Did You Remember to Thank...?

A friend of mine is a farmer and when I watch him sit down to eat a meal, I see in his eyes a kind of thoughtfulness about the food he is about to eat.
I decided to think thoughtfully about my lunch today and I came to the conclusion very quickly that I have too often thought too little about what exactly it took for me to sit down and enjoy the meal that I just partook of.
Today I had lunch in a local eatery. I ordered an unsweetened tea and then perused the menu long enough to decide that perhaps a healthy choice would be a chef salad with honey mustard dressing.
As I sipped my tea, I suddenly realized that apart from the waitress that had served it, there had been someone who took the time to brew the tea. Someone else had purchased the ice machine that had been manufactured by any number of people and transported and sold and installed by someone…likely a local plumber. As I enjoyed the cool tea, I realized the cup had been produced from plastics that had required oil for their manufacturing and linked me to a host of people who had explored, drilled, pumped and distilled those products to make them usable for the manufacturing process that involved numbers of other people, exclusive of those who transported the oil and the finished products from manufacturer to end user. Someone worked in a warehouse counting and stacking and shipping the cups to the place where I was eating. And that was just for the cup and ice.
I then remembered that the process of tea growing was a laborious one. The tiny tea leaves that were used to make my tea were grown in a distant land. The leaves were carefully picked at the right time and gathered laboriously and sold in a marketplace to resellers who enabled the products to be utilized over time by those who placed the tea in utilizable formats, teabags…for use in the brewing of my glass of iced tea. Don’t forget the paper that went into the bag or the cardboard that packaged the tea in the boxes that were placed together in larger corrugated containers for delivery. And I have only begun to drink a glass of unsweetened tea.
As I reflected on the food as it was brought to my table, I was thankful for its appearance. The salad greens, the cucumbers cubed, the hard boiled egg slices, the tomato pieces, the deli ham, the grilled chicken, the grated cheese. Before I had taken in the first bite, I remembered that if I was going to thank the people responsible for my lunch, I would have to thank a lettuce grower and all who worked for him…planting the seed, transplanting the plants, fertilizing the crop, weeding and spraying and watering, pickers who gathered, others who washed and crated, others who transported and sold and resellers who bought and distributors who took orders and resold. I would have to thank those who bought and delivered that fresh produce to the marketplace where my local food establishment purchased the lettuce.
I would need to thank an egg farmer…raising chickens newly hatched from a hatchery where eggs had been incubated for days, feeding and watering the chickens was one small part, but the veterinarians who provided antibiotics and supervision of chicken house environments, food inspectors and egg processors who evaluated the size and quality of eggs, the distributors who from gathering to selling carried on any number of processes to insure a rapid farm to market exchange of goods…I must thank all of them too.
The grated cheese in my salad involved a dairy farmer who fed his cows, had them cared for by a veterinarian, and whose milking operation was of necessity a carefully choreographed twice daily operation of milking and gathering, pasteurizing and cooling, separating and selling the components of the milk that would be used for cheese making. The cheese making process would involve a host of others engaged in that process, often involving extensive time, even months and years of aging, before the cheese might be ready for use in my salad. How many people looked after that cheese in the weeks of waiting for it to be ready? How many were responsible for the electricity that cooled the place where it was stored? How many were engaged in the shipping, selling and final distribution and labeling of that cheese for market? How many artists and salesmen and marketing personnel were involved in bringing that product to my lunch?
