What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving Day?

This morning, when my eyes opened to a new day, I saw that it was a cloudy day we'd be having. Three days ago, our first five inches of snow fell, the "season-opener" for Winter 2011-12. I don't love snow and I don't love cold. No matter. Today is a fresh, glorious day, one that holds the promise for something new, something good, maybe even something unexpectedly good. For a couple years and until recently, I'd kept a Post-It with Brian Tracy's "something wonderful is going to happen to me today" motto taped to the edge of the PC. The message has sunk in and the reminder no longer needs to be there.

In our household, my feet are usually the first to hit the floor in the morning. Then,  morning rituals completed, I'm off to wake up the house, turn on the PC, make a fresh pot of coffee. About mid-morning, daughter Heather and I'll step back from our writing assignments and make breakfast. Often, it's a piece of fruit, a couple organic eggs and bacon from our organic food co-op.

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. "What are you thankful for?" I've been asked in a number of recent ezines I subscribe to. Like most of us, I don't need much, if any, time to think of an answer: my faith, my family, reuniting with my brother and sister-in-law this year and some of their daughters, my health. I'm thankful for my passion to write my own words and to edit the words of others who hire me for that purpose. My list includes being thankful for

• every bite of the organic food we eat
• the farmers who raise it
• the organic food store that sells it, and the dedicated people who work there
• the daughter who prepares the foods in delicious, exciting ways.

And I'm thankful for the Wyoming organic grassfed beef rancher who opened my eyes to the world of farming and ranching life, to the people who work so very hard to grow healthy foods for appreciative, health-conscious people. The rancher's message caused me to look at food through a lens new to me, an intriguing perspective. He told me that, in his home, food is a celebration, not just a celebration at birthday and holiday times, but a daily celebration. Friends gather in the kitchen with him and his wife, sometimes to prepare a dish for the meal they'll share. They cherish what they celebrate; they celebrate what they cherish. Until that defining moment, my view had been far removed from the rancher's. I, and most people I know, rush to eat to fill our bellies so that we can hurry off somewhere to do something "important."

Thanks to the rancher, I learned to appreciate the land and its vital connection to our health. But many conventional farmlands and ranchlands are in danger; something vile---synthetic chemicals and GMOs---poisons the land. Do we appreciate what we have enough to stop dangerous practices that threaten the future of our food supply so that, not just we but our kids, grandkids and their kids will never have the means, the land, to enjoy clean foods?

Thanks to the rancher, I looked back to my roots. I didn't grow up on a farm but my granddad did. His daughter, my mother, loved the land and always wanted to be a farmer's wife but it wasn't meant to be. Instead, she contented herself to live in our small city, farming our backyard garden. I had another though indirect connection to the farm; school friends who lived in what I now call the rich environment of the farm life. Rich because of important lessons that life provided them. There, they learned about life's cycles long before I had, as they watched calves, pigs, chickens come into this world. They also learned how to be responsible at a younger age than I, and what it meant in real terms to be depended upon by their fathers and mothers. At about the same time of day they headed into the barnyard to tend to their daily chores, likely to feed pigs and chickens, I was outdoors, riding bike, or playing with neighbor kids. Farm families connect not just to one another and other farm families, but to the land that yields their food, in a way that city kids will never know and perhaps never understand.

Every time the rancher and I talked, I learned something new. But the primo lesson he taught was this: Get connected to the land; know the people who grow your food.

When I started writing about organic food, I hadn't yet met the rancher. Undeniably, he was a gift, one I'm thankful for, daily.

Betty Mahalik is my Monday Morning Coach. Today, she ended her mentoring piece on Thanksgiving with this:

"If it’s true that what we focus on expands (and I have ample evidence that it is) then I invite you to join me this week in finding and focusing on the causes for celebration all around us. What a world we might wake up to come Thanksgiving Day! Imagine….just imagine a world where "thanksgiving" becomes "thanks-living."  That, my friends, is a cause for celebration!"

Celebrate one another, our fellow countrymen, our food and the people who grow it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!