Mike and I began dating during our freshman year of college.  We spent much of our free time camping, hiking, cooking, making things, etc.  We have always both been very interested in food, from techniques, to culture, to the growing of vegetables and fruits and the raising of animals.  Slowly but surely, we have acquired knowledge and experience through reading, watching documentaries, and visiting farms and farmers markets.  When we bought our first home, it was 300 years old, so much time was spent repairing and restoring it.  We also put in fruit trees and a system of organic raised garden-beds.  We had our chickens and tapped our stand of sugar maples.  We had cats and dogs.  Whenever we do anything, a good amount of research is done first, so we were always learning, trying to read from as many sources how to do something so that we could put together the techniques both ancient and modern that would work best for us.

Since moving here, the learning curve has been steep.  In every room of our house you will find books and magazines dealing with all matters of livestock husbandry, vegetables, fiber crafts, etc.  We also read a fair amount on line, the blogs and articles written by those who have come before us are inspiring and very informative.  The River Cottage books and television series have always steered us in the correct direction.  We are also now lucky enough to have developed relationships with a number of local farmers who don’t mind answering questions when they come up.

We are all very curious people in our house.  We all like to know the hows and whys of things.  We don’t mind asking people questions.  We also don’t mind making mistakes.  We use whatever resources are available to us; books, magazines, the internet, people, and our own trial and error.  Hopefully life will continue like this for our entire family long into the future.

We are busy, working parents with two young kids.  Sometimes we go through the drive-thru.  It is infrequent (once/twice a month) and we have rules, for example we try to only order fish or whole cuts of chicken if we order meat at all.  We avoid foods that have been ground due to concerns about contamination.  Same thing goes for restaurants in general, although, again, we are not completely dogmatic about this.  Sometimes we make alternative choices based on what would be easier, faster, most polite, whatever.  The key is moving towards and ideal even if it’s never reached (nor expected to be reachable).

We really like sweets and allow our kids to eat candy and drink soda.

GASP!  To be honest, most of the sweets we eat are things we make ourselves.  If you come to our house, you are likely to find anything from homemade root beer to homemade twinkies to homemade candy.  Several nights ago we made a chocolate cookie cake with a ganache frosting for Mike’s birthday.  I made a batch of dark chocolate covered cherries that I am hoarding in the back of the fridge and not allowing anyone else to eat.  We limit soda to special occasions; birthdays, parties, eating out, and don’t drink soda with caffeine (we usually stick to root beer or ginger ale).  We feel pretty strongly that life is for enjoying and we really enjoy yummy foods.  Our kids get plenty of veggies and other healthy stuff, so the occasional desert won’t hurt them or us.  Plus, when you are living and working on a farm, you can use the calories.  Finally, from years of personal experience (Jamie has only ever had child-related jobs; camp counselor, baby-sitter, nanny, etc.) the kids who have the biggest problems with sugar and sweets are the ones who are never allowed to have them.  Children who are allowed to have snacks and learn to moderate themselves tend to grow up with the healthiest food attitudes.  In our house, it is common to have to throw out the last cookie or piece of cake because it has gone stale.  We have a huge candy cupboard that the kids can both access. They never try to sneak candy because they don’t need to.  In fact, this next year, I think I may just make a bag of uneaten candy that I set aside and we use to decorate our holiday ginger bread houses.

We watch tv and so do our kids.  We also play Wii.

In moderation and without commercials.  We have a Netflix subscription, so we get disks in the mail and watch movies and shows online.  We go to the library once a week and the kids each pick out a movie.  We use a program on our computer that is like Tivo and we set up a weekly schedule to tape the shows that we and the kids like.  I take out the commercials from the kids shows (FYI, a half-hour show is really only 22 minutes).  For our shows, we just fast forward.  We feel that by not being tied down to watching at certain times, we have tons of flexibility and probably watch far less tv.  We have a few kids shows and a few grown-up shows we watch and maybe once a week watch a movie as a family.  We limit the amount the kids watch, some days it is none, and some days (bad weather, sick, really tired, etc.) we watch a lot.  Sometimes I feel like the kids watch too much, but that is life.  If we had a communal living situation and people around to play with and interact with at all times, I am sure they would watch almost none.  As it is, all four of us tend to be people who are very concentrated and focused and intense with whatever we are doing (working, playing, visiting with friends, cooking, etc.) and then want to just zone out for a while.  Plus, there are some really great shows and movies and we feel that our lives are more enriched having watched them.  As for the Wii, it is also something we set limits on.  Mostly Mike and Jackson play together (Lego Star Wars), but we are starting to play as a family now that Charlotte is older (Big Brain Academy).  Like with the sweets and soda, we feel that having our children get exposure to it and learning to set some limits for themselves is the best way to proceed.  Jackson will spend half an hour on the Wii and then go play his legos for an hour or more.  He is learning self-modulation which we feel is very good.

