Dear Biddy,

There is a saying in the Slow Food movement that says: Shake the hand that feeds you. It is an invitation to connect with the producers of food in your local region and something I am lucky enough to do every weekend at the Willunga Farmers Market. It is a place that feeds my soul. A cornucopia of Mother Earth’s love harvested and transformed by the work of human hands. It is a weekly blessing in my life.

I am fed in so many other ways too. Connections and conversations rooted in history matched alongside seeds recently scattered on the surface, both landing on the fertility of the space we create together under the canopy of the great southern sky.

This week I have shook many hands that feed me – producers of ideas, distributors of passion, builders of nests, weavers of webs and makers of mulch and muck – all feeding me in their own way. In a logistics chain love dispensing network sometimes you are a supplier and other times a distributor. The karma returns has the capacity to skip a generation too – paying back and paying forward can happen simultaneously. Offspring wear the consequences of being from the same stock.

I will not clean the house while there is love to be made and poems to be read and conversations to be had.

The Slow Food movement links the pleasure of good food with commitment to community and environment, and each time I sit at a table or tablet I am fed one way or another and am in good company.   I prefer real-time table moments to virtual tablet ones but they both serve to nourish me. When I give thanks it seems to be an endless litany. I am grateful for being fed and I am having a feast.

Litany of A Pilgrim

By the ancients                                I am fed

By the babes                                    I am fed

By millennial tweets                         I am fed

By sister sadness                              I am fed

By sister surprise                              I am fed

By invitations                                   I am fed

By salted caramel tarts                     I am fed

By Lucia’s minestrone                       I am fed

By Billy Bragg                                   I am fed

By Bruce Springsteen                       I am fed

By facebook posts                            I am fed

By gentle touch                               I am fed

By mischievous laughter                  I am fed

By Mary Oliver                                 I am fed

By travelling companions                 I am fed

I am fed                                          I am fed

(c) Moira Deslandes, 2014