How far will you go?

Monday, September 17, 2007

I sometimes fantasize about being able to raise livestock and grow more of what I eat on our little property in the burbs.  Growing fruit and veggies is one thing - it’s not hard.  Raising chickens or goats are quite another.  I’m poo-phobic to start with, and while I’ve seen pigs slaughtered and deer shot I’m not sure that I could bring myself to gut animals regularly.  It takes an intestinal fortitude I’m just not sure I have.

After reading this hilarious article article in New York Magazine, I’m pretty sure that I’m content to leave it to the experts.  The article chronicles one man’s attempt to provide for himself out of his back yard...in Brooklyn.  I especially loved his meal descriptions: maimed rabbit euthanasia stew and home-garroted roast rooster.  Tales abound of “bunny boot-knocking” (or lack thereof) and trying to outsmart a hen.

Few, if any, serious locavores would see my experience as having much to do with what they advocate: eating regionally and seasonally in order to save the planet. But I now better understand what will be needed to back up the slogans. Eating local is expensive and time-consuming, which is why this consumerist movement will not easily trickle down into mass society. It requires a willful abstinence from convenience and plenty, a core promise of the modern world. Our bountiful era is predicated on the division of labor: We don’t sew our own clothes, we don’t build our own houses - and we certainly don’t farm - because we’re too busy doing whatever it is we do for everyone else.

But locavores also preach the importance of valuing all the time and energy and care that go into producing good food, and there I’m with them. So, too, in the end, is Lisa. As I joined her and the kids for supper one night, after finishing my own, Lisa remarked that after seeing how hard I’d worked to put a simple plate of chicken on the table, she’d never shop the same way again. It wasn’t just a matter of buying regionally, or seasonally, or organically - the important thing was to consume responsibly. “I’ll never be as wasteful,” she said. “We throw away more food than we eat.”

I highly recommend giving the article a read.  It very much forces those of us who eat locally as much as possible to confront our limitations and our true intentions.

(Via Food Musings)