Once in a while in my life, I find something that awakens a passion in me that I forgot was there. It happened the day I was invited to try riding a horse after helping to pitch fresh, sweet-smelling straw into the stalls of a barn just outside the city. It happened the first time I saw a band I'd never heard of play live music that plucked strings in my heart and stomach in a small, intimately crowded bar. It happened when I first picked up an SLR camera and managed to capture a candid portrait of a child in soft, beautiful window light. We've all been there. The spark occurs unexpectedly, in seemingly unremarkable circumstances, and perhaps it's because it catches us so completely off guard that it strikes so deeply.
Most recently, passion grabbed hold of me when I was reading a book. In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan had sat, collecting a fine layer of dust, on my bookshelf for months, waiting patiently for me to find the time and desire to pick it up. On the ordinary, unremarkable day that I finally opened the book, I wasn't expecting my life to change. Nor was I expecting to finish the book in the wee hours, after becoming so engrossed in it I was unable (and unwilling) to put it down. I closed the cover and laid back onto by bed with eyes closed and slightly burning, wheels turning in my head, and an itching, restless feeling in my legs. I felt compelled to move. To write. To run. To scream. To ACT. But what to do with all of this new information? What actions could I possibly take to even begin to offset this frantic, sick feeling that was spreading in my stomach?
The book was the first contact I had with a movement that is now growing into a revolution - it's the story of food. Our food, and how we get it. It's something we think so little about, and yet is so important... vital for our survival as a species on this planet! Our industrialized food system is horrifyingly broken, and in becoming aware of this, I found my life forever altered. I dove headlong into a new world, and each new discovery in this world further cemented my suspicion that I was finding the biggest passion of my life. I began reading everything I came across on the subject, each new piece of information adding fire to my belly. Novella Carpenter's Farm City. Thomas F. Pawlick's The End of Food. Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was the last straw. This brings us to present day, and my realization that I have a new direction in my life that will inevitably lead to new discoveries, great joys, and heart-wrenching disappointments.
And so, dear reader, I invite you to join me in this adventure. I am now a little city girl with big country dreams, living in the suburbs of Southern Ontario. I want to grow food. I want to feel connected to the earth again, and to find a better way of life for myself and my husband. I want to wake up in the morning and relish the thought of living. I'm not sure yet what this means, or even what it looks like, but while I figure that out, I'm going to do the best that I can with what I've got.
This is the birth of Mo Farm.
