The value of quality: thriving on winter feeds

The next four months, December through March, bring our harshest temperatures and stinging wind. The average overnight temperature for January and February of 2008 was -10C, but we usually get a week-long cold snap or two, dropping to -30C overnight. And we also get a good January rain, melting the top 3 or 4 feet of snow accumulation. Winter can be harsh, and it can be a hardship to survive, but with preparation, including food storage and sheltered buildings, winter can also be a welcomed time of quiet, rest and reflection. It is a counterpoint to the almost frantic pace of a short summer.

Winter can be difficult for our animals as well, after all, chickens were originally jungle-fowl, and goats and horses were originally desert dwellers. Breeding can encourage hardy characteristics like fat coverage, thick fur or down, and high-metabolism, but encouraging these characteristics to develop requires a higher quality of feed. And even hardy animals need a well-sheltered spot in order to thrive. We have designed the barns to shelter the animals from the prevailing wind, as well as taking advantage of the warming winter sun. The hay and grain is stored in the north-west end of the barn to insulate from the wind, and the animals are on the south-east, allowing direct sunlight to warm the pens at first light, dawn being the coldest time of the night. Along with this, the goats and chickens have a low-roofed and well bedded box, inside their pens, in which to sleep. This keeps draughts off of them at night, and takes advantage of the body heat they produce, radiating it back to them.

From here, their ability to thrive is dependent on a high quality diet. Animals, like us, can only eat so much bulk in a day. North American children, who survive mostly on junk-food, have become malnourished, a term we usually only connect with starving children in Sudan and elsewhere. Likewise, if offered only low-quality feed, an animal will become malnourished, fail to thrive, and if still required to produce eggs or milk, will either quit, or do so at the cost of their lifespan.

A quality diet consists of adequate protein, rich in minerals and vitamins, and contains a source of fat as well. Most of us can tell the difference between poor and high quality foods when looking at the raw materials. Whether it is carrots, green beans or hay and grain, common senses can tell us a lot about the quality of a food: color, taste, smell, texture, crispness, etc. Green leafy hay that smells like a summer pasture is obviously better than stalky bleached dusty "hay". The green hay will not only be more appetizing, but will contain all of the essential ingredients of quality feed. A good quality wheat kernel can be distinguished from a poor one by a plump large size, golden color, and a sticky gluten center when chewed between the teeth. Those who purchase their feed, rarely have the opportunity to choose, but rather must rely upon the feed mill to make those choices. In a good grain growing season, the grain market for human consumption can become flooded, and often, high quality grains can overflow to the feed mills. But in not-so-good or even average years, all of the high-quality grains will be used for human consumption, and the leftover, low-protein, low-quality grains trickle down to the feed mills, sometimes at a high price because of a lack of supply due to failed crops.

This situation describes a portion of our motivation to grow our own grains, along with strong concerns regarding food security and the environmental and ecological costs of industrial farming and transportation of the crops. We rented a tractor to cultivate the two acres for our grain in the fall of 2007. But we planted and harvested it by hand. Most of the grain was seeded by broadcasting, but we planted a quarter-acre with a garden seeder to compare yields and coverage between these two methods. Mr. Fritillary harrowed the broadcast seed under with our horse, Pilgrim. The grains eventually started to ripen by late August. I will write more about our grain growing and harvesting, it was a difficult season for grains, with so much rain, we were both lucky and worked hard to bring in a crop at all this year.

We harvested using a combination of techniques, but mostly we harvested with a scythe. In this way, we harvested grain, straw and weeds together. These grain fields being organic, and turned from pasture the year before, the predominance of weeds were vetch and red clover, both valuable high-protein legumes. Too many of these "weeds" make it impossible for a harvester to move through the field and thresh the grain properly, but they presented no problems for our scythes, and they dried out in a matter of hours under a hot sun. The scythed wheat is stored loose in the barn, off the ground, and is almost entirely dust free.

