Thursday, February 26, 2009

First, there was reading

Over the past year we have been doing a lot of reading about food and food production. Probably the book that led most directly to the Community Supported Agriculture idea was Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. At the same time as I was reading that, I was also reading Supper of the Lamb by Capon, which is about how we consume food. My friend Mark Pederson lent me the latter book, written by an Episcopalian priest in the 1960s, and it is interesting to see how that long ago Capon was questioning the amount of food we eat, and the lack of regard with which we eat it.

Pollan's book got us to thinking about how we use the seven acres we have, not particularly well. The key to that book for us was that it gets you thinking, even if you realize you cannot reach the ideal. Some of the books you may want to look at are:

Mark Bittman, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, 2009
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, 1967
Ellis Jones, The Better World Shopping Guide, 2008
Ellis Jones, et al., The Better World Handbook, 2007
Barbara Kingsolver, et al., Animal, Mineral, Miracle: A year of food life, 2008
Michael Pollan,
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2007
In Defense of Food, 2008
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2007

1 comment:

  1. Yes, the music that I listen to, and the books I read all come from the 1960's. This is really cool, and how fitting that the barn owls have recently returned to the barn. Maybe they were just waiting for the CSA to get going?
    Joy and Peace!
    Mark Pederson

    ReplyDelete