Locavore on the road, or why we're blessed to live in Carrollton

Several months back we planned this week to be the Davis family vacation.  So this past Saturday we packed up our stuff and headed to Gulfport, Mississippi.  We planned to do our best with the Locavore Challenge on the trip, but since we would be sharing our food decisions with family members, we couldn't be certain how it would be go.

Before leaving I did a little bit of research on the web and discovered that Gulfport has a Farmers' Market that is on Tuesdays.  So we bought some butter and cheese at Farmers Fresh, picked some produce from the garden, and headed down the road.

One note on the road.  Thus far, to my experience, every McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Cracker Barrel I have been in has a baby changing table.  As a result, we end up stopping at these (mostly McDonald's since they are ever present and often close to the interstate).  If anybody out there is an app developer and wants to make a changing table locator app, I would be all for it.  In any case, the first epic fail of our locavore holiday came at a McDonald's when we got some fries as a snack, and Raine got his first taste of McDonald's.  C'est la vie.  After all, we aren't fundamentalists.

Once in Mississippi we had a few days till the next Farmers' Market, so I bought some provisions at the local Winn-Dixie, after struggling to find anywhere else to go.  Later that day I found out that probably less than a mile from the Winn-Dixie was a store called Rouse's with this in the window:

We saw this and were excited.  Upon entering the store, however, it seemed largely to be a conventional grocery store.  Still, it was cool to see that somewhere else was doing a similar challenge (though theirs was in June so it was over already).  We did get some local oysters (local seafood being the big blessing of the gulf coast), as well as some beer that is brewed in Kiln, Mississippi (home of Brett Favre and where Jeff once camped while doing some Katrina relief work).  So still we needed to wait until Tuesday.

On Monday we stopped by where the Gulfport Farmers' Market is supposed to be happening, and there was no sign that it existed.  I asked a local business, and they pointed to a spot and indicated that before Katrina there had been a Farmers' Market there, but not since.  I'm not sure if it is because the facility is not built (possibly rebuilt) or if it is for lack of Farmers or interest, but we were stumped on local food.

We were discouraged, but we decided to look around at least for more local seafood options.  We also were looking around for what else to do.  After checking out Quality Seafood and Poultry (mostly seafood, but we did pick-up a chicken stuffed with crawfish etoufee there) we stopped into the Biloxi visitor's center.  Once inside we discovered that there is a Farmers' Market in Biloxi on Tuesday also.  So it was back on.  Perhaps we could have more local stuff than just seafood.

On Tuesday morning, we got up, had our breakfast, and headed to Biloxi.  Again, we were disappointed.  Given that most tables had bananas, it was clear that local foods were not the emphasis of the market.  We walked away wondering if any of the vendors were in fact Farmers, though one table did advertise homegrown okra.  We did walk away with some sweet potatoes we were told came from Northern Mississippi, but otherwise we were mostly disappointed.

Then yesterday, we needed to stop by the grocery store again and saw this sign:

This was in a different Rouse's but was seriously cool.  For a chain grocery store, they do seem to be showing flexibility needed to purchase from local farms, and they identify them in the store by name.  We thought that was cool and picked up more sweet potatoes to keep Raine well fed.

On the whole this has been an interesting learning experience about our community at home.  Being on the road has really made me appreciate the opportunities we have in Carrollton: a vibrant Farmers' Market that is full of fresh food every Saturday this time of year; local stores where we can get tasty foods from local farmers; and restaurants that have been featuring locavore specials.  It has also helped me see how much easier it is to eat local in the community where you live and know people.  I suspect with enough time we could be more connected and eat much more locally here, but years in Carrollton have made connections with the people who grow our food (and allowed us to grow a lot of our own) seem effortless.  Whereas only being here a few days, we might have had to spend most of our time searching out connections for local foods.  There's some quote that someone once said about how much we learn about home by going somewhere else, and it seems like that is definitely true for us.

A Night on the Town.

