Our three gardens

It’s been a few days since I last posted. There’s not been a lack of things to do, and I have still been accomplishing much. Once the rain stopped, we got busy in the garden. We set out 50# of seed potatoes, 32 pounds of onion sets, 150 tomato plants, nearly 300 sweet potato plants, a few cabbage and broccoli plants, and about three dozen eggplants. We’ve also planted peanuts, dried beans, green beans, sweet corn, pop corn, squash, melons, okra, and cucumbers. I’ll be planting some more sweet corn and green beans soon.

We’re using three different garden areas this year, more than we’ve utilized in the past. One has the onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and sweet corn in it at the present time. Another has the sweet potatoes and some watermelon. We’ll probably put the next planting of sweet corn in this garden since there is still room for it. The other, and largest, garden has several types of melons, green beans, dried beans, and peanuts in it.

The children have been helping with taking care of the garden. Each year as they grow they are more able to contribute to our food production. My boys have really been helpful this year with planting and weeding. I try to not overwhelm them with too much at a time, and they’ve really been doing a good job and with a good attitude.

I think it’s important for children to grow up with responsibilities and learning to work. There are so many things that they can do to contribute to their family, and there are so many valuable things to be learned through the process. Too many children, I’m afraid, are not expected to contribute to their families in meaningful ways. When I was growing up, my family had a very limited income, and our gardens provided a good deal of our food. Each of us was expected and required to participate in the growing, maintenance, harvesting, and preserving of food. I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, but I certainly do now.

One of the challenges we’ve faced with the gardens during the last couple of weeks is the deer. They decided that we’re growing food for them. They’ve eaten on our peas, beans, beets, chard, and lettuce. They basically destroyed the beets and chard – I guess they tasted good to them. After they’d eaten on the beans which were just starting to blossom, I put up some deer deterrent: baling twine. I’ve been told that deer don’t like the smell of baling twine, and three years ago we put up a fence of it around our garden because of the deer, and it kept them out of it.

After I fenced off the beans with baling twine, the deer decided to eat some of the younger beans. These deer appear to be very hungry based upon how they’ve been eating. So, the boys and I put up a perimeter fence around the bean garden using 10’ poles driven into the ground and four strands of baling twine. We also tied rectangles of aluminum flashing onto each pole to move with the wind and create noise. So far, the deer haven’t been back in the garden, but it’s only been a couple of days. I’m hopeful it will keep them out for most of the growing season.

Yesterday, Malchiah and I worked on getting some of our tomatoes staked up. Last year I used livestock panels in an A-frame configuration – two panels on either side of the row tied together at the top. This year my rows are 30 feet long which requires four panels per row. I have 12 panels and didn’t want to spend the money to buy more. So, to be able to cover more rows (we have 8 rows of tomatoes), I changed the method for this year.

We started with three rows yesterday. I set some cedar posts at the ends of the rows and one post in the middle of each row. Then, we hung two panels between the posts right above the tomato plants. The panels are about 9 inches off the ground. I tied the larger plants to the bottom of the panels and wove their branches them. As the plants grow, we’ll weave them through the panels to the top, or as tall as the plants grow. We’ll tie them to the panels as necessary. It takes more work to set posts in the ground, but this way we have enough panels for six rows. I’ll stake up the other two rows differently.

We’ve been enjoying fresh blueberries and black raspberries this week. Soon, it’ll be time to pick blackberries. We usually pick and preserve as many blackberries as we can. Last year we picked around 20 gallons. We’re planning on doing the same this year.

I’ve been teaching two sections of my class this summer. There’s one more week to go in the session. It’s been taking a lot of time, but it’s worth it. My objective is to encourage the students to question the institution of school by considering some of its harmful effects and how it is not designed to promote learning/education as they assume. As one of the authors they read says, “School makes children stupid.” I enjoy the class, but it’ll be nice to be able to focus and devote my time to projects (like finishing our house) here on the farm.

Morels

The children and I have hunted for morels several different days during the last couple of weeks. We’ve looked for them in previous years, too, but the most we’ve ever found is about 20. I’ve read about where to look for them and have tried to note where we find them growing, but there’s been little consistency. Basically, they grow where they want to.

Last week we did find about three dozen of the tasty little buggers. We’d had rain a couple days before with some cool weather. As it warmed up, some Morels popped up. We probably spent two and a half or three hours looking on our ridge to find these. The photo shows a few of the ones that we found that day.

After washing them and cutting them in half lengthways, I sautéed them in butter, and we enjoyed them as a special treat for dinner. They were very good!

Root cellar and garden/storage crates

If you didn’t know, we’re building a house. I don’t mean that we’re paying someone to build a house for us. We’re building it. Well, I’m doing most of the work, but I accept help from friends and family.