The cured vetch and red clover add food value to the bundles of grain we feed to the chickens, they eat the greens as readily as the grain, and the mixture of greens helps to balance the calcium/phosphorous content of their feed and provides much needed Vitamin A, which can be seen by the deep yellow of their egg yolks. The chickens make quick work of the grain, served in bundles with a box underneath to catch fallen grains and heads. When they have cleaned off all of the heads, the remaining straw is put down as bedding or nesting material, and turned into compost for the garden. The wheat we grew this year is of a higher quality than I can buy from the local bulk store, or the local organic grain mill, which means that it is above 14% protein, perhaps up to 16% protein. Typical feed wheat is between 10-12%. Our high-quality grains mean that we do not need any protein supplements like soya meal (which causes thyroid problems) or linseed meal (which usually contains rancid oil residue).

These are our young pullets, hatched out this summer, from our Isa Brown hens (a common industrial laying hen from a Rhode Island Red crossed with Rhode Island White) and a Plymouth Barred Rock rooster. There are four distinct colorings: black barred, white with grey bars, white with red wing coloring, and red with white feather tips.

The oats are fed mostly to the horse, who eats them straw, chaff and all, and the goats who nibble off the grain heads, leaving the coarse straw behind. Feeding the oats with the chaff or hulls pretty much eliminates the chances of colic in either the horse or the goats. These oats are about 12% protein, but they also contain more sugars and oils than the wheat, which are necessary for the goats who are producing kids as well as keeping warm.

The winter rye was ready to harvest in early August. We planted only 1/4 acre of rye, so we harvested it with a hand sickle, and stuffed it into feed bags, stacked in the barn. The straw of rye is a high quality bedding, it was used to thatch roofs and make horse collars, etc. meaning that it does not readily break down or absorb moisture. We use the straw to bed down the goats, a foot of this underneath them makes for incredible insulation, and they can nest down into it on cold nights.

The goats also make quick work of picking off the rye heads, their nimble mouths find each and every one, leaving behind the valuable straw. Rye is similar to wheat in protein content.

Another feed crop we grew this summer: mangles or fodder beets. They grow just like beets, but much bigger, and higher in sugars and fiber. The green tops were greedily gobbled down by the goats after harvesting the roots. And the roots are stored in our cold room with the carrots and other root crops. The mangles contain some protein, but are primarily a source of energy or sugars, as well as a treat that definitely gets their appetite and digestion working.

We feed the two of them 3-4 lbs a day, chopped and lightly cooked with a tablespoon of molasses. Served warm this way, around 10 am, it provides energy in the morning after a cold night. We do not serve them the mangles first thing in the morning because the goat's ability to produce body heat comes from the digestion of fibers (ie. hay), not sugars. Goats can easily get a chill by eating concentrates (ie. grain or fodder/roots) on an empty stomach. So we give them a chance to get a good belly full of fresh leafy hay in the morning before the mangles and molasses. Pilgrim likes a bite of this too. The molasses also works as a preventive for Ketosis, a metabolic disorder of pregnant or recently kidded goats in which they do not have enough metabolized energy to cover the demands placed on their body. This is just a general definition, for more specific information about ketosis, please read about it from a credible book or website.

Here they are nose-first in the mangles, notice how Penelope's tail (the one in the front) is held straight up, showing her pleasure and appetite. You can also see in the picture the bulges they are growing, late in their pregnancy. Juniper, the little one, is growing well. She especially needs a high-quality diet since she is not only producing a kid or two, but is still growing to full maturity. She is coming along well, both of them have put on thick downy coats, are bright-eyed and have a ready appetite, and have laid down some condition, which they will need to draw upon in the first month of lactation.

Molasses mouth, licking off every last drop.

Well, don't literally put the fridge in the ditch just yet...

For a bit more motivation on the Ditch the Fridge Challenge, I will tell you all of the wonderful uses we have found for our defunct fridge and freezer...

