What Kids Learn On The Farm

The bridge over our creek washed out again, but rebuilding it was out of the question with our finances. We discussed the problem around the dinner table as we often do. Over a meal of homemade bread and soup our four children contributed plenty of suggestions. In fact they came up with the best solution. The next weekend we dragged rocks from the woods with our trusty 1942 Ferguson tractor and shored up the bridge. Sweating, grunting, and laughing as we rolled rocks into place together was a bonding experience more powerful than any vacation could be. Not that we’ve ever really had a vacation.

Or have we? I’ve seen glossy brochures advertising “farm vacations.” These are offered by working farms that also offer accommodations and meals. Their paying guests have the opportunity to do “real down home chores” like gathering eggs and milking cows. A day or two of these packaged experiences cost thousands of dollars. When the lucky vacationers return to their harried lives they have fond, although brief, memories of living closer to the land. These fancy advertisements help me realize that my own children are developing much more than memories. They are benefitting from rich life lessons gained here on our little homestead. All around me I notice examples of life lessons easily found on the farm. Take chickens, ponds, and chores for example.

Lessons via Poultry

Our chickens have always ranged freely. They have favorite areas for shade, foraging, and dust bathing. Some gravitate towards the pasture with the cows, others towards the house, still others prefer the woods. When we order day old chicks we raise them carefully ourselves, waiting to introduce them to our flock till the poults are eight weeks old. But each summer we’re fortunate to have a hen or two raise chicks she’s brooded. The mother hen brings them out with her soon after hatching. She shows them each day which foods to eat, clucks at them to stay safely nearby, and shelters them under her wings for warmth.

We notice a stark difference between the naturally raised chicks and the young ones raised in confinement with other chicks. Those raised by their own mothers, ranging outdoors with the other hens and roosters, are hardy, clever and able to fend for themselves at a young age. Those we have raised with their age mates are weaker and less adaptable. Sitting on a log with one of my children watching our chickens can’t help but lead to insightful conversations on behavior, science, and culture.

Lessons via Pond

Our pond needs dredging. We haven’t had the funds or equipment to take on the task for years. Meanwhile our once deep swimming hole is getting shallower. But when we mention this our children ask what will become of the pond’s creatures when heavy equipment scrapes away layers of mineral rich silt and algae. Won’t oxygen in the water be compromised by the particulates stirred up? Will the fish and salamanders die? Good questions.

So we give up the dredging idea, knowing the pond may eventually become boggy wetlands. Already different plants populate the edges and a greater diversity of creatures inhabit the area. We see dragonflies, huge bullfrogs, great blue herons, kingfishers, and snapping turtles. Meanwhile all around us acres of farmland have been sold and the fields paved over. Farmyards with old plantings of roses, grapevines and fruit trees are giving way to new houses with careful landscaping. Many of these homes have ponds with water in unnatural blues and greens due to chemical treatments. For our children, the contrast makes the exuberance of life flourishing on our pond seem ever more precious.

Lessons via Chores

Our woodpile is neatly stacked, although there are always more logs waiting to be split and moved. Most farm chores are labor intensive—hauling water, moving hay, checking beehives, and weeding the garden. Our offspring can clearly see that their youthful energy and strength are necessary to run the place. The sheer fact that we need their help for the benefit of the whole family strongly affects their growing years. They are marvelously imperfect as we all are, but they are a far cry more responsible, caring and mature young people than many are at their ages. Could the fact that they’re needed on the farm have anything to do with this?

What’s fascinating is that researchers have studied the long-term effect of childhood chores. They found that adult success in work, relationships, and health habits is strongly associated with regular chores in childhood—starting early on. This is a win-win. Chores help out the entire household while letting young people know that they are needed.

All children have inborn inclinations to learn by working alongside adults, gaining worthwhile skills and gradually taking on real responsibilities. That leads to a sense of true purpose and belonging that no entertainment can provide. Working on our little farm together provides us with warmth, food, pleasure and learning. It provides us many opportunities to say to each other, “Thanks, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

I have few illusions that my children will choose a farming life. But I do know that they see themselves as capable people who are able to surmount any challenge.  And I’m convinced that that the laughter and learning they find on our little farm helps them grow toward the best possible future.

First published in Countryside & Small Stock Journal 

Spinning Straw Into Gold

Anne Anderson Wikimedia Commons

Annoyances tend to come with built in irony, at least around here.

I trundle down the basement steps clutching piles of wet jeans so I can hang them close to our wood burning furnace, saving a bit of propane our clothes drier might have used.  That seems like a farce when we discover a fitting on the propane tank has been leaking, letting hundreds of dollars worth of gas drift away in an ecologically irresponsible manner.

