Freedom in the Hills of New Hampshire

I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately.

This partly happened by chance. You see, my husband and I have been anti-high fructose corn syrup for quite a time now and we avoid eating anything that includes it. One evening, my husband went to the bathroom and I leapt onto his computer and began browsing Netflix instant view to see if there was anything I could watch really quick in the 5-10 minutes before he got back. Sitting there, in my suggestion, was King Corn. I pressed play. My husband returned and looked slightly crestfallen that I had ursurped his computer again but as soon as I mentioned it was about corn, he sat down and watched.

From the video we learned that thanks to the corn subsidies, America’s food chain is totally messed up. You’ll have to watch it to see for yourself, but I immediately became fascinated about where our food comes from. I then read “Animal,Vegetable, Miracle” and “The Omnivore’s Delimma,” both of which discuss organic farming and the importance of eating locally. As far as organic farming is concerned, I’m won over and I was a hard organic skeptic for many years. But basically, the evidence is that organic farming produces food that contains more nutrients than food produced on artificially fertlized land and it also makes soil that is healthier and less prone to erosion. I’m also completely sold on eating free range eggs and meat from pasture-raised animals, as they tend to have higher amounts of healthy fats and more nutrients than CAFO-raised animals and eggs.

What I am not completely sold on are these books’ arguments for eating locally and supporting local agriculture. Their only argument that resonated with me is that produce loses nutrients and quality the farther it has to travel before eaten. So a tomato consumed in January from Chile is less healthy and tastes worse than one from New Hampshire (well, for me anyway) consumed in July. Logical. I dig it.

The rest of their arguments…well:

1) It’s important to support American agriculture because it’s American. Yes, fine, let’s all take a break and chant USA! USA! USA! It’s still not a good reason. Why should I refuse to buy from other countries just because they’re foreign? My husband’s not American. I guess I shouldn’t have married him?

2) If you eat locally, you save blah blah blah barrels of oil that are used to transport food from way over here to way over there. Yes, and if I never travel more than a day’s walk or bike ride from where I live, I’ll save that much oil, too! It doesn’t, however, mean I’m going to do it. Ironically, Barbara from “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” drove from Tuscon to Virginia then up to Canada, then back to Virginia and flew to Italy during her year of eating locally. The fact she drove a hybrid takes away some of the oil, I guess, but sheesh. I guess that’s why the bi-line isn’t a year of living locally.

3) The Europeans  do it—and look how cool they are! Argh. I hate this argument. Americans have a love-hate relationship with Europe, meaning that half the population looks up to Europe and wishes we were more like them while the other half hates Europe and wishes they would go away. We have a very difficult time realizing that it has its faults, just like every where else in the world. But both books made points of glorifying how European countires have  their own food cultures that they still rely on to guide them when they eat (Finland’s revolves around only eating food that looks like shit) and how sad it is that the US doesn’t (never mind that it  does or did and, much like Britian, it suffered tremendously during World War 2). Europeans, they argue, support their local farms and are a lot closer to where their food comes from. Well, yes and no. My host family was very close to where their food came from. My host Oma kept chickens, so we always had fresh eggs, and she made tons of jam and marmelade. My host dad kept rabbits and got ducks before I left, all for food. And they had a huge garden and two cherry trees the supplied most of the produce in the warmer months. When we went to a Richterfest, the hosts slaughtered a sheep and had it roasting on a spit. The other two sheep remained grazing peacefully in a field nearby…

But this experience is not really the norm for most Europeans today, just as it isn’t for most Americans. My host family was exceptional being that my host parents were not only from small farming villages but also lived in East Germany, where being close to your food source was a big plus. When I lived in Berlin and visited Finland, just trust me when I say a lot of stuff is imported, frozen foods are eaten a lot and people don’t spend hours crafting the perfect midday lunch as Italians were portrayed in the two aforementioned books. Unless they’re professional cooks, they just don’t have the time.

Having said all that, I will most certainly check out the farmers market this summer to see what kind of produce it offers and will continue to patronize local pick-your-own farms for apples, blueberries and strawberries because the experience is fun and fesh strawberries are always worth it (I swear, everytime I buy them at the store, they rot as soon as I leave).

Furthermore, this foray into food and finding out where it comes from led my husband and I to decide that when we buy a house, we definitely want to get some land with it, anywhere from two to five acres, so that we can have a little farm. By little I mean a garden to grow vegetables, some fruit trees and some chickens. By farm, my husband means we-are-going-to-grow-everything-ourselves-including-wheat-and-I-want-goats-or-maybe-sheep-along-with-chickens. I think he’s insane because he has no idea how much work it involves, not to mention the fact that we’re both city folk, and not to mention the fact we live in New Hampshire, a land of trees, rocks, long winters and precious little topsoil. We have almost no knowledge of farming or raising animals. But we agreed we’d make a plan (we’ll call it our “Five Year Plan”) that will lay out step-by-step how we’re going to do this. We also agreed that if the chickens are a success, we’ll get a pig. This is due to the fact we both read an article discussing how good acorn-fed pork is. Lasse gets to do the slaughtering.

But it is exciting to have a plan, however crazy it may be. We have a goal to work towards while we live in our tiny little apartment, which makes it all a lot easier.