could have looked at cold, hard facts and real techniques to apply to help himself heal along with using visualization. Sadly, there is no real recovery from this particular glandular cancer still to this day.
The key here, then, is PREVENTION. For pancreatic cancer in particular, the major studies that have come out on this disease show that smoking cigarettes, alcohol consumption, having diabetes, eating red meat – especially cooked well done (the way my Dad liked it), eating cow dairy products, obesity and even some genetic factors all greatly enhance your chances of developing this disease. Cruciferous veggies such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts as well as other fruits and veggies consumed daily help to greatly decrease your chances of developing pancreatic cancer.
Daily consumption of fruits and vegetables has been shown to lower risks of developing all types of cancer. It really boils down to simple facts when you read the studies: diet, exercise, your stress level, your daily thoughts, words and actions all add up to how likely you will be to develop a disease like this.
I for one am grateful for the info. Now I know what to avoid and what to expand in my daily life to stay happy and healthy and never suffer the same terrible fate my father, Patrick Swayze and many others did.
I wanted to tell you about my favorite machine for making your own natural products at home – a.k.a. being a “kitchen witch.” If you are crafty and like to make your own things, you can save loads of money and create many different herbal remedies and beauty aid products for your own personal use or even to start your own little cottage business. That’s what I did with the help of my Vita-Mix 12 years ago.
I became a Certified Herbalist in 1995 and purchased my first Vita-Mix “Total Nutrition Center” machine then, too. This machine still performs amazingly well for me 14 years later even though I’ve now upgraded to the new Vita-Mix 5200. I formed my company, Magical Botanicals, Inc in 1997 and have sold thousands of handcrafted organic herbal products over the years both wholesale and retail. I’ve made the majority of my products in small batches with my Vita-Mix. I mainly used the dry container for grinding seeds, roots, bark, flowers and leaves to use in many different preparations such as tea blends, incense, bath salts, bath bombs and an organic herbal smoke blend. I used the liquid container for making lotions, creams, massage oils, edible elixirs and to mix tinctures.
A good kitchen witch knows that besides making all of her own herbal beauty aids, you need to eat a healthy diet, too. Beauty comes from the inside. The Vita-Mix 5200 helps you to easily achieve this.
My diet is all plant based and I make many raw vegan recipes. My Vita-Mix has helped me to quickly prepare everything such as green smoothies, salad dressings, sauces, soups, grinding flaxseeds, making nut milks, ice “cream”, frozen fruit sorbets and other delicious items in such a fast, easy way.
Making your meals from scratch is very economical and it’s also much healthier for you and your family. Whether you are grinding your own grain in the dry container for bread making or pizza dough or making a frozen dessert in the liquid container, the Vita-Mix 5200 processes your food in such a complete way that it uses the whole food so you are getting all the vitamins, minerals and fiber in your meals and you are not wasting anything. Its biggest asset to me though is really as a time-saving device! Cooking from scratch can take a while but that’s why I use my Vita-Mix 5200 which does the majority of the work for me!
As much as I loved my original Vita-Mix TNC, upgrading to the 5200 has been great. The hard plastic containers used in the 5200 contains no BPA, a known hormone disruptor. The material is also sound damping which makes the powerful motor sound quieter. The lids are easier to use and have a really nice tab over the container for easy on/off and the removable center lid piece actually gets locked into place much better than before. The handles on the containers are now padded and feel better in your hand, too.
I’ve put it to the test this spring with grinding different roots I wildcrafted to make tinctures, powdered dried leaves for capsules and made several batches of my best selling organic herbal smoke blend, Organic Smooth Smoke. As always, it performed beautifully.
Investing in a piece of equipment that is durable, high performing and long lasting that is able to create hundreds of healthy recipes quickly is a smart move for the do-it-yourself kitchen witch. You really can’t go wrong with owning the Vita-Mix 5200!
