Darby Voorhees

Food Ethics Essay

Humanities 11
Living on a Fake Farm

My love for food comes from it obviously being essential but it also carries meaning in
my home. Food is somewhat important to our family- we share recipes across generations. We
buy mostly industrially processed foods but we do pay attention to the quality. Our family likes to
celebrate events and holidays with special foods. Coming together each night at the dinner table
has always been an expectation.
Peek into our farmhouse window around 6 in the evening and you will see my family
gathered around the table sharing dinner. Some nights are fancier than others, but there is
always enough for everyone to get their fill. Since I can remember, we have always had dinner
at the table, no electronics, mostly no TV, just our family catching up on the day. Dinner
favorites include: taco night, spaghetti with italian sausage, roast beef with potatoes and carrots,
pizza, chili and dad’s famous smoked ribs!
It has only been in the last few years that I have become more aware of the pleasure to
be had from smelling the preparation of dinner as it moves through the house. This is something
that cannot come from food collected in the drive thru and brought home in a brown bag. The
click of the stove lighting, the sound of the oil hitting the hot pan and the smell of garlic or onion
blooming is my cue that dinner is around the corner
Food in our house comes from the store, to a pan/stove, then plate and stomach. Almost
every single meal has some sort of meat in it, our family does not follow any strict diets or
restrict our intake. We probably aren’t the most ethically or agriculture aware family, but we also
aren't always buying fast food, frozen food, or highly processed foods.
The most natural food in our house is our eggs that come from our chickens. We
attempted at a garden once, let’s just say it was sustainable. We shop at City Market which
sources from local Colorado farms as much as possible. We buy our meats, and fresh produce
from there as well. Everytime we go to the store we have to get blueberries. I absolutely love
blueberries, they are rich with vitamins and fibers. Year round they are at the store and always
available. Of course, blueberries are not locally grown year round, so they have to be imported.
Even just something as simple as growing blueberries can be agriculturally impactul. The
emissions from the transportation and harvesting, all the water that is imported in for the fields,
or even the landscape that is used or modified for the fields.
I say we live on a fake farm because we have the animals, and the space, and
landscape to make our own food. We could probably grow thousands of blueberries, but that
would be at the cost of our water bill. If we wanted to harvest our animal meat we would have to
buy new ones each year and I would have to learn how to not get attached which might very
well be impossible.
We didn’t always live on a fake farm, when I was younger we lived in Palisade Colorado
outside of Grand Junction. Palisade is known for its fresh juicy peaches and locally made red
wines. Each weekend during the summer days my family would go to the farmers market on
main street and buy all of our fruits and vegetables that were just picked from the local fields.
Going to the farmers market was always a weekend family event. Palisade was a small town
where it felt like everybody knew almost everybody. They were social gatherings. We would buy
boxes and boxes of peaches. I would live on them for weeks on end until they were out of
season. When the farmers markets stopped for the year our family would slow our intake of
fresh produce. That was when our family was the most food ethical in terms of health and
agriculture.
Our family could be better about eating less meat in our house and work on buying fresh
produce when they are in season. Food has always been a value in our house, we take pride in
our meals and how it brings connectivity. We also need to focus on having pride in our food
resources and where it comes from. How our food is made or processed has bigger impacts
than many of us may know.