Tunes for a Monday Morning
When you fear you're just no good....

Food Revolutionaries

Lovely veggies (photo from the Chagfood blog)

Saturday was Food Revolution Day (sponsored by the Jamie Oliver Foundation), with people all over England joining together to celebrate the beginning of the growing season and to promote locally-grown foods, and food education. The folks at Chagfood, our local Community Market Garden, participated by hosting an Open Day, so we trundled along to visit the newly planted fields, with Howard's mum, brother, and nephew in tow....

Herb garden and veg field beyond

Herb garden

C12

Gypsy caravan

Young plants in one of the poly-tunnels

Kid's table

Wildflowers

I've written about Chagfood in a previous post -- and about Samson, a Welsh-cob/Dartmoor-pony cross, who helps to plough the fields and haul boxes of produce into the village:

Sampson and EdEd Hamer with Samson

Sampson drawing the ploughSamson ploughing, with Ed Hamer & Chinnie Kingsbury

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Food is important in our household...and I say that as someone who spent my youth basically living on popcorn and coffee, god help me. But art-making requires mental clarity, steady reserves of energy, and the physical strength for long periods of concentrated focus...all of which become a good deal harder to maintain once the blush of youth has passed (especially for those of us with medical problems to complicate the matter). As we climb into our 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, all that age-old, boringly practical advice takes on fresh relevance: we actually do need good food, good sleep, and good exercise to keep those interior motors humming. When we ignore these things, and run ourselves down, art-making suffers. Or slows down. Or stops.

Sometimes when young people ask me for advice about embarking on careers in art professions, they're surprised when I put "take care of your health" (i.e., don't live on popcorn and coffee) at the top of the list. But creative work takes stamina. Concentration takes stamina. And the natural stamina of youth, alas, simply doesn't last forever. If we're in the arts for the long haul (and we are, aren't we?), then we need to do all we can to make sure these good bodies we inhabit will last a long while and serve us well. Good food. Good sleep. Good exercise. There are no shortcuts.

And if the food is local, organic, and delivered by a horse named Sampson, so much the better....

Howard Gayton, Terri Windling, Sampson at Chagfood's Food Revolution DayHoward, and me, with Samson.

The Chagfood GatesThe Chagfood gates. All are welcome.

Photo credits: Some of the pictures above come from the Chagfood blog, the photo of me was taken by Howard, the others were snapped by me on a cloudy Saturday afternoon here in the hills of Devon.

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