Makin' Granola while the Sun Shines

The weather this spring has been so erratic, one never knows if it's safe to plant those summer plants that are susceptible to frost.  We finally set out our vulnerable peppers and tomatoes, only to learn it's supposed to hit the 30s Thursday night.  On the bright side, it's always a good time to take advantage of a sunny day to make granola.
While this can be done in the oven, using the sun's heat is more environmentally friendly.  We build a solar dehydrator, which works great as a low-temp oven for baking granola and granola bars.  You could easily stick a cookie sheet in your car as well, which is not only "green", but also clearly the most inexpensive option; and some folks find that ingenuity irresistable. 

I mixed oats, local honey, a little oil, local pecans, and local peaches that I dried last year together with some spices and other goodies to yield a gallon of goodness for only a full day in the sun and pennies per serving compared to store-bought granola.  Let your imagination and taste buds lead a solar cooking adventure in your backyard, or sedan...

Meet and Meat Block Party

Warning: graphic pictures to follow!

A few years ago we bought a couple of bottle calves: one for us, and one for Stan, who lives on adjoining land.  Stan was hoping his two brothers would follow him to Oklahoma for a stint.  Much to his dismay, one got married and moved with his wife to Romania to live in one of the few places in the world where traditional subsistence farming village life is still the mainstay (check them out at http://www.provisiontransylvania.com/.  His other brother decided to study in Norway rather that at NSU at the last minute, thus leaving Stan, one man, with an entire steer to himself.  Hmmm. 

We butchered our 18 month old steer in December of 2011.  Stan's steer stayed with us and kept on getting bigger, and bigger, until...

Stan doesn't live here full-time, but rather comes in bursts.  During his current visit, he decided to finally take care of his giant steer.  As much as I appreciate learning and doing all the hands-on work of feeding myself that I practically can, I have already had the pleasure of taking part in butching cattle for meat at the home - twice!  I figured this was plenty.  And, we still have plenty of beef in the freezer from our own butchering 16 months ago.  But, I was alone in urging Stan to take his animal to the slaughterhouse.  And in true Stan fashion, he invited all the neighbors who have not gotten together for a gathering of this magnitude or duration - well, not since we moved here in 2009, at least. 

Johnny tied up the steer.  Mike Brown showed up with the firearms, a 9mm, and shot the steer.  Curly lifted the animal with his tractor, where we proceeded to dump all his internal organs in to the back of Stan's pickup truck.  And believe me, we needed the pickup bed to contain them all.  I started to worry there wouldn't be much meat after all upon seeing the gigantic pile of guts.  HA!

 Next, Curly carried the carcass over to Stan's place where the rest of the butchering took place.  All hands were on deck to skin the animal.  And all were full of valuable advice on the best way to tie off the bung, amongst other tricky tasks. 
 The animal hung outside overnight in the gloriously low-30's temperature to cure until the next day. 

The group worked steady cutting the meat off the carcass into managable sized chunks - following the natural muscle groups.  The meat was freed from it's tough outer silver skin, tendons were removed, and the meat was cut into steaks, stew beef, roasts, or ground using Curly's electric grinder.  Genevieve and Calvin put the meat into packages using Curly's vacuum sealer. Johnny kept busy sharpening knives in between cutting meat.  Mike Thelander showed up on the third day with a delicious stew he made from the meat to nourish us through the final day of butchering and processing.  Jack Gandy, a cattle rancher, even showed up to share stories and photos about hog hunting and bachelor buck groups grazing on his rye field.  It was a big time had by all, and I learned a valuable lesson:  many hands really does make short work.  Not only that, but it isn't work when everyone is hanging out and visiting; sharing stories and getting reaquainted.  And much good eating will follow for everyone who helped, thanks to Stan, for nourishing our bellies and our souls. 

No whining about winnowing

As our last post of long ago mentioned, we harvested all our winter wheat last summer.  Here it is April, and we're still processing wheat, an activity we do in bursts as needed.  And since we do still shop at the grocery store, I don't NEED to thresh and winnow wheat every week, as I planned to do. 

Despite the day-long chore of many hands that is harvesting wheat, threshing and winnowing is an even more labor-intensive chore.  I used to think the word combine (pronounced COM-bine when, in this case, referring to that huge piece of agricultural equipment) was synonymous with all the evils of conventional, large-scale industrial monocropping agribusiness.  That is, until I learned that what a COMbine is: a machine that combines the tasks of harvesting and threshing and winnowing grain.  Hey, what a novel idea!  HA!  But for the home gardener, this is not only prohibitively expensive, but also all-around unnecessary.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options for the modern back-to-the-lander.  But, by some lucky happenstance, I married an incredibly inventive man.  Check out this apparatus: 

So, we still thresh the wheat.  This means getting the wheat berries loose from the hulls.  First, we take a shock of wheat (see next to the barn), put it in a pillow case, and beat it repeatedly for a few minutes.  This breaks off the seed heads, and ideally you're left with just wheat straw.  Next, you twist the pillowcase closed, and rub your hands together vigorously with the wheat seeds between your hands.  This loosens many berries from the hulls.  Then you pour these into the contraption you see at your right (or a modified 55-gallon drum), insert your leaf blower, and simply sit back and wait.  The chaff blows out while the wheat berries are simply tossed around in circles inside. 

After it's all said and done, we really don't need to even use the bucket method to let the wind blow away the last little bits of chaff.  We do two bundles of wheat at a time, which will yield about a quart of wheat berries; more than a quart of flour. 

