The closer you get, the brighter it turns on. - Sturgill Simpson

Not sure who said it, or when, nor does it really even matter. Maybe it was one of us. Maybe one of ya'll. But somewhere along the way, somebody out there said this, which still sticks close like peanut butter to the ribs:

Food as a Verb is a love letter.

Well, yes, I thought, knees suddenly wobbly, that's exactly right. We never called it that directly - not in our pro forma business plan - but ... a love letter? Yes ma'am. That's right on time.

Wrote some pretty emo love letters in middle school. Walking around with Cupid arrows stuck in me like a Plains buffalo. When my wife and I were dating - it was long distance and Wifi was still dial-up - we mailed letters back and forth. Somewhere around here, there's a shoebox full. Antiques Roadshow won't admit it, but, it's priceless.

It's a big, headliner week for love. Valentine's on Friday.

Viewing our work as a love letter is pretty swell. But then, it hits:

Sure, Food as a Verb is a love letter.

But we aren't the ones writing it.

Yeah, those are Sarah's images. My words. Alex's design. But Food as a Verb is just the envelope. The messenger bag. The carrier pigeon. The finger pointing to the moon.

We're trying to hold up a mirror to what we see in the world around us.

"We choose to love," wrote bell hooks.

"Love is a decision," echoed Erich Fromm.

Here's what we keep finding.

Love is waking up at 4.30 am for 15,000 days to milk your herd of cows.

Love is walking away from another career to become a teacher, but not just any teacher; you teach students to grow food, working overtime on your own dime, to make sure they aren't just growing produce, but their own lives.

Love is honoring the land and choosing not to harm it.

Love is a farmers' market.

Love is watching Carmen Joyce watch honeybees.

Love is bringing together an entire town of coffee lovers.

Love is feeding your neighbors.

Love is providing jobs - and housing, transportation, community - for families from anywhere.

Love is a 3 am cake for an overtime mother.

Love is Bruce Weiss.

Love is bringing fresh cut flowers to your Lupi's restaurants each week.

And feeding your pigs pizza.

Love is not wasting.

Love is a warm meal on a hungry day.

And strong men making others stronger.

Love is planting.

And teaching others to plant.

Love is generations stewarding the land.

Love is noticing the small things.

Love is seeing - like Charlotte's Web everywhere you look- all creatures as terrific, radiant and humble.

Love is attention.

Love is running with friends.

Love is trust.

Love is caring for your employees like they're family and your family like they're kings and queens. Love is never resting - never-ever - on what's been done well, your laurels, as if your search for perfection could ever end.

Love is believing in yourself.

Love is everyone - whose name you will never know - who makes the restaurant industry go 'round.

Love is the commitment to the early hours while the city sleeps, the late nights while the city slumbers home.

Love is seeing the beauty and richness and potential in what others throw away.

Love is the daily devotion of dinner time, each evening, for months that turn to years that turn to decades that turn to a lifetime of preparing and sharing meals together.

In health.

In sickness.

Love is baking your own communion bread.

Love is teaching fourth graders how to make donuts from scratch.

Love is lighting the smoker every morning before the sun comes up.

Love is the wordless way it all begins outside of us, the seeds binding to soil, mixing with rain and sun, as microorganisms do their work, all in design and service of growth and nourishment.

Sure, we said it: microorganisms are love.

Love is also cow shit.

Why?

With it, we flourish.

Without it, we perish.

No greater love, Christ said, than to lay down one's life, and isn't that the same song and verse within all parts of farming? The wheat falls from the chaff, over and over and over again.

Christ? With one night to live, what did he do? He hosts a meal. Builds a table. Wine and bread. Fellowship with his mates and crew.

Love, he told them. It all rolls back to love.

When we look back over shoulder at all these Food as a Verb stories, it's like bobbing for apples. There are just too many to grab.

Underneath and running through them all? This wide experience of love as devotion. Care. Selflessness. Rebirth.

Once you see it, you can't not see it.

Our port of call is always external; we're bringing you slivers and slices of what we find in the world.

But we aren't creating them.

You are. They are. We are together, writing our way back to one another, the co-authors of this most magnificent experience of being human, walking the land, love letters everywhere.

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.