Food Folly

The news these days can be downright depressing with the Wall Street protests, middling economic growth, reports of higher food costs and the birth of the seven billionth baby.  In this season of discontent, we sought refugee by traveling to eastern Washington to fish Lake Roosevelt.  The terrain differs so greatly east of the Cascades that it felt like Arizona more than the Pacific Northwest.

Lake Roosevelt is big.  It was created by the Grand Coulee dam and stretches 150 miles practically to the Canadian border.  The Columbia River is no joke either.  No wonder the federal government is spending billions of dollars trying to reform the Hanford Nuclear reservation given the enormous value of the river to so many.

Occupy Lake Roosevelt

Fishing Lake Roosevelt is not for the faint of heart or the cash poor.  We used a 24 foot aluminum hulled boat with a gigantic inboard motor.  There was a separate engine for trolling along with a downrigger and sonar.  Despite all of technology, we managed to land a solitary rainbow trout, which is probably the most expensive fish ever.  Chalk it up to experience and quality family time.

Meet my catch, Spruce Goose.

 Upon our return home, we resumed the final harvest which included quince and squash.

Quintessential goodness.

 

Our neighborhood apparently was once an apple orchard.  Vestiges of the orchard remain in heirloom varietals scattered over our neighbors' lots.  We were invited to a cider crush where two of our neighbors combined the harvest from roughly five trees.  The total output was close to 25 gallons of the best cider ever.  The juice was not quite as sweet or rich as store bought but the price was right.  More importantly, we were able to add to our locavore karma after the fossil fueled fishing trip.

Cider crush rules

Monster (apple) mash

Next stop, hard cider or a lot of vinegar

Silence of the Lambs

Hoptober

Autumn has arrived in its full glory.  Harvest has been in full swing.  We have been harvesting hops, tomatoes, cucumbers, Asian pears and squash.  Last weekend we collected over five pounds of chanterelles.  Firewood collection has been going full tilt with the daytime temperatures in the sixties and overnight temperatures dropping to the low forties.

Burn baby burn.

The change in season has given impetus for meat curing and meat harvesting. Two weeks ago, we made sopresseta which is curing in the basement.  When visitors come to the farm, I always offer to show them my sausage downstairs and then my wood outside.  Husbands are usually shocked by my audacity but soon fall into jealous envy of my well-hung meat and turgid wood pile.

Dirk Diggler has nothing on me.

Yesterday, we slaughtered the lambs.  Gary and Ginger had become great additions to the place.  We lost Lovey to coyotes at the beginning of August.  We found poor Lovey eviscerated and missing her leg.  Damn coyotes could even bother to eat the choice ribs cuts or loin.  After that we made sure the lambs were penned in at night.  Farming teaches you that hubris or inattentiveness leads to loss.  Some events can be arbitrary and uncontrollable (like summer happening late) but by in large you have to be in constant motion if you want to even attempt to keep up with all that nature throws at you.

The lambs were Katahdin, a hair sheep, bred to survive the tough climate of Maine.  Our lambs, once they got over their scours did a great job in the pasture that had a variety of grasses, brushes, alders, nettles and of course blackberries.  Amazingly the sheep stripped the blackberries of their leaves and ate ivy.  Their palette was not as diverse as goats but we were impressive nonetheless with their overall hardiness and temperament.  In the afternoons they would frolic while eating fallen apples and plums.  They refused to eat Asian pears probably because they were racist.

Tools of the (skinning) trade

We lost two chickens a few days ago to either raccoons or coyotes signaling increasing predator activity.  The slaughter has been planned for sometime but it is nice not having to worry about the lambs or rushing home before dark to be able to find the lambs.  On more than one occasion the lambs were stuck in a bramble or in the rain and would not go to their shed easily.

This time, the slaughter was done by us.  Our goal was to drop both lambs at the same time with a head shot. Ginger went right down but Gary was tougher.  My shot must have been off because he seemed to be still breathing albeit labored.  We drug him out and I cut his throat and he was still moving.  I shot him again and after one great death throe he finally passed.  The scene reminded me of Good Fellas when Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) and stuffs him in his trunk.  After a leisurely dinner with Tommy's mother, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy learn that Billy is in fact not dead and are forced to finish him with swift brutality.  My mob analogy continues with the bodies hanging in the garage with plastic sheeting on the ground.

Slaughter, not  funny like a clown or meant to amuse you.

We might have the lamb livers tonight with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.  Oops, I am mixing my movie metaphors.

