Outside The Box

When both sets of my grandparents were still hale and hearty, there were many summers when our family helped maintain three separate gardens. Some of my most cherished memories include late nights past bedtime breaking beans on the screened porch and listening to the old stories, my grandmother’s “working man’s” lunch of salt pork and green onions, and helping out in the kitchen while the whole family pitched in to can beans, tomatoes and vegetable soup. How often the dreaded chores of youth become the longings of adulthood.

The late summers of my wistful nostalgia were energized by regular family trips to orchards, farmers markets and produce stands to obtain whatever the family enterprise didn’t already provide. Peach and apple orchards were numerous across Georgia and the Carolinas, and naturally the peach orchards were the kids’ favorite because in the days before every movement we make was monetized, you were free to eat as many peaches as you wanted while you picked.

The orchard we liked best had superb fruit and the prices were affordable. It was a family owned and operated business, and all hands were on deck during harvest time. As is still the case with the few orchards remaining today, you could buy the peaches pre-picked or pick your own for a significantly lower price.

The orchard prospered and grew over the years and was passed down to younger generations who were even more adept at making a profit. New crops were added, and new products were shipped in from far away. Eventually, you had to ask if you wanted to know if your produce was locally grown. Over time, the business evolved from a farmers market where families could make their dollars go farther buying healthy food, to a tourist attraction . The business expanded to a second location. Some of the family members went into politics. We rarely visit now because the prices have outrun even our runaway inflation.

Last week Tracey and I ventured into the upstate of South Carolina in search of nostalgia and to follow rumors of places where our dollars might go a bit farther. We found a beautiful farm with a restaurant and a store that sold locally produced products as well as that array of jars, all those jams, jellies and sauces that gather dust in scores of roadside attractions waiting to catch the traveler’s eye.

We bought a few expensive late season peaches, enjoyed a panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, made a note to return some day when the restaurant was open, and left a bit disappointed. We had some tasty morsels to take home but had failed to find the bargain we sought for pumping up the larder with some canned peaches and frozen cobblers.

On the way home Tracey spied a handmade sign pointing down a two lane blacktop, so we turned down the country lane to see what we might find. At the edge of an orchard stood a handbuilt shed and a small store with a floor of rough sawn planks. Two delightful ladies were busy sorting peaches and apples for sale, and we visited with them for a while.

The elder of the women was well past retirement age and bright as a button. She told a sad story, however, of the struggle to keep the orchard going. “I don’t know if we can do it another year. The work is hard on my husband as it is, but now all the trees need spraying and he just can’t do it anymore. We can’t find anyone to do it for us. Nobody wants to work. “

We bought a half bushel of delicious peaches and promised to return in October for the late season apples. The peaches were exactly half the price of the other farm, which was a fourth less costly than the Georgia tourist market we mentioned earlier. Inflation, by the way, is not evenly distributed. On average a dollar goes farther in South Carolina than it does in Georgia. Groceries in Hiawassee are more expensive than they are on Saint Simon’s Island.

This week I was looking at some health statistics comparing what ails us now to the state of our health a few generations back. While medical science has advanced tremendously, we have actually become less healthy in several ways. The incidence of diabetes has increased about sevenfold since the 1970’s. Also, during the 70’s, about 13% of adults and 5% of children were considered obese. Today those numbers have increased to 43% for adults and 19% for children.

There is not a single culprit for this decline in health. Sedentary lifestyles, processed foods and sugary drinks all contribute heavily to the problem. A deeper dig reveals significant cultural and economic changes have also contributed. Most of the food we consume now is corporate food from centralized distribution points far from the retail markets. To preserve that food for the long journey from the factory farm, through the processing plants and then on the truck to the grocer, a host of additives and preservatives are required. Even our “organic” food is sealed in endocrine disrupting plastic.

There is a growing demand for fresher, healthier, “farm to table” food, but the supply lags far behind that demand, and healthier food is simply not affordable for a vast number of Americans. In a nearby town there is a farm to table restaurant where you can get a $50 pizza or enjoy a couple of small entrees for about $65. The food is healthy and delicious, but unlikely to be on the menu for a salaried person who has a half hour for lunch.

We have to eat, and when there is limited time for a meal, fast food and processed food is the only choice. There is no homemade canned soup in the larder at home because we didn’t have time to plant a garden. Fertilizer was too expensive. We were too tired from working so much overtime. The local produce markets are few and far between, and more often than not their produce comes from the same faraway sources as the grocer.

I wish I knew the antidote for our species’ flawed ability to reason. It’s a peach of a problem. Some of us want to linger in the past. Some believe that “progress” is always good. We seem incapable of selecting the best from both, keeping what works and discarding what doesn’t. We’re all left or all right, all black or all white. Clearly, centralization is good for some things and bad for others. It’s great for building interstate highways and defending our shores. Not so good for a food supply chain, an electrical grid, or for that matter, a system of government.