How Did We Get Here?

I guess the better question would be: how did I get away from this? Both sets of my grandparents were farmers. They raised cows, boiled down maple syrup, and worked extensive gardens. My grandmother canned and preserved vegetables and fruit and sewed and quilted. They ate fresh food, wasted very little, and in general provided an example of how to live a healthy, “green” lifestyle. A simple, happy life. I have fond memories of following my grandfather around as he worked his garden, watching Grammy sew, and bouncing around in the back of an old Jeep as we went up the hill to pick blueberries. Those were things that they needed to do in order to survive, and as such, they could be considered ‘work’, but they found satisfaction in these activities. They didn’t have the “green” mentality of today – it wasn’t thought about back then – but they lived in balance by working their land and observing the effects of their actions on that land. That makes me wonder how things have changed so much in one generation. How did I get caught up in consumerism? How did I become convinced that I had to buy so much stuff? When did I stop caring about the avalanche of things sliding out of my home as trash headed to the landfill? I guess that none of those questions matter as much as does this: How am I going to get back to what my grandparents instilled in me when I was a child tagging alongside on the farm?

To start, I needed to get out of the city. Now, I don’t want to infer that living in a city is bad. I have many friends and family members that live in cities and suburbs. A lot of them provide excellent examples of living a healthier, sane lifestyle. My mother-in-law lives in a busy suburb, and still manages to be a great encouragement towards better eating by finding fresh, healthy food. Some friends of ours know way more about cloth diapering (and its benefits to health and the environment) than we ever will, and they live just outside of Boston. The city isn’t bad. It just isn’t for me. I needed an environment that inspires me to do the things that make for a healthy, responsible life. I needed to find an area where sustainability is the culture. A place where there are more restaurants serving food from local farms than there are fast-food restaurants. A location where most of the people around us either have a garden or support local farming by getting their vegetables through a CSA. A culture that rejects widespread development, and encourages you to ride your bike to work and mandates recycling. Overall, a place where there are a lot of people who are in search of the same values that I am pursuing…so we moved to Vermont.

And then we had Little Man. There is nothing in the world that will inspire you to a healthy, sustainable lifestyle more than raising your own child. Something about being responsible for someone who can’t fend for themselves tends to make you very conscious about what you feed them, what substances they come into contact with, and how to give them the best start possible in this world. It also makes you more aware of the need to live sustainably – treating the world around us the best that we can, so that our children can enjoy the same things in nature that we enjoyed as kids. Never in my life did I imagine that I would use cloth diapers or make my own baby food. As we raise our son in Vermont, surrounded by a community that desires sustainability and healthiness, we find that there are excellent resources that help us to make healthy and safe choices. There is a local shop (BeBop Baby Shop) that provides laundering services for cloth diapers, removing the ickiness factor. When we fail in our attempts to make appetizing baby food, we find that almost every store - right down to some corner markets and country stores – carry jars of organic baby food.

Overall, being surrounded by a community of like-minded people in pursuit of health and environmentally friendly lifestyles has made it easier to make what we consider to be better choices for ourselves and Little Man. As we make decisions on how to raise him, lower our environmental impact, and step away from the consumer-driven culture that dominates our country, we find local resources that give us information and practical assistance in making the changes we want to make.