Food is Good

Tonight I had a great dinner. Yes, the food was great, but the company made it even better. Here's a little back story for you....

While at my FoodCorps training last week in Great Falls I had the opportunity to meet with a farmer who also happens to be the CEO of Timeless Seeds an organic bean, lentil, and barley company. Awesome man. Anyways when he found out I was in Livingston he automatically told me I needed to meet his friend Jim. A few E-mails later and I was invited to dinner at Jim's home.

Jim is an architect for AERO (Montana's Alternative Energy and Resource Organization) which does a lot of work with sustainable food systems. Jim and his wife have a killer garden, do tons of composting, have totally remodeled their home to be modern/rustic themed.....totally my type of people. Tonight they also invited a couple over who they've been friends with for awhile. The husband is a part-time professor at MSU he also runs a couple acre farm near Bozeman and even sells at the Livingston farmers market. Totally my type of people too. I received some great advice from the farmer/professor when I told him I was considering the Food Systems graduate program at MSU. He told me that I shouldn't waste my time and money and I'll learn more staying in the real world, something I am really taking to heart.

I had a great time talking and more importantly listening with these people. They were all very accomplished people, but yet so laid back and happy. They are people who haven't let their careers let them loose track of the little things in life that are critical for true and pure happiness. Little things like sitting around having a meal together.

That brings me to a point I really want to make. It was a dinner like tonight that really reminded me why I want to get involved with food and food systems. While we were all sitting around the table sharing stories and eating one thing I realized is that the food at the table is just like every person sitting at the table. It has a story too. Some food (like the food we ate tonight) we know the story of. We know were it came from, how it was raised, and how it got to the table. Some food we don't know it's story other than the fact it came from a box or a bag. When you talk to people you seem to connect best with the people that are most willing to share their stories. The same I think is true with food. The more we know the story of our food, the better we connect and enjoy it.

We should eat the foods in which we know their stories, not only that, but we should eat the foods with the best stories. The stories that start in gardens or small farms. The stories that don't include shipping from across the country or world. The stories that don't involve pesticides and herbicides. I like to know the stories of the foods I eat. That's why farming has become so intriguing to me. When you farm you get to make the story of your food and you get to share it. However me and my farming dream is a story for another day.

Anyways, I hope everyone got the point I'm trying to make. I'm sure I'll bring it up again.

I'm tired I need to go to bed.

Love,
Becky