Looking Back to Move Forward

If I was living in the time of my great great grandfather, I probably would have starved this week. Someone would have found my husband and I dead on the kitchen floor, laid out in front of the refrigerator. I guess I have the system to thank for my continued life.

The people who know me well wouldn’t be surprised, but I forgot about my farm pick-up Monday. Thinking it was Tuesday, I wasn’t as frustrated to be held up at work. I came home and saw the empty basket on my table and it dawned on me that last week the pick up was Tuesday only because Monday was a holiday.

After fighting the self-defeating feelings of being a failure, and an airhead, and other thoughts that would be inappropriate for me to put in black and white, I came to terms with my reality and thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about a different time.

My Great Great Grandfather Elijah was a farmer, just like his daddy was, and his daddy before him. He truly grew from the dirt of Alabama. I was told the only things he bought at the market was sugar, flour and fabric. He had a wood-working shed that he rented out for money, but he grew everything his family ate. He didn’t have a job that he went to everyday that exhausted him and left him drained of time, energy and heart. I imagine him getting up every morning with the sun and working in his fields. He did the kind of work that feeds the soul in a way that nothing else can. Elijah was a simple man, who lived and raised his family in a simple way, but he was self-reliant.

As I think about Elijah, I contemplate how far we have come as a society. We have become more sophisticated, more efficient, more educated, and more lost every day. There is a longing that we think we can fill with material things. Phones that can think for you, cars that can parallel park without any effort from the driver, computers that help us connect with the world, but these things take us farther away from what really moves us from the inside. We spend our time staring at screens, instead of watching the sunset, or squirrels fighting over bird seed, or the world that’s alive around us.

The time we live in now is filled with fear, with unemployment figures sky-rocketing, and the financial markets crashing. So many people are lost in their lives. But maybe, we are actually being rescued from the boxes we have built around us. Just maybe this an opportunity to strip down the infrastructure that is no longer serving us, and get our hands a little dirty. If people can’t afford to eat, they will learn to grown their own food. It’s the basics for the drive of survival that we were all born with. It’s about people in the community supporting one another by buying their produce from a local farmer, who may not be big enough to sell to grocery stores, but can feed his family and neighbors. It’s about scaling back and seeing what’s at your disposal around you.
Mother nature can support us all, and has since the beginning of time. Change is always hard, but maybe this is the change we need to learn to live again. Our ancestors have a lot they can teach us, all we have to do is be still and listen for their whispers in the breeze.


Recipe of the week:

Kale Chips

1 head of kale, chopped in bite-size pieces, spread out over cookie sheets
drizzle olive oil over the kale and season with salt and . . . (be creative)
cook at 350 until you see the kale starting to crisp (maybe 10 min? depending on your oven)
then pull them out and turn the kale over to cook the bottom side (you may want to add some salt)