My guest today is Joyce Durnell-White, founder of Clearwater Green Exchange. We’ll be talking about why you should grow your own food and how to create an abundance of food with your friends and neighbors. This local group in Clearwater, Florida encourages members to share backyard produce and support each other in implementing self-sustaining and homesteading activities in this suburban area. area. All items are shared at no cost to members. Joyce has loved to garden since she was a child and takes joy in volunteering thoughout the community. www.facebook.com/groups/420377994822976/
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Backyard Green Exchange Grows Food and Friends
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Joyce Durnell-White
Date of Broadcast: November 17, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Tuesday, November 17th, 2015 and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida.
Today, my guest is a very good friend of mine who lives right here in Clearwater, Florida with me. I had known her about I don’t know. I’ve lived here 14 years and I think that she was one of my first friends, one of the first people I knew. And we’ve known each other ever since and we keep crossing paths.
We’re both writers. We were both in a writers’ group and we both belong to a group a number of years ago, maybe 10 years ago now. It was called Create Clearwater and it might still be in existence, but at the time, we were doing all kinds of things to help people. We were really focused on helping people growing food in our own backyards.
And I learned a lot about how to grow food organically here in Florida where we have practically no soil. Everything is built on sand and I know I have soil in my backyard and I know I have organic food growing in my backyard. And it’s because I had help from people who had lived here, knew how to do it and shared it with me.
So I’m having Joyce on the show today because she, all by herself, started another group called Clearwater Green Exchange. I’m going to let her tell you what that’s about, but the whole point of this show is about – let me just say that what inspired me to have Joyce be on the show is that she has a Facebook group, a private Facebook group. But you can join it if you’d like.
And she had posted a picture of a sign, a handwritten sign and this sign said – it actually came from another website. She didn’t make this. But it said, “If we each grow a large crop of different food, we could all trade with each other and eat for practically free.”
And at a time where I just went to the Natural Foods Store yesterday and I was looking at turkeys, which are already here for Thanksgiving and one small organic turkey breast, not even a whole turkey. One small organic turkey breast was $35. Food is expensive. Organic food is expensive and yet seeds are cheap.
So Joyce, hi.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Hi Debra.
DEBRA: Thank you so much for being on. We have a lot to talk about today. So first, why don’t you tell us how you got started in gardening? Why is this such a passion for you?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh man, I think I was born with the passion. As a child, I had a lot of interest in the nature of things and particularly in plants. And one day, I actually found out finally that plants grow food seeds. I had always wondered where the plants come from. This was when I was a little girl.
DEBRA: I’m smiling as you say that because I think that a lot of people actually don’t know where plants come from and I know that that sounds like a very simple thing. I met somebody who didn’t know where wheat came from. “Where does the wheat for bread come from?” And I really thought that he didn’t know if it was a stock or a tree or what it was. And this is an educated person.
If we’re just buying food in supermarkets, we don’t know where food comes from or what it’s like to grow it. So it’s important just to start out by saying food comes from seeds.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It comes from a seed. Isn’t it amazing?
DEBRA: It is amazing. And listeners, if you’ve never grown a seed and put that seed in the dirt and then see that little sprout come up and then have it grow into a plant and then have it produce a cucumber, whatever you’re growing, a tomato. And then you eat it and you experience that whole cycle of starting as a seed and going to your mouth. Then you don’t know how food actually gets to you. I think that that’s an experience that everyone should have.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah.
DEBRA: So you found that food comes from seeds. And then what happened?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: One day, my mother gave me a nickel. While most kids were running to the store to get a candy bar, I couldn’t wait to buy a pack of seeds.
DEBRA: Wow.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes. And then when I got there, I particularly wanted fruit seeds because I wanted to be able to give my mother fruits.
They had fruit seeds, but they were too expensive. But I found a pack of nasturtium seeds, which was a nickel.
And it said on the pack that you could eat them. I have never heard of eating flowers, but it was a food. So I bought it.
