When did people start being afraid of real food?

As I do most every night that I work, I took a quart of our nice fresh, unpasteurized skimmed milk to work to drink. I was getting it out of the fridge as another nurse was looking for non-dairy creamer. I offered her a little real milk for her coffee.
"Eeyew I can't drink that. I looks like breast milk."
"Technically all milk is breast milk," I replied.
Another nurse heard our exchange looked at my milk bottle in abject horror and asked, "That came from your cow." Well duh! Where did she think milk came from a laboratory somewhere? Or maybe it just appears on store shelves late at night like magic?
I took a swig of deliciously cold fresh milk and went on with my day, but it's really been bothering me all evening. When did we start believing that the more processed, the more removed from the source, the more depersonalized our food was that it made us somehow better off?
I was fortunate to have been raised largely on rich fresh unpasteurized milk from our family cow and pork and beef and vegetables we raised ourselves. And I know this is anecdotal, but my siblings and I were healthier than our friends growing up. My sister and I didn't "blossom" while we were in grade school like girls do now. It distresses me when I see 8-9 year old girls with developed breasts. They are ill prepared for the changes in their bodies and the change in the way that people regard them. This early puberty has been linked to hormones in our food. Why is it that when people talk about contaminated foods they think only of bacteria? They don't think about hormones and antibiotics passed along and concentrated in our commercial food chain.
Another of my friends asked me how I could eat animals that I had raised myself. It never occurred to me that you shouldn't name your food. Each animal on our farm has a name. A personality. And a purpose. We are kind to our animals while they are with us and grateful for the food they provide us. We take responsibility for their welfare and we take responsibility for what we eat.
Come on! Food doesn't start out  dismembered, depersonalized, plastic wrapped and sealed. We had a European couple stop by the farm for a tour last summer. They thought it was weird that in the U.S. you can't tell what animal the meat at the market comes from unless you read the signs. In European markets, they said, you an tell what the animal because you can recognize the parts.

All beef starts out as a living breathing calf in the spring and if it's lucky it grows on pasture until it's two years old. Then it is humanely processed into delicious grassfed beef. If it's not lucky it is raised in an overcrowded CAFO with a lot of other unfortunate animals. It's fed on grain it was never meant to eat and kept alive and growing on antibiotics and hormones. All pork starts out as a cute little piglet not a whole lot bigger than a man's hand. On our farm they are fed on excess cows milk, grain and all the pasture they can eat. They have lovely mud holes to play in  and a large pasture to root around. Less fortunate pigs are raised on slatted floors in crowded conditions and fed sub therapeutic antibiotics and growth hormones. They cut the pigs tails off so that when the pigs become stressed from the overcrowding they can't bite one another's tails.

Which would you rather eat: food from stressed animals grown in crowded conditions? or food lovingly raised by a caring farmer?

Think about it. Know your farmer, know your food.

The joys of having a dinner table

Last night after battening down everything that might blow away, everyone settled down around the kitchen table while Anders, DS, and I cooked dinner.

We talked about the beef we were about to eat as I rubbed three pepper rub on each piece. Wondering how the sirloins from the HIghland beef would taste.

We talked about the weather and the cold wave. And the need to haul in more firewood this weekend. I washed, cut and put butternut squash into the oven to bake.

We talked about the unfortunate turn of events that has left my DSIL out of work and my daughter very stressed and how we had gone to their house this evening and stocked their freezer with meat and milk. We speculated on DSIL's chances of finding another job in his field without the necessity of them moving.

As we talked Anders peeled and cored apples with his new hand cranked peeler/corer. I arranged the apples in a baking dish and stuffed each one with raisins, cinnamon and brown sugar. They followed the potatoes into the oven.

With the sirloins resting and the other food in the oven, we sat around the table with seed catalogs and talked about next year's garden. About high tunnels and the best way to raise beds. About Brian's "GIANT" garden. He wants to raise only varieties that are known to get really really big. About where to put the 3-sisters garden (corn, beans, squash).

Soon it was time to cook the steaks. And we talked about my nieces and nephews and how they are doing in school. How we miss having Lilly and Heather around after school since their daddy is laid off for the winter. We wondered how Eli and his girlfriend Naomi are doing at Rose Hulman.

And dinner was ready so we settled around the table to fill our bodies with good food locally grown. And we talked....


I do believe this world would be a much better place if we all gathered around the dinner table for good food and conversation.

What a surprize!

Brian called me at work last night. He never calls me at work unless something is wrong so my heart skipped a beat as I picked up the phone.
"It's a girl!" he laughed.
"What do you mean 'It's a girl!' Did Brandy have her calf?"
"Nope," he said. "Rosie did!!"
I was speachless, Rosie wasn't even showing any signs of being close when we checked her yesterday morning. We thought she'd be at least another 10-14 days.
It seems my sister was coming up to visit and noticed a calf in our field, so she told Brian. He didn't really believe her since we have sheep in that field too and she could have been mistaken. He asked her to look again on her way out the driveway. She called him back from her cell phone "Yep, it's a calf!"
She stayed and helped Brian get Rosie and her new dunn heifer into the barn with the others.
This little girl is the biggest of the Dexter calves so far. She's beautiful and perfect. Her momma is very protective of her. Rosie staked out the warmest corner of the barn for her baby.
Guess what we're naming her?
KMGF Grass Kissed Evening Surprize!

