For those of us who live an organic lifestyle (or try really hard to), it’s knowing where our food comes from that matters to us most.  What confirmed my conversion was learning my son’s developmental delays were due to a dysfunctional digestive system and vitamin deficiency.  Since his system can’t efficiently remove toxins, I have to minimize his exposure.  My sister’s organic choices are based on healthy eating and being environmentally conscious.  Both of us have chicken coops in the backyard because homegrown organic eggs are an important way we can contribute to our family’s health and be environmentally “green”.

Many supermarkets today do a terrific job carrying organic products, but that still requires us to trust a label.  The term “certified organic” can be really confusing because of differing state regulations and industries.  Raising your own backyard hens in a chicken-tractor has some distinct advantages over the carton of organic eggs purchased in a store.  It can be achieved in even very small backyards.  Here are some of the advantages:

1)      No egg is more rewarding than eating the one you just collected that morning from your own chickens.

2)      You know exactly what you are eating because you feed the chickens – grass, scraps, organic feed, soy-free feed, etc…   Grass-fed or pastured chickens have the highest levels of Omega 3, beta carotene, and vitamin E in their eggs compared to store bought.

3)      Unless you buy local organic eggs, there is the carbon footprint from shipping and transportation (may even be out-of-state).

4)      If you have children, chickens are perfect way to communicate the values of responsibility and informed food choices.  Kids these days are disconnected to the origins of food.  Many have never seen a live farm animal, much less tended one.

5)      Proper use of a chicken-tractor fertilizes the yard with no use of chemicals.  It’s green living.

6)      Chickens are fun and beautiful animals.  They can provide hours of entertainment (running, pecking, exploring) and many become beloved household pets.

7)      Home raised chickens are happy chickens.  They don’t live in tiny cages or have their beaks cut off.  They aren’t stuffed with medication or forced to molt. They can live a carefree lifestyle envious of anyone.

8)      Chicken owners are like a special community.  You’ll connect with people who have a fascinating view on life, just like you.

Even with these terrific reasons for raising backyard chickens, many still hesitate.  There are the questions of time, money, convenience, city regulations, and all that chicken poop.  For you doubters, here are some answers:

1)      Tending chickens, like any other pet, does take time.  Some make it an extensive hobby but it doesn’t have to be.  A lot of it depends on how the tending is arranged.  Getting the right coop makes a huge difference.  Make sure the family is on board in their participation, and get connected with other chicken owners.  There is a vast online community happy to help.  Owning chickens 20 years ago and owning them now are worlds apart (kind of like raising kids).

2)      Chickens are a long-term investment and require upfront capital to get started, but keep in mind the returns are more than saving a few bucks at the grocery store (reference the list above).  A hen can lay eggs for many years.  A good coop can also last many years.  In any case, certified organic eggs are the most expensive eggs to purchase so breaking even in the long run is not impossible.

3)      Modern society is all about convenience. We want it all with little effort on our part. Well chicken coop manufacturers have caught on and the options appear endless (like that helps).  I recommend a chicken-tractor for backyard poultry owners because of its size and benefits.  These can be tricky to build so getting a reliable, prefab one will save a lot of heartache.  Believe me, there is a whole science to building a quality coop.  Prices can range from a few hundred dollars to a couple thousand.  You get what you pay for. Here are some quick shopping tips for making a selection:

1. Make sure the coop is durable against weather and predators.  In suburban areas dogs are the biggest problem.  Many coops come with a sunroom or run which are good for chickens but can be an area of weakness for predators if not built well.
2. Use accessories like nipple waterers and feeders with a storage bin.  This keeps you from having to feed the chickens twice a day (unless you want to).
3. The coop should have nests and a way to collect the eggs externally.  You don’t want to climb into a coop and search for eggs.  The coop also needs a roost to so the hens can sleep comfortably.
4. A chicken-tractor coop helps keep chicken poop under control. Regular coops require the poop to be removed (that’s a thankless job).  A mobile coop moved every day or so spreads the manure as fertilizer.  The coop should still be periodically cleaned (sprayed down) a couple times a year.  Access doors make this easier.  Read here for a comparison between a traditional coop and a mobile coop.
5. If looks are important, there are many cute coops on the market.  Just don’t fall victim to only aesthetic charm.  Function will matter more to you than form in terms of convenience.

4)      Most cities have a regulation regarding poultry or livestock in your backyard.  Many cities allow for chickens in small numbers and without roosters.  If you aren’t sure and don’t want to risk a fine, check it out in advance.  If they aren’t legal you can bet there are citizens already petitioning for a change.  Help them out. Chickens are becoming very urban.

