Luna Nueva has really been connecting me to my food source. Because I’ve been in California for so long, where grocery stores are stocked year-round with every possible fruit and vegetable, I’ve lost sight of how our food is grown and where it actually comes from. Even after having been on the farm for two and a half months and knowing that the delicious pork and chicken that I dine on comes from the animals I see every day and adore so much, I have never really seen that middle step between clucking chicken and stove-top.
When Sara Newmark came for a visit with the Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Foundation (who are all such warm and incredible people! I wish they could have stayed a longer) she decided to stay an extra week at Luna, and little did I know that on her agenda was an item that would fill in that missing step in my understanding of food--she wanted to kill, clean, and eat a chicken. Her reasoning was that since she ate a lot of chicken, she should be able to kill one as a symbolic way of validating and completing the cycle of her consumption. Oddly, though I cannot kill a spider, I have no qualms about killing anything that I will eat, especially if it is done in a humane way, so the chicken sacrifice was not too an emotional experience for me, but taking life is serious and I felt heaviness in the air. The whole process was very gentle. Fernando and Yeudy, our animal guys on the farm, brought out the chicken and calmed it a bit by gently stroking it. Sara then said her thanks to the chicken and with the guidance of Yeudy, swiftly made the sacrifice. Tom Newmark, CEO of New Chapter, the vitamin company that owns Luna Nueva, also participated. He said it best when he described the act as feeling as though he just did something that people have been doing for hundreds of years. The chickens were next dipped in boiling water, plucked, cleaned, and quartered. The event ended with a heartfelt dinner. After observing this process I have a deeper appreciation for my food and am more grateful for my meals. If everyone was this in touch with their food than I doubt that there would ever be any waste!
On a lighter note, I want to mention how comical I find it when people ask me to act as a translator for them--if only they knew how rudimentary my Spanish really is! But despite speaking a really crude Spanish, I have developed a means of communicating most anything I need to with everyone on the farm, though I sometimes doubt what I interpret. The day of the chicken sacrifice Fernando and Yeudy asked me if Sara and I wanted to kill a turkey instead of a chicken. They said they needed to know ahead of time because they had to feed the turkey guaro (a Costa Rican hard liquor) beforehand. I looked at him incredulously and thought, “Did I hear him right? He needs to get the turkey drunk prior to its sacrifice?” After a "Como?" he repeated the same thing and I walked away a bit uncertain until Iti confirmed that the turkey sacrificing process does indeed include Costa Rican hard liquor.
In short, Luna Nueva is fostering an appreciation of food that makes each bite that much more delicious.
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1 comment:
I would probably need guaro too if I were that chicken :)
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