The other day, I was cleaning out my freezer and something magical happened. Not only did I get a nice, organized freezer, but I realized what it really means to eat locally.
When you eat locally, you know things about your food that people who shop at the grocery store do not.
On the labels of nearly every package of meat in my freezer was the name of someone I know….whose farm I’ve actually been to.
I know that those incredibly delicious pork chops in my freezer came from an American Guinea Hog, a breed that is prized for it’s moderate size, friendly temperament, and mad foraging skills. I know that during its lifetime, that hog didn’t go a single day without a scratch between the ears and a kind word. The hog had a large area under the trees to snuffle around and do his hog thing all day long with his hog friends. The hog was kindly treated and humanely dispatched, and I saw the entire litter of them numerous times when I went over to the farmer’s house to pick up excess tomatoes.
And the beef in my freezer? Here’s what I know about that. Those cows lived a life of open ranges with all the grass they could chomp down in a day. They didn’t stand in piles of their own excrement, suffering for their entire existence. The herd that our beef came from was mostly Herefords, and I’ve chatted many times with the farmer.