The first fabulous use of the freezer was as a chick brooder. We turned the freezer on it's side, so that the door opened like a hatch, and the largest surface area (the side of the freezer) was now floor space for the chicks. We laid down cardboard and some coarse sawdust, installed a light bulb on the ceiling (after snipping the electrical cord to the freezer, and re-using it to splice on a light fixture). And screwed in an eye-hook on the door, and a latch, that holds the freezer door open just a bit to allow ventilation. For the first few days the chicks needed supplementary heat. We use hot water to radiate heat. I made a slip pillow to put around a 5 gallon bucket (any bucket, or pot, with a tight fitting lid that fits inside the freezer, and will not be needed again in the house, will work). The pillow around the bucket keeps the chicks from burning their selves as they warm themselves against the bucket, the same as they would under a heat-lamp. For about a week I refreshed the bucket with not quite boiling water, just to the steaming and tiny bubble phase, twice a day. As early in the morning as I could, and as late in the evening, to keep them warm over night. We had a thermometer in there and it kept at a pretty consistent 30-32C. Watching to make sure that it doesn't get too warm when a fresh bucket is installed, in which case I would open the door a bit more, and close it again when it stabilized. After a week, the chicks started making their own heat, and as the freezer is designed as an excellent insulator, their own heat was radiated back to them, and the hot water buckets were no longer needed. At two weeks I had the door open about 6 inches during the day, with a clear plastic window to keep them from hopping out, installed like a child's barrier 3/4 of the height of the opening, again to allow ventilation. By the end of three weeks, the chicks were gradually exposed to outside temperatures, and ready to be moved out of the brooder.

Encouraged by our success with the brooder, we tried it as an incubator. It was a bit harder to keep it up at 37-39C than it is to keep it at 30C, meaning boiling water changed more often. I also made the latch to close the door tight to hold heat well, and taped small sticks around what would be the top edge of the freezer, so that when the lid was closed, the rubber seal around the lid was held out enough to make ventilation gaps. And by moving the freezer-incubator to a part of the house where the temperatures fluctuates less, we were able to incubate eggs without power! The best part about using hot water as a heat source is that it is also a source of humidity. The humidity meter read at a constant 50-60%.

Now for the fridge, when we moved the young chicks outdoors, they still needed a warm place to huddle at night, so we put the fridge on it's side and took off the door. By propping the door against the fridge so that it covered 3/4 of the opening, and just left a gap for the chicks to go in and out, we had a cozy little spot for the larger chicks to keep warm at night.

Now the fridge has been measured and evaluated as a kid box. For the first two weeks of the kid's life, they cannot produce their own heat very well, and need an insulated box to keep warm. Our fridge was a small model, and is not quite adequate, but if it were a full size fridge, it would work very well as an insulated hidy-hoe for kids and lambs.

They also make convenient storage containers for potting soil or as instant raised beds for urban potato growers, etc (You will just have to work out the drainage issue). And in spring can be used as cold frames for transplants. With glass or plastic over the top, and the lid off in the daytime, they will keep plants insulated, holding the heat from the sun like a greenhouse. Just put the lid on at night to keep the frost out. Of course you can also add coffee cans or plastic bottles of hot water at night and on cloudy days to keep them growing.

Or the fridge/freezer can be turned into a big sophisticated version of my camp cooler, with a small pump running cold well water into the basin, and an overflow pipe running water away, to keep your perishables fresh.

Any other ideas?

So next time you see a defunct fridge or freezer in the ditch on big-garbage day, and you have already used up all of your own fridges and freezers for various brooders and cold-frames, you can rescue even more from landfill. And you get a free extension cord thrown into the bargain.

Ditch the Fridge Challenge

I challenge you to Ditch your Fridge! With cooler, or down-right cold, weather coming on, it is a perfect time to challenge your dependence on your refrigerator.

When we moved off-grid, we came with a small fridge and small chest freezer. We had a small generator, battery bank and a solar panel. We could run the darn things, but it was ridiculously expensive to produce enough power to keep our food stored this way. I didn't keep much beyond dairy products in the fridge at the time, without a cream separator, the fridge was pretty full with pots of whole milk, bottles of cream and yogurt. Once it was skimmed, the milk was turned into cheese or fed out. I kept some leftovers in there, where space allowed, but mostly my fridge was an integral part of our dairy processing. The freezer was full of our year's supply of meat, some frozen vegetables and fruit, and extra butter and frozen milk to last through a two month dry period, before the cow calved again.

When we realized we had to make some changes, figuring out how to do without refrigeration was a huge challenge to the milk maid in me. I could do without the freezer, canning the meat, vegetables, fruit, and even the milk for the dry spell. What to do with the extra butter, stumped me until Mr. Fritillary enlightened me about ghee, a traditional Indian or Hindu way of processing butter into pure butterfat, which stores at room temperature like oil. So that took care of storing butter, when fresh butter is not in season. The freezer was soon empty.

