Farming in July

Yeah, yeah, I know July is LONG gone but just for the record...

I spent a lot of time in the month of July trying to make my meat surplus shelf stable because my freezer was very literally overflowing. This is what a five pound bag of pig fat looks like, cubed and ready to be rendered (I did about 5 of these):

And this is what my kitchen looked like during the render-fest:

The crock pots were going 24/7 to render the fat; there are multiple methods to rendering but I found that doing it in crock pots was the easiest. In the jars you can see the finished product, still hot from rendering after being strained from what you see on the stove, which are "cracklins". What you can't see are my counters and floors covered in fat drippings. Kinda slippery. After rendering most, but not all of the fat in my freezer I got 3 jars of tallow and maybe 8 jars of lard? A years supply, yes indeed.

 In addition to the fat rendering I have been making and pressure canning bone broths to store up for all those cold winter soup-based dinners. NEVER THROW OUT YOUR BONES!!! Soon I will experiment with making pemmican from some beef that I dried. Wahoo! Experimental food!

Meat: 7; We culled our flock down to 11 birds and split them into two breeding groups.
Eggs: 187 equivalent of 3 dozen large chicken eggs.
Produce: The gardening lesson of the month was that used coffee grounds make great fertilizer and are often free! Also, Brussels sprouts are best tasting when they have had a frost making them a great fall weather crop. We planted ours in spring and noticed in June that they were already forming sprouts. If we let those sprouts grow to full size they would be tough and inedible. Not to be dismayed I read that by picking the sprouts when they are the size of marbles they would still be tender and the stalk would continue to grow more sprouts. It works and they certainly are delicious! When we get closer to the first frost we will stop harvesting these at marble size and let them grow to full size.

• Beets: 11 oz.@ 1.40/lb= .96
• Snow Peas: 9 oz. @ 3.40/lb=  $1.91
• Green beans: 2 lbs. 5 oz. @1.80/lb= $4.16
• Carrots: 1 1b. @1.20/lb= $1.20
• Chard: 4 lbs. @3.34/lb= $13.36
• Kohlrabi: 1 lb. 7 oz. @2.86/lb=  $4.11
• Cucumbers: 7 lb.@ 3.76!!!/lb= $26.32 Wouldn't you know that I grew a rare and sought after cucumber variety called 'crystal apple?' The regular cukes were going for 1.50/lb =$10.50
• Principe Borghese tomatoes: 1 lb. 6 oz. @ 2.13/lb= $2.93 This is a lovely cherry-type drying tomato
• Strawberries: 4 lb. @4.55/lb= $18.20
• Brussels sprouts: 4 oz.  Couldn't get a price on this because they aren't yet in season
• Kale: 10 oz. @ 1.77/lb= $1.11
• Peppers: 3 oz. @ 2.00/lb= .38

Estimated value of July Produce Harvest: $58.82 and that is without the inflated crystal apple cukes!

Bartering: This month I bartered my canning services for green beans from my mother-in-law and canned 20 pints in my new-to-me pressure canner. I was able to keep 11 pints. My friend also let me pick my favorite "sungold" cherry tomatoes from her garden for a split of the proceeds. I now have a quart of delicious dried sungolds. They taste like candy!

Farming in June

Look who is eating my dill: A Black Swallowtail Caterpillar

This is a little late but life is finally settling into a nice "routine" in our family. Sharing about my mini-farming is more for my record but I still hope you are amazed at I am how much so little space can provide.

Meat: 2 birds off to the freezer (we need at least 6 to make a meal).
Eggs: 130 from six hens; equivalent to two dozen large chicken eggs. We are finding that everyone loves these hard boiled. They are the perfect snack size!
Produce: Production finally started taking off in June. I used both Rodale's and a Farm Co-op in New York for the prices which seem closer to what we pay for organics here. FYI: A bunch of greens usually weighs about half a pound.

• Strawberries: 6lb. @ 3.53/lb = $21.19
• Lettuce: 1 1/2 lb. @ $5/lb =$7.50
• Bok Choi: 7 oz. @ $2.06 = $.90
• Kohlrabi: 1 lb. @ $2.86/lb. = $2.86
• Snow Peas: 1 lb. 5 oz. @ $4.40/lb. = $5.80
• Chard: 3 lbs. @ 1.67/bunch = $10.02
• Daikon Radish: 11 oz. @ 1.27/lb = $.87
• Kale: 9 oz. @ 1.87/bunch = $2.10
• Green Beans: 8 oz. @ $2.23/lb =$1.12  

Estimated value of June Harvest: $52.36

One of the best things about growing a garden (and buying everything else in bulk) is that I don't have to go to the grocery store or farmers market as often. Going out into the garden everyday to gather my small harvest adds up to a lot. Every day I would pick strawberries we might eat a few and then freeze the rest. Over a months time I had frozen enough to make a dozen half-pints of jam.While you can't do that with everything, often I can gather enough in 3-4 days to make a family sized side dish.

