# 4 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

If I can keep up this pace, I'll be close to 50 by the end of the year (I probably won't keep up the pace, but you never know).

Barbara Kingsolver and her family decided to live as locatarians for a year.  Luckily, they owned a farm in Virginia somewhere, although not the best piece of land for having a farm, it was certainly capable of growing fruits and vegetables and providing grass and other goodies for foraging domesticated animals.  Their rules were pretty simple, to get their food as close to home as possible.  There were a couple of things that they really couldn't live with out, but couldn't get locally, like coffee and wheat, so they tried to get shade grown fair trade coffee and organic wheat grown as close to home as they possibly could.  There was also the problem of where to get cranberries for Thanksgiving, they caved and bought some organic ones from the local grocery store.
My father was a farmer and after leaving the farm, ended up living on a farm owned by someone else.  It seems that he had a difficult time getting away from his agrarian roots.  Many of my early days were spent on this farm riding horses, getting dirty in the hay, and playing with the animals.  The farm was a small operation, a few hundred dairy cattle and about the same number of beef cattle.  Perhaps it is these roots that make it hard for me to read about conditions at CAFOs and poultry farms.  Did you know the most common bread of turkey cannot reproduce on their own?  I knew it was bad, but I had no idea that it was that bad.
Perhaps I'm being a little overzealous, but now I've got my summer planned.  One day a week picking produce at local you-pick farms, going to the local farmer's market once a week and one day a week preparing the produce and other goodies for storage.  Canning and freezing aren't that difficult, just labor intensive.  We are going to order 2 shares (we have a lot of kids) from a local CSA.  We are also planning to order an heirloom turkey for Thanksgiving and try our hand at container gardening.  We may not be able to produce as much for ourselves as Ms. Kingsolver and her family were, but we can produce some of it, and learn to appreciate the food we have.