Apple of My Eye

Pure joy in the garden of eating.

We have been harvesting the ancient craggy apple tree that we inherited with the property.  Funny, we had no idea what and if it would fruit but I spent the better part of three weekends this winter pruning.  The reward was a bounty of apples that our neighbor calls "Golden Transparent".

The apples range in size from golf balls to softballs covered with a thin yellow skin.  There was no water core but on the larger apples the cores can be hollow and cavernous.  The flesh bruises easily and has a texture of a golden delicious.  The flavor on the greener apples is tart but sweet, like a granny smith only more intense.  Overripe apples can be mushy but still edible in the same way you can devour all of a perfectly ripe pear until only its seeds and stem remain.

How do you like them apples?

All in all, we were happily surprised that our magnificent tree produced such good produce. The tree produced about five large shopping bags of fruit with a lot of fruit still left on the tree, out of reach of our climbing and ladder efforts.

Being "food industrious" can be oppressive.  You feel as if you must process every piece of fruit even if after peeling and coring some of the smaller apples all you have is a bite. We gave a couple of bags away not wanting to have guilt of wasting food on our souls.  It is better to spread the oppression of being food misers.  

We ate as many ripe apples as we could manage in order to capitalize on our good fortune. After that we set out trying to preserve and store the apples.  The apples represent storage of the sun's energy just as all food does.  Animals are energy batteries in that they convert their feed into flesh. For farmers, being able to preserve or extend the energy saved in plants, fruits or livestock resulted in great inventions such as beer, jam and bacon.  (Yum, that sounds like the start of a good meal.)

The old-timers must have taken great satisfaction staving off starvation through the bleakness of winter with calories that they had grown and processed the summer before.  So when life gives you apples, then make apple sauce (among other goodies).

We added some ripe rose hips to coarsely chopped apples and boiled the essence out of them.  Rose hips incidentally are pretty delicious fresh picked too, almost plum like.

Life through rose hip glasses.  Isn't it grand?

After several hours, the remaining mash was taken off the heat and added to a cheese cloth lined colander where it dripped drop by drop overnight.  Add some sugar and the result was about seven small jars of apple rose hip jelly which tasted like floral honey.

Trade for two tickets to Jerry band?

Some of the apples were chopped and frozen for future fruit pies, more was made into apple sauce and canned.  The remainder was processed into slices and run through the food dehydrator.  We ran several loads and we got three quart baggies.  The kids love them and are chowing them constantly.  If we were in the olden days, we would have starved two weeks after autumn began.  We will have to plant at least ten more apple trees if we are to produce enough for a full year.

Return of the Prodigal Pigs

Bringing home the bacon.

Fat and unctuous meat, just like yo mamma (would have wanted it).

The pigs are back, albeit in the deep chest freezer.  We sold Lenny to two families who decided to have Farmer George process the belly and hams for them at an additional cost.  The bacon made by the butcher turned out great but the curing and smoking took an extra two weeks.  We opted to keep our belly and hams unadulterated.

Lenny and Squiggy's hanging weights were 178 and 158 respectively.  Not bad considering they started at 25 lbs and we had them four months.  That is a lot of pig meat but surprising not as much as you would think especially if you give away a bunch.  We wanted to engender good will with those who helped or tolerated our swine raising.  A pound of flesh, when not given in the Biblical sense, goes a long way with neighbors and friends.

Slow and steady, that's what she said.

The meat has been incredibly tender and flavorful.  By far, the best cuts involve some fat.  We had some of the jowls which were tender and almost nutty when cooked in a red sauce.

The belly and hocks were cured for a week in the refrigerator in kosher salt, pink salt and brown sugar.  After rinsing the meat, it sat in the fridge another two days to form pellicle, then it was cold smoked for five hours.

Stay tuned as the other slab of belly is made into pancetta.

Bacon slabs and smoked hocks.

Peas and Deer

It is July -- the beginning of summer abundance, say all the homesteading and garden books (John Seymour, you lied).  With no spring this year the peas, spinach and other early spring crops are just now starting to produce, or in the case of the spinach reach a mature growth of 1.5 cm and then bolt -- irritating -- resulting in a grand total of half a salad per spinach seed pack, just slightly more expensive than buying fully formed spinach from the grocery store if you don't count the cost of land, water, and labor.