We love technology and pop culture and politics.

We have  and iPhone and iPods and keep up with the latest scandals on a myriad of websites (actually, that’s mostly Jamie).  We don’t wish to be living at another time or place.  We are happy with our modern lives and consider ourselves to be techno-pioneers.

As far as being attached to them, we just don’t allow ourselves to be.  We know (all of us, kids included) that some animals are for eating and some are for keeping forever.  We bond with and give affection to our breeding stock and the rest of the animals are treated exceedingly well during their time with us.  I am pretty sure that I have said this before, but the animals are all typically butchered when they are “teenagers”.  Like human teenagers, they can be rude, loud, and very naughty.  Believe me when I say that I feel nothing but relief when we have dispatched a particularly troublesome creature (our Hereford steer being a great example).  These are not pets, they are food.  We have chosen to take the responsibility of dealing with our own feelings about taking their lives as opposed to forcing the animals we eat to live in sub-standard conditions just so we don’t have to think about the fact that the chicken nuggets on our plate were once real live animals that walked and squawked and had to be killed so that we could eat them.

We feel fairly strongly that if you don’t think you personally could take responsibility for the butchering of an animal (either by bringing it to the butcher or doing the butchering yourself) than maybe you shouldn’t be eating meat.  We feel that when you remember that the food you are eating required that an animal had to lose its life, you tend to feel more concern over the living conditions of that animal and therefore you may be more likely to seek out sources of meat in accordance.  That is certainly the path that led us to our farm.

Finally, most domestic breeds of livestock have gone extinct (95% in the US).  There are many fewer types of cow, pig, sheep, chicken, etc than there have ever been since the beginning of animal husbandry.  Most animals in existence today are commercial breeds that require tremendous care and handling to survive.  They cannot breed, or even live outside of the carefully constructed environment of commercial livestock farming.  When the family farms started to disappear, so did the family farm breeds.  We make a point on our farm whenever possible to only raise breeds listed as endangered by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy.  If more people raised, and especially ATE these animals, there would be more demand for them, and they would not be running the risk of becoming extinct.  Furthermore, to ensure that these breeds carry on and improve on their vitality, vigor, etc, it is important to breed them yearly and then ONLY keep the absolute healthiest and best animals to carry on the line.  For example, we have two ewes (female sheep) that just returned from breeding.  They are hopefully bred with their first set of lambs.  We plan to return one out of every four lambs born back to our breeder in exchange for the services of her ram.  Of those, only one out of two or four may be chosen for breeding purposes, meaning that over the reproductive span of one sheep, she may give birth to 10-20 lambs but only a few may be chosen to be bred and carry on the line.  The chances of producing a really healthy offspring worth breeding increases with the number of breedings that occur.  All of those other sheep could become pets, fiber animals, or they could be eaten.  To continue  (and improve upon) any breed of animal, only the best animals should be chosen to breed, they should be bred yearly, and only the best of their offspring (the top one or two animals) should be allowed to carry on the line.  It is our domestic form of “survival of the fittest”.

Additionally, people are often surprised when they learn about certain things that we do (like eat the occasional fast food meal and let our kids watch tv) as if they think that just because we raise our own food, we must live every aspect of our lives in a natural and old-timey way. We are in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM perfect, nor do we ever want to be. We are not zealots (about anything really, except for not being zealots) and we try to make the best choices we can for ourselves each day. The choices that we make for ourselves as individuals, for our children, and for the animals that we care for are personal decisions and as much as we don’t want other people making our choices for us, we would never judge people for the choices they make in their own lives.

So, here goes, we’re starting an FAQ category. Watch for entries appearing presently. If you have questions, feel free to post them in the comments herein. We’ll post the links to the answers when they get written.