Food Production-Followup on Food Waste Post

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

I really loved reading a comment from one of my readers.. its worth starting this post with it..

“We have zero food waste as well, there is always something on the farm that will use up what we can’t. It has however, made me very aware of how much work/expense goes into being as self sufficient as we are. I long ago decided that it matters little if I have an entire freezer full of chicken when we average one chicken dinner a month, or two hogs in the freezer when we only go through one….and so on. I like to have a years worth of meat and veggies – two years for salmon and a few other things. We’ve taken to raising only what we think we can consume by the time the next season rolls around. Anything over and above that (as in the case of a steer going into the freezer) goes to my kids right off the bat.
We can’t eat an entire steer in a year. I would love to have goats again, and rabbits, and a bigger greenhouse etc. but ultimately have to remind myself that I don’t ‘need’ that much food. ”

This really hit home for me in a big way.. then a friend replied on this post on facebook and I answered her this comment..

its kinda crazy, on one hand I can produce the food/veggies/meat but in the end I outproduce what we need ourselves but can’t carry the costs needed to get that food out into the inspected stamped local food supply without taking heavy losses on returns.

Its been rolling around in my head for the past hours.  I would like to say that its a strange thing that this has gotten to this point but in truth, I think at least to a point.. this has at least in my country been a choice made by those that DO NOT want local small farmers to be able to successfully make a living in a real way.

I mean its possible, there are folks out there that do make a income on their farms, I am not saying there is not.. and I know that I can grow enough “extra” that I could run a table at the local farmers market, or that I could take my extra’s and make them into “extra” value items like a jar of a jam..  there is plants that can be sold, seeds that can be collected and sold and of course you can sell farm gate meat etc.

But I want to bring it back to that statement..  My land and my own skill set at this current time can overproduce what my own personal family needs and yet with our current system in place, I can’t sell it in a way that does not require enough extra cost output’s laid on us in so many ways due to regulations, that it does not eat up any and all profit.

I have hit this very odd place of needing to scale down or needing to scale up.. I am not the only person to have hit this point. I am seeing other people that I have respect for needing to make a version of this choice as well.   The past few years have seen me scale down due to weather, due to hay shortage, and it saw me move different breeding programs in ways that allowed me to continue moving forward.

This however has me slowly coming to the head space to understand that I am doing to end up scaling down more.. not because I have to.. but because it just makes sense for us at this time to not over produce on our farm.

More garden to a point.. but less breeding programs and less protein production. Such a strange place to be at the moment..

There it is..  So now the question becomes.. what do we REALLY need to produce on the farm and how many critters do we need to make that happen? Stay tuned as we are about to make some BIG(or at least it feels that way to me) changes on our little homestead.

Posted in At the kitchen table | 16 Comments

Food Waste

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

I keep seeing more and more comments, video’s and meme’s on social sites about food waste. Its a huge issue and a great deal of it is truthfully totally out of my hands. I can do my bit by writing letters, asking at the store what the local programs are in regards to food waste and I can send and make called to the local and fed government in regards to working towards programs like in France where all food waste from supermarkets must go to food kitchens that then works its way out to the community and those in need. All good things.

Where I can really have control on food waste is in my own home! or can I? I grow a lot of my own food, and I butcher and process even more of our own food. I am frugal.. or am I?

Hmmm, you see it that last stop food waste video got me thinking about food waste, my own kitchen and my own garden..  So I have amazing lack of amount of food waste.. I mean it.. I really don’t have much if anything in terms of food waste.

That is because I have spent major money to make that happen.. I mean thousands over the years easily have been spent on the cause of me and my farm being able to say.. we have a full 0 mile shed.

In the kitchen, I have 2 9 tray food dryers, I have two 18 pint pressure canners, I have hundreds of dollars worth of canning and processing equipment, I have thousands of dollars worth of jars, and I have the space to store all that. I have at least a thousand dollars invested in my butchering setups and equipment, I have two fridges and four freezers (different sizes but still)

I carry a livestock load in such a way that I always can use up all my extra bits on the farm, the farm cats, dogs and our own personal use only pig and depending the chickens take care of any leftover extra protein that does not get eaten by us. Heck I even use fly buckets to process it down to grubs for the chickens to eat.  When it comes to plants, I feed out all the extras to the flock be it fowl, sheep/goat or be it to the pig.

