The song says “Summertime and the living is easy,” but I don’t see that outside the window of my office.

My husband–AKA Farmer John–and two other guys are building a slanted bean trellis on the farm on a humid June morning. But in a few weeks, when the Kentucky wonders climb up the short side, it will make the chore of bean picking less difficult. And on the tall side, John is hoping the Asian long beans will stretch and wind, then dangle down to be pulled. John is working hard now to make his job a little easier later. That’s what farmers do.

But when it comes to choosing food, most people want it to be easy. And it the summer, I can’t blame them; just schlepping grocery bags from the store to the car is a chore. But there’s more to consider than just throwing some stuff in your basket and heading home.

Building the bean trellis

I’ve disconnected from the lifestyle in which a quick trip to Costco or Farm Fresh would supply all my family’s meals. For the last 9 years, I’ve been living on a 5 acre suburban organic farm with a passionate soil builder and vegetable grower. This has made me see food in a very different way- not as a product, but as a continuing story from seed to table. Our family’s food shopping includes ordering bulk items, like brown rice, pasta, frozen veggies and salad dressings from Virginia Garden, (at the Virginia Beach Farmer’s Market at Princess Anne and Dam Neck Roads) filling in with a few items from the organic section of Farm Fresh, and building meals based on what foods are growing now on the farm, including the eggs from our hens. We don’t deny ourselves; we order fabulous coffee beans from a fair trade, organic roaster in Massachusetts, enjoy ice cream and Rita’s Italian Ice in the summer, go out for the occasional meal and order Pizza from one of our local favorites. John makes a point of eating at a fast food restaurant every so often, shocking people who assume he won’t touch the stuff.

But overall, what we do is make food choices consciously. When Buy Fresh, Buy Local encouraged us to list our farm in its beautiful, colorful publication, I became aware that there are many sources of local foods in Hampton Roads, many more than I realized. But how many people are willing to step out of their comfortable food ruts to find these places, to seek out the farmers and cheesemakers beyond their neighborhoods?  Maybe, as my sister suggests, it’s a baby step in the right direction if you buy watermelon in the summer instead of in January, or if you buy all your produce grown in the United States. Thumbs up for that idea, sis.

Gone are the days when we could trust our neighborhood grocery store to provide healthy, safe foods. The brand names with shiny, colorful labels make promises of better heart health and lower fat grams, but who knows? Even today at breakfast, I mourned our food innocence, looking at a loaf of bread with assurances of purity: organic sprouted grains, no transfats, no artificial anything. We love this bread. But I said to John, and really to myself:

On the farm you work hard today to make tomorrow easier.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to think about it? What if the package only said “Bread,” and we knew it was coming from a great bakery, made with fresh, whole ingredients.”

The truth is, if you don’t care about the relationship between what you put in your mouth every day and your overall health, you don’t have to think about it. Millions of Americans choose what is cheap, and easily found on the shelves of their super grocery stores. Millions of people never look at the label, or care about the agricultural practices on the farms where their fruits and vegetables grow.

But if you do care about these things, you may have to stretch. The folks who join a CSA make trips to the local farms where they get their food or pick them up at farm markets or neighbors’ houses.

The folks who belong to our CSA help pick and field wash the greens, beets and turnips they got last week. There may be a little soil on their lettuce, but they don’t mind.

While many good folks on limited incomes have a hard time getting any nutritious food on the table (unless they have their own gardens), I’m not addressing them; I’m talking more to the folks who can afford martinis and restaurant meals but who wouldn’t think about the nutritive value of the food they fix at home. Talk about health insurance? It starts with you. It may be quick and easy to down a Pop-Tart and a Red Bull on the way to the office, but how long will that work? Just as many people discover that they can’t really party hard once they have kids and jobs, some also discover that a good meal is made of real, honest to goodness food that grew in someone’s field- hopefully not too far away, hopefully without too much added salt, sugar  or multi-syllabic ingredients.

Convenience or Conscience? Maybe, you can have a bit of both. When was the last time you thought of doing some of your food shopping at a farm market, especially when the crops are coming in, and the beans are easy to pick?