Since an ordinance was passed in my town allowing backyard chickens and permits were issued, we went ahead and took the plunge and got ourselves 4 baby chicks on March 21st! We now have an expanded garden, made new garden beds on the side of our house, built a small greenhouse (8′x8′) last fall with all reclaimed materials and are going to be building a movable chicken coop (with reclaimed materials, too) to fit in next to our greenhouse. It will be like a coop/chicken tractor so we can move it around the yard and the girls can graze safely on grass. I will let them out inside the garden to eat bugs and let them run around the yard while I’m out there with them. I’ve noticed a red tailed hawk in my neighborhood recently which doesn’t make me happy!
My husband grew up raising chickens so I am getting lessons first hand from him even though caring for them on a day to day basis will be up to my son and I. My husband has lots of other projects lined up to do!
We also built our son a funky tree tower next to the greenhouse because there was an Aspen tree in bad shape that needed to come down. My husband decided to make the tree tower for our son’s birthday in February and built it on any weekend that was not frigid this winter – and we had lots of nice weekends, actually.
Here are some pix of the peeps from 4 days – 2.5 wks old:
The two golden colored ones are Buff Orpingtons and their names are Daisy and Lulu. The two brownish ones are Easter Eggers – Americana’s, specifically and their names are Iris and Acorn. All 3 of us named them. They really are so very cute at this age!
Here is a picture of our (still unfinished) greenhouse that will be painted this spring and the funky tree tower to the left of it:
It’s located right in front of our newly expanded garden space, that’s the garden fence behind it. The tree tower looks like it’s all open in the picture but there is lots of cable wire going through the Aspen branches and it’s a 4 ft tall fence so my son won’t fall out! It’s very secure and he loves it!
The greenhouse was built so we could walk in there through a door (on the left side), it’s about 8′ tall at the highest point and has 2 large beds on the ground as well as a big shelf on the back wall under another window that can hold 4 large pots (or 7 flats of seedlings). The roof windows open for ventilation, too. There is a sprinkler head inside it from our sprinkler system so we can run a drip line off of it to the beds. We are also hanging up heavy duty hooks to hold large hanging pots in there, too. I want to grow the upside down tomato plants to have a longer tomato growing season in the fall (I admit I’m a little obsessed with growing tomatoes!). We have also worked out our glitches from last winter’s trial garden and will use the back of the greenhouse to help anchor the hoop house for better winter gardening this year. We are pretty excited for all of this additional growing space we’ve got now!
Many seeds have been started indoors this past week and my husband just rototilled in a mix of compost and top soil into all the new beds we created so now we are ready to plant! We will be direct seeding the new greenhouse beds this weekend with several varieties of cool weather greens and peas. This growing year should be a good one since we are done with the hardscaping now and can successfully do year round succession planting.
Now with the chickens, we will have free range, organic eggs from happy birds (and my son & husband eat lots of eggs), new fun pets to hang out with and we will be able to feed them many veggie scraps from the garden and compost their waste and bedding to eventually be put back into the garden. The cycle of life. Love it.
The thing I love most about gardening is all that you learn from nature. Everything is trial and error and you find what works best for your individual space and then when it clicks, you get to watch the magic of nature unfold in front of your eyes and reap the bounty! I find this to be so much fun!
For the past few years I’ve been feeling like I need to join a food co-op again (I was part of a home based one 14 years ago then part of a store front one in the mountains for many years and again when another store front one opened in my current town but closed down). I did find a co-op group last summer that was located about 20 min away from where I live. It was what I was looking for but it didn’t work out for us for different reasons. I was left with the fact that I would have to take on this job myself and start something here in my town. I was given the different distributors’ info and set up accounts with them right away.I already had a group of interested friends wanting to do this and since I was doing all the coordinating work for it, I chose to keep it small and manageable for me to deal with – we have 11 families in our group and have had others ask to join in but have turned them down until we think we need to grow. We’ve been ordering about 2x/month. The produce selection changes with the seasons so it’s been fun for us to see what’s on the list each week.
