The wrap up

The garden is all but finished for the year, just a lonely row of cabbages, kales and Brussels sprouts, along with a patch of frost hardy parsley, and a few late onions in the ground. Everything else has found a place in the pantry, the spice rack, or the cool room. Tomatoes of all stages from green to yellow to pink are ripening, an abundance of green, yellow and red peppers will keep for a few weeks at least. The potatoes are in their bins, carrots and parsnips in their sacks, pumpkins and squash on their shelves. Even the rooster and the bucks have found their way to the pantry this weekend, as canned meat and rich broth. Well, the rooster only got as far as the table really, one of the many harvest feasts we enjoy this time of year. So it's quite a bit quieter around here.

It is interesting, wrapping up the season, but this time, not making those thousand preparations in anticipation of next year's garden. No seed saving since we want to start again with bio-regional varieties, although I am a thousand times tempted to stash away a few packets, out of a reflexive sense of preservation. But we have no rare varieties in need of salvation. And the practical consideration of moving cross-continent by bicycle keeps our load light. (Of course there are some things we will be shipping across like my trusty pressure canner, my treasured spinning wheel, our solar panel, etc.) But there is no safe passage for seed, so I let them scatter, and smile at the thought of all of these volunteer vegetable seeds, springing up in the re-planted pastures after we are gone.

When we go, no one will take over our garden, it will go back to pasture, cut for hay once a year. But I take heart in knowing we have made some small improvements to the soil, we leave our treasures for the worms, the insects, the invisible biota living out their secret lives, and for the birds that have become our constant companions in the garden.

The kitchen this time of year has the feel of industry: the pressure canner sputtering, wood stove chugging along, and food, always food, in every stage of preparation and storage. There's always a job to do, but not in a bad way, each job has it's pleasure and satisfaction. I sometimes feel as though I have a thousand clocks in my head, or rather kitchen-timers, each one set sometime in the spring, when seeds were planted, kids born, each one with it's own duration. This is the time of year when everything ticks down, I'm constantly scanning the timers, and tending the tasks that are nearest to completion. I just have to scan my overflowing kitchen (spilling out into the living quarters this time of year), to see herbs in various stages of drying, baking beans to shell, curing pumpkins behind the wood stove, shrivelled ground cherries in the warming oven nearly dry, ripening fruit to sort and process.

It used to be quite overwhelming, in my first few fledgling years as a, well, a housewife. I no longer object to this word because I understand the skill, competence and dedication it demands. Well, truthfully, I'm only a part-time housewife, and only when it's too cold to pleasurably work outside! Now, I don't mind the small circuit of my daily routines, always in proximity to the warm stove, the heart of the household. But as soon as spring breaks, I'm a caged bird, set loose, I'm a gardener, a homesteader, and grudgingly maintain the house, emptied of it's stores of food, hollowed out, dormant.

But this winter feels different, we are spinning a cocoon this winter, weaving new dreams, with new adventures. And making room for a new beginning. Instead of the thousand preparations for next year's garden, we have the thousand preparations for a move. And mostly what consumes our immediate interest is our cycling adventure. We are bike obsessed. Researching tandems, anything we can find about them, and touring gear and routes and tips.

A tandem bicycle is perfect for us, I love the idea of the cooperation and coordination required. On a tandem we will be so much more in tune with one another, and working together on tough climbs, the same way we work together in the garden and household, coordinating our efforts, working with efficiency, and enjoying the companionship. Besides, tandems are fast!

I've also realized that I've come full circle with this blog, I've written about a 12 month cycle of growing and preserving our food. It has been good, it is a good record of what we have achieved, on a bare piece of land, on an empty road. And I hope it has been informative, after all, I know how much I have learned in the process. But we have come to a natural end, realizing there is only so far the two of us can go on this road to self-sufficiency, without turning to capitalism's infrastructure to support us: the ironic hypocritical conclusion to the independent quest of self-reliance. From where we are, we can see that communalism, collectivism, eco-socialism, whatever tag you want to put on it, is the least destructive way forward, perhaps the only way.

So this blog may find it's natural conclusion, or it may evolve, or we may move on to a new blog, leaving this one to archive the food-skills we acquired, perhaps returning to it when we plant our next seeds. Either way, we'll let you know.

Chocolate and Collaboration

For the last three years we have been living in a conservative rural area, where the unemployment/ welfare and illiteracy rates are well over 50% (before the recession even). There's plenty of places like this, all across North America. We both came out here, from large centers of Environmental and Social activism, as an act of going to the "frontlines". At the time, I felt that if all the activists stayed clustered in self-affirming sub-cultures, that we would all end up preaching to the choir, so to speak. I had never lived in a rural area, and I had grown quite cynical about the effectiveness of my urban protests, boycotts and activism through selective consumption. I wanted to become a producer, at least of the majority of my own goods, but our ultimate goal was to start a micro-CSA. We knew that we could keep our costs down in a rural area, and have ultimately outdone our own figures, living comfortably on $100 a month (including rent, utilities, food, transportation, you name it). Granted, it is a very different life than I had once lived, but it is full of rewards I would not have otherwise found.

There is one undoubtedly necessary piece missing: community. I am quite satisfied with the practical aspects of our lifestyle, I would not easily go back to flush toilets, grid power, or anything less than fresh, high-quality, organic food grown by the output of my own physical labor. But I'm simply aching for some creative community outlets. I recently heard an interview with Frances Moore Lappe and she quoted a study done on the physiological effects of collaboration: it stimulates the same brain center as chocolate, a well known pleasure center of the brain. I have proven the inverse of this study, though experience, that social isolation is impoverishing, unhealthy and ultimately depressing. It saps my energy from the work I love to do in the garden. I have grown to realize that what we do out here is ultimately unsustainable without community, and that creatively working in collaboration has always filled my reserve of energy, rather than draining it.

Our original plans for a micro-CSA, growing a variety of vegetables, grains, meats, eggs and dairy products for just one or two families or individuals, would easily have supported our financial needs, and allowed us to make responsible choices in investing in the tools and machinery for growing food in a post-Carbon Climate Change context. In our plans, we gave ourselves two years of building our soil, and providing for our own needs first, while we put the word around in the local communities, mostly having to explain what a CSA is, and why it is a more sustainable model than a market food economy. We also gave our rural neighbors time to get used to us, used to new ideas and ways of doing things, (and there is no doubt that people were curious about us when we moved here), before trying, let alone accepting, these alternatives. We lived by example, and watched as the same cars drove slowly past our raising barns, grazing animals and growing crops of vegetables and grains; very few actually stopped to meet us, they just watched, and definitely talked (we heard some pretty amusing rumors about us, accidentally making their way back to our ears).