I was hesitant to ditch the fridge, but with winter coming on, I was able to cool my twice-daily pot of filtered milk, in a basin of cold water, and let the cream rise in an unheated room that kept at refrigerator temperatures. I could also keep my cream and yogurt in the cold room, as long as winter lasted. But I knew I would need a cream separator by spring. We found one in time for warmer weather. Now I only had our daily table milk, a few liters of cream, a few liters of yogurt, and a pound of fresh butter to keep cold at one time. We do not have a spring or any running water on our property, but the water from the well stays quite cold, even in the heat of summer. We took an old camp cooler, and filled it with cold well water, and submerged everything into the water. Even the butter went into pint jars, same as leftovers or opened bottles of applesauce, etc.

The cooler is on an outside porch, where no direct sun falls on it at any time. In the heat of summer the water must be changed two or three times daily. I put the fresh milk, and separated cream into cold water, morning and night. And change it if need be again in the middle of the day. Come spring and fall, the water only needs to be changed in the evening, the cool night air keeps it cold, and does not start to warm up until late afternoon. In the winter, I change it every few days to keep the water from going stale, and even have to bring the cooler into an unheated room to keep it from freezing out on the porch.

Refrigeration can be done many ways. A small pump from the well can run to a cooling basin, with an overflow, to simulate a spring. Water is a more stable cooling element than air, so it works well. But air can be cooled by a small fan pushing air past a mist or trickle of cool water. In hotter climates, the ground temperature a few feet down can be cool enough to store food.

But designing a way to cool and store your food is only part of the challenge. You may also have to change the way you cook, and even the types of food you eat, to ditch the fridge. Take a look at the contents of your fridge. Eggs and many cheeses can be stored in a cool cabinet. Eggs store quite well at 60-70F for at least two weeks. The only reason they are refrigerated at the grocery store is so they can be kept for 3-6 months. Homemade preserves, pickles and jams will keep in a cool cabinet or submerged in the cooler, for a week, so preserve your food in one week sized portions. With a backyard garden, produce is eaten straight from the garden, and with the exception of lettuce, will keep in a cool cabinet for a few days. Vegetables like shelled peas or broccoli heads can be put into a jar or water-proof container, and submerged in the cooler and will keep fresh for a day or two. For the most part, the refrigerator only prolongs the distance food takes to get to your table. The fresher your food is, the less you will need your refrigerator.

The challenge I have set for myself next year is to expand my range of fermented vegetables. Many people prefer to freeze vegetables over canning them for the nutritional value that is maintained in frozen vegetables. More than just cabbage can be fermented, including beans, cauliflower, roots, and cucumbers. Even a medley of vegetables, onions, peppers, garlic and herbs can be fermented together. Fermentation preserves the nutritional content, since vitamins are never destroyed by heat, and pathogens are kept from spoiling the food with friendly-bacteria that also add their own health benefits to the foods. And fermented foods can be kept for months, or even a year, in a cool room at 50-60F.

Ditching the fridge is not only environmentally progressive, it can wean you off of a dependence on consistently available cheap power, and give you the opportunity to change your relationship to the food you eat.

The Naked-Seeded Pumpkin

The story of a pumpkin. In 2007 I grew pie pumpkins, because I love pumpkin pie, and other pumpkin related deserts. When I saw the Naked-Seeded Pumpkin in a seed catalogue in the spring of this year, I was delighted. There are no nut-trees on our property, and sunflower seeds are difficult to hull, if you can beat the birds to the harvest, so we have little in the way of nuts and seeds in our diet. I really only miss them in dessert recipes that call for walnuts or almonds. I figured I could substitute pumpkin seeds, and seeing as they are easy to grow, and easy to harvest, along with the benefit of using the flesh as well as the seed, I knew this was a pumpkin variety for our garden.

