The other night one of our neighbors down the road stopped in and introduced herself. She works at local restaurant that offers weekend buffets and she had brought us four large buckets of all of the customers "scraps"as she "just hates seeing good food go to waste" and figured we could feed it to the pigs. There were pounds and pounds of fresh fruits and veggies, muffins and breads, scrambled eggs, etc, and it was pretty sobering to see so much food just thrown away. I thought it was very generous and so responsible of her to try and put a good spin on what was a lot of waste. She mentioned she worked twice a week and could bring that much and more to me every week. Wow, how awesome was that, especially from a stranger! I was grateful.
After she left, it hit me. The food she was offering to give us was, unbeknownst to her, most likely chalk full of pesticide residue and GMO ingredients as I know the restaurant she works at does not serve organics. Dang. Now I had to turn her kind gesture into a snub of sorts as I had to let her know I couldn't accept her gift as the whole goal of Kittleson Family Farms is to provide wholesome food, free of pesticides and GMOs.
I felt bad about this on so many levels: bad for rejecting her kindness, bad for the waste, bad for the customers who ate the food I won't even give my pigs. How did we, as a society, get to this place of waste and negligence?
But now I will hold onto the goodness of both gestures, keep the intention in my heart and continue to believe we can affect change in the world through our mutual kindness.