I ran home and I planted it and watered the ground every day for about a week and nothing was happening. And then finally one day, I come outside and boom, the little seeds were poking their heads up out of the spirit and I was so overjoyed and I felt so accomplished and proud. I still get that way today 50 some years later.
DEBRA: Yeah. And about six or eight weeks ago, I planted some little tomato seedlings and then I gave them some wonderful fertilizer and really took care of the soil. And they’re growing so fast.
And every day, I’m watching these plants growing and growing and growing and I planted some little seedlings of peas, snap peas. And just to watch them, the first day that that little flower came out that’s going to be a pea, I just felt so excited.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I understand.
DEBRA: It’s like life right in front of you. It’s not a package that you buy at the store, like it is an industrial package. This is life giving you food.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes. And how spiritual is that?
DEBRA: It’s incredible. This is what’s missing from our society I think, people having this connection with life and connection with nature and knowing that you can do something like plant a seed and nature will respond and give you something in return.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It is so simple. Yeah.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So what inspired you to start Clearwater Green Exchange?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Through the years, I’ve been growing food here and there. What I noticed is that I could never measure how much food to plant or not to plant. I always planted too much.
DEBRA: I understand.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I always planted too much. And we would always have this [inaudible 00:09:04] of harvest. So I just naturally would knock on the neighbors’ doors or anybody that would stop by and I’d share it with them.
And then just recently, I don’t know what I was looking or whatever. I began to wonder why people have to struggle with the cost of food all the time. I too was in Naturals the other day. I couldn’t believe the prices on some of these items that you need every week.
DEBRA: Yeah, I know.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It’s extremely expensive. And then I thought, how can I be a solution to this problem? It seems pretty easy to me to share your food.
DEBRA: Yes.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I mean if we all shared our food, that would lessen the need to spend all that money, right?
DEBRA: Right. I would not say that I’m an expert gardener, but I love growing food. And I had that problem of knowing how much to grow. And if you read a book, a gardening book, they all say figure out how much you’re going to eat and plant that amount. So that’s what I always had in mind.
But you know what? I’ve got a fair amount of land around. I mean not acres, but I could grow more food. But it never occurred to me until I saw what you are doing.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah.
DEBRA: And I could grow a lot more food than I’m growing now and share it a lot more widely and exchange it with people. We’re going to talk more about this when we come back. We need to go to break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Joyce Durnell-White. She’s the Founder of Clearwater Green Exchange. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Joyce Durnell-White. She’s the Founder of Clearwater Green Exchange. If you want to see what’s going on, then you can go to Facebook and search for Clearwater Green Exchange.
Joyce, so if somebody’s not a member, can they see and they just can’t participate or they can’t see it at all? Joyce?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Hello?
DEBRA: Hello? Can you hear me?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, I can now.
DEBRA: Okay, good. So what I asked was that if somebody goes to your Facebook page, if they’re not a member can they see anything at all or do they need to become a member in order to be able to see the posts?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: They need to become a member, but it’s easy. They just request membership. It’s been changed to a public group now.
DEBRA: Okay.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: So just ask to be a member and I let them right in.
DEBRA: Okay, good. Good. So again, I’ll say go to Facebook and search for Clearwater Green Exchange. So be a member and you can get to look at what’s going on here.
The reason that I wanted to have Joyce come on and talk about this is because this is something that anyone can do in any community. I was going to say if you have backyards like everybody here has backyards, unless you live in an apartment building.
But even if you’re living in New York City, a lot of people grow things in New York City in window boxes and rooftops. Any place that you live, there’s a way you can grow even if it’s just in pots. I have a lot of potted things. But wherever you are, you can grow a seed. You can grow food in some way.
So Joyce, tell us how the Green Exchange works.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Only just simply come into the page or in the group and you request or your post your need and counter with what you have to share in exchange. It’s that simple.
