"Homegrown Eating Pleasure" by Millisa A. Bell

Hello Dear Readers,

I am so excited to have my first Guest Blogger this month!!

Millisa A. Bell is a fellow Unruly Gardener who resides in Florida, USA! Somehow I was lucky enough that she found my website/blog and connected with me. Since then we have been getting to know each other via emails where I have learned more about her philosophy and life. How wonderful to have found a kindred spirit!

Mellisa has been working as The Unruly Gardener in the southern state of Florida for well over 10 years and is passionate about living her unruly life with her plants and animals along with sharing her knowledge and guiding people to a more self-sufficient, locally supported lifestyle.

Here is a little bit more about Millisa from her website:

“The Unruly Gardener is a Florida native, organic gardener, permaculturist, seed saver, and self-sufficiency enthusiast. She cultivates edible and medicinal plants, and raises chickens, ducks, rabbits, worms, and bees in Southwest and North Central Florida.”

Please welcome Millisa to my blogsite and savour her words! I am passionate about all that she writes here - it is even more relevant in the times we are living in. I hope her words inspire you as much as they do me. It is time to step it up and live our unruly lives! Take charge and demand to know where your food comes from and be aware in every moment of what you are feeding your body, your soul, your mind. This is the best way for all humanity to join together and live the lives we were meant to. And please reach out if you want ideas to set up your own garden of heaven...

We can do this!

Without further ado, and with Millisa's permission, I am posting this thoughtful, insightful and inspiring blog of hers.

Recently my husband and I sat down to a delicious meal of chicken, heirloom eggplant, and potatoes. To say the meal was deeply satisfying would be an understatement. The satisfaction didn’t come from the fact that it filled the belly (which it did) or delighted the taste buds (which it overwhelmingly did). The true satisfaction that I derived from that meal was knowing that outside of a sprinkling of salt purchased at the grocery store, the entire meal right down to the herbs we seasoned it with was cultivated and produced entirely on our little farm. The fulfillment came from knowing exactly how much work, effort, and sacrifice went into providing that simple, delightful, nutritious meal to our plates. The joy came from knowing exactly how it was produced, how it was harvested, and knowing exactly what we were eating. I didn’t have to wonder if my vegetables had been sprayed with pesticides or what kind of life that chicken led before we ate it. I knew because I was part of the entire process. I call that food sovereignty.

There are others out there like me trying to reach this goal on a daily basis, and a select few who have been continuing the tradition all along, but we are a limited bunch. While more and more people like me are desperately trying to reconnect with the food we eat and the true costs associated with that food, we are but a drop in the bucket within the food to mouth disconnect that has invaded our culture. And there is a clear war being waged on both our desire and our ability to reconnect.

Not having this connection to the food we eat has allowed us to turn a blind eye over the last century to the loss of 90% of our food diversity. It has allowed and encouraged us to ignore the mass environmental pollution and destruction created by the way the majority of Americans eat; to ignore incredibly inhumane suffrage of animals; to ignore soil depletion and subsequently a weakening of the mineral content of our food (while the vitamin shelves grow larger to replace that loss); to ignore mass spraying of food crops which practices are linked to a wide array of health ailments; to ignore water quality; to ignore slave labor wages for both immigrants and farmers (because people have become accustomed to cheap, governmentally subsidized food); to ignore mono-cultures and the problems they create; to ignore an indisputable reliance on the grocery store shelves being full; and perhaps worst of all, to buy into the hype that only gmos can feed the world while we here in this country discard nearly half of ours in the trash. Honestly with what the massively scaled, pesticide and herbicide laden, and governmentally subsidized practices dominating this country are producing, that’s exactly where most of that food belongs. We’ve been sold on the fallacy and convenient idea that it is the only way to provide food for ourselves and the only way to eat, and as a result, eating for most in this country has become a mindless, ungrateful practice.

What my partner and I do on an acre of land can easily be produced on your typical urban lot, but the powerful interests that be have decided that lawn and palm trees are the better investment and damn the urban or gated community dweller who believes or attempts to invest otherwise. Their efforts are most likely to be quickly thwarted and in many cases penalized by the guy who took down every potential nesting site in their gated community before branding it with the misnomer “Eagle’s Preserve.”

The cost is the loss of community that comes from having a locally produced food supply. Food literally brings us to the table. And what I would call ‘real’ food, brings us into a genuine dialogue with the people we share it with.

How have we fallen away from each other socially, politically, economically, and so on? We have metaphorically left the table that sustains, enlivens, and connects us all. We now eat at the table of mass media, social media, and cheap, nutrient and spiritually deficient food. How many people do you know who make it through a meal without feeling the need to look at their phones?

The direct link to this particular post is: http://www.theunrulygardener.com/homegrown-eating-pleasure/

And here is the link to Millisa's homepage: www.theunrulygardener.com