Why we are thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! As our season draws to a close I want to thank all of you for your participation in our program this year. Your connection to us as a food source is what allows us to keep farming. I am grateful that people like yourselves are interested in exploring the specifics of our seasonality and entrusting us to provide much of the food that you eat. It is this support that lets us practice the farming and the education that we love. Thank you.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it is simply a celebration of connection and gratitude around food. If we are what we eat, then when we share food together and eat the same things, I think we grow together. In this way it seems possible that Thanksgiving (and maybe some other holidays with particularly specific menus) serve as a larger kind of communing experience. Here we are pretty much everyone in the country gathering one night of the year to eat a feast of most of the same kinds of foods. Part of it could be that we are all experiencing a turkey coma or a starch overload that puts us into similarly altered states but I think it offers some important kind of shared experience. I like to think that the common connection of cultural expectation for the meal of Thanksgiving directly makes us embody commonalities. When people eat meals together they develop a similar shared experience and a communication.  

I am happy and thankful to recognize that this shared experience has become a successful and important part of our working and learning experience on the farm.  As a regular part of our farm work we plan, discuss, delegate preparation to one of us, and share meals made from the freshest and best farm ingredients.  What started as a good way for us to have lunch during a busy work day has become a definitive part of our experience as a farm crew getting to know each other, coming to understand farming, and bonding with this place.  I have come to appreciate the powerful, positive transformative effect that this sharing of food can have.   

I have been contacted by every member of my far-flung family in the last few days asking for pointers, recipes, and menu preparation advice for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately we will not all be able to be together this year but from the four different smaller off-shoot meals being held in various parts of the country I feel a sense of positive influence. As far away as we may get from each other in our individual daily pursuits our hunger can gravitate us back to a center of shared food.  

I wish you and your loved ones a happy Thanksgiving filled with shared experience.  Thank you for a great farm season!

-Jason