Georgia cattle raiser Will Harris left behind the destructive techniques of modern agriculture, charting a new path forward for the livestock industry.

“Earth’s soil can sequester vast amounts of carbon — I’ve known this for years. But it wasn’t until I stood at the boundary between two farms in southern Georgia recently that I appreciated the enormous potential of that fact…”

Will Harris
Fourth-generation cattleman

Read the whole story…

“We have to recognize the way we are living, eating and consuming energy are all having an impact on the planet—and increasingly it is reacting.”
Fareed Zacaria 2020 *

Industrialized food shapes us today, and alters our world tomorrow. As we struggle to find  obscure paths back to real food, our planet will follow, calming itself, and us, as we reinvent an only recently lost ancient, food-centric life

Healthier, happier and stronger, we may discover that our new nutrient dense meals have become a miraculous, affordable healing force.

Watch for Farmers Kitchen’s monthly e-books, with simple seasonal recipes, tapping Into local and ancient food wisdom; bringing year round, super fresh, nutrient dense foods to your table. (Complimentary upon monthly renewal for Premium Subscribers!) Look for the first e-book around mid November.

Today’s industrialized “food system” is responsible for 1/3 of climate change, depending, as it does, upon fuel intensive transportation systems, vast refrigeration and manufacturing processes. Big Ag’s machines create heavily compacted soil, now rendered unable to sequester carbon. And factory made food necessitates toxic chemicals to disguise lack  of freshness and nutrients.

Save the world with real food? What a delicious idea!

We all know the right thing to bring to a funeral. A “covered dish; ” placed on the table, brightens many dark days. Since ancient times humans have buffered losses and hardships with food.

Jose Andres knows this. When tragedy, fear and loss strike in the form of earthquakes or hurricanes, the world renowned chef and his mobile food minions are among the first to arrive. They set up field kitchens.

Should we take our best covered dishes to long tables where people whose hearts are broken gather to protest injustice? Food helps humans survive heartbreak with their humanity intact. It provides the irreplaceable element of community support.

Imagine offering generous quantities of good or great food to first responders, families, and victims of illness in a pandemic. Would we see fewer deaths from Covid if we ate as well as people in a food centric culture? The United States, the wealthiest country in the history of the world,  has suffered far more COVID damage than any other country on earth.

◦The US has deliberately “saved” both time and money by skimping, since the 1950’s, on food quality, freshness, and access for all. (Think TV dinners, preservatives, food deserts, and Sci Fi faux food GMOs.) Huge collateral damage costs now loom. We may not have enough protective nutrients to buffer a blunder of such historic proportions.

Processed food belongs with polyester in the dustbin of history. File it away as another dreary “tech fail.” Can we cook our way out?

These farmers say their cows can solve the climate crisis

Reitz, South Africa (CNN) Danie Slabbert points toward the cattle that brought his farm back to life. Down the slope ahead of him, 500 black Drakensberger and mottled Nguni cows graze cheek by jowl. The Free State farmer gestures with his giant shepherd’s crook. Climate change may doom 1 in 3 species of plants and animals in the next 50 years Climate change may doom 1 in 3 species of plants and animals in the next 50 years “If cattle are part of nature, like they are now, then my cows are keeping the system alive,” he says. “How could you think that meat is the problem?” Calls for plant-based diets to save the planet from the climate crisis are growing louder. But there is another, quieter, revolution reshaping the agricultural world. Farmers like Slabbert and their supporters say that what people eat is not as important as how they farm. They believe cattle and cropland could help save the planet… Read More

Look for lots of Thanksgiving sides and special Holiday Offerings on the Grocery list this week. Holiday updates will be posted Monday morning. We think Climate Friendly Local Food For the Future makes the best holiday gift for our families and our community .

We’re offering something new along with groceries. Look for the beginning of Make it Easy, Make it Real meal kit offerings, comprised of fresh, local and artisanal items from our groceries list. A subscription to this new service starts at $200 per month in the month of December (with patronage refunds for committed subscribers) and includes a deeply supportive process, with recipes, videos and podcasts to help you Cook at Home, nestled into a  community supported food system, in time that you actually have!

Check it out here and let us know how you like it.

Climate change stress begins with growing and making bad, chemical laden food and driving or flying it around the country, and around the world…because, why?… Because we can? Not anymore.

The nasty chemical BPA  lines every can of food you open, as well as many of the “soft” packages in the grocery store. BPA in our food can lead to hormonal disfunction, cancer and even Parkinson’s disease. Factory food hazards include  lack of nutrients and soil depletion.

Sealed plastic bags with salad greens and other faux fresh foods? They have a preservative gas inside. Your avocados other produce coming though commercial portals has been gassed with chemicals.

Our locally grown and carefully foraged food will help you avoid cans, chemicals and carbon. And we hope you will also become healthy and wealthy, as a result of having been so wise!

The items listed on our groceries site ( produce, baked goods, condiments, etc.) come and go, so we will update the list daily. There will always be something new and wonderful, and also something that is gone and may be with us again next year or next week.

“We must reimagine our relationship with nature,” said naturalist Paul Rosolie, referencing fires in the rainforest. Choosing to eat clean “small” food here at home surely reimagines the very essence of our relationship with nature. We just might put out some big fires of our own in the process.

Why Real Food?
It’s our ancient, and now endangered, support system. Real Food provides both enrichment and protection for the inner and outer environments that humans rely on to survive and thrive.

