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The Way Out

© Bob Ewing

Snow, we had snow yesterday morning. I was coming out of the Thunder Bay airport, at approximately 7 a.m, on my way to a workshop at the Airlane Hotel and there it was: big, white flakes falling, falling, falling. I have to admit it was pretty, but too early. Today, it is windy and cold. We have had frost three days in a row so the Harvest is over. If you haven't picked it, it's gone.

Fortunately, we got our tomatoes in from the community garden plot on the weekend. We only planted two plants this year but they did well. Still a few green tomatoes but I do love fried green tomatoes, especially with fried onions and hot peppers. Served with eggs for breakfast, a great way to start any day.

Just before I sat down to write this week's column, I was eating a red delicious apple. I don't normally eat red delicious apples, I find them tasteless unlike the ones I remember from my youth, when the only time we got them was a Christmas in our stocking. The same with tangerines and mandarins, they were treats only available for a short time each Holiday Season. Now they are around all the time and have little or no attraction for me, the fun has gone. Special foods served at special times enhance the celebration. When they become readily available all year round, they are no longer special and the celebration is diminished.

We need to reconsider our relationship with food. This statement will come as no surprise to regular readers but we have allowed our food system to get out of hand as we move to a globalized agricultural system that strains the environment and taxes local economies. As I have said before, we need to move from consumers to producers. As we make that shift we begin to find our way out of the current downward spiral our society is in.

There are several ways we can develop the local economy through our food choices and make the move from a consumer society to a producer society:

1- form food growing and marketing cooperatives,

2- grow and market food ourselves,

3- grow food to meet our own needs,

4- grow some food and buy the rest from local growers,

5- buy all our food from local growers.

There may well be derivations from the above five ways and that is cool. We need to begin this process now. The way out is there, let's take it.

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