and there are a billion starfish washed up on the shore, dying around me. How can I save all of them? Do I run back home and get a bucket? Do I build a giant net? How long will that even take? The beach is endless, but my life is finite."​

I had been talking to my father about the climate crisis, and the napkin I had been toying with was long since ripped to shreds. 

"Easy," he said, unruffled as always. "You start with one."

"But that won't save them all!" Parents never understand. 

"True. But to that one starfish, it will mean the entire world." It was an earnest answer, but not one I wanted to hear.

I sighed and threw the napkin bits out, feeling defeated. I'm from a family of engineers, and if there's one thing that engineers excel at, it's being lazy. Not "lazy" in the traditional sense of the word, idly sitting around watching clouds go by, but lazy as in, "I've automated all my work, so now I can lay around all day watching the clouds go by."

An engineer looks at a thousand starfish on the beach and says, "I can build a bucket for that! With a time investment of one hour, my Starfish Save Rate will increase at least tenfold!"  She builds a free body diagram, prototypes, iterates, launches, and eventually ensures that no more starfish ever get beached again (forever and ever, amen). So goes the techno-futurist utopian vision. 

But what about when there are too many starfish, too many forces, or too many variables to plug in? What if the problem is spatiotemporally infinite?​ What if the problem is too big, and you are just one small person in a large, complex world, filled with problems you never asked for, but now must solve? 

J.R.R. Tolkien had a wonderful answer to this in his fantasy legendarium, in which an evil, primordial power threatens the existence of all that is good and green in the world. Like me, the main character expresses dismay at the world:

​

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

​

​ We're in an extinction event, hurtling toward an unstable future, with the doomsday clock set at 90 seconds to midnight. We're making decisions that don't bode well for our long-term survival, and there seem to be more problems every minute- 

So what do we do?

We make what difference we can, in the time that is given to us. We start with one little starfish.

Grazing Guild is my answer to the infinite tragedy of the present; our food system is woefully unsustainable, with each moving part seemingly intractable. But there are people who are moving the needle on sustainable agriculture.

By elevating traditional charcuterie spreads to highlight these pioneers and use higher quality, regeneratively-grown, less harmful, or plant-based ingredients, I invite you to try a better way of nourishing yourself and your loved ones that centers the health of both humans and the biosphere in which we live. Board by board, bite by bite, I want you to be intrigued and delighted with the magic of the natural world and all its abundance.

Cheers to the bacchanal!

May we sustain it, together, for years to come.