Homesteading Will Make You Question: Food

This is Part One of a five part series about how Homesteading Will Make You Question Everything. Specifically, some of the systems and practices in the United States.

Changing your lifestyle brings with it many unforeseen challenges, adjustments, and sacrifices. In our efforts to produce as much of our own food as we can with the space we have, get completely out of debt, and get things in place to be more self-sustainable, I find myself questioning why we do certain things in our modern society. A question that keeps repeating over and over in my head is, “Why?” Examples would be, “Why don’t more people pickle their own food? It is so easy!” or “Why don’t people understand that you are not a freak (especially in the USA) for putting some food back just in case (aka ‘prepping’)?” Sometimes I wonder if other people who are transitioning like we are think and wonder about the same things. The lifestyle we want to live and the mindset to it takes ‘get there’ has changed every facet of my life and I find myself questioning everything around me: How and what we eat, how we work, how we play, and how we treat each other, and how we live overall. This first article in the series “Homesteading Will Make You Question Everything,” will focus on How and What We Eat.

How and What We Eat. I used to be just like the average American: Hamburger Helper, premade frozen foods, and overly processed ‘food products’ were all part of our everyday diet. We didn’t think twice about guzzling soda and other ‘sugared’ drinks. And just like the average American, we are overweight due to that kind of diet and lack of exercise (though it gets better day by day now!). When we started growing our own food, the very first thing I noticed was the difference in color and taste. Homegrown foods tend to have a more vibrant color to them in my short two year experience. The taste difference cannot be denied! I am a huge carrot lover and will eat them just about anyway you can cook ‘em but once I ate some that I grew myself, I knew that I would be hard pressed to enjoy store-bought carrots again. I was ruined, spoiled rotten! I never knew carrots could be so sweet or that crunchy! Their color is incredibly vibrant and bright which has remained even through all of the processing I have done. When compared to store bought carrots, you can see the difference in texture, color, and of course taste.

As I learned about canning and preserving my own food, I kept asking the question: “Why don’t more people do this!?” The first answer usually has to do with time and money factors and I get that. It’s the ones who talk about how hard or dangerous it is to pressure can foods as their excuses that I shake my head and think they are just being lazy. This is sometimes reinforced by having to listen to them (who are able bodied people, mind you) lamenting how they are stuck eating GMO and chemical filled foods but they don’t do anything about it. This may be unfair but there is a kernel (at least) of truth to that observation. Most people alive today in the USA view growing your own food versus going to the going to the grocery store as weird or odd or just “not normal.” Yes, there is the work factor which again makes me think lazy. What they do not realize is that the modern grocery store as we know it has not been around for even 100 years yet! Yes, farmer’s markets and harvest markets have been around for time immemorial however, the one-stop shopping we are used to today is very new when looking at the big picture. Even the farmer’s markets are not always as organic or wholesome as people tend to think but it is still a better bet than the organic section at most major grocery store chains and it helps a local grower, not some big food company production. There are very few little guys left out there!

The local butcher has been taken over by the FDA. The local dairy farmer where you buy your milk and cheese has been taken over by the USDA. Now enter big food companies whose bottom line is to make money, not ensure the safety per se, of the food they are selling you. That is the job of the USDA and FDA but, these big companies lobby to get laws passed so they can continue doing what they do best: selling products labeled as safe and nutritious to make money. It is well documented that many high ranking former Monsanto employees now work for the FDA and USDA and it has to make you wonder. There is great controversy whether or not other countries have banned GMO crops from being grown in their country but there IS verifiable proof that other countries require clear labeling of foods that contain GMO ingredients. (I will leave it to you to do your own research on this). What irks me the most is our government thinks it has the right to regulate how and what I eat. They pass rules that will not allow something from the local farmer, while turning the cheek at the scary practices or treatment of animals. As far as I understood it, they were there to make sure practices were safe, ethical, etc: not to tell me that I cannot eat beef from a neighbor’s cow that was raised as nature intended and without all the shots and hormones. It is not their job to ‘save me from myself.’ As I recall, that is one of the reasons we separated and made our own country back in the day.

Another thing in our current food system that just doesn’t make sense to me is the whole organic thing from the Government’s perspective. The only thing I can think of is control and money. Where is the sense to make those people who wish to grow food as naturally as possible turn around and fill out incredible amounts of paperwork to prove they aren’t using pesticides, herbicides, or other chemicals in the process but so long as companies provide a list of what chemicals they are using, is perfectly acceptable? Am I the only one who sees this as completely backwards? Why do I need to prove that I am growing my food in the most natural, non man-made chemical way? Instead of spraying anti-slug chemicals all over my food, I go out with a flashlight and pick them off. I also am employing the use of egg shells and other natural solutions that will help keep the buggers out of the beds completely but that, I fear, is a never ending battle. And I am OK with that.

As I continue down this path, the incredible amounts of waste that is produced blows my mind. Before the conscious change, I wouldn’t think twice about tossing out the end scraps of veggies when cooking. It was ‘trash’ to me. Now, however, I am not quite done with those scraps. I usually take and make them into a vegetable stock and jar it up for later use. The cooked ‘scraps’ then go into the compost. When we have chickens, they would be fed these treats and absolutely nothing is wasted. That ‘garbage’ gets turned into more nutritional food in the form of vegetable stock, eggs, and chicken meat. This is only one example of ways people can help their dollars to stretch further when it comes to food but it is also easy to apply this mindset to other areas of your life. It is all part of having the veil lifted and seeing the world through different lenses. I have learned how much better food really tastes when you stop smothering it in gravy and sauces. When a main dish only has 5 or 6 ingredients, it just always seems to taste better. Now, I am not saying that sauces, gravies, and deep frying should never be done or enjoyed; far from it. The point is that by choosing to cook more simply, instead of more elaborate, actually opens up a whole new palette of flavors to be enjoyed. It also tends to lower your food bill because you are buying staples more often and cooking from scratch instead of boxes and cans of precooked, premade foods. We constantly work to get away from store bought, premade foods. Instead, we use our own premade foods that are also dehydrated, jarred, or frozen! We take the middle man out (aka the big food companies) and replace them as much as possible with our own processing. We try our best to buy from other local gardeners, too. I know it is unrealistic to try and get completely away from the grocery store or dependency on our modern world but there can certainly be a better balance found.

The further along I go on this path, the more I see the wisdom in how our great-grandparents lived. I really wish I could describe the deep, ‘soul-ular’ satisfaction I feel when I pull out a jar of vegetables that I grew from a seed, tended until it was time to harvest, and then processed it myself in a shelf-stable method that will hold for a solid year (likely more). To me, that is more powerful than having a million dollars. It is more powerful than having the best materialistic object that you desire. The objects can be taken away but the skills I now possess cannot be. I can grow, harvest, and preserve my own food. Why would I want to have someone else do it for me whose main focus is to make the largest profit and not necessarily my well being? I like the control I have over how my food was grown, processed, and preserved. I understand that people have different challenges on many different levels. If you are doing what you can with what you have, that is still moving forward! If all you manage to do is give your scraps to a neighbor who has chickens in exchange for some eggs now and than, that helps. That is taking back control of some of the food in your life! You know what those chickens ate and how they were raised and are putting good, wholesome food (that tastes amazing!) into your body. You had a direct hand in the production, however large or small, of that food. You did it yourself, not some big company. And I can tell you, the person raising the chickens is grateful, too. 🙂

Have you ever wondered about any of these things in your journey? Give us a comment below! We love to hear from our readers and do our best to answer every single one. Keep it civil please!

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