High Alpine meadows, like their near relatives prairie, desert and certain varieties of wetland, teach us to consider the world from a fresh perspective, to open our eyes and take account of what we have missed, reminding us that, in spite of our emphasis on the visual in everyday speech, we see so very little of the world.

Snow isn't just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grime of a Fife mining town but also of a kind of weary familiarity, a taken-for-granted quality to which our eyes are all too susceptible.

What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gravity is not just a limitation, but also a possible partner in an intriguing, potentially joyful game.

Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural world's most elegant phenomena.

It's important to have quiet time and isolation.

I'm incredibly optimistic about what individuals can do. We have technology that our grandparents would have given their eye teeth for.

I would suggest that if you get in your kitchen and cook for yourself, you can eat like kings for a very low cost.

I don't have money. Monsanto has money.

Our biggest fear is that 'Food, Inc.' will move heavy-handed food-safety regulations forward.

Choose to patronise your local farmers; as eaters, you need to demand a different type of food. Appreciate the pigginess of the pig.

I am libertarian, and Americans generally are, more than, say, Canadians and Australians.

We believe that the farm should be building 'forgiveness' into the ecosystem. What does that mean? That a more forgiving ecosystem is one that can better handle drought, flood, disease, pestilence.

What we're looking at is God's design, nature's template, and using that as a pattern to cut around and lay it down on a domestic model to duplicate that pattern that we see in nature.

Think of all the mesquite in Texas, the pinyon pines, the acorns in Appalachia, every place has the possibility of mass production. It's an infrastructural system so nestled in ecology, it's a more beautiful ecology.

Nature moves towards balance.

Industrial agriculture, because it depends on standardization, has bombarded us with the message that all pork is pork, all chicken is chicken, eggs eggs, even though we all know that can't really be true.

I want people to think through issues. I'm just tired of blind alignment.

Instead of buying into the global agenda, which is using food as just industrial stuff, we would say we view food as biological, a living thing, that belongs in smaller communities.

New Zealand has incredible global recognition for grass-fed livestock.

We can't begin to feed ourselves with a local-centric system if we lock up land in royal manor models.

God doesn't just miraculously and physically intervene in the whole process, so if I just go and drop a bunch of chemicals and herbicides that leach into the groundwater, I can pray all day to keep my child healthy, but if the herbicides gone into the groundwater come up my well, my child's going to drink that water.

We're scared to death to try new things because we think we have to get it right the first time.

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen. Start building up your larder! We don't even use that term any more.

We would be a much healthier culture if the government had never told us how to eat.