Well, I am glad to report the locavore scene at local restaurants is BOOMING!!!  My beautiful bride and I wandered the square tonight in search of local yummies and were not disappointed.  We began by getting some baby sitting from some of the elves who sometimes make delicious local food at Farmers Fresh on the square.  Once the baby was in good and caring hands (you can tell they are good and caring when you taste the food they make), we went on our outing.

We started at Little Hawaiian and surveyed their options.  They had 3 meat choices and a vegetarian choice. I'll write more on them a bit later.  From there we stopped by Blue's Steakhouse, which had no local options, so we kept on walking.  We were greeted warmly by the proprietor of La Trattoria on the Square.  We learned that they had 2 choices this weekend: a roasted leg of lamb and lamb kebabs (which I believe hale from Heritage Farm).  Alas, we had the chicken from La Trattoria last weekend, so we kept on going.  We stopped in briefly at The Alley Cat where we were told they had burgers with meat purchased locally.

On we went to the first place our tour would actually take a pause.  We stopped into Plates on the Square which had no obvious signage indicating local food, so we weren't expecting to linger.  But when we asked, we were told that they had a gazpacho made from all local vegetables.

It was delicious, paired with some wine that was not local, but lovely nonetheless.

From there we settled on Little Hawaiian.  As we walked in we ran into some friends of ours which was nice.  Then we sat down to make our choice among their 4 local entrees: local beef sliders (with beef from Dennis Farms, Tomato Capri (a vegetarian option), local roast beef (in a Texas style), and local pork from Gum Creek Farms w/ fresh ginger.  My special lady decided to go with the Sliders, while I couldn't turn down slow roasted and shredded pork with ginger:

These were also really good (much better than the picture).  The sliders had on them local green tomatoes that were fried.  I'm not sure, but I think the vegetables with the pork were reported to come from Hager Farm, though perhaps someone might want to ask Wendy about that :-).

As good as the food was, it was also great to hear from every restaurant we went to that people seemed to be excited about the local food options when they came in.  We wrapped up the night, picked up our bundle of joy (temporarily transformed into a bundle of anger and despair due to falling asleep without mama and papa) and returned home to find that while we were away, Santa Claus brought us a tractor!!  Can't wait to see what adventure that brings.

Why I didn't write a post last week.

So, the first week, I went at it full bore - I'm gonna write 3 posts a week.  Then I wrote 3 posts no problem - except, I haven't written anything since then.  I've spent some time thinking about why since then.  Seems like there are a variety of reasons.

The biggest thing is likely that last week's big farm news was unpleasant and awful and I didn't want to write about it.  One of our mama goats died last week.  It seemed like the obvious next thing to write about, but then I didn't want this to become the dead goat blog.  Also my feelings about it were much different than about killing a goat.  Having one of our goats die inadvertently left me feeling like a bad care taker - ashamed.  We do this because we are concerned about the well-being of our animals, and we failed one of them.  Or, perhaps, it is that these things just happen and are part of the game.  I spent a fair amount of the week with that being the obvious thing to write about, but I didn't want to.  I don't really want to now, but there it is.  I guess, oddly, when it comes down to it I'd rather shoot them in the head than letting them die of worms (which is what led to her death).  That is an odd realization.

That probably also led to some inertia and some unwillingness to write about other more mundane things.  So there it is.  I promise I won't write about a dead goat again, at least not this month.

Dispatched from the Haven or Where Do Ribs Come From?

Yesterday, Independence Day, was one of the harder days of growing and harvesting our own food.  Since I  had the day off, and it has been about 6 months since they were born we decided to harvest (my favorite euphemism) two of our young male goats.  I thought about getting pictures for this, but decided better of it. 

