Still Life with Dried Cranberries

It's quite a bit easier to list the myriad of things I've been doing than to tap myself for real reflection this week. There may be a scientific explanation for why some weeks (or months ?) are made for more pragmatic tasks in the world, and other weeks are made for more spiritual gathering and artistic expression. Sure, some of it is the return of sunlight up here. Other factors for me, are the relative return of health after a period of advanced struggling to cope. For whatever reason, the past two weeks have been busy for me "being fully in the world". I've been talking to people about practical concerns. I've been learning about practical tasks.
An assorted list
1. I am learning the legalities of business and government as they pertain to farming. I am reading legislation and talking to 'official' people. I am meeting with business development people, learning about 501(c)3 paperwork, the 'corporate veil' and rewriting business plans.
2. I am becoming a "master food preserver" with the local cooperative extension service. I'm taking a canning class and making cheese. I've learned to home pasteurize milk, and I've re-learned to make bread.
3. I've begun composting with worms, knitting slippers, carding wool, and learning from many, many local farmers about why and how and with what species they make their living.
4. I still have no answers for summer employment and graduate school, but I am allowing myself to hope for the options that I truly want and have applied for.
5. I've begun to accept that what I am truly doing is changing careers, walking into a 'no man's land' of passage that has no clear-cut means of entry. I am, as they admonish us to do, "following my bliss"--not because I think the world is ending (this may be arguable, however:) but because these new tasks and connections bring great satisfaction. I have no idea where 'the money' or even when. I have planned for this as much as I can with the variables as they are.

Of self reflection, I can say that I'm edging up on some useful self-disclosure. We talk about local food supplies and farming. We talk about 'slow-food' USA, becoming a locavore, global politics, farm animal welfare, the disappearance of family farms, the heritage loss of local craftsmanship. I have a personal interest in how we are remediating the loss of connection with farm animals and sublimating much of that "racial memory" into our relationship with pets. And I also have a personal interest in the way the radical change in the American food economy and the clinical rise in eating disorders coincide. As I skirt the issue of penning an essay (not for this website) about "Why eat local? Why remember 'the farm'?" I'm feeling that there is a real dearth of information regarding either of these parallels. I grew up in an area with no active 4-H group. I grew up in an area--and in an era--where every conceivable food item from around the globe was available at any hour of the day. Often, it's dietetic version was also available. Instead of being freed by such a level of food security, by age 11 I was diagnosed by Yale Hospital as anorexic. That began the odyssey of food drama that underscores my life. And I am not alone. At all. But to come to a place, however belated, where there is a personal and finite relationship with food -- because it comes seasonally, because you know the animal that was butchered, the friend who named her chickens and sold you the eggs, because you have worked hard, HARD through the day and have the sensation that you are finally tasting skillet-fried potatoes and onions for the first time, this is a blessing. I wonder if we were to take all the anorexics and bulimics out of the treatment facilities, and take all the "bad kids" out of the high schools, give them each a human buddy, and then a lot of hard work alongside animals and garden rows (I mean TIRE them out) if we might heal? What would happen to the energies behind the 'conservation movement'? It sure takes a lot of energy to maintain an eating disorder as well as an active, antagonistic relationship with school administration -- what if that energy were used to respect themselves and their world?

Here's to idealism, I suppose. Here's to hope.