August 24/25

The time difference here is three hours behind Vancouver time. So the first morning I woke up excited to start my day at 4:oo am Tahiti time. That is 7:oo Vancouver time. No one else was up so I had to sit and stew for several hours. The plan for the day was that Teremoana and his family would show us around Tahiti.

We got a good sense of the island from our tour. On one side was green rising steeply up, and other side was the lagoon. There is no beach in most places and few of the white sand beaches the south pacific is famous for. But the ocean is beautiful and more than makes up for the lack of beaches. That night for dinner we went to the wharf to eat. There are trucks set up there that sell food and everyone goes there. We went to fish pace where I ordered Poisson Cru, a dish I had heard a lot about, but one that didn’t live up to it’s expectations – that night anyway. Poisson Cru is raw tuna marinated in squeezed coconut meat with vegetables. That night we moved from our little Pension (it was booked) to a big hotel, La Meridian.

The next morning we went snorkeling at the Meridian’s beach. The coral was dead, but the water was warm and the fish were brightly colored. My favorite is the Picasso Triggerfish, a parrot fish that has brightly colored stripes and waves down its body. Later, we took the ferry to Mo’orea and Daddy and I played our duets the whole way across. Paulette and Taufa (her son) picked us up and took us back to the house. That night we also had Poisson Cru, but it was drastically different from the previous night’s experience! The one Paulette made was rich, milky and flavorful. The one from the wharf had few veggies and the coconut milk was more like water. Let me explain a common misconception. Coconut water (usually called milk) is the clear substance that you pour out of a coconut before you eat the meat. It doesn’t taste like coconut. Coconut milk is the coconut meat grated very finely and then wrung through a cloth so the all the meat’s juices come out. This liquid is white and tastes like coconut.

Paulette and Gré own two houses. The one they live in now and a post retirement house. The house they live in currently is owned by the organization Gré works for – he is director of the Economie Rural – the government organization that is in charge of the Opunohu Valley. So when he retires next year, they will have to move to their other house. We are staying in the second house, where Romilda, one of Paulette and Gré’s daughters lives now.

Tahiti Impressions

Air Tahiti Nui Flight 1: I have never been on such a deluxe airplane. The flight attendants started out in a typical dress and skirt suit. Except that their outfit was a bright turquoise and they had Tiare flowers in their hair. Tiare is a Jasmine native to French Polynesia. It is small and white, has seven petals, and gives off the most divine smell. After takeoff the flight attendants, all of who were native Tahitian beauties, brought each of us a Tiare, and then changed into a long brightly colored dress with flowers embroidered on the hem. Unlike on most flights, we got served warm food that was actually flavorful and were given a blanket, pillow and sleep mask. The airplane itself was huge. There were four sections and eight seats across, two by the windows and four in the middle. The plane must have been able to seat 350 or more.

As we disembarked the plane, the humidity hit us like a wave. When we walked into the airport we were welcomed by a ukulele quartet playing songs in the traditional style. The whole feel of the airports was very relaxed; the customs people just waved the pilots and flight attendants through, sometimes giving them a high five. The customs officers were friendly to us and everything was relaxed and comfortable.

We knew that some of our Tahitian family would be meeting us at the airport, but we were unprepared for our greeting. “Our” Tahitian family are the Tahiata’s – my mother’s adopted family from when she was doing her PhD research here 16 years ago. The whole three generations of the family were there: Paulette and Gre, their children, and some grandchildren. We were hung with lei of Tiare and given enthusiastic hugs and kisses (one on each cheek). Paulette had strung the lei with flowers from own garden. We were driven to where we were staying “Pension de la Plage” and everyone except me stayed up late visiting. I went to sleep instead because Je n’ai pas dormi dans l’avion (I did not sleep on the plane).
French Polynesia is a French colony.

