This past weekend I traveled to Yuma Arizona to visit my Dad for his birthday. The weather was beautiful--warm and pleasant. We went to the swap meet, traveled to Mexico, and took a long drive through the field just outside of town. Yuma sits right in the middle of the Imperial Valley--acres and acres of lush farmland created by silt from the Colorado River depositied over centuries of time. The local agricultural buraeu claims that 90% of the US winter vegatables consumed in the United States are grown in the Imperial Valley--and I believe them. We drove past fields of lettuce, cabbage, califlower, radishes, broccoli, alfalfa, and wheat. The weather is so warm and the water is so plentiful that most of the feilds produce 11 crops a year. My favorite fields are those growning lettuces mixes. There are several rows of each lettuce variety making it possible to mix and pack the bags right in the field. The fields resemble green and red striped rugs.
Yuma is also known for its dates and citrus fruits. There are miles and miles of trees heavy with ripe oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. My Dad has a grapefruit tree in his back yard. I went out Saturday morning and picked my breakfast grapefruit right off the tree. It was delicious--far superior to one that has languished in my local grocery store for a week. This is the point to my rant--have we lost touch with our nutrition origins. Do consumers today even know where our food comes from--and I don't mean from the grocery store, I mean how does it come to be in the first place?.
When I was 8 we moved out of the big city of West Valley to the small rural farming community of Highland, Utah (those of you that are familiar with Highland today will find that description humorous, but it was true). We had only been in Highland a few days when we were invited by our new neighbor friends to help "butcher a hog." We hung on the fence watching as Dale and Robbie's Dad shot a very large pig in the head, dragged the carcass behind the tractor to a large tree, and hung the body upside down from a stout limb. In respect for those of you with squeamish stomachs I won't describe what happened next, but my ghoulish 8 year old mind found the entire process fascinating. I thought that meat came already cut up from a butcher shop. I'd never seen the process from the beginning.
A few years later we had a couple of Missionaries living with us. One day Mom was away and Elder White decided to surprise her by cooking dinner. Elder White was a 1960's farm boy from the back woods of Kentucky so he cooked dinner the same way that he would have if he had been back home. He went out into the backyard and caught a chicken (as it turned out she was Mom's best laying hen). We thought that he was Daniel Boone reincarnated. The rest is history but once again I was fascinated to watch food production from its inception.
Today I grow a garden but that's about as close as I come to the food production cycle. But I'm grateful for the knowledge and appreciation I gained from seeing the process from beginning to end. I feel sorry for my children. I don't know if they appreciate what work and time goes into producing the food in their local market. Nor do they value the farmers that make dinner possible.
5 comments:
I've eaten three grapefruits in the last two days!
I absolutely love grapefruit. My roommate and I always split one in half, put brown sugar on top and enjoy with a spoon. Delicious!
Wow that description of Yuma is nothing how i have always viewed in my mind. I am from Phoenix, and have only driven through Yuma, and have always considered it the armpit of the South West, but maybe i was too quick to judge.
So my Grandpa is from California and every summer we would go to his house which had a lemon orchard in the backyard, and other properties around my grandpas house grew other citrus fruits (like cumquats!?!?! i love those) I still remember the smell of that place and I grew up in the orchards playing still the flag and throwing lemons at each other. Good times. I have seen the process of the whole pig thing to, but it was a lot messier because in Mexico they didn't use a gun, just a knife to the throat. Yeah. I am done.
I honestly believe that if it weren't for my parents big garden i would never have come to enjoy vegetables. Still there is nothing quite like a garden tomato or head of lettuce, but it will do while i am stuck in the winter of utah.
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