Monday, September 18, 2006
Location: Bison Ranch, Alberta

This morning I awoke at 7am to the rooster’s crow. I climbed out of bed in the van and threw on some ripped jeans and army pants, preparing myself for a days work. I came into the house to the fresh smell of organic coffee brewing, cream from the jersey cow ready and waiting, while Janet cooks up eggs from their hens the day before. I think I’m in paradise ;-)

When most of us in the world go and buy our food, we have no idea where it’s all coming from. We buy milk that is mass-produced and shipped from far away places where it’s been sitting in large storage tanks. The idea of fresh food is a complete farce. Nothing is really fresh anymore, we buy ‘fresh’ fruit transported thousands of miles by truck, or imported from far away places like Mexico. The only reason it maintains its fresh appearance is probably because it’s soaked in pesticides from both field and factory. Here, on the other hand, I’m sitting eating eggs straight from the hen, and using cream straight from the cow. What strikes me, is how simple it all is. I’m thinking about the fact that all of our food is now part of such a complex system. This system, I would argue, disconnects us from nature and disconnects us from the source of our food, the farmer. We can no longer put a face to our produce, and for most of us, gone are the days of the open-air markets and those lingering conversations with the people who tend the land. We’ve replaced a beautiful, simple and connected lifestyle with mass production, big box grocery stores, teenaged cashiers and preservatives and pesticides. Like with oil and gas, I understand that it’s not a black and white issue, but I long for the past, I long for nature, and I long for a world where we’re reconnected to our food. I also believe that in this world, where the farmer is able to sell direct to the customer, we may find the solution to many of the problems of big agribusiness.

What I find so incredible is that the Canadian Food and Drug Administration has actually made whole unpasteurized milk illegal. It is illegal for you to milk your jersey cow and feed it to your child. It is illegal for you to sell whole milk to your neighbors, despite a serious demand. You see, many people want whole milk. Many people want a product that holds a connection to the place that it came from. In addition many people want milk that hasn’t had all the beneficial enzymes and antimicrobial qualities pasteurized out of it. You see, when you pasteurize milk, what you are doing is subjecting it to sterilization and irradiation, which removes much of the original goodness. In many cases of our current big factory farming this pasteurization is needed due to contamination from huge storage vats, mechanically overworked dairy cows, and milk that needs to keep for longer than a few days on a shelf. But… the question remains, why has the original method where the food travel from field to plate become illegal, with consequences of fines of up to $250,000? Why have we built a system that outlaws the small farmer, preventing them from building a local economy?

These are questions being posed by the people who are trying to go back to a system that always made sense. Many of the proponents of slow food who want to reintroduce connectivity and locality to their food are also up to the same challenges. Being here, experiencing and learning what I’m learning, and based on my own intuition and longing, I fully support and stand behind these kinds of changes. As I’ve echoed many times in the past, I personally feel that the only way for us to go forward is to reconnect with many of the simple tried and true practices of the past.

peace,
d

Here are some photos from sausage making at the ranch,