Little Farma, Local Love - Kale in the Country and Cancer

 "Make food your medicine and medicine your food." -Hippocrates, The Father of Medicine

"Make love your medicine and medicine your love." - Dawn, The Good News Muse

Recently on a country field trip to a local hardware store, a nearby farmer's market caught my eye.  Baskets of freshly dug potatoes and bags of turnip greens got my attention.

I walked over to find the bags were filled with kale. Kale?!  I was elated to find kale in the country but even more so to hear the story of how this particular kale came to be.

This Smithville farmer, Jeff Cantrell*, shared with me that a local friend approached him and asked if he would grow kale for her to purchase.  She had cancer and wanted it for her juicing machine.  He in turn has grown loads of kale for her and to sell too.  (By the way, Jeff's kale was much more vibrant than my photo portrays.)

One of the sales people asked what I do with kale. I originally started putting it in soup several years ago.  Now I saute it with scrambled eggs, stir fry it with veggies and dry it with salt and olive oil to make kale chips. Most times I don't use recipes though they abound.**  Cooking to me is based more in art and experience than following a recipe. I do what feels right and is colorful.

This is the same reason I eat kale. It feels right and is beautiful.  I had no idea it's such a great food until later when I searched it on-line. (Kale's an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant with more iron than beef, more calcium than milk and more vitamin C than spinach.)

I walked away that morning from the Smithville Farmer's Market with kale, potatoes and hot peppers but more importantly I walked away filled with love, joy and wonder.

How beautiful that as trees become barren and skies tend toward gray that kale's green leaves appear.  How beautiful this local man is participating in a friend's healing.  How beautiful that green, the color of growth is the color representing the heart's energy center especially since hurt hearts are inclined to resist the growth that comes with re-opening. 

Hippocrates the Greek physician considered the Father of Medicine said, "Let food be your medicine and medicine your food."  I would add, "Make love your medicine and medicine your love, especially loving the local."  

Little Farma is about local love, local love of nearby land growing foods for local folk like this farmer does for his friend.

Love the local and heal the land and yourself.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 16 November 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

* Thanks to Jeff Cantrell who I've since learned is the president of the Smithville Farmer's Market. Thank you for talking with me that day and more recently for giving me permission to share your name in this story. 

 **  14 kale recipes from "Cooking Light."