Kansas Agriculture and Health Summit

I'm having a hard time verbalizing everything I want to express about my experience yesterday, so bear with me. It was just so awesome and I got so excited that I'm having a hard time organizing it into a coherent set of thoughts. I tried last night, but I couldn't make it work so I'm up early this morning having another go at it.

Deep breaths. Lets start with the context.

Yesterday I went to the Kansas Agriculture and HealthSummit. I got an email early this week promoting it as an event to

 "kick off the conversation in Kansas about the intersection of food, farming, health care and public health" 

If you've read by blog for a while I'm sure you've noticed that food and gardening are two of my passions,but what you probably don't know is that my CV lists my "Research Interests" as

"Human interaction with the environment through agriculture as it relates to the experience of health and disease..."

Are you starting to see why I got all excited yesterday?

I was very interested in talking about agricultural policy and health in Kansas, but it really got me thinking about things a little closer to home.

Like growing food for my family and feeding them the way I want to feed them instead of the default which seems to be eating whatever we can scrap together in the half hour between when I get home and when Norie needs to be fed and put to bed. Don't get me wrong. It's generally been pretty tasty, but it hasn't exactly been produce heavy.

I also got reinspired to help other people with traditional skills like growing food and cooking it and canning and home dairying and sewing and all those things our grandparents know or knew exactly how to do but are incredibly rare skills in my generation.

Don't worry. I'm still really excited about decorating and building and you'll see tons of posts about that you'll just also start seeing more about gardening and food. They all work together in making a family and a home and that's just the stuff that I love to share here.

On my to do list for today:

• Take the puppies and Norie for a walk
• Read this week's entry in my Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook and actually do the things it says I should do this week
• Measure for the bracket for those blinds
• Love on Norie
• Work on my Birthday Desk
• Clean the kitchen
• Fold and put away laundry
• Add things to my birthday/Christmas wishlist on Pinterest

I better get started.