We are visiting two groups of islands in French Polynesia, the Tuamotu and the Society Islands. The two islands we are spending time on first, Tahiti and Mo’orea, are in the Society Islands. Fakarava, where we will be going afterwards is in the Tuamotu Islands. Tahiti and Mo’orea are “high islands” – with tall, cloud shrouded mountains and deep fertile valleys: the remnants of the volcanic crater and its caldera. The Tuamotus are atolls, meaning they are made of coral built up on old, extinct, eroded volcanoes. Unlike the Society Islands, they are low and flat because the volcanoes have been eroded away and the land has subsided into the ocean.

The native people here are the Maohi. 3500 years ago the people who would become the Polynesians set out from South-East Asia with an urge to explore the world. They traveled east in their canoes bringing the pig, the chicken, dog, various tree and other crops, and their seafaring technology to uninhabited islands. On the way they stopped and settled in the Society Islands about 1400 years ago. We know that because my mum found the earliest coconuts. When they arrived, they planted crops and made settlements. We now know they reached South America and traded technologies. The Polynesians turned around and brought the sweat potato back with them.

The Maohi culture has been repressed by waves of colonization leading to the present French control. Instead of learning the Tahitian language and culture in schools, French culture and history is taught. The first death toll of a culture is the loss of its language, and most of the younger generation here cannot speak their language. Fortunately, the Tahitian language is now beginning to be taught in the schools and there has been a move towards more independence from France in recent years. It doesn’t seem fair to me that that the French dominate an entirely separate culture. I guess this is the legacy of colonialism

The islands here are beautiful. The extinct volcanoes rise sharply out of the ocean to end with their heads in the clouds. The ridges make a dramatic silhouette against the sky. The shoulders of the mountains are covered in a dense, green blanket. The green makes a sharp contrast with the bright aquamarine lagoon waters. The lagoon ends at the white breakwater that marks the edge of the barrier reef. The rich, deep blue, open ocean water continues on until the ocean meets the sky.

Day 8/9

I have an impressive inner alarm. Last night I overheard that my mum planned to go for a walk at 7:30 with another one of my cousins. I woke up three minutes before she left and persuaded her to take me. We went for a delightful walk in the canyon that is behind my cousin’s house. We left before the day had heated up, but we still worked up a sweat going up and down steep slopes for an hour and a half. We saw geckos, a rabbit and a strange plant that looks like a backbone bleached by the sun.

A canyon is yet another new ecosystem for me. At the top it is dry, almost desert, with few trees away from the gardens around the houses. As I walked down the trails I started to see cacti and shrubs. All the plants – including the trees – seem to have small, prickly, leathery leaves. I asked my father and he said those are adaptations to a dry climate. At the bottom of a canyon there was a stream. Around the stream were trees, and taller, greener plants. We also saw some Poison Oak down there. It seems to like moister areas.


We just tried to go for the same walk in the canyon we went on yesterday. Our attempt to follow the same route as the day before was ill-fated mission from the first, but the walk turned out fine anyway. We started later, so it was already hot when we got out the door. Momma and I couldn’t agree on the different turnoffs to take, I was sure we had seen this before, she was positive of the opposite. We saw the same waterfall again, or at least I think it was the same. In terms of wildlife, we saw a turtle and ducks in the pond at the base of the waterfall, and several ground squirrels. We saw more Poison Oak (I hope I didn’t brush up against it) and some bizarre plum-like fruit on trees. We saw the same kind of fruit in the coyote scat that was on the trail. When we got home and looked it up, we learned that the Catalina Cherries (the plum things) need to pass through a digestive tract to germinate. We also saw some very happy cacti – prickly pears in fruit.

For the rest of today I will be staying at home and (hopefully) doing some math.

Day 7

Today we will get to LA. Most of the drive was across a flat agricultural-wasteland. The landscape was so super flat that we deduced that it must have been a prehistoric lake bed. From the car windows mostly all we could see was flat, flat, flat land fading into the distance. Sometimes in the far distance we could see dry, rolling hills.