In other words, I do not feel that our expectations were unrealistic, we had a solid plan, a realistic idea of the amount of hard work it would require, and had scaled our income requirements to fit a very modest local interest in fresh, organically grown food, available at or below supermarket prices. But I am still at a loss for words to explain the utter lack of interest in what we offer. Anywhere else I have lived, we would have a waiting list. And this lack of interest is intimately tied to our social isolation, we simply have not met people who share our same concerns about the world, and about the future. Individual people have shown us kindness, done us favors (which we have enjoyed returning almost more so than the acceptance), and tried to make us feel welcome, but not one of them has been willing to collaborate with us. And that is the one thing we simply cannot do without, the one thing that makes our life unsustainable.

When I started this blog, it was my attempt to find that sense of community and collaboration over the internet. I wanted to explore the possibility of using virtual spaces to organize and activate, while remaining on the "frontlines", in the communities where alternatives are hard to find. I have found friends, and supporters through this blog and other online platforms, but I need to feel that the work I am doing every day is contributing to a larger social goal, not just maintaining our existence here, and that is hard to do "virtually".

I have only occasionally referred to the social aspect of our life here, partly because I am sometimes at a loss for words about it, partly because it sounds like a bit of a sad story, and I only want to share it publicly if it has some sort of point. And I suppose it is only just recently that I have put the pieces together, and fully understood the power of collaboration. Without community, we are constantly hobbled, unable to reach our potential. And it is really that: constantly striving to reach my ever growing and changing potential, that defines my purpose, my goal, my spiritual practice in life. Being hobbled for too long has begun to trick me into thinking that I cannot go any further.

Which leads me to a decision we have been ruminating over since winter, we're moving on from here. It's difficult to know when it is time to move on, but there's simply too much work to be done for us to be stagnating. I have used our three years here well, getting some serious gardening and animal husbandry under my belt. I have also gained confidence in my resilience, my ability to adapt, and in my great satisfaction in living an agrarian life. The cynicism I once held for the effectiveness of my actions on making a positive social and environmental impact has been transformed into resolution, courage, faith.

Where? We are going West, we are looking at certain areas from Oregon to British Colombia. But most importantly, we are looking for a community in which our skills and desire to work creatively, collaborate, and contribute to building a sustainable local food culture are welcomed, appreciated, and allowed to flourish. When? Next June is the goal. We have our garden and market garden this year to bring us through the winter, and time enough to organize the move, and begin to make contacts. The market garden was our last compromise to try and work within the established market food economy, and possibly influence it from within. The conventional farmers around here are skeptical at best, about organic production methods, and we hoped that our flourishing garden, high-quality produce, and low levels of disease and pests would give them a new impression. But those are mostly pipe dreams, and we mostly knew that already. In reality, the market garden is what we thought it would be, one big gamble. If we hit our luck, we will take the money and run.

Regardless, we are moving under our own steam, by bicycle. It will be a grand adventure, decompression time, a journalistic look into how climate change is affecting the land and agriculture, the best way to travel, and an opportunity that a dairy-maid hardly ever gets: a month of exploration with nary a bleating, clucking mouth to feed.

There is one place we have our eye on, the Slocan Valley in South Eastern British Colombia. They have some very inspiring community initiatives going on there. Including an Integral Forrestry Innitiative that sustainably manages a massive region of the local forest. As well as Canada's first Grain CSA in the Creston Valley. (This is just one of many sites and articles describing the Grain CSA, if the link eventually breaks, simply search under "Grain CSA Creston") This project really got me excited. In it's first year there were 200 shares sold, and 600 plus a waiting list for 2009, for local organic Wheat, Spelt, Kamut, Hulless Oats and Lentils. I have become particularly interested in the question of supplying regional grains, especially as more and more people are growing their own vegetables, but do not have space to grow grains. And in my own experience of growing and hand-harvesting our grains, it is a task more efficiently done with a community investment in small or appropriately scaled machinery.

We will continue to blog about the season of growing and preserving our food this year, but as you can imagine, our focus has shifted in many ways. Our eyes are on a broader horizon. And we invite you to continue following us on our next big adventure.

This summer's crop of organic bread wheat

Makin' hay while the sun shines

That's the trick around here, in a humid climate there are short weather windows. The best quality hay, and the highest protein hay, is made from pastures in the pre-bloom and early heading stages. For us that means that we can make the best hay from mid to late June. But typically, the weather is difficult to predict, with thunder showers blowing through that may, or may not, go around us. So we have developed a strategy for making good hay in a short weather window, a strategy that also helps us to improve our tired pastures.

The north hay field, which is not grazed, is primarily Timothy grass. The Clovers don't compete well in this field because it is low-lying and floods in the spring melt. Goldenrod is invading, and slowly out-competing the Timothy, and this field will need to be turned and re-sown to completely revitalize it. When our weather window broke this year, the Timothy was in the early heading stages. Actually the animals pick the Timothy heads out of the hay, the seeds would be high in protein. But there is still a high percentage of leaf compared to stalk in this early heading stage. About 20% of this field is scattered with clover, dandelion and vetch, making it a decent hay, but not high enough in protein to carry a lactating animal or weanlings.

We have two acres in this north field that were planted to grain last year. The grain came up with a self-sown understory of clover. After harvesting the grain, we left the clover to establish itself, and these two acres will provide us with the kind of high-protein hay we need for our lactating does. Again, the clover is at it's highest quality in the pre-bloom stage (meaning that the flower buds are just beginning to form), and fortunately, that is exactly when we were able to cut it.

Our strategy for making hay in short weather windows is to cut it early, while the crop is still light, but high quality, and to cut it high. We cut 6 to 8 inches above the ground, instead of the traditional 1 or 2 inches. What's left in the field is mostly stalk, the least palatable or nutritious portion of the plant, and the young growth. The stubble holds the cut hay above the ground, away from moisture, and allowing air flow underneath the windrow. The combination of a light crop and the added air-flow can cut a day or even two off of the drying period.

The benefit of leaving the stalk and young growth is earlier recovery of the fields. Since practicing this method we have noticed our pastures recover earlier and faster in the spring. The also recover quickly after haying, allowing the possibility of a light grazing, or even a second cut of hay in late July.

Actually the practice of cutting and drying herbs has taught me a lot about making good hay. When harvesting a herb, generally the practice is to cut no more than two-thirds of the plant. Similarly, herbs are harvested before flowering. And the highest quality dried herbs are dried quickly and exposed to as little moisture as possible.

We cut on Wednesday afternoon, there were warnings of thunder showers on Wednesday, but the sky cleared and the forecast was for a hot, windy day Thursday, Friday and Saturday were a bit cooler with part cloud, and Sunday called for a chance of showers with rain on Monday. If we got two good drying days in a row, we could comfortably bale Friday afternoon, but if the humidity rose, or with heavy dews, we would bale Saturday. The forecast looked promising, but when is the forecast ever right?

