We are starting to see spring around the corner. Sure, it’s 30 degrees outside now….but the sun was out today and it warmed up enough to send the kids outside in a coat to run around. We’ve had a long, cold winter and we are very ready to thaw out a bit.
I’ve been aching to start gardening. We’ve been pouring over seed catalogs. We have a lot of seeds already that we saved from our plants last year, but it is always nice to look at all the nice pretty pictures in the seed catalogs. I love all the variety that the heirloom seeds offer. Green stripe tomatoes, yellow and red stripe tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, orange tomatoes, purple sweet peppers, chocolate peppers…. all amazing fruits and vegetables that God created for us to enjoy that are rarely, if ever, seen in a grocery store.
Here’s some of our garden load from last year’s garden. We grew several different varieties of tomatoes. We not only enjoyed the wonderful taste of heirloom, home grown garden tomatoes, but we all enjoyed watching our tomatoes grow and marveled at the diversity and uniqueness of these rarely seen garden varieties. By the way…Wow, look at that green carpet of grass! We’re looking forward to seeing that again!
I just found out about this great conference going on in our backyard this weekend, March 5 -6 by TOGA (Tennessee Organic Growers Association). (Thanks Donna for letting me know!!!!)
It sounds like a wonderful conference if you are in the area. Saturday has a full line up of great speakers. Joel Salatin is on the line up several times with talks on: Marketing, Local Food and Salad Bar Beef. The Barefoot Farmer, Jeff Poppen, is also scheduled to be there and speak.
Cost is $50 for just Saturday as the Friday Farm Day Tours are sold out.
How often do you get to see an albino deer in the wild? Depending on where you find the statistics on the web, you have somewhere between 1 and a million to 1 and 100,000 chance that you will see one.
But the real question is how often will you actually have a camera with you when you see one? I couldn’t find statistics for that one! But what ever the odds are, we were blessed with both of these “against all odds” events a few years ago. These were taken on Hwy 46 between Grassland and Leipers Fork, just south of the Harpeth River.
I originally posted them on the Vision Tennessee site, which has since been removed, so I thought I’d keep a copy of them posted here.
Of course, this is a good opportunity for a redneck test. When you see this picture do you admire the incredible diversity of creation or do you say to yourself, “hum – bet that would make a good roast”? Admittedly, I had an internal conflict. First I said “wow that is an incredible creature”, then I lamented not having my gun… then I realized I had my camera. I quickly snapped these shots and turned the truck around and pulled into the driveway just above the rise seen in the picture below.
As you can tell from the different shots, I was able to spend a few moments watching them. Once I was in the driveway I was trying to figure out the best way to get close to them. As I was headed down one side of a rock wall the three deer headed up the other side. I heard one of them break a branch or make some noise and quickly ran back up towards the edge of the driveway to see the two brown deer dart across the other side of the road. The white one was scared by the car and circled back within 20 feet of me. Unfortunately the shot was washed out from the reflection of the sun either in the guardrail or the stopped car – I forget.
Either way, it made for a fun mini adventure on the way into town and some pretty cool pictures to look at. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
One of the reasons we moved to the farm was in search of a slower paced life that allowed time for “one another”. It was seeking meaningful relationships and finding the time to invest in other people’s lives. In short it was looking for community. Not the old Cheers theme of community, you know the one, “Sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name” – it was more than that. It was to know, more than to be known. It was to serve but at the same time having the stability and certainty that others would also serve you in a time of need.
As I compared those goals that we had as a family to the stated goals of the “Slow Food” movement web site; Slow Food USA, I found myself in substantial agreement with many of the ideas they put forward. Check out the Slow Food Manifesto:
Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.
We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.
To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.
A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.
May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.
Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.
Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.
In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer.
That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it. And what better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects?
Slow Food guarantees a better future.
Slow Food is an idea that needs plenty of qualified supporters who can help turn this (slow) motion into an international movement, with the little snail as its symbol.
That is a pretty fair statement of the conditions of the modern man both churched and un-churched as they say. But in reading this I was faced with several questions. Isn’t that what we lost when the South was conquered by the Union? Isn’t fast food the crowning symbol of progress – the promised utopia the industrialist, forced upon a once contented slow paced Southern people? Is the manifesto really “progressive” or is it merely recognizing some truth prophesied of long ago. As I processed these thoughts I reached for my copy of “I’ll Take My Stand“. I’ll give you a quote from the introduction by Louis D. Rubin, JR. which I think speaks to the heart of the fast food, fast life issue many are seeking to overcome today. In 1962 he wrote his first introduction for the second edition:
…the Agrarians were not economist. They were humanist… And the real values they were asserting in 1930 were not those of “material well-being” or of neo-confederate nostalgia, but of thoughtful men who were very much concerned with the erosion of the quality of individual life by forces of industrialization and the uncritical worship of progress as an end in itself….
