“Farm to Table” – when the table is in the middle of the farm

Almost everything we eat at ARI comes from our farm. At every meal we eat rice harvested from our fields. Almost every day we eat eggs from our chicken (and sometimes the chickens themselves), and several times a week we have pork from our pigs and milk from our goats. Most dishes use onions from our fields and side dishes include a variety of vegetables from the gardens.

We have eggplant with every meal because we are harvesting them and eggplant does not keep. After we return from ARI it will be a loooooooong time before we have eggplant at home. Just saying.

Here is an example of how fast we do farm to table.

Friday morning we were on the Farm team that harvested a few of our soy beans plants.

Back at the Farm shop we separated the pods (the rest of the plant is used for livestock feed).

And that evening we had edamame for dinner.

Many people live this way, of course, and most people lived this way not long ago. But in North America and many other places we have become disconnected from our food sources. That matters. What do you feed the chickens and the goats, and how do you care for them, when you know you will be eating the eggs from those chickens and drinking the milk from those goats? What chemicals do you (or don’t you) spray on the soy beans when you know you will be eating those beans?