I was in Gardenia again today, at my girlfriend's grandmother's house... Overjoyed that the big persimmon tree I'd visited last month was virtually untouched! Closer to ripe on the tree, nearly all of the Fuyu's have turned a vibrant orange. I climbed on the fence and picked an entire bag's full.
To my joy, the grass in grandma's back yard is quite healthy soil. Though it is mostly populated by a very boring grass, many "weeds" have rooted themselves in. There were nicely sized dandelions everywhere! So, I made my point to pick only a few leaves off of each plant I saw, making sure not to kill any one of them off.
On the way back to my girlfriend's house, we stopped at the local avocado tree, and picked what is nearly the last of the previous year's avocados, making sure to leave this year's for last. The family that owns the property upon which the tree resides does not mind so much, because I climb into the high branches where they don't really go. I'm thinking of bringing them a bag or two of fruit tree fertilizer to enhance next year's crop as a thank you gift.
The thing I consider most about harvesting food is what we do to the organism. I am a vegetarian because I don't particularly enjoy slaughtering living beings, when such a thing is not required. Though perhaps they do not share the same form of consciousness with humanity, I am observant of an animal's desire to live according to its instincts, and its capacity for suffering. We may try to separate ourselves from the element of death, by turning a blind eye to the slaughterhouses, but in walking away from our ancestors' more pastoral approach to animal husbandry, to the more modern factory agriculture, we have taken away the most precious liberties of any living being.
Similarly, I consider the life of the planet earth, and the ecosystem at large. Is it not in the best interest of all things living to maintain an equilibrium with one-another? Even the predators at the top of the food chain (excluding us misbehaved humans) are necessary, lest their prey population explode and overtake their food source. Nature balances deficiencies and excesses over gradual periods of time, yet sometimes the most extreme results of imbalances (ie. extinction) become the inevitability.
This is all a very round-about way of suggesting that we should be conscious of what we take from the earth. I enjoy very much, the harvesting of fruit from the tree, because it serves the tree's best interest. But does harvesting a plant or killing an animal serve its best interest? Probably not, and though we must eat, and manifesting death to promote our own lives is the nature of things as presented to us, we must be considerate of this process. To honor our food sources is to protect them, and to minimize the waste and destruction that result from them.
Modern agricultural practices are the precise antithesis of honoring the hand that feeds you. Monoculture, conventional (I prefer the term "artificial") farming, feedlot operations, and the like are all very devastating to the environment. It is a system in which the input required to grow and harvest, combined with the environmental degradation, outweighs the life-sustaining benefits we reap from them. In other words, it's a losing game in the long-run.
So, the beautiful and bitter dandelion greens I find along my way do not die at my hand. I shall only pluck a few leaves from each. Certainly, death is at my feeding hand, but I will always be considerate of my kill, regardless of the level of consciousness possessed by my sustenance in its life. This is how it must be, because I care about the whole, as much as any individual part of it.
ft.