I like the distributor we are with who provides the fresh fruit and veggies. They also carry all of Organic Valley’s dairy and eggs, too as well as locally made gmo-free tofu and locally made organic tortillas. For me, a co-op (or buyer’s club) is better than being part of a CSA (which I was part of for a couple years) because I can pick and choose which veggies and fruit I want and if it’s a price I want to pay. Since it’s a group buying these items, we all split the large cases they come in and get just how much we want for amazing prices. And the quality has been excellent for mostly everything. It’s a win-win for me personally since I really look to always save money especially in an unstable economy and still get to have the best quality food for my family that’s mostly local, wholesale and organic.
There is another distributor located near our produce distributor that carries all the bulk organic dry goods such as: nuts, dried fruits, grains, flours, legumes, etc. If we don’t have enough items to meet their minimum order, we can pay a markup on the price of our dry goods items to the produce distributor and they will go and get it for us and deliver it with our produce order. It really has been great having this option for all of us! Last summer I replenished my dry goods depleted stock here at home and split a variety of grains, beans, flours and nuts and we have been eating from our stores all year making fun and delicious ethnic food and other recipes – even homemade pizza night! Since I eat all vegan (and about half raw) and my husband eats an omnivore diet, we agreed to make vegan family dinners from all this bulk and preserved food we invested in and we’ve been really enjoying the variety of recipes we’ve tried out. The fresh produce we get 2x/month is a really nice addition, too.
Since we live in CO, in winter there isn’t that much growing here on a large scale besides potatoes and indoor herbs, sprouts & mushrooms so more items are brought in from organic farms in CA and other states like TX or even Mexico that we will buy (like citrus, greens & now artichokes!) but during the warmer growing season, our distributor really tries to work with as many CO based organic farmers as possible – several are even from the town I live in which makes me happy to support those farms as well as other organic farms from the surrounding 100 miles of our town. And CO is known for its amazing western slope fruits like peaches, nectarines and cherries and they distribute these as well!
Even though there are 2 large farmer’s markets near me, the exact same produce from some of the same farms are carried through our distributor at much better pricing for us. We only have to meet this company’s minimum order of $200 and they deliver the order to my home for free (where a few of us divide it up for the group) since we are on their delivery route for stores. Since everything through the distributor is sold by the large case or pound sacks (50#), we are actually buying bigger volume from the farmers than if we just bought a pound or two at the farmer’s market or if I had a CSA share. I still like to support other farms and enjoy the farmer’s market atmosphere so we go to the really big market on Wednesday nights in summer and buy assorted items from the booths for a picnic dinner and watch live, outdoor music performed nearby.
We are also growing a much larger garden this season, too. I’ve been trying to figure out how much I might want to purchase outside of the bulk buying of certain fruits and veggies for preserving for winter. We increased the amount we preserved last summer (by canning, drying, freezing & lactofermenting) and have been really good about using our frozen veggies, canned sauce, salsa and pickles and other lactofermented foods like sauerkraut. Even the dried produce and herbs are being used up well. The seasonal food cycle really makes such logical sense to me to live like this and eat really high quality food all year. You can totally taste the difference – even my frozen veggies still have such good flavor and crispness when we cook with them. The frozen fruits (mostly used in smoothies) have been delicious, too.
Don’t believe that eating organic food has to be more expensive – for us, it’s cheaper than buying conventional produce & dry goods at the supermarket. We are also supporting organic farmers from our state as well as a few other locations by buying large quantities from them. Our distributor even gives back to the farmers they work with through their annual profit share program. The more we buy from the distributor, the more the farmer’s make.
And what about me and all my hard work in coordinating all of this? In lieu of payment for me I’ve asked that the co-op members chip in and buy an extra case of fruit each time we order to donate to the food bank in our town. It’s our way of giving back to those less fortunate and who pretty much rarely if ever get to eat fresh fruit or veggies. I am very lucky I don’t have to worry about that so I wanted to donate my “fee” and give fresh, organic food to those who desperately need it.
I’ve written about the Kid Safe Chemicals Act before. It’s just wrong that there is not any real regulation of the chemical industry and how those unsafe chemicals make their way into our bodies. What do you think those chemicals do to our children – and how about our babies in utero? They come into the world pre-polluted! That’s enough to make you say – disgusting!