We have fresh milk, butter, and cheese thanks to our cow Isabelle. We avoid calculating if we’re actually saving money this way but it’s obvious when it costs us. Like now, when we couldn’t harvest a single bale of hay last summer due to flooded fields. These days we have to buy each mouthful of hay she eats in exchange for the food she provides us.

What I can’t grow and preserve myself, I like to get in bulk from a natural foods co-op. It helps us afford organic food. But not when I find grain moths in my 25 pound container of buckwheat groats. Guess the chickens get buckwheat added to their diets and my kids won’t have to complain about pancakes the color of wet cardboard.

Sometimes I’m tempted to indulge in a Rumpelstiltskin-like tantrum. I don’t want to hear about the money we need to fix a tractor. I don’t want to clean a pile of dog puke or stay up late to meet another deadline or deal with unspeakably stinky laundry. I’d like the straw of everyday annoyances to turn into gold.

But then I pay attention.

Right now two of my sons are sitting by the fireplace talking and laughing with their father. My daughter is coming in from the barn, snow melting on her hair and on the bucket of eggs she’s carrying. The small dogs are wrestling at my feet while our old German shepherd rolls over to avoid watching such unruliness. It’s all perfect exactly as it is. My socks still have holes, the window molding is unfinished, there are muddy footprints by the door. But none of that matters.

This is golden.

Feast & Famine

George Eastman House collection, ca

A basic principle used by wise householders the world over is “use the worst first, put the best by.” That’s entirely contrary to what’s preached at us by advertisers but it’s how most generations before us survived. They passed down traits like fortitude, patience, and the ability to go on no matter how bleak the prospects. The hardy genes they gave us are surely flummoxed by fast food and passive entertainment.

“Use the worst first, put the best by” these days doesn’t necessarily mean we save the best for seed stock or dig through a root cellar to make sure the rutabagas going bad are fed to the cows (although I happily save seeds and feed rutabagas to cows). It simply means the apples going soft are the ones selected to make pie, leaving crisp ones for another day. The blemished celery stalks, wizening carrots, and wrinkled peppers inspire a soup. And the cut of meat that’s nearly past the “use by” date is quickly turned into an entrée.

This frugal advice inspires me to try with enthusiasm that’s easy to maintain because I know the  grocery store is only 20 minutes away. Still, I check the pantry and refrigerator regularly, employing my subversive cooking powers to create meals from whatever needs to be used up. And living on a small farm I also do my best to put up what we harvest. Despite bushels of homegrown potatoes and hundreds of canning jars filled with tomatoes, jellies, applesauce, and juices it’s clear that I’d make a horrible pioneer. Blight and powdery mildew regularly hits my garden. Cows get sick Chickens are killed by predators. Cheese doesn’t turn out right and a dozen jars of pickles are inedible. My family would starve.

Complete self-reliance isn’t my goal. I’d rather cozy up on the couch with a stack of library books and beverage of choice than work hard, even if I do appreciate the genes bestowed on me (and you) by stalwart ancestors.  But the attempts I make are teaching me something about what feast and famine might have meant to people who really relied on food they put up themselves.

After a few months of storage my potatoes begin to shrink into softness and my garlic turns dark and hollow. My dried peppers become fragile as dust. My fermented cabbage and pickles start to taste strange. If I lived about 200 years ago I wouldn’t know about home canning and would have to rely entirely on techniques like salting, drying, lacto-fermentation, and root cellaring. These methods are no real assurance that food will last. Several hundred years ago I’d have to balance out my family’s hunger with the need to save enough to get through the winter. I’d have to check regularly to make sure the dried fish and fruits were free of infestation, the salted meat wasn’t getting slimy, the grains weren’t spreading mold, the root vegetables hadn’t frozen. At some point, probably around early to mid-winter, it would be clear to me and to every other householder making the same hard choices, that some of our food wouldn’t last no matter what we did. Everything degrades.

And so we’d make a decision based entirely on faith and goodwill. We’d entend, through our own hard won food, the kind of hope that is of the body itself, the kind of hope that has a close acquaintance with hunger and death but goes on anyway. If I were a woman of this time I would take from storage a bounty of foods not likely to last through the winter anyway. I would cook and bake and invite people to feast with my family. The table would be filled with plenty, even if it meant in a few month’s time I’d be feeding my children soups made with nothing more than salt and beans to tide them over and scrounging in desperation for the first greens to emerge as the snow melted. I can almost picture this woman heaping food on plates. Such a feast would be celebrated with faith that we talk about these days but don’t know in our bellies. It has to do with reverence that’s forever tied to holiday meals.

I’ll be thinking about this woman as I put dinner on the table tonight, relishing the welcome sight of my loved ones eating what I’ve worked to prepare just as she must have done. That’s what “put the best by” is teaching me.

