and I'm off!

I had a comfortable flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt. Towards the end, I got to chatting with the man sitting next to me, and found my expectations of him pleasantly proven wrong ( as seems to be the theme of my life lately ). His name was Anthony Rastelli, owner of Rastelli Global – a “ consumer focused, technology driven “ ( as reads the front of his business card ) international meat packing and distribution company. Rastelli Global supplies all the meat products for such chain restaurants as TGIFridays. Red Lobster, and Olive Garden; and at the moment, Anthony is looking to expand his business into Russia and Dubai.

If you're anything like me, you're thinking to yourself, “there is no way in hell I can relate to this guy”. I found myself falling back into my automatic (and admittedly smug) “ I'm a local/organic/farmers' market shopping/Micheal Polan reading/vegetarian who's going to live on an organic farm for four months” attitude.

But Anthony was not the heartless, money driven, monopoly owner as I had subconsciously pegged him. To the contrary, he was one of the most friendly and kind people I've ever met. He told me that his favorite part of his job is getting to meet so many wonderful and diverse people on his travels around the world. Anthony was very excited to hear about my upcoming trip – especially that I was going to work on an organic farm. He explained that his ideal lifestyle would be living in the country, eating only fresh and local foods – as it is, he rarely eats out and only eats meat once a month, at most.

Talking with Anthony was an extremely humbling experience. Through WWOOFing, I hope to deepen my own practice of sustainability, but meeting Anthony reminded me that the lifestyle which I am pursuing does not necessarily need to work for everyone else. We are all just people doing what makes us happy, whether that's running a global meat packing company or picking organic grapes in Tuscany.