Legacy is multidirectional—a word that looks back as much as it looks forward.
Reading through this 66th issue of The Snack Magazine, this nuanced concept washes over me, sweeping me back into my own personal lineage as I sit on the edge of my story’s forward movement and how that map will unfold. The catalyst could be a milestone birthday at play, or it could be the fact that I have been carrying around your stories inside me for over a decade now.
For me, my heritage and my future crystallized at an unexpected juncture recently. It was a rare moment with my grandmother, not unlike any other moment, except I needed to be who I am today, and she needed to be who she has grown to become. She turned 99 in January. As I sat across from her, watching her curl a newspaper in her hand, everything felt like it had come full circle.
She has nearly a century of wisdom, and at the cellular level, has lived hundreds of lives. She has been my greatest storyteller and the matriarch of the family. My grandma has taught me, and teaches me still, the beauty in telling stories—one time whispering to me across the table how she lived on a silkworm farm in Japan with her aunt and sisters when she was five years old. How the night was the loudest part of the day.
The silkworms were eating mulberry leaves, she told me, and it sounded like rain.
To sit across from her as a storyteller now, the woman who read me Momotarō about the little peach boy, in English, from a Japanese children’s book, feels like a promise. Feels something like legacy.
This hope and belief in legacy have been at the forefront of my mind even more so since then, especially as the conversation builds around the next generation of fresh produce growers—a pool of risk-takers that seems to be waning. This is a reality I believe to be momentary. But, yes, it may be quite a long moment. A legacy is not just a foundation on which you continue to build with one eye on the past, but one that can be an intention set on the horizon, with groundwork laid today.
Entering into this industry as it is this day, with all the production and cost pressures, volatile consumer environment, and day-to-day labor demands, is not without its challenges. But these steep challenges are ones I hope we can reframe for the next generation in a way that, yes, acknowledges the risks they will face, but, more than that, emphasizes the rewards. Feeding the world is no small feat; and betting on the decisions you make today in the hopes they will pay off at harvest and market months or years from now is the stuff of strong character. And becoming a steward of the land is more needed at present than ever before.
It is true, I am not out there at sunrise tilling the land with these strong-hearted many. And yes, my office is much warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the orchards, vineyards, and fields of our friends on the front lines battling to feed the world and to support their families.
I do hope, though, that our team can carry your stories toward the next generation, or to the generation already here now who may be looking toward the proverbial greener grass. Let us help you find the center of your story so that we can live in its orbit.
Let us be your amplifier, your megaphone, your archivists, and biographers.
Let us help your story—tell a legacy that builds forward, and one that also looks back.
To read the April issue of The Snack, click here.