Anyway, one of the things we designed into our home (and, yes, we designed the house ourselves) is a root cellar. At one point in the process, I was going to build a root cellar separate from the house using the methods described by Mike Oehler in The $50 & Up Underground House Book. I still like his method (years ago after reading the book, we thought about building an underground house like he describes), and may use it for some structure sometime in the future. If you want to build a fairly inexpensive root cellar, you ought to check out this method.

We changed our plans for the house more than once (it’s been a developmental process, and it’s only gotten better with each change we’ve made to our plans). One of those changes was to make the root cellar under part of the house with access to it from the house. So, I dug a hole with the use of a friend’s backhoe and constructed a root cellar. You can read about how I built it here.

We haven’t gotten to use the root cellar yet, though. We haven’t gotten to live in our house yet either, but we’re getting closer all the time. In fact, just this week I built the stairs to the root cellar. 

The root cellar has two rooms, a larger one and a smaller one. The larger one is about 8’x13’. The smaller one is about 8’x 8’. I still have to insulate in the ceiling and install the exhaust vents in each room. Then, there will be shelves and bins to build, but I’m looking forward to being able to store some food in it next fall and winter. Hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll also be living in our new house by then.

Earlier this week, I bought some storage crates to use in the garden and root cellar. I saw them advertised on Craigslist late last week. They are really very nice. They measure 24” x 16” by 8.25”, and if filled up to the handles, they hold one bushel (based upon my calculations of volume). They are very sturdy and stack nicely. I think they will be very handy. You can buy them new from a few places, but they’re expensive. I’m glad to say I paid well less than retail price for them.

I move them into the root cellar yesterday after I finished the steps. So, they are now waiting for the coming harvest season and the christening of our new root cellar. In the meantime, we have more snow (it won’t last long, though).

Peanuts and peppers

Last spring I planted peanuts in two different locations. In the first patch, I made ridges to plant them in, and they grew very well. The boys mulched the after the plants got going well. The other patch, however, was decimated by crows. They picked the seed out of the ground soon after it was planted. Granted, they did leave one or two peanuts that sprouted and grew only to be choked out by the weeds later on.

I dug on row of the peanuts that grew well last week, and the boys dug the other five rows earlier this week. The plants produced well. It was interesting to pull up the plants and find where they had rooted from the vines through the mulch and set on peanuts there as well as at the base of the plants.

We fed the vines to the cows who absolutely love them. The boys spread out the vines from their digging so that they could dry, and I feed some of these to the cows when milking. Both Josie and Tilly are eager to eat this treat at milking time.

After picking the peanuts off of the vines, we spread them out on a couple of window screens to dry outside for a few days. We moved them inside the summer kitchen when we got a little rain. It’s a pretty sight to have screens of peanuts spread out. The peanuts also taste really good. I don’t care for raw peanuts generally, but these are good raw. They’re also good sautéed in a little butter or roasted in the oven.

I also built a frame from which Anne can hang sweet peppers above the wood stove to dry them. I set out a lot of pepper plants in hopes of having a lot to dry. However, the plants didn’t bloom or set on many peppers until September. I’ve had that happen before – really nice plants that don’t produce until the end of the season.

Anne cuts the peppers into rings, runs a string through them, and hangs them up to dry. When they are completely dry, she stores them in jars. They are a nice addition to chili, meatloaf, and other dishes. The children also enjoy just eating them.

Sweet potato harvest 2010

On Tuesday, the boys and I dug our sweet potatoes. We had frost down in the bottom two mornings this week which didn’t hurt anything. A few of the leaves on the sweet potato vines were touched, but I don’t believe the notion that frost will go down the vines into the potatoes as some claim. I an inclined to believe that sweet potatoes can’t stand cool temperatures, and that if they are allowed to chill below 45 degrees they won’t keep well.

Anyhow, it was time to get them out of the ground and into the house. We planted somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 slips last spring. Sweet potatoes are easy to grow, and we’ve had very good success with their production. We plant the slips in ridges, mulch them a few weeks later when they’ve gotten going well, and then leave them alone other than pulling a few weeds. The only other chore for the season is digging them out of the ground.

I estimate that we harvested 10 bushels of sweet potatoes this year, approximately 600 pounds of these nutrient-rich little buggers. We sorted out the best ones based upon size and blemishes, filling 7.5 crates which I stacked inside. I made these crates a few years ago, and each one holds about 1.25 bushels. There was about 2 bushels that we sorted out to use first, the ones with scrapes, vole bites, blemishes, etc. So, there may be more than 10 bushels, but that’s okay.