Well, we lucked out with no dew Wednesday night, and Thursday was a perfect drying day, 28C/82F, sunny and breezy. We let the top dry out Thursday, and again no dew Thursdays night. Although Friday morning dawned with a heavy cloud cover and forecast for showers Friday night, rain on Saturday. Oh the fickle spring weather! We raked the hay Friday morning, flipping the windrows to expose damp underside to the drying breezes, and hoped for a break in the clouds. It did break long enough to dry out the hay, but JUST dry enough to save. After a few hours of sun, the clouds once again advanced and we paced the field, testing the hay here and there, finding a few damp clumps, but overall, it was ready.

Hay that is ready to bale should be dry enough to hear it crinkle when you twist it. But it need not be so dry that the leaf crumbles at the touch, not oven dry. If it is too dry, the nutritious leaf will shatter in the baler and you will be left with stalk.

Another way to test the hay is to scrape the stalk. The field pictures didn't come out, so I took this one of some Alfalfa I'm drying for the tea cabinet. If the skin of the stalk peels back, it is dry enough to bale.

We baled Friday afternoon, only 48 hours after cutting, when the typical drying period for a heavy cut of hay is 3 to 4 or more days, a weather window impossible to find in our early summer. And as you can see, as we finished up, the clouds were thick, and it began to spit on us as we unloaded the wagon. Just in time. But it is some of the best hay we have ever made, and worlds apart from any hay we have been able to buy. We harvested 130 (40lb) bales from 4 acres, which is a pretty poor crop when compared to improved pastures. But each one of our bales compares in nutrition to two or three bales of the kind of hay we can buy locally, which are cut in late July and consist primarily of stalk, and only weigh about 25lbs.

We are certainly the talk of the town in the farming circle, they think we are crazy cutting so early and leaving so much stalk in the field! But we would also need twice the barn to store all that poor-quality hay. Most of the local square bales are cut for sale, not for use, and the primary reason for baling in late July or early August is to get as many bales off the field, therefore as much money off the field, as possible. Our hay is cut with a different motivation, and therefore uses different techniques. It would be nice if there were more out-of-the-box thinkers in rural areas to reintroduce fresh ideas and approaches to agrarian life.

To admire the flowers

We paid a visit to our neighboring small farmer. He keeps a small flock of goats and sheep, a variety of bantam and heritage chickens, and provides all of his own produce from a large garden and dozen fruit trees he planted 20 years ago when he started his small farm. Now in his mid-sixties, he is still going strong, but he values our help during haying season to put up 2000 square bales for his herd. And in exchange we use his tractor gear to put up our own 250 bales, and to work up our two acres for grain and garden. And at the same time we have developed a friendship, sympathizing with one another's success and struggles in the garden and around the farm.

Every spring, he has a profuse explosion of daffodils and crocuses and lilies and all kinds of beautiful spring flowers, and every spring, we admire them.

Found a few critters that I would like to find out more about. I have seen this very same species of spider on our potato plants. It is some kind of crab spider. It hunts rather than build a nest, waiting patiently for an unsuspecting herbivorous insect, which makes them a good beneficial insect in the garden.
Flower Crab Spider

And this one is new to me, some sort of nectar eating fly. It is not a bee, for lack of antennae, and it has quite a long proboscis to reach the nectar. Interesting critter, this one.

Greater Bee Fly

Our neighbor is also an amateur naturalist and birder, so he has dozens of birdhouses, bird feeders, bird baths, frog ponds, and trees planted especially to feed the birds. We always see a large flock of about a dozen Tree Swallows at his place, and I was lucky enough to catch the picture below.
His plum, apple and pear trees are just beginning to bud, when they are in full bloom, it is a beautiful sight.

The Melt

It began with the mist. It was like living in a rain forest, without the heat. The evaporation of the snow has been hanging around in the atmosphere and coming back down as rain showers. March was cold and sunny, and so far in April, we've barely seen the sun for all of the moisture. It's been a quick melt, staying above freezing for almost a week, and our last few feet of snow has finally been reduced to slush and water. Lots of water.

Our water garden... under a foot of water by the time the sun poked out in the afternoon yesterday. I could see my stinging nettles in the perennial herb bed just loving the flood, and I'm anxious to see how the kale, chard, leeks and of course garlic, have overwintered under the heavy mulch. Hopefully the kale and chard will produce some early greens before going to seed, and I'm also hoping for some seed from the wintered leeks.

Water was gathering in the fields and around the house and barns like we have never seen it, running in streams, searching for the lowest point. Our manure piles along the garden became dikes, and for a few hours, we had a pond at the front door. Don't fret, no basement to flood, and we are safely on blocks 3 feet above ground.

The barn became an island by evening, our first year we realized that we needed to dig a mote around the front of the barn, we had not expected spring melts like this. So now there is a channel for the water to run around behind the barns and out into the low spot in our Northern pasture.

It was great to finally see the sun after so many days of mist and rain.

By morning, most of the moisture had been soaked up by the thawing ground, except our usual spring ponds. This one in the north pasture and grain fields is a favorite of Canada Geese and American Black Ducks. A pair of geese flew in this morning, 12 days earlier than last spring, gleaning the remains of last year's rye and wheat fields. We had up to nine geese and five ducks last year, the pond sticks around through April, into mid-May even. Looking forward to seeing who shows up this year.

Out in the sun

Everyone got out in the sun today. We have had some gorgeous sunny days this week, but it's just hanging at the freezing point in the daytime, and darn cold at night, -15 to -20C, so the snow is still not melting, 3 feet to go. I get a bit antsy for the snow to melt this time of year. Drives Mr. Fritillary crazy. I even went so far as digging a hole in the snow over the garden last spring, and measuring how deep it was every time it melted a bit! Good thing the birds start to show up again in April, and keep me busy. I started identifying the birds last spring with my Peterson guide and a spyglass. A birding pirate at the kitchen window! Mr. Fritillary keeps himself busy writing (besides fetching wood and carrying water), working on some essays on Postmodern Agrarianism. Patience is the name of the game now, soon enough the busy growing season will sweep aside all other pursuits.

The goats and horse stick to the packed snow in front of the barn. Pilgrim tested the snow a week ago, but he can't go far. You can tell it is Pilgrim's usual hang-out, that's not dirt you see! It is a bit of a sun catch, out of the wind, and he likes the company of the goats.



Check out that bag! Pretty good balance too. :)
Juniper has absolutely no fear of Pilgrim, even though this is the first horse she has ever hung around. She treats him like a big goat, and walks right underneath him, Pilgrim is a gentle giant with the goats. Poor fella can't wait to have a proper roll and romp out in the pasture.

Even miss kitty found a warm spot out of the wind for a snooze. Up in the bay window where the seedlings will be moving, hopefully she is not troublesome, we may have to put up a little electric fence to keep her out. She is cute, but not very smart. Promptly after this picture, and the bit of attention it got her, she rolled over to strike another pose and fell off! Wish I got that picture, hanging by one paw to the wood. Giggle. She did the same thing off the front steps this morning, not the brightest button.

