Friends with farms...

Remember I told you I'm watching my friends property? I had to go out there the other morning to get the low-down on how it all works...where the hay for the goats is...where the chicken feed is...what's ripe when...etc. After about two hours I had it all down pat so I went in to visit with Stephanie a while. After a few minutes Richard came in and said he'd "put a few things by my car" to take with me. Cool.

Well, when Richard says "a few things" he really means "a back seat full"! Good heavens. There was this whole box...plus the other veggies I shared earlier in a cardboard soda flat...AND...

...these! Watermelons! And one of them was yellow inside! And it was gooood. Probably the best of the bunch. Now...I have to say...in the past I have not been real experimental with food. Especially different colored food. Even as recent as last winter I was pretty stuck on orange carrots, green peppers, red tomatoes and red watermelon. You know, the usual.

Well, as you know I got a little adventurous and bought that purple bell pepper and I felt pretty fancy and daring about it. And that encouraged me to do a little more poking around heirloom seed catalogs and web sites. And really...so much of the food we used to eat is NOT "the usual" colors. "The usual" colors have been carefully selected over the years because that's what people buy the most of. Is it truly our preference? Or have we just been conditioned? I don't know. To think about it is frightening. I think the bottom line is money. It all boils down to money. (Doesn't it always?)

Anyway...I didn't set out to talk about money. Because all of this, gardening and sharing and learning and simplifying, it's about so much more. It's about doing my small part to make a difference. It's about gaining a little bit of freedom with each tidbit of knowledge that I gather. And I don't know about you, but freedom sounds pretty darn good to me right about now.