Thunder Snow- Harbinger of Rough Times?
February 3, 2011
The prognosticators were all calling for a winter storm this week that will impact 100M people in the US. With the days getting longer, we have been busy with seed orders and anticipating the smell of newly awakened soil. The old-timers say that thunder snow is a harbinger of drought. With Mother Nature as our partner, we never know what we will get, except that over time, it will mostly average out.
Our free-range chickens have been laying more eggs and enjoy the movable chicken tractor that we cover with plastic in the winter and call it the Florida room. What if our whole country could become aware of the changes needed in our food and farming systems to become healthy and sustainable- just like this mass awareness of this inconvenient winter storm? The snow will melt quickly, but the bad food we eat will hang around a long time- literally.
Our Midwest topsoil washes to the Gulf of Mexico to join the remnant oil from BP as our kids are dealt a shorter life expectancy than us because of food and life-style; but yet we don’t hear the alarms being sounded like we hear when a not-so-unusual winter storm approaches! How about Jim Cantore giving a “be-on-the-alert and stay vigilant” report from the cafeteria of a school at lunch time or at the fast-food drive-thru?
We get so focused on the wrong thing that we go to the supermarket and pay $3.50 for a pound of chicken broth when we can buy the whole chicken in the meat department for $3.50; feed a family of four, boil the remains and make a gallon of broth, or $28.50 worth- retail in the box. Our food and farming systems are changing, but I think we should have the same urgency as the approaching thunder snow. Fall in love with food and have a relationship with it! Then, share that passion with those you love.
