Some people love policy walk stuff and some people love lobbying stuff and I would just
say what do you enjoy doing and do it.
The Stephen Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, stay in your sphere of influence and
do what your gift and talent enables you to do, the passion of your heart and so we talked
about finding your own kitchen, we talked about buying local food, buying unprocessed
food, we talked about growing some yourself and beyond that obviously any kind of activist
work you want to do.
Now if there were one policy thing that I would like to see happen that I think would
blow this wide open, it would be to give every American the right of food choice.
We don't have freedom of food choice in this country.
It's pretty amazing I think that our culture has decided that it's perfectly safe to feed
your kids cocoa puffs, Twinkies and Mountain Dew, but it's not safe to feed them raw milk,
we can't until this pickles and compost grown tomatoes and so believe you me everywhere
I go there are entrepreneurial farmers ready to access their communities with processed
and unprocessed locally grown foods but are denied access due to food safety laws, food
police, people that are saying you know you consumers are too ignorant to make food choices,
we've got to protect you from your own stupidity and so you can't get raw milk, you can't get
compost grown tomatoes, you can't get amethyst pickles and I'm saying if we had freedom
that every single person, every single citizen could purchase their own food from whatever
source they wanted essentially saying I own my body, you don't own my body, the government
doesn't own my body, these three trillion internal bacteria, they're my babies, they're
mine and I'm responsible for them, if we had that, that kind of thinking obviously speaks
to health care and all sorts of the whole safety net stuff that's here to protect us
from ourselves you know but my point is you know what I absolve you of being responsible
for me and for the people who want the government to be responsible for them, fine let them
eat the government sponsored food but for the people who say that's fine I'll take the
risk and I don't even expect you to fix me if I get you know hurt myself, yeah that's
right, that's right, I would rather have freedom than your straight jackets and if we allowed
that it would so revolutionize the market, the food market opportunities in this country
that we can't even imagine what would come out the other side, everywhere I go the number
one thing the most culturally subversive thing you can do is to get in your kitchen and buy
unprocessed food, that cuts out the processors, the adulterators, the prostitutes, it cuts
out all those things and so find your kitchen, we don't whatever appreciate anymore domestic
culinary arts, it's not that hard, I'm not talking about being barefoot pregnant in
the kitchen anymore you know for all you women out there, I'm talking about using techno
glitzy stuff and we've got time to bake, we've got slow cookers, we've got bread makers,
ice cream machines, you know, cuisine arts, I mean grandma would die for the stuff that
we've got in our kitchens alright, so I'm not talking about spending 10 hours a day
in your kitchen preparing meals and going back to a washboard alright, what I'm talking
about is using our techno glitzy gadgetry to prepare unprocessed whole foods in our
kitchens and if you do that it doesn't really take that much time and it's like everything,
it's a skill and you start and you get better at it, you know it might be daunting at first
but start you know, take it easy, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, you know
how do you rediscover this one little point at a time and you just start in and sure enough
you know over time it pans out, I think beyond getting in your kitchen and that involves
your kids you know and you can do your fraction lessons on table spoons and cups and a third
of a cup and all that, I mean this is all part of just life but beyond that grow something,
try to grow something, I mean you know if you've got a parakeet get rid of the parakeet
put in two chickens you know, they make a lot less noise and they lay you a couple eggs
and they'll eat all your table scraps so you don't really have to you know buy any feed
for them and you know there's something magic about growing something for yourself even
if it's a window box, even if it's a postage stamp for those who can't, I mean some people
in New York City people are growing food in pots on balconies, you know this whole pot
gardening thing is becoming a huge thing, we supply a restaurant in DC that has a great
big courtyard and the whole thing among the tables are great big pot, it's a potted garden,
you know they've got asparagus and strawberries and fig trees and all sorts of things, you
know this is really doable and thirdly I'd just say you know don't be afraid to go discover
your you know your farm treasures in your community, you don't have to watch a video
every night, turn it off and go visit a farm and you'll be surprised the you know the treasures
and the open door and the excitement that will come from discovering your local farm
treasures, the beauty of these portable structures, the whole idea of portability and intricate
symbiosis is that it is scalable both up and down and so for example you can have a flock
of six chickens in a you know in an 8 by 10 little floorless shelter and put it over your
garden beds, you know Andy Lee wrote a book about this called Chicken Tractor basically
incorporating laying hens with vegetable production, that's certainly one, rabbits, rabbits work
really well as an eater you know mowing the grass and fertilizing and providing meat
and you know and they're not they're not noisy and in an urban setting a rabbit is not noisy
like you know like a chicken or something like that, you know you probably want to stay
away from cows and llamas and things like that but certainly the small stuff like chickens
and rabbits can all be scaled down into you know into a very small scale, I mean if you
had four or five rabbit does and one buck, I mean you could produce a tremendous amount
of your meat in a year and it would be quiet, you'd have rabbit turds to side dress your
flowers and your vegetables and you're you know it's a very it's a very regenerative
system, not everybody's going to grow things, not everybody can grow things, not everybody
wants to grow things and that's fine I'm glad it gives me a job you know but I think generally
let me answer it this way and maybe this will be an answer that people haven't thought of
is that vegetables and produce and fruit are primarily water, those are the things that
need to be grown as close to the point of consumption as possible simply because of
the cost of carrying water, the other things you know spices, coffee, tea, the dry goods
you know flour and dense things, nutrient dense things like meat and cheese, those
are things that are more appropriate to ship, to transport simply because they're much
more nutrition and less water and so that's something to think about and you know a few
tomato plants out you know by the front walk I mean you can stick a couple of tomato plants
almost anywhere and they are they are just prolific and you there's nothing that tastes
like a garden grown tomato and so you know there's a lot of that can be done now another
thing that can be done on many any single dwelling is a southern solarium which is you
know simply a plastic you know plastic hoop thing to season extend so you can grow your
own mescaline mix and lettuce there again you know those are the things that are most
vulnerable to perishability and are more water based and so if you can if you can grow more
of that in a local garden in your own garden or get or acquire it right there close farmers
market then then you're you're I think being more you know kind of ecologically responsible
recognizing that this water-based stuff simply we can't afford the energy to transport 1500
miles like we can real nutrient dense things.
