I just wanted to give you all a heads up that I'm planning to write you all a book review of the new book by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton called A Nation of Farmers. I have been waiting for this book to be published since I read Depletion and Abundance and I'm thrilled to be reading it now. I have recently discovered two writers of whom I was previously unaware, Gene Logsdon and Vandana Shiva. I have books from each of them in my reading pile and I will report to you on them as I get to them.
I know a number of the regular readers of this blog are just becoming aware of the food issues we are facing here in the good ol' US of A. I know many, many people have read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen and Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Recently, someone very dear to me told me she was only halfway through The Omnivore's Dilemma and it had changed her eating habits already. I am guessing that this response to the book is quite common, but I wonder, as people begin to become more and more informed about food issues if they might actually get overwhelmed by just thinking about all of it and throw up their hands and say forget it. I know, for my part, there are days when, as I told you in the previous post, I find myself in the McDonald's drive-thru. How is that for a locavore? Not very local is it? But I think the important thing is that we start somewhere and do something, even if you can't do it everyday. In our particular case, with 5 kids and a highly fossil fuel dependent lifestyle, we do indeed find ourselves at McDonald's more than I would like. But our trips to any restaurants are vastly less frequent than they were five years ago. One of the things that I enjoy so very much about Sharon Astyk's writing is that she is all about meeting people where they are now is space and time and mindset. She knows not all of her readers are persuaded by the peak fossil fuels arguments or other environmental considerations, and yet her message manages to touch those people as well because food is something that transcends pretty much every other consideration; we all eat.
One thing we have held the line on in our family is eggs. We never, and I really mean never, buy eggs at the grocery store anymore. We have our laying hens, and when they don't produce enough, I have nearby farmers that sell theirs. If I can't do that, we will simply go without. The last time we purchased eggs from the grocery store was a couple of months ago and I bought organic ones; they were a huge disappointment and that day we said, "never again." Why eggs? Well, in our family, we feel strongly about cruelty to animals. We are disgusted by the descriptions we have read about factory farms, and this is one change that has actually been essentially painless for us to make. Now that it is settled our next big change is going to be beef. I am equally disgusted by what happens in cattle CAFO (confined animal feeding operations). Beef is a more difficult change for us because we are a meat and potatoes kind of family, and locally raised beef is very expensive. But we did find a solution. We have plans to buy a beef cow (a Hereford heifer) that we are going to pasture raise ourselves. We can't go without beef until then, so we are still buying grocery store meat for now. We are also still buying more than half of our chicken from the grocery store, but soon we'll begin harvesting our own chickens. I just have to get the gumption to slaughter and clean one myself.
So if you've been interested in making some changes with regards to your food sources, start out with something you can do. For some people giving up all fast food permanently might be pretty painless, or maybe you can start going to your local farmer's market, or you can start making your own bread. Just do one thing at a time and don't beat yourself up if you can't radically alter your habits all at once. Send some comments to the blog and let me know if you've changed any of your eating habits lately. I'm curious what other people are doing and eating.
Livestock headcount:
We lost another turkey so we now have 12 turkey chicks. Everything else is the same. The chickens that arrived last week all beat up with missing feathers and clipped beaks are starting to show some signs of improvement. Their feathers are growing in, albeit slowly, and they come in to roost every night now. I don't know what sort of life these poor chickens had, but from the looks of the things, we freed them from hell itself.
What we're eating now:
Watermelon in large quantities, green beans, corn on the cob, green peppers and we've been having salad almost every night. Other than herbs, which we are getting from the garden, this is all from the farmer's market.
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1 year ago
I hear you on the meat issue. I was vegetarian for a few years and now am eating meat again, but very, very limited because I will only meat if I know where it comes from. We will have our own beef soon enough and next spring should have our own chicken, too.
ReplyDeleteI, too, drive-thru places more than I would like. Sometimes it's just poor planning on my part, sometimes it's because the kids just want it, and sometimes I'm just too tired. BUT we have tried to do that a lot less, both to save money and because it's just horrible. I've even explained to my 5 year old WHERE that food comes from. I think eventually he will decide not to eat it, but we'll see.
I did buy eggs at the store, but I was able to get eggs that are pasture-fed and local. Now I get eggs even more locally and have one hen laying! Hooray. Now if I could just quit buying other things with eggs in them, like ice cream or eggs at restaurants, etc.