One minute I rave on the lack of news coverage on global warming and the revolution it might cause and something does show up dealing with the other desirable revolution, the sustainable Revoultion.
On the front of the same paper that refused to mention GW, they did cover the efforts of a young friend, Tony Miller, to provide locally grown produce and meat to the surrounding omnivious, guys like me. Tony and family has been working hard at this for a number of years now and making some gains providing food through subscription and farmers markets. Now, when I say working hard, I mean that.
His families efforts have been multifacited ranging from chickens to Shitaki mushrooms. I think I saw a hog out there as well. I am also sure that he has to irrigate his holdings so the efforts have to be profound, but heading in a direction that one would like to think is sustainable in some way. They have to make a living and I am sure that will not include buying a bunch of American style toys, no monster pickups, just a bare knuckles operation.
Now, it is true he is appealing to the herbal-kerbal, organic, Burkenstock crowd but I like to think there is another motive and I am sure that he and other young folks like him are aware of this. What they are doing may be not just to provide good organic food (he doesn't produce Doritoes) but it is also to produce food locally, to get away from trucking food into Wisconsin from all over the world, a world that in the future may not be as available to us, or if it is, it will be very expensive. We all know that this trucked in, chemically pounded, factory-farmed stuff is not like his. Most importantly, I like the idea that right here in the upper midwest we now have commercially available, high quality vegetables and meat---and we did not have to burn the very finite petroleum to get it here. Unfortunately, if everyone would need his food, there would not be enough. We need more of these folks, and lots of them.
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