Hey! I’m guest posting over at my great friend Addie Zierman’s blog as part of her One Small Change series. Addie is a STELLAR writer, thinker (with a new book out!) and member of my writing group, and this series has been a huge source of encouragement to me. Each post has taught me how to incorporate better stewardship of the world I live in into my life. Head over and check it out, and be sure to read some of the other great posts. Oh, and buy her book. Really. Do it. 

Here’s the beginning to get you started.

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I grew up surrounded by food.

My grandparents were dairy and crop farmers. My dad likewise raised crops, feeder pigs, and beef cattle. I spent my formative summers eating fresh corn on the cob, mulberries, green beans. Peppers. Zucchini. Spinach and asparagus, homemade bread.

Come July and August, my mother became a produce machine. Corn was cut and frozen. Tomatoes were canned for salsa and sauce. Mulberries were boiled with sugar and lemon and canned as sauce to pour over vanilla ice cream. And when the freezer was getting low, my dad sent a pig or a cow to the butcher, and came home with boxes and boxes of white paper packages carefully labeled in blue meat locker ink.

But when I stepped out from under my parent’s roof, food took on a different shape for me. A new, costlier shape. It was no longer just, well, available. What was worse, I started seeing it in terms of dollar bills that, as a college student, I never had enough of.

—Keep reading