Reading this week's feature story about the menu for the first Thanksgiving, one cannot help but be thankful for all the ways our food choices (and cutlery and linens) have evolved since that first celebration.
In 1621 when the colonists at Plymouth sat down with the Wampanoag Indians to give thanks, their food choices were definitely limited and they were absolutely more limited than what a 'localvore' might eat today.
The idea of buying food that is locally grown for all the good reasons there are for doing so, is a concept whose time has come, and a movement for which we might all be thankful.
Buying our food locally will help keep local farmers in business and successful farmers means the preservation of Vermont's agricultural history of small family farms as well as the preservation of the working landscape that sets Vermont apart from other areas of this country.
Buying our food locally ensures that we know where it comes from and we know how it was grown and where it was grown. It means our food comes from next door rather than California, Ohio, Florida or points farther away.
When growing food becomes a corporate undertaking, accountability is lost. Witness the contaminated spinach debacle of this fall and how long it took to identify the source of the E.coli contamination that killed several and sickened dozens.
It's wonderful in our country of opportunities and plentiful consumer goods to have the option of purchasing all produce and all foods 12 months of the year, but we need to temper this 'wealth of choice' with some smarter choices.
We have many blessings here and many, many food choices that others would love to have, but that does not make them all the best choices. We absolutely have many more choices than those who supped at Plymouth and gave thanks in 1621, and for that we can give thanks, but we can also consider rethinking what food means to us and how it gets to us.
Thanksgiving, of all the holidays celebrated in this country, is one of the 'purest' in terms of possible motive. It's about giving thanks for the harvest and having people with whom to share that feast. Here's hoping that when we celebrate the holiday in ten or twenty or thirty years, there are still local farms supplying our fare.
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