Humanism, properly speaking, is not an abstract system, but a culture, the whole way in which we live, act, think, and feel. It is a kind of imaginatively balanced life lived out in a definite social tradition. And, in the concrete, we believe that this, the genuine humanism, was rooted in the agrarian life of the older south and of other parts of the country that shared in such a tradition… We can not recover our native humanism by adopting some standard of taste that is critical enough to question the contemporary arts but not critical enough to question the social and economic life which is their ground.
This in a nut shell is where Slow Food will fail. It wants us to pretend to slow down and attend our Slow Food meetings on Tuesday night, but the reality of our age is that all those who do will be at the drive through window for breakfast as they rush off to their city jobs on Wednesday morning. We can’t be critical of our cuisine without recognizing the economy that drives it. It is one thing to call for local food, organic food, or “humane” food; but it is another thing to live in an economy that allows one to pay the farmer for his labors.
I guess the short of it is this; we not only need sustainable farms but we need a sustainable way of life. This global economy consumes us until we are gone and then it sets it’s sights on our children. The Twelve Southerners fromVanderbuilt detailed our departure from a sustainable life and foretold with alarming accuracy the challenges we face today when the work was originally published in 1930. The Twelve Southerners were able to put forward a holistic work examining multiple facets of our culture and the challenges industrialization brought in the areas of art, education, economics, politics, family life and structure, and many more areas that are tied directly to the community we no longer enjoy.
It is certain that our diet has changed, but what is less evident is the changes that take place within a man, his beliefs which make up his faith and practices. To say it simply, the reason we have a hard time finding community today is our priorities have changed. They are not based on our belief in God, but what brings us pleasure in this economy. Or as some have said, it is based on what is good for our “personal peace and affluence”. The real challenge lies ahead. It is one thing to see the challenges, but it is another thing to swim upstream to attempt to make the changes needed to reclaim a sustainable life. Many will fall pray to the allure of money and the wealth this economy can promise. But the answer is not to have more money to invest in making changes. I would bet that Slow Food USA has a good fund raising machine. But yet the reality of their lives, even the structure of the organization, works against their stated goals. The answer is to be a people who are not swayed by money, but driven by principles. God places value on family and relationships long before wealth. To finish the quote from Rubin:
It was not their (the agrarians) assumptions that one first achieved material well-being, then used it to further “the more spiritual side of a good, full and happy life”; on the contrary, they insisted that any attempt to divorce economics and labor from “the more spiritual side” of one’s life brutalized the labor and cheapened the humanity.
Let us not sell our soul to a faceless nameless corporate economy that is always promising morebetterfaster of what ever it is we think we need. This new economy, this idea of slow food or eating local produce, is really the old economy, of relationships, time redemption, and of being close to the land that God gave as a gift to sustain our very lives. It’s agrarian at its core and it’s hard work. But, it is worth every moment when you consider the community being developed as we order our lives in a simple honest and just manner.
This report, by Stephanie Dearing, discusses Monsanto’s intent to re-engage in the research and production of GMO wheat:
After Monsanto announced its plan to revisit gm wheat last year, having received the support of an international farmer’s coalition, a worldwide movement opposing the yet-to-be developed grain product is growing…
Monsanto spent under $5 million developing its gm round-up ready wheat, but scrapped the product in 2004 after consumers around the world voiced their opposition to the product…
But last year… Monsanto purchased a biotech facility in Montana specifically for the purpose of developing gm wheat. The company spent $45 million purchasing WestBred.
…Seed companies would obviously benefit from the development of a new commercial product that is accepted by consumers. However, farmers are predicted to be benefactors of a gm wheat that is drought tolerant, because they will not experience the same level of crop losses as they would otherwise. The key is consumer acceptance of gm grains.
These points are taken from a press release from WORC. If you have not looked into the technology behind the GMO “movement” let me recommend a quick view of, “The Future of Food“. When someone tells you that we need GMO seeds for some lame excuse like “our wheat production is down”, you can refer them to this list, or if they are inclined to read the actual report, it can be found here, and more articles are found here. For now, in my best David letterman voice, the Top ten reasons Monsanto should never develop GMO Wheat:
Crop acreage is declining because of changing U.S. agricultural policy and increased production of crops suitable for ethanol and biodiesel production (corn and soybeans), not because of poor wheat production.
Consumer attitudes in the European Union and Japan are not ready for GM wheat,” according to Dr. Blue’s report. “In addition, Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan are leery about importing GM wheat. Major customers of U.S. wheat, particularly the EU and Japan, have labeling and traceability requirements that make it difficult to sell GM wheat.
