My oldest took a car ride with me on Saturday. We were going to get our grass-fed beef. I didn't think much about it until she asked me why we were buying our meat off of the back of a refrigerated truck in a church parking lot instead of the store. I have to be honest, it felt a bit clandestine.
I found the company through a good friend of mine who found them through eatwild.com.
I wanted to try it because my cholesterol hovers just around borderline, and my dad died at 52 from heart disease that was diagnosed at 42 ( just around the corner for me.). I had read that grass-fed beef has higher CLA and extra omega-3's that have a cholesterol lowering effect that traditional grain fed beef does not have.
I have to admit. There is something that scares me deep down inside about our food. I know my husband thinks that I've gone over the edge; but I am seeing a world that is evolving into a place where some of the most natural and good things that go into our bodies aren't so pure and honest any more. I am afraid of the long term effects of GMO's and pesticides and all of the other junk. It has actually probably made me a little nuts.
So now I am buying my meat out of a truck.
But I was thinking about it and with this and the CSA we do every year, maybe it's good that my daughter can see that food comes from somewhere other than the glossy, shiny supermarket. That our food comes from the ground.
Even our own garden.
Our own hands.
Maybe these last 50 years of bigger, better, smaller, faster has pulled us away from our own right to be self-sufficient.
She asked me where the meat came from and I was trying very tenderly to explain about how they get the meat, and "dispatch" the animals, but she wanted details.
100 years ago on the farm it would have been a fact of life and I wouldn't have to find an uncomfortable way to gloss-over an important part of the farm to table process.
I don't want to do the dirty work per se, or be a vegetarian, but I want to have respect for where my food comes from, and I hope my children can learn the same thing.