Of Winter Gear and frosty mornings...

IT's COLD!

I've been trying to get up and do chores on my days off before Brian wakes up. He really needs to take it easy on his foot until after he's had his surgery on the 30th and recovered for 6 weeks. So this morning I glanced at the thermometer; -10 degrees, looked out the window; tree limbs waving in the wind- and wondered how many layers I could put on and still be able to walk.
Turtle neck, followed by polar fleece hoody, over leggings with sweatpants, 2 pairs of socks - 1 cotton, 1 insulated hunting socks. Next comes the Carhart subzero overalls, then the balaclava with the hood of my polar fleece jacket pulled up over it. Finally on top of it all was my Carhart coat. Add 2 pairs of knit gloves and boots. There that about does it. I can't find a scarf this morning.
I step over the dogs in front of the heater on my way out. They aren't moving. First I feed the big hogs and then the small hogs. They aren't moving either. They just look up at me from their hay nests and snuggle back down. Then up the driveway to check the cows and their babies. Everybody's up eating hay.
Nursing mommas need lots of water. The ice on the water trough in the barn has to be broken. It's nearly 6 inches thick. I close my eyes with every whack of the pick to avoid getting ice slivers in my eyes.
By now my eye lashes are full of frost. Thank goodness there is a heater in the other water trough. A couple of bucket of water from the heated trough get carried over to the mommas' trough in the barn. Then a quick head count of cows, horses and sheep and I'm headed back to the house.
I stop on the way to feed the cats and fill the bird feeders...
Here is a "self portrait"! Note the frost in my hair!
IT's really COLD! :)

Exploring the omnivore's dilemma

I spend two hours 3-4 days a week driving to and from work. I’ve grown tired of the music on the radio. It seems like it’s all the same news every evening on the news stations. I need something different to occupy my mind. This week I made a trip to the library to check out an audio book.

I wasn’t sure listening to a book would be enough to keep me awake on the way home at 4am, but I thought it would be more interesting than the same songs over and over followed by the same news repeated endlessly on the radio.

Many of our market customers have been telling us they have read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. So I asked the librarian if it was available. This week I have been listening to The Omnivore’s Dilemma on my commute.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma explores “what’s for dinner?” from the origin of food to its eventual consumption at the dinner table. Yesterday, I learned more than I ever thought to know about the sexual reproduction, history and economy of corn in North America, why Earl Butt’s really was not a friend to the American farmer and why no matter what the price of corn we keep growing more and more of the yellow stuff.

Today, we’ve moved from corn production to the feed lots of Kansas. Did you know they feed fat to cattle? Fat that is shipped in from the processing plant where the steers will be killed– cattle fat. That the diet of corn and additives are totally unnatural for a grazing animal and lead to disease in the cattle. So much so that the big lots have to keep a vet on staff. Cattle at slaughter are frequently found to have abscessed livers.

The author is following one steer from the ranch it was born on in South Dakota to the Kansas feedlot where it is fattened to the slaughter house to his table. It is an interesting tale. Scary but interesting.

Points to ponder:

The manure is collected in a “lagoon”, a vast pool of poop. When asked why they don’t spread it on neighboring farm fields, the author is told farmers don’t want it. They don’t want it because it is too high in nitrogen and phosphorus, not to mention heavy metals. The manure would kill their crops. Wow! On our place manure isn’t waste. It is fertilizer. It closes the circle of production. For example: the cows eat the grass, they produce manure, the manure helps the grass grow, and the cows eat the grass. A circle. They way nature meant it to be.
Downstream the heavy metals, nitrogen, phosphorus cause changes in amphibians and fish. Scary! So what are they doing to us?
Fecal dust causes respiratory and eye irritation for the cattle confined there. On our farm there isn’t much in the way of dust because the earth is covered by growing plants. Plants that feed our animals and keep our air clean.
Cattle fed on corn produce meat that is highly marbled but also high in cholesterol. It’s not red meat that is bad for your cholesterol levels its cholesterol. We raise our cattle as they were intended – on grass. Naturally lower in cholesterol. And I think happier and healthier.
32 lbs of corn each day is fed per steer to create 4 lbs of gain per steer/day. That’s a lot of corn!!
Without routine antibiotics the feedlot would not be possible.
E. coli a new strain, is found in these feedlots and can cause kidney failure in humans. Once again – SCARY!

I won’t tell you everything I’ve heard and all the things that concerned/ frightened me. It would take too long. I will recommend this book to you as a must read - or a must listen if you have a commute like mine.

Take care and be safe,

Dot