We’ll eat from this harvest all winter and through the spring, assuming they cure and keep well. Generally, sweet potatoes keep very well for us. They are currently stacked in the children’s room, where they will stay for the duration. After they’ve cured for a couple of weeks, we’ll cover them so that they won’t have light shining on them which could encourage a few of them to sprout prematurely. Next spring, we’ll start slips from some of them for next year’s crop.

Boiling sap for maple syrup

I decided not to tap any of my maple trees this year. I just didn’t feel like doing it, and we still have plenty of syrup from last year. We don’t have very many syrup trees, maybe three dozen at the most. But, our friend Gill who lives across town has a couple hundred he usually taps. Last year he let us collect sap from his trees and boil it down on his evaporator. This year the weather hasn’t cooperated very well, but Gill has been collecting sap for about a week and expects to get more in the next few days. He offered us some sap, because he didn’t think he would get all that he had collected boiled down soon enough.

So, Dad and I went over yesterday to bring home some sap. We didn’t know quite how we were going to evaporate it to make maple syrup, but we figured we would come up with some way. In the past we have evaporated a few gallons inside on our wood stoves. But, we brought home about 85 gallons from Gill’s, and that is too much to do inside. Gill was kind enough to lend us his small evaporator pan. It holds about 15 gallons.

We put the sap in a 275 gallon tote that I had previously had water in for the cows (thankfully, it was empty). When we got back home, I made a quick fireplace with concrete blocks, some pieces of metal, and a short section of stove pipe. It’s large enough for the pan to cover the opening on the top. Keeping a good fire in it allows the sap to boil, evaporating off most of the water, leaving the sugars concentrated for syrup. We finish it inside one the wood stove. It boils away at about 1.5 inches per hour.

I lifted the bed of the truck to tilt the tote, making it easier to get the sap out. The fireplace is near the truck, making it easy to add sap to the pan as needed.

I finished two pints of syrup last night. This is grade “AA” stuff – quite thick and flavorful. I put another pan of sap on last night after taking off the first batch. Before going to bed I was able to add about 6 gallons more sap and then some more this morning for about 27 or 28 gallons all together. I made three pints of grade “AA” syrup form this today. We just took off the third batch we boiled down from about 21 gallons of sap this afternoon. Dad will finish it tonight. There’s another pan on to evaporate tonight and tomorrow morning, hopefully finishing up what we brought home.

When I bring the condensed sap in to finish it, I put it on the stove to boil. Inside I can watch it more carefully and keep from scorching it. Our candy thermometer doesn’t work, even though it is brand new (I don’t know if we’ve ever had one that actually works right). When the syrup started foaming vigorously, I figured it was ready to bottle. I heated pint jars in the oven and boiled some lids. Then, I strained the syrup (a slow process, usually) into the jars, put lids and rings on them, and set them on the counter. They usually seal within 30 minutes or so.

We enjoy the pure maple syrup we make during the rest of the year. It’s great on pancakes, of course.

Homesteading as a moral commitment

“I’d love to do what you’re doing,” we sometimes hear, followed by the inevitable “but.” There are people who say they would love to live a more self-sufficient life, to be off-the-grid, to homestead out in the country, growing their own food and living a more intentional life. Many of these individuals are sincere and do wish to break free of their enslavement to a social and economic system that holds them tightly in its grasp, but how many of them will ever move on their desires?

It was very encouraging recently to come into contact with a man and his family who earnestly desire to become modern day homesteaders. I will do anything and everything I can to help them realize their dreams (and whomever else). This family’s desire is not just a passing fancy; they are serious and are doing things now to make it a reality. Unfortunately, most of the people I’ve heard express affinity for what my family and I are doing are most likely never going to do it. They have a romantic notion of “the simple life” (which ain’t so simple) but they value some things too highly to give them up to see their notions become reality.

Recently, in passing I mentioned that living a homesteading life requires a moral commitment, but I didn’t elaborate on that point. Basically, the morality of the situation resides in believing it is good/better to pursuing this particular way of living, an intentional life, as I like to call it. For us it is better to live without debt than to borrow money in order to have things which we may want but don’t need, realizing the difference between wants and needs. It is right to invest our energy and labor in providing as much as we can for ourselves rather than relying on industrial mechanisms to make things available for us via an exchange of my labor in the form of dollar bills. Being together and working together as a family is more highly valued than having enough money to provide a bigger home and more things at the expense of family. These are all moral choices that guide our way of life.

You can examine anyone’s life and begin to see what they value. You can do that with my life and find things that reveal moral commitments I should change (I need to be examining my life for this purpose, actually). For instance, if one values things over relationships, this is evident. Granted, some do not see any other way to live than the usual, standard way of living that is all around us; they’ve been conditioned and trained to accept life on terms that they did not create. Intentionally changing the terms upon which we live our lives requires discernment, seeing how we live in its bare, naked form, for what it is.