As far as bartering has gone, I exchanged 3 days of milking my friend's cow for one month of free milk. Pretty sweet deal, eh?

M-E-A-T

I am reading this book right now and totally fascinated by the art of preparing good meat. "Art?" you say? Yes! When you get really high quality meat from animals that live their lives as they naturally should on pasture the meat is fundamentally different than the stuff you buy in the grocery store. Not only are the animals raised differently but their meat goes through a very different process of cutting, hanging, aging and packaging than you get with meat from your local chain store.

This year I purchased half a hog and a half a steer (which steer I then divided with a friend) from Meadow Run Farm. Last year we bought our quarter from a different farmer and the meat was fine but we didn't feel like we got a good deal. Enter: Offal. Offal is just about everything edible other than the "meat" you are used to buying. By requesting the offal and choosing to eat it we save money because we pay by the hanging weight (weight of the hanging animal before cutting). Also, it seems far more respectful to the animal and less wasteful if we make use of as much of its body as possible.

I wasn't prepared by just how much extra stuff I would be getting. Not only did I get the organs, tongues, tails etc. of the pig and steer but I also got the fat for rendering into lard and tallow and the bones for stock. Learning to prepare organ meats can be challenging but that is why I am reading the above mentioned cookbook.

Now for the nitty gritty details: Our side of pork had a hanging weight of 100 lbs. and cost $325. Of actual cuts we received 15 lbs. of ground pork, tongue, liver, heart, kidneys, about 20 lbs. of fat, lots of bones, 1 tenderloin, 12 lbs. of pork chops, 1 rack of baby back ribs, 4 shoulder roasts, 1 shank roast, 10 lbs of pork belly (bacon), 3 ham roasts, 3 ham steaks and 2 packages of spare ribs. The roasts are all between 3-4 lbs. each.

Our quarter of beef, after being divided with our friend had a hanging weight of 115 lbs. and cost $392. Out of that we got 24 lbs of ground beef, 9 lbs of hamburger patties, 3 chip steaks, 3 lbs. short ribs, 2 flat iron steaks, 1 petite tender, 8 soup bones, 2 chuck roasts, 1 sirloin tip roast, 7 New York Strip Steaks, 4 Filet Mignon steaks, 8 Delmonico steaks, 4 mock tender steaks, 1 Tri Tip roast, 2 sirloin steaks, 2 London Broil, 1 brisket, 2 eye roasts and 1 skirt steak plus probably 30 lbs. of bones and fat. We haven't yet received our offal and ox tail but we will be getting it next week.

Fun stuff! This should last us until next summer but anticipate that we may need to buy more ground beef. It truly is a pleasure buying directly from the farmer and having so much choice in what we get for our dollar. I highly recommend going onto to Local Harvest and searching for farmers in your area. Being able to know where the majority of the food we consume comes from is such a blessing. Even with the high price tag, the assurance that what I am feeding my family is of the highest quality keeps me coming back for more.

Holy Cow! 9 Months!

Just a little update because I have some fabulous news and you probably won't even believe me. The GAPS diet is steadily moving forward. I am ever so slowly healing and learning the rhythms of how my body heals. Bodies are weird. When I started GAPS I developed a new symptom: tiny little painful pustules around my eyes accompanied by eczema. I had never had either of these before so I felt like my diet was a lost cause. Thanks to the Interwebs I discovered that for some reason or another (detox?) the pustules commonly appear with the addition of dairy to the diet after a long hiatus. Aha! Eventually they just go away but in the meantime I am treating them with a healthy dose of topical coconut oil.

And now for the fabulousness: I healed a cavity! You heard me right! In December I had a cavity that my dentist wanted to fill right away because it was pretty bad. It was way back on one of my last molars in between the teeth where food has a tendency to get caught. Well, aside from the fact that I didn't like the guy in the first place, I strongly believed that my dietary changes would allow my teeth to heal themselves and refused the filling despite dire warnings against my choice and guess what? The cavity is gone! Hurray!

I am starting to feel like this diet is going to be something I stick with for the long haul. The more time I spend eating this way, the easier it gets. All the food prep can be daunting and having a teenage foster daughter who refused to eat anything not heavily processed made things even harder but now that she is gone my time in the kitchen feels easy peasy.  I still can't eat most fruits without a bad reaction, but berries don't seem to bother me at all. I also recently added dairy kefir and raw honey and I am okay with them in small doses.

