Yes, I know this farm thing is getting to be sort of a theme. Perhaps it's a way of realizing that although I no longer have my horse farm, there are still a lot of farms in the world and ways I can be part of them.
This time it started with a book -- The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's been around for a long time and I've been resisting reading it for an equally long time. I know some of the issues involved in raising animals for food, but I still remembered the farms I had seen as a kid and my Mom's stories of the farm she grew up on. Her comment that she treated her pigs as pets always caught my attention. I just couldn't imagine treating a pig as a pet, but she told me they were clean and friendly creatures and that the mud was a way for them to keep cool. Wilbur and Charlotte would have loved it. The problem was that I was somewhere off in fairyland when it came to my ideas of farms. When I saw some of the feed lots out West, that was not what I had in mind. The cattle grazing the tall grass prairies were still there, too, but they belonged to rich Texans like that guy who cornered the silver market years ago. I still wanted my burgers and steaks but I wanted them from animals that had had a life where they grazed in a pasture or, for the pigs, got to loll around in the mud. And chickens - they belonged outside pecking up bugs.
So I started out to find farms that worked that way and discovered that there are still quite a few. There's Mr. Anderson, who sells eggs and is more than happy to introduce you to his hens, hens who may have to be shooed out of the way to get at the outside refrigerator where you pick up your carton of variously colored eggs. I like to say that I've personally met the hens who lay my eggs. Mr Anderson has also taken in two peacocks and several retired ponies who needed a good home. Starts to sound a bit like Dr. Dolittle doesn't it?
My latest find, however, is in Southampton. I went on line to find a source for pastured beef and any other meats I could locate. I realized that cattle and sheep take a lot of space and so I wasn't really hoping to find a farm that raised them. I expected that to be more upstate. I would be happy just to find a farm or farmer's market where I could routinely buy properly raised meat (properly as I define it, of course). Instead, I hit the jackpot. I found a farm that raises it's own cattle and sheep and pigs. As I followed my GPS in search of this anachronism, I took a turn that seemed familiar and to my delight I found that my new-found farm was across the road from the farm owned by friends I used to see every week at the horse shows. The new farm was great. Beef, pork, lamb, sausage, eggs both chicken and duck. Heirloom tomatoes, purple Peruvian potatoes ( say that fast a few times) and fresh young garlic and garlic scapes that smelled so good I wanted to start cooking immediately. The owner was happy to talk about his farm and get me other types of meat that weren't in the freezer at the stand. After the usual "how did we talk for so long" conversation, I drove off and realized that on one side of the road were my friend's horses and on the other side was a pasture with cows grazing contentedly. Maybe some fairy tales do come true.
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