What Can I Learn Here?

I will never forget the day that I started on this path. Laura and I had just moved to New Hampshire to work at The Meeting School. I had just finished cleaning the kitchen that was my new environment, part of my new job was to manage the school's kitchen and prepare the meals for the community. At the time I was a vegetarian, a decision I had made based on my knowledge of factory farm practices and the assumption that part of what led to my dad's cancer was diet related. 

There were a series of steps that led out of the kitchen and I met the current farm manager there. He was coming in with the afternoon milking and I was headed home with a carton of soy milk. He made some good natured crack about taking his milk over my "milk" any day. That led to quite a discussion about the virtues and vices of the two products. What I realized then and continued to realize over the next several years was that I had a set of facts and understandings that was related to industrial agriculture, not small grass based farms. My decision to be a vegetarian and my conception of that fresh raw milk were turned upside down when I began to understand the difference. 

Thus began for me an education that grew into a passion that developed into a career and style of life. That conversation and that moment when my understanding of the world shifted changed my life. I want to spread that type of moment all around the place by bringing people to the farm and helping them understand the quality and composition of food raised on small, family farms. We are not what we eat, we are what we eat eats....