Well there is something we all can do about it – Sign the Declaration! At least we have a fighting chance now that the new administration is in place and making changes to help the people. This would be one huge step towards improving everyone’s health – especially our children.
The Kid Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA) would put the burden of proof on chemical makers to document the safety of their products before they go on the market.
It just seems illogical that this has not been happening all along. Please take 2 seconds to click on the link and sign your name!
Well this should be good news to women everywhere – both gardening and yard work helps to boost a man’s sexual performance according to a study by the Medical University of Vienna. Hear that men? Now not only can you be helping both the planet and your wallet by growing some tasty organic veggies in your backyard, you will be improving your sex life and making your partner very happy at the same time. I say that’s a win-win for everyone!
As little as 30 minutes a week tending the garden or allotment can dramatically improve men’s performance in bed, according to the experts in the field.
Digging, weeding or mowing the lawn for half an hour reduced men’s risk of failing to live up to expectations in bed by more than a third, the survey found.
I find this news very promising for the women who may have to deal with issues in either category. Your man too lazy to want to garden? Tell him it will improve his sexual performance in bed. Ditto for men who have any kind of performance issues in the bedroom.
Not only does the act of gardening benefit a man’s health in so many ways, it also benefits their partner who would like free, local, organic produce out their back door and more intimacy in the boudoir. Whoever said that women were less interested in sex than men clearly does not really know much about women!
And for the record, both my husband and I like to garden….a lot ; ) And the phallic tomato pictured above grew in our garden last summer!
Last week I read the article, “Farmer In Chief” written by Michael Pollan. It is probably the most thorough article about our current food and agricultural system here in the U.S. and what we need to do to shift the agriculture policy to make it better. Pollan calls it his “Sun-Food Agenda” and it is written as an open letter to the next president. In my opinion, this article is simply amazing. And even better, Obama read it and even quoted from it before he was elected:
There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
Willie Nelson, the musician and the president of Farm Aid, wrote a letter to Obama offering him every resource that Farm Aid has available to assist him in creating a new farm and food policy that supports a sustainable family farm system of agriculture.
From the letter:
There is broad agreement that our farm and food system needs to be drastically reworked. The good news is that the work of building an alternative to the industrial food system is well underway and Farm Aid is proud to have been a leader in this work, something we call the Good Food Movement. The Good Food Movement has grown and thrived almost entirely without the support of the federal government. However, now is the right moment for the leadership of our country to take a role in this important movement. In fact the future of our economy, our environment and our health demand it.
I am waiting to see how this all will unfold once Obama takes office. The way things are run now is clearly not working for anyone on any level anymore. This has to and will change at the policy level and thankfully we have a very aware president-elect that will make sure at least some major agricultural changes take place at that level. It’s already been shifting at the grassroots level as you can tell by the huge surge in consumers buying organic produce, pasture raised meats, attending farmer’s markets, joining CSA’s and the rising awareness of people wanting to take charge of their health starting with nutrition and knowing where their food comes from.
I especially love that he wants to make school food come more from local farmers and be of higher nutritional quality. This is going to really help the low income families who rely on this food program sometimes as their kids’ only source of calories for the day.
Bring Farms to Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support providing locally grown, healthy foods to students as a part of the school meals program. This will both reduce childhood obesity and grow vibrant rural economies, supporting community-based food systems and strengthening family farms. They will support funding for farm-to-school projects for food, labor, equipment, and staff training. They also will allow schools to give priority to local sources when ordering food. Currently the USDA prohibits schools from requesting local products during the bidding process. Finally, they will expand commodity support to include the school breakfast program as well as the school lunch program.
The farm to school program is already being initiated in one school district in my county right now and I’m hoping my school district will be next to embrace this program.
This is just so great, I’m completely excited that finally I can be happy my government has listened to We The People and will act upon what is best for it’s citizens and not the corporate greed system that has been destroying us and our planet for so long.
