I'm really excited to start buying more locally, supporting the community and of course the environment. I've never been great at being good to the environment and I'd like to be better. My worms of course eat a good portion of my garbage, but I still throw out a lot since our recycling up here is not as easy and complete as it is in San Diego. I burn some trash as fire starter, but that hardly leaves a dent, so magazines and mail end up in the trash. I take long hot showers in the winter and that won't end anytime soon.
I joined a local wine club, which I like to think is supporting my community....although it's up in Jacksonville, OR so I get it shipped to me. This creates a problem since I'm never home to receive and sign for the package. It's now sitting in an office in Yreka that's only open Mon-Fri 11am to 4pm. Tomorrow is my only hope of getting it, I'm on call for fires, and I'm the only one who can pick it up. Keeping my fingers crossed. Anyway, the winery is Quady North which is part of Quady and their wines are fabulous. You'll notice that Quady North is in the State of Jefferson, and since I live in the State of Jefferson, I'm obviously supporting the local businesses. I just bought some amazing Vermouths from there as well as a Sherry, which I'm pysched about because I didn't know I liked those. Well, turns out I do. Quady's dessert wines are amazing as well. When I went there for a tasting, I liked everything I tried so I highly recommend them.
I'm reading the book "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer who also wrote "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (a very good book, I recommend it. Haven't seen the movie.). I thought it might be a push for vegetarianism (good for you and good for the environment) but it's actually not. I believe after all his research he decides to be a vegetarian (haven't gotten to that part yet) but doesn't try to get other people to do so. It's a well researched look into where our food comes from, how we eat and why we eat like this, and other options for eating meat. One thing I've always been interested in is farm fresh meats and eggs. The stuff you buy in the store and eat at restaurants is generally not "farm fresh" even if it says "organic" or "cage free". I didn't know this, but "cage free" chickens are not roaming free out in the pasture...or even outside at all. Turns out a "box" is technically not a cage. I'm about halfway into the book, and while there's a lot in the book that I already knew about the chemicals, antibiotics and medications used in the animals as well as the absolutely horrible way they are raised and processed, there's also a lot I didn't know. I didn't realize how bad these "factory farms" are for the environment and our health. As far in as I am, I'm fairly convinced that these factory farms are going to kill us. It's a huge source of new flu viruses and the biggest contributer of pollution- more so than all of human travel combined.
I've also been interested in things like farm fresh eggs because they taste better and I see signs for them up here all the time. I'm surrounded by farm land and couldn't come up with a good enough reason why I'm still eating store bought meat and eggs from factory farms. So I started looking up some stuff on the computer and came across some cool websites. Eatwild.com and Farmerspal.com are great resources for farm fresh food. When you think of cows and chickens and sheep roaming the farm, this is what you're looking for. I gaurantee that most of the stuff you're buying at the grocery store does not get to walk around on the farm. It's disgusting and frankly, quite scary. Anyway, so there's two farms within 2 miles of me that sell meat and eggs. Holding Ranch is only a mile away and sells monthly packages. I sent them an email to find out if I can pick them up instead of getting it delivered, since UPS and I haven't been getting along so well lately. I'm really excited about it.
Why not just go vegetarian? That's fine too, but with my lifestyle it would be very difficult. Plus, I love meat and eggs. When I'm on fires, the nutrition is bad enough as it is, the vegetarian meals are even worse. And since we're on the road a lot, and sometimes only have 10 minutes to stop for food, it's usually fast food (I know, horrible for a hundred reasons). I would feel much better about my health, then environment and supporting the small family owned farms (that are actually legit farms) by buying from them than the grocery store, when I can of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment