Back to the mason jar
Everyone struggles to let go. At the grocery, we seek convenient sources of food because we’re too busy to cook. Today, Americans rely on Big Food, not mom, to prepare their meals.
The Industrial Revolution was a major turning point in humans’ relationship with food, the Earth’s ecology and the environment. It ripped the nutritious heart and soul out of fresh food and changed all facets of lifestyles from human development, resource wars, food purity, health, longevity and social conveniences. Like ripples in a pond, its destructive impact would not wash shore of the nation’s psyche pond until the 1960s counter culture movement.
Not so long ago, American communities bartered and shared; this created supportive, peaceful communities centered on local family farm produce, dairy farmers, beekeepers and livestock that fed on a heavenly menu designed by the generous universe. Eating food shipped from 2,000 miles away was unthinkable. They canned and unselfishly shared their harvest.
A content, self-sufficient community is knit together by threads of friendship born by preparing, canning and sharing homemade foods bottled with loving care and captured freshness. Awakened Hoosiers are disconnecting from Big Food and factory farms (where animals are treated inhumanely, vegetarian cows are turned into cannibals, cans and bottles are lined with cancerous BPA and GMO produce is altered into unholy nothingness).
Home food preservation is experiencing a delightful revival. Discouraged by dead convenient food, increasing energy costs, the globalization of faux food and a growing awareness of environmental and social impacts of industrial agriculture, Hoosiers are returning to the ancestral traditions of actually growing, canning and sharing their own food blessings with friends, family and neighbors.
Changing the way we eat causes delicious changes. I have faith you will eventually transcend unhealthful eating behaviors and embrace local sustainability. Let’s refresh our relationship with food and learn natural eating skills that encourage emotional, spiritual and physical well-being.
An unconnected, malnourished body is not the best place to cultivate a peaceful heart and community; it might just begin in a mason jar.
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