The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - I Threw Out The Turkey You Sold Me.

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

The Ruminant's first ever holiday special! Fellow Canadians, don't @ me. The original version of this piece was produced for Canadian Thanksgiving, for radio.

I'm Jordan Marr, and this is The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca or email me, editor at theruminant.ca. I'm on Twitter at ruminantblog or find me on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. find me on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. Hey everyone, it's Jordan. So it is November 17th today, which is one week before American Thanksgiving, so it seemed like a good time to organize a Thanksgiving-themed piece of audio for you for this episode. Most people listening probably know that Canadians and Americans celebrate Thanksgiving at slightly different times. Americans are always in late November

and Canadians are generally in early October. And that is partly owing to the fact that the two holidays, while similar in nature, have different histories. But mainly what they share in common is that largely they were originally a form of a harvest festival or celebration. Anyway, one interesting and fun thing that happened to me recently is that over the summer, I started a new opportunity that's been really cool. So the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC, produces morning shows in various regions across Canada. And the morning show for my region invited me to become a food and agricultural columnist. So I head in there every two to three weeks to produce a segment about food and farming. And for Thanksgiving in Canada, they asked me to focus on farmers and Thanksgiving.

And like most of these segments I've been producing for them, I ended up with lots and lots of extra tape. So with American Thanksgiving coming up, I thought it made sense to put something together for the ruminant. So that's what you're about to hear. For the radio show, I was being interviewed by the host, and then we would insert different pieces of tape through our conversation. But for this one, it's a self-contained piece where I'm the narrator,

and you're going to hear from a bunch of my colleagues in the province of British Columbia. So I hope you enjoy it. Happy Thanksgiving to all the American listeners, and I'll talk to you at the end of this piece. It's Thanksgiving Monday, and around BC, many people are recovering from a Sunday night feast or preparing for one later today. For the majority of those celebrating, a Thanksgiving feast serves as a great pretext for getting together with people we care about, and to give thanks for whatever blessings have come our way recently. I enjoy Thanksgiving this way too, but as a farmer, I also relate to it on another level. Historically, Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration, a few moments set aside to express thanks to Mother Nature or God or the universe for carrying

us through the gauntlet of the farming season and into the season of rest and reflection. We farmers continue to run that gauntlet year after year, and so many of us still very much relate to Thanksgiving in its more traditional sense. Personally, I've discovered that this added connection with Thanksgiving has put me into a bit of conflict with the way the rest of my family celebrates. I'm the only farmer in my family having grown up with no connection to agriculture. Most years I produce around 25 different vegetables and most years I sit down with my parents and brothers and some extended family for a feast that features exactly zero ingredients from my farm. I recently pointed this out to my brother Alex.

Yeah, that's pretty bang on in our family. But overall, I would say our family just doesn't connect anything to harvest. I mean, you just put that to me and I was like, yeah, that's the first time I've ever even thought of it as a harvest festival. So not even on our radar. I also talked to my brother Steve, easily the most traditional of all of us. I asked him about how he would feel about replacing the standard mashed potatoes, which I don't grow, with baked beans since I grow dry beans at my farm. Not a chance. I asked him why not.

The actual flavor and the style of the dishes that we're accustomed and used to eating gives me that sense of comfort and ability to just remind me about past Thanksgivings and Christmases and stuff and that's where the change of stuff just makes it feel like that day is being changed or whatever so my own experience may be a bit extreme but i know i'm not the only farmer who relates to thanksgiving the way i do andrew budgel co-owns laughing crow organics a mixed veggie operation in pemberton don't call him andrew though unless you're his mom he goes by budgie to everyone else for us as a mixed vegetable farm, Thanksgiving comes right at the end of like what is likely the busiest time of your year. It's a

little bit of a finish line. You know, we don't really have the energy to go out and do like a big social dinner. We get home and it's a bit of a quiet time. You know, every season's its own unique dysfunctional adventure and it's a really good time to think about it. I really can't stress enough that for a lot of farmers, there's a strong connection between the hard work and challenges of the farming season and the relief that comes at the end. Some of us actually have a term for that time of year when we're apt to feel at our most pessimistic or bleak. We call it Grumpy Farmer Month. You're about to hear Budgie again, and then Annalise

Grubb-Cavers of Fresh Valley Farms in Armstrong, a producer of pastured organic meat. Grumpy Farmer Month, for us, that is August, where there's just so many moving variables that inevitably, alongside all this extra work, you get piled on a bunch of extra stuff. And it's, you know, it's this really tough, vulnerable time where you need to be really careful with yourself because you're getting your butt kicked some stuff's going wrong but you you're definitely in a pocket where things are slipping out of control and it doesn't feel like you could have done anything to change that grumpy farmer month it's when we start to go through just prolonged periods of really horrible moods due to lack of sleep, overwork, and probably the accumulated number of challenges that we've faced already in the prior part of the farming season.