Healing is wonderful! Today I learned that my mom was just diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and my first thought was "I will not follow suit." With all the healing that I have felt so far on this diet, I really believe that I won't. Right now I am feeling so grateful that I have had all these health problems at such a young age when change doesn't seem insurmountable and infertility is a HUGE motivator. I never thought I would say that I am grateful for my various maladies but with this diet and the healing I am experiencing the future seems so much brighter! 

Pain and the Atonement

"It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior's promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us...And faith in that power will give us the patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience."

-Henry B. Eyring, quoted by Kent F. Richards, Ensign, May 2011, 16

I did find this thought comforting today as I pondered upon the pain of waiting and not knowing. I do feel better that Christ understands the conflicting emotions I feel as I struggle with waiting for more children while my foster daughter joyfully becomes a mother. With my limited perspective, I feel that the lessons I learn as a foster parent will help me when and if Andrew and I are able to have more biological children. When people ask us why we made this choice, to parent other people's children, most of the time I want to say "I have no idea" because I truly do not, but the rightness of this choice is daily confirmed by the whisperings of the Spirit. I am so grateful for that and for the sweetness of new life.

Moments With A Foster Mom: Triage

I cannot describe how heart-wrenching this whole process is for so many reasons. Tonight I felt the need to share some of my experience in Labor and Delivery triage over the last few days.

My empty womb very tangibly ached as I sat waiting, hour after hour, in triage. Soon to be mom's paced the halls hoping that this endless walking would get them to the magical #4 that would allow them to be admitted. Excitement is everywhere but also some disappointment: Being sent home for false labor, an over-booked induction schedule, and then, towards the end, a young woman comes in weeping with a conspicuously flat belly and I instinctively understood. I overheard the nurses:

Nurse A: "What is wrong with her?" 

Nurse B: "She says she is having a miscarriage (shrugs)"

Nurse A: "Well, where should we put her?"

Nurse B: "I honestly don't care where you put her."

At that point the exchange ended and I went on my way. My charge was being admitted due to leaking amniotic fluid and I needed to get back to my family. As I walked away I felt like a coward; I wanted so much to embrace that poor woman because I knew what that look of total anguish was. I flashed back to my own experience and the strongest memory was the sensation of being very cold. I remember being both physically cold but I also feeling a sense of coldness from the medical support staff  (maybe because of the discomfort of death?) when all I really wanted was to be embraced. While the nurse's words were spoken out of this woman's hearing, nobody deserves to be treated like that especially at a time of such great loss. Miscarriage is still birth; even if it also means death.

It is hard to find my place in this confusing world of foster parenting. Who am I anyway? Just some infertile lady who decided to take charge of this pregnant teen two weeks before her due date. Why did God want me to be a part of this when it reminds me so much of the pain of my own loss and empty womb?

Farming in May

Hurray for Strawberries! The harvest this year has been wonderful! Here are out totals for May:

Meat: 0; we have two birds ready to go but we are waiting for our foster daughter to have her baby before we send them to "freezer camp." In other words, we don't want to traumatize the girl.

Our first two hatchlings

Eggs: 161 or the equivalent of 32 large chicken eggs.  I also sold two of my laying hens for $7.50 each.
Produce:  If you want to see the value of the organic produce you grow it is fun to check out Rodale's Organic Price Report which is updated often. I am using my current farmers market prices as well as the farmers markets in Philadelphia, all prices are for organic.

• Stawberries: 4lbs. 5 oz. @$4.59/lb.=$19.79 (and this is all in 4 days from 18 everbearing plants not including the 14 that I just planted that won't fruit until July).
• French Breakfast Radishes: 1 lb. 3 oz. @$3.76/lb.=$4.47
• Baby Bok Choi: 2.2 oz. @$2.25/lb.= .31, paltry? yes but they bolted
• Leaf lettuce and spinach: 1lb. 6oz. @Organic sells for $5/lb. at my local farmers market = $6.88
• Green onion: 1 (didn't even bother pricing this)
• Swiss Chard: 2.7 oz. @ $2.17/lb. = .37

Estimated value of harvest: $31.82

I was also able to harvest 5 gallons of worm castings. I am not sure the value on it but I traded a bag and two dozen hard boiled and peeled quail eggs to a friend for two gallons of raw milk. I love being able to trade things that I produce for things that I need. I really wish that I had more to trade!

A dozen chicks at a week and a half old, already feathering out.