Focus on Food: A monthly column about food, because everything else is just what comes after
BY Gretchen Stinson - March 2025
Why food? Why do you focus on food, and not on plants? Your business is Serendipity Mini Farm, so it’s not just food, right?
Well, the thing is…our farm is about the food. The food we can produce for ourselves, and for others, and about teaching our children where food genuinely comes from. And about teaching other people’s children (of every single age) how to prepare it.
There’s a meme going around the internet right now, and yes, it’s funny, but….it goes something like “if I had to find my own food I wouldn’t even know where to start…. I don’t know where Little Debbie lives”. And yeah, it gives me a little chuckle, but it’s kind of an uncomfortable chuckle, because it’s so true. Processed food has become the absolute norm. People not only don’t grow their own food anymore, but they don’t cook it either. I don’t mean everyone. I personally know a ton of people that grow, or at least shop local farmers markets, and prepare their own food, but it’s because I am living in this world.
I also know a ton of people that eat out nearly every meal. They use time or convenience as the why, which I get, but it only takes a little bit of planning to make sure you have homemade convenience foods at home, ready to grab for those on the go days. Plus, it’s so much healthier, so much cheaper, and, we then have so many more choices and get to eat our favorites. We then tend to also make healthier choices when it comes to actual meal planning for dinners at home (If you’re planning your snacks, quick breakfasts, easy lunches, and planning your dinners, it’s just as easy to shop for it all at once).
There are still those people that have gotten used to eating out because of time and convenience, that also lose their connection to the food they are actually eating. Not only are they no longer growing their food, or preparing their food, but they are also forgetting where food actually comes from. Many that shop at the grocery store, still fully appreciate that the chicken comes from some farm somewhere (and man, we are all feeling that right now with the price of eggs). But I have heard a lot of people, even in my own generation, and especially in the generation of my children, that forget that their favorite chicken sandwich didn’t just come from the drive thru (how about that…we have gotten so rushed in our lives, we even shorten drive through to drive thru on the signs). And, no, our favorite little ‘nuggies’ didn’t start at the store either. They started at a farm. Now yes, good chance that farm is of the commercial kind, big and warehouse-y, very little daylight, mass produced, but I’m not even here to talk about that.
I’m here to remind people that their food came from a farm. Be it a friend’s backyard hobby farm, or a mini farm, or a generational passed down hundreds of acres of land farm, or one of those big commercial warehouses. Someone grew them, and that doesn’t happen overnight. Our food doesn’t just come from our nearest grocer ready to cook. It had to be hatched or planted or birthed, it had to be watered, fed, fertilized and doused in sunlight and vitamin D. It took time. Whether it was pasture raised or artificially caged, it all still took time to grow.
Our fast food has made everything seem fast. Our curbside pickups, our door front deliveries, they have all combined to serve us a disconnect between the farm and the food, from where it comes from. I have literally heard out of the mouth of a self-confessed addict of a chicken fast food restaurant say “ewwwww, you process your own chickens?”. Um…. Yeah?
Please understand, I don’t believe that’s something anyone can do, or something everyone should. I also don’t think that every single person should be rushing out and loading up on chicks right now if they don’t know how to care for them and forgetting that it takes a commitment and four to six months to get a single egg. Without a doubt, even “back in the old days” there were people that had different strengths and services. Some butchered, some made clothes, some taught children, some built useful things, some delivered mail, some worked at the shoe shop, some grew veggies, some provided healing, whether through herbs or penicillin, and the whole world went round, and everyone was respected for what they had to bring to the table. Whether the actual table they ate at, or the symbolic table that grew to be able to seat the whole community.
There’s another meme that was going around when we finally bought our 3.5-acre farm six and a half years ago and it has never left me.
“When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence….”
I told someone at our house/farm warming party that in time, I planned to have chickens and at least one other kind of livestock, maybe rotational fruit and veggies, and one day a kitchen classroom. Then I would build a 100-foot picnic table, for farm-to-date dinners. They stared at me for a minute, and then said, “why do your goals have to be so huge, why can’t it be a 10-foot table and a couple of chickens and some tomato plants?” My answer then was the same as it is now. I didn’t plan to only feed myself.
It has taken trials and tribulations, failed experiments and misadventures, livestock failures and gardening mishaps. It has also been amazing to turn hurricane flung trampolines into chicken tractors, boat pilings into sitting areas, an abandoned concrete basin into a community fire pit, upcycled materials into raised beds and turned a whole and empty portable building into a complete and beautiful kitchen classroom. Even while in a spinal brace after emergency neurosurgery, with a walker, a cane, a wound vac, and a home health nurse, as I used a cane to stand up and a broom to hold in the ceiling insulation so my husband could staple it in.
Because I knew that not everything in our lives happened fast. Not everything can be made to happen with the click of a button. Sometimes things take perseverance, acts of faith, and literal blood, sweat and tears, and someone either too stubborn or too dumb to give up.
I’d like to consider myself stubborn and, well, I never forgot, that I didn’t plan to only feed myself.
Now we start collecting lumber. It’s time to build a table and I promise, if you need to find your own food, you know where I live (my address can be found). We have chickens and pigs, fruit and veggies. Someday, I might even have some sheep to milk. I hope for bees soon, and I always have oats. I think we might be able to scrounge up the ingredients to make oatmeal crème pies, together. And when you leave here, you’ll be able to make them on your own, and maybe teach another. That’s why we focus on food, because it’s literally the thing that keeps us all alive, physically, but often, through the power of sharing, it’s the thing that keeps us alive emotionally, because of the connection. The connection of ourselves to another. Sharing food, but also because of the connection from the food to its farm.
If you’re one of the ones growing food, thank you. If you’re one of the ones teaching the next generation how to cook, thank you. If you are shopping the farmers markets regularly and taking your goodies back to your apartment, thank you. If the grocery store is still your ‘bff’ due to time constraints, but you’re still focusing on shopping the perimeter of the store, thank you. If you’re struggling to eat healthier but trying, if you’re beginning to learn how to cook, if you’re bartering tomatoes for eggs, if you’re organizing work potlucks instead of order ins, if you’re gifting cookies at Christmas instead of plastic, all of those things matter. So, thank you. And trust me, my constantly on the go, sports and extra-curricular-filled family has hit the drive through more than I’d like. But it’s the exception, not the rule. My kids know the multi-compartment meal prep containers will hold multiple snacks for the whole day, and to fill it up on certain days because there’s a long gap between when we step off the porch and when we step back on it. And I rarely order fries with that, and nothing gets super-sized for us.
Except that table we are building. It will be big enough for everyone. And you know what? When we have potlucks…those heart shaped pans of ‘nuggies’ and those that were so generous to bring them are always welcome at the table, too. But I promise, the chickens are everywhere, and you will chuckle. Maybe uncomfortably at first, but at the end of the meal, we will all remember where our food comes from, and we will all feel connected, and we will all be fed.