Halloween Night

I think Halloween might be my favorite time to take photos of the girls. The evening light is perfect, they always look cute, and they're usually thrilled because they like what they're wearing. All of that adds up to a fun photo session...for me and for them.

After 45 minutes with a 1/2" curling iron...

Yes, that is straight-haired Brynn.

I couldn't get a genuine smile out of her this morning. Brynn A.K.A. Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Callie B.W. (Before Whiskers). She's Angelina Ballerina.

And, by the way, we've decided to avoid candy all together and hand out fruit leathers for Halloween. Scott says our children will be made fun of.

Fair Trade Halloween Candy

Do you know where your candy comes from?

How could I have missed this? Luckily I haven't bought Halloween candy yet this year. And while someone (like my husband) might suggest just buying Skittles instead of cheap chocolate produced through illegal child labor, I just can't stoop that low. Bleh. If there are extras, I'd like to be able to actually eat them. I won't eat that sugary garbage. And besides, only about twenty kids make their way to our door every year. I'm sure that fair trade chocolate costs more, but even so, it's not a huge investment...I'll buy the fair stuff.

A blog I stalk

If you've viewed my profile lately, you'll know that I stalk a lot of blogs. I've subscribed to them all via Google Reader (except for the ONE "by invitation only" blog...ahem, Courtney...since that apparently doesn't allow subscriptions) so that I can read the blogs only when new posts show up. It's really not as time consuming as you might think. I mean, it's not like I go to every blog every day. That would be insane. I don't have time to put away my clothes, much less that. Anyway, one of my favorites is Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Susan, the fiber farmer, runs her farm via the CSA model that I talk so much about on this blog. For the benefit of her shareholders and maybe even for stalkers like me, she regularly posts great photos of her sheep and goats. The post she put up today had some especially fun photos. Baby goats wearing sweaters after their fall shearing...what could be cuter than that? I don't own goats or sheep, heck, I can't even knit, but seeing these little guys just makes me smile! Here's one of Susan's babies in a sweater. Visit her post for more!

Callie's fall festival

Callie running to the pumpkin patch to choose her pumpkin.
She's picked her pumpkin; now she's trying to pick it up.
Ugggggh!
Whoops...
Mom, can you pick it up for me?!
Perfect pumpkin!
Don't smile, Mom. I'm getting a candy-corn tatoo on my cheek.
Mooo! The Flying W cattle following us on our hayride.

In the light

So there I was, annoyed with Brynn for standing in the back row of her ballet class on the one day when parents can observe and take pictures, when she stepped into a ray of light from the window and I grabbed this shot. I've got a lot of other shots that show Brynn better than this one, but I just love the drama of this. When I get the others edited, I'll upload them to Picasa and link it to this photo.

My letter to Oprah

When I was sifting through my Tivo list tonight, I came across an Oprah show from this week that literally made me squeal. She finally did a show on factory farmed meat. "It's about time," I thought. Halleluyer, as Oprah would say. It was a good show -- very fair and balanced. Unfortunately, it focused so much on the quality of life of the animals, there was no time to consider the health benefits of consuming what we here at Our Little Family call "happy meat." For us, one of the most motivating factors in eating happy meat is how much better happy meat is for us than factory farmed meat. For people who don't give a crumb about the treatment of farm animals, they might still care about what they put into their bodies.

And so, at Scott's request, I wrote this letter to Oprah. Actually, I wrote a different letter to Oprah. But then to get it into the web form it had to be under 2000 characters. Including spaces. Arrgh. I'm a wordy girl. So I deleted. And counted. And deleted. And counted. And copied, pasted, and tried to submit. And got rejected. So I deleted some more, resubmitted, got rejected...you get the idea. Somewhere in the middle of that, I pasted a version here for you to read. Enjoy.

Dear Oprah,

Thank you for taking the time to get educated on the topic of farm animals. Recently, my family and I have been on a journey to eat only what we call "happy meat." We get made fun of for it, but we believe whole-heartedly in the power of the consumer in our capitalist system. Because of that, we only support farmers who are raising meat, eggs, and dairy the way we would if we could raise it ourselves!

We now have a freezer stocked with happy meat. Our half hog came from a local family who raises Berkshire pork. Not only was this a happy pig, it is a tasty pig. The flavor is unbeatable! Our quarter beef came from a small local family ranch that raises beef on grass only -- no corn or soy. The beef in our freezer, since it is grass fed, actually has more omega 3s per serving than farm raised salmon. Can you believe that? Happy beef is actually healthy, too! We also ordered a half a lamb, some chickens, turkeys, and a duck and goose from our local CSA, the same farm that delivers our weekly box of organic produce. Not only does my food taste better than what I used to get at the grocery store, I'm actually saving money! I only go to the grocery store twice a month, just to stock up on things like cheese, crackers, cereal, and other basics. We rarely eat out because our fridge and freezer are always stocked.

