Integration: How do you rejoin society? Thoughts after 30 day local food experiment

Local Food, Sharing Groceries, and Creativity

So as my 100 mile food experiment has come to a close I realize that I am not excited to go back. I look at things around me in our house and just don’t want them. I don’t want to eat food that you unwrap and I don’t want oreos or soda or cake or cereal. At least at this point I seem to have a craving for the foods that I have been eating over the last month. It’s actually quite shocking. I knew I wanted to try to keep eating as locally as possible but never could have anticipated this strange aversion to foods that I have loved and craved. It’s just gone. So I kept my contribution to the houses food money back last month during the experiment so that I could get my own local food to eat. They were fine with that. But now the experiment is over and I need to contribute again and share groceries again. I do want to but am also conflicted about almost everything they normally get to eat. And that’s saying something because I live in a community that has a lot of food convictions already. They strive to find fair trade products and environmentally conscious products. I am still nervous because I read labels on packages and stickers on fruit. Over the last month I realized that all of the fruit that they eat comes from other countries all together (By the way I have nothing against trade with foreign nations but we just don’t need FOOD to travel like that) and all of the processed foods they buy are full of crap. There is nothing natural about Nature’s Valley. I want to share my convictions and continue to experiment with food and I also want to be sensitive to their wants and habits. I requested that my grocery contribution as well as Ryan’s contribution be set aside for us to take care of produce and butter. That means that at least we will get locally grown organic produce and real butter from a local dairy farm. They were game and I will purchase the food and eat it but will also see it used by the guys in the house as ingredients in their own cooking and recipes. As we discussed this option Robby brought up a really great question. Since local food is more expensive then how are we gonna balance this growing conviction with our core principles of hospitality and sharing? I really thought this was a great question for us to wrestle with. It’s one I could see myself asking if it was someone else making the request and I am really glad he put it out there for us to discuss. It is true that we will spend more on less food and it just isn’t enough to say God will provide (even though he always does.) We can’t be buying this food unless we are going to share it freely. We can’t buy food that we don’t have enough of. My response was that he is right but that we solve these problems by creativity rather than compromise. We are growing as much food as we can, I have places where I am looking to salvage ‘local trash’ (I don’t care where food came from once we start wasting it), and we also have a network of gardens throughout our community that we installed and can grow a row to supplement our grocery supply for meals we serve. There are ways for us to hold tight to both convictions rather that feel like they need to be pitted against each other. I am excited to learn new ways and I am excited to be a part of a family that is open to new ways. May God guide us.

Cool Eggs.

This morning I got up and walked by my chicken coop to find 4 eggs! I guess we didn’t grab any over the weekend and I was very excited to see one very tiny egg from one of our young chicks. We have only had one chicken that is old enough to lay for some time and the other three are just approaching maturity. This was the first egg for one of our little gals and it made a delicious breakfast that I cooked on the patio.

I am very excited about the fact that all the guys in my house were game to move our stove out onto the porch so as to not cook and create heat in our already extremely warm house. We are doing our best to avoid turning on the a/c except for once a week when we have home church and 25-30 folks over. I often say that sweating is spiritual but that doesn’t mean we need to boil water inside our house and create a sauna. That’s just foolish. So this morning our house was cool with the windows and doors open and I cooked my egg without adding a bit of heat to its hard to keep temperature. It’s a small change and a very unconventional placement for our stove but it just makes so much sense to me. And I will probably be anxious to bring it back inside during the winter months. It’s got me wondering where else in my life I have things set up inefficiently because that’s how we always do it.

Portions

It dawned on me as I ate my first non-local meal after the experiment that I had not really dealt with the issue of portions. I still have a fairly large appetite and as we indulged in the hot wings that we had craved for the entire thirty days I realized that I had more than enough. That meal was in itself a learning experiment as I bombed my stomach with hot sauce, grease, and blu cheese. It was delicious! Though I will say that the craving is satisfied and I haven’t wanted anything like that again. I did eat many small portions throughout the last month but it was because I had to. I woke up and the chicken had laid an egg, I cooked it and split that one egg with Erica because that’s what we had and she also needed breakfast. It was sufficient. What is bothering me however is how much I ate when we had it. When we had plenty of mashed potatoes or an abundance of anything (which was rare) I would eat until I was stuffed. I was actually eating as though I was in starvation mode and it was the first time I actually intended to eat ‘like I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from’ or when. I often didn’t. After eating a bunch of wings I noticed that I was hungrier the following day than I had been in weeks. The idea of stretching my stomach back out to accommodate and then feel like I need that much food to be full terrifies me. I can’t let that happen. I know that I learned self control over the last month by abstinence but I think this next month of learning moderation, control, and practical discipline will be even harder for my volition. Appropriate portions are important. Whether you are eating a local grapefruit or a mudslide chocolate cake with ice cream, it’s important. My eyes must shrink for they have always pushed my stomach to keep up. I want eyes that are smaller than my stomach. May God grant me this gift.

Kill and eat.

When I first started raising rabbits it was because of a very simple thought I had about meat. Meat is dead animal. I had never had to kill my food or see it walk down the streets like you see when you visit Haiti or Honduras or any of the developing countries I have visited. We visit Haiti and watch a chicken get slaughtered for dinner and are shocked by it. Why? We are so separated from the source of our food that we pick up nicely wrapped steak and the image of a cow never even enters our mind. I just decided that I could no longer eat meat unless I was willing and able to raise and kill an animal for food. I raised a few bunnies for this purpose and while I thought killing it might bother me I will say that after the fact, nothing feels more right. I am a meat eater and think any of us that decide to eat meat must think about animals. How are they kept and raised? How are they treated? How are they killed? I also think it is important that we kill and eat. Fishing is one very accessible way to do this without raising an animal. Go catch a fish, kill it, clean it, and eat it. I pray that we would all find avenues to reconnect with what it cost for us to sustain ourselves. Reconnect with your food and creation.

I realize now that this 'experiment' with food is just beginning. This month comes with new challenges, lessons, and questions.