We started our seedlings indoors, in late April, and transplanted 10 pumpkin seedlings into the garden June 7th. The plants grew vigorously, and resisted powdery mildew, despite the moderately high numbers of cucumber beetles (who transmit the mildew). Each plant only put out about two fruit, that had a chance of making it in our short season. But they were also planted in new ground, and had too much weed competition for their liking. In well-tended ground, the yeild would be double. But the pumpkins were large, and while the butternut and curry squash were ripening, they were still green and growing. I had to pick them green, late one evening with a heavy frost settling.
But of course I was anxious to try them, and open one up to see what kind of seed harvest I could expect. Even green, the flesh was tasty, not something I would eat mashed as a vegetable, but great in desserts.
The seeds were easy to seperate out of the pulp. Washed and weighed raw, one pumpkin yeilded 150g of seed (just over 1/4lb). And the seeds were delicious. Once dried for storage they lost about half of their weight. Each pumpkin has yeilded between 75-100g of dried pumpkin seed. So five or six pumpkins would yeild a pound of dried seeds. Along with about 8lbs of flesh on each pumpkin. From ten plants I harvested 150 lbs of pumpkin flesh and will probably get about 2 1/2 lbs dried seed.
The pumpkins ripened in the curing process, and are storing very well, even better than the butternut squash. I roast a whole pumpkin, cuting it open first to collect the seeds, wash and let the seeds dry in a warmish dry place (same as for seed saving) for about a week. Then I scrape out the cooked flesh, mash it with a potato masher, and store it in jars in the refriderator (or cooler in my case), until I use it all up, and cook another. I am hooked on pumpkin cookies and cakes. And until the goats have their kids, we are without milk, hence without pumpkin pie. Organic rice milk doesn't really cut it as a substitute! But these pumpkin cookies have been our power bars, giving us that extra energy for a bike ride home.

Here's my recipe:
mix together
2 cups cooked mashed pumpkin
1/2 to 1 cup sugar or honey (depending on your taste, I tend to like less sweet than too sweet)
1 or 2 eggs (depending on the hens)
1/2 cup if 2 eggs, 3/4 cup if 1 egg, oil or butter

mix seperately
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats (optional)
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2-4 tbsp ground pumpkin seed (either mixed in, or as topping--see below)
cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom (mix and match to your taste)

Stir dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture. Drop by spoonful onto greased cookie sheets, or pour into greased and floured cake pan. Bake 15-20 min at 325-350 for cookies. Bake 30-40 min at 325-350 for cake.

So far I have about a pound of dried pumpkin seeds. I have put them into bread, as well as cookies and deserts. They make a good snack, and are delicious in granola or oatmeal. They would make a nice addition to cracker recipes, and could be used in pasta sauces or other dishes. Let me know if you think of a good way to enjoy pumpkin seeds.

I thought I would show a picture of my roller mill. This is what I use mostly to grind anything from flour to oats to pumpkin seeds. It has different settings, and is geared, for easy grinding. I took the picture with the hopper off to show the stainless steel rollers.

Here's one of the pumpkin cakes, I made them short to bake quickly. The pumpkin seed topping is made with 2 tbsp ground pumpkin seed, 2 tbsp sugar or honey, and enough olive oil (or butter) to grease it up. Sprinkle on top of unbaked cake.

Winter delights

Penelope and Juniper are looking quite pregnant. The books say that most of the development happens in the last two months of prengancy, and they are due anytime between 6-8 weeks from now. The previous owner did not write down the breeding dates, so we have to watch them closely. One tip I read is that the careful goatherder will be able to observe when the first kid moves into the birth canal, by a slight slimming on the right side. This gives about a 12 hour notice before labor. The kids are carried on the right, the rumen on the left. Overall I am happy with their condition, we have been feeding them our homegrown grains to bring their condition up to snuff before they kid, and they are doing a great job picking off the heads and digesting the whole grain. The chickens do a great job at it too.

Winter has certainly arrived, we got about a foot of snow on Saturday. This is our winter road. Mr. Fritillary did some maintenance on the bikes, pumped up the tires and greased everything well, to resist rusting from salty winter roads. In the summer our 15 mile round trip commute down to the internet access center takes about 15 minutes each way, but slick winter roads can slow us down a bit. Although cold usually doesn't deter us from making our way down here about twice a week, wind and snow can. I wear quilted overalls, a down coat, and my treasured handknit long underwear, and wool bra, along with copious scarves, hats, gloves and a few pairs of socks. I barely feel the cold, even when it gets down to -20C. Haha, I look like a marshmallow, but I can still pedal!

