Blog 1.0

I love the smell of dew on fresh ground in the morning. I love the smell of chlorophyll in a spring breeze. I love how rich soil feels in between my toes and under my fingernails. I love eating fresh vegetables from my grandfather's garden. I love the meals shared by Indigenous Honduran people with my family...food they had grown and raised themselves. I love fresh juice had on any and every street corner in Caracas.

It has been years since I have been to Venezuela, but I can still remember the citrusy sweetness of the fresh Parchita (passion fruit) juice. It is memories like these that drive me today. What I once took for granted, all the fresh locally grown food you could imagine, is now a luxury I can no longer afford. Some of us can shop at high end grocery stores and buy as much locally grown, organic, humane food as we need. The reality for most of us, though, is that we are forced to buy food products and less than healthy produce (if we even eat veggies). Many in Chattanooga live in food deserts and are forced to buy much of their food from convenience stores. This gets expensive and unhealthy very quick. What has happened? More importantly, how do we get back to living a life where our food is something we truly love once again? Can that even happen in this fast paced, web connected life we now live? I think we can, and I propose a solution.

Let us start a network of home gardeners, botanists, engineers, artists, native plant specialists, herbalists, farmers , and enthusiasts of all kinds to come together with the sole purpose of cultivating our own gardens, our neighbors gardens, and ultimately our city as a whole. We can, one yard, one lot at a time, turn Chattanooga in to a self sustaining food resilient community. There is no reason, given the right amount of effort, that every person in our city cannot have all the fresh, locally grown, organic food they need.

Interestingly enough, I have found that if I bring the same love I felt as a child for fresh food to my moment to moment experience...things start to change around me. Often in beautifully mysterious ways. I would urge all of us to look for those moments of love in our past and seek to bring them to our here and now. Each and every moment is a new opportunity to respond to life with love. Let this be your daily meditation. Let this be your way.