Farms in my Bowl

When I conjure up a tasty meal I sometimes let it marinate in my mind for a while until I feel the dream is complete and ready to make. This particular meal revolved around my sister's Borlotti beans, garlic, zucchini, local fresh corn, and the want for soup.
After a peruse on the internet I began to salivate for these beans, noting their similarity to the Fava bean. A night or two later and the initiation began.

A base of white onion and garlic, sage and rosemary and oregano, diced field tomatoes, cabbage, kale, corn; it was a matter of minutes and the kitchen was steaming with the aroma of a harvest meal. I had some veg stock in the freezer which I pulled out earlier in the day, and some left over bean juice from beans I had also cooked just the day before. This meal was coming together perfectly, I couldn't help but be utterly grateful to appreciate and acknowledge the joys of food. What other animal can put so much attention to preparing food? Taking great care in sourcing, growing, preparing and most of all eating food is an honour. Becoming more excited when I layered the soup bowls with a bed of basmati rice, I poured big ladles teaming with fresh cooked veggies and garnished with slivers of fresh basil.
Happily we chatted as we slurped and munched up all this goodness, talking about how incredibly blessed we are to be eating and feel so rich in our simple meal. Then I looked into my bowl, about half consumed, and I took in the reality of how many parts were brought together to make the sum of my dinner, not just my efforts either. It was a solemn pause, to really consider the particulars it takes to bring food into one's home. How many families did it take to make my soup? How many hands and seeds, how much soil, the intention and thoughts and creativity, the tilling, ploughing, watering and fertilizing. Just how many farms do I have in this ceramic bowl made by hands somewhere in Japan?
Well, I can count and acknowledge a few; garlic, kale, zucchini, beans from Honey Grove Farm, Vision corn from a farm in Ladner, Basmati rice from a farm somewhere in India, herbs from my garden box - seedlings from a BC nursery, onion and tomatoes from a BC farm, salt from Real Salt in Utah. That was a far as I could get, but I think that is more than half of the ingredients in this soup. That's not too shabby as far as I am concerned, and really it's the very point of even considering the web that wove this soup into being.
With greater appreciation, I thank and bless my meals with even more reverence.
It takes a village to feed a family.