A Place for the Food Network

No, I’m not going to challenge Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, Ree Drummond, Alton Brown, or Ina Garten, but I am going to share personal observations about the food network around Merry Mount.

Summer evenings, just after sunset, are often serene.  One can observe bats leaving the barn loft as they begin their nightly hunt for mosquitos and other insects.  Occasionally, one encounters a skunk as it digs for grubs.  Our flock of chickens scratches one last time in search of a worm or insect. Frogs and toads also embark on their nightly search for food and water.  Owls, hawks, and herons fly in search of moles, mice, small rabbits and fish.  Foxes and coyotes prowl the grasses for the same. One can become acutely aware of the great ecosystem of which we are a part and how interconnected we are to it.

Twice a day, I head to the barn to feed and water three barn cats, seven goats, four ducks, and ten hens.  If in my laziness, I try to ignore their needs, I hear from them.  One can learn a great deal about animal behavior by closely observing their habits around food.  I find that my own behavior around food is similar, but fortunately, I have many more dietary choices from which to choose, and am married to a wonderful cook.

Recently, Rett and I received a wonderful retirement gift from our friends Mary Anne and Stu, a book entitled, How Not to Die, by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM.  It has influenced my thinking about a healthy diet more than any previous book that I have read.  Anyone that knows me well is aware that my attitude about eating is determined by my sense of taste and not by a logical choice, but by sharpening my awareness about how my brain prompts my dietary urges, I am slowly making healthier dietary decisions.

Fortunately, the approximately three acres of land we call Merry Mount, provides ample space for growing a garden and we revel at how some hard work and special care can turn seeds into a variety of delicious fruits and vegetables.  While we are far from self-sustaining, we are attempting to create a small food network within the larger ecosystem of which we are a part.

The Current

Having once put his hand into the ground,
seeding there what he hopes will outlast him,
a man has made a marriage with his place,
and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back.
His hand has given up its birdlife in the air.
It has reached into the dark like a root
and begun to wake, quick and mortal, in timelessness.
a flickering sap coursing upward into his head
so that he sees the old tribespeople bend
in the sun, digging with sticks, the forest opening
to receive their hills of corn, squash, and beans,
their lodges and graves, and closing again.
He is made their descendant, what they left
in the earth rising into him like a seasonal juice.
And he sees the hearers of his own blood arriving,
the forest burrowing into the earth as they come,
their hands gathering the stones up into walls,
and relaxing, the stones crawling back into the ground
to lie still under the black wheels of machines.
The current flowing to him through the earth
flows past him, and he sees one descended from him,
a young man who has reached into the ground,
his hand held in the dark as by a hand.

            -Wendell Berry

For twelve consecutive days this summer at Merry Mount, the temperature has exceeded 90 degrees and there has been no rain.  One notices the strain placed on plants and vegetables.  Climate change is upon us and we are forced to adapt to it.

The ancient Greeks believed that there were four elements that everything was made up of: earth, water, air, and fire. This theory was suggested around 450 BC, and it was later supported and added to by Aristotle.

Many indigenous peoples believed in an Earth-Mother that controlled the four elements.

Enter Darwinism: The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring. 

According to Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the theory has two main points: "All life on Earth is connected and related to each other," and this diversity of life is a product of "modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in an environment over others.”

The food chain describes who eats whom in the wild. Every living thing—from one-celled algae to giant blue whales—needs food to survive. Each food chain is a possible pathway that energy and nutrients can follow through the ecosystem.

It would seem that homo sapiens have developed cognitively to a place of superiority over all other species and, therefore, have gained a position of dominance.  I’m not so sure.

Enter SARS-CoV-2.  Suspected to have originated in bats, this new virus moved through the “food chain” and is now ravaging the human population, and epidemiologists are warning that drastically changing the natural environment is a catalyst for other more deadly pathogens.

Humans beware.  Time has arrived for us all to be aware of the great food network of which we are apart, and to assist Mother Nature rather than fighting against her.

CPW