Freedom: You Are What You Eat

There is a good piece on the River Cottage website under the topic, ''Why Grow Vegetables''. I wish I had read this before heading off to a party in my old stomping ground in North West London. Cornered in the kitchen (it was a party after all), two guys, an old friend and a new acquaintance, were asking me how I filled my time now ''out in the sticks''. Without hesitation, I began to regale them with accounts of our new allotment venture, yet half way through it began to dawn on me that they didn't quite get it.

Damning me with unintended feint praise, my good friend concluded it must occupy a good bit of my time – and money. Money? No way!, I protested. A packet of seeds is a pound-fifty, onions sets and potato chits a few quid a bag. Then people give you stuff for nothing and you keep stuff back for next season, not to mention the stuff already growing there; asparagus, rhubarb, raspberries et al.

Then new acquaintance chipped in that I had, of course, to factor in my time. Once I did this I would find that my carrots and beans would be quite expensive; I might as well put in the equivalent overtime at the office and eat in four-star restaurants instead. I just knew they hadn’t got it but without Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and being slightly more greenhorned than greenfingered, I fumbled for mitigation in the face of hard reason. I’m not going into business!, I think I said. it's just a hobby…

It's much more than a hobby though. I knew that then as much as I know it now – they wouldn't understand. As the article puts it so well, When you buy your vegetables, you are a slave…. When you grow your own, you are free! It’s not the money or the time, it's the priceless spirituality gained from involvement in the whole enterprise, beginning to end, and onwards. You have to grow your own to appreciate this, I think, but it is the truth as you will know. Even if you never want to do it twice you will still know, and fruit and vegetables bought, cooked and eaten thereafter will be a conscious compromise.
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Why Grow Vegetables (RiverCottage.net)