58% of Europeans are opposed to genetically modified organisms, while 21% support their use.
The wheat export shares for the former Soviet Union (Russia and Ukraine) have gone up from 10% in 2001 to almost 30% in 2008. If the United States approves GM wheat, the EU would buy more wheat from the former Soviet Union.
In 2007/09, 55% of U.S. hard red spring wheat was exported, mostly to countries that label GM food and where consumers can refuse to buy food containing GM ingredients. Only 28% of U.S. exports go to countries that do not label GM products.
In 2007/08, U.S. durum wheat exports to Japan, Taiwan, the EU, and North Africa were 75% of total U.S. durum exports. The high export shares of hard red spring and durum wheat to countries likely to reject or curtail import of GM wheat place these exports at risk.
No GM wheat is near commercial release. Monsanto shelved plans to GM wheat in 2004, and Syngenta recently announced the company was not pursuing GM wheat because of consumer resistance.
Introduction of genetically modified wheat in the United States is a risky proposition
The introduction of GM wheat would not reverse the declining market share of U.S wheat exports, nor would it reverse the downward trend of wheat acres planted.
Wheat buyers in Europe, Japan, and other Asian countries are likely to switch to GM-free wheat from other countries if GM wheat is introduced in this country. As a result, the price of U.S. hard red spring wheat would fall 40%, and the price of durum wheat would drop 57%.
- Due to the high content of flammable oil in orange peel, dried peel makes a great firestarter or kindling
- It seems that cats don’t like the smell of peel, so you can place them around plants where you don’t want cats digging
- Using a “zester”, the top layer of an orange peel can be scraped to produce zest. This can then be used to strong flavor to foods, such as sauces, soups and salads. The zest can be dried overnight and then stored in airtight bottles for future use.
- Dried orange peels can be placed in a cloth bag and placed in closets and cupboards to reduce musty odors
- A puree blend of orange peel and water can be applied to an area to discourage ants from crossing.
- Most insects hate limonene – the oil in the peel. Small piles of zest can be placed around an area to keep it free from flies and mosquitos. A great way to enjoy a picnic without having to use commercial repellents or insecticides!
- To deodorize a garbage disposal unit, throw down a few peels while it’s operating
- Candied orange peels are a tasty treat that seem very simple to make. Plenty of recipes can be found on the Internet.
So the children were right, our dairy goat, Mally, had twins! Finally on Feb. 1st, she gave birth the day after the other goat had her baby! Newborn goats are so cute! She had one doe and one buck who have some very nice Alpine colorings. The momma and babies are called Cou Blanc Alpines which means that they have literally a ”white neck” – white front quarters and black hindquarters with black or gray markings on the head.
Our daughter had a nice surprise out in the pasture yesterday.
One of our goats gave birth to a very cute little mixed nubian alpine doeling, which we weren’t expecting. The boys found the baby and thought it belonged to Mally, the goat who we have been anxiously awaiting to give birth. They ran inside to announce that Mally had her baby! We were all excited and jumped up from the table to go see!
We soon discovered that the baby wasn’t Mally’s and was in fact from one of our other goats — a first time momma.
I’m not complaining. We love the snow in the winter time. It’s just working in it…the frost bitten hands, layering up before chores and what the combination of mud, ice and worker boys do to my back door area. A couple of days ago the down pour started. It blanketed our field and animals within a matter of hours. The boys were hustling to finish up some farm work before the storm hit. They found themselves right in the middle of it.
Night came and brought in ice. The ice covered everything from the trees, to the fences to the animals. I took some pictures around the farm on my morning hike.
All the animals seemed grumpy and unhappy. Some of the cows had cut up their hooves from the ice. The goats were the only ones who didn’t have icicles hanging off them. Goats run for shelter at the first drop of rain or snow, the other animals don’t. The sheep have a nice thick winter coat on them. Our Katahdin sheep are beautiful hair sheep. They do well in the heat as well as the cold.
Some smart chickens were nestled up in warm hay nesting boxes. Others were covered in ice and snow. I was beginning to think that maybe they were frozen to the coop.
While the winter is beautiful, the boys are talking an aweful lot about warmer spring weather!
Feed corn, winter snow and boyhood farm work are beautiful sights! The boys went up to a new feed store that just opened up in town. They bought some bags of corn for $5.75 for a 50 lb bag. They were doing good to get the trailer unloaded and the feed put away in the barn with the down pour of snow we were having. After they unload and stack feed bags, they bolt in the back door wanting hot cocoa. They take the layers of coats and gloves off as I fix them a warm mug of raw milk hot cocoa…something our family loves on cold days like today! I love hearing them talk about how many pounds they lifted and watch them compare muscles. Boyhood farm work is so good for young men!