I used to say, that if you couldn't handle animals dying, you probably shouldn't eat meat.  Or more directly if you couldn't kill the animal yourself you shouldn't eat meat.  I'm not sure if that is true now - it's kind of like saying if you can't handle the sight of blood you shouldn't have surgery - which is more obviously not true.  In any case, it is a truth that all of us who eat meat contribute to the death's of animals.  At some level for me this goes back to the idea of food and connection.  It is a difficult part of what we do, and arguably the hardest part of harvesting the goats is the day leading up to it.  I certainly thought about what was to come consciously at times, but I'm not sure how much consciously my emotions were involved.  That said, late in the day I had a pretty profound sadness come over me.  I can't say what it was about - maybe it wasn't the goats, and it was just run of the mill ennui.  Or maybe it was difficult deciding this is what I was going to do with my evening, some part of me rebelling.  I'm not sure.  At the point when it was definitively decided that this was what was happening, however, I returned to being more about what I was going to do and the sadness passed on.


Here we do our best to make the death's as quick and painless as possible.  For the most part we try to make it like a normal day for the chosen goats.  The first difference, however, is they don't get grain that morning.  The less stuff in their stomach's the easier they are to clean.  We still send them out with the other goats, so they get forage and water throughout the day.  Since it was hot and there were thunderstorms about we waited until about 5:45 to really get going.  Leading up to this the knives are sharpened, the 12-gauge slugs are purchased, and the butcher's bandsaw is put together.  


Then someone goes and gets the first goat to be dispatched and a disposable bowl with a little bit of goat food in it.  We put the food down so that the shooter (that's my role) isn't pointed towards anyone or anything that would be dangerous if there was a ricochet.  I already have the shell in the gun, and walk up to something like point blank range.  This time our first goat was pretty docile, and he easily walked up and started eating.  I was able to take my time and line up my shot.  Once the trigger is pulled I see a moment of the dramatic change in the head, and the sudden appearance of red all around.  I immediately walk away.  Another person comes in quickly with a knife to cut the throat so that while the heart is still pumping the blood can be pumped out.  Then we take the goat and tie him to one of the beams in the barn so that he will be ready to be skinned and cleaned.


Then we bring the second goat over.  Last night he was skittish.  When we first put the food in front of him and let go of his lead rope, he immediately bolted.  I took the slug out of the gun, put it down on the deck, and we had to get him corralled again.  This time we tied two lead ropes together so that everyone could be out of the way, but he couldn't run too far away.  We brought him back, put the food in front of him, and he was either more relaxed or more into the food.  In any case, he began to eat.  A skittish goat is troubling for me as the shooter, because I need him to stay still while I walk up to have him in close range.  So I rushed this one a little more and felt more stressed by it.  Nonetheless, the result was the same: about half of his head disappeared, someone else comes in with a knife to cut the jugular and we tie him up.


Following this comes skinning.  From here on out things are basically the same for both goats, so I'll only detail one of them.  We skin from the neck down, splitting the skin along the chest and slowly working it down using a knife to cut the connection between skin and the fat and muscle beneath it.  Then the internal organs are removed.  It was around here that gallows humor began.  Last night it was when someone reached inside the carcass (now an it, no longer a him) to pull out the last organs (the lungs and heart).  It struck me as funny, because it looked like he had his hand inside a puppet.  This led to a moment of pretending that one of us was hosting a children's show with a dead goat as his side kick, asking "Apollo, you don't seem to be talking anymore.  What happened?  Cat got your tongue?" At this point the camera would pan over as the cat finishes off Apollo's tongue.  And tension is lessened.  


Once skinned and gutted, the feet and head are cut off, and we wash the body.  This takes longer than expected, because there are traces of goat hair here and there all over.  We wash, and wash and wash.  This has the additional benefit of helping to cool the meat down so that it doesn't spoil.  Finally we are satisfied that the goat is clean, and it is time to fire up the saw.  This is a relatively new piece of equipment for us.  It takes some time to set up (including a wasp sting for yours truly earlier in the day), but saves so much more time in preparation.  Now we set it to cut 1.5 inch slices and the rest is pretty quick work.  From here we carry the slices into the kitchen to be cleaned again.  