The tomato in my salad was fresh, and likely grown in a hothouse or in some other more favorable climate than ours. If it were field grown, it would have meant a laborious preparation of the field by the farmer, often utilizing a raised bed and often, an extensive use of plastic sheeting utilized in large commercial operations. Thank the oil producers again and the plastics manufacturers and all those who work for them. We can’t forget the providers of the fuel for the tractors and the semis that transport load after load of goods across the country. We should thank the nurseries that often start the seed and prepare seedlings to be transplanted at favorable times. The system of watering often uses elaborate irrigation systems, either drip or spray systems that use local deep wells or water from melted snowpack found in rivers corralled by dams to provide moisture over long seasons with little rain and electricity to go along with it through turbines turned when the water flows downstream. Did we thank those who built the dams and hydropower plants? Hothouse tomatoes, while often having a little less taste than fieldgrown, require a regular dose of energy and heat often provided by artificial lighting (did we think to mention those who manufacture the light bulbs) and large fan driven heat systems to maintain appropriate temperatures for growing (thanks to the HVAC people). Some of that electricity might have come from nuclear energy. These power plants require the proper and careful management of fissionable materials. The elaborate systems needed to maintain such facilities requires enormous initial cost in building and continues to require ongoing attention for centuries due to residual radiation in spent fuel. Those guys will be working long after my lunch is over…I should thank them. The pickers, the craters, the shippers again bring that load of tomatoes my way to be used by the local restaurateur.
The same again applies to my cucumber. As I dipped my chicken into the honey mustard sauce I realized a whole other group of people to thank. Those who live next to a chicken house know the price of growing those birds. There is the heat and labor of feeding, inoculating, watering, cleaning, catching, crating, shipping live chickens to the processor…then comes the killing, defeathering, washing and cutting into those most frequently used types and sizes for regular commercial use. My deboned and chunked portions would have required any number of individuals to be a part of the process before the meat was sold fresh or flash frozen for storage or shipping.
The chunks of deli ham were delicious. I couldn’t tell if they had come from ham that was fresh sliced or perhaps smoked beforehand. But I’m getting well ahead of myself. I remember feeding pigs on my granddaddy’s farm. It was a daily duty. Today’s producers use more efficient operations, but the requirements are many….from piglets to full grown pigs, usually necessitates a level of constant oversight. Pigs can’t take the heat. Cooling is often required in the form of watercooled areas or temperature-controlled environments. Pigs require frequent feeding as they grow steadily. Again the trucking requirements to move the pigs from farm to processor are critical to the process. The meat packing plant that handled the meat from hoof to deli ready meat required butchers and cooks, packagers and shippers again. Along the way, food inspectors qualified the processors and evaluated the quality and safety of the food production. I should thank them all.
I thought I had it about wrapped up when I realized I was sitting at a table made by a furniture manufacturer using wood cut from a forest, shipped by a trucker, cut by a saw mill, dried by a wood drying operation, planed, glued and finished by a series of processes made possible by another host of people.
And I haven’t even gotten to my honey mustard sauce…someone gathered the honey. Someone produced the mustard plants. Someone harvested and prepared vegetable oils and spices and other ingredients. Who added salt? That made for another group of people working to make my dinner. Did I forget someone else? I had salad crackers with my salad. A bakery made them, from ingredients that would start this conversation all over again. Wheat was grown, harvested, taken to a granary, later to a mill, ground, made into flour. Corn syrup made from a corn crop was used to supply the sweetness. The preservatives were added to retain shelf life. The plastics wrapped the crackers. Cardboard wrapped the goods. Shippers transported…again.
The hands and lives of people who labored to make my lunch possible begins to sound like a whole city of people making contributions to me indirectly, but for me to have that meal…each one was necessary. I am thankful for them, but then understand…I have no doubt left out a host of others. My check came. I used a ten dollar bill to pay. Someone made the pen used to write the check, dozens of people made the paper to prepare the pad for orders, a multitude of workers at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and the pressmen and printers, and press engineers and maintenance workers made possible the distribution of funds to the Federal Reserve and then to local banks and to the teller who handed me the bill when I last cashed my paycheck. I should thank them too, along with all those who made my salary possible.
I finished my meal, but as I stood to leave, I remembered that while I began the meal thanking God for the food, I was leaving the meal thanking God for all the people.
The meal was good. The food was nourishing and pleasant to the eye. The service was kind and attentive. The experience of remembering what it took for my lunch to be made possible reminded me that every part of our lives is such a miracle of relationships as we are bound together in countless, important, but often forgotten ways.
Thank you God for each and everyone whose life has touched me in this hour.
Bless them with the knowledge of your love and with thankfulness for all your blessings. AMEN