Free-Range Organic Meat Chickens

Just dropped off 21 meat chickens at the butcher. Getting my farm girl on.

3 reasons to avoid factory produced 'food'

As you may know, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals which pretty much finished off what Animal, Vegetable, Miracle started: Friends don't let friends eat factory-made food. 

What I used to see as 'food' I know realize is 'product': manufactured and marketed like any other product -- not for my good or benefit, but for the profit of industry.

So, I am buying less product and more ingredients. And here are my three of my reasons:

1. Contaminated feed supplies: Illegal, Experimental, And Potentially Harmful GM Cottonseed Enters Food System.
2. Cruel living conditions for most meat animals.
3. Excessive dependence on trucking and thereby on foreign oil.

femivore

One of my students called me a femivore in his final essay.  A what?  I only eat females?  I am a female who eats?  I am a feminist (ha!) that eats? What does he mean? 

Being well-trained, he kindly provided a definition along with his specialty jargon. 

Orenstein defines femivores as women who have renounced the consumer culture and have made the home a self-sustaining center of labor and livelihood.  These women typically grew their own vegetables, kept chickens, canned their fruit and stuffed sausages. A majority home-schooled their kids and derived their income by working on-line (Lisiecki).

Ah, yes, that is me.  But who is Orenstein?

Peggy Orenstein is the author of (among other things) a March 14, 2010 article in the New York Times, The Femivore's Dilemma, giving attention-- and a new name -- to those of us that in a previous generation would have been called home-makers. Ree Drummond over at Pioneer Woman is a classic example of a femivore, complete with the Black Heels to Tractor Wheels story line.

It's a great article; you should read it.  It's also a great life-style; you should try it.

My prediction?  All the County Extension courses are going to have record enrollments this year.  If I weren't so busy growing my own vegetables, keeping chickens, canning fruit, home-schooling my kids, and earning my living on-line, I'd apply to the County Extension office for a teaching position.  I actually know where my Master Food Preserver badge is. 

Vote with Your Fork! State of the Pantry Report

As we continue our efforts to disassociate ourselves from agri-business, believing it to be harmful to our personal financial and physical health as well as being harmful to the well-being of others (financially, physically, and environmentally), we are moving more and more of our purchases over to niche markets.

Here are our goals, in no particular order, with the over-arching consideration in parentheses.

• to shun misery-laden production practices (personal ethical health, preservation of small parcel agriculture[usually]),
• to shun edible-food-like products that have factory origins (personal physical health, personal financial health, regional environmental health*).
• to shun farming practices that rely on the intense use of petroleum-based fertilizers (personal health, regional environmental health).
• to shun foods laden with antibiotics and insecticides (personal physical health, community/regional environmental health).
• to source our food from as nearby as possible (community financial health, preservation of small parcel agriculture),
• to purchase it directly from the farmer or as close as we can get (community financial health, preservation of small parcel agriculture),

Here is our State of the Pantry report:

Goals Met:

• Beef -- Misery-free grass-fed beef born, raised, and butchered in one set of pastures within our region. Purchased directly from farmer.
• Eggs -- Our own misery-free yard-fed hens give us plenty of these.
• Flour -- Organic regional flour milled by locally-owned flour mill.
• Salad Greens -- Part of the year we grown our own. Part of the year we buy Earthbound mass produced. We don't feel good about the latter. More later.
• Apples -- Purchased directly the non-organic, but watershed activist, farm 2 blocks away.
• Milk -- Purchased from locally owned grocery chain who buys it from the dairy 8 miles from our home and sells it to us in recyclable glass bottles.

