Our Health, Our Hope

By Andrea Yoder

The beauty of Spring Creek at Harmony Valley Farm

As humans, we often see ourselves as removed from nature—as if we are looking down on it or walking amongst it yet separate.  We try to control it, but that seldom works out.  In reality, we are nature and our amazing bodies were designed to live in and work in synchronization with the natural world which was designed to work!  So when your mother told you to “Eat your vegetables,” did you ever wonder why?  Yes, the basic answer is “because they are good for you.”  But why are they good for you?  Vegetables and fruits are nature’s medicine, the building blocks and tools we need to detoxify, repair and build our body.  They contain valuable and important nutrients and compounds we need to keep our body functioning optimally.  It’s our job to care for our vessel and give it the fuel and resources it needs to achieve this state.  One way we do this is by consuming nutrient-dense foods.  When our physical state is optimized, we feel good.  We not only survive, but we thrive, have energy and vitality that allows us to fully live, experience and participate in our lives!  It impacts all aspects of our being including clear thinking, emotional stability, conscious living and an overall increased quality of life.  It helps us show up in a bigger way allowing us to contribute in positive ways in the world.  None of us knows our time on Earth, but we each have the choice every day to maximize our personal potential and impact while we’re here.

Doing our part to social distance and cover our faces!

It’s obvious our world is shifting, changing, and in many ways revealing the weaknesses in our society, food systems, political structures, etc.  COVID-19 has affected us all in major ways that go beyond having to wear a mask and social distance in public.  Our work lives have been disrupted and there may be some in our membership who have even lost their jobs.  School will look much different this fall for our students and despite the fact that we all long for COVID to make an exit, it’s clear the impact of this virus will continue.  For how long?  I’m not sure anyone knows the answer to this question.  How do we stop it?  Where do we find solutions?  There are many factors seemingly outside the realm of what we can control and impact.  This pandemic joins the ranks of so many other big issues of concern in our world today including topics like climate change, factory farming, the use of agrochemicals and the impact all these things have on human and ecological health as well as our economy.  Money seemingly buys power, but when that power is used in self-serving ways instead of for the greater good of our society we seem to move backwards, negatively impacting people and our planet.  To think about this can be pretty overwhelming and may at times leave us feeling helpless and anxious about our future.  But that’s not ok.  We are not helpless and we do have a future.  Unless we choose to give our power away, we all still have a say in all of this through the personal choices we make every day.  How do we choose to show up in the world?  From where do we draw our energy and where will we turn our attention?  What do our choices represent and support?  So lets start with something so very basic to our existence--our physical body and the strength we have as we exercise our right to make choices that positively impact our personal health and well-being.

And to think beautiful food like this Red Pepper, Lentil
and Tomato Salad can be our "medicine!"

COVID has brought forth a collection of public health messages encouraging everyone to maintain their distance, wear masks, wash your hands, etc.  On August 14, 2020 an article entitled “Why aren’t we promoting health to combat COVID-19?” was posted by Dr. Mercola.  In this article there are references to research from the scientific literature identifying lifestyle-related health conditions including obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, and hypertension as modifiable risk factors that make an individual more vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 if exposed and may lead to more severe disease and higher risk for a more unfavorable outcome in individuals presenting with these disease conditions.  If you’re interested in reading more of the specifics about these studies, I encourage you to reference the original articles cited at the end of Dr. Mercola’s article.  While I like evidence to support practices, I think it’s already pretty well-established that our lifestyle choices are directly related to our health and wellness whether we’re in a pandemic or not!

Anthocyanins, carotenoids and so many other valuable
nutrients in vegetables such as these gorgeous beets!

For those of you who don’t know this already, my first career path was as a dietitian.  I remember sitting in one of my early nutrition classes listening to a lecture about magnesium that left me amazed that a simple mineral could impact the human body as a cofactor in literally hundreds of biochemical reactions in the human body.  Yes, we can take magnesium supplements, but we can also get magnesium from a wide variety of plant and animal foods including leafy greens.  I also remember learning about anthocyanins, a group of antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables that are the pigment that gives some foods red, blue and purple colors.  The fact that I can identify a nutrient compound in a food by its color was a pretty cool thing to learn, but the fact that they also protect our bodies in many ways through their role in scavenging free radicals that can damage our cells was even more impressive.  Yes, I was a bit of a nutrition science geek, and still to this day am completely amazed by the power of our food to impact our physical health by building our immunity, preventing the development of cancer, detoxifying our cells and so much more.  So when we say we strive to grow nutrient-dense food, this is why!  We need all of these nutrients to build our bodies up and when we eat a variety of plant foods every day the cumulative effects of all of these beneficial plant compounds become our health insurance policy!

The Nash Family, one of our awesome CSA families!
Read more about their experience here!

So in the midst of this pandemic, I applaud all of you for prioritizing organic vegetables as an important part of your diet.  When we take care of our body, our body will take care of us.  When we give our body the nutrients it needs to have a fully functioning immune system, we’ll have better outcomes should we be exposed to COVID-19, influenza or any other potentially pathogenic virus or bacteria in our environment.  Of course we also believe there are many ways we benefit our health by being connected to each other and the source of our food, spending time in nature, and participating in activities that nurture both our body and our souls such as gardening or preparing meals for ourselves.  We have many longtime members who have been eating from CSA boxes for 15-20 years, or in some cases more than 30 years!  They have experienced firsthand the health & lifestyle benefits of choosing to eat organic vegetables from a CSA box.  Many of these families also have adult children who grew up as “CSA kids,” a subset of our membership that I will forever be lovingly jealous of! These people are doing great things in this world as engaged members of our society.  This year we also have many members who are new to our farm.  Some of you have participated in CSA before while others are experiencing this way of sourcing your food for the first time.  We hope you are seeing, feeling and experiencing the positive benefits from something as simple as eating fresh food rich in nutrients.

Mother Nature never ceases to amaze us with her
expressions of beauty.

What does the future hold?  The answer to that question actually falls upon all of us starting with ourselves.  As the bounty of the summer harvest floods our kitchens, we can’t help but feel nurtured by Mother Nature who continues to feed us regardless of a pandemic or any other seemingly insurmountable life situations.  So keep eating your vegetables, cook, enjoy, be nourished and thrive.  Our society needs each one of us to contribute and be fully present to the unfolding hope of tomorrow.