Local farm

There's a rather cool farm not too far from us, in Sweet Home. It's name is Sweet Home Farms. I met the owners, Carla Green and Mike Polen (not the famous guy with the similar name) at a food event earlier this year (she got the door prize of chocolates that I was eyeing, but I'm happy with the chicken butchering certificate). They are Salatin-ites who work a day job from home and are overworked. They remind me a lot of us (but much more serious about the farming). They even have an English Shepherd dog.

I was trying to buy a half a lamb a few weeks back and had trouble with their website, and didn't understand their pricing. I know how hard it is, and they are trying to make a profit... but with the confusion and delay means I got sucked into other things, by now they presumably have butchered and the opportunity has gone by.

They also sell by the piece but I CANNOT find their website using google. So just so I can find it again, it is sweethomefarms.com. It sure seems like if you can't be googled, you don't really exist, maybe this link will help them.

Quick update

We're coming up on living here a year, and often think about what a lot we've got done. It's too much to catalog now, but some updates, so I don't forget when we got the first green beans, the way I've forgotten just when the first blueberries showed up.

I'm enjoying the greenhouse very much; though ceiling painting is no fun (heat rises!). The plants are thriving in the greenhouse, I'll be happen when painting is done and they can move into the final locations. I found a tiny little tree frog at eye level in the melon plant, which was a treat. Alas, spider mites on the kiwi.

Of the two roosters that showed up in place of the pullets we ordered, one leaked out of a fence, found by Sophie, and died a week later from the injuries. We gave the other to the Hess's (who gave us in return some very delicious blueberries). 12 cornish cross went to Scio for butchering, which went smoothly. We have six cornish left, which we'll butcher ourselves with the Hess's. The 5 turkeys have a ways to go yet. These guys are stuck in the barn stall until we get fencing.... which had to wait until the leftover construction dirt pile was moved... which just happened. So, progress, but unhappy poultry meanwhile. I bring them dandelions and sow thistles, since they've gone through the kale and collard bolts.

We had our first pickings of green beans this week, they have been delicious. I've only seen two cucumber beetles so far, but the second one got away so we're doommed :-). I check tomatoes frequently but nothing has ripened yet. The peppers look small but we do have some eating size jalapenos. Potatoes have started to die back, they potatoes look great. The cucumbers, squash, and melon plants look good. The corn has just barely started to tassle up. We made a second planting of corn, a bit late on July 20, but we will see. Onions are finally getting large. The garlic, which all sprouted in the ground in spring, has been depressing and I've tried to ignore it. Starting to feel the pressure to get ready for the fall/winter garden; need dirt. We haven't had rain for some weeks, the ground surface is pretty dry, the grass is still green. Keeping things watered has been easy (well, with the irrigiation in...). We haven't yet watered the orchard, though I exect to soon; all the black plastic over the grass must be helping a lot.

The new kittens, Greta and Sundance, are starting to adjust. Greta is much braver and will stick around when we are outside, but we rarely glimpse Sundance. Greta actually came up behind the barn yesterday where we were watching turkey TV, in spite of Sophie being with us. Greta followed Buddy and sat down in the dirt along with the other cats and dog. I think she was hungry. Buddy likes the kittens (Greta, anyway), but KitCat has not been himself since they arrived; he's stayed away for long periods and is grumpy when he's around. He hisses at the kittens, if you pick him up, or sometimes when just walking along. But sometimes he comes and sits on your lap, so we hope he'll eventually adjust. Sophie thinks Greta is a squirrel and behaves accordingly. The kittens are very, very cute (well, the hostile expression always on Sundance's face isn't that cute).

Moving gap

It's been a long time since I posted. We moved! 200 miles north, to the cool, moist Willamette valley. Moving a farm is a horrific task, though we sold off the stock and only took a few chickens (besides the dog and cats). But we did bring hayfeeders, rolls of fencing, water tanks, and a small greenhouse with us, we didn't exactly move light.

Starting over again in a new place is not easy; there was nothing here, we've had to put in a garden, fruit trees, and build a barn, and still have some fencing to do. Relying on store-bought food has been challenging. Eating your own food is a pipeline, where you start things at one point, tend them for a while, and eat them much later. But I didn't realize just how long the pipeline is. Some things you get pretty soon - we've had kale and eggs from an early point of living here, plus this place has oaks and acorns to experiment with. But it's been over eight months now, the carrots, parnips and potatoes we brought with us are long ago eaten, we just ran out of onions, and there isn't much to replace it. We're buying most of our food, and the freezer looks bare and empty.

The soil here is pretty good, so we've managed to put in pretty extensive beds and should have more to harvest starting maybe in a month or so. Chicks and Poults are growing fast now in the barn, so some meat's in the pipeline, but we won't be harvesting any lamb until next year the earliest. Unexpectedly we might have a couple of cherry-producing cherry trees (there are any number of fruitless flowering cherries, so sad).