Goals Unmet:

• Chicken -- yes, well, obviously I could raise and butcher my own, but that is not going to happen. Purchasing misery-free yard-fed hens from others is really expensive. I found some at the local butcher (by butcher, I mean a man in an building that is a killing house for animals, not the employee behind the counter at a store that sells quasi-edible-food-like products), but they were pricey. Right now, we do without it, but it is so handy for a quick stir-fry. What to do . . .
• Salad Greens -- During the off-season we end up buying the Costco bulk tub of Earthbound farms, which is an organic industrial producer of baby salad greens. The greens are machine-harvested and trucked across the country. There must be a better way. Build a greenhouse and grow our own? Find a local grower of winter greens and hire them to grow for us? I need to study up on what winter greens could be grown here (note to self - review this part of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and see what she grew).
• Other Fruit -- planted 15 new fruit trees this year. Must get up to speed on spraying and storing.
• Bread -- organize time better to bake all of our own, not just some.

This started when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My goal then was to take a look at my shopping cart and to alter the proportion of what I used to call manufactured stuff versus real stuff, but what I now call quasi-edible-food-like products versus food. My first goal was half and half: no more than half the cart could be manufactured stuff. At the time, this seemed like an honorable goal. Looking back now, I am ashamed that I would allow that much quasi-edible-food-like products into our home.

When the half-and-half goal was met, I budged it over to 25%/75%. When that became doable, I pumped it up to only 1-2 indulgences per shopping cart (Heat-and-Eat lasagna or pizza for Crisis Nights). This means that I am buying mostly ingredients and only a little bit of ready made. Canned goods count as food, as does bread and other items that involve minimal manufacture. This may sound odd, but if it is something that I could make at home, it's okay to buy it. If is something that I would have no idea how to make (Twinkies, soda pop), then I probably shouldn't be eating it. I don't make tortilla chips, but I could, so those are allowed, as are beer and wine by the same token.

Then I read Omnivore's Dilemma and realized that it is my civic duty to get as far away as possible from the agribusiness food chain. Last spring we got chickens and doubled the size of our Victory Garden. This year I aim to bake more bread and can and freeze more produce as well as to whittle away at the "Goals Not Yet Met" list.

Are you changing your food habits? How so? Why? Are we part of a tide change? or is this a passing fancy?

*environmental health -- the packaging, the shipping, the trucking. All of these are wasteful of natural resources and are wasteful of my money. When I buy the food, I am paying for the packaging and for the long-distance voyage. Why would I want to do that?

hunting: maybe not so bad

This is -- for me -- a huge policy shift. I've decided that hunting, which I have loathed without hesitation all my life, may be a good thing.
As I see it, there are four choices.

1. Don't eat meat.
2. Eat meat that is part of the industrial food chain with all the drugs, chemicals, fuel-costs, and animal misery that that involves.
3. Eat meat that is part of the natural food chain that has a healthy diet and 100% outdoor access and a pretty good life until the bullet arrives.
4. Eat meat that I raise here on my own land where I can make sane choices about what the animal eats and how it lives before it gets into my freezer.

Since I'm not going to do #1, options #3 or #4 seem like the only responsible options.

works for me: natural free-range beef

As part of my efforts to Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-ize my family, I've been trying to buy food from non-industrial sources. You read about my egg happiness, now it's time for the beef report.

I've bought beef from a couple of different places in the last couple of years. One of my favorites, Prairie Springs Ranch, offers beef from free-range grass-fed beef.

At Prairie Springs Ranch, we raise beef the old-fashioned way. Our animals are born here, nurse on their mothers for 6-9 months, are then weaned to a diet of pasture grass and hay that we grow here. We don’t use pesticides on our pastures. We don’t use any growth stimulating hormones, and our animals are not pumped full of antibiotics to keep them healthy. We do not butcher sick animals. Our animals aren’t exposed to other animals that may have diseases.

Every fall the healthy grass-fed animals are processed to bring to your table. The beef is instantly frozen to maintain freshness and shelf-life.
We are not certified organic, mainly because we want to keep the cost of health affordable to families: we try to keep our prices comparable to that of grocery stores for regular beef, while providing a superior product, the simple, old fashioned way.

Grass-fed beef is usually leaner than grain fed beef. Our first batch of ground beef was tested to contain 5% fat, a level seemingly un-obtainable in grocery stores. We like to add a bit of olive oil when we are cooking to keep it from sticking to the pan!

