Use it up. . . . or do without

I read an interesting article yesterday about how warehouse clubs like Sam's Club and Costco are doing a booming business these days.  People perceive the prices at these stores as being inherently cheaper, even though that may not be the case.  But the point that really struck me, in light of the Great Depression food research I've been doing, was an expert quoted in the article saying that when people buy large quantities of food stuffs, they tend to eat MORE of what they bought rather than conserve it for long term.  This is precisely the reason why I've seldom bought fresh produce at Sam's Club.  The quantities are just too large for two people to consume in a reasonable amount of time without wasting.  Though, with my freezer suddenly no longer filled with meat, I am strongly considering loading up the next time we go and freezing my bounty.  But it's more fun to do that with farmer's market purchases and better for the farmer and the environment too.  :=D

Back in the days before World War II, pre mixed boxes for baked goods were pretty much unheard of.  Women either baked completely from scratch or had their own pre-mixes in jars or bins ready when they needed them.  The mixes had flour, leavening, dry flavorings, and shortening in them and only needed to be mixed with water or milk, eggs if necessary, and liquid flavors like lemon or vanilla.  I've become a huge fan of these mixes after stumbling across the list posted at Grandma's Pantry.  

I have the brownie and cornbread mixes in my cupboard and have used each successfully several times.  The brownies are tender, moist, and impressively chocolate-ly.  The cornbread is moist and dense but relatively bland, which I improved by adding honey along with the eggs and milk.  In the next couple weeks, I'm going to also make up the basic cake mix, pie crust, and hot chocolate mix.  I suspect the later will want the addition of non dairy creamer to more closely mimic commercial hot cocoa mixes but if one doesn't mind a "thin" tasting hot cocoa, this mix looks pretty much the same as what my mom used to make up by the half gallon jar.

As for storage, the best option would be glass gallon jars.  If you don't have many lying around, having ransacked your home for recyclables, I've had great results with washing out gallon milk jugs and filling them with dry goods.  The jug does need to be completely dry, of course, and I found filling them easiest with the use of a paper cone to funnel the mix in.  Most of the mixes mentioned here can be stored for three to six months (you use shelf stable shortening like Crisco) in a cool dark place, like the back of a cupboard.

Use it up, wear it out, make it work or do without

Such was the philosophy of our predecessors who lived through the years of the Great Depression.

In light of the increases in basic cost of living expenses, Ba'al and I have made some radical changes to the way we shop for food.  We buy nearly all of our fresh vegetables at farmer's markets.  I freeze about half of what we buy for future use and present the rest as creatively as possible for as many days as possible.  Most of our cans and dry goods, we buy at a local "scratch and dent" grocery.  You can't be the sort of cook who makes the same seven meals every week if you want to shop successfully at a discount grocery but if you're somewhat flexible and creative in your cooking, you can save a ton of money at these stores.  For specialty ingredients, we go to Whole Foods or a local natural food store called Mountain Mama.  I do buy some bulk items at Wal Mart or Sam's Club but there are only a few select items I buy there now.

Notice I haven't said anything about meat yet.  That's because we have reduced our consumption of animal protein to twice a week.  Yup, just two meals a week include poultry or red meat.  This is a HUGE change for my red meat loving husband but we've committed ourselves to eating smaller amounts of higher quality meat instead of animal protein nearly every night of the week.  In addition to eating less, we've also committed to buying kosher meat.  It's more expensive but more in line with our religious beliefs.  As a result, we're eating more creatively.  We had Doro Wat for our Shabbat dinner last night and leftovers of that tonight with a tomato flower salad.  Tomorrow, we're having eggplant parmesan with eggplants I bought fresh off the farm on Thursday.

Lunch the past three days has been soup.  It started as a pasta and bouillon soup on Wednesday.  Thursday, I added farm fresh veggies.  We had the same thing yesterday.  After dinner last night, I added our cucumber and tomato salad leftovers to the soup and served that for lunch today.  By the time Ba'al had his mid-afternoon snack, the pot was, at last, empty.  I love never ending soup pots!  They make lunch so much easier.

The challah (egg bread) made for dinner last night has been snacks all day today and will be breakfast tomorrow, served with cream gravy.

I have become VERY conscious of using everything I make and not letting anything go to waste.  With food rapidly becoming more expensive every time we shop, it's important to use every useable scrap.

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In that vein, I've started a braided rag rug.  It's material is old sheets and things I have lying around.  My sister is also sending me some similar weight materials she bought but has no use for.  I could donate the sheets or Freecycle them but I desperately need area rugs and making my own is better than buying them.

Recycling glass

We saw a really cool product on an HGTV program tonight.  On the show, they used it to cheaply cover up old tile without adding to landfill waste.  We're thinking about it as original coverings in one or more bathrooms:  Recycled glass tile.  Eco Friendly Flooring makes recycled glass tiles ands sheets, they also produce reclaimed wood flooring, cork and bamboo flooring, and recycled metal tiles.  

Crop Management

I've been doing some research about crop management.  I want to grow teff for my hay crop.  Everything I've read says teff is similar to timothy hay, which is really good feed for horses.  Considering the number of horses in our area, that's a great cash crop if we decide not raise many animals ourselves.  However, teff is nitrogen intensive.  It sucks nitrogen out of the soil, just like corn does.  And I've been planning to not grow corn for precisely that reason.  So for a day or so I was starting to wonder if teff was a wise choice.  

Ah, but there's good news.  Amaranth, a seed crop I also want to grow for it's seed (high protein seeds, nutritious leaves) is also a nitrogen fixer.  That is, it puts nitrogen into the soil.  Grown in rotation with teff, amaranth will restore what teff takes out.

