Environment

Lesson #1: Antennae

Three years ago, I attached some antennae to a bike helmet, painted my bike black and yellow, and started The Beez Kneez. At the time, I had no idea where it would take me. What I was aware of was my motivation, and it was two-fold: I wanted to work with bees, and I was very concerned about their struggle to survive. 

Our butchering date had been weighing on me for weeks. I was counting the days, looking forward to the end of hauling 5- and 7-gallon water jugs morning and night from our yard hydrant to the chicken yard and of wrestling 50-lb. bags of broiler feed every few days. But I was also dreading the slaughter – the toll I would be exacting on sixty living creatures. This was not the sort of burden I ever considered before our first harvest of meat chickens in July of 2011.

This is the third post in a series about hunting for food -- truly meeting your meat. Also check out the earlier posts from the series, Duck Hunting and Squirrel Hunting with Mom.

This is the final installment in our Straw Bale Gardening series, which follows a novice gardener’s attempt at her first straw bale garden.

This is the second post in a series about hunting for food -- truly meeting your meat. Also check out the earlier post from the series, Squirrel Hunting with Mom.

If you are on any type of local food listserv in Minnesota, you’ve received an invitation, or two, or ten to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Food + Justice = Democracy national meeting, convening September 24 -26 in downtown Minneapolis.

IATP’s goals for the convergence are lofty; the conference is billed as a national meeting to change the food justice narrative, where “participants will co-create a national food justice platform to push our government and our political leaders to prioritize a fair, just and healthy food system.”

It’s amazing to me how loud a single leaf falling through the canopy of a forest can be. As I sit quietly in the woods on this September morning, I again notice how loud sounds can be in the forest. It is early in the morning on Saturday, September 15th – the day of the small game opener in Minnesota – and I am sitting in the woods about fifteen minutes south of Burnsville with my newest hunting partner.

The belief I’m about to argue — that eating meat is ethical — has been, for me, 25 years in the making. For much of this time, paradoxically, I was a vegetarian because I thought eating animals was morally reprehensible.

What a self-righteous twit I was.

At my in-laws’ traditional Thanksgiving dinner, I recited graphic details about industrially raised turkey. (Do you know what debeaking is?) At the counter in a fast-food restaurant, I’d loudly order a cheeseburger with no meat. (I want a bun, cheese, pickles, lettuce and onions…but no meat!) At a neighborhood pig roast, I asked the host if he had ever read Charlotte’s Web. (You would never be able to eat pork if you had.)

Recently, I had lunch out with a friend and in the course of our conversation I mentioned that I was trying a new recipe that week: quinoa-potato croquettes (from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone). “That sounds good,” my friend said. “Will you have that with some baked chicken or something?” No, I explained, it was one of our meatless meals. “But it’s not Monday,” my friend pointed out. 

I explained that Meatless Mondays don’t usually work for us – Monday is slow cooker day, due to work and school schedules. However, we try to have at least two or three meatless meals a week; just not on set days. 

Anyone who knows me or read my article challenging consumers to be more conscious about packaging knows that I am always trying to use less and less. I suppose until I see more people hauling around coffee mugs and saying no to unnecessary bags, I will always be encouraging more thoughtfulness. I was thinking along these lines the other day as Kadin (my 6 year old son) and I were riding the bus and had to stop at the grocery store.