🥬 TREE 629: JG – vegetables!

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Once we got survival sorted, the big question for me in the 00s was: How do I live the values taught in the New Testament of the bible?

Working on that question is what caused me to embrace nonviolence. It helped me to understand that being gay is a normal, healthy expression of life on earth. (What a crazy sentence to have to type!) And it turned me into a vegetarian.

My second sister – she’s seven years younger than me – planted the idea in my head that animals don’t need to die for me to eat. Eventually the idea sprouted and grew. I realised:

• I don’t like animals being born in huge quantities, raised in mostly cruel captivity, then killed so I could have food on my plate.

• Producing animal food products on an industrial scale like we do in the West is harmful to the planet and therefore to ourselves.

• I am a privileged Westerner who does not need to eat dead animals to have a healthy and interesting diet.

So I decided to stop participating in that death and cruelty. On Father’s Day 2006, I barbecued and ate some very tasty locally produced pork sausages, and then I was done with meat. It didn’t feel like something I chose. It was more like being a vegetarian happened to me and when I noticed I stopped eating meat. Christine followed a few months later.

The dairy and egg industry is just as bad if not worse than the meat industry. But it took me until 2018 to become a vegan. This time, Christine led the way by six months, and it was a choice. Dropping cow milk wasn’t a big deal because Oatly, but giving up cheese was hard. I still ate eggs for a while because we had happy rescue hens living in our garden and giving us eggs.

Huge amounts of credit for the way I eat goes to my Mom. I grew up in a family that ate differently and a lot more healthily that most everyone around us. She raised me to be intelligent and intentional in my eating. She gave me the confidence to be different.

I didn’t draw a desert hedgehog because they already look like they are drawn by me.

Learn, via tree rings and hurricanes, what the sun in the 1600s has to do with modern capitalism.

Remember, I’m telling my story, not prescribing what you should eat. If I was going to give you a takeaway for today, it would be to ask yourself this question: Am I being intentional and intelligent in what I eat?

Grow slowly
Jeff