I cannot wait . . .

Last summer, once my garden was well underway, we ate almost exclusively from it. True to the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle concept, it was a rare event for me to go to the grocery store. I might have zipped into Whole Foods to get grains or meats -- but that was it.(Now, incidentally we get our beef and pork from a local Rehoboth farm.) But at one point I remember having to go into my local Stop and Shop supermarket. I walked into the produce department and stopped dead in my tracks. I looked around -- everything looked like plastic. Perfect plastic food without life to it. You couldn't tell that any of this stuff had been in the ground! I remember being so surprised at the change in my perspective. 

When I took an Organic Apple Growing class last spring a big topic of conversation amongst the larger orchard growers there and the teachers was how Americans had become conditioned to purchase only perfect looking food. Nothing misshapen, no fly-spec, no scab . . . we want perfection. Otherwise we won't buy it. The irony is, it's tough to grow a perfect apple without spraying the dickens out of it. At the class was a middle aged couple who wanted to start growing some of the apples in their orchard organically. The previous year they had tried to go completely spray-free (not even organic types of prevention) and came up with such "damaged" apples that they had to make them all into cider. No one would purchase the poor things. 

Now that ALL of the vegetables and fruits from my garden are long gone, I have to resort to the supermarket for my vegetables. I cannot wait to harvest my REAL food!