The author dreams of tending to their garden and harvesting vegetables while also acknowledging the preparatory work that needs to be done first, such as repairing the chicken coop. They resolve to pay more attention to their local foodshed this year - the flow of food into a community from surrounding farms and producers. Consulting maps of local foodsheds can help make the connection between eating locally and learning about the sources of one's food, such as the farmers who grew specific produce. While the author isn't ready to solely eat food from within 100 miles, they vow to be more aware of where their food comes from in order to nurture a bond with the land that provides for them.

1. Letter from Birdland-Foodshed - Gather.com : Gather.com
In Birdland the sudden thaw is welcome, even though it fills the yard with mud, which decorates the
kitchen floor with paw prints. The mailbox fills with gardening catalogs and IâEUR(TM)ve already
drafted an order, already dreaming of tender green tendrils twining up the chicken wire
walls of my garden coop, already smelling the fragrant purple bean
blossoms, already picking the cucumbers and beans dangling from above. But wait. I pull back and
remember lots of work needs to get done before the harvest. For one thing, the garden coop still
houses the chickens, and I need to make repairs to their permanent home before moving them out.
Meanwhile, though they are supposed to be scratching in the soil in their search for nutritious
tidbits, and that scratching will allegedly cultivate the garden and rid it of insect pests, they are not
doing their fair share. IâEUR(TM)ll likely have to do some of the cultivating and dig their droppings
and composted hay into the beds myselfâEUR"as well as remove the top layer for the outside garden
beds. Even with the deep mulch of half-composted hay I put in the floor of the garden coop, the
earthen floor tends to harden with the cold.
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The garden catalogs provide images for dreaming, but
also food for thought. IâEUR(TM)ve resolved this
gardening year to pay more attention to my foodshed. I
read about foodsheds in the February/March issue of
Organic Gardening. Foodshed is a term first used in the
1929 book by W. P. Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed.
ItâEUR(TM)s something like a watershedâEUR"an area
of land where water flows into a large body of water. Sno w melts, rain falls,
and the water flows into streams, into rivers, and then empties into a lake or an ocean. A foodshed is
the flow of food into a community. Cornell University has a foodshed mapping tool on its website,
which maps the sources of locally grown food in New York State. Some restaurants now have maps
of their foodshedâEUR"colorful graphic representations of the suppliers of the food they
serveâEUR"which help the consumer make the connection between the theory of eating locally and

2. the actual fact of doing so. Eating food grown only within a hundred mile radius saves carbon
emissions and supports a more sustainable form of agriculture, but you have to ask a lot of
questions. A foodshed map can make that process easier, as well as help us imagine the source.
Where did this broccoli come from? Who planted it? Who tended it? Who harvested it, and how did it
get to my plate? Do the chickens who laid these eggs enjoy the sunshine? Scratch in a green yard?
Or are they confined to a small cage? In the summer at the farmersâEUR(TM) market we can
sometimes meet the farmers who grew our food, but at other times we can still make a spiritual or
even just a virtual connection with the growers of our food. I think that every time we cons
ider the whole process that brought our dinner from the earth to the plate,
we nurture the bond between ourselves and the generous earth.
For the first time in weeks itâEUR(TM)s warm enough to release the chickens into the yard without
danger of frostbite, and they run to the patches of brown grass newly uncovered of snow. I order my
seeds and prepare the first pots for indoor seedlings. At least a little of my foodshed will be in my
own back yard. For the rest, I vow to be more aware. I know IâEUR(TM)m not ready to give up
everything that canâEUR(TM)t be grown in a hundred mile radius, but the act of looking into the
origin of my supper will help me move my life closer to the life I imagine: one that nurtures my
spirit, my community, and my planet.
Garden in Beauty; Eat in Peace; Blessed Be.
Mary Lucille Hays lives in Birdland near White Heath. She is interested in the relationship between
social justice, food systems, agriculture, and ecology. Birdland now has a fan page on Facebook. She
can be reached at LetterFromBirdland@gmail.com, or by snail mail care of this newspaper.
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