Busy Days

We have been working hard on our little farm these past few days. The rain has stopped and the earth is drying. The plants are reaching up and down with green tips and hairy roots. I am now applying myself to the happy task of filling 2oo square feet of gopher and deer-proof garden beds with seeds and home-grown transplants. The boxes are constructed of huge redwood beams and galvanized wire mesh, so I expect to be using them for many years to come. They will hold onions, leeks, root vegetables, lots of greens, and many kinds of herbs. Tucked in here and there will be flowers, too, including some red peonies that I have dreamed of for years. Thank you Ruchama!! Each of the children have a little section all their own. Ellie planted flowers and chamomile for tea. Izzy will be growing peas, carrots and flowers. Aliana, ever practical, figures I will be growing enough vegetables for everyone, so she is going with nothing but showy, delightful blooms.

I also have a large sunny area that Izzy and Papa are discing in the first picture. This will be planted in corn, beans, squash, melons and potatoes. Yum. I just have to get up the nerve to use the gopher traps. Yuck.

The Glamour of Farming

This growing your own food business is a lot a fun.

Most of the time.

Then comes the day when you realize the milk goat has a terrible, messy belly-ache because you, the clever farmer, fed her way too many orange peels. Or, at least, you hope that is what is causing her upset. Not being a vet, you haul out the biggest book on the animal care bookshelf, the Merck's Veterinary Manual. (Thank you Brendan and Kirsten) It confirms you suspicions. You decide that the goat will live, but that the family won't be drinking the milk for a few days, just in case. You send Mr. Farmer to the store to buy organic milk. While he is off in town you discover that even in her distress, sicko goat felt well enough to knock down and mutilate the wire cage protecting a wild honeysuckle vine in the goat pen. Your parents, generous enough to let you stick your dang vine-ravaging goats on their property, would like to this this specimen preserved, hence the cage. You straighten the cage, tromp through the incredible boot-sucking mud and return with a five-pound bag of cayenne pepper. Why do you possess five pounds of cayenne pepper? It was going to be an attempt at organic pest control. The sicko goat is certainly making a pest of herself. You cover the ground around the cage with the spicy stuff and sneeze a couple of times. Okay, time to milk. On your clock, anyway. Goat girl thinks it's time to play tag. You're it. A bucket of grain and some stolen mouthfuls of alfalfa later, you nab her. Then she runs with amazing strength, dragging you to the gate, eager to leap up on the milking stand. Okay, chores done, wipe that sweat off your brow.

Oops. Remember that cayenne? It's in your eye now.

You think this farming thing might not be worth your trouble after all? Mr. Farmer returns with a gallon of organic milk from the blasted grocery store. $8!!!

Okay, okay, I'll go do my chores, just let me get this pepper out of my eye first.

Routine but not dull

I like to stay home. It is absolutely my favorite place to be. I view errands in town with a general level of grumpiness and usually turn them over to dear Patrick, oftimes with a list more detailed and controlling than I care to admit. I have turned grocery shopping into one giant expedition once every month or so, when I drag Aliana along and show her some real world application for all that damn math I make her do. When the garden really gets rolling I think I will be able to cut the frequency down to every few months. Long live the chest freezer! All of that means I'm now only obligated to venture out once a week to take the kids to a day of workshops at our homeschool program site. My dear Patrick climbs out of bed every morning and drives away to ensure we have a small cash flow, while I have the liberty to stay at home and find ways to avoid spending those dollars. I am grateful beyond words for his willingness to divide our labor the way that we do.

So, what do I do all day.? Have a bon bon and let me catch you up on Days of Our Lives...

The hours in my days are neatly bookended by animal chores. Every twelve hours I milk Rosie the goat. Every single day, 7AM and 7PM. In summer I'm outside in the sunshine both milkings, in the winter I hide under cover from the rain or dark or cold at least once. I love having a living being depending upon me to be on schedule. It makes me actually do it!

Caring for other animals and the garden takes up time every day. Dishes, laundry, cooking, and homeschooling happen every day. My days are nearly all alike. I do have a loose weekly plan to accomplish things that don't need to be done daily, such as checking food stores on Friday, making cheese and bread on Tuesday, or planning our school week on Sundays.

