Help! I'm Lost in Nature!

Shierfolk farm: some chickens grazing freely These past two weeks, we have been focusing on understanding what holistic management is and how to achieve it not only on our farm, but in our lives as well. Here's a snapshot: Permaculture Workshop: After a night camping, we had our second permaculture workshop. We learned how to integrate animals into farms and create food forests. Emilie, our teacher, showed us in real time how she has applied permaculture to her small farm and business, and how mixed the results have been. Definitely planning ahead and thinking holistically, her and her husband invest wisely to reach their five-year goals for themselves, their land, and bettering the local foods movement in general. Chicken Farm: After seeing the horror clips on YouTube about what the meat-rearing industry in America is like, it was tremendously inspiring to see chickens being raised in adequate space, with a brooding place that mimicked how a mother hen would pr...

During orientation for AMI, we wrote "I am" poems about food. I struggled more than I expected with this project. I have had a love-hate relationship food for most of my life: I loved eating and hated how it persisted in love handles. Like your typical teenage girl, I struggled with body image issues. Since I exercised all the time, I knew the culprit of my frustration had to be food. If it is all about calories in and calories out, then I could calorie count to my perfect body type. Right? As I grew past my teenage years, I realized there was a little more to the story. Pressures on how one should eat are constantly around us, some that we are aware of, and some that subconsciously sneak in when we least expect it. This includes anything from advertisements for Dunkin Donuts to the size of your bowl and spoon. I studied Psychology and read Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, and heard about all the sob stories of my mom's bulimic and anorexic pat...