One winter's night about three years ago, I was watching a show on the History Channel that explains how we get the foods we eat. That night they were talking about eggs. Being a city girl and knowing nothing of agriculture, I was entirely unfamiliar with the industrial process of chicken farming. I have to tell you, what unfolded before my eyes in those thirty minutes broke my heart. Those sweet baby chicks are hatched on giant conveyor belts, alongside countless thousands of other chicks. Then they are dumped into another area where a worker hangs them up BY THEIR BEAKS on this machine that cuts the end of it off!! Then they go on through there, pushed and shoved through the rest of the assembly line as they are injected and dumped into crates.
Then these poor babies are raised in nasty dark barns, stepping on top of one another, trying to get to food and water, until they finally grow big enough to lay eggs. At this point they are put in cages, barely big enough for their bodies, where they eat, drink, poop and lay eggs until they die. : ( Seriously.
And no, this was not a propaganda film, where you might be tempted to think they were exaggerating the conditions. If you buy regular eggs from the grocery store (and I'm not judging you because I did too), I swear to you, that is exactly where your eggs come from. With tears in my eyes, I turned to my husband and told him, "One day, when we have land, I would love to have a few chickens to lay eggs."
Uh oh.
Apparently those were the exact words my country boy turned doctor husband had been dying to hear. "We don't need to wait til we have land! We can get some right now!" I looked at him like he had just grown two heads. What on earth could he be thinking??? He was a resident at the time and we lived in a tiny house on a postage stamp yard. We literally had no backyard, just a six foot wide deck that bordered a fence and parking lot. However, we did have a side yard. Down one side of our house was a strip of grass about ten feet wide. We had planned on putting a few beds in to start a vegetable garden and I had no idea where he was going to squeeze chickens in.
Well guess what. He found a space. Right outside of my breakfast nook window went up a salvaged chicken coop, and he built a caged run to go alongside it. It was just big enough to house three chickens. The following spring, we bought three young hens (Sissy, Missy, and Chrissy, named by our darling two year old) and by June 2010, we were in the egg business. Oh boy, I had never eaten eggs like that in my LIFE!! We also began vegetable gardening and learned to put the chicken manure to good use. We had phenomenal gardening success after that, and even had one single cherry tomato plant that grew over 7 feet tall and yielded over 1000 tomatoes!!! That's right, our little postage stamp side yard was producing 2-3 eggs a day, tomatoes, beans, peppers, peas, squash, cucumbers, watermelon, strawberries, pineapple, and corn (IN THE SAME SEASON)!
Sissy, Missy and Chrissy (left to right), about 8 weeks old here.
While that chicken show initially prompted us to start reevaluating our food source, it was just the beginning. We had just signed up for a trial of Netflix and discovered the documentary "Super Size Me" was available for free! After watching it, we also found one for free on Amazon Prime called, "Food, Inc." Wow, if you haven't watched those two movies, I am begging you to do so. If you have Amazon Prime, they are still available for free. I have included direct links below, or you can find them by searching on Amazon. Two other great free documentaries available on Amazon Prime are "King Corn" and "Fresh." Watching these films opened my eyes to what we are truly consuming when we eat our food. You might think you don't eat much processed food so you're okay. Ooh, buddy, that's what I thought until I found out about the cattle feed lots, the chicken farms, pig farms...
If you watch even one of these movies, it will change your mindset forever. Don't let that scare you, though. Change can be a good thing. It's funny how my forward progress in health has brought me BACK to the way things USED to be done. : )
As promised, here are the links to some fabulous free food documentaries. Don't have Amazon Prime? You can get a trial and then cancel it without being charged (be sure to read up on that and do it correctly if you don't wish to keep it), or just pay a few dollars to rent them. They might even be available in a Redbox near you. Check 'em out...
Food Inc: http://www.amazon.com/Food-Inc/dp/B002VRZEYM/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1361685441&sr=1-1&keywords=food+inc.
King Corn: http://www.amazon.com/King-Corn/dp/B003F9XQ9A/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1361685985&sr=1-1&keywords=king+corn
Fresh: http://www.amazon.com/Fresh/dp/B007JRU4TY/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1361686043&sr=1-1&keywords=fresh
(I do not have Netflix any longer, so I cannot provide you a link to "Super Size Me", but if you have Netflix, try searching it. It is also available for rent on Amazon for $3.99.)
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