Living the way we do, like sardines in a can, means that working surfaces must be kept clear when not in use. So tidying things up happens all day, every day. Flat surfaces with elbow room are at a premium in an 800 square foot home. It is enormously difficult for me to begin a cooking project if the counter is full of dirty dishes and condiment containers. Any hope of concentrating on a math lesson rests on beginning with a clear table. After many gentle and a handful of far from gentle reminders we have all settled into the habit of cleaning up one mess before we begin making a second one. Naturally we all need occasional reminders, but generally the house stays pretty tidy these days. I wouldn't want a visitor to peek behind my cupboard doors, and the laundry regularly overflows the capacity of the basket by about 700%, but I find it much easier to keep my head above water than I ever have before.

One thing at which I continue to marvel is the fact that even though we let go of truck loads of material goods when packing and moving last year, we are still finding things to give or throw away. Once a day I give the kids a few minutes warning, and then walk around to find things that aren't put away, threatening to donate anything I find lying around to the thrift store. The first time I found toys on the floor I tried to be lenient and give the kids another chance. to tidy up. Much to my surprise Isidore informed me that they had left them on the floor because they didn't want them any more. The choices they make about what to keep or give away fascinate me. Legos stay, tinker toys go. Wooden dolls and little metal cars stay, the marble maze set goes. Homemade cardboard shield and fabric scrap cape stay, fancy animal costumes go. Less toys mean less clean up for the players.

Living in our teeny abode has made the housework load many time lighter, as well. Sweeping the floor takes a few minutes. That's the whole floor, not one room. Once a week I wash the windows. All three of them. In order to simplify the dish-washing chores we each own one plate, one cup, one bowl, etc. Even 4-year old Elizabeth can rinse her bowl out after breakfast and leave it ready for lunch.

Less is good.

The Order of Things

I wrote a few posts back about creating order inside our new home, adjusting to a smaller space and less belongings. After the work of decluttering and tidying is done it feels so wonderful to stretch out and enjoy our home.

A few days ago we butchered a goat. We have created a little farm life here, an extension of what we began at our old home. On a farm there is a never-ending cycle of fecundity and sparsity. In the spring the garden wakes up and begins to grow after the winter pause. The animals bear young; dozen of eggs from the chickens, one or two kids from each female goat. The summer heat and long days full of sun help the garden to produce an astonishing amount of food in just a few months. The tiny chicks and frisky kids also grow with amazing speed. A chicken eats its way to butchering size in just twelve weeks. By the time autumn blows in, the garden has filled the root cellar, freezer and pantry with pounds and bushels and quarts. Also in the autumn the chicken coop feels much too crowded. Roosters loudly compete for attention and require substantially larger amounts of corn and scraps than they did as chicks. Some of the goat kids were male, or simply number too many to feed economically. As the light and warmth wane and the chores of the garden are fewer, butchering time comes.

Just as our home feels roomier and calmer after removing the excess, the chicken coop is quieter and much, much more peaceful after the majority of the young roosters and older hens have been, with enormous gratitude, dispatched to the freezer and pantry. It is much the same with the goats. As the male goats become mature they become aggressive and hard to manage safely. To allow peace to return to the goat pasture, leaving the does to chew their cud and fatten up until they give birth in the spring, we butcher the extra animals after they have done their job of ensuring that another generation will be born. The winter months stretch ahead of all of us, animals and humans, a quiet, less active time. The garden is scrubbed clean by the cold wind and frost while the animals enjoy the warmth of their shelters. In the snug house we plan next year's garden and cook from our stores.

Really, extra is not the right word for the animals we butcher and vegetables we eat during these dark, cold days. Unlike the material excess we gathered for years and then removed from our home, those creatures weren't brought into the world without thought. On the contrary, we put great consideration into just how much food our family requires for each turn of seasons. Each spring we plant what we hope is the just enough seeds and plan to raise just enough meat. We try to raise just enough, not too much, not too little.

I do believe the world could use a lot more just enough right now.

Sunday, with syrup

We have been...

Baking rye bread, unpacking boxes, eating Grandma's banana cake and rescuing dinosaurs from tar pits.

Zo, zee znailz.....

We ate 'em! First we starved them for a couple of days, then we plunked the lot in boiling water for a minute. Once out of the bath they slipped easily out of their shells. We sauteed them with homegrown garlic and butter and then...












Aliana chowed down! Isidore and Elizabeth decided not to partake, but Aliana loved them. She is a big fan of clams and mussels, and we all agreed they taste just like clams. We will be collecting more next week to make a main dish meal with pasta.

