When I was appointed managing director of the Wholesome Food Association earlier this year, I started explaining to various friends and acquaintances what it’s all about.
Pretty simple really:
We’re a non-profit organisation providing an alternative labelling system for small growers and food producers who can’t afford the cost and time involved in organic certification but use nature-friendly methods, and supply their produce to local customers.
Most people “got” it immediately and thought it was a good idea. One woman who I don’t know very well was puzzled though, and became rather challenging. Were we all a bunch of hippies, she demanded to know, “hippie” clearly being her shorthand for all sorts of scruffy no-good layabouts.
Well I had to smile, because I was a teenager in the late 1960s, with a predilection for wearing crushed velvet and hand-made beads, and I remember very clearly one occasion when my father forbade me to leave the house because I proposed going out barefoot.
I believed you could save the world by giving out flowers.
Now I believe we may possibly be able to save the world by changing the way we live to include things such as growing our own vegetables and not importing unseasonal food from half-way around the world.
But to answer my acquaintance’s question, I’ve discovered that members of the WFA come in all shapes, sizes and shades of opinion. What I believe they share, though, is a certain idealism, and a commitment to hard work. Indeed the latter can hardly be questioned given the freezing weather of the last few weeks, during which our producer members have been continuing with all the usual tasks involved in caring for livestock and land.
As the list of articles on this site grows, I hope to introduce you to many of the interesting folk who make up this association of ours.
Image above by scragz, used under Creative Commons attribution license