Food, seasons, speed....

(OK, I know it's been 3 months since I wrote ANYTHING but I've been nesting like a mad woman and excusably turned my energies to actually getting my house in order for our little Thumper, coming near the full moon of March. If anyone still cares to read this stuff, please forgive my absence!).

I've been thinking a lot about food recently. I love food. I enjoy cooking. But I hate the grocery store. I mean really hate the grocery store. To the point where I pretty much don't shop until there's nothing left but beans and potatoes and onions. I'm not exactly sure when this happened. I used to kind of like the process of meal planning and budgeting and going to the store every week. But recently, it has become an unpleasant chore. I hate loading up the car and packing my son up and heading out. I hate the experience of being in the store and feeling like I’m getting screwed from every angle. It’s such a pain to have to read every label and hope that I’m not missing something.

In the past few years we’ve become more and more green (and PC!) about our food choices. Starting with the switch to all organic produce and grains. Then we split a CSA (which is a great way to reconnect with where your food comes from). Then we bought a chest freezer and split 1/2 a grass-fed, free-range organic cow from a local farmer. Which meant I was never going to the store for meat (and could actually afford to buy ethically & sustainably raised meat).

Really I think it's the combination of all these things. We market in the park 7 blocks from our house all spring, summer and fall. We get our milk, eggs, bread, etc from the local grocer 5 blocks from the house where my son plays with the employee’s baby daughter. We know our farmers who provided all of the produce for the whole growing season, both through the CSA and at the market. I get bulk grains and legumes from our bulk foods coop once a month. I don't really have to go to the mega-grocery store anymore, definitely not in summer. It's nice.

I’ve been surprised to find how much this has made me aware of the pace of the seasons. In the Summer, everything is fast and quick and there is such abundance and so much work to do. I’m hoping to learn how to can and preserve soon so I can really begin to take advantage of this (and go to the grocery even less often)! But by the end of summer I don’t want to even look at another tomato! Come Autumn things begin to slow a bit and I start to crave those heavier foods like Squash or Leek & Potato soups. And by the time the first hard frost hits, I’m ready to nap and survive only on roots and grains, apples and sausages. But by the time Spring makes her first peeps in the buds on the trees and the bulbs shooting up, I am craving those greens! All I want is greens. Which is good cause around here that’s all I get for at least 3 weeks of the growing season!

I marvel at the sense of peace and the spiritual journey of learning (trying) to pace myself with the seasons. There is such rhythm there, like any week or month. It’s like Winter is the Earth’s Sabbath. Take a rest, God says, recuperate because Spring is coming and regeneration takes energy. Summer is close behind and abundance is taxing. But Autumn will follow and everything will indeed get done. Then the rest and sleep of Winter will come once again.