Stone Soup Revisited

It’s less than a week before the CSA boxes begin their regular arrival for those of us signed up for the Morgans’ CSA program. For those of you unfamiliar with CSA, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. My family bought a share of the farm for the summer and so we will receive a share of the harvest for the summer. I can’t help but think about the summer when we did the Stone Soup project at Beagle Books. For eight weeks, a group of us gathered at Beagle to discuss Barbara Kingsolver, Steven Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver’s book, Animal Vegetable Miracle and to explore the many opportunities we have to indulge in locally grown food and drink. We took two field trips to the CSA farm (one at the beginning of the season and one later in the season) and were blessed with visits from local food experts including Forestedge Winery, Bill Maki (wild ricing), Chef Tom (morel mushroom hunting), Donna Ludwinksi (bread making), Sari Mabbett (cheese making), and more. We ended the summer with a feast of local foods. It was a summer of exploration and change for me, and I hope for others. Maybe we should have a Stone Soup reunion. I wonder if the other participants still think about choosing local foods when making their food choices. Do they pause when discovering a desired food traveled here from another continent, consider the food miles, and put the item back? I hope so. My mantra that summer was, “start small.” I encouraged my fellow Stone Soupers to make one small change, make it a habit, and then make another small change, etc. Have the others done this? To be honest, I myself have not made a new small change in some time. To my credit, though, I have stuck with the habits I created that summer. I still buy raw milk from a local farmer, eat local meat, buy a CSA share every summer. I avoid bananas. I buy wine produced by my local winery. I pick strawberries at Keskes Farm. I’ve noticed one of the grocery stores in Park Rapids makes a point in their ads to highlight local items available. Has a change for the better occurred right here in the small town of Park Rapids? I hope so. I credit the Kingsolver/Hopp family – their experiences eating only local foods for one year recorded in a book for the rest of us is invaluable. That is truly the power of a good book.