At this point it more closely resembles what we usually think of as meat when we buy it in the grocery store, than it does the animal that it really is.  We clean the pieces of meat in the sink, and then package them in freezer paper, label them and put them in the freezer.  We decide to keep out the ribs because they are hard to package, and they became tonight's dinner.  And so things go, we live, we cause deaths, we consume life.  It brings me back to connection.  Connection to reality much more than a chicken nugget can bring.  Connection to the cycles of life and death that sustain.

Spaghetti Squash with meat sauce

Here is the first home cooked dinner of our Locavore Challenge.  Annie grew the spaghetti squash, and we are totally digging it.  We use it just like spaghetti, but it comes from right here on our place.  I cooked it in the microwave.  All you have to do is poke some holes in it, and microwave for 10 minutes, then let it stand for 5 more minutes.  Cut open, take out the seeds, and use a fork to pull the spaghetti-like strands into a bowl.  We did two of them last night, and apparently I didn't have enough holes in the first one - so it kind of blew up in the microwave.

Here you can see the main ingredients (or some that are destined for cooking later).  The sauce came from one day's harvest worth of Annie's Tommy Toe tomatoes.  Actually it began with a couple of patties of sausage that I picked up at Vogelsberg's Bakery in Carrollton.  When I asked where the sausage came from I was told "Right from our own hawgs, and they don't eat much but these doughnuts."  So that's local, and a good use for something that would go to waste.  To that I added in some ground beef from the meat vendor that has recently arrived at Cotton Mill Farmers Market.  I also threw in an onion that was left over from before the challenge (I'm counting that as part of my 10).  I meant to add some of the copious basil on our counter, but forgot.  Nonetheless it was delicious.

Food and Connection

So, some of you may be directed here by the blog page from the West Georgia Locavore Challenge.  So it's worth knowing that while we haven't posted here for a while, that changes today.  For the month of July at least, I'm gonna do my darndest to post at least 3 times per week.

As my initial Locavore Challenge post I thought I'd expand on why local food is important to me.  I've been pondering that for a few days, and how it fits in my overall mission of working towards a better, healthier world.  What mostly comes to mind is that I think one of the greatest detriments to our society is how disconnected we often are.  We interact with machines instead of people at the bank, grocery store, and gas station.  We are in such a hurry that we often whiz by hundreds of miles without noticing much about what's going on.  And the list could go on.

Our culture is suffering from a lack of connection.  When we don't connect with each other, and often even ourselves, things often get problematic.  Go to espn.com and watch a comment thread, or even worse go to a news site that is covering the recent health care legislation/court case.  People who don't share a real world connection can be awful to each other, and our discourse suffers.  Likewise other violations ranging from simple rudeness to violent crime to massive corporate fraud (hello Mr. Madoff) are easier to perpetrate when we aren't connected to the people around us.  Disconnection is a real problem.

For me, when I think about what culture is, food is one of the first things that comes to mind.  I think Italy - I think pasta, Japan I think sushi, or for home I think of country style steak, mashed potatoes and gravy.  There are certainly other major components of culture, but food is also high on the list.  And then I look at most of the food in the grocery store and I have no connection with it.  The bananas are from south america, the tomatoes are from California, and the meat is from who knows where.  I don't have any connection to that food, or the people who grew it.

So, in our food we are as disconnected as everywhere else in our culture.  So as some one who would like a more connected culture, one way of trying to have a positive effect on the world is to work for a food system that supports connection instead of disconnection.  When I shop at the Farmer's Market I connect with people, and gain a greater appreciation for the food and the work they do.  When I work to grow my own food I gain a greater appreciation of the wonders of our world, and the magic that happens between a seed being planted, a tiny plant emerging, and a luscious tomato going into my sandwich.

Alright, so there is my sermon for the night.  If comments come in and spark conversation I may follow this thread some more.  Otherwise my intention is to post pictures of meals that I make during the month, discuss what is in them, and a bit about the cooking I did (tonight's dinner, which may get posted about tomorrow, involved a spaghetti squash explosion in the microwave!).

Eat on!