Farmer, Farm, Farming, Food: Trends in book references

I have asked several friends and family members to help me with writing some guest blog posts to offer different perspectives and add voices to the dialogue I hope to create through this blog.

Recently, my husband, Nicholas (check out his blog here!), has taken a significant interest in the data you can pull from the work I am interested in.  He is very intrigued by how the data shows our disconnect from the land, our food and those amazing people who help put said food on our plates - farmers!  While I have been blogging away on my research and activism, Nick has been pulling stats and reveling in all of the data you can find related to food and farming.

I am posting one of his recent search results which shows a disturbing lack of interest in where our food comes from, how it is grown and who grows it.

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Farmer, Farm, Farming, Food: Trends in book references since 1820

I happened across a TED talk about a tool that Google built that allows you to search a series of words across the ~15 million books that they have scanned. I was interested to see what people have been saying over time regarding the “farmer”, their “farm”, the act of “farming”, and “food”. I was hoping to find some interesting data but what I found was more interesting than I expected.

Here is the graph from the data:

Jubilee!

I first heard of Jubilee Farm from my friend Lindsay, when she joined their CSA workshare program.  She invited us to pick up their share while they were on vacation and we enjoyed a day on this beautiful property picking beans, raspberries and flowers to round out the standard box of produce we picked up.  There was so much bounty!!  This was the first time I had ever heard of working on a farm to 'earn' your veggies and in payment for your sweat equity you received a box of delectable produce.  I was entranced!  Our next visit to Jubilee was several months later for the October festival which included a trebuchet slinging pumpkins, roasted corn on the cob, planting seeds, a hayride out to the pumpkin patch and choosing a pumpkin.  We had a blast!

October Festival - slideshow maker with music