But the farm runs on feast and famine and so when its feast time, I have to carry enough livestock to makes sure that everything is used and while I would love to tell you that I butcher on time always in order to never carry anything longer.. life does not work like that and then I am buying extra feed of different kinds to carry that livestock till of butcher age.

That all costs more money, money for feed, money for hutches, money for buildings, money for bedding and then time.. o my goodness the time.. time to make all the things above happen.

I am proud of the fact that we grow as much food as we do, I am proud that I have as little waste as I do.. but I am having a real hard think on the frugal end of things.. Would it be better to put more things into compost piles then to increase carry load of critters at certain times of the year?

And what about those that don’t have the funds to put that kind of output in terms of space, time and money? Do they think they are doing something wrong.. most likely not.. most likely they are working hard in their own ways to reduce, reduce their own food waste, reduce their foot print.. reduce what it costs them to eat a healthy meal plan day after day.

I know that is not the case in a lot of ways, I have a girlfriend that spends hundreds of dollars weekly on her family of six.. she spends more on food in a month then most people would spend on their house and car payments combined and she is always talking about the food waste that goes in the green bin.  She says its the stores fault that the food will not hold or the kids fault that they didn’t like the meal she made or that her family does not eat leftovers. (we agree to not talk about certain things otherwise we get a bit grrr at times, but none the less, she considers her family normal and my way of life a bit tilted)

I also know there are all kinds of family that are meet in the middle. however I want to bring it back to those that are trying.. really honestly trying.. I think we forget some time to say it out loud.

Land, Space, time and money were and are being spent all the time to create that 0 mile end result.. and its ok for not everyone to even try and do that..  because a truly frugal person or homestead.. I was there at one time as a single female and I could do a lot of some things but nothing like I do now with a husband that works a full time well paid job that brings in the main household income.

Even for us.. maybe I need to step back and be willing to let a part go.. its not like I can’t compost it.. not everything fodder produced needs to go into the next stream to produce eggs, milk or meat.. some of it could just go into producing compost..

Posted in At the kitchen table | 3 Comments

Dental Care

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

What is it about getting over the age of 40 that suddenly you have to work harder at keeping everything going smoothly? Honestly 40 is not that old and yet at 45. Hubby and I are finding old war wounds starting to ache.

For me, its my bad left leg, the list is way to long, broken bones, cow kicked, fallen though a rotten floor to dangle and a flip off a quad and land on a tree stump. That left leg of mine shows off many a foolish or “WTH just happened moment” of my younger years.  That knee is the worst part of it.. at times it just decides.. no you can’t get down, or no you can’t get back up.. or what do you mean you want me to hold weight.. it just says no..

For my Dear Hubby, its his knees.. As a Geologist that worked in the far north for many season’s, its walking 20 plus km with a backpack of rock samples over rough artic tundra that gives him that knee pain.

However todays post is about dental.. Now I am going to own up to the fact that both hubby and I don’t have the best line up teeth wise gene wise and so we have dealt with different issues over the years..  We are very lucky to have coverage up to a point.  While Canada does have a health care plan. It does not have a basic Dental coverage plan. So when it comes to Dental, you pay out of pocket.

If you are lucky enough to have some form of insurance, you get a percent of what you pay out of pocket back.. Some things are covered nicely at 90 percent, other things much less and many other things have caps on them.. example if you need a screw in tooth, cost will be about 3500 and the average insurance cap (per the info from our dentist is between 1000 and 1500). That’s not even a 50% coverage.

Way back in the day, you paid the difference and the companies billed the insurance and that was that, but over the last number of years so many of the services have flipped it.. now we pay full price, get our paperwork and then have to send it in.. I get it.. they have found a way to pass on having more staff doing this work and given it back to the client to make it happen.

What it means for us though is that we must always upfront the total cost out and then wait.. better for them.. not as nice for us. I have had friends talk about the fact that while they have the coverage, they have to save for months to get the upfront cost raised before being able to do things.

Anyway.. Hubby had a tooth issue very early this week and we got him in and seen late weds, tooth needed to be pulled.. so I have a hubby that is on soft food only with a big old sore spot in his mouth at the moment.  So far the blood clot has formed nicely and we will take it one day at a time.