 

 

This is a Food Renegade, Real Food Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, and Traditional Tuesday post. 

Five Ways To Ease The Crazy Busy Syndrome

Who isn’t busy all the time? But around the holidays we’re crazy busy. At least women are, and those lights in our lives we call children make the pace even more frantic.

Sure we make efforts to simplify and de-stress but for most of us the additional joy of holiday decorating, baking, cooking, shopping, wrapping, gifting, visiting, hosting, and merrymaking have to fit right into our regular (overburdened) schedules.

It’s not like we can make more time where there is none. Well, maybe we can. At least we can use our time differently. I confess to suffering from Crazy Busy Syndrome but I fight back with these tactics.

1. Renounce the How-Does-She-Do-It-All-Disease.

You know the symptoms. You add extra responsibilities to your already hyper-responsible list of tasks. You uphold traditions because your family enjoys them. You pay close attention to get just the right gifts. You worry about money more than usual while spending more than usual. On top of all this you try to keep the focus on intangibles like joy and togetherness. The most extreme cases of How-Does-She-Do-It-All-Disease manage to keep up with everything and still keep smiling. Or at least feign good cheer.

When the frenzy is over you often end up with an empty feeling. The warm tenderness and connection we hope to feel around the holidays often gets lost under the sheer weight of obligation.

The cure? Talk to your loved ones about what means the most to them, then slice away the rest. If that doesn’t work, slice anyway. If you feel guilty about it sit down and read a nice stack of picture books to your children. No one really puts you in the Little Red Hen role for the holidays. Besides, that too-cheery tone you use doesn’t fool anyone.

2. Shun Those Voices.

They speak to you from TV shows, magazines, websites, blogs, store displays—in fact they’re hard to escape during the holidays. They seem genuine and alluring but their sole aim is to make you feel insufficient. These voices relentlessly tell you that you’re not enough. To compensate you must do more. Dress beautifully, make elaborate meals, buy lavish gifts (and wrap them with panache), lose 10 pounds by New Year’s Eve, capture every holiday memory in photos and videos, be a sexy surprise for your partner—oh, you know the list.

This is the only diet you need to go on. Don’t watch a single cooking show, don’t open one slick women’s magazine, avoid stores as much as possible. You’ll have a lot more time plus you won’t have to reassemble what’s left of your self esteem.

3. Screw Tradition.

No, I don’t mean you should shun Grandma’s house.  I mean it’s possible to enjoy the season without so much of the heavy Gotta Do It  Because We Always Do It weight hanging over you.

Some of my family’s most memorable holidays have actually been those that veered wildly from tradition. We won’t forget a holiday dinner at Becky’s house featuring walls still wet with paint, an oven on fire, and a dog getting sick everywhere. The zinger? She hosted the event to show visitors from Germany how we celebrate here in the U.S.

If you’ve always gone to the movie theater to see the newest holiday releases after a day of shopping, skip both and go to a play at your community theater. If you’ve accepted every holiday invitation despite the costs of babysitters, travel, and lost sleep limit your selections to those events that are simply too wonderful to miss. If you’ve always made a big meal, consider ordering take-out from a locally owned restaurant to serve on your best plates. If you’ve always accommodated your kids’ requests for gifts because it’s Christmas or Hanukah or Kwanzaa put new limits on materialism, letting them know you’ll consider one or two items they make their highest priorities. If you’ve always driven around to see the holiday lights, go outside on a frosty night to sing together (even if only to a lone tree lit by moonlight). You’ll not only save time and money, you’ll also create new traditions.

4. Rethink Gift-Giving.

Great-grandma is right, things have gotten out of hand. In her day children looked forward to gifts such as a fresh orange, maybe a piece of candy, and if they were lucky a toy or useful gift like a pocketknife or sewing kit. Historian Howard Chudacoff writes in Children at Play: An American History that most toys co-opt and control play. A child is better off with free time and objects he or she can use to fuel imagination (yes, a cardboard box).

I admit things got out of hand in my own house. In a quest for meaning (let’s rephrase that to my quest for meaning) we’ve always had handmade holidays.  I’m one of those annoying people. Meals from scratch, hand crafted gifts, organic cookies that are frightening dark due to buckwheat flour. Each of my four children made gifts for everyone every year, gifts that took substantial effort such as woodworking, felting, and ceramics. My kids still make some of the gifts they give although I’ve stopped putting myself in charge of coming up with the ideas and supervising the process.

The last few years economic realities have made handmade and useful gifts ever more necessary for many of us. Thankfully there are solutions. Choose gifts from socially responsible vendors, non-profit sources, and directly from artisans.  And take heart, studies show experiences brings more lasting pleasure than possessions. That’s a great reason to steer your holiday dollars toward gifts of theater tickets, museum passes, unusual lessons, local restaurants, and other experience-based gifts.

