2008 Woodie Awards
Happy pigs provide healthy meat
By: Kelsey Siebert
Issue date: 10/1/08 Section: Features
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TurkeyTail Farm, Chico's second Community Supported Agriculture organization, is now providing organic mushrooms and grass-fed meats, said farm manager Cheetah Tchudi.
CSAs are organizations that create a way for the public to have a relationship with the farm their food comes from, according to localharvest.org. For a monthly fee, many CSAs offer fresh veggies, milk, eggs and meat to subscribers.
Raising animals in a natural way, as TurkeyTail Farm does, is much more humane for animals and healthier for consumers than industrial agriculture practices, according to eatwild.com.
TurkeyTail Farm, located in Yankee Hill, off of Highway 70, differs from most CSAs in that it specializes in meat, Tchudi said.
The farm provides chicken, duck, pork, lamb, goat, oyster mushrooms and a few veggies for consumers, he said. It works with Natural Resource Conservation Service to remain ecologically friendly.
"We seek to become a model of ecologically conscious agriculture," Tchudi said.
Customers can benefit from the farm by getting great pricing on high-quality meats, and they get to reap the benefits of overproduction, he said.
There were only about 50 CSAs in the U.S. in 1990, and now there are more than 2,000, according to localharvest.org.
While CSAs have become common in the United States, meat CSAs are more rare, Tchudi said.
Another CSA in Chico is Growing Resourcefully Uniting Bellies, which provides shareholders with fresh veggies and works to educate the community on where food comes from and how to grow food, said Lee Callender, one of the founders.
Like TurkeyTail, GRUB works to promote environmentally safe farming, he said.
"We wanted to act in the most sustainable way we could and we figured growing our own food is a damn good way to do it," Callender said.
Whenever GRUB has excess food, it tries to donate to nonprofits around the community, co-founder Francine Stuelpnagel said.
"Good, healthy food is a right, not a privilege," she said.
Stuelpnagel is excited for TurkeyTail Farm, she said.
"We're helping to promote his CSA because we're all down with local produce," Stuelpnagel said.
Senior Jessica Nesbit is an intern with GRUB who got involved when she went to an environmental law conference in Eugene, Ore., where she became hooked on what she called "the most solution-oriented idea."
If every town had more CSAs, people could be more organic, healthy and sustainable, she said.
"The average American meal travels 2,000 miles before it gets to the plate," Nesbit said. "That is ridiculous when we have so much food that we can grow around here and eat."
Kelsey Siebert can be reached at
ksiebert@theorion.com
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