Where Does Our Food Come From?

As I stumble along in this farming venture I have been working on lately, I have run into a very unexpected realization. PEOPLE DON’T GET WHERE THEIR FOOD COMES FROM. I find this to be so true now more than ever. When I was in Greece, I started to come to a realization about the way that food is processed and where it comes from. A lot of the food production is done out in the open there. Everyone knows when it is olive picking time. Everyone knows when the grapes are ready. The chickens that lay the eggs you eat wander around the farms and sometimes onto the roads. If you drive outside the country it is clear that just before Easter the young lamb population takes a great dive.

I think that the problem is that the production of food in America is done behind our backs and we have lost connection with the food that we eat. Children REALLY think that milk comes from the grocery store. The understanding of food ends there. The production behind the food is completely lost by the glimmering storefronts that promote that they have everything you will ever need.

My problem has been along the lines of the other animals we eat. I have been raising our chickens and our ducks out in the open and it has been well known from the beginning that I intend to eat them. Apparently, the idea is horrifying to a LOT of people. The problem is, that it does not make any sense. The people that have a problem with me eating my chickens are not even vegetarians. I literally had a conversation about raising and butchering my chickens with someone over a chicken dinner. Somehow, it is horrifying that I would consider slaughtering an animal, while it is perfectly ok for that animal to come from the meat case at the store.

I have also run into this with the goats. There are two weathers on the farm that are being raised on Milky Way, and I just don’t have a use for them. You can’t keep them all, and not all animals can be raised as pets. We have a wonderful packing plant just 2 miles down the road, and my idea is just to have them butchered when they reach the correct age. I can’t tell you what kind of a horrible person this has made me in so many people’s eyes, YET THEY STILL EAT MEAT! It is as if the closer the people get to the true production of their food, the more the “magic supermarket” lie turns up. I feel like I need to plan a trip for everyone I know to a factory farm where these people’s eggs and meat really come from.

This has been a particularly frustrating venture to me, and I feel that it is an uphill battle. Of COURSE I think that my chicks are cute, and I like to watch them play and run around and be babies, but they have a purpose. I have chosen to eat meat, and I enjoy being sustainable in my production of my food. That is, I am going to raise these animals for meat because I know that I can do the job raising them that I would want done. I don’t think that makes me evil. Unfortunately, my friend Julie is around me enough, and I talk about it enough that I actually made her daughter vegetarian for a while because she just didn’t want to eat her cute little chickies. I’m not one for torturing children and their innocent ideals, but I feel like we are doing a disservice by allowing the future generation to believe that the food really “comes from” the supermarket.

I have been able to bring a few people around. I actually convinced Julie that she should raise some meat birds, and Jared seems to be supportive of whatever I do (so long as he does not get attached to the chickens).

I see so many people around me who claim to be organic food activists who are really naive about our food and our food production practices that I just don’t get it. It is not a mystery to me why America has a problem with so many obese people.

Please, PLEASE have some compassion for a ‘lil lady trying to raise her own food the way she wants to.