5. Last Resort.

This tactic is heavy duty, the one I bring out when I start to feel sorry for myself. Because we’re not crazy busy in comparison to women throughout history. We think we’re stressed? Our foremothers hauled water; carded, spun and sewed clothes; chopped firewood and maintained the stove they cooked on; ground grain and made bread each day; planted and weeded gardens, then canned and dried the harvest; stretched limited food reserves with careful planning to last; cared for babies, children and the elderly with no professional help; treated the sick, stitched wounds and prepared the dead for burial. You get the idea.

Worse, many women in today’s world still do this sort of grinding labor each day. Typically, women in developing countries work 17 hours a day.  Our sisters receive a tenth of the world’s income while performing two-thirds of the world’s work. These harsh realities put any concept of busy or stressed right out of my head. (For empowering information, check out the wonderful book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.)

So fight the Crazy Busy Syndrome with all you’ve got. And if you aren’t on my list to get homemade buckwheat cookies, count your blessings.

This is a re-post from Farm Wench’s main site. 

Good Price on Honey? It’s Fake.

Honey gleams on the shelves of grocery, discount, and drug stores like bottled sunshine. The contrast is noticeable because it’s often surrounded by artificial products that marketers promote as “food.” But here’s the ugly truth. Even that honey probably isn’t what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers to be real honey.

I wrote about this three years ago, noting that products labeled “honey” coming from China typically contained packer’s syrup (commonly corn syrup, rice syrup, artificial sweeteners, water, thickeners, and other additives).

Worse, honey imported from a number of Asian countries is contaminated with lead (due to storage in lead-lined barrels) and the antibiotic chloramphenicol, which, when present in food, can cause a fatal reaction.  Up to a third of all honey on store shelves is likely to be from these sources. That’s a lot of fake honey (and profit). The U.S. imports more than 200 million pounds a year.

According to Food Safety News, three-quarters of the honey sold in the U.S. contains no pollen. This means the product is either ultra filtered or doesn’t come from bees at all. Ultra filtering is a high-tech process used by unethical honey producers. The honey is heated, sometimes watered down (or dried and reconstituted), then forced at high pressure through filters to remove pollen. This process destroys the health-enhancing effect of honey’s enzymes, nutrients, and pollen. Let’s remember, pollen is the only sure way to identify the source of honey, so ultra filtering is a way to hide its origin.

Research by Texas A&M University, sponsored by Food Safety News, found:

• *Not one single serve packet of honey tested from McDonalds, KFC, or Smuckers contained pollen.
• *Three-quarters of samples from grocery stores including Giant Eagle, Kroger, Metro Market, or Safeway contained no pollen.
• *More than three-quarters of samples from big box stores including Walmart, Target, and Sam’s Club contained no pollen.
• *All samples from farmer’s markets, co-ops, and natural stores had the full amount of pollen.

We have much to learn from bees and the health-enhancing honey they create. Sometimes it seems the way we treat them, their honey, and each other teaches us more than we want to know about ourselves.

 

This is a Monday Mania, Traditional Food Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, and Real Food Wednesday post.

Why We Save Seeds

Our ancestors understood that seeds contain much more than the next year’s food. Seeds hold a particular wisdom. Throughout history, each generation kept the very best of their harvest to use as seed the next year, maximizing desired traits such as disease resistance and better yields. They also knew which varieties flourished in different areas and in varying conditions. Seeds hold the traditions of the people who plant, tend, and harvest those crops. The nutrients and flavor of those foods say something about us and the ways we are connected to place, culture, and each other.

If we ask, we can still learn about seed saving from the oldest generation. Sometimes their families suffered terrible deprivations but they didn’t let themselves eat the seeds they’d saved, a testament to hope. Sometimes they smuggled precious seeds when emigrating to a new country, sewn into hems or pockets to evade inspection. The seeds they saved, if still grown, are a vital legacy of biodiversity. According to the United Nations, approximately 75% of the world’s genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost in the last 100 years, threatening food security.  These heritage seeds, grown in good soil and without and chemicals, can equal the yields of today’s hybrids and offer superior nutritional quality.

Perhaps even more threatening, more and more of today’s farmers rely on genetically modified seed. These crops are designed to be used with heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and herbicides which have been found to promote the growth of unstoppable super weeds. Although they’re touted as producing greater yield, studies show that GM crops cost more to grow and yield less. Such practices make no sense when research continues to show that organic farming practices are more profitable and maintain soil health much better than conventional farming.

