Becoming Consumer Leaders

Embracing a Worthy Heritage

When people ask me why I keep chickens in my suburban New Jersey backyard and grow or pick an increasing amount of my family’s food, I tell them it’s not because I’m chasing the latest fad. It’s because I’m embracing both my own heritage and that of my state. New Jersey is, after all, the Garden State.

There’s one thing I can’t (or won’t) do on my suburban lot, however, and that is produce humanely raised meat. In the past, I’ve bought grass-fed Black Angus beef from a local friend who kept a few steer on his land, but like a lot of farmers large and small, he now grows soybeans instead. So this summer, when my family and I attended the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, I was on the lookout for meat vendors.

Finding Food and Friends

It was there that I met Jeremy Swartzfager, the proprietor of Footprints Farm, a small homestead that he operates with his wife Ellen and their young children Elsie and Isaac. The Swartzfager’s chicken was featured on the fair menu, but he wasn’t selling directly to fairgoers, so my family and I stopped by Footprints Farm in western Pennsylvania on our way home.

We arrived just after Jeremy, Ellen, and 4-year-old Elsie had finished processing the chickens we planned to buy. The freshly killed birds needed to cool before we could take them, so we stayed a while, shared a meal, took a tour of the farm, and got acquainted with the family that raised and killed the chickens and pigs that will serve as nourishment for my family this fall and winter.

Footprints Farm sells pastured, not organic or free-range meat. This means the animals have access to pasture on a daily basis and to safe refuge from the elements. The cost of organic certification is prohibitive and neither certification nor free-range labeling guarantees that the animals have led a cruelty-free life.

To a suburbanite, freshly-killed, pastured meat tastes different. Like home-grown produce, its flavor is fresh and clean. Both the taste and the high nutritional value are a product of the way Footprints Farm animals are raised, Ellen said. “The animals are doing what God created them to do. They are getting fresh air. They’re rooting. They’re eating grass. They’re eating bugs. And their health affects our health.”

“God made a pig with a bull-dozer for a nose,” added Jeremy. “To raise it on concrete really doesn’t fit with God’s design. By raising it in a way that lets the pig do what God designed it to, it creates health...because the pig can pull up minerals out of the soil that benefit us when we eat them.”

The method Jeremy uses to kill his animals is found in the book of Leviticus, he said. “You cut both jugular veins and it causes a painless and very immediate death. You don’t activate the nervous system, so you don’t cause any adrenalin to be released in the animal. The proverbial chicken with its head cut off is dead, but running around on adrenalin,” he said. A quick death is not only more humane, but it also improves the flavor of the meat. Both those things matter to the Swartzfagers and to me.

Leaving Positive Footprints

But just because I bought some chicken, pork chops, and super-delicious sausage from Footprints Farm, it doesn’t mean I don’t shop at the grocery store or the big box store. I do that, too. Like a lot of decisions in life, being a responsible consumer isn’t either/or; it’s both/and.

Compromise describes Jeremy’s life as well. He is bi-vocational. At this point, his family can only minimally sustain itself on farm income, and they couldn’t even do that if it weren’t for the fact that they lease their farmland from Ellen’s family. “I love my work, but the farm brings a lot more life to me than the grind of corporate America,” Jeremy said. “Number one, I’m outside with my family, and number two, I get to work the horses a lot, and that gives me a lot of life.”

Ellen recently asked Jeremy what he likes best about plowing with his team. “For him, it was turning around with the horses and getting to see the maple run coming into full color,” she said. “That inspires us. It goes back to a stewardship of people and a stewardship of this place. It is beautiful. And we just want to live very thankfully in the midst of it.”

Footprints Farm was given its name because the Swartzfagers want the footprints of their animals to impact the earth in a positive way. They also want to continue “leaning on Christ and following his calling in the care both of people and of creation.”

“Small farming is at the heart of an economy,” Jeremy said. “Thomas Jefferson believed that our country couldn’t stand if we didn’t have small farmers.” He believes this so strongly that he and Ellen (who has a background in youth ministry) are designing a program to mentor young people in their church to become small farmers.

Cookbook Calling

My journey to simple living literally began with a gift from my mother. Because I liked to cook and was into “health food,” she gave me a cookbook in high school called the More-With-Less cookbook. It was written in 1976 by the late Doris Janzen-Longacre in response to a Mennonite Central Committee initiative that called for Americans to eat and spend less in response to the problem of world hunger.

Longacre wrote, “In Mennonite communities across North America, people are responding with a kind of holy frustration. ‘We want to use less,’ they say. ‘How do we begin? How do we maintain motivation in our affluent society? How do we help each other?’ From questions like these, the idea of compiling a cookbook was born.’”

And those questions were born in me. Because of them, I chose to attend Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, even though I wasn’t a Mennonite or even all that familiar with Mennonites.

My freshman roommate grew up in an old-order Mennonite family that didn’t have television or a modern washer and dryer. Her family farmed, quilted, canned its own food, and made its own clothes. My mother did some of these things too, but my family also had all the latest modern conveniences.

What Kind of Steward Will You Be?

I left EMU not doing any of these things, but with a deeply ingrained desire to be a good steward of the resources God provided for me and my family. It’s been a long journey of learning to blend idealism with reality and juggling competing desires, but I’ve stumbled along on a path that feels authentic to me, unique to my Garden State heritage, and honoring to God.

Longacre said “It may not be within our capacity to effect an answer” to the world’s food problems, “but it is within our capacity to search for a faithful response.”

My question for you is: what does your response look like? It doesn’t have to look the same as mine or the Swatzfagers, but each of us is called to be a good steward.

Post and image by Christine A. Scheller.