OMG Goats!!!!1!

So I have been too busy playing around with technology and/or trying to just at least get a post up regularly to really sit down and write out precisely why “Three Bowls” and what that’s all about etc.  But here’s a teaser – one of the bowls is about responsibility.  

Hmmm.  I just realized that for a "teaser," that sounds totally dullsville.  Well, what can you do?

Anyhoodle, so I was happy to come across the blog with the snappy name The Ethicurean – and the motto “Chew the right thing.”  

I am about a year and a half behind in my food blog reading/discovering. I’ve been trying to find the time to write my own for ages.  Every time I read somebody else's, I would get so antsy to just do my own thing and then have not have time to do it that it just made me feel crazed.  So must likely I will be posting some finds that will be the food-blog-specific equivalent to someone being like “Have you heard of YOUTUBE?!? It’s like this crazy place where people post VIDEOS and stuff?!”  But whatever.  Shut up.

What has taken the place of food blog reading over that timeframe has been looking compulsively at pictures of cute-cute-cute cats, puppies, etc.  I quit smoking a while back and so visiting CuteOverload or ICanHasCheezburger periodically throughout the workday has become my replacement cigarette break.

So I was excited to see on The Ethicurean a link to a slideshow of goats!  (Exclamation mark included!)  Food and cute-cute-cute animal pics!  A twofer.

The goat pics were from a trip last year to Redwood Hill Farm, a goat farm that produces milk, yogurt and goat cheese.  The logo looked familiar, and I checked a little goat cheese tub I’d washed and saved to reuse and it was, in fact, theirs, so their own branded (and tasty!) products are available here in Seattle.  (I bought the cheese at Metropolitan Market.)  They are also apparently sold at Whole Foods, and the company makes Trader Joe’s Goat Milk Yogurt.

The story that goes along with the slideshow is worth a read.  For one thing, it’s always great to learn where things come from.  For another, I find it can be inspiring to learn about small and family-owned businesses that can succeed when so many of us spend much of life surrounded by corporate culture and homogeny.

It’s also sweet to see how Scott Bice - the manager of Redwood Hill Farm and son of the couple that started the business - is so in touch with his animals and really cares about them. (Albeit within the realistic context of a working farm...the idea of animals sold at auction for meat still makes me a little sad but I also wish lions didn't eat gazelles, and that's not going to stop anytime soon either.) 

From the article, after the author noted that some of the older animals who can’t really be adopted are sold as food:

“One of us had the bad manners to ask Scott whether he’d ever eaten goat meat. He was pretty offended. 'No way! I couldn’t. They’re my friends — I know all their names,' he said. However, Redwood Hill also raises some poultry. 'I eat those meat chickens. I don’t mind that — they have no personality.' By contrast, some of Scott’s goat ladies won’t get down off the milking platform unless he gives them a kiss. 'Those are the ones that we have to find pet homes for.I would never let them go to auction.'"