The Organic Dish provides easy and delicious, fresh, natural and organic "make-your-own" meals and dinner kits for vegetarians and omnivores in Boulder, Colorado.

My family can trace their farming heritage in Germany back to 1253, when older records burned in a church fire. That’s 750 years of farming and of collective wisdom of land stewardship. Due to WWII my dad was the first generation to leave the farm and not come back to it (the land was nationalized by the occupying Soviet force and the East German government), so I never got to experience this part of my family’s heritage.

My dad loves our food, but he gets this slightly puzzled and/or amused look on his face whenever we talk about all the stuff we do to set ourselves apart from “conventional” agriculture and food. We buy from local, organic producers whenever possible, we use recyclable and compostable packaging, we are a “zero waste community partner,” and a “partner for a clean environment.” We are proud of these efforts and we think they put us on the leading edge of environmental responsibility and healthy eating.

But do they really put us on the leading edge? My dad points out that the family farm was always “zero waste” and “organic” and “sustainable,” but so was everybody else’s because there were no plastics and no pesticides.

I’m not longing for “the good old days” (and neither is my dad), but it’s interesting to think about the fact that what we call “conventional” agriculture is not so conventional after all. Really, it’s sustainable organic farming that’s conventional, and the chemically infused and pesticide saturated crops of the last 70 years are unconventional.