Even the bikes got some sun... Winter is hard on them too, salty roads and rusty chains and all.
Snow bank at the end of the driveway is still about 6 feet tall. Mr. Fritillary cuts some stairs into the bank for access.
Sorry I haven't gotten many pics of the kids up here, they don't stay still long enough for a decent shot! Only when they are drinking milk. We got them drinking out of the bucket this week. Not something they take to on their own, always preferring the nipple. We don't like to starve them into drinking out of the bucket, so we submerge the nipple into the milk and they drink through it like a straw. Once they get the idea that there's milk down there, they figure out the rest.

A conversation on ecological sustainability: Part 2

In my post A conversation on ecological sustainability, I made these statements: "I no longer believe that over-population is the dominant problem, or even the root cause of many of our ecological crises. I firmly believe there is more than enough for everyone alive right now on this earth to be nourished, clothed, housed and enabled with dignified work. This is not an utopian ideal, but an ethical principle." I am aware that overpopulation is one of those controversial hot-topics, which is why I feel it is so important to return to this issue and keep churning it.

First off, by simple mathematical equation, arriving at a concrete number for the carrying capacity of the earth, no matter how large or small, requires a calculated footprint for each human being. If we take the current available arable land on this earth as a base, in order to calculate how many human beings can live on that land mass, we need to know how much land each person requires. So which standard of living do we use? When we first began homesteading, one reason we moved into an underpopulated rural area was because we thought that we needed 100 acres to homestead on a largely self-reliant basis, and these depopulating areas held the best chances that we would be able to afford a piece of land that size. In the three years we have been on a 100 acre parcel (10 ac cleared pasture, 90 ac wooded), we have found, through practical experience and meeting the majority of our material needs, that we need a lot less land. Really, 10 acres would almost be too much. Even with wood as our sole source of heat and cooking fuel, and harvesting wood for building all of our barns, fencing and sheds, we have only begun to thin 4 to 5 acres of bush that was clear cut 20 years ago. The trees we harvest are primarily quick growing poplar and fir, and they are not large, average diameter of 6-8", and at least half of the trees we used were dry-rot because the regrowth was crowded and had not been managed. So if we were harvesting our wood out of a sustainably managed woodland, with hardwood for fuel, we need only 2-3 acres, at most. As we develop more solar hot water and solar cooking technologies, we need even less. And this sustainably forested area could also serve as a source of grazing for goats and rabbits, wildlife habitat to shelter natural beneficials in the garden, and food sources such as bramble fruits, orchards and nuts.

As for arable land for gardens, grazing, hay and grain, we first thought that we would run out of room on the 10 cleared acres. And these unamended, unimproved, tired pastures were just enough to carry one dairy cow, a horse and some pigs and poultry, so our first approach was to improve the pastures to increase the carrying capacity. The real revolution for us was to change the kinds of livestock we carry. One dairy cow provides enough milk and dairy products for a large extended family, and without a sustainable community approach to dairying in this area, this one cow was consuming most of the land resources as well as our time and energy, and even with my best effort to use up every drop of milk, in reality, we were producing too much. In switching to goats as dairy animals, and grazing animals such as rabbits and ducks instead of the grain intensive pigs and chickens, we are now able to meet our dairy, egg and meat needs (including growing the grains to raise them) on less than half the land. So as we continue to improve pastures and soil, we can grow all of our food (except coffee, tea and salt) on less than 3 acres, in Zone 4b. The carrying capacity of this zone is just about equivalent to the marginal lands surrounding deserts, we have a 3-4 month growing season, and 8-9 months dormancy, trees grow slowly and pastures do not provide more than one cut in a season. It is the same in a semi-arid climate where the growing season after the rains is only 3 months, with the dormant dry season extending throughout the rest of the year. So in a temperate zone, we could easily decrease our footprint by half or more. A large majority of the land mass of this earth is in the temperate band, if these lands are managed on a sustainable scale, using very low-tech methods and traditional fuels and foods, I would suggest that one acre is plenty to support one adult and a child. If we then continue to innovate, improve and build soils, push back the deserts, and use the types of methods Bishop's Homegrown detailed, the potential is endless.

We also thought that we would run into water issues, even here with a large snow pack and heavy precipitation, because we moved on here with a shallow, hand-drilled well. The well consists of a 2" diameter pipe drilled down to about 25 feet. The water table is usually between 10-15 feet below the surface, but it replenishes slowly because it is only ground water. We are not tapped into any water veins or the fossil water 100" below the surface that our neighbors access. We have to manage our water usage, both in the summer if we go 3-4 weeks without much rain, and in the winter when the ground water and precipitation is locked up as ice and snow. We have often thought of drilling a deeper well, or of using water catchment to meet our non-drinkable water needs. We cannot irrigate the garden on this scale, and even meeting the water needs of the dairy cow began to drain our well, especially in the winter. We mulch the garden and build up water-retaining humus in the soil, and only water tender transplants. On this level, even without rainwater catchment, we use about 10 gallons a day to meet all of our water needs, including livestock, garden, laundry, processing our canned food, etc. Our shallow well only taps the groundwater in a small diameter around it, I would guess that our water footprint, in an area with heavy precipitation to be only 10 cubic feet of ground water. Mr. Fritillary farmed on the edge of a desert, and using permaculture and water management techniques such as heavy mulch, shade houses, etc, he was able to catch enough water for 6-12 months with 5 inches of rain off of a 112 square foot roof. Most semi-arid zones receive 5-10" of rain a year, so with the appropriate rain catchment and storage techniques, water needs can easily be met on the land scale suggested above.

So now for manufactured goods, materials such as metals that require mining, electronics and technology such as solar panels and wind generators. We do our best to make either life-time purchases or buy used goods. We spend well under $1000 a year on purchases such as electronics, bicycle parts, solar panels, generators, tools, grain mills, cookware etc. And that number gets smaller each year. We could easily meet our fiber, clothing and leather needs on the footprint given above. We do not purchase things that are considered "consumables" or pure entertainment. Local theater, arts, artisan crafts and the like are sustainable ways to fulfill our desire to express and entertain one another.

Our power system is on the same micro-scale. We meet our power needs, including powering a laptop, radio, mp3 player, cell phone, household appliances (including a fan in the summer), small power tools, lights and electric fencing on 1200 Watts a month. On this scale, designing and building a power system to meet household or community power needs are easily achievable. Villages in Africa are building their own wind generators out of "scrap" and bicycle generators to power their cell phones, laptops, radios, lighting, etc. The more localized the power generation, the more efficient, because power is lost the further it is pushed down a line. Google is beginning to source renewable power to run the large server farms that provide the Internet. By locating these server farms in appropriate places where there is a consistent power source like tidal, geothermal or wind/sun, we can sustainably build up the global communication network that the Internet provides. Access to the internet can be broadcast over radio-waves, requiring only simple receivers, and data can be stored on-line at these renewably powered server farms, eliminating the need for fiber-optic lines, tele-communication satellites and power-sucking desktop computers.