One of the most pleasant benefits of grass-fed beef is flavor!! Grass-fed beef tastes sweet, and smells rich while cooking.

I love that the steers get normal lives, hang out with their moms, graze outside and so forth. They have all good days, but one.

All that good food and clean conscience and buy-local-goodness for 1.99 a pound for an assortment which included: 6 roasts, 39 pounds of hamburger, and 19 other packages -- mostly of steaks and a couple of stew meat and soup bones. Works for me!





My other Works for Me posts.

Twin Brook Creamery

Wasn't I just wishing for a better milk supply? I went into my local grocery store and was amazed to find glass bottles full of milk from local hormone-free cows. Well, I suppose the cows have hormones, but just the ones God gave them, no extra ones added. I saw the bottles and the Twin Brook Creamery, Lynden, Washington label and thought, 'nice, but I'm sure they'll be pricey.' Nope, setting aside the one-time bottle deposit, each item was priced exactly the same as its Darigold counterpart.

I happily paid the deposit on the bottles and brought home whipping cream, half-and-half, and 2 gallons of cream-top milk, that's milk that has not been homogenized, so the cream floats to the top.

• I get fresher milk.
• My local grocery store and a local family of farmers get all my milk money.
• The landfill does not get any more plastic milk jugs from my house.

Now its just organic local chickens that I am wishing for.

egg happiness

It has taken me five years, but at last I have found a source of organic farm-fresh eggs. One of the ladies in our home-school group has extra eggs and lives directly on My Gift's commute route. When she has a dozen, she calls, hubby swings by her mailbox, and fresh eggs from happy ducks and chickens arrive at my house.

My goal is to just say no to industrialized food. Our beef comes from cow who grazes the field up the street. I buy flour from the man that mills it who buys the grain from the farmer that grows it. Now if I can just find a milk supply and an affordable source for chickens that are hormone and horror-story free . . .

organic free-range local beef

I picked up our 1/8th of a cow yesterday. I got a squidge under 95 pounds: six roasts, a bunch of good quality steaks, stew meat, soup bones and a whole bunch of ground beef for $230.00 ($165.00 for the farmer and $65.00 for the butcher). That's about $2.42 a pound for a morally acceptable cow. He lived up the road from us in a nice field where he had a pleasant life (up 'til the last hour that is). We're supporting our local food economy and avoiding contributing to the horrific feedlot industry.

Grāpple: obscene apples

Have you heard about the Grāpple (pronounced Grape-L)? It starts life as a perfectly wholesome Fuji apple, which is, in my opinion, not the yummiest apple, but still a nice little snack. Apparently the Apple Gurus finally noticed that, as they selectively bred Fujis for uniform shape, size, and color, they lost some flavor along the way. Instead of going back to a variant that still had flavor, they are now injecting grape juice into the apples. ARGH! More processing, more meddling. What was wrong with apples in the first place?

The Grāpple news page shares this blurb:

"We are so lucky," said Jan Holt, Director of Child Nutrition Programs at Camp Lejeune. "Yes, more labor is involved, yes, it's more costly, but it's so beneficial for the students. It's worth every second." Grāpple® brand apples are just one of the popular choices being served at some of our nation's schools. Read the full story on some North Carolina schools enjoying the benefits and great taste of eating healthy.

Okay, so the kids like the Grāpple and didn't like other apples? How can this be? Ah, yes, the Red [not] Delicious came to mind: mealy, tough- and bitter-skinned, watery flavor. It's so not-appley I had rather forgotten about it. If Red [not] Delicious apples is what the kids are used to, no wonder they are excited about the Grāpple. Imagine how nice it would be if they could eat a real apple?

For a nice explanation of how Red Delicious became the Red [not] Delicious, see this article from the Washington Post: Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is: Decades of Makeovers Alter Apple to Its Core.