The view from the car varied slightly, depending on the times I looked out. Sometimes I saw bushes or trees, stretching in orderly rows as far as the eye could see. Other times I saw brown desert wasteland with the exposed topsoil blowing away. The most startling image that wafted past our car was of lush fertile plantations next to a dry barren area. We wondered where the industries got their water, after all, it is almost a desert. Once we saw a group of migrant farm workers picking grapes. They worked under umbrellas to try and escape the oppressive heat and sun. Several times we saw “tomato trucks:” huge two-bin vehicles, full to the brim with bright red tomatoes. Once, we saw a truck identical to the tomato trucks, except that it’s bins were cages with some stray feathers caught in the wires. This was a chicken transport truck. These chickens were on their way to a new home—your mouths.

The amount of diversity in this landscape is amazing. In late afternoon took a side road to go for a hike before hitting the freeways of LA. The road climbed out of the valley and went quickly from the dry central valley of California to the cool, moister mountain pine forests. These particular pines are Jeffrey’s Pines. Jeffrey’s Pines are special because, in the sun, their bark gives off a strong smell just like vanilla. You can only smell the vanilla if the bark is in the sun and your nose is so close can feel the pines’ abrasive bark. The bigger the pine, the stronger the smell. So I immediately made it my task to find the biggest, smelliest tree I could. I also went about searching for the biggest pine cone. Jeffrey’ Pines have cones ~20cm tall and ~15cm wide. I eventually found my perfect pine cone and I will add it to my pine cone collection when I get home in Vancouver. Where we went hiking in the Pine forest gets snow in the winter – only a hour from LA, imagine that!

Eventually we arrived in Thousand Oaks (outside of LA proper), where my aunt, uncle and the rest of my cousins live. We are staying with my Aunt and Uncle (my father’s brother) and children.

Day 5/6

Larry is a seaweed harvester. In other words, he collects seaweed, dries it, and sells it. He is careful to harvest sustainably and to not deplete the seaweeds or harm the ocean ecosystems. So, since he knows the coast so well, he took us kayaking in some sea caves off the Fort Bragg coast. We were kayaking in “Tupperware-sit-on-top-of-kayaks”—big kayaks that Larry uses in his harvesting. They were both doubles; Medjula and I were in one and Georgie and Larry in another. After a hilariously (paddle on your left Medjula, your left!) drenching start we were off. We went to three caves, all of which were amazing. When we paddled into a cave all I could see was a dark hole. But I could hear! You I hear the sound of the surf crashing on the rocks and feel the surge picking us up and letting us down. Then we turn the corner and are out into the sunlight. Medjula and I had so much fun in the surge that we went back and forth in different passages. By the end, we still didn’t have our timing right with the surge, but we didn’t get soaked like we did at first.

By the time we got back to the beach we were hot, what with wearing wetsuits and all. So we decided to go for a swim. Medjula and I were the only people in the water, seeing as it was frigid. But it didn’t feel cold to us because of the wetsuits. It was only after we got out that we realized how cold we were.

The next day we drove the whole day past non-descript scenery (oh look, a McDonalds, oh look, another McDonalds). In the early evening we met Medjula’s mum in Tracy. We left Medjula with her mum and continued driving. The car felt empty after Medjula left. We all miss her. They headed back to their home in San Francisco. We stayed in a generic motel.

Day 4

This was the first time I had ever seen redwoods. I had remarked earlier “the redwoods make living here seem pleasant”, however, that was before I knew that Poison Oak grew everywhere. They are, unfortunately, entwined—literally. Poison Oak can grow as a vine up the redwoods. For those of you who don’t know, Redwoods are like silent blue whales that don’t move. But they do breathe. Their exhalations are the winds in the canopy. These coast redwoods are known for their height, in fact they are the tallest trees in the world! They are not the biggest in total mass; that honour belongs to their cousins the Giant Sequoias in the California mountains to the south. The Coast Redwoods are so tall that you can’t even see their tops because of the other trees. The tallest tree we saw was 359.3 ft tall (110 m). But since you couldn’t see their tops, it was hard to see their height--what was really inspiring was their girth. The medium sized ones took several people to wrap around the trunk. You could comfortably live in the trunk of the biggest ones. Even with the Poison Oak the redwood forests are the most awe inspiring that I have seen.