Transportation is a pretty easy issue to resolve, it just takes a lot of reworking, and restructuring the way we live, but it is technologically and practically possible for us to transport ourselves and our goods without the use of fossil fuels, with low-impact mining and manufacturing. For ourselves, we use bicycles as local transportation, even through our winters, and carpool trips to town a few times a year. But we are working on an electric bicycle design, using a tandem and a trailer, powered by a compact marine wind generator to keep the battery charged. With this bicycle we can comfortably carry 100 lbs in the trailer and 50 lbs on the bike, and travel 100 miles a day at a maximum.

We do not usually "boast" of these facts about our life because we are typically met with a combination of pity and aversion. But we live this way, and are comfortable, nourished, healthy, happy, fulfilled, we have friends and a great marriage, so as far as standard of living, I think we are very well-off. We work hard, but we are not breaking our backs. We live within restrictions, but we are not stagnated by poverty. We are not Luddites by far, and use the latest innovations in technology when they improve our quality of life without harming another's. These are ethical choices, at heart, but they are also practical solutions. It has been a kind of experiment for us to live this way, and because of what we both have learned, we also have a high sense of security and confidence that we are able not only to survive, but to thrive and contribute to our community under incredibly adverse conditions, including the climate disasters to come. I looked into the definition of pragmatism, because I know that I am no longer an idealist, since we have been living by and redefining the ideals that we only held in theory when we lived in an urban environment. By the definition below, I believe, if these kinds of labels really matter, that my approach to this issue has been entirely pragmatic.

"The goal of pragmatist theorizing is not to solve abstract philosophical problems but to attain knowledge of a concrete, social reality and to focus on the problems of actual experience. This knowledge and experience will then direct political action and social change: theory and practice are interrelated. Based on this experiential and practical foundation, pragmatists hold, among other things, that there is a plurality of values and meanings, that human action can better the human condition, and that there is a relationality between the experiencing subject and the experienced object."

So to re-state our belief that overpopulation is not the problem, to us, it is not a question of whether the solutions are out there, the question is whether those of us who have been used to a higher material standard of living are willing to make these changes before it really is too late.

In doing a basic google search for concrete numbers on the arable land available on earth, I found this page:

Surface Area of the EarthEarth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles (which is the mean diameter of the Earth - see "Prove it" under 103).

The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.

Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.

The human population on earth has crossed six billion. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.

Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.

Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.

Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.

I believe that this is possible, and if our earth were being tended on an ecologically sustainable scale, we would be building soil and increasing the amount of arable land. By this I do not mean huge agro-tracts of monocrops, because these farms contribute to the loss of soil and arable land. I am starting to digress into another branch of this issue, so I will save the rest of this discussion for the next blog.

Encouraging change in your community

Well, I'm posting my responses back up as a new blog again because I would like to keep this conversation going. We had to take a few days to sort out how to respond back to the over-population theory, and I'll be posting more on that later this week. I also wanted to say thanks to Bishops Homegrown who really detailed a lot of the solutions that I only threw a passing reference to. But first off, I wanted to respond to Farmmom and Trapper Creek, fellow rural homesteaders who see a lot of the same things we see around us.

Farmmom and Trapper Creek, living out in the country as you both are, I am sure you see many examples of the devastating mismanagement of natural resources practiced in market-driven big-ag. And your own examples of low-input sustainable food production provide a stark contrast to this model. Because of this contrast, we often feel that we are living in a different world than our neighbors, which makes communication difficult because we lack a shared vision, and share only a few common goals, such as the notion of a continued quality of life for the next generation. But our notions of how to achieve that common goal is a wide gulf to cross. We greatly sympathize with both of your frustrations at being daily confronted with what seems clearly to all of us, not just a misuse of resources, but also an ethical issue. What Trapper Creek's cabbage growing neighbor does with his soil, water and crops affects all of us. It is painful to see that food go to waste, especially in the face of empty food banks, and the hungry children and families in our own communities. Every year that Prince Edward Island has a bumper crop of potatoes, the potato farmers collectively dump many thousands of tonnes of perfectly good potatoes into the ocean just to keep the price up. They report this fact on the local news in the Fall, and at the same time, the local food banks are broadcasting public service messages asking for donations to meet the high demands of the Christmas season and winter months.

I believe that a few of the farmers and food banks started to work together, and the food banks would accept bags of potatoes, but most food banks have restrictions on the types of produce they accept. And although the farmer gets a tax-writeoff for the donation, it does cost him money to harvest the crop. I wondered if a U-pick style would work, basically the biblical gleaning method. But I doubt that many of the families that must rely on food banks in difficult times would harvest and either store or process the food. Perhaps it would require a new approach to donating to a food bank. Instead of donating money or peanut butter and canned goods, people in the community could donate their time to meet the farmer half-way and either harvest or process/bag the “excess” produce. In some cases, even setting up a community food-kitchen to can the produce so that it can be stored and distributed by the food bank.

Of course this would require some sort of politicking and educating on the municipal level, and food safety standards would need to be met. But I would imagine that this kind of approach would open the door a little wider between “us” and the big-ag farmer who has been doing the same thing for years and perhaps cannot afford to take the risk (or cannot quite see the way) of dramatically altering the way that he farms. It does not work to approach the farmer in opposition, nor would it work to shove books and literature into his mailbox to try and “educate” him about a new model. We need to build a bridge to reach across that gulf. And that is usually harder to do than any of the work that follows.

We have a neighbor with a small farm, who grew up surrounded by big-ag, and who believes that the Green Revolution of chemical farming is the only way to feed the world. He uses roundup in his garden, and everything that goes along with that approach. He often ridicules our organic approach to growing food, and sees us as eccentric idealists. But we keep the conversation going, and we see him watching what we do. He looks through our garden, and sees that we have fewer pests or disease, year after year, than he has in his garden, and that we often get bigger harvests. He also watches our animals and how healthy they are, and that we have treated common ailments without antibiotics. He never openly acknowledges these things, we just watch him watching us.

When we planted our grain without any “inputs” and no herbicides, he came over and walked through the field and basically told us that we would not get much of a crop. But in the fall, when we had harvested a decent crop of grain, and most of the grain fields around here were lost because the farmers could not get their harvesters over the soggy fields, or had lost the crop to fungus, our neighbor kind of gave us a nod. He did not openly approve of our methods, instead, he put his own sheep and goat manure on his garden for the first time in decades and came over to explain to us how he would not need to buy so much fertilizer next spring. It was amusing to see him explain it to us as his own idea that had occurred to him when he thought back to the garden his mother used to grow when they were too poor to afford fertilizer, and not as any sort of response to what he had seen in our garden. He has good memories of his mother, and it is kind of a basic human response that we sometimes need to associate a new or opposing idea with something good from our past experience in order to accept that new idea, no matter how much physical evidence and data we are confronted with to try and convince us. We don't pay much mind to his ridicule of organic farming because we know it is backed up by years of thinking that way, and we don't much mind whether or not he openly learns anything from us, we have just kept the conversation going, and kept our door and our garden open to him, because he has to make up his own mind in order to change his well-worn beliefs and well-trodden paths. So I guess that's what I've got in response to your question Trapper Creek “any ideas on educating everyone, besides just keep plugging away as we are?”. Keep plugging away. Keep churning the issues, like churning butter. And keep the conversation going.

