Dumbest Things People Have Said About Your Chickens/Eggs/Meat

[speckledhen]

Blooie, I think you made some excellent points. I think really the gist of why yesterday was better than today is that real food is better than fake and/or adulterated food. You mentioned cigarettes. Though I am extremely anti-smoking and have lost many relatives and have more dying from emphysema/COPD now, yesterday's tobacco is not the same as today's. Today's is very chemical-laced and I think that is more what is killing folks than the actual tobacco itself.

Real vs Fake. I'm not an extremist, can't afford to be, have my own not-great-for-me stuff I like to eat occasionally, but we use real butter, not margarine and have for years. Real foods, unadulterated, natural and whole, forget the fat content. They just came out with studies that said that well rounded normal in fat diets were healthier for the heart and overall well-being than low calorie, low fat diets. Well, duh. We also grow more and more of our own food now and have started canning as well as freezing. We can't do it all, but we do as much as our bodies will allow us to at our ages and with my DH's disabilities. We live on a military pension so we have to do what we can to live by our own power. It's those folks who are scared of our eggs who will come to us for food when the you-know-what hits the fan and they can't buy food at the grocery stores. And they'll be a little disappointed, I'm afraid, and wish they'd thought ahead, not been so naive. JMHO and I'm sticking to it, LOL.

 

[hennible]

Speckled hen
Grate points.
Do as much as you can, thats a great motto.
I read a book ( the zero mile diet ) the women who wrote that had a good motto, grow enough for your self and your neighbour and no goes hungry if the S hits the fan ( lucky for me my neighbours are pretty self-sufficient). That's what I'm working towards, seed saving, canning, drying, freezing, raising meat, hunting, wild harvesting.... What ever I have time for when I can. And learning to do these things so I can teach my kids or anyone case to know. And some day I'll add a dairy cow.

 

[hennible]

Sorry lots of wrong words in that....

 

[rancher hicks]

Blooie, I think you made some excellent points. I think really the gist of why yesterday was better than today is that real food is better than fake and/or adulterated food. You mentioned cigarettes. Though I am extremely anti-smoking and have lost many relatives and have more dying from emphysema/COPD now, yesterday's tobacco is not the same as today's. Today's is very chemical-laced and I think that is more what is killing folks than the actual tobacco itself.

Real vs Fake. I'm not an extremist, can't afford to be, have my own not-great-for-me stuff I like to eat occasionally, but we use real butter, not margarine and have for years. Real foods, unadulterated, natural and whole, forget the fat content. They just came out with studies that said that well rounded normal in fat diets were healthier for the heart and overall well-being than low calorie, low fat diets. Well, duh. We also grow more and more of our own food now and have started canning as well as freezing. We can't do it all, but we do as much as our bodies will allow us to at our ages and with my DH's disabilities. We live on a military pension so we have to do what we can to live by our own power. It's those folks who are scared of our eggs who will come to us for food when the you-know-what hits the fan and they can't buy food at the grocery stores. And they'll be a little disappointed, I'm afraid, and wish they'd thought ahead, not been so naive. JMHO and I'm sticking to it, LOL.

You may or may not find this interesting but in my genealogical research, I have copies of documents, of my Great, great, great grandfathers petition for his Civil War disability pension. It contains doctors reports and testimony from friends. The final paper is copies of my Great, great, great grandmothers letter to get her widows pension. The got $40 a month in 1906.

As for the food thing. I'm tired of folks who just will not listen. I'd tell them to drop dead but they probably will sooner than later. I've a friend who can only eat eggs from my birds without getting sick. Even Egglands Best make him sick.

What I hate about todays food is the taste or lack thereof. I've a recipe for Watermelon jelly but try to find any that have any flavor. I sometimes wonder if the reason I don't like certain foods is they don't taste the way they should.

Sorry if my interjection is out of line,

I wish you well folks,

Rancher, just got back from the farmers market, Hicks

 

[hennible]

Its the food, and how its grown.
When my watermelons do well the taste is amazing. My toddler walks through the greenhouse eating things no "normal" kid would, Swiss chard, kale, cucumbers, because they are grown with care and it shows in the flavour which I think reflects higher nutritional value.