DEBRA: Yeah, it really is simple. What are some of the things? I need to open my page to your page. I didn’t do that before the show. What’s going on today?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: What’s going on today?
DEBRA: What’s being posted today?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I posted it. I have one and a half dozen store food I would like to share with people.
DEBRA: Oh, they’re beautiful. They’re beautiful. I just saw at the page.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh, you see. Yeah.
DEBRA: This is also a photographer. And so she takes pictures, beautiful pictures of all these fruits and vegetables. And when people come visit her garden, she takes pictures. It’s very visually appealing. Wow.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah, I put a lot of work into it.
DEBRA: I would like a few of these. Can I come by and get some?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: You most certainly can. And what have you in exchange my dear friend?
DEBRA: Well, let’s talk about that after the show.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Okay. As you see, one woman is posting pictures of some monarch butterflies or caterpillars that are turning into – what do you call those things? When they turn…
DEBRA: I don’t see that. But I have the other day on one of my bushes, it was on a food bush, but I have something called sweet almond plant, which has these little tiny white flowers that smell like almonds. And I had this big green wormlike thing with stripes on it and it was eating up the leaves. And I thought this was going to turn into a butterfly and I bet that’s the same thing. I don’t see the pictures that you’re talking about.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh, you don’t. She has two dozen monarch caterpillars.
DEBRA: I bet they are the same as what I’ve been seeing.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Well, they only eat milkweed as their only food. So she has them and she is more or less raising them.
DEBRA: Wow.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah. Now, they’re turning into – what do you call this thing that caterpillars turn into?
DEBRA: Chrysalis, I think.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah, it’s chrysalis. Now, they’re turning into them and she’s going to have 25 beautiful monarch butterflies flying around the garden.
DEBRA: Wow, I would love to see that. I would love to see these pictures. Why can’t I see them?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It’s everywhere around. Yeah. So there’s a lot of sharing of avocado. Because we’re in Florida, there’s a big sharing of avocados, avocado trees and many trees that are citrus.
DEBRA: Because I’m not on the right page.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Okay.
DEBRA: Okay, I’m going to another page. Here we go.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes.
DEBRA: Okay, so go on with what you were saying.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: There’s a lot of food here in Florida that we are posting to exchange with, papaya trees or just the hearty greens or anything that will grow in Florida.
DEBRA: Yeah. Part of the value of this too is that especially people who are new to the area like me, I’ve been here 14 years, but when I was knew, I didn’t know what to plant here. I didn’t know what grew here. I was coming from Northern California, which has a very different climate and a very different soil.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Soil, yeah and green – I’m sorry, go ahead.
DEBRA: And so I didn’t know what to do. And when I was in California, my neighbors taught me what to plant. In fact, they gave me plants. There was one man who had so many raspberry canes. He was just giving away his raspberry canes and everybody in our immediate area has raspberries in their yards from this one man’s gardens.
Mine just multiplied and I had so many huge delicious sweet raspberries. It’s totally free. I didn’t even buy the plants.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Isn’t that amazing stuff?
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: That’s what’s amazing about this. Why spend money that you don’t have to when you can virtually have food for free.
DEBRA: Let me ask you this question. I think that the difficulty is that we live in a consumer society. And so our orientation is if we want something, we should go to the store and buy it. And we have. It’s very different than in time’s past even 100 years ago when we had more of a village agricultural society where people relied on themselves.
If you think about people settling in the frontier, they had so many skills. They were building their houses and planting their gardens. And if they didn’t grow their food, they wouldn’t eat. We have to go to break. So we’ll continue this thought when we come back
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Joyce Durnell-White and she’s the Founder of Clearwater Green Exchange. You can go to Facebook and search on Clearwater Green Exchange and find her. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Joyce Durnell-White. She is the Founder of Clearwater Green Exchange and we’re talking about how this group of neighbors and friends are sharing food so that everybody can have more to eat at less cost and also to get to know each other.