On a personal note, I've just read this out to my husband and he laughs and says to me that this blog is beginning to sound like a Dear Abby advice column. Ha! Oh my. Sorry if it sounds that way to you all too, I guess I'm full of advice and organic fertilizer! In truth I'm writing this out as “advice” and ideas for myself as well, and using your comments and this blog as a sounding board.

It is a lot easier for me to learn how to grow vegetables than it is to learn how to communicate well with people, especially people I do not share many common views with. My conventional education did not teach me much in the way of communication skills, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, and by hiding in books most of my life, I got away without learning these skills. About a year ago, I found a great site about emotional intelligence and communication skills, it is practical and I like the way it is written (it's not flaky), and I find that most of what the author says is true. I am finding that these skills are just as important as "survival" or homesteading skills because in order to start acting on some collective or collaborative solutions, we need to be able to sit down at the table together and work some things out. Here's the link.

What we grow, and a slight digression

Lisa L. asked if we could share what all we are growing in 2009. These are the food crops we are planting in the garden. We are also planting 1/2 acre of feed oats and 1/2 acre of feed wheat. I have listed an estimated yield as well, but these numbers are specific to the condition of our garden soil as well as our gardening zone (Zone 4b). Our best ground has only been worked and amended for two years, after being turned from tired pastures that had been cut for hay but not grazed or fertilized for at least 15 years. The grains are going into the pasture where we strip grazed our chickens, and turned and worked last summer.

Sorry I'm not yet web savvy enough to put this into a table using html, it was a lot more readable that way...

Vegetable: variety; Row ft or Sq ft; Expected Yield
Potato: Gold Rush (russet); 120'; 150 lb

Potato: Yukon Gold; 240'; 300 lb

Potato: Norland (red); 120'; 150 lb

Potato: Hermosa (early white); 120'; 150 lb

Potato: Purple; 120'; 150 lb

Beet: Lutz (winter keeper); 100'; 125-150 lb

Carrot: Scarlet Nantes; 200'; 350-400 lb

Parsnip: Andover; 100'; 100 lb

Turnip: Golden Ball; 100'; 125-150 lb

Garlic: Chesnook Red; 128'; 12 lb

Leek: Lancelot; 20'; 15 lb

Onion: Stutgarter; 350'; 200 lb

Broccoli: Early Italian; 45' (30 plants); 10 lb heads, 2 lbs sprouting seed

Brussels Sprouts: Jade; 12' (8 plants); 5 lb

Cabbage: Jersey Wakefield (summer); 12' (8 plants); 12 lb

Cabbage: Bartolo (storage) 36'' (24 plants); 75-100 lb

Cauliflower: Symphony; 12' (8 plants); 12 lb

Kale: Blue Curled Scotch (summer); 10'; fresh summer greens

Kale: Winterbor; 10'; fresh greens into December

Chard: Rainbow; 15'; fresh greens

Lettuce: Simpson & Optima; 20'; fresh greens

Mesculun: Mild Mix; 50'; fresh greens

Spinach: Bloomsdale; 30'; fresh greens

Cucumber: Garden Sweet; 6' (2 plants); 40 lb slicing

Cucumber: Pickles; 12' (4 plants); 80 lb pickling

Pumpkin: Naked Seeded; 48' (16 plants); 240 lb (5 lb Pumpkin seed)

Winter Squash: Sweet Kuri; 48' (16 plants); 200 lb

Zucchini: Black; 18' (6 plants); 60-120 lb

Ground Cherry: Aunt Molly's; 60' (20 plants); 80-100 lb (10-12 lb dried)

Tomatillo; 6' (2 plants); 20 lb

Tomato: Roma (canning); 30' (10 plants); 100 lb

Tomato: Cherry Fox; 12' (4 plants); 40 lb (5 lb dried)

Tomato: Latah (early slicing); 12' (4 plants); 40 lb

Tomato: Yellow Plumb; 6' (2 plants); 20 lb

Pepper: Long Red Cayenne; 24' (12 plants); 6-10 lb

Pepper: Carmen Sweet; 24' (12 plants); 6-10 lb

Green Beans: Provider; 360'; 150 lb

Pole Beans: Kentucky Wonder; 120'; 30 lb Green Beans, 10 lb Dry Beans

Baking Beans: Jacob's Cattle; 120'; 10 lb Dry Beans

Shelling Peas: Thomas Laxton; 200'; 40 lb Shelled Peas

Dry Peas: St. Hubert; 120'; 25 lb Dry Peas

Chickpeas: n/a; 600'; 60 lb

Lentils: Green; 600'; 60 lb
Grain and Seed Crops; Row ft or Sq ft; Expected Yield

Hard Red Spring Wheat: Hoffman; 1/8 acre or 5500 sq ft; 400 lb

Hulless Oats; 1/8 acre or 5500 sq ft; 250 lb

Spelt; 1500 sq ft; 75 lb

Hulless Barley; 1500 sq ft; 75-100 lb

Millet: Proso; 2400 sq ft; 60-75 lb

Quinoa; 1200 sq ft; 25-50 lb?

Amaranth: Golden; 1200 sq ft; 25-50 lb?

Popcorn: "Popcorn"; 120'; 12 lb popcorn kernels

Sunflower: Early Russian; 100'; 20 lb?

Poppy Seed: Mauve Flowering; 240'; 5-10 lb

Sugar Beet: "Sugar Beet"; 600'; 400-600 lb (200 lb syrup)

Mangle: Mammoth Long Red; 600'; 400-600 lb (fodder crop)

Herbs; Row ft

Anise 12' (seed)

Caraway 18' (seed)

Coriander 21' (seed)

Cumin 12' (seed)

Dill 15' (seed)

Fennel 12' (seed)
Alfalfa 30'

Basil 21'

Betony 10'

Catnip 10'

Chives 9'

Chicory: Coffee 30'

Comfrey 24'

Ephedra 4 potted plants

Lavender 5'

Lemon Balm 5'

Marjoram 18'

Mint 10'

Mullein 20'

Parsley 12'

Peppermint 5'

Oregano 10'

Rosemary 2 potted plants

Roseroot 2 potted plants

Sage 10'

Skullcap 20'

Stinging Nettle 10'

Thyme 10'

So you can see, this is a pretty basic garden as far as varieties or specialty crops, there aren't many thrills or novelties. Our priority is to grow a garden that nourishes us for a year. We place a priority on staple foods, storage crops and grains. At this point, we only put a minimum of effort into non-staple foods that require intensive methods in our climate, like peppers, or summer vegetables that can only be stored well by freezing such as broccoli and greens. It is a no-nonsense garden. I would love to have time for more flowers. We can really only eat out of the garden for 3 months at best, the other 9 months we must rely on the pantry. Our gardening season is too short for succession crops, except for lettuce and radish, so up in the north here, it is an intense growing season with one planting and one harvest. Any foods that require more than they give back are either cut altogether, or reduced to a manageable size.