The peas, however, were doing great.  One little 4 x 4 plot of ground where I felt good about our vegetables.  They were tall and vigorous and the children were eating handfuls of peas a day straight off the vines.  These peas are supposed to be allowed to mature and then shelled for the delicious green peas soaked in butter that is a favorite health food (much like fresh green beans cooked in bacon -- another favorite health food).  Then we went on a family road/camping trip for a week.  When I returned, I found the peas suspiciously gone and the top foot of the pea plants shorn off.  Deer!  Thinking I'm smarter than a deer, I wrapped the plot in netting and stuck all the pretty little pea tendrils inside the wrap.  The next day . . . the deer had opened a hole in the netting and eaten another 8 inches off the tops of the peas.  I need a fence, a tall, 8 foot, sturdy, deer proof fence, preferably with razor wire on the top and spring loaded shotgun attached to trip wire on the peas, much like the below delightful garden structure.

Fire and Steel

A couple of days ago we had our propane fireplace insert replaced with a wood burning insert.  It was somewhat cher but we hope we can recoup the costs by heating our house primarily with wood this winter.  Our old house is heated with oil.  The rising cost of diesel combined with the need to refill our propane tank every six weeks made our decision to switch easy.  The guys at Custom Hearth in Poulsbo did a bang-up job.  Thanks fellas.

Does this forty-foot ladder make my ass look big?

The new insert will hold a log up to 24" in length, which is good because that means less chainsawing.  We chose the flush insert over the type that juts out into the room for aesthetic reasons.  The disadvantage to having a flush insert is the loss of some heat that is transmitted through convection.  Fortunately, there is a good blower on this unit that should force the heat into the house.  Who says that style can't have substance?  Judge for yourself.

Jotul Rockland, pride of Norway by way of Maine.

By coincidence, our new massive grill arrived the same day.  The grill is a massive chunk of iron that will be well suited for smoking and grilling when the pigs return.  It remains to be seen if the grill will function as a cold smoker without making any modifications.

Vulcan himself would be proud of the fire-burning appliances that we recently added to the farm.

Brinkmann Limited Edition Trailmaster, not intended for children.

Fabergé egg

After many, many months of waiting, we finally got an egg from our hens.  Every morning for the past month we checked our egg boxes on the outside of the coup only to be sadly disappointed.  Why would the hens mature so much later than the roosters?  Afterall, Thomas has had no problems cockadoodling and raping the hens for the past six-weeks all the while the hens remained ambivalent in exercising their biological imperatives.

Bupkis brought to you by feckless hens.

All that changed yesterday when we discovered the first tiny brown egg buried in straw in the corner of the laying box.  Hurray!  Our first free-range, organic egg.  Now, if we could only sell the egg for $1000.00 to recoup our costs.

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

"Post Mortem Laments" Lament

I am forced to disagree with the lamentation below.  We did not harm Lenny and Squiggy by hiring professional butchers to kill and slaughter them (if you don't count killing them as harm . . .) -- quite the opposite.  Their deaths were instantaneous and so far as is discernible to the human senses they felt no fear, no pain and no stress.  They did not squeal; they were not hauled offsite to be slaughtered some other place.

If we would have tried to kill and butcher them, we could easily have missed the mark and the deaths may not have been as quick.  As for the butchering, I'm pretty sure that if Lenny and Squiggy had a voice they would have been worried about how death comes knocking and not so worried about whether the funeral is open casket or cremation.  Plus we didn't have to buy all the stuff that you need to butcher an animal.  All in all, I think a very successful first attempt at pig raising.

Post-Mortem Laments

The pigs have been gone a week now.  Their squeals and their presence are missed.  Their empty pen remains unchanged like a child's room after she has left for college (only filled with more dung). The pen looks forlorn now.

It is easier now with just the chickens and the lambs but the pigs were the animals that gave us farm-cred.  Everyone has chickens but two fat pigs?  Not where we live.  Everyone who knew of our pig pursuit found it amusing that we would choose to raise an animal that was so visceral.  We received our share of pessimist comments like, "Oh you will grow to love those pigs so much that you will never be able to kill them".

Oh Squiggy, we hardly knew thee.

It is true that we grew to love them.  But our love was not just for their industriousness and their personalities but also because they represented an earnest attempt to raise our own food and by extension an attempt to connect with our most base requirements of existence.  Indeed, when our four-year old witnessed the pigs slaughter he wanted to know why the men were taking the pigs away after they were skinned and gutted.  (Answer: the butchering was done at their shop after at least a day of hanging in a refrigerator).

