Field Trip to the Fields

I may not be traveling anymore right now, but I can still take a field trip. So, last Monday about a dozen Happy Boy Farms employees (including myself) took a field trip out to the fields where our veggies are growing fresh and lively.

One thing that can be said about the Happy Boy farmer's market workers is that we are our number one fans! Which is to say that we probably eat more of Happy Boy's produce than any of our other customers. The running joke is that the people at the grocery store must be laughing at us when they only ever see us buying dairy, toilet paper and beer. Well, maybe not exactly, but when all of our veggies, fruit, bread, rice and honey are coming fresh from the farmer's market, there's not much need for anything else.

Mouths watering, we hit the fields. A few of the veggies were so tempting that they just had to be plucked on the spot. Other than eating watermelons and tomatoes in the field, I also took home a "first of the season" red kabocha squash, a few fresh red cippolini onions, and a handful of okra.

California is such an amazing land. The skies were big and blue and the sun was shining hot. The majority of the fields we visited were in the Hollister and Gilroy area, although I don't know all the exact locations. Greg (the owner of the farm) was excited about our newest field because of the mix of long hours of sunshine with a cool coastal air - perfect for our baby lettuce!

The colors were beautiful, the smells were fresh, and the Happy Boys and Girls were smiling happily. Yum!

By the way, I've used up all my free space on Picasa, so I started another account to fit the new photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bhavanatraveler

Home

I just watched this movie, Home. It's a series of breathtaking aerial images of different landscapes across the planet Earth. A narrator describes "our home" as we move through time from the beginnings of life to the age of petroleum.

It's more of an eco-movie than a meditation movie, but I'm not sure if there's much difference for me. I really like the maxim: Think Globally, Act Locally. And, really that's what my blog is about too: Travel Globally, Meditate Locally. (Maybe that will be my new tag line.)

The imagery in the movie takes us on travels around the globe to see stunning sights from every continent. The story takes us implicitly into the psychology of being an Earthling, although there's no explicit mention of psychology or greed or the primal drives which move us as humans.

What becomes clear is that with the beginnings of life comes the hunger for energy. To be an Earthling, and to be alive, is to be an energy hungering, sucking, slurping carbon-based form. To be an Earthling is to be composed of energy stored in organic matter and to feed off the energy of the Earth, the Sun, or the stored energy of other organic beings. Organic life. Hungry. Licking it's lips. Carbon! Light! Yum!

In fact, it even appeared (to me) as though humanity has just been a pawn in the wide sweeping movement of life to be born of energy and light - a process which has been going on for billions of years and is likely to continue long after the carbon-based human has mutated once again into greatly more complex organic life.

I like the idea of titling the movie "Home," though I was expecting it to be a bit more like a tour through my home to see what we find. I think they had a different agenda. I'll suggest the next movie be called "Earthling."

Anyway, I'm hungry now for some more light-energy stored conveniently in plant forms for my consumption. Time to eat. Slurrp!