When We Have Grown it, a Gift of Food is a Gift of Ourself
“First we fed the chickens, now the chickens are feeding us.”
My toddler’s chant became a mantra, a blessing, as we scrambled the dark yellow yolks in the pan, cooking up a dinner of the freshest eggs possible. That afternoon we’d made our first visit to Valley Rock Farm, one of our county’s many small-scale egg producers. It was also a long-overdue visit because it is owned by part-time farmer friends of ours, and every time they see us in town, they invite us out.
Soren’s recent obsession with farm animals (maybe the veterinarian gene skipped a generation, from my father to my son?) encouraged me to call Mark and Tami, and they were thrilled to have visitors.
Mark is raising two fine sons, so he knew just how to engage Soren. We toured all the barns and paddocks with a bucket of multipurpose grain. To make friends, we offered food. (Just as I brought a loaf of my banana-zucchini bread for our farmer friends.) We fed the sheep (a mixed flock for both wool and meat), the solitary goat, and the fowl—oh, the birds! I tried to keep count: about 35 chickens and 25 ducks of various species, and two huge geese leading the pack.
And oh, the poop! Good thing Soren and I were both wearing boots. I am so grateful to farmer families for putting up with livestock on their lawns. I’m just not prepared to deal with poultry droppings in our yard. That’s why I’m prepared to pay $5.50/dozen (the going rate here) for local eggs. It’s one of my top food commitments for my family, and once you’ve switched, there’s no going back! (Full disclosure: I keep some lesser-quality eggs—but not the worst factory-farmed ones—in my fridge for baking. My motivations are health, taste and local economy, with ethics lower on the list.)
Valley Rock Farm poultry have the run of a grassy barnyard so large I couldn’t see its fenced edges over the lay of the land; this is what free-range, pastured birds look like. But they have been trained to lay in the nesting boxes inside one of the barns, and that’s where Soren “discovered” half a dozen of their most recent gifts. Mark boosted him up so he could feel around under the straw and unearth each one with a triumphant grin.
Of course, these six eggs were sent home with us, along with another six to make an even dozen, plus two pumpkins, plus a frozen package of salmon that Mark caught and smoked himself (can’t wait to try that!). Producing food makes us generous. Food wealth is somewhat perishable, that’s true, but that can’t account for the impulse to share foods that can be preserved or even sold for cash.
We wouldn’t think of gifting departing guests with bags of potato chips or breakfast cereal, even if pantry was overflowing with these rather nonperishable, commercial items. But when we have grown it, a gift of food is a gift of ourself, of our talent, of our dogged persistence to keep those plants or birds alive and productive. We can be so very proud of that, and the receiver so grateful.
Gratitude for the people who grow our food is sorely lacking in our culture, and we need “the good food revolution” to bring it back.
On the 35-minute drive home from Valley Rock Farm, I felt overflowing with fall bounty, and with excitement about our friends’ parting offer: to join them next August or September when they “harvest” their roosters. If I want a roasting bird from their flock, I have to earn it, Mark said. Since reading about poultry harvest in Barbara Kingsolver’s food memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’ve been wondering how I could experience this cycle of life-giving-life that she describes so beautifully. I’ve been handed my opportunity.
Thoughts about food have been gathering in my head this week, and they coalesced yesterday at (where else?) our Saturday Farmer’s Market. I had $45 in my wallet and toward the end of my shopping, I decided I’d rather have a 10# bag of carrots for $10 than hot soup for lunch. So I blew my lunch budget and lugged the beautiful bag to the playground, where a friend was watching my son. I was suddenly the object of carrot envy! Three acquaintances confessed they had eyed the carrot bargain but had been unable to commit. What was I going to use them for?
As I passed out carrots to all their children for snacking, we had a great conversation about the merits of cooking from scratch, eating organic produce, supporting our farmers, and not busting our food budgets. I feel it comes down to changing your habits, and knowing what healthier behaviors can replace not-so-healthy ones (like shopping trips to Silverdale—our closest big-box nightmare of a town, which fortunately (and very unusually in our nation of sprawl) is an hour drive away—from whence you return with more packaged crap than you ever intended). It’s not about simply substituting local, fresh, organic food for the cheaper produce you purchase from a chain store that was shipped from California or Mexico.
It’s about changing how you cook and eat, and discovering how food shopping, preparation and ingestion can become more of a force for goodness and happiness in your life, your relationships and your community.
This is the precise topic of a forum coming up this Thursday, Nov. 3, which I am interested to attend. It’s called “Making Local Food Affordable,” is moderated by our newspaper publisher Scott Wilson, and is held from 7-9 p.m. at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend. There will be info tables and people to chat with starting at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public, so hope to see you there!
P.S. You can buy Valley Rock Farm eggs at the Port Townsend Food Co-op, and maybe you’ve eaten their duck eggs on the menu at Sweet Laurette’s Café. Support our friends!
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Hi Shelly! What a great new blog! Your mention of the egg price (and the ASIDE sidebar) reminds me, I was just thinking yesterday that we (C and I) spend more of our money on food than we’d spend if we ate the current conventional American diet — because we buy the healthiest, most local organic choices (and spend time and effort growing some of our own). But food choices are SO IMPORTANT — to our health and to the health of the planet. I’ll add a plug for a book I copyedited that just came out: “Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food.” It’s a fabulous illustrated guide to grocery shopping, full of tips and recipes. Totally in synch with your message here. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for your book suggestion, Kristi! If you edited it, it’s sure to be great.
I forgot to mention what I plan to use my 10# bag of carrots for: soup stocks (I also bought my first stewing chicken at the market and need to get it in the crock pot today) and the remainder for dilled carrots. My son LOVES them and I’ve never made them before, but my neighbor is into pickling, so I’m going to pick her brain…
What a coincidence! We got to visit with family in Tennessee as we travel across the country from our Ohio home as we head for California for the winter. Our parting gift from your parents was a zip-lock baggie of dried apple and pear slices from their Anacortes, WA trees! We dove into the treats as we traveled across Mississippi today. Yummy! Share the joy and the abundance from your gardens!
Just read an Atlantic article by Jane Black called “How $8-a-Dozen Eggs Threaten Real Food Reforms” (8/8/11) and am astonished that she (nor apparently any of the 96 commenters) doesn’t draw the distinction between ORGANIC eggs and PASTURED eggs.
Of course, there are no rules for using these labels, but my understanding is that organic eggs come from chickens fed organic feed — and means nothing more. In commercial operations, they are unlikely to be allowed to freely range outside. And these eggs are of course cheaper than pastured eggs, that come from chickens that get to act like chickens — roaming in grass, eating grubs and insects. Like most backyard chickens do, and like the Valley Rock Farm birds most certainly do.
I value pastured eggs so highly, I would pay $8/dozen!