Sometimes I picture our forbears shaking their heads while we ignore the knowledge they passed down to us. Even those of us who are enthusiastic organic gardeners often buy seeds in bright packets from big box stores, seeds hydridized to grow in cool Maine, humid Louisiana, or dry Arizona. We can’t save the seeds from these plants and expect them to grow true the next year, confounding the basic tradition of gardeners. Over the last century we’ve lost more than three-quarters of the genetic diversity in our crops, making our food supply more vulnerable to pests and diseases.

In our day-to-day lives it may seem impossible to turn the tide, but every choice matters. Around here I use heritage seeds from Turtle Tree Seeds, Seeds of Change, or Sustainable Seed Company. I have no hope of attaining sainthood, so you won’t find me trying to save nearly invisible seeds like beet or radish. But gradually I’m learning to save seeds from some of the plants we grow.

The learning curve is steep. I’m horrible about keeping basic records let alone tracking what plant came from which seed. And there are so many different requirements for seed saving that I’m often tempted to give up. So I start small. This year I’m saving seeds from squash, purple bean, and edamame. The guide I use is Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners.

Here’s the last of the purple beans I’ve let stay on the plants to mature into useful seeds, along with some other last-to-ripen veggies. (It’s also possible to pull entire plants and hang them upside down until the seeds are dry.)

I split the pods, sort out the best seeds, and let them dry on the counter until they’re so hard they can shatter at the tap of a hammer.

Then they must be frozen to kill any lurking bean weevils, which are common in home-saved seeds. Unchecked, these creatures will destroy stored seeds. Weevils eggs are eliminated after the seeds, kept in an airtight container, are stored in a freezer for five days. When the container is removed from the freezer, it must remain closed until the seeds have completely thawed. If opened too soon condensation forming on the cold seeds can damage them.  Even after freezing, the seeds cannot be in contact with any products where bean weevils may be present or they can be recontaminated. Prepared this way, bean seeds maintain high germination rates over long periods of time.

Already I’m vowing to be a better gardener next year. (Right now that means correctly labeling and storing seeds.) I guess gardening practices are a year-to-year gamble. We try new things, hope we’re up to any challenges we face, and keep refining our skills. Around here, every step we take toward greater self-reliance gives us a greater respect for those who came before us.

Creative Tactics For Eating Frugally & Well

Food prices keep going up, but you don’t have to sacrifice your family’s healthy diet. A few positive changes can actually make a big impact. Try these suggestions to satisfy your taste buds and sustain your budget.

Snack wisely. On average, children in the U.S. snack three times a day, with junk food making up more than 27 percent of their calorie intake.

So emphasize fruits and vegetables as snacks. Keep cut-up portions easily accessible in the refrigerator along with healthy homemade dips. And offer them at the start of a meal, not just in between meals.

Need suggestions? Try cubes of cheese and melon, homemade hummus with cucumber slices, nuts and dried fruit, homemade smoothies, celery stuffed with cheese, homemade muffins, and apple slices spread with peanut butter.

Many dieticians also suggest drinking a glass of water before snacking. That’s because it’s common to confuse the sensation of thirst for hunger.

Take it with you. Pack your lunch. Yes, you’ll save money by doing so, but you’ll boost your nutrition too, because packed lunches generally have fewer calories and smaller portions than purchased meals.

Try to keep a supply of healthy snacks available when you’re away from home. Avoid single-serving packages and convenience snack foods, since even the healthiest versions are expensive. Instead, pack your own in reusable bags and containers. Keep a bag of almonds in your backpack, a jar of pumpkin seeds in your car, some granola in your briefcase. This helps avoid impulse buys when you, your children, or your companions are hungry.

Don’t leave the house without something to drink in a reusable container. It takes just a few moments to fill a bottle or thermos with water, a quickly blended smoothie, or iced coffee.

Make it from scratch. Prepared or processed foods are not only less healthy than fresh whole foods, they’re more expensive. A 16-ounce bag of potato chips costs about the same as a five-pound bag of potatoes. A package of pre-seasoned boil-in-the-bag rice is 10 times the cost of rice bought in bulk. Even bagged salads cost about five times more than the same fresh greens bought whole, then washed and shredded at home.

Making your own food lets you to be more innovative in food selection than in any restaurant. You can choose burritos for breakfast or omelets for dinner, filling them with any ingredients you please.

Emphasize frugal food choices and preparation techniques. Pricey ingredients like raspberries or shrimp can be used as garnishes. Make protein-packed main dishes with dried beans instead of meat. Use sharper cheeses for greater flavor impact rather than a larger amount of mild cheese.

Need more ideas? Check out these meal suggestions as well as frugal-eating blogs.

