Food Inc.

During the Food Inc. documentary, I only had one thing come to mind; Thank goodness my family puts in the hard work and dedication to buy, raise/grow, process, and butcher our own meat.

Since I was a little kid, I remember getting up very early in the morning in mid-February to go over to a family friend's house to butcher a cow/pig. My first job was writing what the meat was on the package. As I grew older, my job was package and wrap the meat. 

For a while, we stopped raising hogs and cattle because my dad (the farm manager) has DDD (degenerative disc disease) in his back and it was hard for him to take care of the animals and the farm by himself, so we just bought store meat. 

It wasn't until a few years ago, when my older brother moved home from college and bought a house close by with his wife to help my dad on the farm, that we started raising cattle and hogs again. Since I was now older and wiser, I was handed a knife and was told it was my turn to be at the table with the adults. I wouldn't say I'm a master butcher, but I do have a knack for it! 

I was never "allowed" be a part of the process of killing the cattle and processing their hides because my parents thought it would bother me too much. But what I do know is that there is nothing hidden in my meat. My father buys the calves from Logansport (next to a little restaurant called Bullshippers Cafe. Yes, it's real) at an auction, raises them in our own pasture where they eat grass. We wait unti they are big and old enough to slaughter so we can take them to our friend's house where they are processed (I'll leave out the gory details of this part).  Then we gather a bunch of people to come cut up the meat and viola! I had a portion of a pig this year and the meat in my freezer is worth about $1,500 in retail value that I only paid $200 for. 

Also, since I can ever remember, we've also butchered our own chickens. The funniest thing to my siblings and me was watching my dad chop off the chicken's head and watch it run around headless. I've been a part of that process from beginning to end. Head comes off, dip in hot water, pluck, cook. There's obviously a little more to it, but I don't want to make anyone sick! 

I tell of all this because I have the knowledge of what homegrown, naturally raised meat should look like. I work at Meijer and I walk by the meat counter and cringe. That's not real meat. That's chemically processed meat. I may eat fast food and restaurant style meat, but it never looks like what I've been raised to know. It makes me wonder what all we are putting in our bodies when we eat something when we don't know where it came from. 

I love living at home in the summer because almost everything comes straight from our farm: meat, vegetables, and fruits. My dad also has his own garden that he is proud of. I enjoy knowing where my food comes from. I once watched the "cooks" in Noyer mixing powder that turned into scrambled eggs. That's not how you make scrambled eggs!! There wasn't a chicken, there wasn't a shell, and there wasn't any yolk! I understand that some things are meant to be made to feed a mass quantity of people, but that doesn't mean we should sacrifice our bodies!