 

[enola]

I wonder how folks survive. I should be dead instead of thriving and being active in my 60s. Everything I eat, drink, breathe, wear, and do is designed to kill me, I guess. Back in the day folks made their own bread. Gluten was the stuff that you tried to get to develop when you kneaded it. There is a segment of the population that should avoid gluten - folks with ciliac disease and such - but for most folks gluten is totally harmless. Yet somehow someone came up with scientific evidence that gluten kills even healthy people and a new market to promote "healthier" foods was born. A box of regular corn flakes - $4.00. A box of gluten free corn flakes - $5.49. So if people never eat gluten, fats, salts, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, drink carbonated beverages, flavored waters, never breathe a molecule of pollution, and avoid all of the things they are told to avoid, can they live forever? That's the implication. "If you eat _____________ you will die from it." That implies that you'll live forever if you stick to artificial guidelines. Look around next time you're at the grocery store, not at the products but at the people. How many old codgers like me do you see? Quite a few, I'm betting. Those folks played in the gutters after it rained. They played with toys that had small parts. They slept in wooden cribs that had been passed down from the kids before them. They rode in cars without seat belts and air bags, and cars that didn't tell you that you were about to be in an accident and applied the brakes for you. They ate heavily marbled beef, pork, and made the food dollar stretch with organ meats. As babies they were eating cereals at 3 weeks old, strained foods by 2 months old, and cow's milk instead of formula by 6 months, rather than living on nothing but formula or breast milk until after a year old. Food allergies in children were extremely rare. Those old folks used pesticides on their gardens for a bigger harvest. They ate homemade bread with lots of gluten and they slathered it with fatty butter. They weren't terrified of home canning and pressure cookers. They didn't panic over preservatives added to some foods because that made lots of food safer to store for longer periods. Some of them even smoked cigarettes or smelly old cigars. They lived through the Great Depression on next to nothing, eating things that would make the food police come uncorked. And they survived. They are still walking around among you today - a little frailer, a little worn around the edges, but still viable and loved family members. I admit that there are more cases of things like diabetes, heart disease and cancers today than there once were. But I wonder, I really wonder, how much of that increase is because the bodies that were fueled with fats and sugars used to work so hard at physical labor that those foods were burned off quicker and didn't just sit in our bodies, accumulating. Have we overprotected our systems so much that now they simply can't handle the diets that once made us strong and helped us thrive? Too much of anything can be bad.....and that goes for putting too much credence into what "experts" tell us we should do to keep from dying. Please stop informing me that there are chemicals in stuff that I eat. If you were to find a blade of grass in an untouched wilderness and give it to a scientist for examination, guess what he'd find? Chemicals. Everything is made up of chemicals. But they pick the scariest ones to warn us about, and we blindly follow. Even health food junkies die eventually. Me? I'd rather enjoy a home made chocolate cupcake (made with regular flour, cocoa powder, sugar and eggs) with my grandchildren than just about anything else I can think of. I kinda like to think that that's what I'm supposed to be doing with my life instead of spending it reading labels and watching for signs of poisoning. How does that tie in with the dumbest thing people have said about my backyard chickens? When offered a dozen eggs yesterday, my neighbor replied, "No, thanks. I just have this thing about eating eggs that didn't come from a store.......I'm just not sure what's in the ones from your chickens." Well, I'll tell ya, Vickie - I inject mine with gluten, MSG, high fructose corn syrup, sodium, and xanthum gum. People are running scared. And it's pretty bad when we are so scared of food that unless folks can read a label and see what evil stuff might be hiding in there they won't touch it.

You forgot drinking out of the garden hose.........

 

[7 Biddies]

Yeah, it is an allergy, but only 1 in 133 people have it. Yet everybody who reads "gluten is better for you" suddenly is allergic to gluten.

Sheeple ... they jump on every new trend that comes down the chute. They keep advertising firms and marketing experts rolling in the dough. Let's hope they don't make Darwin out to be a liar. If you haven't read Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, do so. It addresses this issue in depth and in plain language.

 

[speckledhen]

You forgot drinking out of the garden hose.........

Ha, my chickens' waterers are all filled with the water hose. We should all be six feet under!

 

[7 Biddies]

When offered a dozen eggs yesterday, my neighbor replied, "No, thanks. I just have this thing about eating eggs that didn't come from a store.......I'm just not sure what's in the ones from your chickens." Well, I'll tell ya, Vickie - I inject mine with gluten, MSG, high fructose corn syrup, sodium, and xanthum gum. <sigh> People are running scared. And it's pretty bad when we are so scared of food that unless folks can read a label and see what evil stuff might be hiding in there they won't touch it.

Isn't that how many of us got into raising chickens and growing fruits and veggies in the first place; not trusting what's in the commercially produced stuff? Your neighbor is right to worry ... she just has what constitutes good food vs bad food backwards, that's all.

 

[7 Biddies]

Ha, my chickens' waterers are all filled with the water hose. We should all be six feet under!

My chickens' water comes from a rain barrel and then fed through a water hose. Still better than chlorinated city water.