Long Days, Crappy Food

Last month I signed up for Path to Freedom's 100-foot diet challenge. We have had a lot of fun dreaming up homegrown meals. We've scoured our cookbooks for egg recipes, stayed up late talking about ideas for dishes, remembering things our relatives made. We've all greatly enjoyed planning our meals.

The problem has been finding the time to make them. The past few weeks the shop has opened its jaws wide and eaten us. Sometimes owning one's own business kinda sucks. I love spending my days working with my partner. I really appreciate being able to bring the kids to work instead of dropping them off at daycare. But I don't like it when everything breaks and people get mad at me. There are days when the idea of punching out at five o'clock and going home sounds delicious.

I know there are people who work long hours and fit cooking from scratch into their busy schedules. I would like to be one of them. Some days I wake up early and use the pressure cooker to whip up some variation of rice and beans and vegetables. It makes everyone's day better to eat a real meal instead of something that came out of a box. It's the logistics of it that kill me, though. I have to get up early enough to have enough time to cook it, then I have to have clean tupperware to use for transport. At the shop we have to have clean dishes and silverware. Then after the food is eaten dishes have to be done at the shop and the tupperware have to make it back home for the next day's meal. It all theoretically works fine, but the reality is that usually one of the pieces of the chain end up missing. I didn't wash the tupperware, or get up early enough, or maybe when we get to the shop we don't have clean dishes at lunchtime. The result is way too much expensive, salty processed food for our meals at the shop.

So, we have lots of homegrown menus up our sleeves for the weeks to come.

I am sure that things at the shop will get easier, and we will find more time to cook wholesome meals again. When Patrick and I met and were courting, as he likes to say, we cooked together all the time. It was a wonderful way to get to know each other. We long for the kind of days that allow time to chat as one of us chops the garlic and the other stirs the sauce. Cooking with the kids is also such wonderful time together. I love to watch little hands holding giant spoons.

So... stay tuned for more 100-foot diet meals. Such plans we have in store!

No picky eaters allowed!

My family is amazing. The bunch of us are all weirdos, but we either don't care or don't know, depending upon the individual in question. That's really why we're homeschooling, to avoid the embarassment of sending them out into public. Just kidding. I think.

This morning Isidore was complaining because we were having fried eggs and sliced oranges for breakfast again. Ever practical (see my post from March 26) Aliana pointed out that we have lots of homegrown eggs right now, so we should enjoy them. She explained that eggs are healthy protein filled food, and that oranges help our bodies fight colds and lower cholesterol. I simply stated, for the seven hundred twenty fifth time (so maybe I'm exagerating) that I will not tolerate picky eaters in my family.

Did either of these attempts sway dear Isidore? Nope. Breakfast was eaten under threat of force.

After he managed to finish his meal without dying of boredom from eating eggs and oranges for the third time this week he scampered outside with his sisters to collect snails from the garden for tomorrow's dinner.

Yes, the child who fights over consuming two of the most common items on an american grocery list thinks it's a great idea to eat a creature not many people on this continent would even consider food.

The kids are all very involved in what we eat. They eagerly peruse the seeds catalogues just as I do. They help to plan the garden, plant the seeds and as it grows they water, weed and harvest. Some of my very favorite memories of my time with my children are in the garden. When I signed us up for the 100 foot diet challenge they cheered me on. We have been brainstorming, and realized that in the spring the snail population explodes. In years past we fed buckets of them to the chickens. This year we're going to cook them with a little garlic and butter and eat them ourselves.

Yum.

Another Omelet!?

As I considered my options for our second 100-foot meal, I was at first sort of annoyed that my ingredient list this week isn't any different than it was last week. "What am I going to write about if we just eat the same thing again? How boring. 'Look, here's another omelet. End of post'."

It occured to me only when I was photographing the meal that eating eggs again is anything but boring. It is in fact miraculous. I happen to think that eggs may well be the most beautiful thing found in mother nature. I never tire of finding a warm egg nestled in the hay in the barn. It really actually makes me feel excited and special every single time I find one. I never just rush it in the house and stick it in the egg carton in the refrigerator. No, every time I come across a newly laid egg I cradle it in my palm and marvel at how perfectly designed such a thing is, from a human or a chicken perspective.

For a hen, an egg is a way to raise a whole lot of babies at once and therefore insure that some of them will survive to make more chickens. It amazes me that an egg can wait weeks in the cold before a hen decides she has laid enough to spend a few weeks sitting on the nest. Her warmth helps the previously dormant creature inside that shell quickly grow into a perfect little chick, ready to walk and peep and eat the day it hatches.