Yeah, it's the hump. I'm shocked neither Budgie nor Annalise mentioned another key contributor to Grumpy Farmer Month. The heat. It's just so hot in most of BC around that time, which makes the stress of that time of year harder to bear. Anyway, I mention Grumpy Farmer Month here because it really encapsulates why Thanksgiving as harvest celebration is so meaningful to many farmers. When you come out to Thanksgiving, the story's kind of been told. You're talking about more like you're not worried about outcomes, you're kind of dealing with outcomes.

There isn't a whole lot you can do to change the outcome, which is a really, you know, which can be a pretty anxiety-provoking time. So for sure, Thanksgiving is that time where there's a little bit of release because, you know, for better or for worse, it's done. Now let's return to the tension that can exist between the modern conception of Thanksgiving we all know and love and the traditional conception that farmers can also relate to. I asked everyone I interviewed whether it bothers them that many people prepare a feast for a holiday rooted in celebrating the local harvest

using food they have little or no connection to. Here's Justine Wright of Food of the Sun Farm in Costin, and then you'll hear Annalise again. I've learned not let it bother me. I just wish people were more connected to their food. It's just it takes, I feel like it takes the value out of what you grow locally and makes it less special. So when people really connect, it can be a really cool thing and you want other people to feel that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's strange to have a tradition that is so agrarian in nature and then to not have any agricultural connection to your local community. agricultural connection to your local community. I think that people are more prone to like waste maybe if they don't understand the amount of work and resources that goes into food production and just it's such a sense of pride that goes into food production for me.

At no time was Annalisa's sense of pride in her work more challenged than when she received an email from a customer who had just purchased a fresh Thanksgiving turkey from her. A misunderstanding had occurred. The customer had asked for the giblets to be left out. Giblets are the neck, heart, liver, and kidneys of the turkey, and they are often included for use in making gravy. Only, the customer didn't use the word giblets. They used the word gizzard, which is a different organ that Annalise doesn't include in her turkeys. The customer discovered the giblets, as well as some blood-coloured water in the bottom of the bag because the turkey was sold fresh. And then...

We got this email about how horrified she was when she opened the bag that she had to cancel her Thanksgiving dinner and she had to throw out the turkey. She couldn't eat it and she demanded a refund. And I was just so offended. I'll grant that this sort of outcome is extremely rare, but it really gets at the heart of this idea of two different ways of relating to Thanksgiving and to food that are often in tension with one another. The customer had bought a local turkey for the first time, but told Annalise she threw it out because certain realities of a freshly killed turkey compromised her vision of the perfect Thanksgiving feast she had in mind. For her, the aesthetic trumped the harvest celebration. For Annalise, the idea that a turkey raised with hard work and care

with the intention of feeding someone would be thrown out for such reasons was a sacrilege. But it really did ruin my Thanksgiving for that year. I tried to get someone else to go pick up the turkey. She did assure me that she actually gave it away rather than throw it out. But it was just an awful experience. Now, please don't think that if you host a farmer at your Thanksgiving dinner

that they're stewing in quiet disapproval at your menu choices. For farmers, it's not modern take or traditional take on Thanksgiving. It's modern take and traditional take. Every farmer I spoke with for this story expressed a love of Thanksgiving in all its forms and a deep enjoyment and appreciation of the relationships that they have with the people who do support their work.

And there are lots of them. So we get this really nice thing where we really get to communicate with this section of the public that's really encouraging and really thankful. So I think that really helps a lot. I imagine it would be pretty tough if we didn't have that sort of weekly reminder and have this type of farm model going. I often think it would be pretty tough without it. I was struggling to figure out how to end this essay until I decided to call my mom

to ask her if we could completely change the menu for this year's feast to feature food from my farm. She had no idea I was working on this radio piece, and I asked her if everyone would be okay with cancelling the turkey and other dishes in favour of corn tortillas with popolano peppers and shallots and a great big green salad and some baked beans. I was trolling her, and what I was after was an awkwardly worded rejection of my request.

But here's what I got. I don't think they would, I think they'd be fine with that. We can do our turkeys another time. I think in our family, I think they'd say, hey, let's go for it. It's all about having a nice meal together. I mean, I do think she forgot about my brother, Steve. Not a chance. But I was touched all the same. It turns out I'd forgotten to do what I'm always trying to get my young kids to do. Jordan, use your words. Today I learned I don't need anything to live on except for a little old you. I've met a whole army of weasels.

That's about it for this episode, everyone. One more time to my American friends, happy Thanksgiving, and I will talk to all of you again when I damn well feel like it was meant to be, aw don't fret honey, I've got a plan to make our final escape, all we'll need is each other a hundred dollars and maybe a roll of duct tape and we'll run right outside of the city's reaches We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry

We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve i don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,