Western culture and economics dictate a certain way of life, one that I find morally problematic in many ways. Until I had opportunity and reason to question the context of modern life, I didn’t see this. As my eyes opened to the problems of our socio-economic system, I was challenged with the responsibility of making a choice about what to do. Should I go along with what I understand is wrong but which is difficult to disentangle myself from (the easier path)? Or, should I act upon my understanding and choose to change the circumstances of my life, living in opposition to much of the socio-economic order surrounding me? That’s a tough place to be, but one in which everyone makes a choice. Even choosing not to decide is still to make a choice.

We are surrounded by romantic notions of rural/farm life and the good old days. Most of these notions are not in sync with the reality of rural/farm life as it exists today. Examine the packaging in the grocery store to see the images that are sold to us, images that draw upon our romantic notions. These are a part of our social psyche, but they are not based upon current reality. These are powerful images that when we buy things from the grocery store may help us feel good about what we’re buying and eating and keep us from seriously considering the real conditions of production. They are evidence, though, of the power of our notions and their very real existence.

I think it is these same kinds of romantic notions which lead people to say they would love to live a self-sufficient life but to never make changes in their lives to realize at least part of that desire. Being a homesteader doesn’t always mean owning a chunk of rural property with enough room to raise a large garden and a menagerie of animals. However, it does mean making choices and decisions in our lives that separate us from the hegemony of the socio-economic system in which we are all enslaved. It means frugality. It means doing as much for yourself and your family as you can. It means taking increasing responsibility for your life in meaningful ways within the current sphere of your existence. It’s a process, not a destination.

I wish to encourage all who want to homestead to take steps right now to realize their desires. However small the steps may be, start taking some now. Limit your consumption of industrially produced products by making do with what you have or making for yourself. Focus on and prioritize those things which are more meaningful, like time together as a family playing and working. Grow a tomato plant in a pot. Preserve some of your own food. Make your choices more intentional with a goal of realizing your dreams/desires one step at a time.

There’s nothing wrong with romantic notions. They can guide and motivate us. We need to take responsibility for our our actions, for the moral choices we make every day, with an end in view, not because it is a romantic notion, but because it is a better way to live. Our moral commitments are revealed in what we do. What does what we’re each doing say about us and our values?

Canned ground beef

It was a lot of work, but Anne finished canning the meat yesterday. She ran eight canner loads in four days. It takes longer when canning on the wood stove than it does on a conventional stove. So, two loads in a day is pretty good.

We ended up with 25 quarts of shredded meat from the roasts and 61 pints of ground beef.

We’ve got at least three very full 20-quart stock pots of bones to cook down for broth. We’ll start that this weekend. They’ll cook for at least a full day, extracting lots of good stuff out of the bones and making a rich broth. There ought to be several more quarts of meat and some of broth to can from that. Then, there is some fat to be rendered. That will be used for making soap sometime, or it will be used in cooking.

It’s nice to have the meat. We’ll be doing it again next year, God willing. We have another steer which will be 18 or 19 months old in a year from now. He’s a beef breed (Belted Galloway-Angus cross), so he ought to have a little more meat on his bones than Chucky Joe did (he was a Guernsey).

Canning beef

Dad, Danny, and I worked on cutting the meat off the bones on Sunday and Monday. We decided to just get it done while we had the time. I don’t know that anything would have been gained by waiting. The meat would have kept fine in the chest refrigerator, I’m sure, but by getting it cut up, Anne has been able to process four canner loads so far. She cooked roasts, and I helped her cut the meat into pieces. Then, she filled jars and ran two canner loads yesterday and two today.

It takes 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure to can meat. She filled the jars full, adding hot broth after packing the meat. The canner holds 7 quarts at a time. We were disappointed yesterday that three jars broke. There was no apparent reason for the breakage. Sadly, one of the broken jars was a favorite old jar of Anne’s (she ‘collects’ old canning jars and uses them). As near as I can figure, the grate on the bottom inside the canner which holds the jars off the bottom of the canner is transmitting too much heat to the jars. So, today, she put some canning rings under the grate to get the jars up a bit higher. No broken jars today – we’re grateful. We have a couple dogs staying with us (maybe permanently) who will enjoy the meat from the broken jars (usually, jars that break in the canner have clean breaks, but we have seen glass slivers in the past, so we don’t use the contents ourselves). So, it’s not completely wasted.

While the second canner load was processing this evening, I fried some steaks off the backstrap. Let me tell you, they were awesomely good! Wow! We had some small steaks yesterday that I cut off of the front leg. They were good, too, but they weren’t as tender as these off the back. We have some tenderloin to cook and eat, and we’ll also have some hamburgers this week. Once it’s all canned, we won’t have the fresh meat. Canned meat is very good, though, and very convenient. We are so grateful for it.