On a sustainable footprint scale, to digress a bit, we are beginning to question where human settlements should be centered. Living an agrarian and domestic life above Zone 4 is not only hard, it is an inefficient use of resources. It takes more land, more fuel, and more grain to live here. Domesticated grazing animals are only on pasture for 5 months of the year, so it takes twice the pasture to grow enough grass to store through the winter. We need a larger garden, and more compost to grow the same domestic garden vegetables. We also burn more firewood to keep warm through the winters. This is the very edge, the furthest extreme of being able to live a settled life off of the land. These zones have traditionally been used as nomadic grazing and hunting grounds, and are still used primarily as a source of resources, either lumber, minerals or water.

Living on the edge of a temperate climate, we know how vulnerable we are to climate extremes on our own home-front. If Canada were not a nation with the resources to import food and maintain social assistance programs, as well as implementing research and technologies that will mitigate or manage disasters, it would be experiencing local famines and out-migrations of people already, due to the extent of grain crop failures in the Prairies in the last 5 years in particular. Nations without the same resources can do nothing for their people but plead for help from the UN, and the wealthy nations of the world. It is long past time that we have a global strategy to face the coming storm.

Climate change is beginning to reshape our planet and human civilizations, and the first climate refugees are evacuating the most fragile island ecosystems. Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and the Caribbean islands have been putting their cases before the UN, as they are flooded out and washed over by 1,000 year storms. What is it to be a natural citizen of a nation that has been made uninhabitable by climate change? These islands are the canary in the coal mine, and our planet will continue to be reshaped by devastating climate swings. When national borders become front-lines in a climate war, it will be too late to prevent the famines and genocides to follow.

The temperate zones, both north and south are, and hopefully will continue to be, the most stable regions on this planet. The polar and equatorial regions are our best planetary carbon sinks, and these zones will likely experience the largest extremes.

We do not believe the theories that over-population is the main cause of pollution and famines. It is the wanton and wasteful use of resources that has created dead zones, deforestation and the climate refugees to come. In a temperate zone, a comfortable life can be sustained on just a few acres per person. So with these things in mind, we keep a critical eye on our own use of resources. At this point, living on a no-impact, zero-emission scale, is not enough. Climate famines are not inevitable, if we reach down deep, forsake our wanton abuse of planetary resources, and even forsake our national boundaries to allow the free movement of peoples onto arable land, we could pull through. And prevent what could be the greatest human genocide.

One of our neighboring clearcuts we are surrounded by at least 200 acres of clearcut on all sides, leaving no habitation or wind break, and devastating the forest ecology. There are no tree planting programs locally either.

Ten acres of cabbage on a local farm that were plowed under, we suspect because it cost more to harvest than he would get for the crop. Perhaps 200 tonnes of food, not to mention the heavy usage of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and diesel for the tractor, wasted.

Our greatest human potential is our ability to adapt to a perceived danger. We would still be animals if all we could do was react to changes. Perhaps what makes us human is our ability to foresee. And because we can foresee these famines, it is our greatest human degradation to ignore them, and carry on. So as much as the so-called developed nations are suffering economically, we are largely insulated from the greater emergency. And it is my hope, that difficult times remind us to open our arms even wider to those who suffer more, and that times of strife inspire us to make room, where otherwise we would be tempted to exclude.

Goals for 2009

2009 is going to be a rough year for most, I hope that it draws together communities and families, to take care of each other. I hope it clears our collective eyes of all the clutter, and reminds us of what is really important: a possible future for the children on this planet, and food, shelter, dignity and peace for every human.

The end of December and the beginning of January are always the slow weeks for us. It is dark and cold, and we are recovering from the busy growing season. This time is necessary for us to regenerate and reinvigorate.
The fierce feline hunters cuddle up to Blackie in his box, some mornings the little grey one is actually sleeping on Blackie's back.

The rest of the winter gives us some time to focus on interests outside of gardening and homesteading, as well as time to plan for the upcoming season. I love to plan out the garden and make plans for the livestock we keep. Mr. Fritillary takes on the larger homesteading "systems" like our power system, or growing/harvesting/threshing grains.

Our goals in the garden are to continue expanding our small grain and pulse production. For cereals, along with wheat, we are also going to grow a crop of hulless oats and spelt. And our pulse crops will include a larger crop of baking beans and dry peas, as well as chickpeas and lentils. I want to try quinoa again, our crop in 2008 failed to produce seed in time for the frost, but we had an early severe frost this fall. After seeing how frost tolerant it is, I will plant at least a week earlier in the spring as well.

The additions in the vegetable garden are minimal, a new variety of pole bean, and paprika peppers. The rest will be just about the same, but I would like to grow more cabbage, sweet potatoes, beets and parsnips. I hope to improve the yield in my onion crop by amending the soil with potassium (from wood ashes). I lost my ground cherry crop to the frost last fall, not a single ripe one, but they struggled to germinate in the spring and I knew they were a bit late. I may have to begin again with purchasing seed since the germination rate of my saved seed was so low.

In the herb garden I'll be adding a few new medicinals, as well as allocating more space for culinary herbs. I am determined to get some fennel seed, I started some indoors last spring, but not early enough I suppose.

And I will be doing more seed saving, especially with the biennials. I have some turnips, beets, carrots, mangles, and onions in storage to be planted for seed in the spring. I also have one cabbage in storage, pulled with the root ball and all, to replant in spring for seed. I left some parsley in the ground to go to seed in the spring, and I mulched over a row of chard and kale hoping it will make it through winter to produce seed in the spring. I am also going to start a lettuce seed bed as early in the spring as possible. Lettuce and radish are long season seed producers, and this fall I lost my radish and the larger part of my lettuce seed crops to the frost.

We are also expanding our variety of grain and fodder crops for the livestock in 2009. Along with wheat and oats, we are planning to grow peas for grain and hay, for both the chickens and goats. Millet, amaranth and sunflower for the chickens. And more mangles for the goats and rabbits.

Our plans for livestock are to keep our two does, and possibly get two ewes, and 2 or 3 doe rabbits in the fall. We will be looking for some ducks in the spring, hopefully some duck eggs to incubate ourselves, somewhere between 12-20. We will also be breeding our young flock of hens and either incubating the eggs or letting a clucky hen hatch them out herself. Going into winter next year we will keep the flock down to 6 hens and a rooster and 6 ducks and a drake.

