Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth Read Free Page A

has made sure that our family and his friends have received many signs and much guidance and love from him. It has been quite a journey, these past years.
    For many years people have asked me when I was going to write a book. I would always reply that I was just doing things that were already written in books and I recommended they read those books. Now, however, I’m doing things that are not in existing books and it is time to write my own. What you will read here is how I’ve combined the principles of GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farming with everything else I’ve learned and put it into practice, in a way that works for me and which I trust can also work for you and many others. We can thank Travis for my actually getting this done. The signs and guidance from him about this have been quite strong lately. So, with help from heaven, here it is.
    All the worksheets in this book are available for download at http://tinyurl.com/mf4a33r

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    Sustainable Diet
    T HE WORD “ DIET ” has many connotations. Hearing that word people often think of having to eliminate certain foods from what they are eating. The definition of “diet” in my copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language begins “The usual food and drink of a person or animal; daily sustenance.” That’s what I’m talking about: getting your usual food and drink, your daily sustenance, in a way that is sustainable. The definition of “sustain” in that dictionary is “To keep in existence; maintain; prolong.” A sustainable diet would be one in which the food choices are grown in a way that maintains the earth so that it can be kept in existence. Just growing this diet would replenish the earth. It’s a different way of thinking about what you eat.
    For the most nutrition, the least distance in space and time from the soil to the table is the best. This means that if you are following a sustainable diet you will be eating locally and seasonally. What you don’t grow, you will acquire from local growers and your selection will be regional. For far too long people have had access to food shipped in from faraway places. The environmental cost of that is tremendous. Currently people have a hard time discerning what is in season in their area when the grocery store has anything they could want, all the time. Begin to notice the origins of the food in the produce section of your grocery store.Growing your own or buying from local growers quickly educates you to seasonality. That doesn’t mean that you will never again eat something grown elsewhere. Cultures have been trading for eons. Those items will become treats, as they once were, rather than everyday fare.
    You will need to cook, a skill that is being lost with the availability of so many restaurants. Much of what is offered as prepared food does not meet the definition of a sustainable diet. When I was growing up, most people took their lunch to work in a lunchbox. Dinner together as a family was a given each night and eating in a restaurant was a rare occasion. I realize that times have changed, but if you are going to be eating food from your garden or from local growers you will be cooking it yourself. When you do go to restaurants, patronize ones that serve local food from sustainable growers. You vote for how you want the world to be with every dollar you spend, with every bite you eat.
    Not everything can be eaten soon after it is picked, so you will need to learn how to preserve food. Your excess tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbages, etc., will need some attention to save them for later months. A sustainable diet uses the least fossil fuel in this preservation. Although I still do some canning, I’ve turned to solar food drying and fermenting as my preferred methods of preservation. Some crops can just be stored until time to eat them. All you need to learn is the proper handling.
    The world population has topped 7 billion and is rapidly increasing, stretching thin