Animal, Vegetable Miracle Thoughts: Bacteria and Dirt

Bacteria. Yuck, right? Make you sick, right? Except for the good ones. Strains that can be helpful. But have you ever noticed? We don't call them that. Bacteria, I mean. We call them cultures, or probiotics, or whatever else, just not bacteria. Somehow I don't think Activia would sell quite as much if they used "Good ole bacteria in every bite" as their slogan. And what about those commercials showing all the bacteria in your mouth. Better get yourself some good toothpaste to kill them off.

Dirt. Yuck. Nobody wants that in their house. Get it out. Out! And certainly don't get it on your clothes or put your hands in it. What? Food comes out of that? Certainly we can't eat that. It's DIRTY! Better buy your food from the grocery store where they sell clean food.

:) Just saying, we have some conceptions in our culture that we are going to have to change if we are going to eat locally and healthfully. If we are going to get a new generation of youth interested in gardening and where their foods comes from, we are going to have to get over the yuckiness of digging in the dirt. Especially if their parents aren't introducing them to those experiences at home. We are going to have to recognize the interconnectedness and balance of each organism in our environment, even bacteria and dirt.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Thoughts: Kids in the Garden

So, if we will be forced to change how and where we get our food as the amount of fossil fuels we had dwindles, that means my life, but even more so my daughters' lives will be affected by this. They will have to eat differently. Which makes me think: How will we help them do this? What knowledge will we share with them? They will need knowledge about agriculture. About how things grow and how they can grow them. They are not (in the current system) going to get that in school.

Carla Madigan writes, in the book The Backyard Homestead, about this lifestyle being "...a way to pass along to your own children skills for self-sufficiency and to create in their minds the memory of time spent doing something practical and fun with the people they love. It's amazing to me that I can still remember so much of my food life from when I was a child. Something from those days must have stuck with me, because I've become a person who gardens, forages, bakes, makes cheese, and puts up fruits and vegetables, much like my parents did."

Yes, that is the hope that I have for my daughters. That they would have positive memories of times shared as a family and skills they can use in the future. That they would also see value in resourcefulness, frugality, the flavors of homemade food, and being good stewards of this Earth.