Plan ahead. The best intentions to save money and eat healthily are easily foiled when we’re hungry. If we shop on an empty stomach, we’re more likely to make unwise purchases and spend more overall. And when we plan to make a nice homemade dinner but are ravenous after skipping lunch, we’re more likely to pick up convenience food on the way home or eat unhealthy snacks while preparing that meal.

Post an ongoing grocery list in an accessible spot. Encourage all family members to note when staple foods start to run low. This list can be used to take advantage of weekly grocery specials and seasonal offerings at farmers’ markets.

Whenever possible, plan meals in advance to avoid the desperate dinner-hour rush. Make double recipes and freeze half to use another day. Start supper in the morning and let it simmer in a crockpot. Creatively incorporate leftovers into the next day’s meals. And expect family members to help in planning (as well as meal preparation and clean-up).

Be aware of sales, but beware of coupons. Pay attention to regular prices so you can gauge the validity of “sale” prices. Stock up when items are on sale. If a product must be used soon, make double batches of recipes to freeze or share.

Use coupons cautiously. The majority of coupons are issued for processed foods and non-food items. Their purpose is to get consumers to buy name-brand items they normally wouldn’t try. Only use coupons for items you already plan to buy and, if possible, wait until the item is already on sale to maximize your savings.

Get food close to the source.Patronize farmers’ markets, pick-your-own farms, and community-supported agriculture programs.Fresh local foods give you a healthier return on your food spending.

If you can, grow some of your own food. Even a small yard can generate a substantial yield. Apartment dwellers can use community gardens and container plantings plus grow sprouts and herbs indoors.

A recent study found that children served homegrown fruits and vegetables were more than twice as likely to eat the recommended five servings a day. Better yet, children who grow up eating homegrown produce continue to prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods.

Reduce Waste. A third to a half of our food is wasted in the U.K., Canada, and the U.S., according to Tristram Stuart, author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. Not all of this happens at the consumer level, but it’s easy to reduce food waste.

Maintain a close watch to determine which foods need to be used next to avert spoilage and use them in upcoming meals. Check for such foods in your refrigerator daily, your freezer weekly, and your cupboards monthly.

Use leftovers to create different soups, stews, salads, and casseroles. Freeze leftover vegetables to make soup or stock. Save leftover coffee or tea in the pot for iced versions. Freeze ripe fruits to use in baking or smoothies.

Buy in bulk for savings, splitting items with friends and family if necessary. Store food safely by marking the date and contents on each container.

Learn to can, dehydrate, and ferment foods. This is much more fun when done as a group. Start food-preserving traditions. Try picking apples together, then spending the day cooking and canning applesauce.

Share the cooking. If boredom or time considerations make packing a daily lunch difficult, try creating a lunch club with co-workers. Two, three, or more colleagues take turns bringing homemade lunches for the others, saving time several days a week for everyone while allowing each club member to save.

Set up a potluck group with friends or neighbors. Get together on a regular basis. This is a great way to try new foods, exchange leftovers, and enjoy companionable dining without the expense of a restaurant meal.

Create a cooking-night cooperative. This enables friends to swap chef duties in exchange for upcoming “catered” meals. For example, four couples set up a Tuesday-night cooking cooperative. Each couple takes a turn one Tuesday each month to cook and deliver a meal to the other three couples. On the other three Tuesdays, a homemade meal is delivered to them.

Get together with friends or family for cooking projects. You might devote one afternoon a month to such events. Each time, the group makes a large quantity of food to preserve for use in the weeks or months ahead. One session might be devoted making homemade egg rolls to store in the freezer, the next to cooking and canning spaghetti sauce.

Start or join a food-buying club. Form or join a co-op to split food bought in bulk at discount stores, farmers’ auctions, and food terminals. Many operate using simple guidelines to share the work of sending in orders, unloading the truck at delivery time, and splitting bulk food without any need for a central location or regular meetings. Lower prices on such items as fair-trade coffee, vitamins, and whole foods make the effort worthwhile. (See sidebar for suggestions.)

The effort to eat well despite a difficult economy can spur us to greater ingenuity and thrift. It can also foster a companionable interdependence with our family, friends, and neighbors. What a tasty way to pay attention to what really matters in our lives.

First published in Culinate.com September 2011

Food-buying co-ops

Canada
NOWBC Co-op(Vancouver area)
Organiko Organic Food Co-op (Vancouver area)
Sprouts Buying Club(Vancouver area)
Ontario Natural Food Co-op
Ottawa Organic Food Alternatives, 613-730-0606

U.S.
United Natural Foods Buying Clubs
Frankferd Farms Buying Clubs
Frontier Wholesale Cooperative
Atlantic Spice Company

This is a Food Renegade and Patchwork Living and Real Food Wednesday post. 

