Blog
"Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.” Naomi Shihab Nye
Nourish seeks to engage the whole community in talking about food, equity and ways we can rebuild our food system from the ground up. Ultimately we want to see that everyone is able to purchase nutritious foods, while producers/farmers get a fair share for their work. We are working to create food places in Peterborough City and County where everyone feels welcome and has the opportunity to learn about how to grow food and how to cook simple and healthy meals.
It all started rather innocuously. Pawlick wanted to make a very simple salad. He bought four attractive-looking tomatoes at the supermarket and discovered, once home, that they were too hard to slice. So he decided to place them on the counter, to let them ripen. They didn't. After several days, out of curiosity, he picked one tomato up, took it outside and threw it against a fence, to see how it would fare. "It bounced off, undamaged, like a not-very-springy, red tennis ball." (p.2) Why was it so? Pawlick was hooked on finding out how the answer.
Our dominant relationship to food seems to be as consumers. In our busy lives, there is little time for gathering food, cooking from scratch and thoughtfully reflecting on where our food comes from. The challenge with this approach is that it significantly undermines our capacity to establish a healthy food system, one based on taking care of the land, valuing those who grow our food and ensuring that everyone is able to eat nutritious food.