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Thanksgiving - Heritage Foods

burnt

Well-known member
A column that I submitted to our farm paper -

Original Design - Heritage Foods.

I recently read a captivating piece by Rosie Dimanno in the Toronto Star in which she recounted her family’s food traditions. In an age where most nourishment comes in foil wraps and plastic packs, the story of her parent’s labor of love in feeding their family is truly legendary. And one to which I can fully relate!

It brought back childhood memories of fall butchering on the farm where I was born – Dave Oesch, the neighborhood butcher, would come on a preset date and the hogs would squeal their last protest before succumbing to the “bonk” and being turned into cured hams and sides of bacon hanging from hooks in the smokehouse, or stuffed into sausages for canning or freezing. And although Dad considered it a near-delicacy, I never acquired a taste for headcheese . . .

The sausage-making detail was perhaps the most interesting as the process took place on the kitchen table – the meat grinder was clamped to the table and those slender, pink strands of ground pork squeezing out through the screen were simply fascinating to a small child! Then, the sausage stuffer was clamped to the table top and Dave would form the ground meat into large balls which he would slam down into the cylinder so hard that occasionally a bit of fat would shoot back up and stick to the ceiling above the table! Mom was not as impressed as I was. “Can’t have any air pockets in it!” Dave would quip.

Now, some 50 years later, although all our grown-up children are fully intimate with the rigors of being raised on the farm, I still call them home for the annual chicken butchering in the late summer. Because I want them to never forget that food comes at a cost – there is literally blood and sweat involved in keeping our bodies fed. One of my greatest, recent joys is seeing our new daughter-in-law fuss over her garden and stand at the kitchen counter, elbow to elbow with my wife, avidly chopping her fresh garden produce and fitting it into jars for canning. She has quickly learned how to feed her family.

This is a reality that has been lost on several generations whose closest connection to food production is driving past a corn field on their commute to the cottage. “Get off the road with your slow machinery, farmer”.

It concerns me deeply that in the present season, we have a whole crop of consumers who mistakenly believe that the value of food is simply a number on the price sticker. No understanding of the true cost at all – the risk in planting tomatoes for that sauce, the sore back from weeding those garden plants, the weight of the worry brought on by drought or the threat of an early frost, the ache of finding a momma cow mooing over her stillborn calf – these real costs are never even thought of by those who eat what we grow out here in the country.

Then I read Rosie’s story and become blissfully aware that there is at least one “city person” out there that knows the true “cost” of food . . . maybe that is why a tear slid down my cheek, evoked by the resurrection of memories of my own, and the knowledge that a few others still know why we should be thankful in this season.

JES/09/06/12

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians.
 

gcreekrch

Well-known member
Very good read Burnt, more of us need your passion to share and writing expertise.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
 

Shortgrass

Well-known member
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! Lets just remember who we are thankful to, not just what we are thankful for. I am glad to be reminded of the Canadian holiday! It really slipped up on me! Happy Thanksgiving to all of ya.......
 

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