But I have quite a number of blogs that I want to write, and two a week hasn't been covering it, so I am going to post a couple of blogs when I am down here, to make up for not having daily internet access.

Our driveway does not get cleared until spring, we pack a trail over the snow with snowshoes, and our occasional visitors park up on the road, and walk in. The dogs have to leap to get through the snow on our morning walk, as we head out to road for a good stretch.

Winter has beauties that rival summer blooms and breezes. Icicles hang off our rough-cut porch roof. The light reflecting off the snow on a clear day is dazzling. The solar panel collects nearly as much energy from a short winter day, as a long summer day, with the added boost of reflection.

The south-facing kitchen window always forms these fan shaped intricate ice crystals.

And the north-facing windows form sharp angular ice crystals, quite beautiful really.

Brussels Sprouts are practically designed to withstand frost and snow. The leaves protect the little cabbages along the stalk. They have finished growing, but I am still harvesting bits of green. The winterbore kale is doing very well, I am still harvesting a pound a week, but will probably get one last harvest or two. As long as we still have some greens from the garden, I can put off opening my canned green beans and peas, our only greens except sprouts and sauerkraut, until spring.

The last of my green tomatoes are ripening well, they have stored, and slowly ripened over six weeks in the cold room. Again, the longer I can use these, the longer I can put off using up the canned tomato sauce in the pantry. Afterall, it has to last until next August!

Sweater socks: Part 2

Sweaters that make the best socks are XL men's knit, with a tight stitch. Round neck or turtle neck are better than V-neck. I am also experimenting with fleece pull-overs as sock material. In the winter we often wear two layers of socks. The knit wool sock close to the skin would draw moisture, and the fleece sock over top would provide more insulation.

This is an XL men's wool knit, measuring 23 inches across the body. Excuse the poor quality image. This is an ideal sweater to make two pairs of knee-hi socks from the body, and one mid-calf pair from the sleeves. These are simple straight tube socks. Take a calf measurment for your own custom socks, and use that as your starting point. I have found that 11" works great for both of us. I would call that a medium.

The red yarn in this blurry picture *oops* marks out where I will cut. The best and most straignt forward sock comes from the middle 11" strip. Front and back will match up as one pair. The side cuts are a little funny because of the armholes. Measuring just above the waistband, I cut these at 6" from the seam, both front and back, leaving the seam in place. I make these "flank" cuts a little wider to compensate for the narrowing along the armhole. Starting at the waist band, cut straight up to the shoulder seam, cut along the shoulder seam, and down along the inside of the armhole seam. Do this front and back. Cut off the neck band. You should have something like this. A pair of flank socks.

An easy pair of tube socks.

And a pair of sleeve socks.

Remember that the waist band and wrist bands of the sweater are going to be the calf bands on the sock, and the shoulders are going to be the toes. If you are dealing with a V-neck, then your middle socks will be shorter, either mid-calf or ankle length depending on the sweater. Cut the back strip to match the front.

Now that you have your sock material cut, fold them inside out, and start sewing the seam from the calf band, down to the toe. Start with the strips from the middle of the sweater, they are the easiest pair. I make a narrow seam, only 1/4", so that the seam is not bulky. A bulky seam could be uncomfortable in the toes of tight fitting shoes. I sew the seam twice over, with a tight stitch to prevent the seam from pulling out.

Round the toe, then try the sock on, inside out, to see if it fits. You may want to make the ankles narrower if they sag, or you may find that the calf needs to be tighter. You can always make them tighter, until you get your own measurments worked out.

When you are happy with your first pair, tackle the funky armhole socks. For this pair, remember that I had cut them at 6" from either side of the seam, because the sweater was wide enough. So I started my seam at the calf, a 1/2" from the edge to maintain an 11" calf measurment. When I got to where the armhole narrows, I returned to a 1/4" seam following the contour of the fabric, rounded the toe, and continued around back to the body seam. I tried the sock on, and found that the ankle was baggy, and took it in until I was happy with the fit.

