While I frequently write about business that you may find in your city or town, we can’t forget that our most basic roots are in our rural communities.  I grew up very closely associated with the land.  My mother grew up on a farm and as a result I worked on the farms of my aunts and uncles from the time I was young.  I learned that you picked what was available and ate it.

Sometimes you picked corn at 4:30 am, and if you were hungry, you ate raw corn as you picked for the Farmer’s Market.  I learned that produce doesn’t keep.  It must be eaten as fresh as possible, because that is when it tastes best.

Our rural businesses have a very unique set of problems, and yet in order for our country to survive, for our cities and towns to survive, our rural business cannot be left behind. Without our local farms, we wouldn’t have local fruits and vegetables, local farm-raised meat and eggs, local milk and cheese. What would life be like if all the food we ate and drank tasted like cardboard?

There are several grass-roots movements afoot about supporting local agriculture such as Farm to School, Community Supported Agriculture, Farm to Table, Locavore, etc. I will be covering these topics in greater detail when I have the opportunity.

Update: 9/2012 Here is the link to my Farm to School Article in Acreage Life Magazine.