Can a Veg Box heal a family?

I recently went to pick up my first Veg Box. I am now part of a member-led Co-op that distributes organic, seasonal veg in my community, redistributing any leftovers to people who need them.

On Wednesday I pick up from a shed 10 minutes walk from where I live. You get given a code for the padlock, and all the bags are colour-coded by size/price, so I just grab the nearest brown bag.

Each week, a newsletter lands in my inbox, featuring updates, messages from farmers or volunteers, delicious recipes, and important reminders about the upcoming AGM.

But you might be wondering: why the fuck do I need a veg box? Well, 3 reasons:

1. The political

• Eat seasonal. Eat Local.

• Organic small-scale farming

• supports grass routes. Support Farmers

• Invest in the local economy, build community

• Small acts of resistance for the sick and tired

• Support local redistribution and solidarity networks

2. I have very few spoons, and a personal aversion to the supermarket, a place I feel is consumerism dressed up as accessibility.

My aversion isn’t perfect and supermarkets can be the most accessible option. Things like washing up liquid, bin bags, cans of stuff, and the few branded products I have sold my soul to the devil over, I get at the supermarket.

Generally, I try to shop local for everything else. This takes time, with lots of different shops in different directions, and sometimes I can’t. A veg box scheme seemed like a solution: instead of many shops, it’s one shed; instead of 2 hours doing a shop, it is a 20-minute walk there and back—half what it would take for me to get to the nearest supermarket anyway. It’s only veg, but they make up most of my meals, and I can make it work. It’s decision-free, in the hands of the earth and her seasons.

3. The part I don’t really want to admit to.

I got a veg box to feel close to my sister; she is as cool as fuck, a land worker currently in the West Bank doing the work. She has always been the kind of person to “do the work," radical to her soul. Despite this, we don’t get along; sometimes we fucking hate each other and can’t spend long together without coming for each other’s throats.

We aren’t talking, haven’t been talking for years, whether by decree or because neither of us trusts each other enough to talk. I miss her, I think. So I signed up for a veg scheme, something she used to run while in Bristol—something she embodies from bones to soul.

I miss her, so I signed up for a veg scheme because I know it’s something she would see as movement, as progress. But it feels deeper and more tangled than simply missing someone.

I mentioned to my friend the rituals I have adopted to feel a closeness to my family, whom I miss, but haven’t found safety with. A weekly veg box scheme for my sister, and coffee beans from the same place my mum has been going for thirty years, to carry some kind of family tradition, even though the traditional sense of family is a memory lost.