Real Food Struggles – Confessions of A Homesteading Mom

I wish I was less of a control freak.  I wish I allowed myself to shop the inside isles of a grocery store.  I wish for once I could buy my family Lucky Charms and Mickey mouse shaped chicken nuggets.  I wish I could stop at McDonalds and let me kids climb around on the toys without obsessing about the dirty slide or the insane amount of MSG added to the 13 packets of ketchup my toddler just ate.
I won’t lie, sometimes I wish I was like other moms who can just toss whatever they want into a grocery cart and not feel guilty about the ingredient contents, moral ethics or political propaganda that these companies support.
But I just can’t do it.
I think about how easy it must be to prepare a family meal. Open a box, add a powdered “sauce”, throw in some ground burger that was scored in the clearance meat section. Give everyone a soda, sit in front of the tv and ta-da.  Dinner is served, Ipads and all!
But I just can’t do it.
When their meals are complete, the leftovers get tossed in the trashed.  Nothing is composted.  Nothing is saved for lunch tomorrow.  Nothing is fed to the pigs. There is no remorse. No guilt. No feeling like they’ve just altered their kids eating habits for the future.  There is no over-obsessing about potential auto immune diseases or diabetes.  They don’t worry about how many antibiotics were in that meat or how the cows were treated. They just ate their meal.  That’s it. They just ate.
It’s sounds so easy.
I want to do it but I just can’t.
I have friends that eat this way. Heck, I have family that eats this way.  They’re the fun house.  They have packaged tator-tots for dinner. Their kids eat junk food all night then sleep in till noon. There are no chores at the fun house. No cows to milk. No pigs to slop. No eggs to collect. No garden to weed. Why would they need any of those.. it’s easier to just buy them at the store.
But I still just can’t do it.
I simply can not bring myself to buy prepackage frozen foods or commercial meat.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  I’ve put it in the cart and then I put it back.  I just couldn’t do it.
They call me a control freak. The truth is, I am.  I am completely controlling about what goes into mine and my kids bodies.  I obsess about feeding their brain and molding a healthy eating structure for their future.  I spend hours researching natural alternatives to today’s easy ways.  I sneak out of the house when the sun goes down to pick the slugs out of our organic garden.  I make homemade fly spray with essential oils for our cows and I scratch down the milk fed pigs. I even make our own toothpaste!  It’s not easy. We are not the fun house and I am not the fun mom.  I want to be but I’m not.

I am tormented by my knowledge of the food industry.  My kids would LOVE it if I took them to a drive thru fast food restaurant.  But my mind can’t get over the fact that they use styrofoam to-go boxes.  I can’t get over the fact that their chicken lived in a tight cage it’s entire life with it’s feet growing into the wire and then ultimately processed in China.  I can’t get over the fact that the lettuce came from Ecuador and not a local farmer.  I want to. But I can’t.
There are days where I would rather take my kids to a movie theater, order some buttery salted popcorn, a sugary soda and watch a $20 movie. But we don’t. We grow popping corn.  We brew kombucha. And we don’t have cable tv.  Why? because unfortunately, I am a control freak.

 I haven’t always been this way.  I used to be the fun mom.  And then life happened and I was unexpectedly diagnosed with a life altering disease.  This changed every aspect of the way I think about food.  I have healed my lupus through food.  The right food, that fuels the body and the brain.  It was not an easy feat and our family gave up a lot during this journey. They put up with a lot for me, for my health.  A lot of crunchiness that they hate.  But they love seeing mom healthy.  And its that, that keeps me driven to eat whole food.  I’m paranoid that I will once again, one day, wake up and my legs wont work.  That I’ll be once again bed ridden and my family will be stuck fending for themselves.  I am paranoid that if I don’t feed my children whole foods that they will one day wake up and experience the pain I have went through.  I am control freak out of fear.  I fear for my childrens health. I fear I may relapse. Hippocrates once said ” let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”  I think about this daily.  While some may think that my children are missing out, (my children included) I can not once again risk the consequences.   So, yes, I am a control.  I hate it.  But I hate sitting in my rheumatogist office even more.

While some people may envy the life of a crunchy homestead mom, I simply envy moms who can let their guard down long enough to enjoy the moment.  Ones that do not look the possibility of chemo in the eye.  I don’t want to be a food Nazi.  But I’ve learned that  this is the way to keep me on my feet, so that I can be a mother to my children and a Sheppard to my herd.
so, yes, we raise our own meat. We milk our own cows. We make our own fertilizer. And we can our own veggies. It takes everyday to do it. We don’t have cheat days on the farm.  There is no cheap chicken Monday’s. Our chicken was hatched here.  It was raised by a mama hen. It spends it’s days foraging for bugs and fertilizing our lawn. Sure there’s chicken poop on my patio and a duck or two swimming in our pool but they live a happy, healthy, chemical & cage free life and that’s something I am comfortable feeding my family.  I can do that!

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. Hippocrates

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