For those of us with opposable thumbs and slightly larger brains, the egg is no less awesome. Here is a portable food storage device like no other. Eggs keep much longer than most of us think, and really don't need to be stored in as cold a place as our refrigerator. We keep them there out of habit, but a farm-fresh egg will keep in a cool place like a cellar for weeks and weeks. And for those of us who eat with the seasons, the egg is a celebration of spring. Though supermarket eggs are available 365 days a year, our hens only recently began laying again after taking a break during the short, dark days of winter. The first few eggs felt like tiny miracles! We carefully considered how to prepare them. As the days lengthened the girls gave us more eggs each day. Now we find between 6 and 8 every morning.

This morning I sauteed some of the volunteer arugula that just grows in the yard and tucked it inside the omelet, and sprinkled chives on top. I took some pictures, then Aliana and Ellie and I sat down to eat. It was delicious. It tasted just right. It sounds kind of trite, but it tasted like spring, like what we ought to be eating on a morning in march. The girls and I felt really fortunate to be eating such tasty food from our own homestead. It's not a glamorous life, but it is satisfying and fun.

Friday

Victory Garden

Planting and caring for the garden this year is a little tricky. We will be living on the mountain by the end of the summer, perhaps even sooner, so I am planting things up there this spring. I’ve run into a bit of trouble because I'm not up there every day to plant and because watering is not as easy as turning on the hose anymore. Up there I have to find a way to get the water from the spring that's halfway down the hill to the thirsty plants at the top.


Right now the way I accomplish this is to use a plastic barrel to haul the water up in the back of the truck and park slightly higher than the garden. I connect a hose to the barrel. What I hope to be doing by next year is using the strength of my darling mule, Dina, instead of the truck. She is eager to work; I just need to find more time to train her to drive. That, too, will be easier when we are living there full time.


The opportunity for the kids to grow up smack dab in the middle of nowhere sets my soul at ease in a way I thought would never happen, but the chance to feed my family also thrills me. In a few years we will probably be close to self-sufficient. I’ve been working on this goal all the years we’ve been in the little red house, but now I have acres to work with! Each year we set aside some money to spend on edible plants and necessary tools. Last year we added 12 fruit trees to the yard. I have moved them to the mountain, and most of them seem to be in good shape. This year I ordered lots and lots of seeds so that I can have enough for this year and the next in case my seed-saving attempts don’t go well. I am saving the extra in tightly sealed jars in the refrigerator. In each jar I have a silica packet to keep them dry. I’ll put them to the fridge at the shop after we move up to the land of no electricity.


Up on the mountain I am planting lots of different edible perennials. I’ve already put in hazelnuts, huckleberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and wintergreen. On the way are seaberry, honeyberry, fig, red and golden raspberries, elderberry, kiwi, wolfberry, and a green tea plant.
Most of what I ordered this year came from Territorial Seed Company in Oregon. They come highly recommended for their care with seed trials and seed storage. I am using two books written by the former owner of the company, Steve Solomon. One is called Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, the other is Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times. I like the first book because the climate he writes about is like mine, not like most gardening books whose authors assume you actually have a summer and a winter. I just have a wet season and a dry season. The latter title has very good advice about growing vegetables with little or no irrigation.

First 100 foot diet meal

We didn't have our customary special Friday night meal last night, so our first 100% homegrown meal was breakfast. An omelet was the natural choice.

Our ingredients were eggs from our faithful hens, homemade feta cheese, and some chives snipped from the garden. We also made a nice pot of homegrown chamomile tea. It was simple and wonderful. We had a bright, sunny morning meal before we all headed off to work.

Under the teapot there you can see the table runner that my genius sister (we dropped the in-law part awhile ago) Francine made. She is the crazy quilting queen. She creates one-of-a-kind pieces for sale, if you are interested.

Spring magic

Most mornings at least one of the kids comes out help me with the chores. I milk and feed the goats while Aliana cares for her rabbits. Taking care of the chickens, though, usually falls to the earliest riser of the day. Heading out to the yard in the morning sun we all enjoy seeing the girls come flapping, hopping and running to eat their morning ration of cracked corn and kitchen scraps. As the days have lengthened the chance to do chicken duty has become a more and more powerful incentive to get out of bed. This is because the hens have a very good clock in their little chicken brains, and as we enjoy more and more daylight they lay more and more eggs. Another part of their bird instinct tells them to hide those eggs. So our dear girls lay their eggs all over the place!