Yes We Can

U.S. National Agricultural Library WWII

Every year I vow to keep track of what we plant, how much we harvest, and exactly what we preserve.

Do I? No.

I keep thinking I’ll remember enough from previous years to build on our successes and failures. Memory, schmemory.

This makes it difficult to determine if we should put in 45 tomato plants or 70, three rows of rutabaga or one. Which means some years we don’t have enough produce to sell. Today as I stand dunking a bushel of this year’s tomatoes from a pot of hot water to a sink of cold water, I can’t recall if we canned 80 jars of marinara sauce and 50 of salsa or the other way around.  I’m complicating my own life.

So this year I’m actually keeping track. I know we’re well behind last year’s production due to weather so unusual that it delayed planting, ruined our hay fields, and doused my self-sufficiency delusions.  In fact this year’s yield was so low that we headed off to the Homerville Wholesale Produce Auction. We go so rarely that it’s an experience to savor.

The auction was started in 1995 by a dairy farmer who couldn’t make ends meet due to the declining price of milk and increasing costs for feed. His Amish neighbors were also struggling. He put up a large, open barn with a pull-through dock roomy enough for horse-drawn farm wagons. The first year, 20 growers participated, nearly every one Amish or Mennonite families living within a few miles. Now more than 500 growers participate, selling to grocery stores, farm stands, restaurants, and interested folks who live nearby.

This week’s auction was bright and lively. The empty barn filled with huge crates of pumpkins, rows of blooming mums, peck baskets of colored peppers and tomatoes, bushels of apples, and boxes brimming with grapes.   There were as many horse-drawn farm carts and buggies as there were cars and trucks parked in the grass along the front and back of the auction barn. Everywhere people stood talking while they gauged the price of this autumn bounty, some wearing bonnets or straw hats and traditional clothes, others wearing country music caps and union jackets.

As with any auction, the sellers take a risk. Some items, especially those in abundance, go for much less than their value. I watched peck baskets of red bell peppers (a peck of peppers probably weighs 8 lbs), go for less than two dollars each. And some buyers don’t have any idea what it means to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the people who planted, weeded, harvested, packed, and hauled these crops to the auction. They complain about what’s available or say the goods aren’t worth more than a few cents.  One fashionably dressed woman prowled the aisles stuffing raspberries in her mouth, taking bites from peaches and apples before putting the bitten fruit back, poking a sharp nail into butternut squash, squeezing paw paws until they split. She left after her inspection, buying nothing.

When the auctioneers begin it moves fast from item to item. I find it hard to understand the auctioneer’s patter. And there are two simultaneous auctions. Big lots are sold at the dock. Farm carts loaded with single crops like cabbage, pumpkin, corn, or apples pull through and the entire lot is sold to big buyers like grocery stores. Smaller lots, pecks or bushels, are sold starting at the other end. Listening to two auctioneers can boggle my easily boggled mind. We stayed for hours, happy with our haul at the end. We came home with three bushels of apples for pies and applesauce, a bushel of onions, two pecks of hot peppers, a bushel of red bell peppers, and a few pecks of tomatoes, all to augment our low harvest this year.

And we’ve been canning. Sometimes all the work doesn’t seem to translate to much. Forty pounds of tomatoes make only 8 quarts of spagetti sauce and dozens of apples make only a few pints of apple butter. But the kitchen smells good. Fragrant steam builds up on the windows and escapes out the door. Often we’re not done until late in the evening. Even after we’ve gone to bed we hear jar lids popping as the contents cool.  We can’t help but smile. All those jars are filled with food we’ve grown or our neighbors have grown. Organic food to sustain our family through the winter until we harvest again.

This time I’ll be keeping track. Yes I can.

Get Cultured With Homemade Sauerkraut

I make raw milk yogurt and fermented pickles, but I’ve never attempted homemade sauerkraut. Until recently. I’m motivated not only because cabbages await in my garden, but because I know there are powerful benefits to lacto-fermentation.

People all over the world thrive on foods of living complexity, as they’ve done for eons. Kimchi, pickles, kefir, sauerkraut, yogurt, miso, and many more foods teem with cultures that provide flavor and a range of probiotics. These probiotics make nutrients more accessible, provide helpful bacteria to balance our bodies, and help us live longer healthier lives.

Except commercial versions of these foods have no probiotic life in them at all.  Most products available today are heated to lifelessness by canning, pasteurizing, or other processing methods.

Sure, we can buy yogurt with active culture but there’s much more to probiotics and fermenting. The best fermented foods are ones that are truly alive—raw and brimming with healthy bacteria. Sauerkraut is one of the easiest lacto-fermented foods to make at home.