We gave my parents and Danny a little over half of the beef. There was almost 250 pounds of beef after it was cut off the bones. We could have taken a larger portion, but we wanted to share with them. And, they appreciate it. We’re happy with the blessing of healthy, properly-raised meat!

The meat’s in the fridge

Previously, I explained how we converted a chest freezer into an efficient refrigerator. After we made the conversion, my wonderful wife encouraged me to order another external thermostat so that we could convert our other chest freezer also for times that we might need it. One of those possible times would be at butchering time when we have more meat to preserve than we can do at one time. Keeping it refrigerated would allow more time.

We were going to leave the meat from our steer hanging in the garage to chill until we could work it up and can it. Originally, the forecasted temperatures were fine for doing so. But, the forecast has been changed. In fact, it changed a couple of times just yesterday. Today, they’re calling for 54 degrees with a low of 40 tonight. That’s not cool enough. Coupled with forecasted highs near 50 for the coming week, we couldn’t leave the meat hanging in the garage. It’s too warm.

So, I hooked up the external thermostat to our second chest freezer and made a refrigerator into which we could pack the whole steer. We moved it from the garage this morning. It got down to freezing last night, which allowed the meat to chill pretty well. Now, there shouldn’t be any problems with keeping it chilled properly.

The butchering of Chucky Joe

Today was the day. Chucky Joe is no longer. I expected it to be difficult to pull the trigger, and I was right, it was. It’s never easy to take an animal’s life, nor do I believe it should be.

We raised Chucky for meat.

I took care of him during the last 20 months and grew somewhat attached to him.

Even knowing the purpose for his life, this morning wasn’t easy. Out of respect for him as a living creature, it was important to make it painless and quick. It was. He never knew.

Once he was dead and had bled (that gave me enough time to shed my tears and calm down), we began the butchering process.

We first removed his feet, cutting at mid-foreleg (cows’ feet can get kind of dirty and messy). Then, we hooked a rope to his rear legs to pull him inside the door of the barn to place him under the chain hoist and gambrel. We used the tractor and a pulley to do this; he was too heavy for us to do it without mechanical help.

Then, the skinning began. Skinning a steer takes longer than skinning a deer – something to do with the respective size of such creatures, I suppose. Once we started skinning the rear legs, we hooked the gambrel through the legs near the knee joint (there’s a strong tendon there that works well for this) and lifted the carcass a little off the ground to make the skinning easier. The chain hoist makes it easy to adjust the height. After we had skinned about halfway down and had raised it higher, we removed the head. This made it easier to get the hide all the way off (the head would otherwise be in the way and impede the process).



Once the carcass was skinned, we removed the front legs. Then, it was time to remove the stomach, intestines, and other organs. The children were really interested in seeing this part of the process. I carefully cut down the stomach lining from the groin to the sternum, and then we let the innards come out into a cut-off barrel. There’s a lot inside a cow! I cut out the liver and also saved the heart.



With the carcass eviscerated, we began to cut it into pieces. We didn’t follow the traditional way of cutting up a cow carcass which involves splitting the carcass in half down the center of the backbone. We removed the neck, cutting it off where it joins the back at the shoulders. Then, we cut the ribs off along the side of the backbone, over far enough to leave the backstrap and tenderloin uncut. At that point, we removed the back and then the two hind quarters. We find it easier to cut it up this way; it involves a lot less bone cutting than splitting the backbone. This is important when you’re not using power tools.

With the carcass cut into pieces and laid out in the back of my truck on a clean tarp, I drove it up to the garage. There, we rinsed the pieces off and hung them from a beam in the rafters of the garage. In there it should be safe from varmints and can cool off before we cut it up. Many people like to let a carcass hang for up to two weeks. Since our refrigeration is dependent upon the outside temperature and we don’t necessarily see a need to let it hang for such a length of time, we’ll start processing it next week.

Earlier in the week, the forecast looked pretty good temperature wise. However, it was warmer today than I would like and it’ll be warmer than I’d like tomorrow. It will get down to about freezing at night. The meat should be fine in the garage, but I would like it a little cooler. I don’t have control over that, though. So, we’ll work with what we have and get it cut off the bone next week. We’ll mainly be making burger and roasts. Maybe we’ll cut a few steaks off the back.

Chucky becomes meat tomorrow

The plan is to butcher our steer, Chucky Joe, tomorrow. We’ll let him hang for a few days and then cut the meat off for burger and roasts. I’ve been getting things ready. I sharpened my knives, hung the chain hoist in the barn, and made a gambrel big enough for a bovine (I’m pretty sure the one made for deer wouldn’t hold the weight of a 20 month old steer).