This is where the children come in. After the girls have settled down for breakfast the kids take their baskets and have an egg hunt.

Yep, every morning. We have nice, neat little nesting boxes that we built, but the hens ignore those in favor of dark corners of the shed and inviting bushes. The first child who makes it outside in the morning has the best chance at finding the real prize- a green egg. Two of our dozen or so hens are Americaunas. They lay naturally green-shelled eggs. Ladybug and Siren are their names, and they are getting old for chickens, so the green eggs don't come as regularly as they used to. Therefore discovering a green egg has become a special event.

As we approached Easter this year we began to save up the green eggs, as well as the white ones. This year we are going to try using dyes made of natural materials to color the eggs. I found a list here:

http://www.lakewinds.com/store/Natural-Egg-Dye-Recipes-W4698C18760.aspx

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a list of natural dyeing materials in the magazine that our grocery store puts out. Here here!

Isidore reminded me that last year the Easter bunny left some muddy paw prints on the kitchen table when he ate the carrot we left out for him. I do hope he will be a little tidier this year. I wonder if he knows the kids have had so much practice hunting for eggs. He better hide them really well.

100 Foot Diet Challenge

I have decided to participate in an online challenge proposed by the gang at Path to Freedom. If you don't know who they are you should. They give me hope even on days when I can't bring myself to listen to the news because it's all so dismal. Click the link on the top left of this page to go to their site.



The challenge is called the 100 Foot Diet Challenge. Check it out here:



http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2008/01/06/100-foot-diet-challenge-launch/



The idea is to grow a portion of our own food because having cheap food filling our grocery store shelves all the time depends on an infrastructure that isn't going to remain stable over the coming years. For an explanation of why I say that, see one of the other links at the top left of the page, Casaubon's Book. She writes far more eloquently than I do, and presents news and information about climate change, peak oil and the economy, as well as practical ways to deal with the changes ahead of us.


:: Guidelines ::


A meal must be comprised of food grown on your property or garden plot (literally or figuratively within - 100 feet - of your front or back door). If not from BACKYARD, then Locally produced (PTF’s addition)If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.If not ORGANIC, then Family farm.If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.

I hope we will be eating at least one meal per week created from foods grown in our garden or barnyard. We could actually probably manage more than one, even this time of year. We have created a tradition in our family of sharing a special meal each Friday night. I am planning to try to make our Friday meals out of home-grown ingredients.

So... it's March, and in the garden right now we have some collards that are going to go to seed pretty soon, a few straggly leeks, some volunteer greens and assorted herbs. The chickens are laying six or seven eggs every day and our dear goat Joanna is blessing us with about a half a gallon of milk every day. That milk can be magically turned into yogurt, mozzarella or ricotta. In the freezer we have several packages of frozen home-raised goat and chicken. In the pantry we have home-raised chicken broth and canned chicken.

What wealth! Our family has been reading the Little House books aloud for more than a year now. We are making our way through the last one now. Have you read The Long Winter? It causes one to appreciate food in a new light. It should be required reading for picky eaters.

I'll tell you what I come up with for tomorrow's dinner!

Strawberries

We are blessed to have many friends and neighbors who work for the strawberry farms which surround us here. During berry season they share... a lot. I haven't bought strawberries in years, but we have a cupboard full of homemade strawberry jam. Years past I also sliced and froze bags of them for baking. This spring, though, I am anticipating living without refrigeration. By the end of the summer our family will be living on the mountain full time. So I bought a book called Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation.
The simplicity of the ideas in it is astonishing. I read it as I sat at my kitchen table with Rory. She was reading something of her own, but every five minutes I interupted her with another exclamation that usually went something like, "No way! That's amazing, why don't I know that?" or "Why do we can food with heat again?"

My favorite recipe goes like this:

Ingredients
Blueberries
Honey

Instructions
Put blueberries in jars. Brush jar lids with honey. Screw lids on jars. Will keep 1-2 years.

Yep, you read that right. 1-2 years. There is similar recipe for tomatoes, which is one canned food I would be hard-pressed to cook (or live) without.

My ideas about what our pantry and our meals will be like when we are off-grid are still forming. This book has done a lot to broaden my thinking about how I will preserve and prepare food.