DIary of a Transplant: My Son, The Hunter?

  |  October 8, 2013

One of the biggest reasons we moved out of the city was so that we could be more connected to our food. The Park Slope Food Coop and the little backyard vegetable plot just weren’t enough. Then we started keeping chickens, and … it was all over by then. It was just a matter of selling our Brooklyn house and finding a farm upstate.

In our current lives in Greene County, NY, we have a huge garden, a hoop house that gives us greens 10 months out of the year, and a steady supply of eggs from our flock of hens. When we end up with too many roosters, we slaughter them and eat them. We also raised lamb and pigs this year.

In our efforts to create our own local food shed, we are very lucky that we happen to have a 14-year-old son who’s drunk the Kool Aid along with us. He wants to live a sustainable life, just like we do. He makes cheese with milk from his goat herd, sugars our maple trees in February, and will occasionally bring in a haul of wild garlic or sassafrass root. (One of my favorite drinks this summer: cold sassafrass tea straight from the fridge. So refreshing, and naturally sweet!)

And now? He wants to hunt.

So, that’s a little different from digging roots and tapping trees. But we’re down with it. I wrote about it for The New York Times. You can read it here.

I’ll be back next week with more about our ever changing lives upstate.

Read On, Reader...