38 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



for the industrial system to starve us out, no matter 

 how badly business goes to pot. 



A completely vegetarian family could live entirely 

 out of a kitchen garden and orchard occupying no 

 more than an acre of land. But we never subscribed 

 to the tenets of this dietetic cult, though we are con- 

 vinced that the average American family consumes 

 much more meat than good health requires. Most of 

 us, so to speak, are digging our graves with our teeth. 

 Over-eating meat is one of the ways in which the 

 public generally practices this form of suicide. For 

 this reason we have tried to increase our consumption 

 of fruits and vegetables and to decrease correspond- 

 ingly our consumption of meat. This has made the 

 vegetable garden and the orchard acquire a place of 

 much greater economic importance on our homestead 

 than is usual on the average farm, and to correspond- 

 ingly decrease the importance of the livestock. For 

 instance, we have never gone in for hog-raising, even 

 though we are fond of pork. Between chickens, ducks, 

 and turkeys, and an occasional "bull" calf or "buck" 

 kid which we did not wish to raise and therefore 

 slaughtered, we have had plenty of meat. When par- 

 ticularly hungry for ham and pork, we patronized 

 the local meat market. Families hungrier for meat 

 than the Borsodi family should raise a couple of pigs 

 each year, buying the young pigs and fattening them 

 for the fall and winter. This would also furnish a 

 plentiful supply of lard, a natural food, instead of the 

 chemical fats which people now use. Butter and 



