In 1990, a winter morning on an Alabama farm taught me what real food as nourishment actually means. Some lessons stay with you.
Jean and Carol — two remarkable women and partners — were farmers a little northwest of Tuscaloosa. That year, they invited a group of us to do something unusual.
We prepaid for the season, shared the risk, shared the work and shared the harvest.
Jean and Carol divided us into neighborhoods of about seven households. Each week, one person from each group would go to the farm, help with some of the harvesting, sorting and packaging and bring it back to the others.
It wasn’t a pickup box.
It was participation.
That first January, after bountiful spring, summer and fall harvests, Jean and Carol went on vacation. They left us instructions and trusted us to tend the vegetable garden ourselves.
The Best Food I ever Tasted
One sunny winter morning, a handful of us walked the rows together. The air was cool and bright. The soil was dark and quiet. We picked sugar snap peas and broccoli, filling baskets to carry back to our neighbors.
I remember standing there and popping a pea pod straight into my mouth.
It was the best food I had ever tasted.
Crisp.
Cold from the air.
Alive.
Something Inside Me Had Shifted
I can still feel the January sun on my face, still taste that sweetness. What I didn’t realize then was that something inside me had shifted.
As a result, food was no longer abstract.
Not calories, numbers, or virtue or control.
It was soil.
Weather.
Hands.
Time.
Community.
Over time, those plants depended on us.
We took turns tending them.
Together, we watched them grow.
We shared the bounty equally.
Jean and Carol taught us gently. They showed us what to do and then trusted us to do it. I felt competent because I had been taught. I felt included because I truly belonged.
In time, that experience formed me.
It’s part of why vegetables feel normal to me.
Why seasonality makes sense.
Why repetition feels steady.
Why nourishment feels relational.
It didn’t start my food journey.
But it transformed it.
Years later, when health challenges required more structure and more skill, I wasn’t starting from nothing.
I was starting from soil.
How This Could Look in Your Life
You may not live near a farm or join a CSA. Your turning point may look completely different than mine.
But something happens when you take even one small step closer to where your food comes from.
Something shifts when food is grown, tended, or shared. It becomes real. It becomes nourishment.
Ask a farmer a question.
Grow one herb on a windowsill.
Visit a farmer’s market.
Cook a vegetable you’ve never tried before.
Pause long enough to taste what you’re eating.
Jean Mills and Carol Eichelberger started the Tuscaloosa CSA in 1990. It was one of the early Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) projects in the United States.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like What If We Started With What’s Good?
