‘Tis the season for buying local, regardless the advertising from the local grocery emporium.
I recall listening to old (literally) farmers as recently as 20 years ago complaining about the demise of the family farm, replaced by a product one of them, Ken Bailey, called “view stew.” He thought it somewhat less than nourishing, though it did seem to attract large infusions of cash in the bank accounts of its chefs, who touted it as a major benefit in the purchase of the houses they had planted on former corn fields.
Ken is gone now. Probably died in the same bedroom where he was born. I stood in his dooryard (that’s what Mainers call their front yard, where your feet land as you step out the kitchen door) as he pointed up to a second-floor bedroom window and proudly announced:
“I was born right there in that room.”
His grandson was the eighth generation of Baileys to work the farm. The first generation was two brothers who received the deed as pay for their service in the Revolutionary War.
Ken was the last person in Maine to deliver milk door-to-door, straight from the cow to your home. He liked to remind me the reason milk is homogenized is because city folks thought it was spoiled when they found the cream risen to the top of the milk jug. So the molecules were beat to death until they would not separate — creating, he said, a granular concoction that would sandblast the arteries of anyone foolish enough to drink the stuff.
I’m not so certain about the second notion, but he was correct on the first part: a lot of urban dwellers I’ve known have been totally unaware that the reason I shook the milk bottle before taking a drink was to mix the cream back into the milk. They just thought I was a little weird. Probably, but there was a reason for the weirdness.
He used to talk about local industry, in which local farmers would take their corn crops to Gould’s cannery (now a tourist trap and crafts emporium). Shoppers who did not live on farms would give Mr. Gould money for the cans of corn, and he’d give some of it to his workers, who put the corn in the cans, and some of it to the farmer who grew the corn, and some of it in his own pocket.
The non-farm people were school teachers and lawyers and doctors and such, who the cannery workers and farmers gave money to take care of issues such as education and contract preparation and other such ailments the need for which would from time to time become evident.
Thus the money made the local circuit. Mr. Bailey thought it a shame that the local Wal-Mart took all the local money and trucked it down to Bentonville, Ark. And who knew where the food came from?
As far as I know, Adams County spinach isn’t tainted, and animals aren’t falling over dead from eating Adams County road kill. (From becoming road kill, maybe, but not from eating it.)
And if there is a problem with food I buy from the stand in Orrtanna or Biglerville or that one on the way to McSherrystown, I know where I got it. (Though I’ve never had a problem from one of those stands, so I’ve never tested the idea.)
I don’t have to wait for the company to deny the problem, then the government to count up the bodies and suggest a voluntary recall might be good advertising. (Though I’ve never had a problem from one of those stands, so I’ve never tested the idea.)
I can’t say Wal-Mart or Costco or Target or K-Mart are bad places to shop. They have things I want I’d spend a pile of time and money trying to find and purchase if they hadn’t collected it all so conveniently in one place.
But as anyone who knows me can attest, food is one of my favorite dishes. It’s nice to know where it comes from, and it’s nice to know I helped someone I know buy a new pickup.
© 2007. Readers may contact John by email at jmesseder@comcast.net.