In the late afternoon we arrived at Larry’s, Erica’s boyfriend, house. Medjula and I got our own little cabin. We fell asleep quickly to dreams of huge trees…

Day 3

We left Ashland with a goal of arriving in Eureka to visit a cousin. First we were waylaid by a wonderful farmer’s market. We bought succulent fresh organic tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, goat cheese -- and two pieces of pizza. The tomatoes were gone down our gullets before our first hour of driving. The woman who we were buying the pizza from was got very confused. Medjula said “I want the French pizza”. The woman pointed at a completely different one and said “this one”? “No, this one”! Medjula replied. The lady still didn’t believe Medjula, so she (Medjula), had to reach out and grab the slice. The lady was very confused and I would have hated to see her dealing with someone who didn’t speak English!

Somewhere in the middle of the Siskiyou mountains we stopped to indulge in a need of ours to cool down. We stopped by a little river, or a very large stream, to get wet. My parents stripped immediately, while Medjula and I only took off our pants. I promptly slipped and got my underwear and shirt soaked. After that I figured, “why not?” and stripped the rest so I could paddle around a relatively deep pool. The reason I had slipped was that the rocks were coated in algae, sitting and skidding on these same rocks coated my underwear with brown green scum. I hope it doesn’t stain!.

California is on fire. The road we were going to take to Eureka was closed because of a fire that had become active as the winds blew up. We ended up having to drive an extra three hours and come out past Eureka. We phoned my cousins to notify them we wouldn’t be coming. Luckily for us, some friendly rednecks took us under their wing. They, in their jacked up 4x4s, and us, a little Volkswagen, traversed the back mountain roads. The roads they took us on were steep, cliffs on one side gravel roads. They curved around the burned area and ended with us back on our original highway. Since we were curving around previously burned areas the ground was covered in ash. In some places, there was no understory and the ground was covered in a fine layer of white-gray dust. It was just a brush fire, so the trees were unharmed. I found it amazing to see a place that had so recently suffered a fire.

That night, we were meeting our friend Erica in the redwoods, where we were all going to camp. It was there that I met Poison Oak. For those of you who don’t know, Poison Oak is a deceptively beautiful plant that causes you to break out into a painful and itchy rash three days after you touch it. And it is impossible not to touch it. Poison Oak is all over, as vines, understory and tall bushes. As soon as we could, we washed off all parts of us that could have come in contact with the evil plant. So far, the rash hasn’t appeared.

Day 2

When we woke up in Eugene, on the 15^th, the heat had dissipated slightly. This was a good thing because otherwise we couldn’t have gone for our walk. We walked to the local graveyard and it was the nicest one I had ever seen. There were native plants where grass usually is, and the whole thing was shaded by native trees. It wasn’t an new graveyard. One of the earliest dates we saw was 1860. One person we read about was born in 1894 and died in 1997, that’s 103 years old! Think how much world turmoil that woman saw. Her life would have changed dramatically with all the new inventions that were made. She survived so much! Since all these graves were so old, it was like touching a piece of history. My favorite grave was one that was a tall rough hewn obelisk surrounded by snowberry bushes. All you could see of the grave, was the top of the obelisk sticking through the dense snowberries.

It was also unbearably hot there too. What would have been a normal stroll to dinner turned out to be a “strenuous hike”. The restaurant we were eating at was full. So we had to eat outside—without air conditioning! We sat there using anything we could for fans. Medjula and I shared a hot soup for dinner. You might think we were crazy ordering something hot, but it is supposed to make you cooler. It didn’t work. While it was unpleasantly hot, the food was delicious and the waitress was enthusiastic. It was her first night and I think she was feeling overwhelmed. But she never stopped smiling and was a very amusing server.

