Our home school collective went on a field trip to a dairy farm yesterday. The excursion was illuminating, to say the very least. I certainly don't feel like an uninformed person when it comes to understanding where our food comes but seeing things up close and personal really brings the details into the blaring light. From my perspective, it was a sad, sad place to be. The cows live under a roofed concrete floor that is fashioned with water mattresses for them to lie down on. They walk around in their urine and feces. Their legs are and sometimes their sides are caked with their bodily fluids. And if you haven't been a round a cow in a long time,  their is a lot of urine and poo. The children marveled at the copious amount of waste issuing from the backsides of these black and white dairy maids.

I'm sure the waste is hosed out a few times a day and it probably wouldn't have seemed as awful to me if I hadn't asked the question, "When do they go out to pasture?" The answer: "Only when they are about 2 months from giving birth." Other than that they live on concrete floors. They are inseminated by humans (with bull sperm , of course), their calves are born, taken away and fed formula. The calves live in little plastic huts called "Calf-tels." Some of these structures  have the word HUMANE imprinted on them.

On the flip side, the farmers aren't rich. I don't mean this to be some sort of expose on dairy farms. My understanding (from a friend who has dairy farming family)  is that dairy farmers are not financed by banks unless they farm a certain way. The "certain" way is the the path to the most profit. The path to the most profit does not include pastures and exercise for the cows. The path does not include a natural diet for the cows but rather corn. Cows normally eat grass. Funny, we grow lawns and mow them like it is a religious ritual but cows must eat corn. The path does  include antibiotics, chemicals, water beds and aqua cow rising systems for downed cows.

So then, the farmers barely eek out a living, the cows live a life on concrete, corn and three milkings a day, we consumers imbibe denatured milk containing who knows what (really), and who reaps all the benefits from this mess? The big milk companies, chemical companies, agribusiness and banks I guess. I'm sure I'm missing something here but it all adds up to me thinking our family needs to change its eating ways. Reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle along with my continued readings of Wendell Berry has enlightened me but the path to eating in a just and sustainable way is a windy one. Our family lives on a very modest income. CSA's, buying shares in cows, buying local and organic foods and are prohibitively expensive for us. I held back a gasp the other day at our local organic Market, Ellwood Thompson's, when the clerk informed me that ONE organic red bell pepper cost $8. Again, who is REALLY profiting from those prices. The farmers? I doubt it.

So, I'm growing bell peppers and tomatoes and lettuce and peas and beans and basil and squash. But it won't be enough to get us through a year. It'll help though.

I've also been peeking through a book called Food Not Lawns. It has some radical ideas. I always like a sprinkling of radical. Food Not Lawns also has some fantastic ideas on how take control and ownership of our foodchain here and now. I'm pretty sure I'll be owning this book soon!

Clean Food. Pure Air. Clean Water. We, the living beings of this planet, need them all to be healthy.

Are we healthy? That is the question.

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Other suggested reading: Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals 

photo: Shy Calf. Kimmy Certa