And if you think this sort of apple-tweaking is obscene, vote with your grocery cart. Buy apples based on flavor and texture and disregard the other aspects. Who cares if the skin has a ding? It grew on a tree, for crying out loud. Who cares if it is the same size as its fellows. It's an apple; it's job is to be yummy, not good-looking.

Animal Vegetable Miracle Blogpost Round-up

So many people have blogged about this, I can't resist another blogpost roundup. Join me?

Animal Vegetable Miracle blogpost roundup Participants

1. L.L. Barkat 2. Barbara Kingsolver 3. Mary Lee 4. Bridget 5. Suzanne 6. Historia 7. Jenny th\'huisvrouw 8. Matty

9. wskrz 10. Lisa 11. more from Lisa 12. nutmeg 13. She Who Eats 14. Becky at Farm School 15. Melanie 16. Becky at Farm School II

17. LibrariAnne 18. Susanna\'s Sketchbook 19. Angela,MotherCrone 20. Sarah 21. Jennifer Jeffrey

Learn more about Animal Vegetable Miracle blogpost roundup here.
View More Animal Vegetable Miracle blogpost roundup Participants

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

If you want it, here is some handy-dandy cut-and-paste coding to add to the end of your Animal Vegetable Miracle post to share the blogpost roundup.

the button:
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text only:

:: this post is part of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle blogpost roundup.

<span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">:: this post is part of the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/html=" com="" 2007="" 07="" html=""><i>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle</i> blogpost roundup</a>.</span>





:: if you are here after Mr. Linky closed, just leave a comment and I will link you up manually.

animal, vegetable, miracle

I finally finished it! It just wasn't a read-straight-through kind of book. One had to stop to go find, buy, pot, and dither over heirloom tomatoes, and then stop again to locate, order, await, receive, and play with cheese-making supplies. I did briefly consider chickens, but reigned myself in.

It was a great book. It was a pleasure to read, and was very informative and inspiring. I've already changed the way I shop.

Here is the last snippet that I will share with you from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

When we traded home-making for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. (Or worse, convenince-mart hot dogs and latchkey kids.) I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation. (p 126-127)

my other posts on this title:
June 2 - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: snippet of the day
May 19 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle snippet of the day: "Livin' la vida loca."
May 10 Animal Vegetable Miracle, snippet of the day


:: this post is part of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle blogpost roundup.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: snippet of the day

Tomato-blues haunt me.

Well I am obviously not doing very well with my Spring Reading Thing challenge as I am only 143 pages into my book. Kingsolver is now singing the praises of heirloom fruits and vegies. I had heard the term before, but didn't really know what it signified.

. . . open pollinated heirlooms are created the same way natural selection does it: by saving and reproducing specimens that show the best characteristics of their generation, thus gradually increasing those traits in the population. p 47

Of course, the traits desired by the home-gardener (yumminess being at the top of the list) may differ greatly, Kingsolver explains, than the traits desired by commercial growers (easy to transport, uniform size, long shelf life, good looks). The produce in our grocery stores is from seeds selected for commercial needs, not necessarily for yumminess. It is wonder no one wants to eat their vegies as all the flavor has been bred out of them to make them docile little travelers in contrast to

. . . heirlooms [which] are the tangiest or sweetest tomatoes, the most fragrant melons, the eggplants without a trace of bitterness. p. 48

So, I'm sold on heirlooms now, but Kingsolver goes on to say that they grew all theirs from seed. Alas, I am too late. But I keep reading and my regret thickens when I read about the

narrow-leaved early bearer from the former Soviet Union with the romantic name of "Silvery Fir Tree." . . . [one of] two Russian types that get down to work with proletarian resolve, bred as they were for short seasons. p. 100-101

Not only would I have loved to have an early-bearing tomato, but they were from Russia! But, too late to start seeds. Tomato-blues haunt me.

Stop at the store for eggs and milk. Glance glumly through the tomato starts only because they are 4 for $5.00, 4 inch pots. What? they are all labeled Heirloom and this one is, why yes, it is a Silvery Fir Tree. I do a little jig in the aisle much to Dandy's amusement.

