seared chicken with mushroom sauce over barley
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 9:56PM 
A fresh breeze to ruffle the feathers, sun to warm them, freedom to run about and peck at whatever they should choose. Delicious vegetarian feed and a life free of antibiotics and hormones. That's how chickens should be raised. Not in cages or factory farms where they never see the outdoors a moment of their lives. Not where they crawl with bugs and peck each other to death out of fear, anxiety, and a blind attempt at self preservation.
It's not a very appetizing thought, is it? Sadly, it's the reality of commercial farms, the predominant source of meat throughout the US.
It can be difficult to find an alternative to factory farmed meat, though, and the difficulty often outweighs one's conscious. It's so easy to just pop over to the neighborhood supermarket and pick up a pound or two of chicken for dinner and not think about where it came from.
It's an issue that's plagued me significantly since moving to North Carolina. In California it was so easy to find humanely raised meats at nearly any market, but in North Carolina it's been impossible - at least until last week.
Carolina Grown, a relatively new business in central NC, is offering an amazing new service. Produce, dairy, and meat from solely NC growers delivered directly to your door for a surprisingly reasonable flat fee.
