There Will Be No Bacon Shortage

[HopeHoops]

22. I trust then that you don't qualify for a "factory farm". Family farms are so different.

We get our eggs from one of my wife's coworkers. It's hard to crack open a grocery store egg now and think of it as the same type of food. The difference is amazing. The same's true for pretty much everything raised on family farms. I'm in PA so we've still got a lot of them about. Thirty-fourty cows grazing here, a sea of corn there, a hundred or so sheep or goats in a field.

I no longer eat meat, but in making the change I gained a whole different perspective on family farming and hunting - in both cases you're taking responsibility for the meat, not just paying for it at a cash register. Most of the last meat we ate (quit in '89) was from a small butcher store down the road that only bought from local farmers. Amazingly good (and lean) cuts and sausages. The ground sausage was so lean that the frying pan rarely had more than a tablespoon of grease in it even with eight or nine patties (and they didn't shrink up, either). I'm glad that's what I was eating at the end of that era in my life.

I look at the factory farm / family farm issue as the difference between Home Depot and a family-run hardware store (which fortunately we also still have). I'll give my business to the small store whenever possible, as I do with the family-run grocery chain (7 or so stores and the last such chain in the area).