The Art of Celebration

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posted on

September 17, 2025

Maybe it's the cool mornings, but I have recently been thinking of feasting on good comfort food and gathering with friends.

It can be hard to believe that we are on the tail end of summer with all the cookouts, picnics, and farm dinners, but we have the cozy fall and winter seasons ahead of us.

I love how we as humans always have the need to eat and nourish ourselves, but that can look like a million different things. In different seasons of life, it is going to be unique, but celebrating and gathering around food is a central part of life.

In a world full of distractions and patterns that promote isolation, gathering is something we need to intentionally cultivate in our lives.

Here are three myths about gathering over food and three tips for cultivating community into your life:

Myth #1: I don’t have time to do “one more thing”.

Truth: Look at your life and find the natural rhythms that are already there and invite others to join you. Do you like to relax on Saturday evenings on the porch? Go next door and see if your neighbor is free to come over! Do you cook a big lunch for Sunday after church? Consider inviting a friend at that time instead of stressing about adding another large meal of cooking to your busy week.

Gathering with friends over food does not mean it has to be a five-course meal with entertainment to plan (although throwing a party like that may be fun to do on occasion!). I personally rely a lot on my crockpot or simple Dutch oven meals when I have friends over.

Myth #2: I have to be an expert at hospitality in order to gather over food with people.

Truth: Hospitality and hosting others is something specific people are really gifted at, but it is also something that you can “come as you are” and uniquely offer to the people in your life. I have learned that you can let things speak for themselves. Introduce a friend to our mouthwatering meats and let the nourishing food and the kindness of companionship minister to others more than anything else.

Just be a friend to others, gathering over food is about sharing community and eating together; it is pretty simple.

Also, feel free to cheat and make things easier for you if hosting feels stressful. Paper plates are your friend! Ask to meet up at a park or picnic pavilion, or another setting that makes things easy for you.

Myth #3: I have to have my life together to invite people into it.

Truth: “Having your life together” is a facade that many of us chase or hide behind, but real, authentic community sees behind whatever curtains we can put up. Life is full of different seasons. There is joy and grief. Full houses and empty houses. Scarcity and abundance. Making an effort to gather isn’t something that happens when all aspects of your life are perfectly balanced. Your life will never be perfect, nor will anyone else’s.

What would happen if we embraced the imperfection of each season and grew with those who love us in authentic community?

Do you have a house full of toddlers? No one said you couldn’t gather over PB&J’s. Are you struggling financially? Why not do a potluck where everyone can contribute a favorite recipe?

Authenticity is hard, but how else will we truly be able to celebrate or mourn what is going on in our lives unless we open up about it?

Let’s reject the myths that keep us apart and start gathering over good food and building lasting relationships!

Here are three quick tips to encourage you in the process:

Tip #1: Find your people.

Some of us come from colorful backgrounds full of culture, community, and close relationships. Others feel very isolated, and the very idea of trying to integrate community into their life seems quite daunting.

My advice is to start with your easy friends. Find the people in your life who spending time with feels effortless. Invite them to share food with you in some way. No need to start your journey of cultivating relationships with a distant relative who stresses you out.

Keep your eyes open. You were made for community. There are people out there for you.

Tip #2: Start small.

As I mentioned in some of the myths above, cultivating community and gathering with people is not a spectacle or a show that you have to put on. Consider starting by adding simple traditions to existing gatherings.

Try something new on a birthday and bake or cook some nourishing recipes as we look forward to fall and winter with all the various holidays.

Be intentional about life accomplishments. Let graduations, weddings, new babies, and new homes be a catalyst to gather and grow in relationships.

Tip #3: Know yourself.

You know best where you are in life right now. In the spirit of keeping things simple and easy, find ways to make gathering natural and effortless for you. Otherwise, you will get overwhelmed and burnt out. People can do that to you, as much as gathering with others is so healthy for your soul.

Pull out some board games if conversation gets difficult. Meet up for lunch instead of dinner if you are an early-to-bed type of person.

Eating with others should be an act of joy, not stress!

What would make eating a meal in community a joy-filled experience for you?

I hope that as you start to ease into the fall season and develop your rhythms with kids back in school and shorter days, you will take some time to gather with friends over good food and experience the joy of cultivating relationships in a world that is increasingly isolated.

Who knew that eating lunch with a friend could be such an act of resistance?