Our other major project for 2009, Mr. Fritillary's terrain, is to design/build a bicycle generator and/or a horse-powered treadmill (literally a treadmill for the horse), to replace our gas-powered generator. We spent $400 on gas in 2008 (at an average of $1.15 per Liter), $300 in 2007, and we could make one or both of these generators for about that much. The horse treadmill is a bit more complex to build, but it would truly replace the gas generator, producing an equivalent amount of power, and it would give Pilgrim, our standard bred workhorse, something to do in the winter. He actually gets bored and cramped in by the deep snow, and would be a happier, healthier horse for the exercise.

It seems to me that Pilgrim remembers being cramped up by the barn due to the 4-5 feet of snow on the ground through most of last winter, so every time it snows it is as if he is out getting one last romp around the fields.

I have really enjoyed starting this blog, and beginning to build an online community, and will continue to write about our experiences and experiments with homesteading in a brave new world.

Baking with Freshly Ground Whole Grains

Using a hand cranked steel-roller grain mill to grind our whole wheat and rye kernels, the flour we use for baking is full of bran, and is coarser than purchased flour. We could go through an extra step, put it through a stone flour mill and filter out the larger flakes of bran to produce a product identical to the whole wheat flours we used to buy from the somewhat-local organic flour mill.

Sifted flour

Bran (that fly must have snuck in the picture, they are pesky little things in the summer)

But to these light flours I used to add multi-grain mixes or cracked wheat to produce a hearty loaf of bread with the nutty aroma of freshly ground grains. The advantage of making a finely-ground, sifted flour is that I could use it in any recipe without modifying the ingredients. But cooking with seasonal ingredients, primarily from our garden, has taught me the art of modifying recipes and substituting ingredients, so I chose instead to become familiar with my own unique flour. Besides, our tastes prefer this slightly coarser grain in cakes and bread. The texture of my cakes is similar to cornbread when made with half wheat flour, and if you have ever tasted bread made with a significant portion of rolled oats, that is the texture of my wheat and rye breads.

Cake showing flakes of bran
Baking my first batches of bread from our flour, I followed a familiar basic whole wheat recipe, but struggled with the texture. I have found that working with a flour so high in bran changes the ratio of liquid to flour in any given recipe. Where a recipe calls for one cup of whole wheat flour, I use 1 1/2 cups: the extra 1/2 cup being similar to a recipe that lists an optional amount of wheat germ, for example, that can be omitted without changing the desired texture.

The benefits of baking with freshly ground flour are, a superior flavor and nutty aroma imparted by each particular grain, and the superior nutrition. Grains contain Vitamin E in the germ and bran. Vitamin E is an oil, all oils or fats, when exposed to air and oxidation, go rancid and become free-radicals in the body when consumed. By storing our grain whole, and grinding only what we need, the Vitamin E, along with other familiar vitamins that are removed with the bran and added again to "enriched" flour, are consumed in a state that is beneficial to health.

Consuming white flour, can be found, in part, to originate with the gentry and aristocratic classes of Europe. Pastries and breads baked solely using white flour were more expensive, since nearly half of the whole wheat flour, the bran, became a waste product, meaning that nearly twice the amount of grain had to be produced, stored, and then ground, before filtering out the undesirable bran. Bran was the food of horses and peasants in those days. But the white flour, and the whiteness of the resulting products, was desirable to the upper-classes also because it was reminiscent of purity and delicacy. Women of this class were preferred to have pale white skin, while peasant women, who labored under the sun, had bronzed and dark skin tones, not unlike the brown bread that sustained them.

As the Industrial era approached, and manufacturing was centralized, products like flour were produced further away from their markets, and needed to be stored longer. The cheaper whole wheat flours that the lower classes were used to consuming would go rancid, and the industrialized process necessitated cheap white flour for the masses. In the first half of the 20th century, it was "discovered" that this now widely available cheap white flour no longer contained vital ingredients, and deficiencies were prevalent in society. But industrialization could not afford to make freshly ground whole wheat flour available, so the cheap white flour, which was once ironically the food of the aristocracy, was "enriched" with the necessary vitamins.

Since the 1970's we have been in the "health era" as it could be called. And once again, whole wheat flour, and and foods like yogurt, became fashionable among progressive mostly middle-class families. Food manufacturers are now happy to make these "health products" available, but of course with a higher price, "healthy" being a value-added quality. So what was once the food of peasants and horses, is now unaffordable to a large population of working poor. Up to the 1970s, a loaf of whole wheat bread was half the cost of white bread, now it is nearly double.

I find this story interesting, and I do believe that the flour we are making at home is similar to the flour of peasants two centuries ago, but it is not out of these sentiments that we are motivated to change the way we eat. The way we eat is simply an extension of the way we live.

So here is my basic bread recipe, the recipe that finally gave me a kneedable dough, and a well textured bread:
3 cups warm water (I use potato water most times, or even vegetable water from canned beans)2 tsp sugar

1 tsp yeast (I have lots of yeast in the air from baking, so double the yeast if you don't bake regularly)

2 lbs wheat, freshly ground

1/4 lb rye, freshly ground

1 tsp salt

optional: tsp caraway or tsp rosemary

When the hens start laying more eggs in the spring, and the goats start milking next month, I will experiment with some richer bread recipes.

Dark days indeed

These are our shortest days, we get down to about 8 1/2 hours of daylight. I love being on the other side, knowing that the light is returning, and spring will be upon us before we know it. We spend the long evenings talking, planning, dreaming and reading aloud to one another.

Every cold morning we wake to a new ice painting on the kitchen window.

Wishing you all a happy holiday.

Ice painting

My kitchen window gave us a spectacular display Wednesday morning. The temperature dropped to -18C (-5F I think) overnight. We hang wool blankets over the windows at night in the winter, when we pulled them up in the morning we were greeted with this ice sculpture or ice painting. As the sun came up and the light changed, the ice painting transformed.This is an hour before sun-up, when the winter sun lolls below the horizon. The flash reflects off the ice formation.

With the sky lightening up I could get a detail of the ice fans.

The sun just peeked over the horizon.
The sun is now completely over the horizon.

And here, with the sun working its way to the south along the horizon, I could get the whole window lit up.
It is full light now, about 9am, but the sun has not burned off the night chill yet.

By about 10am the ice began to melt. It reminded me of Tibetan butter sculptures which they carefully carve out of colored butter, then put out under the sun. As the sun melts the sculptures they are reminded of the transience and preciousness of life.

It remained about -8C all day, so by 3pm, an hour and a bit before sunset, the ice fans began to form again. It was hard to capture them on camera because of the white background of the snow and sky. But they showed up against the wood of the front porch.

They look like feathers with a quill along the middle.

They were forming fast enough to watch the progress. It was quite beautiful. And quite distracting as well, I couldn't help but watch my window most of the day. Between chores and meals, canning meat, rendering tallow and winnowing wheat. It was like having the art museum come to my kitchen. Life is what you make of it out here. It's the details, things you might easily miss, that make it a life worth living.