Now for the sleeves, they usually taper down to the wrist. The wrist band will usually fit nicely just below the calf. Make a mark where the sleeve gets wider than your basic width measurment (that's 5 1/2" for me or half of 11"). If you look back to the sleeve picture, the tape measure marks out where the sleeve reaches 5 1/2" wide, and the red yarn marks out where I will make my seam. Start the seam at your marker, and round out your toe as usual. Try it on before you cut the material, depending on the sweater you may need to make an adjustment.

When you are pleased with the fit, trim off the excess fabric, turn the sock right side out, and try it on again. The seam at the toe and running along either side of the calf has never bothered me.

Narrower sweaters may not allow room for three pairs. In that case I would take the middle strip from front and back to make one pair, and the sleeves to make one other pair. Women's and children's sweaters will make great short summer socks or kid's winter socks. Don't throw out those turtlenecks either, they make great neck warmers, especially for doing barnwork where a dangling scarf might get in the way. I have tried making gloves out of sweater fabric as well. Experiment and have fun!

Some of the little things

We do the best we can to live according to our conscience, here on our homestead. And living within limited means dictates some of our less-than-ideal choices. We are always making choices, and usually making small sacrifices, to find a way to live conscientiously: to responsibly manage our time, our physical and mental energy, the natural resources on our homestead and in our community, and of course, our limited cashflow. We set priorities for the necessities, and make long term plans to meet wider goals. Most everything our society takes for granted is largely destructive at it's root: our electric grid, food system, transportation, and production/consumption cycle. We have made those large lifestyle changes to address the bulwark of our concerns, reducing our power consumption to a level we could affordably produce with renewable energy, growing most of our food, living car-free out in the country by sharing rides and organizing monthly town trips, and for the rest either going without or buying responsibly.

For most things, we prefer to buy second hand, for small appliances often times older models have higher quality manufacturing. I picked up this table top sewing machine for $5, in great condition. All of our clothes are second hand, there's just too much used clothing out there, in perfect condition, and with a sewing machine just about anything can be made to fit. I also love to knit, and am a novice spinner, so our hats, gloves, scarves, and even undergarments, are homemade. And will one day, be made from homegrown fiber.
But I don't knit socks anymore. It's not that I don't like to, it is just that they ware out too fast for the amount of time I put into knitting them, and the cost of the wool. A hand-knit pair of socks costs $3 and about 3 hours, and usually only last a month. But store bought socks, or the pitiful collection of thin cotton socks in the second hand bin, just don't cut it for our winters. And my dear husband certainly deserves good winter socks, he is the one usually doing any unpleasant work outside in cold weather, while I am inside the warm house baking and well, knitting. So I would knit socks regardless, if we hadn't come up with an acceptable alternative.

Our local second hand clothing shop has an under-utilized abundant resource of out-of-fashion wool ski sweaters. These sweaters are tightly knit and make a very durable and warm fabric, perfect for socks. One large man's sweater will make about three pairs of knee-high socks, costing maybe 25 cents and 10 minutes a pair, and lasting about six months. Use the waist and wrist edges as the top of the sock, depending on the particular sweater, either cut out two strips between 5-6 inches wide, the full length of the sweater, or one 10-12 inch block. With the fabric inside out, sew up the seam or seams on the sides of the sock, rounding the toe. The sleeves usually make a shorter pair of socks.

Make your seams thin, and go over it twice with a small stitch to reinforce the seam, or if you have a machine that reinforces edges, use the appropriate stitch.

And voila! Great winter socks.

Homegrown Popcorn!

In our garden this year we planted about 20 row feet of popcorn. Not being a necessary crop I demoted it to the newly turned ground with just enough composted cow's manure to give it a try. We had to be careful with our precious compost this year, and make sure that the food crops we really rely on would yield enough to feed us for the year. So the popcorn came up, but it never got too high, only about 3 feet tall. But they put out tassels, and eventally small ears. Again, not being high on my priority list, I did not give them the attention they deserve, and never checked the ears for worms. In fact, I really didn't think there would be much of a harvest there. But after the first frost, as I harvested all of the squash and other frost tender crops, I checked one of the popcorn ears to see if there was anything worth salvaging. I was pleasantly surprised with these diminutive cobs, only about 3 inches long, and many of them damaged by corn earworms, but none the less golden popcorn kernels.
The kernels were already hardened on the cobs, but I let them dry inside for a couple of weeks. Then on a rainy day I shelled the corn, and sorted out the damaged kernels. I also saved the best, undamaged cobs for seed next year.