Many blessings on you and your communities,

Priscilla

Food Shortages

I'm in Oregon today speaking at the Azure Harvest Festival and a question from the audience during a Q&A stimulated a lot of discussion: "What do you think about the possibility and preparation surrounding food shortages?" David Stelzer, founder of Azure Standard, answered that the issue is not food volume, it's food nutrition. That was an interesting answer that has a lot of merit. As a nation, we are overfed and undernourished. This is the crux of the MAHA movement and the epidemic diseases we see in our country. At Polyface, we know the pastured meat and poultry we produce is far superior in essential phytochemicals and other nutrients due to the carotenes, exercise, and stress-free habitat we offer. You can taste the difference, feel the difference in texture, and measure it empirically. Perhaps my most poignant affirmation was our cat test. We purchased meat from the supermarket and offered our own for the four cats. They wouldn't touch the conventional meat (ground beef). Even though two plates and four cats would be much easier to accommodate if they spread out, all four crowded around the plate with our meat, eating it all and licking it up, before later sniffing and gingerly eating the supermarket counterpart. Since cats don't understand TV ads or USDA propaganda, they know what's good and what's not. We encourage anyone dismissive of food differences to ask their pets: you can trust them far more than doctors and experts. Yes, I get the nutrient deficiency angle on the shortage question. But I'd like to explore it a bit further. Right now, the world throws away more human-edible food, as a percentage of production, than at any time in human history. The planet is awash in food. Some 40 percent gets thrown away because it has a slight blemish, exceeds the sell-by date, or is tainted in some way. We have a fundamentally segregated food supply rather than an integrated one, and that creates a lot of unusable waste. The vulnerabilities of our food system, I think, are much more subtle. When I was in Uruguay two years ago, speaking at a conference, one of the other presenters was from Germany and showed a soil map of the globe. Not a single commercial agricultural region had a stable or positive soil trajectory. Every single area on the planet is losing soil; some faster than others, but globally our soil depletion continues without any sign of abatement. This is not a good trajectory. As much as the technocrats promise food without soil, that's not the way to bet. Soil is the skin of the earth. When it goes, famine results. The main difference now compared to centuries ago is that we have the capacity to move food around. Nobody starves due to a lack of food on the planet; they starve due to socio-political unrest and dysfunction. But what happens when massive areas can't grow anything anymore? Even being able to move food around doesn't help when there isn't enough. The soil trajectory does not look good. But at Polyface, we're building soil. Areas covered with shale (layered rocks) half a century ago now have a foot of soil on them. That's not the 3-5 feet that 150 years of inappropriate tillage eroded, but it's a build-back start. In addition to soil loss, as a planet we're seeing hydrologic decreases. The Oglala aquifer, which undergirds the irrigated agriculture in five states, has dropped more than 100 feet in the last half-century. At its current rate, it will be unpumpable in about 50 more years. Imagine if all those circular irrigation pivots in Nebraska and Kansas shut down. What then? At Polyface, we keep building ponds to inventory surface runoff. By definition, surface runoff occurs when rains come too fast at once or too much at one time for the soil to absorb it. Holding that and using it strategically in a drought is a way to reduce flooding during rain events and grow grass when it gets dry. This is one of the most landscape resilient techniques we can implement. Finally, major animal and plant diseases threaten the world's food systems like never before. African swine fever, hoof and mouth disease in cattle, and bird flu in poultry appear to be getting worse and covering larger areas. Why? We believe it's because chemicals and factory farming compromise the immunological systems in both plants and animals. Monocrops and chemical fertilizers wreak havoc on immune systems, opening the planet's food systems to new levels of fragility. In contrast, at Polyface, we believe happy animals and biodiversity offer the best antidote to immunological deficiency. Stress from unsanitary conditions, mono-species density, or dietary deficiency (rations or fertilizer) invites disease. Nature uses disease to cull the weak. Predators pick off the stragglers. This is the way biology works. But at Polyface, we keep these vulnerabilities at bay with compost fertilization, pasture rotations, and lots of species diversity, including pollinators and wildlife. Here's the point: the basic long-term vulnerabilities in the planet's food systems could all be reversed with practices Polyface uses every day. Looked at another way, the entire food shortage question could be answered if eaters and farmers implemented these ecological and immunological protocols, working together to rather than completely separated. We don't need to fall into an abyss of starvation. If we all simply began eating food from farms that build soil, increase water, and stimulate immunity, we could deliver a hospitable, abundant planet to our children. Reversing these trajectories wouldn't take much time or money. It takes intentionally-minded folks who connect the chain of sustenance from their plate to the planet. Polyface patrons do that. Thank you. Let's heal the land together. Joel

The Art of Celebration

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