Take a tour of the local organic Turkey farm (video)

I'm in "relationship" with my meat eating ways. That means this Thanksgiving I'm juggling my  values, the information in my head, my taste buds, and the desire to please the ones I love.  Even though I'm having 20 people to Thanksgiving this year,  I seriously considered skipping the Turkey. I asked my guests about the idea of a vegetarian holiday, they spoke back, and well, that's another post.

After years of consuming information, meat, and guilt, I have come to the conclusion that eating meat is a natural thing to do, and necessary for a healthy body. I have also come to the conclusion that the way we manufacture our meat (what we feed the meat to make it grow faster, how we treat the meat when we are waiting for it to grow large enough so we can process it, and how we consume the meat, is not healthy or natural).

As long as I can connect the two: the life of the animal, to the life I am living because of it's death, than I feel I am actively and consciously engaging in the food chain.

So given that my guests were not particularly interested in a meatless Thursday, I found a local organic farmer and away we went. Ok, the truth is, in between editing sessions I asked Evan, the Current Green intern extraordinaire to find a local organic farm that raised and slaughtered their turkeys. 4 Google searches, 3 Twitter call outs, 2 Facebook shout outs, and a Yelp posting later... he came back with Tara Firma Farms. I then invited everyone coming over for Thanksgiving to join our tour of the farm. Kait took me up on the offer, and was excited given she only eats meat when she knows the farmer and and how the animal's life was taken. She hasn't eaten a turkey on Thanksgiving in 12 years, and so was excited to come along since it would mean...you guessed it! She'll be eating Turkey with us this Thanksgiving.

Originally we had high hopes that we would have the opportunity to watch the turkey be slaughtered. That sounds wrong. To the truth is, I was interested in documenting the experience so I could share it with you, not because I actually wanted to watch the turkey die. I'm grateful to say that they had finished that process the day before we arrived (and by the way, they call the process of taking their lives "processing" turkeys). For starters, who can complain about a beautiful drive to a farm in Petaluma to get your meat. As hokey as it sounds, the experience began to remind me of Little House on the Prairie. I loved reading those books when I was a kid, and one of the stories that stays with me is the amount they treasured and valued the things they received at Christmas~ things like sugar, and shoes. Waking up before the sun rose so we could drive to the country and pick up our thanksgiving dinner was beginning to make the event feel pretty darn special.

The very fact that we were on a journey to meet the people who had raised the bird we were going to eat, and see how it was raised shifted my thinking about turkeys from objects thought in poundage: "do I want a 20 pound dinner or a 22 pound dinner?" to an actual animal who was raised on a farm and had a life before it was wrapped in plastic and put in my refrigerator.

It was after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma that Craig and his wife Tara decided to open a small scale sustainable farm that would provide organic meat and serve as place that would help reconnect their community to the food they are eating. In the video below  Craig talks about how they started the farm; at around minute 2:30 Craig shows us the area where they process the turkey (aka as taking the life of the turkey) and the tools they use. It's pretty amazing to see how it works. Craig discussed his ideas about the the role of death in life, and explores what it means to honor that process.



Craig (self acclaimed farm husband) talks to us about the "vegan myth", and discusses how raising and taking the lives of animals can be part of a spiritual practice.



Frankly, it was just amazing to be on the farm. While we were drawn there to consume something dead, we had the chance to connect to a place that is dedicated to fostering life.

I finally learned the difference between free range chickens and pasture raised chickens (more on that later), we visited baby chicks, and I even got to hang out with some live turkeys (that are destined to become...Christmas dinner).



Thanks to Kate_Armstrong's wacky question she asked via Twitter: "Can turkeys drown in the rain?"

We have this cool info on the personality of turkeys:



The turkey is in my refrigerator right now. I think of this turkey in a way that I have never thought about my turkeys in the past. It's not just that piece of meat I am putting in my stove and that is heavily tied to my ego of making a juicy well prepared meal. It is a bird, that was raised by people who wanted to play an active role in nourishing healthy communities. I saw it's home, I know how it lived, and for the first time, I actually know what a turkey sounds like. We got to play with the dog who couldn't stop chasing it's shadow, hang out with the barn cat, walk the rolling fields of Petaluma, breathe in the fresh air, and connect to the source of our food. When I serve this turkey on thanksgiving, I know that I am deeply aware of the life that was taken, am conscious of my part in the food chain,  know the name of the farmers who raised it, saw the land that nourished it, and know that I am making a healthy and nourishing contribution to our thanksgiving meal; and for that, I am deeply grateful.

Related links:

The race to green my thanksgiving! (aka pet peeves and traditions) video

How Twilight, True Blood, and Buffy are teaching us how to save the planet (video)