Wheat Harvest

Thanks to a former nutrition student of mine, Johnny and I decided to try growing wheat three years ago.  This summer's harvest came in early - in late May, ripening surprisingly quickly. 
We put wheat and/or field peas in as a cover crop on our acre crop field each fall.  We till this in early in the spring, leaving a small plot of wheat to ripen.  This plot is only about 18' x 180', so just over 3000 square feet.  The past two years this plot was about half wheat and half weeds, yielding a pickup truck load of wheat.  This year our plot was weed free, and we got 3 pickup truck loads!   We hoped to invite some folks out to help, but our hand sickles didn't arrive in time.  Luckily, we had some die-hard friends who had their own hand tools and showed up at our place at 7am to cut and bundle the wheat - many thanks to Russel, Terri, Dave, Stan and Amy!

We let Dave drive home with his truck full, and kept two pickup loads for ourselves.  This should provide enough wheat berries and thus flour to bake a loaf of bread twice per week. 
We thresh on a weekly, as-need basis.  This is the most time consuming part.  This year, with everyone's help, the harvest only took about 3 hours, but threshing and winnowing (to separate the wheat berries from the hull) takes a while.  We store the wheat on our screen porch, and grind it in small batches in a coffee grinder.  Dave has already made whole wheat biscuits for his family, and his daughters enjoyed them.  We were lucky to find this year's wheat resulted in a finer, lighter flour and is easier to thresh than other years.  Thanks farmers' coop!  We gain greater food sovereignty each year as we expand our farming operation, but I still find that wheat products are what I purchase at the grocery most often.  The favorite dish of the elders where I work of cornbread, beans, and greens with a side of buttermilk is starting to make a whole lot of sense to me.  This meal is nutritionally complete, consists of crops that are either easy to grow in drought and cold, or easy to preserve without refrigeration, and inexpensive if you did have to purchase these foods.  Fortunately, they are delicious too! 

Pasture Pastimes

Part of our livestyle entails limiting the entertainment that we purchase and instead creating our own fun.  To this end, Calvin and Johnny designed a 5-acre maze in the pasture.  Calvin was the primary designer, creating his plan on paper.  He and Johnny staked out key points in the pasture, and Johnny created the maze with Helen, our riding lawn-mower.  This Friday we host our annual homeschool end-of-year party, and will invite all 19 kiddos to partake in getting lost in the weeds.  After this Friday, Johnny will quit mowing this and appreciate adding that extra hour back to his regular farm work.   

A couple of times each week I walk my goats.  This gets the goaties out of their enclosure and allows them access to much more varied forages.  Plus I get a kick our of leading them around.  They know all the sweet spots rich in clover or lespodeza or acorns in the fall.  And they get to actually browse as goats prefer to do. 

The latest addition to our home entertainment system is a donkey.  I have long yearned for a ridable donkey, and this weekend serendipitously made my dream a reality.  A fellow vendor at the farmers' market had been trying to find a new home for this young man for some time (thank you Cara!).  He is broke to ride and was used as a pack animal in the recent past.  He is very affectionate, tame, and snuggly.  Johnny is off to town today to get a halter, a bridle, and hopefully a bareback pad.  He came with the dignified name of Atticus.  He seems especially fond of Calvin, so we'll soon be fighting for turns to ride Atticus to the mailbox and to check on blackberries and the like. 
Speaking of which, now is the time to go blackberry hunting.  I've already made 16 pints of jam, a cobbler, froze over a gallon, etc.  While many are still red, there are pockets of huge, sweet, ripe ones. 

More edible flowers

Each spring I anticipate the redbuds, and envy the trees in town the blossom before ours up in Rose.  I gather the purple flowers and add them to apple-carrot-raisin salad, stir-fries and more.  This year our dear friend David Gahn insisted we smell the wonderful locust blossoms on his trees.  Not only do they smell fantastic, but he informed us they are also edible.  I tried to imagine what would best capture their fragrance, and came up with locust blossom fritters.  They are simple and a great vehicle for these sweet, delicate, albeit transient treats.
 To 4 cups of locust flowers, add 2Tbsp flour and 2-3 egg yolks.  Next, beat egg whites (2-3) with 1-2 Tbps. sugar (optional) until stiff peaks form.  Fold this into the blossom mixture.  Then just cook like pancakes.  Enjoy immediately.  They are great plain, but even better topped with a little local honey. 

Here we go again!

I just said to Johnny the other night that while I don't feel particularly idle in the winter, I suddenly feel like 'here we go again'.  Our (tiny) dairy goat herd doubled in about 10 days.  Our seasoned Sanaan mamma delivered three babies, two of which were born alive and are doing well.  And our two first-time Oberhausli mommas each had relatively easy births.  Calvin and I spent an hour one afternoon watching Sorrel deliver her baby and witnessing his first steps just 17 minutes after entering the world.  Amazing!  The farm has taken on such a lively atmosphere with the four babies frolicking about all the time. 

And Johnny and Calvin have been busy mowing and then tilling in cover crops and planting seed for spring crops.  Our broccoli and cabbage seedlings are in the ground, along with green onions, carrots, lettuce, chard, kale,  spinach, and more.  

Johnny on his home-made row-maker!



Wildflowers are blooming!  The chickweed is in full bloom and is on its way out, but we have buttercup, trout lily, spring beauty, yellow corydalis, and many varieties of violets, including some edible ones!  The elms are seeding, and I finally figured out which are the Slippery Elm trees.  I gathered bark for decotions/teas.  

Notice the hairless seeds of Slippery Elm

Even the return of the ticks can't get me down this time of year!