I expect that it will be a little difficult for me to kill Chucky tomorrow morning. I was there when he was born on May 14, 2008. In fact, I helped pull him out. He’s been a friendly guy. He usually wants to play more than I want to, though, mainly because he’s too big. We’ve raised him for meat. That’s been his stated purpose all along. Once he’s dead, the butchering process is no longer personal; it’s just a job.

I’ll post about how it goes tomorrow.

We need to teach and to learn

We take a lot of things for granted. Our way of life is encompassed with so many blessings. We are together as a family every day. I don’t have to run off to work somewhere off the farm, and we sit down to eat together as a family three times a day. We eat food that is good for us, not the standard American fair.

Anne and I watched Food, Inc. recently (via Amazon Video on Demand). It’s a sobering portrayal of commercial/industrial food and the multi-national companies behind its production. We were already aware of a lot of things in the film. In fact, we stopped eating commercial meat, dairy, and poultry products in 1996 because of concerns about that whole industry. We studied and learned more about the appalling treatment of animals in these industrial production facilities and desired even less to consume their products. Who would want to eat beef that was fed rendered animal refuse and chicken litter?

We took steps when we lived on the outskirts of Bloomington, Illinois, to raise our own food. When we bought our house there, it came with a 3/4 acre lot across the street in front of the house (it was previously the right of way for an interurban railroad). I worked up two large garden plots, and we grew a lot of vegetables. We planted fruit trees and bushes, but we moved before we were able to enjoy any harvest from them.

We moved here to Kentucky in order to further pursue out desire to grow our own food, including animal products. We have structured our lives around what is important: faith, family, and food. It is a blessing from God that we enjoy what we have here, and we are thankful every day. But, there are so many who don’t have the knowledge to make significant differences in their lives, to grow their own food, to refuse to be in debt, to champion the importance of family time together.

What about those individuals who are ‘caught’ in a trap of debt and low wages? What about for the families for whom it is more economically feasible to buy a hamburger than an apple? We want to see changes in our food industry, and consumers have a lot to say about how things go in this industry. But, when people are enslaved by debt which has been pushed on us through national and local economic policies (our economy is based upon debt – for example, consumer spending does not take into account whether any of the things bought are actually “paid for,” only that they were purchased somehow, usually via debt encouraged through low interest rates), the options readily available to them are severely limited.

It’s easy for me to garden, hunt, raise animals, etc. I not only have the knowledge about how to do so, I also have room and opportunity for all of these things. I’m not trapped in a city somewhere. Sure, even urban dwellers can grow some things, theoretically, but what is the reality of their lives as they seek to make ends meet? Do they even know that they need to? What is the path to take in order to get out of this ‘trap’ that we as a society have created in which we are dependent upon cheap “food”?

As I look at it, the need for education is apparent. Our schools aren’t teaching about ethical and responsible food consumption and production. Our churches aren’t. Our governments aren’t. The multi-national food corporations aren’t. It’s not even happening within most families. I don’t expect to change the world in a grand way with what I’m doing, but I am shaping the next generation through my children. We are setting an example for others by what we do and what we value. But, even so, I can’t take credit for the ways in which my eyes and heart have been opened. I have made choices based upon opportunities that were presented to me, opportunities that I recognized because of things I learned that made those opportunities possible, but my learning was shaped and influenced by my coming into contact with others and their knowledge.

All of us should seek to share our knowledge with others and to continue to learn from others. We’re involved in a great educational experience, and we’re all in it together. As we endeavor to change the world and bring education to others, may we each have the humility to learn from one another.

Where’s the beef?

On May 14, 2007, our Guernsey, Josey, gave birth to Chucky Joe, a little bull calf. It’s been something watching him grow during the last 19.5 months. I banded him when he was a couple of months old (he was just about too big at the time) in order to make a steer out of him. We’ve raised him for beef. Sometime in the next two weeks, we’ll butcher him. I know that to some that may sound like a harsh thing, but that’s what he was created for – to become beef (and to provide the materials to make two powder horns).

Chucky has lived a good life. He’s had plenty of grass and hay to eat and good clean water to drink. He’s gotten to be with or near his mother his whole life. In fact, he still nurses. She never kicked him off. It’s something to see a 900+ pound steer nursing. Josey is just too patient and kind to wean him. I tried to wean him, but it just didn’t work because Josey wouldn’t help. Even those weaner things you put on a calf’s nose didn’t work. He found a way to work around it. I even kept the two of them separate for two and a half months, but when they were together again, it was like they’d never been apart. Finally, I gave up.

