I was just reading another blog (Eight Acres) where Liz was talking about having a 5 year blogging anniversary, and I thought that I must be nearly five years of blogging too. I just looked and yes, 5 years exactly (3/1/2011)! So I thought I better do a post to mark the occasion.
My first post:
The purpose of this blog is to share my food philosophy and to hopefully help people to understand better ways of farming, gardening, cooking and eating. I am confident that the leading cause of disease today is our food. We need to eat healthy nutritious food to lead healthy lives. One way to ensure that we are eating healthy food is to eat food that is produced without or with minimal chemicals. You either need to buy it or produce it yourself. I do produce a lot of our own food but I know that not everyone can. What I would like you to do though is to think about where the food you buy has come from. How was it produced? How far did it have to travel to your local shop? These are the two main questions you need to consider, however when you consider how it was produced, you need to think about so many things: organic, biodynamic, pasture fed, chemical free, hormone free, free range, and the list goes on. Hopefully through this blog you will get a better understanding of these two questions and can then make your own decisions. The food we grow on our farm at the moment includes: beef, chicken, duck, pork, vegetables, milk and eggs. We aren't self sufficient, and it would be difficult to be so as I enjoy cooking too much and need ingredients that I can't grow. I am passionate about food - from growing it, to cooking it, to eating it. I will share my adventures in these endeavours - from sharing recipes to just sharing my experiences.
I don't think a lot has changed but I do think I post more about food than farming!! Ha Ha, anyone who knows me, knows that I am fixated with food. Especially home grown!
The original driving force was to share what I know and hope that readers get something out of it and if my posts help in some way to change for the better anyones lifestyle then I'm happy. I am a passionate supporter of a local food economy and I think that this is very important if one is to eat healthier and to engage with how food is grown and delivered.
Some of you may remember reading that I was going to post every day - that didn't last long and it's now been quite a while since my last post. Our life only seems to get busier, and will for the next year or so. Hopefully our free range pig business will continue to grow enough that we can employ a full time (if not two) employee so that we can take a deep breath and slow down a bit. That is probably our Number 1 business goal for this year. My number 1 personal goal is to have a productive vege garden for the ENTIRE year.
This year is a big one for us - Kim and I have been married for 30 years, I'm turning 50 and we have owned Anabank our property for 25 years. A big celebration to prepare for this year!