This land can certainly be abundant, the grass is shoulder high and the weeds are lush. So some future point we've have food again. Then we'll have to wean ourselves off bananas and barbecued salmon :-)

People eat a lot: producing more and bigger

It's easy to grow some food, and growing your own makes a big impact on your diet, since you can grow the most delectable and interesting parts of your diet; summer tomatoes, basil, cilantro, green beans. Once you go beyond the glamous stars, and start producing the everyday and mundane, and filling in more of the background, every day, every month, then producing your own food means producing volume, storing, and much more cooking. Maybe I'm a gardener first, but I find producing the food is the fun part, while storing and cooking it is a lot of sorting dirty roots, peeling and chopping, standing over a hot canner of boiling water, and cleaning up the mess. And I don't even want to start on how unpleasant it is to "harvest" chickens.

Coming as I do from a normal backgroud, a fairly small family of light eaters, we'd cook meals that would produce leftovers but still quite modest quantities. I imagine familiies with 5 or more childen or teenage boys would have a very different perspective! One of my challenges has been to "think big". For example, my chili recipe made enough for two meals. But it's not that much more work to double it. Last time I ended up making 3 gallons of chili, which was perhaps a little over the top; 11 people barely ate half of it. But it freezes fine, and it's so nice to have some quarts of chili handy. It was a lot of peeling tomatoes, but with so much it's worth it to get the food processor out for the onions and peppers, and the kitchen only had to be cleaned up once.

The same is true of canning. Much of the work of canning is dealing with the hot water bath. I used to end up canning only a couple of quarts of sauce or quarters, a few pints of salsa. But it's much more efficient in kitchen work to can a full canner load (7-9 jars), or two loads. We got the larger 9-quart size canning kettle this year.

Getting more serious about producing food is the other part (the part that comes first, really). You need to have enough reliable if not exciting producers. I most enjoy growing interesting and exotic heirloom tomatoes, but the interesting colors, odd shapes and shy production just don't work as well for processing. It's been a road to learn to grow a bunch of dull but productive plants to get serious tomatoes, enough to make gallons of chili and gallons of salsa. Giving up growing a few of the intesting ones - but how many interesting tomatoes can you really eat? I'm more of a graze-on-cherry-toms-right-from-plant person, myself. The interesting tomatoes go into tomato juice which seems to even things out, I can even put a few green-when-ripe in there.


Lisa’s Vegetarian Chili

2 tablespoons oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 large red or green pepper, chopped
1 lb.Tofu, frozen, thawed, and crumbled
4 cloves garlic, mashed
15oz can tomato sauce
1 lb. Can whole or diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder, or more to taste
A little cayenne flakes, if desired
1 can corn
1 can black beans

Squeeze water out of thawed, crumbled tofu, and mix with part of the chili powder. Add a little liquid from the canned tomatoes and mix well, squeezing to let the spice color the tofu.

Fry onions and peppers in oil until soft and just starting to brown. Add tofu and garlic and cook a few minutes. Add other ingredients and cook for at least an hour, longer is better, until it looks like chili.

Serve over cornbread or rice and garnished with shredded cheese, chopped onions, and chopped jalapenos.

Notes:
- all quantities are general and I use fresh instead of canned when possible.
- Cook beans before adding, and peel and quarter tomatoes, but everything else can go in fresh.
- Using all fresh tomatoes increases cooking time.
- It's important to freeze and thaw the tofu before using, to get the right texture.
- I usually use a lot more chili powder but it depends on the quality of the chili powder you have.

Late in the non-lull of summer

Usually I have a lull in summer, between the time the garden is in and the tomatoes start to ripen. This year that didn't happen; I think knowing there's a lull it gets overcommitted before it starts.

It's mostly been animal activities that took up the slack. We had a batch of meat chickens, scheduled to be full size in the early august part of the summer lull. And they were. We're getting better at butchering, but it's still a lot of work and energy, never mind trying to cram them into the freezer. We were didn't feed them too much, so they ran out and had to wait for morning and evening feed; perhaps as a result, they grew large without any deaths, coming out in the 5.5+ pound range. There are still three left, along with the poor turkey.

We also acquired a ram from Eagle Point, three sheep from Phoenix, and a young buck from another place in Phoenix. Then one of the sheep and the ram turned up with health issues we had to deal with. Calla's been dropping off milk production, worryingly, but Lily did turn out to be pregnant and produced a kid a few days ago.

It was such a late wet spring and cool summer that the tomatoes are still not ripening; usually by this time we're up to our eyeballs... but we just get an occasional one. Very worrying. The peppers also look good but aren't ripe yet. It has been a stellar year for green beans, though; and the spring planted kale is nice looking, which is something I'm not used to in August. The basil that looked so bad in spring is looking fine now... the secret is to plant a lot, since only about a third of the plants survived. I've been better than most years about starting seeds in flats for fall crops; but it's been difficult to find time to plant the seedlings. And the cabbage worms really are hard on tiny little seedlings.

The yellow plums were late, but we got too busy (camping trip!) and missed most of them (the chickens liked them). There are more plums to come, and the apple trees are loaded. The peaches are just gone by, not as many as last year, but Jay and Lindsey enjoyed them a lot (I can't abide the fuzz, myself).