The story of "stone soup" exists all over the world. In my favorite variation, a hungry traveler appears in a village with nothing but an empty cooking pot, a spoon, and his appetite. When the suspicious villagers will not show him any hospitality, he sets up his cooking pot in the village square and begins to boil water with a simple stone in it. As the curious townsfolk pass by and ask him what he is doing, he stirs the pot and tells them that he is making stone soup. Further, he explains that at the end of the day when the soup is ready, everyone will be welcome to come and share it with him. Eventually, one person ventures that the soup might taste better with a few onions. Soon the villagers are each bringing a couple of carrots, a potato, a little salt, whatever they have on hand to add to the stone soup. At the end of the day, the whole town shares a delicious pot of soup (minus the stone, of course), and they have also learned a valuable lesson about the joys of shari
Good morning, and happy stoopid-clock-changing-this-is-so-dumb week! Ok, I've gotten it out of my system (mostly), and we can pick up this morning where we left off last week, with our trip at the end of October to see the updates and expansion of the Boston Area Gleaners at Stonefield Farm in Acton. The Gleaners is such a success story in this area, not only managing to ensure that a gorgeous family farm in Acton will be preserved forever, but also rescuing a gazillion tons of produce across the region that would otherwise go into a landfill. All summer and fall, we are able to share amazing bags of produce with our pantry guests, thanks to the efforts of the Gleaners and our friend Jess who works there, and also thanks to our friends Alison and Rich who go there each week to pick up our produce for us. But wait, there's more! Alison and Rich are two of those tireless people who serve this community every single week by doing this pick up, but they also make sure