# EATLOCAL by Megan French of Boundless Farms
“ When we told our youth that farming was a lowly aim compared with becoming teachers, doctors, or lawyers, what were we thinking? We need teachers for just a few of life’ s decades. If we are lucky, we’ ll see a doctor only a few times a year, and a lawyer even less. But we need farmers every single day of our lives, beginning to end.”
-Barbara Kingsolver from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Before you feel hunger, a farmer sees a fragile forest of starts, each the size of the thread flaring from her tattered jeans. Each delicate tendril a testament to patience and care. Each hand sewn into hand sifted soil, placed in dark, warm, and humid conditions, first leaves prompt a great migration from darkness to light to propagation. Before you feel hunger, a farmer is planning. First seeds started in February, transplanted, then tended until harvest. There’ s anxiety and eagerness as frozen dew, fifteen degree mornings and 40 mph winds rip holes in greenhouse plastic, waiting for water to flow from canals. Plant starts will inevitably freeze, flea beetles eat holes in arugula, and hailstones impale freshly planted greens. To be a farmer is to be an eternal optimist. A farmer must purchase seeds, amendments, infrastructure and fuel, then make an educated guess at how hungry you will be and how much to grow. If a farmer is lucky, you’ ll tell her. If a farmer is fortunate, you will support her all year long with CSAs. There is disconnect between food, farmer, environment, and our wellbeing because food is always at our fingertips, so convenient we forget the means to an end. We see food as an ingredient in a recipe. If we look at the system behind food’ s creation we reconnect links between the environment and farming. By eating locally, we interact with this system firsthand. We talk to farmers at local Farmer’ s Markets. We observe the abundance of birds, insects and livestock at local farms. Four basic necessities in life are: water, food, shelter, and air. If these are unsafe, such as unclean water, smoky air or bad structures, we know it, but impacts of unhealthy foods may not trigger us immediately. To know our food is to know the
land and the people who grow it, either by growing our own food or supporting local sustainable farmers. This takes the guesswork out of the grocery store filled with misleading nutritional labels. Eating locally revitalizes our community and our bodies. It rehabilitates our impact on soil, water, and air. It reconnects us with what sustains us. www. boundlessfarmstead. com
Photos by Manya Williams of BePantd
14 BEND HEALTH GUIDE | Spring 2018