Farming and Food

Just finished reading Wendell Berry’s Bringing it to the Table:  On Farming and Food.  It’s an amazing indictment of our current agro-business oriented food production system and effectively demonstrates the destruction we are causing to ourselves, our land, and our communities.

So what can we do?  Berry gives these seven suggestions:

1.  participate in food production to the extent you can, even if that means a pot in your kitchen or a window box on the patio.  Everyone can grow some kind of food–herbs, patio tomatoes.

2.  Prepare your own food.  For a lot of Americans, this will be a BIG change.  Learn to bake bread.  It’s easy.  Prepare fresh green beans.

3.  Learn the origins of the food you buy.  Buy food produced close to home.

4.  When possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist.

5.  Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can about the economy and technology of industrial food production.

6.  Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.

7.  Learn by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.

First Concrete Steps Taken

After all this dreaming, searching, and agonizing, we’ve taken the first concrete steps toward homesteading on land this week.

1.  found a surveyor

2. found an appraiser

3.  handed over hand-drawn house plans, plus a big ‘old check to the designer/architect.

All these are related.  We need to get the land surveyed that we are going to buy out of the larger track but now the family wants to have the land appraised, in which case, we might end up buying more than 11 acres.  Can’t do anything else without house plans–real ones, not the ones I’ve drawn.  We need plans to go to the builder to get cost estimates and a contract and then need those to go to a bank or title company to get a loan.  All these are interconnected and should be completed by end of February.  Woohoo.  And scary at the same time.

But that’s how dreams are.  You throw your dreams out into the world and then watch as they manifest.

here’s the farm in winter.  Don’t you want to live here, too?

Goat Song: Living with Goats

I just read Brad Kessler’s Goat Song:  A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese in just a few hours.  I couldn’t put it down.  That’s saying a lot when we’re talking about a book that focuses on goats and cheesemaking but these are two topics that I’m keenly interested in right now.  I keep thinking I’d like a couple of goats but am not sure how dedicated I’d be to milking them twice a day for half of each year.  Just the kid’s routine drives me crazy.  Am I ready to commit myself this much to another creature?  To making my own cheese?

I feel much more close to saying yes after reading Kessler’s book.  He makes goat herding sound downright idealic and it’s not because he hasn’t included the low-down on the stinky side of goat raising, he’s just tapped into that instinct most humans have to be close to our food source.

You can hear him talk about living with goats here: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/08/close-to-goats

Making Soft Cheese

I spent all day Saturday at Homestead Heritage making soft cheese.  It was the most fun I’ve had in a while!  There were 12 of us from all walks of life–some who had made cheese before and some who probably hadn’t stepped in a kitchen, ever.  The disparity in our skills and knowledge was fun since it was an intro class and led to the sense of community that permeates everything the folks at Homestead Heritage do.

the herb cheese log

So what did we make?  Here’s a quick run-down from memory.  I’d have to consult my notes to give you the full break-down:

1.  butter

2.  cream cheese

3.  sour cream

4.  buttermilk

5.  cottage cheese

6.  Feta

7.  mozzarella

8.  herbed cheese logs

9.  yogurt

10.  ricotta

11. labaneh

12.  and stuff to do with the whey left over!

One of our instructors making cheese

I bought some of the required materials that I don’t keep at home, like rennet, and now need to find a source for raw milk since I don’t yet have goats.  Interested in taking a class?  Find out more at Homestead’s School of Homesteading.

Now that I’ve taken the pre-req, I’ll sign up for the hard-cheese making class.  Woohoo–cheddar, here I come.

Urban Homesteading with Novella Carpenter

Ever wonder about how you’d feel killing and processing a pig or rabbit in the middle of the city?  Novella Carpenter will give you the lowdown–She runs Ghost Town Farm and has recently written a book about farming in the city.  It’s called “Farm City.”

Check her out in the video, on her blog, and her book.