I can’t put my finger on when it started? or how it started? A few years ago, I was happily going to my favorite large chain grocery store to buy my organic produce. The drive, the shopping experience, even paying was completed without any human interaction at all thanks to self-checkout. I had no clue where the food was grown. A little empty and unsatisfying when I think about it now?
What brought me from there to here? Today, I’m sitting with my laptop, looking for the right words to express how excited I am for the changes I’m seeing; for our community to be on the verge of something truly remarkable. Not to be overly dramatic? but something that would fundamentally change the quality of our lives. Connectedness.
It may have started when I unsuspectingly pulled onto the farm of Mariah & Paydon at Cherokee Lakes Farm. I was just swinging by to pick up some fresh produce which felt at the time like a foodie indulgence. Paydon was working on a welding project, and Mariah was working in the field when I arrived. As Mariah showed me some heirloom cucumbers and squash that was just picked, she began to tell me a little about her farming practices. About Korean Natural Farming inputs, soil regeneration and what it meant to grow nutrient dense food. The information was just pouring out of her and I couldn’t get enough. Before I knew it, I think my quick ‘swing by’ lasted about an hour and a half. My friends who were waiting on me were not thrilled – sorry again guys!
I don’t believe pivotal moments in your life happen by accident. Around this time, I stumbled on a free movie on YouTube called Back to Eden. To keep this from becoming a small novel, let me just say that over the following months I watched dozens of videos on no-dig, no-till, lasagna, food forests and permaculture designed gardens. The seed of a passion had quietly put down a healthy root and I had to get my hands in the dirt.
The first year, I started out in our backyard. Billy & I have a large live oak that covers our property; that means there’s about a total of 5sf that gets more than a couple of hours of sun a day. I was excited that some edibles took hold, but I had to finally accept that very few if any vegetables were going to grow.
Thanks to some incredible friends with land, that winter I was bundled in coat, hat and gloves in 30 degree weather, laying the foundations of our own 2,000sf garden. When people would ask why I was doing this, I truly didn’t know? I had no desire to sell produce to make money, and Billy and I couldn’t possibly eat enough to justify a garden that size. I just felt this inexplicable drive to connect people with the soil and their food and so I figured, heck I’ll just give it away. Week after week of working quietly with the soil, I realized that my desire to connect people locally with food and each other was much bigger than my little garden, and I so created Hood County Fresh.
At this point I had the HUGE honor of getting spend time with the kids at Rancho Brazos as we set up a regenerative garden and learned about soil heath, microbes and growing food. What a thrill that was!!
I realize now that my instincts were already telling me that a community that comes together around food produced from the land by neighbors, will find as a natural consequence, relationship, laughter, support, strength, confidence, identity and self-esteem. It’s not just about the nutrient density in the food itself, just as necessary, are the spiritual and mental ‘nutrients’ that come from being connected to each other.
Days after HoodCountyFresh.com was launched – I stumbled upon this video. This interview between Morag Gamble and Helena Norberg-Hodge articulates this so well. It is long, but if you found that any of this strikes a chord for you, then it’s well worth watching. I hope you are as inspired as I am. You can see even more if you watch Helena’s award-winning movie The Economics of Happiness.