Besides eating healthy, backyard chickens are a great family project or personal hobby.  If you have computer savvy kids, get them to research chicken breeds, coops, and social networks for support.  Set aside a family day to build or assemble the coop.  Pick chicken names.  Argue over who gets to collect the fresh eggs. Wow friends and extended family with a tasty, fortifying quiche (spinach from the garden, right?). 

Organic living is not just about consumption choices, it’s about quality of life.  With homegrown organic eggs there is never a dull moment.  You can learn more about chicken coops and care at www.tufclimatecoop.com.   Also find your closest source of organic chicken feed at www.organicfeeds.biz.

Written by: Marguerite Inscoe, Homemaker, part-time employee of Egganic Industries and my dad, the inventor of the Henspa and many other backyard chicken coops. Contact: marguerite@henspa.com

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In an interview with TreeHugger Joel Salatin made a couple comments that really struck home with me. I am a HUGE fan of Mr. Salatin… just read my 5 post review of his book Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal.

Just imagine if people began discovering their kitchens again, and if the average household instead of popping irradiated amalgamated prostituted reconstituted, adulterated, modified and artificially flavored extruded bar coded un-pronounceable things into the microwave, actually prepared whole foods for all-down-together family meals. It’s not normal for a culture to eat things it can’t pronounce and that it can’t make in its own kitchens. Ever try making corn syrup. Or red dye 29? If we quit feeding cows corn, and practiced mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization, 70 percent of the world’s arable land could return to perennial prairie polycultures building soil and sequestering carbon. That would completely destroy the power of the grain cartel, the multi-national corporations, petroleum usage. If every surburban–or urban, for that matter–lot and mega-yard became an edible landscape, supermarkets would be gone. I don’t have a vendetta against these institutions, but I do think that the world we currently live in is a veritable blip, an abnormality cyst, in the continuum of human history. Chances are in the distant if not near future our food system will be more decentralized, localized, and in-home prepared than it is right now. And that looks a lot more like the food system of 1800 than the one of 2009.

Powerful stuff, no?

The industrialization of food has destroyed our food in so many ways. It has meant the addition of preservatives, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms, all of which can be harmful to our health and to the environment.  Additionally, it means that there are generally only a handful of large farms growing the majority of any particular crop throughout the country.  That means distribution is costly both in terms of money and resources and our options are fewer by design.  It is not the same food that our grandparents ate… they more closely resemble Frankenfoods when you take a closer look. 

Where does your food comes from and how do you make an educated buying decision?

#1  Check your food’s mileage.  Many foods come from half way around the world to land on your kitchen table.  That means that many times they are harvested early, robbing you of valuable nutrients. To make them appear ripe they are sometimes sprayed with chemicals as well. To make that trip to your dinner plate they are filled with preservatives and pesticides to maximize productivity and enhance longevity. Always find out where a food comes from.  It the label will usually say, “Grown and raised in Iowa” or “California oranges”, or “Farm raised in Thailand” and so on.

Buying food that comes from just down the street, or at least within your home state, accomplishes two things.  It helps to ensure you’re not receiving nutrient-poor foods or foods heavily loaded with preservatives and pesticides. It also reduces the carbon footprint and helps the environment.

#2  Buy according to what is in season. Buying strawberries in December is definitely going to cost you more in terms of carbon footprint and money than buying them in July. Why not freeze those strawberries from July so that you have plenty to eat in December?

#3  Buy fruits and vegetables locally.  Buy your fruits and vegetables from local organic farmers who can charge much less for their produce because they don’t have to pay for distribution.  Additionally, you’re helping to sustain your local economy and you’re ensuring that thousands of gallons in fuel are not required to get the produce from the farm to your table. 

Joining a CSA (community sustained agriculture) program or shopping at your local farmer’s market is also a great way to buy foods which are both healthy for you and the environment; CSAs are generally organic farms and do not pour pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and fungicides into the earth.

#4  Try going a few fruits and veggies on your own.  Whether you live in a small space or you have acres of land, you can grow your own herbs, fruits and vegetables.  This not only provides immense satisfaction, it saves you money and is good for the sustainability of our planet.

#5  Finally, whenever possible, buy organic.  Organic farmers treat your food and the planet with respect.  Unlike industrialized farms, they do not use chemical pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers.  They use sustainable practices to keep you and our planet healthy. And if they aren;t certified organic so what? Get to know your farmers and see how the food is grown. Often times small farmers just don’t have the resources to get certified but their products may still be organic.