If we put off killing Chucky for beef until next winter, I’m sure we’d get more out of it. He’s got the frame to grow quite a bit more, but, I don’t want to keep feeding him for another year. So, his time is coming soon. Dad, Danny, and I will do the job. Mom and Anne will help with the processing, too. We got fewer deer this year than usual, but with the addition of the beef from Chucky, we’ll have enough meat for the coming year.

We don’t buy and eat conventionally raised and processed meat from the store. The way animals are treated and raised and what they are fed and injected with in order to provide that unnaturally-colored meat in the supermarket is horrible. I don’t want to consume it, let alone support the industry and its practices.

I want to know how my meat is raised. I want the animal from which it comes to live a good live, eating good food, and to not be filled with antibiotics and hormones. A cow is not meant to eat a diet of corn and corn products; it is a grass eater. Chucky has eaten grass and hay his whole life; he has lived naturally. The meat we get from him will be healthful and will have been gotten in an ethical, humane fashion. And, apart from some labor and a little fuel and string for making bales of hay to feed him, it’s free meat. In my book, that’s good.

Hunting with my boys

We had two weeks of rifle season here in November. I did not see any deer. Dad saw some three different times, but, alas, he didn’t harvest any of them. Even though we didn’t get any deer (actually, I got a small one with the van the week before rifle season), it was still enjoyable to spend several hours in the woods or in the deer blind.

The boys wanted to go hunting with me. So, one morning I woke Malchiah up at 5:00am to go out with me. We walked to the blind in the dark and got situated. Once in place, the idea is to sit still without making noise while watching for deer to come by. Sitting still and quiet for 2.5 hours for a six year old is a pretty big task. Malchiah did admirably well, but he grew bored after the first hour. He laid down on the ground and played with a piece of wire. He did perk up and get excited when a flock of turkeys crossed the creek and began working their way across the field. He encouraged me to shoot them, but I explained that it wasn’t turkey season and that a rifle isn’t the best gun to use for shooting a turkey. After the turkeys went into the woods, we headed back to the house.

Ramiah went out with me that afternoon. Perhaps, sitting still and quiet for that length of time is easier for an eight year old, but he still was fidgety at times. Still, no deer came by during our time in the blind that afternoon. No turkeys either. Ramiah went with me one more afternoon during muzzleloader season. No deer then, either. But, we watched two coyotes walk across the field.

Venison from the deer we shoot and ones that neighbors give to us is the primary meat we eat during the year. This year we have a steer to process, so the limited amount of venison won’t be a problem.

Someday I expect the boys will do much of the hunting to bring home meat for the family.

Lessons from butter

Anne wrote the following in an email to her sister. I thought it was worth sharing:

 
I am working on canning the stuff in my freezer in preparation for going solar. One of the things in my freezer was 15 lbs of butter - mostly from the coop, a pound or so from our farm. Well, I have directions on how to kettle-can butter, and how hard can that be, right? 

I successfully canned 10 lbs of the butter. Of the other 5 lbs, 4 lbs are in jars that haven't sealed and I don't think they're going to, and 1 lb is in the trash can.

I learned some things today:

1) it is better to kettle-can butter working in small batches, otherwise the butter in the pot cools off too much and your jars won't seal.

2) a pot of simmering butter boils over when you have a lid on it. (learned that one twice.)

3) a really good way to fill your house with a lot of smoke is to have two big pots of butter boil over on a wood cookstove.

4) if you pour hot butter into a jar that got too hot while being sterilized in the oven, the jar will break. (resulting in a pound of butter in the trash can.)

5) if you have a pint jar (full of melted butter) break, there is no way you can salvage the butter or the kitchen towel that the jar was sitting on.

6) every homestead kitchen, no matter how frugal, needs paper towels.

7) you CAN survive disastrous canning days - it is not the end of the world, although it sure seems like it.

So, that was my day. Tomorrow I will try again and redo the four lbs that didn't seal. (1 pint jar and 9 half-pints).

Anne :)

Recipe for canning butter

It’s almost winter. . .

There aren’t many dull moments around here. There is down time – sometimes. Sitting down at the computer and composing a blog post got put on the back burner, so to speak, after my last post in July. It’s not that things weren’t happening, it’s just that I didn’t write about them. Part of the reason is that I’ve not actually finalized in my mind what I want to do with this blog. I’m not generally really big on sharing my business with others. Sharing some of it is fine, of course. I realize that others might be interested in what we’re doing here and others might be able to learn from some of our adventures. So, I’ll work on sharing more about what’s going on.

 

Maybe I also ought to get over the notion that a good blog post has photos in it, because if I don’t have pictures, I’m less inclined to write about something. I’ll try to include photos but not let lack of them stop me. Okay?

