Real food? - Mini vent.

I'll be glad when I'm able to get my own place. My life would be so much easier if i didn't have to run out to the farm everyday. I'd rather just walk out my back door to feed the horses.

@Denim Deb that's what I have wanted my whole life--just walk out the back door and there's my horses! We had 16 acres (just sold it) 3 miles from town and a house in the middle of town. We decided not to build and retire here, so we're moving closer to our kids-just 7 miles from them. We can't wait!

We're going to be looking for a new place. I told my husband I'd give up the chickens if moving to town would make him happy. He gave me this weirdest look and said he doesn't ever want to live in town again.

I grew up in a fairly big town and I didn't like it much. Sure it's convenient, but it's so much nicer to have space, have animals, have a big garden, silence... I'll never live in a town again if I have a choice! I'd like to give my son what I wanted as a child, space, farm animals, seeing where food comes from, eating home produce. The good life!

I hope your children appreciate it. My two older kids couldn't wait to move away from the country. One lives in the suburbs, the other in an apartment in San Francisco (and she claims to absolutely love it). Only the youngest wants to stay in the country. I think different personality traits end up dictating where someone will be happy. Still, even if your kids don't stay in the country, at least they will have learned things like where food comes from and such.

I know ur right Sumi lol. A mini-vent that rings true for anyone with tastes buds. I love growing my own fruits n veggies although this yr I have not done as much. Its hard to believe that what's labeled as food sometimes is not anywhere close to "food". I became very aware of this myself over the last few yes & it was beyond obvious that the produce I was growing was so much better than what I had been spending quite a bit of $$ on. Now years later I know there's no contest. I grew up on gardens & farm raised chicken eggs & anything else that my grandparents grew farmed raised etc. I can only hope that now as I'm becoming more & more self sufficient that I can pass along my increasing knowledge to my own 2 kids & continue a cycle of good health good with good food. Thanks to my own meager raising I've retained enough "old fashioned way of doing things" lol(that's how my 12y.o. son says it) to really value what I have & work hard to improve on the things that aren't so great. I'm so glad I'm not the only one

Britesea, at the moment he does. he enjoys being out on the farm, the freedom, the space. He enjoys the animals too. We'll have to see how he feels when grows older, but as long as he's in my care, I'm going to give him the good life.

@basschick2305 I wasn't aware so much of the "problem" with food until I tasted my home produce and just went wow... I'll never forget tasting my first carrot, from the soil. That flavour! Peas from the vine, sun ripened tomatoes, real, full cream milk. Home made jams and preserves, instead of the strange mush we buy in the shops. Look at the ingredients in "mixed fruit jam". Scary stuff! We are getting cheated and we're paying dearly for it. Call me old-fashioned, I'm enjoying my food

One of the eye openers for me was when I tasted my home canned dill pickle relish for the first time. It was such a simple recipe- very few ingredients- yet it tasted so much better than store bought. That's when I realized that all those preservatives have a flavour, but we are so used to it now that we don't even realize it.

I notice a big difference between home baked goods and box mixes. And I much prefer my own relish to any I've ever bought in a store.

I cannot bake a cake to save my life, so I'm afraid I'm batting for the shop team there

A friend of mine showed me this:

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/08/judge_to_decide_fate_of_richla.html

Really? But feedlots are still allowed, aren't they? Battery hens? Sow stalls? 3 Acres is a decent size piece of land. I just don't get this.