The men were able to kill, skin, gut and saw in half the two pigs in under an hour.  It was numbing the speed at which the men were able to process Lenny and Squiggy.  All the while, I watched and felt like a useless voyeur.  After all,  these were the same little pigs that we personally selected and raised over four months with nothing but the finest kitchen scraps.

It's just a flesh wound.

We owed it to them, no to ourselves, to take the time and love to kill and butcher them.  Nothing says love like a .22 to the head.  The industrial speed of the slaughter raises the question of whether raising pigs in this manner was only a small step removed from buying flesh at Costco.  The point to raising our own food was not simply to enjoy the fruit of our labor but also to learn and benefit from the process itself.

Going completely off the gird is no mean feat but that was never our goal.  There must be limits to hobby farming lest we start making plans to breed pigs and build a castration shed to barrow our hogs.  It is tough to balance true diy farming with working a job full-time.  Next year, the pigs will get slaughtered by hand and with much love.

Dead Pigs Waddling

The pigs are going to be slaughtered in two days.  After much internal vigorous debate (I was called Pol Pot at one point), we decided to have a butcher do the deed for us.  One option that we considered was to hire a local farmer/butcher to come and teach us how to slaughter and process the pigs.  Advantages to this route included a hands-on experience and scalded pig skin .  I know, pig skin.  I bet your mouth is watering just envisioning all of that lovely chicharrón.

I wanted the skin on so I could try my hand at prosciutto.

Doing the slaughter ourselves would have given a reason to outfit our farm with the tools necessary for the task.  At a minimum, you need a .22 rifle, gambrel, butcher saw and good sharp knives.  If you want to scald your pigs, then some type of water container like an old tub, 55 gallon drum or trough and someway to heat the water.

But why be a minimalist?  Good tools make a big difference.  You might as well treat yourself and get a chain mail apron, two handed cleaver and face paint à la Braveheart.

In the end, it was easier to have Farmer George come out with his mobile slaughter unit.  We wanted the pigs killed on site to avoid unnecessary stress on them.  Poor pigs.  Poor juicy delicious pigs.

"You can take our hams but you can't take our dignity."

Summer loving (Not)

Will any son of Adam or daughter of Eve please kill the White Witch already?  We are almost into June and we have had only one day over 70 degrees.  Yesterday, we spied a formation of geese who I am sure were headed south for the winter.  Our garden is looking pretty sorry notwithstanding the pig manure, weekend spent rototiller and the futile efforts to start seedlings in our basement beginning in February.

The lettuce that we sowed directly into the ground appear to be a bonsai variety.  Will we be able to develop a niche market of miniature and stunted vegetables?  If you like baby vegetables, you'll love our line of The Emperor's New Vegetables.

Lame lettuce over two months old

Our pasture appears to be doing well.  Our three lambs, Lovey, Ginger and Gary, are enjoying the spring grass but it alone is too rich for them.  They have had serious diarrhea which we cured by feeding them alfalfa.  At $15 a bale, raising sheep has not turned out as inexpensive as we had hoped.  The sheep were supposed to eat our grass so we did not have to mow it.  Turns out, the sheep are only interested in certain sections of the pasture.  The pasture looks uneven with patches of flowering grass in some spots and other areas that are closely cropped.  If the sheep do not do a better job of subsisting solely on grass and grounds keeping, we will be forced to eat them in the fall.

All lambs surveyed preferred to eat store bought alfalfa over free grass.

Freeloaders

Chicken Chivalry is Dead

I'm struggling with (not) imposing human morality on the chickens.  I do not like our rooster; he has no sense of chivalry.  Thomas is all of the male characters in Thelma & Louise, absent Harvey Keitel.  But boys will be boys; I must forgive him his Henry VIII ways.  Of course, the other boys we beheaded (perhaps from Tudor inspiration?) and ate for dinner.

Then came the attack.

Thomas can be a real cock.

Four of our hens are a few weeks younger than the rest.  As Sleeping Beauty was endowed by the good fairies with grace, charm, intelligence, beauty and kindness, so have these hens been endowed.  They are lovely of face and feather, kind to one another, never peck or belittle another bird and, in sum, are the essence of sweet, modest, maidenly chicken-ness.  While all the hens are delightful, these four in particular have a certain grace rare among even their chicken sisters.  Last Friday, Thomas, sidled up to one of these Evangelinas.  I could just see him offering her some candy, asking if she wanted to look at a puppy in his van.  Then when I turn my head, I hear a shrieking mmmmkwaaaak!  I spin my head to see Thomas running her down, she yelling "no, no, no" the whole time (or so I interpreted) Thomas flew up on top of her, pinned her down by the head and took advantage.  This was a completely nonconsensual act!  While normally opposed to capital punishment, it may be in order for Thomas.  At a minimum, I'm Martin Luthering  Antioch's rules for appropriate dating behavior on the coop door.  Antioch's Sexual Offense Policy

By the way, still no eggs.

