Food Should Not Be Recalled

It's a pretty simple assertion. Food should not be recalled. We only find ourselves in a society where such events are commonplace because of the industrialized system we have for growing and processing food. We have developed a dependence on this system that blinds us to how critical food recalls are.

Small-scale farmers don't have issues with such diseases nor do you hear of people getting sick or dying from products grown or produced on a small scale. Watch this video to see a contrast between the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) and a small scale, on-pasture operation. Listen to this farmer, Russ Kremer, who made the transition from a CAFO to a pasture operation

Christmas Trees and Cheese

On Saturday, December 5th, we traveled right at 100 miles to visit Jill's parents at their mountain house on Bluff Mountain in West Jefferson, NC. This is a yearly tradition. Our wedding anniversary is on December 9th and from the very beginning of our marriage we have decorated for Christmas on December 9th. In order to decorate on the 9th we have always gone to West Jefferson to get our tree the weekend before our anniversary. ...[continued]

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

You've heard the saving, "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?" The general premise is when you go without something your desire for it increases. This could be a person, a vacation spot, a special dessert your grandma makes; the list is endless. If you have a favorite thing or are particularly fond of something or someone, availability is an important thing. You want to have that "thing" whenever you want it or be with that person as much as you can. ...[continued]

The Spectrum of Choices

Over the past five years we've attended workshops, read books, researched on the Internet, talked to people, learned on the job - whatever it took to do it ourselves.

Fast forward to this past summer, August of 2009, and as I eluded in my previous post, we really decided we were going to be deliberate about what we were doing after seeing the movie, Food, Inc. With inspiration from numerous other sources; Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon's 100 mile diet, our own successes, my great grandfather I never knew personally, we decided we wanted to try to stay as local as possible when it came to eating. ... [continued]

Our journey to this point

So where do you begin? Where did we begin? Originally for us it was about reconnecting to my past. My great grandfather was a farmer in rural Missouri, Jill's grandfathers were as well, in rural North Carolina. They farmed out of necessity and not a career choice. But we wanted to create a homestead where we raised our own food and were comfortable with it's origin and now it was grown. ...[continued]

The Locavore’s Guide to the Neighborhood - Welcome

Our family had been gravitating toward the “local” movement for some time, more concentrated over the last six to nine months and very intensely since August 2009, but I think the catalyst that clearly positioned us as “locavores” was viewing the movie, Food, Inc. Jill and I drove from Lexington, NC to Chapel Hill, NC (170 miles round trip) just to see the movie. After viewing it we so wanted the children to see it, we scheduled another viewing during our family vacation this past August (of 2009). We saw it a second time with the children in Little Rock, Arkansas and with my cousin while visiting there. Once the children saw it they were on board. It's not so much a scared-straight movie as just an eye opener, slap-in-the-face moment when you realize there are alternatives out there to the industrialized food system... [continued]