so we packed up our life, put it away, and headed for a new horizon.

we told everyone we were moving to hungary to work on an organic farm.

they said, "*choke* WHAT!?!?!," as they mopped their drinks off the fronts of their blouses.

we haven't quite made it to hungary yet. we call ourselves "flexible" travellers. our loved ones call us "irresponsible" travellers.

anyways, on our way to hungary we had a job offer in belgium (not far from brussels, the center of the EU) and we took it. WWOOF connects volunteers with both organic farms and with organic gardens. our current job is the latter, playing with a garden and taking care of a home so that its owners can spend more time promoting healthy agriculture. we hope to move on soon, but for now we have no living expenses and are having a lovely experience living with a european family. everyone always says newlyweds should use the lower income for living expenses and use the larger income to pay off loans and put into savings. no one ever told us that we could use the larger income the same way, but for "lower income" substitute "volunteer on a different continent in exchange for room, board, and an office (and free french and flemish language lessons, and experience with children, and european cooking and bread-baking lessons, and a garden, and weekend trips to paris/amsterdam/luxembourg)" and it all works out the same. we had to figure that out on our own.

my husband is singing like johnny cash.

i divide the world's population into two categories. the growers and the eaters. or, the producers and the consumers. everyone fits into one of these two categories. there is a bit of overlap (i.e. those who eat out of their garden in the summer, but shop in the winter), but not much. and there is gradation in the "consumer" category: the person who consumes locally grown, in-season products purchased directly from the producer is clearly better than the person who consumes heavily-packaged, well-traveled products. but they still are not producers.

the growers in the united states make up less than 2% of the population. and the vast majority of those in the 2% are over the age of 60. what if they all died at once? what would the consumers do if all the growers disappeared? would they step up to the plate and become growers? or would they perish? or just pay massive amounts of money for other countries' food in order to maintain their "non-grower" status?

we want to be growers. i'm not sure what the emotional reasons are, but i could give you loads of economic, environmental, social, philosophical, and theological arguments. the purpose of this trip was to gain "growing" experience. but for some reason we felt really called to this job, this situation. maybe it's a humility lesson... we have to be consumers for a while so we don't get to high on our "grower" horse.

for now we are "third-hand growers". the first-hand growers are the guys with the muddy boots and strong backs, pulling beets out of the ground and collecting eggs. the second hand growers are the people, like our current hosts, who work their butts off for the first guys. they may have never seen dirt before, but they are writing grants and educating the public through newsletters and conferences, encouraging the average consumer/eater to spend his grocery money responsibly. then there are the third-hand growers, like us, who take care of the second guys by making their meals and bathing their children so that they can write more articles and spend more time promoting responsible farming and husbandry. yes, the second- and third-handers are right there in the consumer category, but they actually have something to do with agriculture, unlike the average stockbroker or store clerk.

so here we are, following the same guiding light that led us to europe, then specifically to belgium. who knows where it will go next, but for now it rests over this house. for an unknown reason we are third-hand growers (intermittently venturing into the "second-hand" to write some articles for the next newsletter), and first-hand consumers. strange.