Before the break, I started talking about how we have a consumer orientation where our mindset is if we want something, we should go to the store and buy it. And in time’s past, people had a lot of skills and they actually needed to grow their food or they were not going to eat.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Can I [inaudible 00:27:13]?
DEBRA: Sure.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I’m sorry. I just want to say this. We need to return from consumerism and become human again.
DEBRA: Yes, I agree. I totally agree.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah. We need to go back to those times you’re speaking of. We need to live closer to the earth and those living in the cities would see us so they know that we’re growing food. All you need is a seed.
And here in the city, because of the lack of knowledge or the lack of soil, lack of space and even lack of motivation to seek better alternative, we tend to feel lost in that. And cities are filled with dangerous commodity and it’s called convenience. Wouldn’t you agree?
DEBRA: I do. But here is the point that I wanted to make, which is – I agree with everything that you’ve said, but here’s the point I wanted to make. I think that one of the biggest obstacles to actually doing this, growing abundant food and sharing is just the fact that we don’t know our neighbors.
We don’t know other people.
I’m guilty of this too. I know practically none of my neighbors even though I’ve lived here for 14 years. And I’ve introduced myself to them and they go back into their houses and never speak to me again.
And so one of the values of being in your group and knowing you is that it’s a place where people of like-mind who want to do this particular activity can come together and communicate with each other and actually share their food. If you weren’t doing this group and having your Facebook group,
I wouldn’t be thinking in these terms.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Amazing.
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It certainly grows community.
DEBRA: It grows food, but it also grows community. And when you start getting to know people, you have new friends, you have more people that you can do more sustainable activities with and you can exchange other things besides food.
What we need is more community. We need to know people who live in our vicinity and what they have to offer and what skills they have and what you can give and what they can give and how we can all help each other. And this is a good way to start that. It’s a good way to start that.
It’s a different concept and like a gardening club. It’s really about sharing. It’s really about sharing.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Tell them about the story of the Thanksgiving dinner we had in your backyard.
DEBRA: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So when we were both in Create Clearwater, that Thanksgiving, that first Thanksgiving of that group, we had a community Thanksgiving.
And before I describe ours, I want to say that I come from California where I lived in a very small community that was in a little valley. And so it was all cut off from everything else. We had a community center and every Thanksgiving, a number of women would come to the community center and people would donate turkeys and we would cook turkeys all day long and people would bring side dishes and everything. And then 200 people would come to the Thanksgiving.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, yes.
DEBRA: And it was fantastic. We were all crowded into this room and we were all eating and laughing and talking and meeting each other.
And then I came here and I didn’t have that. I said, “I want my Thanksgiving. I want my community Thanksgiving.” And so we invited all these people and how many people did we have?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I don’t know. Was it like 30 or 40?
DEBRA: Thirty or forty or fifty, something like that?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Something like that.
DEBRA: We set up tables in the backyard because it’s warm on Thanksgiving here in Florida.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes.
DEBRA: This is the backyard and everybody brought food and we had all this and a lot of people because this was a group about growing food. A lot of the food on our Thanksgiving table here was grown in people’s gardens.
We had 12 different kinds of pumpkin pie and turkey. And it was so much fun. It was so much fun.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It was delicious and it was filled with wonderful spiritual fellowship.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes. And we met each other. We didn’t know each other, a lot of us.
DEBRA: No. And people who had no family here, people in our group would invite other people to come and it was so wonderful. I would just like every Thanksgiving to be like that.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: I even brought some plants to share with people.
DEBRA: Oh, I remember. I remember.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It was exactly 2009. I think it was.
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah.
DEBRA: Another thing that we did in Create Clearwater was soup exchange and people would make different kinds of soup and bring them in jars and we’d all get to have different kinds of soup.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes. That’s a wonderful idea.
DEBRA: We really need to get back to having those community experiences where we can help each other eat. People talk about local food, but really even local food, we were growing on our own backyards.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Exactly.
