WHAT IS IN OUR FOOD?

How do we actually know what is in our food? A disturbing article in the Daily Mail states that the nutritional content of the food we eat now is much lower than 50 years ago. Most foods do not taste of anything, bananas could be like eating cardboard. It does not have to be this way. If you have ever grown a carrot or peas and eaten them straight from the ground ( after scraping it and washing it of course), your taste buds might like to explode. Carrots are sweet and tender and peas crunchy and sweet. The quality of what you grow depends on the quality of your soil. The soil can be improved by addition of organic material. The pumpkins I grew last year were huge, and people asked me what I had done to them. No more than recycling the composted vegetables and chicken manure and then put it back on and in the land. The saying, you reap what you sow, comes to mind and I have to say that the reason why I want to be my own greengrocer this year is simply that I like my food to taste as fresh as a daisy and I like my children to experience some of the pleasures that simple home grown fruit and vegetables can give. I went out today to see what is growing in my garden, and apart from a few leftover leeks, I spotted some wild garlic and some very fresh tasting parsley. It maketh not a complete meal, but it sure brings taste in the house and beats bland convenience foods.

There is talk of Avian flu coming to the Uk brought here by wild swans and wild birds. I have been cleaning the old hen house today as I am looking forward to setting up home to 9 hens and 1 cockerill soon. I like chickens simply because they are the only birds I find attractive, ( being a mother hen myself so to speak), they lay eggs, they eat some of the grain leftovers my boys leave, they chatter and cluck and make a nice sound around the place and they produce manure which heats the compost heap up and helps it get to a crumbly moist dark soil which enriches the soil we grow things in. Are they hard work, not really, they earn their keep very well and when you go slug hunting at night, they are always pleased to devour the creatures. Nature can be cruel but wonderful at the same time. Last year I spotted a toad in my polytunnel, it did not stay long because wen the temperature rose, it went away but in the meantime, if did its bit to clear up slugs and snails lurking in the polytunnel. Just shows we can all work together no matter what we do , what we eat and what we look like.