 

Winter is just around the corner here in our neck of the woods. We’ve had lows in the 20s and even in the lower teens so far, but overall the weather’s been fairly nice. Anne has been canning things from the freezer – meat, butter, broth/stock, green beans, & peaches. I’ve not done much on the house for a while. I’ve had other projects and class work. Thankfully, the work on my classes is just about complete for this semester.

I spent time in the woods waiting and hoping for a deer to wander by so that I could bring home some meat. The deer didn’t cooperate though. This week is muzzleloader season. So, maybe we’ll get one. If we don’t, it’s all right. Chucky Joe has gotten pretty big – probably 900 pounds. We’ll make beef out of him next month. He would get quite a bit larger if we let him go until next year, but I’m not planning on waiting. It will cut down on hay consumption to only feed two cows and a calf (and a horse).

I’ll endeavor to share some details about what’s been going on here since summer in some future posts soon.

Life’s too short to drink bad coffee

A nice, fresh, hot cup of flavorful coffee. For some people, it’s a prerequisite for a good day; they can’t get going without their morning cup of joe. I enjoy a good cup of coffee, but it’s got to be good, otherwise it just isn’t worth drinking.

In the year 2000, I started roasting my own coffee. Prior to that, I purchased whole beans and ground them myself – a definite improvement over coffee that comes in a can. Buying green coffee beans and roasting them yourself is the next step in the journey toward the ultimate cup of coffee. There are some excellent online resources for purchasing green coffee beans: Sweet Maria’s or Coffee Bean Corral are a couple I’ve ordered from. 
   
One of the advantages of roasting your own coffee is the level of roast that you can achieve. It’s in your power to decide whether you want a full-city roast or a french roast or whatever. The different levels of roast bring out different flavors in the coffee. Another advantage is the many varieties of coffee beans available to you. I enjoy exploring the differences between South American, Indian, or African coffees (and the differences within regions). The flavor, though, is the most important advantage. Freshly roasted and freshly ground, the coffee tastes much better. Life is too short to drink bad coffee; you’ve got to make it good.

I roast my coffee in an old hot air popcorn popper. I’ve actually been using the same one for the last eight or nine years. My mom gave it to me because she wasn’t using it. It still works great, although it looks like I’ve been using it for eight or nine years. I discovered early on that I get better roasting results when I place the popper inside a bucket during the roasting process. This helps to make sure the hot air is hot enough. If it isn’t quite hot enough, the beans will not fully roast (they have to reach about 400 degrees internal temperature). With the popper in a bucket, the air coming into the popper is preheated.

There is a fair bit of smoke associated with roasting coffee beans. I roast mine in the garage. The smell of the smoke is pleasant to me, but not everyone wants to smell it in the house for several hours after roasting.

After roasting, I place the beans in a wire strainer. This allows them to cool more quickly than putting them in something the air cannot pass through. They come out of the roaster quite hot. Generally, the flavor from the beans will improve if they’re allowed to age or mellow for several hours after roasting, but it’s not necessary to wait. They make great coffee immediately after roasting (I don’t always want to wait).

 

I roast a handful of beans at a time. That’s about as many as the popper can handle. It’s also sufficient for several cups of coffee. The fresher the roast, the better the coffee. Roasted coffee will begin to lose some of its flavor as it gets older, after a week or so, through the process of oxidation.

My newest coffee maker is an Aeropress. It makes some really great coffee. I purchased it after reading the reviews on Amazon. So far, it has lived up to all of my expectations. It makes a flavorful, full-bodied cup of coffee in a very little time, and clean up is simple and easy.




My process for making coffee with the Aeropress is:

1.  Grind roasted coffee beans (one tablespoon for one cup of coffee – fine grind)2.  Heat water to approximately 180 degrees (in a teapot)
3.  Put grounds in Aeropress
4.  Add hot water (to the 2 or 3 mark on the Aeropress)
5.  Stir for about 10 seconds
6.  Press the plunger down to force the coffee through the grounds (takes about 20 seconds)
7.  Add fresh cream (a couple spoons full)
8.  Add more hot water to fill the cup
9.  Stir
10. Enjoy!

I don’t find a need to use more than one scoop of beans per cup of coffee. I like my coffee fairly strong, and this amount seems to achieve my desired ends. Some people make espresso with the Aeropress, but I’ve not tried that yet. I’ve also used the same filter for several cups of coffee. I just rinse it outwards and let it dry so it’ll be ready for the next time. Works fine.

Some people don’t like coffee. I can understand that based upon some coffee I’ve tasted (and did not drink). But I find that when it tastes like it should (meaning, good), the flavor is enough to make me anticipate the next cup. I’m already looking forward to my next cup. . . .