DEBRA: So Joyce, tell us what are the benefits of backyard food versus buying food.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: For one, you can look at it health-wise. It’s certainly healthier because with homegrown foods, you can get the natural fibers and vitamins and minerals your body needs and you get it quite naturally.
Probably in processed foods, these nutrients are omitted or manufactured. And so even besides being more nutritious, garden foods have a high physical value also. So in that, I believe that food is our medicine. That’s one thing. Yeah.
And also, homegrown is a cheaper alternative to processed packaged foods.
DEBRA: Yes, it is.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: If you compare to the average cost of a pound of tomatoes coming in at say $3 to $4.50, one tomato seed can produce a plant using 20 to 30 plus pounds of tomatoes. Isn’t that astounding?
DEBRA: It is.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It’s amazing.
DEBRA: It really is.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: And it makes the price per tomato a [nano?] percentage of a penny. You can’t beat that math.
DEBRA: Yeah, you can’t. When I was in California, I grew these tomato lines. And it was 15 feet high and it would just be covered with tomatoes in six months. That’s all I needed. I had more tomatoes than I could eat.
We need to go to break, but when we come back, we’ll talk more with Joyce about how w can feed ourselves in our own backyards by sharing with our neighbors and friends. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Joyce Durnell-White. She’s the Founder of Clearwater Green Exchange and you can go to Facebook and just type in Clearwater Green Exchange and you’ll get to her Facebook page. You need to become a member to get in and take a look at it because it’s a private group.
I wanted to have her on today because this is such a fabulous model that can be done anywhere in the world. Anyone can start this.
And I just want to emphasize again that what we’re talking about here is not just growing organic food, not just having a farmer’s market, but people in their own backyards growing an abundance of food that then can be shared with other people in their community and exchanging. People in this group are not asking for money for this food, but they’re asking for exchange of other food or garden or plants or whatever it is, just some kind of exchange. Even I suppose, Joyce, somebody could exchange working on a garden for food.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh, sure.
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Any help to get a garden planted is ideal. That’s the whole point of this whole concept. It’s to get people to start growing their own food if they want self-sustainment.
DEBRA: Yeah. So it’s to have there be exchange, but not to have there being money involved and money is not required. Food is a basic thing that we all should be able to eat.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Right.
DEBRA: And I’m just thinking about even homeless people, if in the community, if enough people grew enough food, homeless people could go work for their food in these gardens and they would be fed.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Isn’t that a wonderful idea?
DEBRA: Yeah. And it’s actual work, instead of a handout.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Exactly. I don’t know. I saw on the internet somewhere. There was this one town. It’s a very successful action actually allowing or offering the homeless to do the garden. They help the garden, their lawn. They’re given wage and shelter. And so in this town, there is no homelessness.
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah. So it’s working. It’s a workable action.
DEBRA: Yeah, it is. It is. So what are some of the other benefits of sharing food?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Well, let’s see, to know where your food is coming from.
DEBRA: Wow, that’s a big one.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: In this day and age, it’s an amazing thing. When you go outside and you plant your food, I’m going to say that of course, you’re leaning towards planting organic because we want the best for ourselves and our family. That is exactly what you want. You want to know that your food is organic and it is lacking the genetic modifications and the pesticides in our food today.
DEBRA: That’s right. Another one that I can think of that is especially dear to my heart is diversity of varieties. You go to the supermarket and you see one kind of tomato. You can go to the farmer’s market and maybe you get a few others. How many heirloom tomatoes are there? There were hundreds.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Exactly.
DEBRA: In fact, when I was in California, I grew heirloom tomatoes. I would order the seed packets and I plant these heirloom tomatoes and they were beautiful.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: All colors and…
DEBRA: Some are purple and some are slight – and it’s just made with food. It’s so interesting that we’re preserving biodiversity when we do that.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: And when I lived in California, there was actually a woman who had gone to another woman who lived in the next town and she had gotten seeds from her tomatoes. It was an Italian woman. Over her lifetime, she had bred her seeds to be perfect for her place.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh, that’s great.