We also bought a Green Zebra start and all sorts of others that promised us oddly colored and strangely shaped and extra tasty tomatoes. So, now I am in tomato-bliss. All my new plants are potted and perching on the sunny side of the new deck and I am resolved to start my tomatoes from seed next year. I'll be buying heirloom seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange.

If growing your own seems like too much hard work, you could consider eating only wild foods. This would save you the trouble of planting, though the harvesting may get to be a bit much.

The Indextrious Reader: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a growing concern

The Indextrious Reader: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a growing concern

I'm not getting very far with my Animal Vegetable Miracle reviews, so you may want to go read the review linked above.

I've been busy preparing my manuscript for my first ever critique group. SCARY! I sent it off just now, before I lost my courage.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle snippet of the day: "Livin' la vida loca."

I've had not much time to read, but the little that I have is making its mark. On Friday the children and I went to Costco where we loaded up. Usually, when I drive home with my car full of produce and my children full of glee to be in the presence of so much yummy food, I feel like a right good mama. Yesterday I was questioning my every purchase. Where did those strawberries come from? How much gasoline did they use to get here? If I limit my purchases to only produce grown in North America, is that a responsible compromise?

In today's snippet, Kingsolver has noted that we tell our young people to wait for the quality experience when it comes to sex, but we are sending them another message when it comes to food.

We are raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires.

Waiting for the quality experience seems to be the constitutional article that has slipped from American food custom.

Actually, the ability to wait seems to have slipped away from the American character. We now have instant credit, instant soups, instant coffee (blech), and even instant peanut butter. Diploma mills crank out instant degrees which are even more worthless than the juiceless and rock-hard off-season produce that Kingsolver is railing against.

It seems as if we are failing to wait in every regard. You have heard of the marshmallow experiment I trust? Here it is again, from Wikipedia:

The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this [deferred gratification] concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and discussed by Daniel Goleman in his popular work. In the 1960s a group of four-year olds were tested by being given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

In their previous life, my children lived what Kingsolver is advocating: eat only what is in season and local. They were also hungry and underweight, though I know there were other factors contributing to that. To the children in the orphanage, the bananas we brought were far more exciting than the toys. That Dandy and Chickadee get to eat a banana Every! Single! Day! thrills and delights them still. Bananas are never going to be in season or local here.

We never buy farmed fish; we have gone over to local beef (as in right-down-the-street local); we will soon start to be blessed with our neighbors' organic produce. I've been putting egg cartons in the car so that the next time we see a "eggs" sign by the side of the road we can pull over and buy local eggs. I need to line up a free-range chicken source. I can see how I can limit our protein purchases to local, but I'm not ready to give up off-season fruit.

On the other hand, I'm only a few chapters in, so I may be a complete convert by the end of the book. I'll let you know.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: snippet of the day

When Poisonwood Bible came out, Barbara Kingsolver came to our small town on her book tour. If you bought a copy in advance of release, you were eligible to buy tickets to hear Barbara speak. I gave the book and one of the tickets to my sister for her birthday. It was a treat for both of us.

In her most recent book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver shares the reasons for and the adventures in a year of trying to eat local. We've been dabbling in this for awhile, somewhat intentionally, somewhat serendipitously (our nearest neighbors are CSA organic farmers).

I'm never going to have time to write one whole review all in one go, so I'll give you snippets as I read and gather them all up when I am finished.

Today's snippet:

Knowing the secret natural history of potatoes, melons, or asparagus gives you a leg up on detecting whether those in your market are wholesome kids from a nearby farm, or vagrants who idled away their precious youth in a boxcar.~ page 10

Part of her argument is that wholesome kids from nearby farms are yummier; her other point is that the ones in the boxcar spent more energy calories in fuel consumption (boats, planes, trains, trucks, etc.) getting to your market than they can deliver to your body. Buying auslander produce is running an energy deficit.