If we were real agrarians, we would have a corn crib full of corn and hay piled high in our hay loft that we grew in our fields this summer. But we aren’t experienced agrarians yet. We’ve experienced a lot of what not to do. (like the example we give here)
When you start living on a farm, you quickly realize how inadequate your farming efforts really are. It’s good to put your hand to the plow so to speak and start somewhere and be grateful for the work you do get done. However, as spring turns into summer….summer to fall….and fall to winter….the grass disappears, it gets cold and your animals get hungry! A real farmer would plan to store up enough food for the winter. Just like a real farm wife would still have a pantry full of wonderful food stores conveniently stored away for the winter blasts.
We’re grateful for the lessons we are learning on the farm. We’re grateful for the challenge, for the growing and the stretching. We’ve come to understand the completeness and depth of the words provision and preparation. Our 24 hr. Stuff-Mart cultural mindset is completely opposite of the agrarian life where forethought and preparation are vital to survival.
Ideally, we would love to find a resource for buying bulk corn and mixing it ourselves. It’s too cold to think about that now though. We’re collecting the last pieces of firewood and hoping to hold out until spring so we can start over and try preparing for winter again!
I found some other “When It’s Cold Outside” posts I’ve written in the past. Here are just a few. There are a ton more:
It’s funny how the Milk Nazi’s are on the war path against raw milk, but Monsanto gets a free pass. Fox news completely ignored the research and “human health concerns” of rBGH Milk in favor of advertising dollars from Monsanto. This 10 minute clip, from the original reporters, tell the story of how Monsanto attempted to silence the reporters and bury the story. The story tells how Monsanto and the FDA played fast and loose with the facts to make money at the risk of public health. What this also shows is further evidence of the connection between the federal government and the corporate dollar / power which we discussed here.
Here is a ruling that gives a strong precedence to the Cow Share Programs of the world. The Complete Patient had this to say about the verdict,
In the end, the judge determined that cow shares are outside regulatory oversight based on the following:
That legislation is subject to a “dynamic” based on cultural, social, and historical factors. In other words, raw milk doesn’t pose the same dangers it might have been seen to pose in the 1930s, when much of Ontario’s dairy legislation was passed.
That Michael Schmidt wasn’t “marketing” the cow shares. “There was no advertising and sale (of raw milk) to the general public…Cow shares are a legitimate private enterprise that does not constitute marketing in Ontario.”
Perhaps most intriguing, that “the people who are permitted to buy the milk are fully informed” via a special booklet, identification cards, regular newsletters, and other steps Michael Schmidt took on behalf of his members. “There is no evidence of any illness” in all the years Michael Schmidt has been distributing raw milk, he observed, and tests by the regulatory authorities never found any evidence of pathogens.
Be sure to check out the complete patient article and others linked below.
In the furore around Home on the Range dairy, statements from Health Authorities resulted in headlines such as “Raw milk hazardous to health”.
They’d have you believe that ‘every glass of raw milk is seething with bad germs’. Which is utter nonsense. In fact, as it comes from a healthy grass-fed cow, raw milk is one of the purest foods of all. How milk is handled from then on determines whether it contains bacterial harmful to humans. Read More at The Bovine.
The kids thought this was the greatest thing. Today they were officially able to walk, slip and slide all the way across the pond. With the temperatures getting down into the single digits and the arctic wind we have had, the water was frozen hard enough today for the kids to slip and slide around on. The snow kept it from being too slick
Our boys are the main milkers here on our farm. They have strong hands to prove it. I am very grateful to them for all their hard work around here.
Having a milking animal changes life pretty dramatically. She’s a big part of the family. She requires attention and care daily, but we are rewarded with lots of good fresh milk.
May still has a calf nursing on her. So we are managing the calf and the amount of milk we are getting. The calf is close to weaning.
May’s our sweet milk cow. She’s very curious about the new lambs that have been staying in her milking stall. Or maybe she just wishes she could stay in the warm stall and lay around on the cozy hay like they do?
It’s cold…very cold. The boys enjoy updating me on how cold it is outside. It’s been below freezing for a couple of days.
We’ve had a busy first few days of the new year and all very eventful. The boys heard coyotes out one night while doing their chores that they said they were so close that it ”made their heart leap into their throat”. Today, one of our ewe’s had twin baby lambs. We were all guessing that with the extremely cold weather, the ewe’s were going to start having their babies. Today she did and several of us were able to see her giving birth as we watched from the upstairs window.
I hope to get some pictures of the cute lambs soon.
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