Why?

Hi, wife of PJ Farmer here. I'll be putting my two-cents in here and there.
So how does a girl who LOVES the city and LOVES the culture of Minneapolis end up raising chickens, growing a garden and living in the boonies...? Well it started about 3 years ago when we found out we were going to have a baby.
Babies make you think, at least I hope so. I knew out life was going to change, but I didn't know it meant leaving the city. In the last 5 years I've had 5 friends how have developed cancer (mostly breast cancer) and of those 5 ladies, 2 are no longer here and of those 5 only one of them was over the age of 35. Heck, I'm 36 now... I don't like those odds.

So I started asking "why?" There has to be a reason so many 30 year olds are developing cancer. Heck they won't even give you a mammogram till you’re in your forties. One friend found a lump in her breast by wiping some food that had fallen on her chest. The lump wasn't in a position that a self breast exam would have found. What is going on? You can’t tell me there is no reason. Now I am about to bring a baby into this world and I want to give my baby the best fighting chance I can. I know I have NO control over most of what is going to happen, but that which I can control… well I want to do right.

One of the biggest things I could (and would) control is the food my daughter eats. 30+ years ago was when foods with hormones really hit the shelves. Pesticides took on a life of there own and we killed EVERY bug that dared to even look crossed eyed at our food. Now here we are 30 years later and cancer is on the rise (as well as other issues), so we decided to go organic.

Now in Minneapolis getting organic isn’t really that hard. Super Target, Uptown Rainbow, and even Cub Foods have organic sections. There are even whole stores for organic food like the Coop on Lyndale, Whole Foods, and one of my favorites Fresh & Natural (they introduced me to grass feed beef and I’ll never go back). But even though it is easy to find the food it is still expensive. When Daryl lost his job after 4 years we felt it was time to move. I said, “Honey, I think God is kicking us out of the cities.” I LOVED my house in Mpls, but wasn’t crazy about the neighborhood. I also dreamed of a yard that my daughter could play in that I wouldn’t be fearful of a drive by or stray bullet. So we packed up and moved to the country.

Now organic food is so easy to find in Minneapolis… not so much here. And the small stuff we do find is very expensive. Grassway Foods in New Holstein is a great place and one of the first to offer organic eggs and raw organic milk, but again, not really in our price range for every day consumption.

Even before leaving the cities Daryl and I had talked about a “hobby farm”, but you k now that sounds good on paper, but who knew if that would really be what we wanted to do. So when we found a hobby farm that we could rent and give it a try I knew God was blessing us.

Trinity thought she was in heaven when she could just pick an apple off the tree anytime she wanted. There was prairie grass and wild flowers, a field for a horse maybe and lots of room for the dog to roam. I imagined Trinity making forts in the woods and being gone for hours playing in the summer time.
Steve is a great landlord for trusting us with his home and I only hope that when the time comes he will sell it to us, knowing that we will love it as much as his parents did.

Back to organic…. When we rented this place we knew immediately that we wanted to go organic. Yes, bugs can be pests, but without bugs our food doesn’t get pollinated, (it isn’t just bees that do that). Yes, I’m a little afraid of spiders or at least creeped out by them, but as long as they stay out of my house (where I use a Kleenex or the bottom of a shoe) I won’t kill them. I don’t want to spray for bugs and then have chickens eat those chemically dead bugs that then I eat… nope not doing that. So no bug chemicals.

Same with the veggies in the garden, whatever I put on those plants I’m then going to ingest and I don’t care what people say, washing isn’t going to get it all. So no garden chemicals. We aren’t trying to tell people that they are wrong or right, this is just the choice we have made. My father-in-law thinks we are crazy, but if I can maybe keep the excess processed food out of Trinity’s system (as well as my own and Daryl’s) and I can do something good for my environment (even if the environment is only our 80 acres) then it is my obligation as a parent and a human to do so. Ok, so I’m done for now. :-)