DEBRA: And so my friend had gotten seeds and she started growing them. And she gave me seeds. And it was named after our little valley, the seed. So I had my very own locally perfect tomato.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Wow.
DEBRA: And that’s what you can do in the backyard. It’s just so amazing because it’s a nature-oriented existence rather than a consumer-oriented existence.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes. That’s right, Debra.
DEBRA: Yeah. And that’s what we need to do. So what are some other benefits that you find from sharing?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Let’s see. We want an ever-growing community. Hello?
DEBRA: Hello? I’m here. Yes.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Okay. It actually creates a sustainable food system.
DEBRA: Yes, it does.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: It creates a sustainable food system that we can depend on and not have to go to stores to buy.
DEBRA: Right. And one of the things being a self-employed person is that cash flow and this is true for everybody even if they’re gainfully employed, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, but there are times when the cash flow is a little thin. It’s not that you’re not making money.
It’s just maybe you’re waiting for a check. But if you’re growing food in your backyard, you can just walk outside and have something to eat.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Isn’t it wonderful to be able to just walk outside to take your lunch?
DEBRA: Yeah. I could go over to Joyce’s house and pick it up at her backyard.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, exactly. I’ll give you the [bowl?].
DEBRA: It’s like we always have something to eat. When you think about it, how many people are hungry because they can’t go buy food?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Hmmm.
DEBRA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah.
DEBRA: There’s a place in California. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was a subdivision where when they planned the subdivision, they planted fruit bearing trees all along the parking strips.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Isn’t that smart?
DEBRA: And everybody that lives there can go pull fruit off the trees anytime that there are fruits on the trees. Everybody is just community food.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, I love that.
DEBRA: Yeah, I do too. I do too. So do you find yourself to be more resourceful when you’re doing this?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah, I believe I do. I do.
DEBRA: What do you find with people who participate in this? Do you see changes in your life or changes in their life?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: There are definitely changes in my life. I have people coming to my yard all the time. And now I’m very often and receiving of these people and I’m very happy to be there. It lifts my spirit. Sharing is a spiritual activity.
So I am loving this. I am doing what makes me happy and what makes me happy is sharing with people. And when I see the smiles on their faces, there’s nothing greater than that.
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Who needs money?
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Who needs money?
DEBRA: There’s something about food that is grown in your own backyard where you nourish the soil, where you put your caring into it. And then you eat that tomato or that cucumber. I use these examples because I grow that in my yard.
Or even when I go out to my pot of parsley, I have a big pot with six parsley plants in it, I go and I trim off my parsley and I put it on my omelet or I put it on top of my tomato sauce or whatever. It’s so vibrant and alive.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Oh god, yes.
DEBRA: I don’t know if people know that the most nutritious something is the second that you take it off the plant. If you could leave it on the plant and eat it, it would be even better.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yes, yes.
DEBRA: But when you harvest food and then ship it, you lose nutrition and you lose vitality and that’s what most of us are eating. You go from a plant when it’s most alive and then you ship it and then you cook it and put it on a box. By the time you take it out of that package, it’s pretty dead.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Yeah. People don’t understand I think how much energy is spent in producing food just [inaudible 00:49:03].
DEBRA: We’ve only got about a minute left.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Okay.
DEBRA: So is there anything that you feel that you want to say that you haven’t said?
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: Well, I just want to inspire people to share their harvest, to have abundance and share with others. You share, you care.
Do you understand?
DEBRA: Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: And I feel impelled to help the free food movement into being. And that’s why I’m on your show today.
DEBRA: Well, Joyce, thank you so much for being here. You’re just such a good example and I hope that people listening today are inspired at least to begin growing food on their backyard and if they are already growing food to grow more and share it.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: That’s right. Plant more seeds, people.
DEBRA: Plant more seeds. Yeah.
JOYCE DURNELL-WHITE: And share.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