On to Ashland! We had gone to Ashland with one sole purpose: to see The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare. We walked into the theatre expecting to see a comedy where half the jokes were lost in old English. Don’t get me wrong, I love Shakespeare, but it can be difficult to understand. This particular production was quite different. It was set in a generic American western town (think cowboys) and it was a musical. Everyone still spoke in Old English, but with Western accents. Most of the long soliloquies were put to music. And the places where new lines needed to be made up were artfully blended with the Shakespearean text. The whole play was delightful. Even Georgie liked it, though that might have been because of the gun shots. We saw the play in their Elizabethan theatre, which is a copy of the Globe, in England. It was amazing to see Shakespeare in a setting similar to where it would be originally performed.

Thursday, August 14th

Yesterday was our first day on the road. We drove through B.C. and part of two states. We left at 10:15 and we were in the US by 12:30. We would have entered the US sooner, except that we had an hour wait at the border. Currently, in Eugene, I am now farther south than I had ever been in a car. The farthest south I had previously been in a car was Seattle. I learned something too, the state of Washington comes before Oregon, and then comes California.

It is interesting how a road trip is unique. You drive for several hours and then you stop and have moments of action. But it’s not that a road trip isn’t captivating. There are SUVs to spot, scenery to watch slide by, and new towns to get the feel of. Our first stop was, not surprisingly, a bathroom break. This was on our way to the Mima mounds (my-ma). At the same place we bought hillbilly smoothies. They were like soft berry ice cream. And there was a hillbilly port-a-potty, labeled “the honey pot” Lets just say, the only good thing about it was that it didn’t smell, and that we hadn’t peed for six hours. And also, a cold drink is really welcome after a hot drive.

The Mima mounds are a strange geographical feature that covers miles of ground. They are like giant ant hills, without the ants They are about two meters high and four meters wide. To see them from above is truly amazing. No one knows how they were made. They aren’t burial mounds because of the lack of human remains. They weren’t made by humans because they are too regular and cover too much area, or at least, they used to—before humans leveled some and built on others. Also, even today, with our fancy machines, you can’t move that much dirt. One of the hypotheses was that Pocket Gofers made all the hundreds of mounds. This is quite inconceivable if you see how many there are. You can read more about them at http://southsoundprairies.org/visit.htm

In our last hour of driving before we entered Eugene we drove through a horrendous smell. It was like rotten, boiled cabbage, times ten. It was all pervasive, and disappeared only to come back again in renewed force. Finally, it disappeared and we all breathed a huge sigh if relief.

At 9:30 we arrived at our friends house in Eugene and we gratefully fell into bed. Though, since it was very hot, that was about all we could do. The heat made your limbs feel like they were filled with lead weights and you couldn’t walk five steps without breaking into a sweat. We all sleep with only a sheet that night.

Before We Go...

These last few days have dragged out more slowly than the past two months combined! There didn’t seem to be enough to do to fill the day, and then poof! the day would be over and I would start to feel panicked over what I still needed to do. “One less day before we leave!”.

The house is supposed to be spotless when we leave, so that it is clean for us to come home to. But currently, as of the day before we leave, it’s not. There are clothes littered all over the floor, the suitcases are open, and that is only our clothes! The tent and sleeping bags are in a pile in the entranceway, natural history books cover the tables, and my parents are madly trying to finish one last paper.

Another added piece of chaos, is that we’re giving a friend of mine a ride down to San Francisco. She is getting here late today. This last day was supposed to be a day for just packing. However, since I forgot about my orthodontist appointment yesterday, I have one today. And my brother needed to run to the dentist this morning, to get a filling, also unplanned. We are all starting to feel kind of panicked about how much stuff needs to be done before we can leave tomorrow.

Later the same day: now all our clothes are in their suitcases. Each of has a suitcase. I’m still not sure how everything will fit in our Volkswagen diesel Passat. We have so much stuff! All of our camping gear is in the car, and the back is almost full. However, we also have a ski box, which will give us a huge amount of extra room.

