My favorite piece of jewelry, a bracelet my daughter made years ago.

 Also from my girl, a tiny sculpture made of the wool I washed earlier this week. Wool a friend gave me from her sheep that she rescued from a farm down road, from a farmer who has grown to old to care for sheep any longer.

When you begin sourcing your life as locally as possible, you begin to notice a lovely reflected layering and depth. Everyone has their bit to contribute. It all matters. Connectivity is implicit, comforting, tangibly real, reliably genuine. When you know where it all came from, that creeping mystery most Americans spend our lives trying to ignore is simply wiped away. All the crap we collect, our stuff, our relationships, our will, creates what we see around us, what we eat, how we love, and what gets passed around. Everything has its own history, which will dictate its quality and which influences the quality of your personal and our collective future. 

When I close this computer in a few minutes, I'll drive over to a local farm for weekly groceries. I'll be greeted by the farmer, his two dogs, and if I'm lucky, his adorable fat brown-eyed toddler.  I'll pickup our milk, some cheese, any meat they happen to be processing this week, and some fresh shitakes. I've seen where the mushrooms grow, in a fairy village of production in the forest behind his house. We will chat, trade goods for money, and I'll drive back home. The whole thing will take 20 minutes. There is no parking lot. There will be no other customers. I'm not going to a store. A profound sort of serenity will replace the normal low grade stress and stink of buying boxed food from China. I will bring home zero packaging, no waste, and no mystery. 

While picking up our food, I'll compare the farmer's fig tree to mine, wondering which will ripen faster. I'll mentally note his cow's udder, the quality of her pasture, and her condition this season. The only way to improve the sensuality, the deliciousness, the simplicity, and the sustainability of my weekly grocery shopping, would be to ride a horse there and back. Imagine such a life! If I could do that, I would wear my fuzzy kitty bracelet as I rode.