Local eating, organic eating, clean eating, meat-free eating, knowing where your food comes from--these are all hot topics for current times. Which is why
this essay from an urban gardener in Oakland, who keeps a blog called Ghost Town Farm, is so fascinating:
Four years ago, I raised my first Thanksgiving turkey on my urban
farm in Oakland, CA. My reasoning was the following: I wanted to eat
organic, free-range turkey but didn’t have a lot of money, so I decided
to do it myself. With this in mind, I did what any urban farmer does: I
logged onto the internet and bought a bargain-priced assortment of
day-old poultry. A few weeks later I received a peeping box through the
US Post Office, my assortment was called the Homesteader’s Delight. The
baby turkeys—poults–looked like chicks: fuzzy, adorable, with a little
pucker of skin on their heads. As the poults grew, that pucker turned
into a dangling snood, and I grew fond of this most American of
poultry. They had a curiosity, an openness toward other creatures,
including my dumbfounded neighbors. One of the denizens of my street, a
strict vegan, even named the turkeys in a bid to turn them into pets,
not dinner.
The turkeys lived on my farm for six months. They had a good life
and were fed well. They roamed freely. And on one cold November day,
one of my turkeys went from live animal to the celebratory centerpiece
on the Thanksgiving table. My initial goal, to save money, was a
colossal failure: I ended up spending about $100 each on feed for the
birds, making it not so cost-effective. Instead of saving money, I
learned a few lessons about what it means to eat meat. One surprise was
raising a turkey made me feel deeply connected to our human ancestors.
You'll most definitely want to read the rest.[Photo by nosha]
