Do You Eat This Way all the Time?

Yes, I really do get that question, “Do you eat this way all the time?” The answer is a resounding YES! Our family eats what we grow or what we source through our network of local producers. We eat seasonally and fresh. We make each meal entirely from scratch, while maintaining a 12 to 18-hour workday.
I’m astonished by how many people I meet who say they cannot afford to eat healthy and local. The rebuttal to eating wholesome comes automatically, as if this is common knowledge. Well, I’m sorry, but it is just a myth—a very harmful myth.
First, eating healthy is not more expensive than eating (falsely) cheap prepared foods. For instance, my dad Steve used to be able to take home a rotisserie chicken from the store and consume the whole thing for dinner. Jane (a CSA member) on the other hand bought one of our homegrown chickens, paid at least seven times the store-bought price and had this type of yield for two people:
“This ONE chicken from Farmstead Creamery has been turned into:
Roast Chicken, Cauliflower, Spinach
Chicken Apple Brie Sandwiches
A big pot of Chicken Vegetable Soup
Two Chicken Mushroom Pesto Pizzas
Two cups of Chicken Salad
A crockpot full of Chicken Stock (which will net about 12 cups of broth)
And there is still 5 more slices of breast meat in the fridge for more sandwiches
Tom and I will have at least 10 meals or so from this ONE chicken… plus, the stock will be frozen and eventually turned into 3 more pots of soup. Fresh, organic, delicious, nutritious, safe and unbelievably economical.”
So, who got the better deal on the chicken? What makes this difference? Chickens raised on pasture with a diverse diet yield meat that is much more nutrient dense than a factory-raised chicken (which can be upwards of 35% water when purchased in the grocery store). In essence, Steve had to eat more chicken per meal because his body knew there was less usable fuel for him than the homegrown chicken Jane enjoyed.
Because I have the ability to raise my birds longer instead of being motivated to have a high turnover rate in the flock, I can let the birds grow larger and more muscled. I can also raise breeds with greater flavor and robustness that would never tolerate being locked up in a poultry barn. My birds were able to be real chickens, and that shows up on the plate, every time.
Now let’s start to look at the bigger picture. We have this cultural notion that we should stretch our food dollar. Folks are even proud of it! But if you really internalize how much what we eat affects our health, then the food dollar is the last thing you would want to stretch in the family budget. Genetics have been shown to impact 3% of our life and health span, whereas lifestyle choices (especially eating choices) make up the rest. What we eat affects our life now and in the future. Cheap food suddenly doesn’t look cheap when you consider the health crisis that will follow, whether this is with diabetes or heart disease or obesity or cancer and so on.
Now let’s step back a little further. This time we’ll use eggs as an example. Almost everyone can tell the difference between a real, small-farm-raised egg and a battery-cage factory farm egg. With the former, the yolk is golden-orange and stands right up in the pan. With the latter, the pale kind-of-yellow yolk sags listlessly. There is also a distinctive difference in flavor. Recently, in some areas of the country where bird flu has forced the slaughter of massive numbers of factory farmed hens, commercial egg are as expensive as mine! So, why do folks still buy the 99-cent eggs (when available) from imprisoned hens? “It’s a better deal.” A better deal…really? Let’s unpack that a little.
The tight squeeze of the family food dollar has come at the expense of our land, our animals, and our farmers. Contamination of surface and ground water, runoff into waterways, and deadly airborne pathogens are examples of what the overcrowding of livestock into CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) has caused. Animals meant to live outdoors with plenty of elbow room suffer physically and mentally as well in these situations. But the idea that having more and more animals could make the lessening profits in farming pay was sold to growers in the “get big or get out” push, and many went into heavy debt to build the needed infrastructure. That debt and the squeeze between rising costs and stagnant wholesale prices is making the process unsustainable on even more levels.
To keep these operations going, the government chips in to financially support largescale farms, again keeping the price of goods falsely low. Those subsidies come from tax dollars, so is commercial food really so cheap? Yet, the squeeze continues, and the situation has grown desperate, with farmer suicide rates on the rise. By comparison, our farm does not receive subsidies for our products, and we have been able to stay debt free by growing slow and staying small.
So, I challenge you to really take a look at the social opinion of whether you or I can afford to eat healthy and local. We each vote with our fork for the future we wish to see. I’m committed to keeping healthy, local choices alive for that future. And yes, I really do eat this way all the time. See you down on the farm sometime.