Knowing where your food comes from is important for the planet, but it’s also important for your own health and the health of your family.

This morning I made some raw almond milk. It is still a living food, its vegan, and is very good for you. My two boys love to drink it straight up…my daughter would rather have raw cows milk I think. But none of them mind when I use it in cereals or in homemade raw ice cream. We also use it to make chocolate milk and banana milk which they all love. Check out my Raw Kids Recipes book for recipes.

It is super easy to make. Other than the 12 hours I soak the almonds first it only takes about 5-10 minutes to actually make. This morning I used my Vita-Mix 5200 of course and it gets it so smooth you won’t find a single nut chunk.

I strained the milk through a cheese cloth to get it smooth enough for drinking straight up… otherwise it kind of resembles a smoothie and I leave the brown seed casing on so that gets strained as well. After I squeeze all the milk out of the cheese cloth I spread the almond pulp on a dehydrator sheet and I use my Excalibur dehydrator to dry it out. After it is dry I will ground it into almond flour for pie crusts or raw cookies.

Hot on the heals of my review of Choosing Simplicity I decided to finally review Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver… a book that has been on my shelf for months.

The book immediately resonates with me because it starts out in Tucson, Arizona as Kingsolver and her family leave their home of 25 years to live permanently in Virginia on their summer farm. I remember well the postcard perfect saguaro cacti and gorgeous desert sunsets. One person’s dream is another person’s normal. I remember well everything she describes. I lived for over 25 years in Phoenix and visited Tucson often. The desert is amazingly beautiful but it lacks something very important though….local food. Although remember my post about eating cactus… you can you know.

Not only is it hard to grow food in an arid desert, Arizona is using borrowed water piped in from the Colorado River and Mexico. The whole set up is not sustainable at all. So Kingsolver decided to re-enter the food chain and move somewhere green where the land could sustain her family.

It was important that her family know the basic things that our ancestors knew that in today’s age we have lost touch with. When do various fruits and veggies come into season? When can the last frost be expected? Which grains are autumn planted? How many people don’t have the foggiest idea what the answers are to these questions. Do we even consider it important? We have lost our connection to our food and this book is about the Kingsolver family’s attempt to find the answers and reconnect with their food. They would do this by growing as much of their food as they could and sourcing the rest locally.

The Kingsolver family settles into a farm and they begin their adventure of eating only what they and their neighbors have grown or raised. Each family member had one luxury item that they could keep buying, like coffee and smaller things will small eco impact like spices were allowed. They planted a large vegetable garden, the youngest daughter raised chickens for eggs and meat, and they raised turkeys. Close relationships with farmers nearby formed so that they could purchase from them what they could not grow or raise themselves. Immediately they began to see just how spoiled people have become when they do not have to consider where their food came from and at what cost. Honestly how many of us actually think about where our meals came from and how? Green people are becoming acutelyy aware of this but by and large not many people are.

Most people might never know what wild asparagus looks like, how to make cheese, or how to find a moral mushroom. They don’t know this because it isn’t necessary for survival anymore. And here I am saying ”they” when in fact I do not know what wild asparagus looks like, how to make cheese, or how to find a moral mushroom.  But the Kingsolver family was determined to reconnect with their food in an intimate way and never again be so detached from the process. Their adventures are delightful to read from the first picking of asparagus in spring, to making cheese, to organizing a birthday party for over a hundred people using only produce from local farms.

Barbara Kingsolver writes much of the book but her partner Steve also contributes essays and her daughter Camille details some delicious recipes the family ate while on their journey. It is a wonderful book for those who want to see what it looks like to live on local food.

Available via Amazon.com

This is part five of my discussion of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. Read part one here. 

Chapter 19 discusses Avian Influenza and chapter 20 talks about bioterrorism. They are closely related because they both work to taint our food and the USDA without fail will always try to claim that small family farmers are the ones propagating diseased food and/or are the ones most likely to be the source of a bioterrorism outbreak with their unsecured facilities.

Several years ago there was big scare about local chickens having the bird flu and Salatin shares some stories and theories. He even shares a widely held theory that the chicken industry “planted” the bird flu and accidentally let it get out of control. I buy that theory 100%. In fact I have a similar theory about almond growers and a salmonella outbreak. It was conventional almonds and not raw ones that were the source but somehow…miraculously raw almonds were the ones that got banned. Funny how things just work out like that for big agricorp? They get to stick it to their competitors when they should have been grabbing their ankles.

