Natasha Chart's blog

Then it occurred to me that apples bake up really nicely for dessert, and they're only a bit less dense than potatoes. The sweet thing wasn't a problem, I've been known to put maple syrup on breakfast sausage before. And there it was, my now favorite breakfast dish; the apple sausage fry.

Michael Pollan talks about increased public interest in the Farm Bill and the minimal effect it's had so far on the legislation. Though that shouldn't be surprising. Public interest started peaking over the last year and has been unfocused, while the agribusiness lobbies that have made farm programs what they are today have been cozying up to our representatives for years. Next year, folks, we'll get them in appropriations.

"... Many adults, I'm convinced, believe that food comes from grocery stores. In Wendell Berry's novel Jayber Crow, a farmer coming to the failing end of his long economic struggle despaired alound, "I've wished sometimes that the sons of bitches would starve. And now I'm getting afraid they actually will." Like that farmer, I am frustrated with the imposed acrimony between producers and consumers of food, as if this were a conflict in which one could possibly choose sides. ..." - Barbara Kingsolver in "The Essential Agrarian Reader"

I mostly grew up in various Los Angeles suburbs from about the age of 5 onwards. Before that, my family had lived in a rural part of northern California that I never got to know very well. I only remembered some about how my much older teenage sister worked a part time job picking strawberries one year until her hands were raw, or little things about the walnut orchard run by an old family friend. I knew nothing about agriculture and no one was really suggesting that I needed to know more.

Then I started studying agroecology on what I thought was a path towards environmental science. And I learned some things that changed my priorities completely .