Emilio, an intern from Argentina who helped Chickenman on the farm for ten days, has written a post on his blog about the experience. A very thoughtful, moving account of life on the Food You Can Trust farm. Here is an excerpt:

I had not realized to what extent i am what i eat. […]

I think my friends are starting to get suspicious of me.
That’s what I hated about being a vegetarian: the wariness. “Oh no, here she comes again, trying to make us feel guilty about our food,” or “Great, now we have to make her something without chicken broth in it,” or, “Why won’t she eat meat? […]

Farming is hard.
And I have a feeling Chickenman is going easy on me.
Omnichores:
Shoveling the wood chips out of the brooder house to get ready for the imminent hatching of the chicks.
The brooder house hasn’t been used for a long, long time, except by scorpions and geckos, and really big black spiders. Oddly, the more I’m […]

Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit watchdog organization based in Washington D.C. that advocates clean food for the consumer, has released the names of 106 chicken plants that failed to meet the USDA standards for acceptable levels of salmonella between 1998 and 2005. The data, which was collected via the Freedom of Information Act, also […]

I had a dream about the eggs last night.
But before we get into all that, I want to tell you about why. I think the dream could only have occurred from working at the farm. There were things I could know only from touching the eggs, walking in the grass, moving across its landscape, breathing […]

I’ve been keeping an eye on my local Whole Foods in Austin. Not so much the behemoth downtown — I’ve mostly been stopping by the li’l one up north, closer to my neighborhood and with much more elbow room. Yesterday when I stopped by to get a cake for a dinner party, I noticed that […]

For those Austinites that are interested in eating at establishments that make use of locally grown food, I suggest two like-minded, yet atmospherically different restaurants: Casa de Luz and Kerbey Lane.
Casa de Luz — located in South Austin and tucked away on Toomey Road off of fast-food gauntlet Lamar Boulevard — is more than a […]

On Sunday, I phoned Chickenman to see if I could stop by to get some eggs and chicken. He said he would be there until the cows came home. Literally. How long would it take me to get there? The drive to Manor takes me about 20 minutes. “Okay,” he said, “I have a chore […]

Austin is lousy with Farmer’s Markets. And by lousy I mean in that Holden Caulfield way that they’re all over the place. According to the United States Department of Agriculture website, there are ten. Last Saturday morning, I went to the South Austin market, as well as the downtown farmer’s market.

I was surprised to find […]

When I decided to start touring farms and farmer’s markets in Austin and post the results on the Ethicurean, I thought that I would simply visit whatever Farm of the Week I fancied, interview the farmer, and post all of the really cute pictures I took. However, this isn’t really how it works, as it […]

That’s what my friend Wendy wants to be called. With my husband (who wishes to be called E-I-E-I Ho), we went on a field trip to Boggy Creek Farm in East Austin. I had been eating really bad food for the last two weeks, partly due to a recent (family emergency, not leisure) trip to […]

There were three articles about food in the July 2006 Consumer Reports. Well, four really, if you you include the one on best restaurant chains. Which I won’t. I’m not sure if it is a new thing for CR to write about food, because my husband (who is in need of a nickname for this […]

Curious about the meaning of all of the utopian language on your food labels? The Consumers Union Guide to Environmental Labels tells you all that and more. For example, did you know about “Tiers of Organic Labels?” Here’s a breakdown, according to the site:
100% Organic
According to USDA’s national organic standard, products […]

My first trip to Austin Farmer’s Market downtown turned out to be way more interesting than I could have guessed. I was interested in buying local, organic produce and chicken. With my dear friend Mike in tow, I walked around purchasing produce like it was going out of style. I bought fresh chives and […]