Real Food faces peril as corporate and tech based interests come to dominate our civic, business and private environments

Real Food, 1940’s Style, once flourished planet-wide, encompassing  plant based medicine as well as fresh locally grown food. Even preserved  food was artisan made at home without chemicals or solvents and degreasers.

Everyone knew chicken soup could heal the body and that children, as well as grownups, needed  fresh fruits and vegetables. Mint tea healed digestive problems and oven warmed onions clapped onto an earache could heal an infection. Asparagus was synonymous with a spring detox and a plant poultice could heal a sprained ankle.

Following World War II, the planet came to be dominated by large economic interests, relying  on cheap fossil fuel delivery systems, financial complexity and “living better through chemistry.” These forces continue to endanger both our outer and inner environments.

Corporate food manufacturing, a big economic player in the 21st century, pollutes our atmosphere and our bodies with alien compounds that threaten, in aggregate, to destroy the very essence of human civilization and wellbeing.

Climate change, driven in great part by our massive global food distribution system, undermines farming and human life itself.

When this system collapses, we will desperately need local food and simple human scale distribution systems. Will they exist? Only if we create and sustain them now.

Farmers Kitchen Groceries brings you an opportunity to reach out  and touch real, artisan made good food. Our model? That most ancient of food systems, where a few forage and cook for many.

Dinner Pickup as early as 12 Noon!

Order by 12 noon the day before and your meal will be ready to go by noon the next day!

Helpful for everything from pre picnic and summer outing pickups to summer afternoon heat avoidance. (And parking downtown is much better early in the day.) One obvious option is to order a summer meal and enjoy it for lunch! Or, parents of young children can choose to combine dinner pickups with children’s activity pickups in the afternoon.

We will offer this service beginning Tues June 4th (0rder before noon on Monday!) We’ll look for your feedback as we proceed!

So, this week, we’re  all looking at a new and highly respected food study, concluding that processed (factory made) food is making us all overweight.  Hmm.

It’s akin to what researchers in France determined last year. The latter group followed 100,000 people over 10 years and concluded that a 10% increase in a person’s intake of processed food resulted in a 10% increase in their risk of cancer.

Unless we believe in magic, our problems with climate and food point to a need to go back to eating like it’s 1940. But U turns and do-overs are super hard on people. Nobody likes change. And  most people have little or no idea how to do it.

“The world was different then,” people often say. And it’s true, but who’s  in charge of turning back the clock? The much publicized and promoted vegan “Impossible Burger” financed by Bill Gates, didn’t turn back the clock.

The impossible Burger, genetically modified to emulate meat and produced in a factory, will actually add to global warming via excessive factory food miles. Now, thanks to this new study, we know it also contributes to obesity. Like Soylent Green (all your nutrients in a fake shake) and meal kits that fly your dinner across the country, we’re turning a blind eye to the environmental and human health ruin of such schemes.

The idea that tech will save us from all the trouble we’re in brings to mind that old saw about how a problem can’t be solved by the same mind that created it. We have to step back from tech and chemicals and the hubris that made this mess.

Our new non profit will offer to assist people with the process of making the U turn. “Learn by doing,” that old 4-H motto, applies here. We foresee reviving basic processes and social structures involved in living a food centric life…foraging, cooking, growing, bartering, no longer baffled by the simple things that our ancestors did every day….please join us. We think it will be very empowering.

A new academic paper  (Read it here…) points to the fact that we are all writing the climate change story. For example; if we drive less, and seek out climate friendly cars, we provide less financial support for oil and gas companies and conventional car manufacturers. Our choices will portend a new future, leading key players to hesitate before investing in conventional  fuels and cars.

If we choose organic, (chemical and gmo free) foods, we incentivize capital to flow toward organic food and away from processed and artificially engendered foods. “Real food”, sourced nearby and prepared in kitchens instead of factories, can put the stopper back in the bottle of climate change.

A “sensitive intervention point” currently exists around local food systems. Building  and actively supporting local, clean, non industrialized food systems may be the one crucial thing we all can do to bring our situation back from the brink.

Locally sourced unprocessed ancestral or “real” food has a tiny carbon footprint compared to industrialized food. Food transportation’s climate change impacts now include (for example) the climate cost of shipping a salmon caught in Alaska to China for processing there, before returning that same salmon back to the US for sale. This may seem like an egregious example, and it is, but where and when and how we buy salmon will either fund or defund the madness.

The same principle applies to everything you eat. Support for  small organic farms in our immediate surrounding area gives farmers the ability to continue growing food in a manner that allows the soil to sequester carbon. Farms that pasture grazing animals, as well as those growing produce, deserve support. Grazing animals greatly enhance carbon sequestration. More farmers will be inspired to undertake small organic farms and animal pasturing operations when they can provide a living wage for a family.

And if we do it here in Davis, others will see that it works and that it tastes good and can be made affordable and feasible for everyone. It will happen elsewhere and each community will become stronger as it meets its own challenges and finds its own rewards.

Groceries are not just groceries and food is not just food. And you are not just a consumer. Everyone here today writes the story of tomorrow. How we put the pieces together today, with the storm clouds on the horizon, shapes the future of humanity.

We shape our economic forces. We decide who wins and who loses. Basically, if we don’t feed money to destructive forces, they can’t survive. Everybody eats and food is Big. We can, collectively, either take back our climate balance, or destroy it. The  “sensitive intervention point” is here right now.