Author: Kyler Blodgett

Four days a week for my internship, I help prepare a meal for 40 people give or take, the vast majority of whom are economically poor. Sure, the food is part of it. We have to make sure enough egg salad sandwiches are ready, along with two main dishes, a green salad, and whatever deserts and sides have been donated. The food is the time-consuming part but in the end, it is the easy part of the meal prep.

The hard part of the meal is the intangible, inedible bit. While the 40 guests trickle in and out over the course of the hour, the volunteer prep crew hovers awkwardly around the buffet serving station. Sometimes we slink away into the kitchen to wash dishes or refill trays, and to get out of the eye of those we have made this meal for. Other times, two or three volunteers will eat amongst themselves and talk quietly. In all of these scenarios, the “meal” is not a meal. It is a setting where we, the volunteers, have made lunch for them, the hungry people.

Oftentimes there is a friendly, chatty atmosphere among the regular guests but it is something that I and many other new or occasional volunteers have a hard time joining. When one of us sits down, the conversation slows to a pause and eyes turn to us momentarily or – more uncomfortably – anywhere but us. The fault for this awkwardness is not mine nor the guests’, but the feeling persists. I have promised myself to sit down and eat with the guests every day and so far I have stuck to it. The diners have been welcoming, too, but I cannot shake the feeling of a barrier between us. The more I try to ignore this barrier and dichotomy, the frustratingly stronger it becomes.

How can I create a meal atmosphere where the distinction between cook and guest (along with the implication each of those roles brings) is so apparent? How can I be hospitable while also making the diners forget that I am the host? I believe I have made progress to the goal of being natural around the guests and treating them not as food insecure but rather simply as people. I appreciate any advice you have to help me advance further.

So over Feb Break this past winter I went on a MALT trip down to this urban farm in a dilapidated New Orleans neighborhood with some friends. The owner of the farm was this 40-something year old opinionated guy who did not have health insurance or car insurance or a stable food or income supply but who felt very real compared to most people I meet. Anyways, he said a lot of things over the course of the week, mostly rants against the education system and the food system and national/local governments. The one thing he said that stays with me 4 months later is this: “We have to somehow convince thousands of bright college seniors (like ourselves) to open up farms after graduation instead of going into Wall Street or non-profits or wherever else people take jobs nowadays.”

Reading Berry’s Amish principles and defense of family farms, I cannot help think back to this man’s comment. It is tempting to extoll the benefits of life as a small agriculturalist and living healthily for both the natural environment and the people living in it. But choosing farming means very specifically not choosing other life paths. For me, and millions of college students like me, these other life paths have been ground into us from pre-school: “Do well in school so that you can go to a good college and get a good job and provide security for your family and don’t forget to be a good person.” Farming does not provide a predictable paycheck. Farming is not glamorous or sexy (according to many Americans). How do we convince graduating seniors to to pick it up as a lifestyle? Even if they all read Wendell Berry, they will not be convinced because they do not want to be convinced. Presenting these graduates with the logic of the family farm will do nothing. It is like any other social movement: the image of farming must been changed so that people will be more receptive to it. How to do this I haven’t a clue.

“Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts.”

I haven’t started my internship or my stay in Weybridge yet, so the hills and farmland of Middlebury still seem like a different planet from my DC suburban neighborhood where food from all over the world is consumed happily and easily.

Even so, I have been trying to read up on national poverty and hunger to give myself a macro view of the micro problems that likely await me at the Charter House this summer. Though such reading has been interesting and has kept my brain from atrophying over the past few weeks, the material has also saddened me. Many of the pieces take an academic view that debate the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s metrics used to calculate the poverty rate, or they explore the real standard of living for the poor to show that they aren’t struggling as much as most people think. The underlying question: Who is poor? Who needs help and who deserves help? If your income is above a certain level (about $23,000 per household), does the system cast you off as not poor enough?

In the forest of numbers too large for me to grasp (who can visualize 45 million Americans in poverty?), I realized that trying to get a handle on the “facts” was making me forget that I am about to be dealing with real individuals who are struggling with hunger and rural poverty. I can read up on all the academic analyses of systemic poverty in the library, but I doubt it will make me a more effective friend and meal preparer for Charter House inhabitants this summer. At what point do I ignore the big picture, Wendell Berry’s “facts,” and focus on my daily encounters with real people? Eventually I hope to meld the sterile national perspective with my up-close-and-personal experience, but do not think I am there yet.