While they say the first 72 is the most important, it should take two weeks to heal up the first cover over but it takes 8 MONTHS to fully and properly grow back that bone covering in that hole. That means watching and tracking the diet a bit more on makings sure he’s needs are meet to grow new bone.

Given our normal diet, its not to make tweeks but still I will need to make more bone broths and ideally more gells to support that healing process.

What about you? Does your country cover any basic dental? Do you have to have insurance? or is it a pay as you go?

Posted in 31 Day Self Reliance Challange | 11 Comments

Osyter Mushrooms

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

We stopped by the local mushroom growing plant and picked up four pounds of fresh Osyter  Mushrooms.  They were picked fresh while we waited behind the red line.. stunning mushrooms. While some will be eaten fresh cooked, most of them are being sliced and dried for future use.

“Oyster mushrooms contain ergothioneine, a unique antioxidant exclusively produced by fungi, according to a 2010 study led by Penn State food scientist Joy Dubost. The study found that oyster mushrooms have significant antioxidant properties that protect cells in the body. A 3 oz. serving of oyster mushrooms contains 13 milligrams of ergothioneine, and cooking the mushrooms does not reduce this level.

According to a study published in “Food Chemistry,” oyster mushrooms contain significant levels of zinc, iron, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin C, folic acid, niacin, and vitamins B-1 and B-2. The study concluded that consuming oyster mushrooms as part of a healthy diet contributes to recommended nutritional requirements.” Qouted from Living Strong 

These ones are being sliced lengthwise as much as possible, they will be dried out and then used in a few ways.

  • One or two of the dried long pieces will be added to each pint jar of soups to add natural mushroom flavour to it as it cooks.
  • A few of them together will be steeped into a tea that will be drank as a mushroom tea just for their health issues.  We have always eaten a lot of mushrooms in our diet but the cost of them fresh in the regular store has gotten higher and higher and with the droughts we are in, my local mushroom hunting for the kinds that we eat, the pickings are slim this year.
  • This type can be soaked and used as firmer texture in soups, stews or mushroom fried rice style dishes.

Do you grow your own mushroom logs? Do you wild forage for mushrooms on your farm or local woods? Are you finding weather currently having a impact on your finds? Are you changing or modifying things in your meal planning based on the rising costs in the stores or in regards to what the extreme weather patterns have done to your “normal” growing season?

While there is still time to a point that some of my fall mushrooms might fill the larder with dried kinds of winter, I think its much more likely that I will need to use the local mushroom farm to make it happen.

 

Posted in 100 mile diet | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Blueberry Pie

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

This Weekend we picked just shy of 18 pounds of really nice blueberries and that means many bags of blueberries went into the freezer for use though out the coming year. I saved out enough fresh ones for a pie.

I made my basic pie dough recipes that makes enough to make three pies at a time.

I could not wait for it properly cool all the way, had to try a piece while still a touch warm from the oven. If you want a thicker pie filling, (like you get in store, you will want to use a recipe that asks you to cook your fruit with sugar and corn starch) but if you don’t mind that old fashioned bit of sweet juice that runs in a messy way while you eat your pie.. this one is delightful!

Blueberry Pie Recipe

Filling.

  • 4 cups of blueberries
  • 1 tbsp. of flour
  • 1/4th cup of sugar
  • 1/2′ tsp of ground ginger
  • 1/2  tsp of salt

Mix dry and then pour over the blueberries in a large bowl, gently stir them, trying not to break open the berries and coat them all well with the mix and into your prepared pie plate with your bottom pie. There will be some of the dry mix left in the bowl, carefully using a spoon, take it out and evenly sprinkle it over the berries and then pick up your pie and gently shake it a touch side to side to make it head to the bottom of the pie.

Put your top dough on and in my case as I was baking two pies with different fruits so Blueberry is marked huge B on the top

 

 

 

Posted in Baking, pie dough | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Gooseberry Update 2018

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Well, the last of the gooseberry crop has been picked. It was a reasonable year in terms of yield. The main gooseberry patches gave me their average which considering the year is just fine with me.  We were able to keep the area around them mowed a few times which helps but they need a solid clean up.

