Grow the Change: A bit slow on the Slow Food scene

20 October 2008

A bit slow on the Slow Food scene

We just watched the closing discussion from the 2008 panel at the Slow Food Nation Conference in August. The panel consists of some of the greatest activists and writers in the good local food and social justice movement: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser and Carlo Petrini.

We are a bit slow on the uptake, six weeks after the conference, but our own slow food season has come first.

If you haven't seen this yet, it is well worth watching.

http://fora.tv/2008/08/30/Slow_Food_Nation_Closing_1_of_2
http://fora.tv/2008/08/30/Slow_Food_Nation_Closing_2_of_2

2 comments:

Chiot's Run said...: I subscribe to the slow food blog and read most of the articles. Mr Chiot's and I are big advocates of Slow Food. We've been teaching some friends to slow down and enjoy what we eat, they're catching on and starting to do it more frequently (even without us around). Now if we could only convince them to eat local pastured beef & drink raw local milk.; October 20, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Freija and Beringian Fritillary said...: Three convincers: its good, clean and fair. That is the 2008 Slow Food theme for the conference. Good, meaning it tastes good, a good convincer. Clean, meaning it does not harm the environment or out bodies. Fair, meaning it does not harm our social fabric, or siphon money and resources only to the top of the economic ladder.

A value system I think most of us would aspire to, but it is eroded by a culture of Fast, Easy and Cheap. Fast, easy and cheap are hard to turn down, especially when we are cacooned from the consequences of this deadly trio.; October 23, 2008 at 5:00 PM

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The way we live

Just in case you are curious about the way we live... We produce enough income from a half-acre market garden to live a simple, debt-free lifestyle. We are off-grid and produce our power from an 80 Watt solar panel to run the things we need. We hydro-cool our perishables, and can, dry or cellar our food instead of running a fridge or freezer. We cook and heat water with wood, year-round, which means getting a fire going each morning, even in the heat of our two week long summer, and doing all the cooking and washing before the heat of the day. We ride bicycles to get where we need to go, especially to the Community Internet Access Center, and barter for rides into town for shopping a few times a year. In our Northern garden, Zone 4, we produce and preserve our own vegetables, herbs and most of our grains in a half-acre garden and acre grain field. We keep a small herd of goats, and a small flock of hens, to produce our meat, dairy products and eggs. We live seasonally, our daily life in the spring centers on planting and cultivating, our daily life in summer centers on harvesting and preserving, our daily life in fall centers on preparing for winter, and our daily life in winter centers on reading, learning, writing, philosophizing, planning and crafting. We are always looking for ways to innovate the tools and techniques for growing food on a home-scale. And we are always looking for ways to strengthen the effect of our lifestyle choices by connecting what we do with the larger community.