“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.”
—Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Jill and I watched Food, Inc this past weekend, and it brought this to mind. What immediately struck me re-reading this is how quaint “grocer” sounds. No one really has a grocer; what today would pass for a a reasonable connection to our food, a single person or entity we know who sells us food, was too removed even for Aldo Leopold. I guess you can think of “grocer” as “food-production-industrial-complex” or what have you.
On the larger point: Jill recoiled even during the part in Food, Inc showing the responsible farmer slaughtering animals. Even the good guys! she said. I’ll admit I found it gruesome, too, but I think the point there is that killing animals is a necessary part of eating meat and we should be aware that it is. If we’re not okay with it, we shouldn’t be eating them.