Our house sitter has arrived, and Willow is well acclimatized to him, which happened more quickly than I thought it would. Of course, the fact she has been fed non-stop treats might have something to do with it! We are about to take her out for her last walk with us for almost five months. And the worst thing about it is: she knows. Willow was following us around the house, at our each move she would jump up, terrified of being left behind. As soon as she saw the suitcases a couple days ago, she started acting antsy.

Today, after my orthodontist appointment, my brother, father and I stopped by a second hand book store. We got enough books to last us for at least a week. Most of the books I bought were by John Grisham. He is a good author who writes mostly about lawyers solving murders. It is a great way to learn more about lawyers.

Over the summer I have been rearing basil on our front porch. I have been dutifully watering it every single day it hasn’t rained, or I have been away. And as we live in Vancouver, it rains quite often. Anyway, I have watched it grow from little seedlings to big , beautiful, strapping basils. Today, it was harvested, clipped off five cm above the moist, black soil. You could smell it from the street. The smell pervaded our house, drifted down the stairs and out the door.

An Introduction

I will start by introducing you to my family, so that when I mention them you aren’t completely flummoxed. I have one brother, Georgie (George), who is 4 years younger than me. I live with him, my mum Dana, my dad Ken, and my dog Willow. We live in North Vancouver, British Columbia. We also have a cabin on a small Gulf Island where we spend every summer and every other fall. If we weren’t traveling this fall, then we would be on Lasqueti (the Gulf Island I just mentioned). My mother is an archaeologist and my father is a forest ecologist. They both teach at Simon Fraser University.

We decided to go on an extended trip about a year and a half ago. We debated between Europe and Mexico, but Mexico won out. My mother wanted to go somewhere where she could speak Spanish. She is quite a capable speaker of that language. However, I wanted to go to a place where I could practice French, as I am learning it in school. My Mum also wanted to show us the American Southwest, where she had some research, before Georgie and I were born. None of us wanted to country-hop in a plane, because of it’s high carbon footprint. So our dilemma for the next several months was how to satisfy everyone’s desires.

What we came up with was a road trip, with a "small" deviation in the middle. We would drive as quickly as we could from Vancouver to LA, where we have family, fly to Tahiti for three weeks, fly back and continue driving south. The Grand Canyon, and the Four Corners Area are our next destination after LA. Then we drive until we hit Oaxaca (wh-ha-ca) City, on the Day of the Dead, November 1^st. We will be based in Oaxaca where we have rented an apartment, for a month. The plan is to be back in Vancouver by the end of the winter holidays.

Of course, not all of the four and a half months we will be gone will be fun. Both my parents will continue to grade and write papers, talk with students and be involved with the university. My brother and I will be doing our school work. This blog is for my English class. ‘Math’ is working my way through five chapters of the textbook, at two pages a day. ‘Planning’ is doing several projects. Science and socials are reading through their respective textbooks. And I will need to sit beside my brother for about nine hours every day. Have you seen Shrek Two? Remember Donkey? That’s my brother—my own, personal, annoying, talking animal. I love him, but he can be quite persistently annoying sometimes, okay, I’ll be truthful, he can be quite aggravating.

Now you might, or might not, be wondering what we are going to be doing with our dog. I’ll tell you. She will be staying with our Grandparents, who live just up the street. We have quite a sensitive, high-strung and emotional dog. While we are gone, she will mope and pine for us. I’m not joking. And, of course, she’ll get fat, because that’s what Grandparents are for.

Hopefully, now you have a sense of my background and some reference points for what I will post in the future. Just so you know, everything else will be about our trip.

Something I wrote last summer...

Why I am a Locavore[1]

By Gavia Lertzman Lepofsky

When you go into a grocery store, sights, smells, and sounds assault you. Walk down to the vegetables and fruit aisle. Pick up some lettuce, bananas, apples, and strawberries. You pause, you think a moment: don’t apples, lettuce, and strawberries grow at different times of year? Where does one grow bananas? Most of the fruit and veggies we buy from stores are not local, out of season, and non-organic food. The food is flown in from a faraway place. In this essay, I will try to convince you that buying local, in season, and organic food is better both for you and the environment.

