About
It all started the day my husband came home from work and said, “I saw these chickens pecking around in someone’s driveway, and thought they looked happy and quaint. I think we should get some.”
A few weeks later, I was hooked.
Not long after acquiring our first pair of laying hens, I read a news article about a chicken that escaped from a processing plant. The accompanying photograph showed a pathetic creature with a floppy comb and missing feathers. As I considered that this was what I was eating whenever I thawed a chicken breast for dinner, I became dismayed. I grew up on a farm, and most of my extended family members are farmers. I knew that good food didn’t look like the chicken in that photograph. So I did a little research. When my husband came home from work the next day I said, “I saw these broiler chickens in a catalog, and I think we should get some…”
And so began our foray into the world of naturally raised, beyond-organic food.
As a licensed chemistry teacher, I still believe that (to some extent) we can achieve “better living through chemistry.” But when people take chemistry and use it as an excuse to abuse animals and the environment in the name of higher production and better profits, the “better living” becomes an unachievable pipe dream. The antibiotics that should be used to heal the sick are instead used to keep animals alive in deplorable conditions. The chemical fertilizers that promise us more abundant and cheaper food instead deliver us contaminated drinking water. There has got to be a better way.
We hope to be part of that.
To be continued…