And of course, I had to try popping the corn! I have a favorite popcorn pot because it has a tight fitting lid, covered the bottom with olive oil (when I have ghee on hand, that is even better), heated the oil and threw in about 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels. Then goes the lid, and the pot sits atop the hottest part of the cookstove with a roaring fire going. These kernels started popping almost right away, the ones from the bulk store take a minute or two to pop, but fresh must be best. Tastes great too, with sea salt and dried basil, a good rainy afternoon movie snack. We watched "Fiddler on the Roof".

A Goat's Economy

This is what we get these days. We no longer get showers. When it rains, it really rains. Twice we have gotten a wheelbarrow of water in 24 hours, at least 5 inches of rain, only ten days apart. The Climate Change models for our area are proving true. I am not sure how much this would be, if it were snow instead of rain! But the forecast both times predicted 1/2 to 1 inch of rain, not 5 inches, which is I think, the result of funding cuts to local weather stations.

This kind of rain keeps me pretty close to the house, and I have been reading up on goats. Our goat-tending neighbor down the road dropped off his goat library, five titles in all, touching on all issues related to goat care and farming. One book in particular has caught my interest, Goat Husbandry by David Mackenzie. In the first few chapters he details the reasons why goats have never fit well with industrialized farming. Goats have always been the cornerstone of subsistence farming, especially those pushed to marginal farmland. I was amazed to read our story echoed in his pages, a story centuries old, of subsistence farmers who tried to raise a family milk cow on marginal land, as a way to try and feed the family as well as raise a supplemental income. More often than not, the needs of the cow would push them into debt, and the needs of milk on the table and cream for income, would deprive the calf of the only protein rich food available, stunting the calf, and further jeprodizing the family's ability to get out of debt.

So I am exploring what it means to be a subsistence farmer, and how subsistence farming works within a community. Our ideals of farming have changed dramatically since we began our adventure. We used to think of our ideal farmstock as consisting of cows, pigs and chickens, with heavy draft horse breeds providing for the extensive amount of grain cultivation and hay necessary to maintain the stock. These animals in particular fit well into industrial or market economies. We are now transitioning to goats, sheep, rabbits and ducks, using only standard horse breeds or possibly draft ponies for the relatively small grain and cultivation needs. Goats, rabbits and ducks (with the exception of sheep), have never fit well into the traditional market farm economy, but are relics of a still older, and perhaps more stable, subsistence farm economy.

Viva la Kraut!

Thanks to Paul at A posse ad esse, I was encouraged to try my hand at making saurkraut. I have been a reader of Weston Price material, and know that fermented food is great for health, I am a fan of yogurt, but like Paul, had never incorporated saurkraut in my diet. But I did put in a few cabbages this spring with the intention of trying a batch.

Like the apple cider vinegar, turning cabbages to saurkraut is really quite simple. I used the ratio I have seen in many blogs and books: 5lbs shreaded cabbage to 3 Tbsp salt. I had 7lbs of cabbage, cored, and sliced as thin as I could with a large knife. The cabbage is Early Jersey Wakefield, it's a summer cabbage dating back to the 1700's, and it is one of the only open pollinated varieties I can find up here in Canada. The heads will not store over the winter unless they are fermented.I tossed it with the salt, mixing it well, and packed it into a gallon jar, tamping it down with my fist until the juice started to run and fill most of the air pockets between the shreaded cabbage. Then to seal the cabbage from the air, and to keep it below the brine, a clean plastic bag filled with brine sits atop. Thanks Paul, for sharing that great tip!
It's alive! Within 24 hours my batch of saurkraut started bubbling and fermenting. I set it next to the fermenting apple juice, behind the stove. I'm not sure if the same micro-critters colonize the briny cabbage, but it's caught the fermentation fever. So now all I do is remove and rinse the bag once every week, and wait about 4 weeks for the taste test.