And there's more.  I also want to grow quinoa.  Guess what?  Quinoa is also nitrogen intensive.  But I want to grow lots of beans and beans are, yup, nitrogen fixers.  

So it looks like we'll have a five field rotation system.  An N taker, and N fixer, an N taker, an N fixer, and one lying fallow every year.  Giving one field off every year also helps the land recover from the demands of nitrogen takers.  The fallow field I'll turn out my nurse cows on because they can make enough milk to feed babies on rough forage.  

Grey Water and Rain

This is one of those things that seems so simple and obvious and yet, apparently is the *new* and *experimental* thing to charge big bucks for.  I'm assuming that by the time Ba'al and I are ready to build, the costs will have come down a great deal.

A grey water system is a water reuse system.  Water from showers, sinks, and washing machines drains into a cistern.  The cistern then feeds through a filter and into the toilet.  Once it goes through the toilet, the water then goes into the septic system.  We want to add an extra step by putting the grey water first through a radiant floor system, and then into the toilet.  

Grey water systems save a household 30% on their water bill on average.

We also intend to install a rainwater cistern.  Basically, we'll put barrels under the downspouts and this water will be used to help irrigate the garden.  That alone should save us a great deal of money and be far kinder to the local environment by reducing our reliance on a drilled well.

Dairy Girl, Part Deux

I stand corrected.  I got a couple of my facts wrong yesterday.  I wrote that Holsteins in commercial dairy operations produce for around 10 years.  The reality is that this Holstein is lucky to produce for FOUR years.  It is cows in smaller, less aggressive dairy operations that produce for ten to twelve years.

We visited Larga Vista Farm today, near Pueblo, CO today.  They have a cow share program going that allows owners of shares in their cows to receive raw milk.  Basically, in most states, it is illegal to sell milk that has not been pasteurized.  However, if I buy a share of a cow and pay room and board fees for the care and upkeep of my cow, then I am entitled to receive the output of that cow, milk, as a raw product.  Having gotten my start in life on fresh milk, I've been wanting to get it again.  There are a number of farms in our area who have share programs in place but most of them do not at present have cow shares available.  I'd be willing to drink goat milk but Ba'al most certainly isn't.  Larga Vista is the only farm within drivable distance that has cow shares available at the moment.

One of the things I very much appreciate about the operation Kim and Doug run is that they don't put the calves on milk replacer after three days of life.  Instead, they separate mom from calf and put the calf with a cow in their nurse herd.  They don't milk any of the cows in the nurse herd; the job of those cows is to be wet nurses to the calves for five or six months.  I think this is awesome!  When I get my Dexters, I'm going to do the same thing.

The milking herd is Gurnsey and Gurnsey mix animals; relatively small but put out a high volume of milk with lots of milk fat.  The average animal in their herd produces 5% milk fat, roughly double that of cows in commercial operations.  The milking herd receives no grain.  They are on pasture land, hay, and a milking time treat of dry molasses.  The result is about three or four inches of cream at the top of the jarred milk and said cream is golden yellow.  

It costs $40 to buy a share and $34 per share in room and board per month year around.  We're going back down in a couple weeks to sign our contract and get started.  In the meantime, I need to find a butter churn.

Dairy Girl

Once upon a time, I had a boyfriend/unofficial fiance who lived in Southern California.  He turned out to be an abusive bastard and I eventually left him for Ba'al.  But while we lived together, his friends quickly decided to call me Cheese or Dairy Girl.  He and his friends were all lactose intolerant to one degree or another; of the entire group, I was the only one who regularly consumed milk and with great relish.

I am a farm girl.  I lived on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin until I was almost eight years old.  I vividly remember going out the the barn before bed for a before bed snack of milk no more than five minutes removed from the cow.  Problem is, most dairy cows are engineered to do nothing more than produce enormous amounts of milk for a relatively short number of years.  The average Holstein (the black and white cows that are the primary provider of milk in this country) only produces for about ten years.  Some smaller breeds, like Gurseys, Jerseys, and American Shorthorns live longer, produce richer milk, but need fairly rich forage to do so.  Colorado has anything but rich pasture land for cows of this nature.  

Our dreams of a self-sustaining farm actually got their start a year or so ago when we learned about the Dexter breed.  Dexters are rare and endangered and are classified as a miniature breed.  Most stand no more than four feet tall at the shoulder.  Most are red in color although we've seen some that are black and white.  They produce a large amount of milk relative to their size (around 10 gallons a day) and can do so on poor, scrubby forage.  They don't need grain (unlike Holsteins) to produce well.  They are also a duel-purpose breed.  They can be used for meat as well as milk.  Where most breeds, in our sort of climate need an acre per animal, Dexters can flourish on about a half acre each.  So they pretty much seem to be the ideal breed for us.  

We also want sheep.  We think we're going to raise Navajo-Churros; a breed native to the American Southwest.  As with many breeds that are now rare or endangered, NC's are duel purpose.  They turn out six pounds of wool per animal or more, they fill out well for low fat meat production, and the ewes are good milk producers.  The ewes also give birth easily with little intervention and are generally good mothers.  They tend to produce twins or triplets which helps us build a herd and make some money selling lambs to other farms.

Now any farm that has cows and sheep needs a good herding dog.  And we've got one picked out.  We want a Canaan Dog.  They are from Israel, developed from the wild dogs native to that region.  They're medium size, tough and hardy, and bred to herd, being loyal and protective.  They excel in field competition.  Ba'al wants to do the training since he would like to show the dog in herding and field competitions.