Farm tour of a Local! Organic! Sustainable! Farm that raises....Turkey!

http://blogs.current.com/green/2009/11/25/farm-tour-of-our-local-orga...

Check out the video tours of the farm and pretty pictures at: http://blogs.current.com/green/2009/11/25/farm-tour-of-our-local-organic-sustain...

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 one’s I love. And even though I’m having 20+ people to Thanksgiving this year, I 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, 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 like I am actively and consciously engaging in the food chain.

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 shoutouts, and Yelp posting later… he came back with Tara Firma Farms. I then invited everyone coming over for Thanksgiving to join us for our visit to the farm. Kait took me up on the offer, and was excited to come because she only eats meat when she knows the farmer and and how the animal’s life was taken. She hasn’t eaten a turkey 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 it I could share it with you, not because I really 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 it processing the turkey when they take their lives). 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 was how much they 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.

Check out the video tours of the farm and pretty pictures at: http://blogs.current.com/green/2009/11/25/farm-tour-of-our-local-organic-sustain...