Embracing Ceremony Blog

“Eat Your Vegetables!”

Right up front I’ll tell you this blog doesn’t have much to do with weddings, but it is such a beautiful, heart-warming story I’m compelled to tell it. So if you’re looking for a Taos wedding officiant, jump over to my home page and learn about the services I offer.

I also do landscape design and maintenance and as a part of my Beyond Wild Flowers business I run a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program from my home gardens at SpiriTaos. Most of the year I’m feeding about 10 people which is a great feeling! One of my CSA clients is a young couple that sponsors three foster children. The stories these women tell me about the joy these children derive from the fresh veggies makes my heart sing! They pick up their veggies en route to school and they can’t wait to unpack the bags of vegetables to see what they’ve gotten. Sometimes the carrots are gone before they get to school. And they delight in taking raw beans into school with them to share with their friends. Yes, it is only mid-May, but thanks to my coldframe and greenhouse I’m able to provide a lot of seasonal-type vegetables quite out-of-season.

If only more youth could be exposed to truly fresh produce. There is no taste comparison to something that has depended on oil to transport it around the country from its place of production to the grocery store. Not to mention the oil-based pesticides and fertilizers used in growing the food and the diesel to power the tractors that do much of the work. Here in northern New Mexico there is an active community of small farmers producing food the “old-fashioned” way and selling it through CSAs and farmers markets.

Speaking of oil, I’m thrilled that my home, SpiriTaos, is now 100% carbon neutral. In fact, I’m putting power back out on the grid with my new oversized solar array on the garage roof. It joins the water-heating panels on my house that provide my domestic hot water and radiant heat for my home and greenhouse. I capture all of my roof water and put it to use in the landscape and my gray water also irrigates part of my landscape.