Getting to Know the Neighbors

Over the weekend Tim & I watched a movie that we'd heard a lot about but had never seen - Food, Inc. Wow, was that an eye opener. While we both knew a lot of what was documented in the movie, there were some big revelations and with that, a renewed sense of importance and purpose when it comes to eating local and organic. I came away with a new sense of determination to educate my kids about the food they are eating and for us to get to know our local farmers and take tours of the places from which we are purchasing our food. After watching the movie I got a great list of our local, organic famers from this site: http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home. You can get more information about the movie here: http://www.foodincmovie.com/ and a great new (to me) blog on this topic is http://www.poorgirleatswell.com/.

With this renewed sense of importance to know the food we are eating, it felt so good to be back in our own garden planting the first of this years crop: peas & onions.
 
The items in our cold boxes are not doing well, so we hope to figure out what is going on so we will be salad greens in no time.

If you're local we have been enjoying meat from Harvest Hill Farms. I plan on taking a tour of this farm with my kids in the next couple of weeks and we plan on also touring two farms in Johnstown.

This weekend we also visited a local lumber mill where we purchased wood for our chicken coop and the kids' playhouse. It was great to go see where the wood was harvested and to talk to the man that owns it. It was nice to know that only a few blocks away this man is living a life with complete intention where he taps his trees for maple syrup, does canning (which we did a small exchange of items) and hunts deers on his property which he makes of a point of using every part of the deer. We saw skin hanging and drying to be used for varies purposes and said he's even used the fat to make soap. This was way better than a trip to Lowes for lumber.

Comments

[Ser]

Erin, do you have any hints on what to prioritize on a very strict budget? I buy snowville milk and local eggs, and I also try to buy local meat when I can (we also do a little bit of conventional and also just eat a heck of a lot of beans). I get really overwhelmed when I think about this all too much, because I want to make all the best choices, but I can't afford to do it all, nor do I have time to go 10 places for food for the week.