Of course, my organic coop is about 50 m from the Wed/Sat market, open 6 days.
there are other bio-markets elsewhere, a bio supermarket around the corner, and at least three small bio-shops.
makes it easy here. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
it always cracks me up when i see the name 'REFORMHAUS', lol.
reforming the house could be named better 'rebuilding the Temple'.
england has got a few years on italy, in this respect, but germany is way ahead of both.
the good news about italy is that there are a lot of organic grains/legumes/fruits/nuts veggies here, even if most are for export, (60% of euro bio food comes from italy, iirc). there are some bio foods creeping onto the co-op supermarket shelves, slowly but surely.
i have discovered a cranio-sacrally aware osteopath in the vicinity, woot!
germany has much more progressive policies on natural healing modalities, greater civic acceptance/penetration. italy is changing, v-e-r-y slowly. maybe there's a greater need in germany too, the bigger the front, the bigger the back... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
As pointed out below, it requires a freezer, of course. We keep our old (well insulated, heavy duty) freezer in the garage, so it barely has to run the compressor in the Winter.
Funny thing is, to me it tastes like meat 'in the old days'; to my kids it tastes "gamey".
Only problem is that our beef provider is ancient. As healthy as he is, he cannot live forever. I'm beginning to work on succession. paul spencer
My biggest health concern is about BPA in the containers both of my milk and of her soft drink containers. Also, sometimes there is a bitter taste to the milk which I suspect derives from process control problems in the bottling process involving too much heat that likely produces unhealthy byproducts. The commercially available milk likely also contains BST, bovine somatotrophin hormone, given to boost milk production, and possibly other hormones and contaminants present in the milk of dairy cows.
What I would like is a local dairy that bottles its products in glass. The last one of those shut down in Southern California about three years ago and there are none that I am aware of that distribute locally in Arkansas. I could likely keep chickens. I have the room -- so long as the neighbors don't complain. I live just inside the city limits and there are formal restrictions.
We had a cow for several years when I was a child and it was my job to milk her twice a day. The problem is that this results in six to eight gallons of milk per day and I would not want to go into the dairy products business. A 100kg to 200kg bovine would be about right, but I would really need a couple more acres which would cost me $8-10 thousand/acre - at present, and would require clearing of overgrown second growth forest. Fortunately, in a crisis, I am sure I could learn to do without dairy if I had to. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
We buy organic butter from Costco - their Kirkland brand - again without knowing much about the product. But Costco is an interesting story when it comes to such things. Their olive oil is as good as any available out here, and they claim that it's essentially organic, too. If any of our Italian friends know anything about their source, I'd like to know.
Story from 1972 - Mirta and I lived in an original homestead 'house' on a dairy farm. The milk was definitely organic and old-style. The farmer told us that the tanker truck driver threw in a 5-gallon bucket of formaldehyde every so many gallons of milk collected. In any case we bought raw milk directly, and it was the best of our experience. paul spencer