The area around the bushes need to be trimmed out and removed the top layer of nature grasses and other plants are pushing in to hard and we had to do some hand weeding in the plants which is not the ideal. Once that is pulled back, then the plants need a good layer of well done horse manure compost put down and when the time is right, I need to trim out a solid 1/3rd of the branches out and get better air flow in the bigger older plants.

I got a new Gooseberry bush two years ago and it did nothing last year but grow.. given it was a tiny little thing, that was fine with me.. but this year it did give a few fruit.. the size of these fruits was huge.

They are the size of grapes where as my normal ones which seem really small next to them are about the size of your thumb nail. I will very interested to see if they will continue to as large next year when hopefully they will produce a larger crop of berries. I need to trim this plant in regards to shaping and I am going to see if I can root out the trimmings and make a few more of these plants.

I love that gooseberries have enough nature pectin in them that you can just juice the berries, add your sugar, bring to boil and jar up and do a ten min water bath session and it will set up all on its own.

Do you grow gooseberries? Do you make Jelly or syrup with them? Do you ever take the time to top and tail them to use them in baking, I have to admit that I almost never do, make a thicker no skin jam or jelly or syrup are so much easier to do.  What is your favorite way to use them? What size is your gooseberries?

 

Posted in Garden harvest | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Bee Watering Station

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

So easy to make and so helpful to our native bees and other pollinating busy buzz. I do not have honey bees but I do have a lot of different native bees on the farm. This drought means that I am wanting to add in a few extra water station to the different areas on the farm.  Without the bee’s, I will have far less produce coming in.

I picked up a plate from my second hand shop and at the same place I found some nice blue glass bits to mix into a base of blue-grey gravel. Its important to give them a nice mixed surface to land on and drink off.

So lets talk a little bit more about why I choose blue.. most of the books will tell you that for the native bee’s yellow is their favorite color in plants (and yellow is important) but Blue is pretty special to them. Its not a common color in plants, however a lot of plants have a blue sheen to them that helps draw the bees to them.

To read lot more here is the link..

https://www.beeculture.com/bees-see-matters/

However here is the qoute that is the most important that I would like to share from their site.

Like us, bees are trichromatic. That means they have three photoreceptors within the eye and base their color combinations on those three colors. Humans base their color combinations on red, blue and green, while bees base their colors on ultraviolet light, blue and green. This is the reason why bees can’t see the color red. They don’t have a photoreceptor for it. They can, however, see reddish wavelengths, such as yellow and orange. They can also see blue-green, blue, violet, and “bee’s purple.” Bee’s purple is a combination of yellow and ultraviolet light. That’s why humans can’t see it. The most likely colors to attract bees, according to scientists, are purple, violet and blue.

Posted in gardens, native bees | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Raspberry Spice Cake Recipe

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

 

Raspberry Spice Cake

  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 1/2 Cup of Butter
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tbsp. of molasses
  • 1 cup whole milk (sheep in my case)
  • 2 cups of raspberries (This will give a very moist cake, if you want drier, use half a cup less)
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp all spice
  • 1 tbsp. Baking Powder

Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the eggs, then add milk mix together. Add all dry on top and mix the batter well. Then gently fold in the raspberries and into a greased pan (9 by 13) or muffin tins and bake at 350 till golden brown and knife comes out cleanly (yes the fruit is going to sink in the way I did this) if you want more on toppish, mix half in the battery and carefully drop the other half on top and half push into the batter and then bake.

 

 

Posted in 100 mile diet, Baking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Making homemade wool tags for the garden

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Got Sheep? Yes, lovely hair sheep that I adore.. they are my favorites, so easy to work with. Got Wool Sheep? Why yes I do have two wool sheep in my wee flock..  but I don’t use their wool for spinning or felting or anything else that other folks use wool for what is currently considered a normal way.

Nope, I have a wool sheep so that I can use that wool in my gardens.. Don’t worry you can buy them in stores now all prepped and ready to go 🙂 However if you homestead or have sheep and you garden..  This post is going to interest you.. Don’t worry for the rest of you lovely gardeners. A) if you have a friend with sheep, I know they will be willing to give you some of the tag wool 🙂 if you ask. B) they now sell wool tags all cleaned and work done for you in the stores. Give them a try!

http://njsheep.net/wool-pellets-for-gardening-marketing-raw-wool/

Here is a little video I have done for you, its so easy to make these at home for smaller numbers and if you visit while working on them, you can make larger amounts for different rows in the garden.

