#98 Sad Commentary

This is the ghost of a commercial orchard; there are many, many more ghosts around our valley. We used to be a huge fruit growing county, now the orchards are disappearing. We import from Asia now. That makes as much sense as me taking a bath in a barrel of tar.
We need to watch our labels and buy locally....or at least from the closest source possible.
Jack and I purchase locally or items made on the West Coast to help cut down dependancy on oil. Items like bananas and coffee I make an allowance for.
I do reccomend a book by Barbara Kingsolver called "Animal, Mineral, Vegetable" (I think that's the title...something like it.) Good reasonings on why we should try and purchase only locally made items.
She made it a year and purchased locally for almost everything. She was fortunate in that she lived in an area in Virginia where they kept their farmers' market open year round. Ours runs about 5 months and is a 45 mile round trip to get there! The really nice market is 90 miles round trip!
Just one of life's challenges....being responsible with our resources. Seeing the lumber mills closing and the logging trucks parked in the parking lots and the orchards disappearing are just reminders for me of how fragile our system truly is.
(Okay, I'll get down from my soapbox now.)