Food for Thought

I remember like yesterday the first Edible Communities Publishers Conference that we attended in Santa Fe, New Mexico, nine years ago. Our team had just published the first issue of Edible Sarasota and we were about to meet the other 65-plus publishers of the Edible community for the first time. We were enthusiastically welcomed and supported from the first handshake. We listened and learned and left New Mexico inspired, more hopeful, more joyful, because of the power of this community. We wondered how we could make such positive changes in our own community and couldn’t wait to get started.

Nine years later, we will welcome our old and new friends here, in Sarasota, for the 13thedible Communities Annual Publishers Conference.

So I started thinking about what we have learned and how much we have grown since that meeting. We have become friends with the farmers who grow our food, raise our chickens and put fresh eggs on our breakfast table. We have set up countless booths at the farmers’ markets and spent time with our readers. We have made friends with clowns and photographed Nik Wallenda eating a chicken sandwich as he walked the railing of the Ringling bridge. We have helped put life back into the bay by releasing thousands of clams with the good folks at Sarasota Bay Watch. We have hosted countless sustainable seafood dinners with some of the best chefs in town.

We have ridden our bikes for miles to raise money for diabetes research as Team Edible Sarasota. We have cried as a community when we have lost one of our leaders. We celebrate when one of our own wins the food network championship. We have collaborated on cookbooks, we eat and cook what’s in season, we grow our own food and share it. We drink local beer and we’ve walked our local vineyards in the summer heat. We support local businesses. We Eat Like a Local. We give thanks to our amazing community for allowing us tell your stories.

We are happy with how we’ve grown, and we’re excited to see what the future holds for the local food movement. I’m really excited for the new Edible publishers who will attend their first conference this month. I hope they too leave more hopeful, joyful, and alive—just as I did nine years ago.

Here’s to 2019!