I recently read the book 'Animal Vegetable Miracle'- have you read it? It's about a family that lives off their land/buys local food for a whole year- meaning no bananas, chocolate and pineapples etc. While they couldn't quite give up their coffee (neither could I) and bought fair trade coffee from a local roaster, they did manage to produce an amazing amount of food for the whole year. It sounds as though it took up a lot of their time; planting gardens, raising turkeys, making sure they did all the canning and freezing when they had an abundance of certain veggies. It was also really inspiring. As my own boys' appetites get larger and our grocery bill has climbed over the last couple of years, I get a little depressed walking through the grocery store. How will we be able to sustain our family through the teen years? 'Organic' everything is just so expensive, it seems like it's out of our tax bracket. And yet, I am increasingly becoming aware of what kinds of farming practices are being used and how we as consumers can make a difference.
Which is why this family farm has become really important to us. Not only do our folks raise beef and chicken for food on their land, but also the garden, berry patch and greenhouse manage to fill up our freezer too- as long as we go over and help with some of the planting, digging and weeding. It's a great trade-off and I'm hoping we can make the 1 hour (sometimes more) drive to the farm a little more often over the next few months. There's lots to do!
I hope you have a very Happy Easter! We have lots of family stuff planned so we are looking forward to that. I'll try to wrap up my NCECA posts next week- I have some great work I'd love to introduce on the blog that is really inspiring to me, so I hope you will stop by for that!
1 comment:
I love that book! (as I do most other books by Barbara Kingsolver!) That book inspired me to get my own chickens :) My garden doesn't quite live up to hers, but I hope to get there someday!
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