Even when it is the large, industrial chicken farmers that are spreading disease it is the small family farmer that takes the heat. The USDA certainly won’t tell you Tyson did this to you….they want you to think that birds raised outside that can come into contact with air and other birds are the ones getting infected, when that could not be farther from the truth. They simply will not allow the media to portray their benefactors in a bad light. The local food chain is the fall guy.  I guess some people really are dense enough to believe that 100 chickens crammed into a small cage that eat manure and never see the light of day are safer to eat than a bird that gets fresh air, sunlight, and grass to eat.

Salatin goes on to compare small, local farms with that of industrial ones as far as access for bioterrorists goes. The USDA wants us to believe that industrial farms are immaculate, stainless steel wonder worlds that are guarded ferociously to protect all the wonderful people of this country. Small local farmers are dirty, careless, and certain to let any old terrorist on their property to taint food. Does this sound logical to you?

Industrial farms are almost devoid of people. Machines feed and water them, computers monitor temperature, and there is hardly anyone around. They are prime for terrorist infiltration. The actual processing facilities however, where they slaughter and process all that raw product is crawling with people, many of whom have no legal status to be in this country and do not even speak English. How hard would it be for a foreigner (because terrorists are always foreign don’t ya know) to get a job there and taint up to 10 tons of food? I don’t think it would be to hard….at all.

A smaller, local farmer would be much less likely to be targeted. It is also unlikely that they ever would be considered a viable target because they do not do the same volume and a terrorist will want maximum impact. The USDA is trying to make us fear the local food system when it would likely be the safest thing for us in the event of a bird flu outbreak or a bioterrorism event.

Chapter 21 addresses the NAIS or National Animal Identification System that the government wants to impose on us by 2011. Basically it would require microchips be implanted in all cows, pigs, chickens, horses, sheep, and goats. I think the program sounds crazy but supposedly it would make our food much safer if we tag all the animals. The fines you can rack up for stupid things, like forgetting to declare and animal dead or for having an extra chicken are outrageous. Also, the smaller farmers will have to tag each and every animal but industrial farms can have one tag per 10,000 animals. How fair is that??

Chapter 22 is about Mad Cow disease and how it became a problem. Also discussed is the disgusting practice of industrial farms to grind up animal remnants and manure (even from sick and diseased animals), mix it up with some grain and molasses, and feed it back to the living animals. It is practices like this that make mad cow disease possible but the USDA is not about to change things. They don’t really care about food safety.

If you recall a couple years back a company in Missouri called Creekstone Farms was upset because the mad cow scare in the US was causing foreign buyers to ban US meat products. Creekstone managed to secure a deal with a Japanese buyer that they could still do business if the farm tested every piece of meat they sold. Well, the USDA sued them! Why? The USDA said that if this farm tested every product then that would make all other meat processors who choose NOT to test look suspect in the consumer’s mind. So here the USDA is suing a company because that company is testing for mad cow disease. Creekstone eventually won that case but the USDA plans to appeal. If they really cared about food safety why would they sue companies testing for diseased meat?

Chapter 23 was not a favorite of mine. It talked of animal welfare and how farmer’s get vilified for buying chicks via mail order or using farrowing crates for sows. Salatin explains that when he orders 2000 chicks in the mail and the post office accidentally suffocates them or leaves them out in cold temperatures and they freeze to death this is the post office’s fault. Hence the farmer should not be vilified for a practice that would have been harmless to the chicks if not for careless post office workers. But I don’t buy that. The post office shouldn’t need to baby-sit your mail. If you elect to ship a living thing in the mail then deal with the backlash when it dies and people get mad.

The final chapter just sums thing up for us and tells us where we need to go from here. I particularly like this quote:

The political rationale for food safety ultimately rests in the notion that we are wards of the state. Not a free people.

I for one do not want the government telling me what I can and cannot eat. This is a basic freedom that I don’t think anyone should give up. The crack down on food is just getting worse everyday. Anything raw, even vegetables are getting the evil eye these days. Are we ready to throw ourselves under the bus of government protection because we are too stupid to know what is good for us? Are we ready to start eating sterilized, irradiated, processed, antibiotic laden “clean” foods for the rest of our lives?

Make your voice heard that this won’t be tolerated, find back door methods to get illegal foods such as raw dairy through cow share programs or donation based markets. Withhold your compliance from the tyrant that seeks to take our food freedom away…

[tags]Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, book, review, Joel Salatin[/tags]