Bobbie Ann Mason Quotes

My grandmother had a courtyard of animals, like goats and chickens. She made ricotta cheese, cooked with potatoes warm from the garden, grew everything from beans to wheat. It was simple, seasonal food, and we all ate what was produced 10 miles from where we lived. It was that way for centuries.

Too often, parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But great stories come out of great farming.

I want to know where my food comes from and the conditions in which it's grown. I also want to embrace traditional British produce, and seasonality.

I'm not a Luddite, but I'm outside more than I'm on my computer. We have a micro-farm - it's a step up from a garden. We have a pretty extensive vineyard. We grow about 60 percent of our own food, make our own wine, have chickens for eggs.

I have fruit trees. Cows for fresh milk, yoghurt. My own wheat. I'm basically self-sufficient.

We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast.

I feel blessed to have had such a background, where animals, food raising, harvesting and canning were a natural part of life.

First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery.

When I lived summers at my grandparents' farm, haying with my grandfather from 1938 to 1945, my dear grandmother Kate cooked abominably. For noon dinners, we might eat three days of fricasseed chicken from a setting hen that had boiled twelve hours.

The British have such an odd relationship with food - and the land. I want the public and the Soil Association to see that growing things in a garden is no different to growing things in a field.

Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.

In California, you're on a first-name basis with fruit. You take a beautiful Blenheim, you don't want to mess with it.

We undervalue food in this country, yet Britain has beautiful food and beautiful growing conditions. It is astonishing the range we can grow.

If you grow the food you eat, it tastes better. Seasonal vegetables are grown at the right time, and you can make sure everything matures on the plant or on the tree. It's as fresh as you can get.

From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.

I grew up shopping from farm stands. Dad taught me how to smell a good cantaloupe and thump a watermelon for ripeness.

I just planted the family vegetables yesterday. You name it, I grow it.

I spent a lot of time on farms when I was young. My uncle and my dad owned a big farm.

I have a generally optimistic temperament and am thrilled by what I see as a rapidly growing food movement, especially among young people who care about how food is produced and what it does to their health and the environment.

Eating local is a relatively new concept in American dining; for the Italians, it's a way of life.

Almost all the knowledge required to produce more food than eroding soil is available today - we just need to use that knowledge within a holistic paradigm - managing agriculture holistically, forming the policies that undergird it holistically.

Farm to table is a personal choice.

I grow the vegetables my family eats. I grow enough, and we seldom buy from the market.

When you grow up close to poultry and fields and gardens and open-air markets, you can't help but develop an instinct for quality food.

From the time I was a small boy, I remember working in the fields with my grandfather and father. We weren't growing grapes, but we were farming crops, creating something good out of the earth.