We have become used to getting all sorts of produce in all seasons, without questioning where it comes from. For us to have received lettuce in January, or apples in May, they will have been shipped half way across the world from someplace that has a different growing season than ours. Not only that, but we are getting fruit that would never have grown here naturally in any season. We get bananas, star fruit, pineapples, and mangoes from half way around the world. Any guesses how all this “healthy” food gets here?—aeroplanes. In addition, for soft and delicate foods, such as tomatoes to survive the long haul flight, they are often genetically modified (GM). Ever notice that fresh produce from a farmers market tastes better?

There is evidence that our supposedly “healthy” food isn’t actually all it is said to be. When the scientists modified fresh food genetically to make it more transportable (thicker skins, tougher, and more regular sizes), no one considered that those changes would also effect the taste and nutritional value of the fruit. For example, tomatoes with a thicker skin are generally frowned upon, but, low and behold, GM tomatoes have thicker tougher skin to make them more transportable. Many of America’s lead food writers talk about how our formerly healthy food is lacking in nutrition and taste. That is why farmer’s market produce tastes better. They are selling the real, unadulterated food.

The environment benefits from organic and local food too. In non-organic farms people spray herbicides and pesticides to kill the “weeds”, insects, and plant diseases. It works all too well. The pest species of insects die, but many “good” insect predators of the pests die as well. Sometimes, the birds that eat the insects die, and the animals that eat the birds can die as well. We ingest those very same plants that have all those chemicals on them, the ones that killed the bugs. So you would think that after all of this extermination the plants would be healthier, right? Well no, because over time, the pests evolve resistance to the chemicals. What we’re actually doing is promoting pesticide-resistant pests. And since many of the farms are monocultures—and all their industrial neighbours are planted with the same GM strain of the same crop—the whole area is susceptible to a pest outbreak or disease. That is one the reasons why farms that plant a variety of produce are good. If one crop catches the “bug” the farmer still has other foods to sell.

Most of the food in a normal North American dinner has travelled a long way to reach your dinner plate. When food is flown in from Chile, whether or not it is organic, the aeroplanes guzzle a lot of fuel. Many people are trying to drive less, not only to save money on fuel, but also to reduce their contributions to Global Climate Change. If we drive less, we will add less carbon to the atmosphere. However, by purchasing food from far away, like lemons from Chile[2], anything we have been doing at home to reduce our carbon footprint can be erased. Aeroplanes have a big effect on the climate for two reasons. One, they use up a lot of fuel—and by doing so release a lot of carbon, and two, carbon that is released high in the atmosphere has twice the effect as when it is released on the ground. “Aeroplanes contribute 4-9% of the total climate change impact of human activity”[3]. When we buy such world weary food we are stressing climate’s and wildlife’s health.

People say “Choose the right thing”. Well how should we know what the right thing is? Who do we want to benefit from our choices: big, multi-national, agribusinesses, small organic farms, the environment, ourselves … ? If we consider carefully, we can make these into win-win decisions. If we choose to buy from a small-scale, local, organic farmer, everyone benefits (except the multi-nationals, who get enough money from other people). The farmer gets an income, the animals and ecosystems don’t get abused with chemicals—and we get delicious fresh food.

Sources

1) Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven Hopp, Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2007

2) Knowledgeable family members and friends

3) Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006

4) Powlick, Thomas. The End of Food: how the food industry is destroying our food supply and what we can do about it. UC press, Greystone books, Vancouver, 2006

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[1] A Locavore is someone who prefers to eat locally grown, preferably organic, food.

[2] We recently found lemons in the grocery store that came from Chile. In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan discussed getting organic asparagus from Chile—it tasted like cardboard.

[3] From the David Suzuki Foundation Website