The best news? The food we're eating now is not only cheaper, it’s actually healthier for us. The pastured eggs we get from our CSA have far less cholesterol than conventional eggs. Our beef is low in fat and high in omega 3s. Our poultry has been eating organic greens. And wouldn't you know it, the important vitamins in those veggies get passed on to me.

Can you do a segment on the nutritional value of non-factory farmed meat? This is something Dr. Oz needs to sink his teeth into!

One resource that I am finding invaluable during this journey is Michael Pollan, author of two important books on this subject. We read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" first and then we read his most recent book, "In Defense of Food." Both books have helped us figure out how to make this unconventional diet work. Along the way, I've written about our journey on our family blog, http://dickmanfam.blogspot.com. My posts on this topic are tagged "food politics," so they’re easy to find on our blog.

Thanks for covering this topic. I look forward to hearing more about it in the future!

Sincerely,
Hillary Dickman

This chicken rocks!

The chicken rocks and so does the Ziplock vacuum packer.
No kidding -- best gadget in my kitchen.

Okay, so, I haven't actually tasted this chicken yet. But I can tell it rocks. Err...it's gonna rock. How do I know? Well, first of all, the fat on it is yellow. YELLOW, people, like the color that butter is supposed to be. You know when you pick out a paint color called butter yellow and it's, well, yellow? That's what butter looks like when it comes from free range grass-fed cows. And that's the color of the fat on this chicken. Not white like the chicken I used to buy from Safeway. Not ivory like the chicken from Whole Foods. Yellow. So, that's one way I know this chicken's gonna rock.

The second reason I know it will rock is because it came from a small family farm. My farm, in fact. Can I call it that? I own a share. They call me a shareholder, so can I say it's my farm? I'm going to go ahead and take that liberty. The chicken comes from MY farm. Grant Family Farms. And I know how they raised this chicken. They let her run around outside. They let her dig in the dirt to eat bugs. They let her eat the bruised broccoli and rejected kale that humans didn't want (and really, with kale, how can you blame them?). The chicken pictured above wasn't stuffed with soybeans, corn, and antibiotics and slaughtered at six weeks of age. If chickens were wild and lived in Colorado, they would try to live how my chickens lived. In fact, if chickens ran wild here in Colorado, they would probably try to break into Grant Farms to live with the chickens there. That's how great these chickens had it. I can't wait to eat them. But I'm gonna have to wait. Because I've got a freezer full of pork, a quarter beef hanging in the slaughterhouse and waiting to be cut up and added to my freezer, and a bunch of fish waiting to be eaten. So we'll have to pace ourselves and find a way to spread these six chickens over the next year.

Yes, I only bought six chickens from my farm. I really intended to get more. When I found out that Grant Farms would be raising chickens, I thought I'd buy like twenty. But then we got the beef. And the pork. And we've got half a lamb, two turkeys, a goose and a duck coming, too. All for our 21 cu ft freezer. Do you think we'll make it? I think we might.

Here is what excites me the most about filling my freezer with all of this happy meat. When I make goals that have to do with food, they don't usually last long. Like, when I tell myself I'll only eat 1700 calories a day, that goes out the window after about a week. When I try to grind up flax seeds and add them to everything I eat, that lasts about two days. I can't even take vitamins regularly. I suck. But this, this eating happy meat? I'm good at this. I think it's because I know that it really matters. It matters to my body, it matters to the environment, and it matters to the animals I'm consuming.

When I decided last December that I would no longer eat factory-farmed meat, it was a bit of an adjustment at first. For a few weeks we didn't eat much of any meat. As I worked through the process of finding happy meat, it became a rhythm. It turned into a habit and our former way of life was quickly forgotten. Now that we've got a freezer full of happy meat, I can only imagine that this process will get easier. Unless I take the next step. And what would the next step be? Well, for us the next logical step is to eat only wild meat. Meat that we've caught ourselves, with the exception of salmon. I won't be catching salmon any time soon.

We've met one person here in the Springs who only eats wild meat. Elk, to be specific. He does it because he worked in a slaughterhouse when he was young and can't imagine eating anything that has been through that process. I thought that eating only wild meat would be impossible for me. Until I read Merle's Door. (As a side note, if you like dogs AT ALL you will probably LOVE this book. Up there with The Omnivore's Dilemma, I think Merle's Door is a MUST READ.) Ted, the author of Merle's Door, only eats wild meat. He catches fish and hunts grouse, elk, and antelope. And he makes it seem so...natural. So natural that I'm actually considering taking the NRA's Women on Target class, a free hunting class for women. Yes, I'm serious.

Maybe a few years from now my 21 cu ft freezer will be full of elk and I'll look back at this post and think, "Argh. You were so dumb back then, Hillary." For now, though, I'll enjoy my chicken and its yellow fat.