Babs came up with the idea of A Walk today which was an excellent one. Far too much time spent infront of wii, DS, PC and TV this week for all children has made for a lack of colour in cheeks and fresh air in lungs. Babs consulted maps and came up with a route which we could drive to and walk home from, sending blokes out to collect the one car with the other one afterwards.
Chris dropped most of us off and then went back for the remainder while us first outers hung around watching children play. It was just starting to get uncomfortably cold and windy when they arrived to join us and we headed off on the walk proper. A few false starts of children getting left behind too far and deciding this was a good place to build a boat, or too far infront and deciding to diverge from the path meant the grown ups had two periods of hanging around, at which point we declared it a ‘walk, not a wait’ after which everyone more of less stayed together and we walked at a perfect pace for chatting, admiring the surroundings, playing with sticks etc.
We reckoned it was between 3 and 4 miles, easy walking but enough to feel we’d earned our dinner 🙂
Back at home ( 😉 ) we had refuelling snacks and drinks and then blokes settled down to watch rugby while Babs and I headed off to look at the local farm shop. Babs is experimenting with different, non supermarket food shopping and has had organic fruit and veg boxes delivered this week which we’ve been impressed with the price and quality of. The farm shop had one free range chicken left so we got that along with some free range eggs. The woman there was very friendly, full of passion and enthusiasm for the products on sale and the farm itself, talking about cooking methods, the farmer, the cafe and so on, again I was impressed 🙂
We then did go to Tescos too for various bits before coming home and cooking a communal meal of roast chicken, roast and mashed potatoes, stuffing, suet pudding, roast carrots and parsnips, yorkshire puddings and gravy, with all adults playing a part. Over dinner we had some fascinating conversations about free range, animal welfare, vegetarianism and veganism, what price you’d pay for happy animals and so on. It was great, I love listening to childrens’ takes on these things. Davies and Scarlett are very clued up on such things having been involved in chicken rearing for years, seen first hand slaughter and prep and been to various places where welfare standards are different so they have plenty of knowledge to draw on. We talked about taste in relation to cost and what is the most important factor for us. We discussed how tonights chicken was about 50p per person more expensive which is about the difference between having pudding or not afterwards and whether that was a choice they’d all make. Interesting stuff.
This evening we watched some of a dvd the guy on Rum burnt for us about Earthships. It is not terribly well presented but fascinating nonetheless and something I imagine Ady and I will be watching over again. I’m feeling very inspired and excited, I suspect Ady is more daunted! 😉 He did fall in love with the earthship all over again though and we love the idea mooted in one of the films of building what they call the ‘hut’ which is a simple 6ft diameter room as a practise run – they reckoned doable by four people in a week for about $2500. The people on the film were living in it – it has a mezzanine for the bed and it could make visitor accomodation, kids bedroom, storage or get encorporated into a wider design in a modular fashion. Definitely something to have a go at I reckon.
The whole ethical shopping thing is full of conflicting “wants” for me. Would I rather drive to the co-op supermarket in the next town to buy fair trade coffee and lots of other fairtrade and organic profucts (co-op is very good at that and is not one of the big supermarkets I prefer not to use) than walk to the village shop that doesn’t sell fair trade or organic or even locally sourced food, sells coffee but not fair trade and worse yet, is Nestlé? But I do want to support my village shop and keep it in existence. So I constantly feel a complete hypocrite.
Loved the link Babs put to hers. We do have Abel & Cole and have had for a few years. It salves my guilt ;-).
Comment by Michelle — 26 February 2012 @ 9:04 am
Too many conflicting thoughts for me too, very similar Mich. So, I walk to the co-op or stop when I drive past. Farm shop when we are going past anyway, or have gone for a walk around the farm so visit is entertainment as well as shopping. Rest of the time I stop at Asda as that is the shop I pass the most. When in asda I tend to buy as much from the reduced shelf as poss, which often dictates what we’ll be having for dinner! Also get fortnightly box, but am not sure of the environmental advantage of it, nor the cost advantage really, but it does mean we have a variety of veg!
Comment by Em — 26 February 2012 @ 10:33 am
It’s a minefield! I’ve read a fair bit about stuff like that over the years and have never quite made my mind up. It’s all about to become irrelevant to us anwyay 😉 but I have my own personal hierarchy of what is most important on stuff like local / food miles, ethical, fairtrade, organic, animal welfare, seasonal, environmental, affordable and so on. If deconstructed it would probably start to unravel anyway. What we did learn this past year is that it is definitely possible to live without supermarkets and probably with very little financial impact but definitely with a time impact, that regardless of what a supermarket labels animal produce there is very little difference between cheapo meat / eggs and the top of their range meat / eggs in terms of individual animal welfare, but a world of difference in terms of impact on your pocket. If you really want free range meat then buy direct from the farmer, not Tesco et al. Organic veg boxes are still importing food but probably not by air and you are supporting an ethical local business rather than a corporate giant and probably gettting nicer food.
Then there is the dilemma as to whether if you are really conscious of such things would you be better buying as cheap as possible and choosing a relevant charity to donate the difference to – maybe that would save more animals / help more people?!
I think it’s a matter of finding your own line in the sand and being comfortable with where you have drawn it. Realistically we are all hypocrites in our choices unless we go to total extremes so to coin a popular marketing phrase ‘every little helps…’ 😉
Comment by Nic — 26 February 2012 @ 12:46 pm