"Pigs, they tend to wiggle while they walk." -Pavement

It was a snowy day in February when we acquired our two little piggies.  We drove all the way to the Key Peninsula to retrieve them.  The family that bred them had the parents on site along with several other piglets and sows from the previous year.  The boar must have been 700 pounds and the mama sow not far behind that.  They were the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

The piglets were kept apart from the adult pigs.  There were three red and two pinks.  The lady who bred the pigs got into the pen with her son in order to try to catch the pigs.  The pen was filled with muck and the smell of poop was powerful.  I thought to myself, "How could these people have such a dirty and dung filled pen?  It might be alright for other people's pigs to live that way but not mine."  Boy was I wrong about that.

The mother and son cornered a piglet but it escaped.  At one point, the son dove for the pig linebacker style, landing violently in the mud.  Eventually, the pigs were caught and dropped into a dog carrier where they proceed to squeal bloody murder the entire hour ride home.  By the time we released them into their pen, they had crapped themselves big time and laying in their filth.

This was our introduction to pig rearing.

Eventually, we grew to love Lenny and Squiggy.  We fed them all of our kitchen scraps including chicken bones and rancid coconut milk.  We rotated their pen every week or so and the pigs rooted up our vegetable patch and manured it.  They saved us a lot of work breaking up the sod.  Not only that, the plants grown in the former pen areas are markedly bigger than those grown in non-pigged areas.

It has been amazing to see how these beasts have grown.  They were twenty-five pounds when we got them and by the time they are slaughtered, they should be well over two-hundred.  Lenny is longer and the boss pig but Squiggy is wider and stockier.  I know that you shouldn't have a favorite pig but Squiggy is by far the better pig.  He has a kind disposition that is quite charming.  It's not that I have serious animus towards Lenny, it's just that Lenny, has on occasion tried to mount Squiggy, who happens to be his brother.

Lenny, would be pig f-er.

Schlepping

I once spent a summer in Berkeley, California landscaping and doing menial construction work.  The man who owned the properties had various piles of detritus that requirred relocation.  At one point, I recall that we moved the same pile from spot A to spot B than later back to spot A.   At the time, I was chafted at his lack of poor organization.  Now I find to my chagrin doing the same on our farm.

Owning a small farm means lots of schlepping.  Schlepping of animals and their feed and water; schlepping of bedding and moving of waste into compost.  When you think about it - most of our day to day activities involve schleping whether it is farm related or otherwise. 

Firewood, it doesn't grow on trees.

Speaking of schlepping, today, I moved a pile of hemlock branches that was sitting on the edge of the garden. I will buck this pile (and the other two piles located randomly about) into useable pieces when I can find a moment.

Schlepping carries a negative connotation.  I truly enjoy working on the farm it so maybe I should rephrase.  Sometimes life is about the journey itself, indeed, it is always worth stopping to smell the roses.

Note: Tractor is life-size.  These are jurassic roses over 50' tall.

My next posting will be comprised entirely of trite and overwrought cliches.

Welcome to our blog.

We are a family of four who recently moved to our dream property.  The house was built in 1937.  It has its faults, such as a lack of insulation, knob and tube wiring, galvanized plumbing and really poor well water.  Despite these warts, what drew us was the fact that the house is the two and half open acres abutting a nature reserve, which is a rarity in my humble opinion.  More importantly, we get full sunlight during the three days the sun is out a year in the Pacific Northwest.

Our goal in moving was to produce as much of our own food as possible.  I admit it's pretty trendy these days, kinda like blogging.  The new ethos of the suburban middle class is trending toward self-sufficiency with young couples trying their hand at farming influenced by the horrors associated with factory meat raising, rising food costs and a desire to feed our children with naturally raised food.  It all sounds pretty groovy but we are not proselytizing.  For our family, smallholding is a welcome distraction from the rigors of our jobs and provides us with a source of ingredients for our other passion of eating well.

This blog serves as our diary for all of the adventures and misadventures in super-small time farming.  There will be at least two contributors, one of us an excellent writer the other not so much.