I love our area!

Praise for Savannah
For years Dave and I have been creatively figuring out how to eat fresh local vegetables and organic free-range / grass fed meat and dairy. I don’t mean the ‘free-range’ at the grocery store that means that they get ‘access to fresh air’ but are still factory farmed. I mean the free-range where they roam freely- outside- eating what they are supposed to eat – like the iconic picture of a farm that you have in your head. Or – like the cows I grew up around in Texas – just roaming. We do this selfishly, not for some greater purpose. We don’t want to be sick, and we don’t want to ingest the pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics that are fed to factory farmed animals.

For dairy we have to settle for ‘organic’ because that is what is available in the grocery store – still better for us (and the environment) that regular milk products, but not ideal . Read Michael Pollen’s ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ for more information - it will change your life. For a summarized version watch FOOD, INC - that was the final straw for Dave since he’s not a reader.
Since 2007, for meats, we order everything non-beef from a farm in Wisconsin, Black Wing Meats. Their animals are all free range, and the quality is amazing. When we first started ordering from them, our selection was limited to chicken, bison, ostrich, beef and hot dogs (since that is sort of it’s own category). We order it and it gets delivered in an immaculately clean and well-packed box with ice packs. Yes, it is expensive, but there are only two of us and the meat comes in smaller packages, so we use only what we need. This year, we started ordering ground beef from Hunter Cattle Co. which is here in Georgia – a free range cattle farm run by a family about 45 minutes away. We order with other families in large quantities, as small farms have to sell only in large quantities due to State Law. The more farms that pop-up with local meat, the more we will buy.

For vegetables (this is where Savannah comes in) we are getting really lucky. There is a farmers market on Saturdays at Forsyth Park, an organic food co-op that I just found out about and back in December we started receiving a Farm Box. Our farm box gets delivered to our door weekly, and contains fresh local veggies, organic bread, and other random stuff that people like us enjoy.

Lastly, since we live in Chatham County (about 4 miles from the Savannah City Limits), our zoning allows us to have chickens. I have been toying with the idea of a couple of chickens for eggs, but only recently did I convince Dave. He had previous experience with ‘yard birds’ as they call them in Georgia – and was reluctant to re-hash those memories. Our three chicks are arriving in May (we had to wait to get the variety that I wanted – ‘Barred Rock’ pictured below):

Thanks Savannah!