I spend a lot of my time (as you know) working on finding and writing about toxic-free, manufactured industrial products because that’s where most people shop.
But for many years now, I’ve actually been living this “other” life that is beyond industrial products. It’s the next level of living toxic-free. Much more difficult and not available everywhere, but oh so rewarding.
I actually started envisioning living this way in 1987 but gave up because I couldn’t find it. But now thirty years later…
Here’s how I spent last Sunday
I spent most of my day going to our local “farm market” (that’s what they call it here, not “farmer’s market”) and also our annual Gravenstein Apple Fair, which celebrates the harvest of the Gravenstein Apples, unique to our area.
Both of these experiences made me very happy I live here as they take my experience of toxic-free living well beyond the action of choosing products without chemicals from store shelves. They take me back to LIFE.
THE CHANGING OF THE SEASON AT THE FARM MARKET
About 30 years ago I began to study nature, and one thing I learned was about the changing of the seasons. On our civil calendar “The First Day of Autumn” has been fixed September 21, but it’s not. The Autumn Equinox that falls on that day is the middle of autumn.
I had an ancient calendar that marked a date in early August as the end of summer and the beginning of autumn and there was a festival to celebrate it. That this time of year was the end of summer and the beginning of autumn was kind of theoretical to me because it is always hot in August wherever I’ve lived, but I could see small indicators.
I’ve now been going to the farmer’s market every Sunday for almost a year, and this week, I really saw that ‘autumn is a comin’ in’. The Gravenstein apples are here, as well as Gravenstein cider and a tent telling you where you can use the community apple press to press your apples for juice. The multicolored cherry tomatoes are gone. My farmer who has been providing gorgeous cherry tomatoes and bell peppers and Persian cucumbers said good-bye to me this week. He won’t be back until January. The entire spectrum of foods in the fields is changing.
While tomatoes are ending, cauliflower is just beginning. I can’t resist these baby cauliflowers. So tender and sweet.
We don’t see this change of season in the supermarket. But it’s very real at my farmer’s market and on my plate.
We’re moving into the time of harvest. I’m working hard now to bring in the “harvest” of the work I’ve been doing all year to move my work to the next level with a new website. I can start to see the new website now. Structure is up. I’m starting to organize data. I’ve found someone to help me with the technical challenges and we were started work on that yesterday. I’m working full speed ahead.
Eating seasonal, local, organic food is part of my “practice” of living toxic-free. It goes beyond reading labels to avoid toxic chemicals in industrial products, to the next level of aligning with life itself.
For the past two weeks we’ve been sampling different varieties of peaches. We’ve been putting each variety in separate bags with their names on them to get to know them. The farmer explained how the best peaches were the first peaches picked from the outside of the tree where they get the most sun and that the following week that week’s varieties would be coming from the inner branches and new varieties would be being picked from the outside of other trees.
Imaging my surprise when I brought these peaches home and cut them open and there was a sunset of colors inside the peach! Not just white or orange, but white and orange and deep red and purple. I though I would pull a photo off the internet with these colors and couldn’t find one. But this week we bought a whole entire box of peaches, and as I was peeling peach-after-peach I discovered the deep turn of color comes from ripeness. I had just never before eaten a peach that was actually ripe. But it’s only ripe like this for moments. The next day they begin to rot.
AND THEN WE WENT TO THE GRAVENSTEIN APPLE FAIR
This was the first time I’ve been to this particular fair and it moved me deeply.
First, it was a city fair, so it wasn’t at a fairgrounds, it was in a park, under oak trees. There were local craftspeople, food tents set up by local restaurants and children showing and explaining their 4H animals, and bands providing music. The entire fair was the city in microcosm. And Gravenstein apples—apple pie baked by the ladies of a local Church who bake the pies every years, apple fritters, apple cider, boxes of apples, bags of apples—all Gravenstein everything. One food stall offered a grilled cheese sandwich made with slices of Gravenstein apple, local blue cheese and local honey. Apples, apples, apples!
Of course, Larry and I walked in an immediately bought a piece of pie to share. I looked up and everyone around me was eating pie made with our local apples, baked with the loving hands of our local women, and tears came to my eyes. This is what creates community. Once of the reasons I left Florida was because I was once told not to bring homemade food for refreshments to a meeting—only packaged foods. Sitting under the oak trees eating apple pie with my community made me feel part of the community, not only in the moment, but part of it’s history past and future.
I had to include this photo above of the disposal area. It’s more that trash and recycling. It was landfill, recycling, compost, and pig food.
But of course. This is a farming community. And so our fair had woodcarving and historic farm equipment and “agrarian games” (I didn’t see those, but I’m thinking they may be like the Scottish Highland games, which are competitions of skill based on things actually done in local work life).
Here the food is seasonal, local, and organic with full disclosure. You can’t buy Mindful Meats online. They are local. And you can call up all these farms on this chalkboard and they will proudly tell you all about how they grow and raise their food. No secrets here.
This is how life should be!!!!! Everywhere.
Enough. I think you get the idea. I feel like I’ve come home.
As we were walking to our car I said to Larry, “This fair is in agreement with me. It’s just how I would design it. And I am in agreement with it. This is where we belong.”
And he agreed.
