Oh my gosh!

I got a comment from Julie Zickefoose! I feel like I have had a brush with a celebrity - seriously! I love her blog - the writing is great, the pictures are awesome...and she commented on my last post!

Hoo. Now that I have calmed down a little bit, on with the regular business of this blog - talking about me . In our search for local, organic food here in Conway, we have had some great suggestions from various members of Benjamin's new department. As a result, while we don't have a really good farmer's market, we have found not one but two CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) groups. One provides subscribers with a mixed basket once a month, and another lets subscribers order from the products on hand and then delivers them every other week. I have signed us up for both, and we will be picking up our first basket this weekend. I am really excited about it. The basket comes from the same people who do the one organic market in Little Rock, but we don't have to spend an hour driving there and back (in our poor car with no A/C), and it is steady support. That is what these small, local groups need - our support. Critics argue that there is no way organic agriculture can support the entire population, and that such programs are elitist and out of reach for the poor among us. Yes, they are a bit more pricey than going to the grocery store, but the produce and other food tastes so much better for not having been trucked to Arkansas from California. And no, such small local movements cannot, as they are now, support large numbers of people - but with our support, the amount of land and food devoted to such causes can grow, and the number of people that can be fed can grow, and the prices can come down. No product or business can reach its maximum potential unless it has support. Do you think Whole Foods could have gotten so big without people using and buying its products? Of course not. Not that I want all these little local producers to get as big as Whole Foods - that isn't the point (and it ruins some of the joy of it), but I would like the farmers to be able to support themselves with their labors, and I would like the amount of land that is farmed in sustainable ways to increase. I realize that I am mostly preaching to the choir here, since y'all who read this tend to agree with me about such things, but it never hurts to repeat such sentiments for the few people who stumble across my blog and don't know such things.