 

I promised in the video that I would show a few more photos on the cutting and rolling as I could not do it while holding the camera in my hand.. its pretty easy to figure it out but here they are anyway.

So you do need to pull your wool into a nice loose line before cutting otherwise your balls are harder to roll and can end up to big.

This is the same line cut into the sizes I like and then below rolled into their balls.

I  have given thought that you could also give these a soak in a live active bit of water mixed with your best active compost pile before putting them into pots. That way if you bought soil, you could put your wool tags (or togs) balls in and also give your soil a massive boost in microbes at the same time.. Something for me to try and report back on 🙂

Have your used Water Wise Wool Pellets in your gardens? There is some great studies on this product done in Europe and it appears to be catching on in England (as a renewal resource) and its up and coming in the states.

Its a possible small yield revenue stream for homesteaders! Many of us sell our rabbit poo or other composts to local gardeners. If you have sheep, consider adding in selling the sheared an bagged raw wool with instructions as a added on item at the same time.

Up to you on if you have time to make balls to sell, myself personally, I can see ideally just selling the wool and having them do their own making. Ideal for those that are doing small raised beds and for mainly gardening in pots.

Posted in Garden | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Tree Hay and cleaning up pastures

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

I am still faithfully cutting and feeding out tree hay to the flock, they seem to really like it.. they come running when called an they will clean it all up, by tomorrow all the leaves and all the thin green tips of wood will be eaten off, leaving me with thin fire starting branches and large branches that are ready to be cut into small fire logs for stacking.

The still in milk ewe’s are without a doubt the ones that eat the longest at a time, they seem to really! like it. The lambs are more a graze or nibble.. the goat kids however are also crazy about it.. they really enjoy it!

On the flip side in the newly fenced off pasture (now called the Front Pasture) I have kept all critters out of it for the past weeks and intend to keep it critter free till mid aug at which point, it will be opened up for the sheep flock only as it will be my fall finishing lambs and flushing ewe’s. Then everyone is being pulled off it and I will be working it and re-seeding it heavily for stripe grazing next year with hot line fencing.

However this weekend we needed to get rid of the Canadian Thistle that was just ready to start blooming, they were cut down and allowed to dry in this crazy heat for two days and then they were done in a slow burn in our burning pit.  Every single other county around me has fire bans on and the truth is, we should as well.. but we don’t!  I got a nice started with some of the branches that came down in a storm and did not get feed to the critters (such a waste of greens) and once it got going, I dumped the somewhat dried thistle on top of it to smolder itself down.

None the less I took great care, I did it in smaller slower batches and used the hose to wet the area down around it just to be on the safe side. It made me hmm in regards to anything that could “ash” upwards in regards to possible spread.. its just way to dry to mess with..

It meant that I got to spend a couple hours in the shade keeping a eye on this, glad the job is done now as I did not feel I could leave it even for a few minutes at a time. I did do chores and cleaned out the rabbit hutches an raked up some of their poo as well.

The next chore that I must do in this pasture is to take the pitch fork and the wheel barrel and pick up all the horse poo’s and haul them out and stack them in a compost pile for future garden use. The sheep and goat can stay there and I will spread out some mixed finished compost in certain area’s of the pasture as I want to feed the whole pasture. I will look forward to seeing how it will do with different seeding out.

The chore after that is that there is a old feed area that now is in effect a five year old compost pile and I have a lot of compost-soil blend there that I need to dig out and move for garden use in the food forest area and then once I get to soil, I want to put it out a mix of fodder radish and beets into that area on the inside fence line. and on the outside of the new fence line, I am working that area to be a new garden area for next year.. my planned corn garden.

Its another hot one and we are still waiting on rain..  I am pleased and surprised how green our land is compared to those around us.. There are hay fields that have been cut and they are so brown, the lawns in town are brown as far as the eye can see. Other folks gardens are struggling more then our. I think we are holding at the moment due to the cover crops, the intercropping and a whole lot of compost in the soils. Still we are saving grey water from the house and using it to water in new transplants in our soft and hard fruit tree’s and bushes. I do not want to have those new guys die off due to our drought.

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