Close to the Food

I noticed once, while visiting Linda in Tucson, that one thing I don´t like about Arizona was that so little food could grow there. Growing up in Indiana, I was used to being close to the source of food even though in recent years Indiana has almost become a monoculture (close to the source of ethanol and high fructose corn syrup).

Yesterday and today I´ve walked approximately 45 km through Spain. I have enjoyed being close to the food source: Wheat stubble, indicating recent wheat/grain harvest. Fields of sunflowers, their petals gone and their droopy, seedy heads apparently awaiting harvest. Olive trees and alamond trees. Pear and apple trees. Many vegetable gardens, some with strange-looking plants that might be an artichokes. Last night, beside a small back yard vegetable garden, was a fenced in yard including a fence on the top. It housed a few chickens and a few turkeys. A rabbit hutch was on a low roof. I heard a rooster crow in Pamplona.

I passed, so far, a few vineyards and have sampled a few grapes--very nice and delicately flavored, not at all like the Concord grapes we used to grow. Wild raspberries grow along the path and I have eaten a few. Other berries I don´t recognize and don´t eat. The countryside eems to be an Eden for humans and birds.