Does the trend toward buying and eating local have you yearning to set up a homestead and live off the land? If so, you're not alone. I and millions of others here in the U.S. are with you, seeking out farmer's markets to pick up where our backyard gardens leave off. Tune in to the The American Sound Saturday at 6 pm for a musical salute to America's farms and farmers on Old Farmers Day. America's agrarian history, like the soil of America's fruited plains, is rich and nourishing, fueling everything from small family farms of yore to today's much larger operations. The local food movement of our day is in one sense a reach back for what came so naturally in the small farm culture that was part and parcel to a less complicated way of life. Three generations ago, my kin were farmers and did, in fact, live off the land. My great-grandfather and his horse plowed the fields. My great-grandmother's fried chicken began when the chicken whose neck she had wrung stopped flapping about and went limp. Hard work? Definitely. Beautiful? Not at all. But no preservatives, no salmonella. And work done just to survive, not for fame or fortune. So every time I plant in my garden a seed that I drove to the garden center to buy, or harvest squash or tomatoes and fix them up with store-bought pasta - wholesome as it all is - I am reminded how much I wish I could learn from my own farmer folk about the land and living. Join me for a celebration of  America's farms and farmers on Old Farmers Day, Saturday at 6 pm on The American Sound on Classical 101!
Jennifer Hambrick unites her extensive backgrounds in the arts and media and her deep roots in Columbus to bring inspiring music to central Ohio as Classical 101’s midday host. Jennifer performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago before earning a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.