Pranic bang for your buck

Recently I came across a magazine article detailing grocery store price comparisons of common food items: bread, apples, milk, and butter. I wondered how the local sources stacked up. All of the items cost more than any of the leading stores at the farmers' market and Reading Terminal Market. I wondered why local food was so 'expensive'. But despite the higher price point, I still believe that local food grown on small farms is the best value. These foods are just so much more filling than anything I've ever gotten at a grocery store. I also feel better on a different level when I eat these foods. I genuinely feel that these fresh, local items somehow contain more prana to nourish my system than industrially-farmed foods. Why is there more prana in local food? Namely, it's fresher. The produce I pick up at the farmers' market could likely have been picked that day; it's not been sitting in a cold room or on the grocery shelf for weeks. But also I think that it's the prana that goes into this food on the farm. Stephen Cope notes that prana is contained in fresh water, living plants, love, and inspiring words. I can't help but think the small farms where my food comes from are more nurturing environments than some giant industrial farm. Small, family-based farms, most not eligible for the government subsidies, growing chemical-free produce in great diversity must pour more energy and love into this food than the big companies. We are truly blessed in Philly to live so close to many of these farms, close enough to obtain virtually everything from them, vegetables, oats, butter, ketchup and mustard, eggs, meat, pickled goods, milk, and yogurt. The list goes on and on. Try and make the grocery store a foreign place, and see how much more fulfilling the whole food experience, from shopping to eating, can be.