I swear I didnt realize that MLK day was coming up when I wrote the newsletter for Swallowtail Farm this past week. My hope is that we all remember that Dr. King wasnt just about the right to vote and having a dream like we all read in our public school books, but rather that he pointed out the fundamental contradiction that the wealthiest country in the world spends more tax money each year on war and destruction than on programs of social uplift. He dreamed of a base social shift towards the beloved community. https://dropbox/s/xdkzudfbtj00fsx/sfcsa_newsletter_1-14-15_screen.pdf?dl=0 I ate at Crane Ramen the other night downtown, and I didn’t fully realize why I enjoyed it so much. Ya, most of the meal was sourced locally (including the carrot tops from Crone Cradle in the mushroom salad!) and quite deliciously pieced together. But upon arriving and being seated, our table was forgotten for a little longer than intended by the host & server. So, if I was a fancy restaurant critic, I would poopoo that on my blog or something. But I’m not. I work at Swallowtail Farm. And what I’ve come to respect and admire about the farm is that honesty and kindness are really important to us here. And so, from the time the server arrived to when she brought the check, she was kind, courteous, and honest about everything, even the miscommunication. On top of all that, she happened to be a CSA member. Needless to say, when I left the restaurant I had that good community food buzz phenomenon (I swear it was from the lemon-grass soda). Here’s where I wanted to write about about how Florida’s food system is dangerously insecure and how we export most everything out of state. How the environmentally destructive process of creating NPK and its application run off into our springs and aquifer. How injustice manifests in the form of farm worker abuses and urban/rural food deserts from Homestead to Tallahassee. But the good lord knows there’s plenty of that in those interwebs and tube televisions. Instead, I want to get meaningful, like with the righteous indignation of a Southern Baptist Preacher. I want to encourage anyone who reads this to seek out this kind of food buzz far and wide! To not only dig deeper within yourself and find shelter in power of this kind of Good Food Community-loveydovey kumbiya, but to go forth and spread that gospel with the fervor of a Swallowtail apostle! Ya. Sooo... I was a Religious Studies major in school (not a preacher), and food has been a religion to me since. We each have our own Dharma I suppose and I just happen to be terribly interested in how we humans build meaning and connect (or don’t connect) with our source(s) of ultimate power. This was really important to me because connecting with an ultimate source of power was a defining characteristic of a Religious system, and I had to get a degree in something. But when I finally understood that, I realized that the source of power I was connecting with every day, that ole thing called the ‘Economy,’ was void of healthy food and just about honest anything. So, as it turns out for me, the ultimate source of power wasn’t like Bilbo’s invisible ‘ring of power’ deal (Yes, we do get off the farm and go to watch movies like the Hobbit sometimes), but rather something more similar to living the life of a humble little Hobbit, growing food, nestled off in the rolling hills of the Shire..eh...I mean Alachua But seriously, let me tell you what gives me meaning. It’s my team. It’s my tribe. It’s the tree’s and bee’s. It’s the kind of commitment to serve, parent, farm, etc, that pushes you to drives thirty minutes each day, each way, existing in the contradiction of wanting to become more environmentally sustainable while burning a finite source of extracted dino-stuff. It’s the moments when a once total stranger (also known as an apprentice) becomes a friend and a re-affirmation in the goodness of people and our ability to serve, change and grow together in the trenches of the fight. It’s the ability to see beyond the world as it is, whats considered normal and appropriate, and to build an economy and culture that is meaningful to more than just a few of us. It’s to live in a community where you speak honestly and openly to each other with that leap of faith into the hands of non violence and its ability to bring about the ‘beloved community,’ as Dr. King called it. Ok, enough of that hippie-dippy stuff. What I want to get across is this, if you are like me and want to live in a world with less destruction each year, less war, less injustice, less violence, it absolutely can not happen with out more of us. And when I say us, I mean farmers, CSA members, distributors, producers, CPA’s, website developers, mechanics, thai-yoga massage therapists, and so on. And when I say it absolutely cannot happen without more of us, I mean that it is our duty towards future generations to do something, cause it better than doing nothing. Tell a friend. Cook dinner for your family. Ask your server where the food is coming from. Plant a fruit tree this weekend. Invest, spend, or trade value and time into positive things. Be stewards of the planet and be keepers of our brothers and sisters, if we claim the planet and all life on it to be sacred. I cannot express how grateful I am for being here at this humble little hobbit farm and for having the opportunity to be in the trenches with some amazing people. I hope that I’ve done some justice to the spirit of Swallowtail and what Noah, the Nesbits, Emily, Marianna, apprentices current and past, CSA members, and all the family in between that have supported it and I hope that this same spirit lights the fire of a thousand suns in every person that comes into contact with it... or whatever a Southern Baptist preacher would say. Sincerely, Ryan Iacovacci Dirt Devotee
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 21:26:38 +0000
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