Under the heading: Now, I’ve heard everything!
The other day my cousin told me that a young mother she knows who works at Taco Bell often feeds her children something called, “taco-flavored dip.” What on earth could it be, I wonder? Taco flavored??? Made in the same factory in New Jersey that makes the flavors for McDonald’s French fries? Oh dear.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is a couple in California, Rachel Hoff and Tom Ferguson, who have taken eating local to a new level. They are not buying groceries at all, but rather, growing or raising everything they eat while each of them holds down a full time job!
Their yard brims “with everything from corn stalks to honey bees.” Initially, they allowed themselves to go to farmer’s markets. But now, they eat only what they can produce themselves. “It’s about knowing where the food is coming from,” says Hoff. “Was that pork ethically slaughtered? …How old is that tomato plant when it gets to us?”
Besides the dogs that account for the name of their place, Dog Island Farm, the couple has goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and bees, from which they get eggs, honey and meat. Sometimes they trade with other farmers. When their fruit trees didn’t fare well, they turned to friend’s trees.
It sounds like a lot of work to me, but they claim anyone could emulate their ambitious lifestyle by giving up T.V. and using the time to make meals from scratch and cook them with friends. Is this what “friends with benefits” really means?
Learn more about this couple from: ayearwithoutgroceries.blogspot.com and also find out more about foraging, growing and harvesting your own food and urban homesteading from www.foundfruit.com
Some of this material taken from: The Sanfrancisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 4th, 2011, “Grow (all of) your own,” by Lauren Reed-Guy