I’ve held off trying sauerkraut, hoping to get some sort of snazzy fermenting container. For at least a year I’ve had my eye on this TSM Fermentation Pot

as well as fantastic glass airlock containers called Pickl-It

but other pesky spending priorities keep getting in the way, like fixing porches that have been threatening to fall right off our house. I finally realized it was silly to wait. There is, at least here, no Fairy Godmother of Fermentation Crocks.

I followed instructions in the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz.

Chop or grate cabbage finely or coarsely. Place cabbage bits in a large bowl as you go, sprinkling the layers with salt. You’ll want to use 3 tablespoons of salt for 5 pounds of cabbage. (The two cabbages I used, one purple and one green, nicely weighed in right around 5 pounds.) The salt pulls water out of the cabbage, slowly creating the brine in which the cabbage can ferment. The salt also inhibits organisms and enzymes that can soften the cabbage, keeping it crunchy.

Katz notes that you can freely add other vegetables at this point such as grated carrot, garlic, greens, Brussels sprouts, turnips, beets, or burdock root. You can also add fruits, apples are commonly included. And you might choose seasoning such as caraway seeds, dill seeds, celery seeds, or juniper berries. I stuck with the plain version.

Mix all the ingredients well. Pack tightly into a container, a small amount at a time, tamping each layer down firmly to force water from the cabbage.

Cover the cabbage with a plate or other lid that fits within the opening of the crock, then weigh it down. This will keep the cabbage under the brine that will soon form. Cover the container with a cloth. Every few hours this first day, press on the weight as you pass through the room to increase the pressure on the cabbage. Within 24 hours the cabbage should be covered by brine. If it isn’t at this point make a solution of 2 tablespoons of salt to 2 cups of room temperature water, and add until the cabbage is covered.

Leave the cabbage to ferment. The volume will gradually reduce. You may see mold or scum on the surface. Just skim off what you can and don’t worry about it, the kraut itself is under the anaerobic protection of the brine.

If it ferments in a warm kitchen the kraut will be done sooner, if in a cool cellar it can keep fermenting for months. Keep removing the plate (rinsing it) and tasting a bit of the kraut. The tang and overall strength will continue to increase. Each time you scoop some out, repack carefully to keep it under the brine and covered by a clean plate. When it gets to the taste you prefer you might use it that very week or pack some in jars to store in the refrigerator. And then start another batch.

I’ve learned a few things from my first foray into sauerkraut making. Next time I’ll cut the cabbage into thin ribbons. Maybe I’ll live it up and get a mandoline slicer or an authentic slaw cutter. And if I want the pickier of my kids to eat it, I’ll make it from green cabbage. But we’re pleased with this batch of sauerkraut. It was just the right flavor for my family after fermenting for less than two weeks. I feel more cultured already.

Resources

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig

The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity by Donna Gates

The Life Bridge: The Way to Longevity with Probiotic Nutrients by Dr. Richard Sarnat, Paul Schulick and Thomas M. Newmark

Patchwork Living and Make Your Own Mondays post

Small Farms Create More Jobs

excerpt:

“All the ways being proposed to increase jobs right now are the same old methods that do not face the real cause of the dilemma. The awful truth is that we have created an economy that can’t afford people to do the work and so every year there are fewer meaningful jobs and more pretend jobs. Pretend jobs require pretend money.

All government really has to do is provide a level playing field where small intensive farming can compete fairly with large, heavily-subsidized, industrial farming and then stand back. A revolution will take place in new job creation and it will be in the right direction: more good food and a more stable society at a lesser overall cost.”

Read Gene Logsdon’s full post.

And if you aren’t familiar with Logsdon’s books, you’re really missing something. Here are just a few, packed with the kind of common sense that meets the definition of wisdom.

The Contrary Farmer   Logsdon offers an alternative to the decline of the family farm by explaining how to successfully engage in what he calls “cottage farming” part-time for enjoyment as well as profit.

Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind  Logsdon, trenchant and humorous as always, makes an elegant case for wise use of what is now wasted. As with all his books, a worthy read.

All Flesh Is Grass: Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming A terribly important and useful book covering the why’s and how’s of raising animals in a natural setting on their native diets.

Living at Nature’s Pace: Farming and the American Dream In a series of observations, for example, carefully calculating the efficiency of Amish farms, Logsdon predicts a rebirth of small-scale, profitable farms around the country using sustainable practices that will change the nation’s attitudes concerning agriculture.

Good Spirits: A New Look at Ol’ Demon Alcohol An entertaining, unusually holistic look at the role of alcohol.

You Can Go Home Again: Adventures of a Contrary Life As he describes his search for the good life, Logsdon upholds living simply, respecting the land, taking pleasure in self-reliance, and being neighborly.