REMEMBER**No deliveries next week. Christmas Break!!
BUT ALSO REMEMBER**We will be back the following week (New Years week), with our normally scheduled programming.
Folks, you have been with us through thick and thin this year. It’s unprecedented what we have endured as a society. Through it all, I never lost hope and it’s literally due to the response that our community has shown to:
-Themselves - It all starts with how you take care of yourself...right? Love your neighbor as you love yourself sort of thing? By pledging your allegiance to take care of yourself through food, you have started a cascade of choices that are affecting not just yourself, but all the benefactors between you and the soil.
-Each OTHER - See: benefactors above
Think about how the economy works. You have dollars to exchange for things you need...food, shelter, clothing, etc. When you spend that money at a huge company that has special interest in making sure lots of peoples (who most of the time we don’t know, so how can they possible care about us?) pockets are lined…the quality of the product sufferers. It’s naturally going to be done in the fastest, cheapest, and most profitable way possible.
Unfortunately, in that spirit, many things are being destroyed. And not just like, “oh, I’m sorry that is being destroyed, better luck next time”...but like, “Oops, we just took the gift of this planet, and literally created another extinction.”
But YOU, yah, I’m looking right at you. (not literally, that would be creepy) You decided to take back some of the things that are in your control.
-What you are going to fuel your body with (this is a good step)
-Where you are going to find that fuel from (this is an even more important step)
-How much of those dollars mentioned above are going to go straight to the hard-working men and women who are growing and producing the fuel (MOST IMPORTANT STEP)
(every time I say fuel, I mean food)(It’s kind of an ironic play on words as so much of the destruction we have done over the last century has been to create fuel to run things...as in fossil fuel)(more parenthesis you say? Coming right up!)
And here I (I’m Benji) sit watching you all do it. What was a couple dozen people, then a couple hundred people, has turned into a couple thousand people that are literally “Saving the Farm”. I see studies, and emails, and more studies, and questionnaires, and software, and articles, and conferences, and MORE STUDIES about how small farms are dying and how we might be able to save them. I just want to POINT AT YA’LL and say, “Hey! Over here!! Look at these people!”
You have money. You need food. Our GROWERS need money in exchange for food. No more studies needed.
Change the way you eat.
Change the way you spend.
Change the world.
Any now...may you have the merriest of days over the next weeks. May you look into each other's eyes and connect. May you prepare food, and eat, with the awareness that you are consuming the holiest and most sacred substance in existence. That it is connecting you each and every day to yourselves, to each other, and to the place we call home. Put a bow on 2020, and look back through both the joy and the pain, and be thankful.
