How has our society become so disconnected with our food, that we have become careless as to how it ended up on our plate? Over the years, it has been a race to grow food as fast as possible, as big as possible and as cheaply as possible. Oh, and it must survive a trip across the country. That is the criteria. Notice anything missing? Your well being, your health and the nutrition of the food is never a factor. Possibly that is buried in a mission statement somewhere in a company’s “About Us” section. But it rarely shows up in a product. Maybe we are so disconnected because we have to be in order to accept this food as a source of sustenance.

Listening to customers who tasted our chicken never gets old. We hear a lot of great responses. One of the most popular being “That was the best chicken I ever ate.” You would think that would top the list of compliments, but it doesn’t. There is one that surpasses it, but at the same time, makes you stop and think about our food today. That compliment is, “This tastes just like I remember when my grandma used to make chicken.” This is of course referring to chicken from a long time ago. To most people, it’s a relic of the past, a faint memory of those wonderful flavors, those fulfilling meals and that nourishment that food has seemed to have lost. How did we get here? How do we go back and find that real food?

We are lucky to be in a community where we have some fantastic farmers who are striving to do things the right way. We are not concerned with growing things fast, big & cheap. We grow food that fuels us. Food that can actually nourish us the way it used to when grandma made it. In this local foodscape, the mission statements are not buried, but rather show up in the end product. Visit the farmers and you will see it. Eat their food and you will taste it. Make a diet around their food and you will feel it.

Let’s all do our part and opt out of industrial foods en masse. Let’s replace it with local foods from our great local farmers. Each of us have the privilege to not only support a local farmer, but to sustain a healthy life for you and your family with what you place on the dinner table.