FOOD: WHAT'S GOOD FOOD?

I used to be a food junkie. My body was done growing, I lived alone, and what I ate or didn't eat was a simple matter of what appealed to me at that moment in time. Nachos one day, a super-cheesey (yum!) baked potato the next, and, on a good night, dinner at a fancy Vermont restaurant. Life was easy!

Now? With two young children and an avalance of news on all the toxic stuff that will mess them up, I'm on a motherly mission to feed them the food we should all have access to, and on a fair budget.

But where do you get this food?

"Organic" used to be the byword for eating the right stuff. Then that was taken over by the food giants. Next, "Free Range" became the word of choice for meat products. And that too has become meaningless, as the food giants slap it on all their labels. Now I see many meat and egg products are saying, "Antibiotic and Hormone Free." Right. But will it be healthy for us?

The one phrase you are not seeing in the supermarket yet is "Pastured." This simply means that the animal was not kept in concentration camp housing, but in an open field with access to grass and sunshine. And the nutritional differences from pastured to factory-farmed are HUGE!

Unfortunately, the label can be adulterated too. The food giants just have to throw the animal a bale of hay, and that is considered "pasture."

So, the obvious conclusion is to go to the 100-mile diet and buy foods that are raised close to home. Better yet is to buy our food from farmers right up the road, where I can visually see the health of their animals and crops.

And this is what I've done.

We are now ordering a side of pork from a neat family about 20 minutes from us. The pigs actually come up to the fence to say "Hi" when we visit. (I just won't tell the kids where their supper came from!) They share a huge open pasture with cattle that can also be put in our freezer when their time comes.

And the price? The same as the "good stuff" at the supermarket, which is still 10% salt and water from processing, filled with bacteria, and is far less nutritious than food that has been raised in the open. More on that in a future post.

In addition, since we DO live on a farm with some acreage, I am going back into raising our own chickens this year. We took a two year hiatus as my health was causing problems and the neighborhood raccoons, coyotes and weasel wiped out the previous flock. This year I'm attacking that problem with an energetic farm dog (who'll probably try to eat the chickens himself), electrified coops, and heritage chickens. That is also another post!

In the meantime, the egg-laying chicks will arrive April 7, and then we'll be ordering the meat chicks in July. If my reinforced containment units do their job, the little chirps can feast on bugs, slugs, clover and grass all summer and then let us feast all winter! Stay tuned!