Our food heritage in America starts with Native Americans.
To better understand why certain foods are popular, it’s good to see how they came about in the first place – Our Food Heritage.
Think of these foods; sweet potatoes, corn, grits, hominy, porridge, cornbread, squash, black-eyed peas, turnips, and collard greens. Most of us would immediately say those are foods of the South when in reality; they are Native American foods that the South adopted.
When we think of the meats we eat now, most Native Americans had never seen animals such as beeves, chickens, pigs, sheep, or any of the other domesticated animals brought to the United States by the Europeans and others after the 15th century. They actually learned how to graze wildlife, allowing them to roam freely from one area to another. When they wanted to harvest a buffalo or deer, one of their favorite methods was to burn a controlled area of underbrush. This would attract animals to lick the rich minerals that the burned underbrush provided. A sharp shooter with a bow would direct an arrow at a choice animal that would fall without disturbing the rest of the animals. When the rest of the animals obtained their fill of mineral rich ash and left, the hunters would claim their bounty from nature, not wasting anything.
It was the Native American who taught us how to preserve meat through air drying and smoking. Jerky is a Native American creation. Pemmican is another creation they made from dried meat, melted fat, bone marrow, and wild berries. This was nutrient dense, light weight energy food for warriors. What a power bar!
We at BF Farms could say that we have created a better way to raise and manage our animals so that their meat is tender and flavorful, without the use of antibiotics, growth hormones and free of GMO products. But this would not be true. In reality, all we have to do is look at nature and the Native American way of living with nature and we are already headed in the right direction.
Ask this question, “Can you think of any place in nature where there is no animal life?”
BF-Farms, LLC
Oklahoma's #1 source for 100% grass-fed beef and lamb.
