Gratitude and Purpose

Reflections after our second annual Liberty Food Fest

Hello Everyone,

Hope this note finds you in the best of spirits!

That's a wrap. Our second annual Liberty Food Fest is in the books. What an inspiring couple of days. Joel Salatin. John Klar. Winona LaDuke.

The more I've reflected on the speakers, the food, the people and the conversations --- on the whole experience---- the main sentiment is one of gratitude.

We live in one of the most thriving local food economies in America, a place where someone can go and get a local grass-fed burger at The Hungry Diner, because of the passionate vision of Cait and Chris Caserta; where kids can get a glass of local organic milk because of Pete Miller and the good folks at Miller Farms, and because of virtuous administrators like Harley Sterling who go the extra mile to make the math and the logistics work.

We live in a place where folks can swing into Pete's Stand and grab a butternut squash grown a few hundred feet away, where you can go into an old Subway storefront and get authentic local Jamaican cuisine from Chef Jewelz. Where you can send your kid to Meadows Bee, and have them learn skills like sewing, and get badges for raising poultry and milking cows--- thanks to the passion and vision of Leigh Merinoff.

How lucky we are to be a part of this community, my wife Susan and I, and our kiddos Abraham and Maya to have stumbled here without much of a plan, simply following the path of least regulation.

The second feeling I am filled with today is one of purpose. Yes, we have a thriving local food economy here, however, it is in jeopardy. We have just gotten word that a small rural business was shut down last week for the "crime" of baking pies in their home kitchen and selling them to friends. Dairy heroes like Rich and Cynthia Larson in Wells, Vermont are being subjected to invasive testing. Hemp Farmers like John Rodgers are being forced to pay "legal" bribes for growing cannabis simply to fill the coffers of the state.

It is imperative in the coming year that we support our farmers who are under threat. And more than being reactive, it is of vital importance that we begin the real grass-roots work of crafting an amendment to the constitution of the states of Vermont and New Hampshire that enshrine food choice as a fundamental human right.
Once we have enshrined the Right to Food in our state's constitutions, the way that our neighbor Maine has, we will no longer need to fight battle after battle. We will have a lasting victory as real as the one of the Home School movement in the 1970s and 1980s that culminated in home schooling becoming legal in every state in America by 1992. We can do this. Our founding fathers- people who loved liberty so much they put their lives on the line for it--- people like Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin--- these people faced far more challenging hurdles than we do now. And let us draw from them courage, as we draw water from a well.

When we increase liberty in our own town, in our own county, in our own state, we spread it not just through laws, but through minds, and spark a world where they tyranny of collusion of large scale corporations and large scale government dissolves in the compost of fertile local economies. As Matt Kibbe shared with us during the world premiere of the director cut of Free the People’s massive hit: Off the Grid with Thomas Massie.

Thanks to each and every one of you for joining us this year, and last year--- at the Liberty Food Fest. We doubled our attendance from 75 last year to 150 this year and we aim to double again in 2025.

Here we go.

God bless and have a wonderful holiday season.

best thoughts,

graham

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