Winter is on the way

Last night we received our first frost. The van was covered in ice and Jed had to wait a bit before we could drive him to work, but the leaves on the grapes and all the three leaf plantain around the tomatoes kept them from freezing up last night. The pumpkins are also fine so we'll see how long they last before the frost just gets to them.

What does this mean? That we will be paying closer attention to the weather and that we are able to plant our winter crops. =) Until now most of the leafy greens, peas, and brassicas would just kind of die and tell us to jog on. The heat does not let up until late in the year so we have to wait until the weather agrees with them. I keep reading about English gardens that grow brassicas year round.. all I can say is "You utter, utter bastards!" same goes for people who get regular rain and in good quantities (I'm looking at you people from Nevada City right now.)

Also, to add to the awesomeness of winter we were able to turn on the wood burning stove yesterday so that Ivan can learn why it is not smart to go near it, and why he is a jerk when he tries to play with the ashes after I told him not to. This also means that it is finally pie time!! We've been making pumpkin pie and will be adding more to that list. We've also started making pumpkin pasties and will enjoy some pumpkin muffins tomorrow with my little man. Happy baking everyone!

There is food and there is home food

I've come to realize just how awe inspiring our lifestyle has become. Jed joked last night when I told him we were eating lamb (not lamb again!) and I added a little bit of left over beef just to get it out of the freezer. What I noticed is that the beef turned into little rubber cubes that would not soften no matter how much I simmered or tenderized, the flavor was atrocious, and that my tummy let me know that I had eaten something that it did not recognize as food. How creepy is that? I stop eating beef for ... well a year now, and suddenly I realize that my body can tell if I'm eating home food or not. I mean, yes, I can tell with flavor and texture, but to know in a cellular level is a bit vexing. How is it that people are getting away with creating non-food for distribution at all major stores?

Ok, off my soap box. What I was really trying to write about is the odd nature of our lamb. I noticed that our lamb cooks faster, is more tender, and extremely flavorful. I don't know if others have noticed this same thing with their home meat. Our chicken, pork, and goat are the same way. Our meals are now dictated by the other ingredients (peas, beans, hard veg) as to how long we have to cook them. The meat is just added as a condiment to help flavor and enhance the meal. Something that was brought to my attention as I read up a bit on Thomas Jefferson and his enthusiasm for gardening and exotic veg. I think I prefer having the veg and starch be the main point of the meal with the meat enhancing the richness of the meal. This also includes stocks, which we have used this season to a much greater extent. Our rices are that much richer when cooked with home stocks and soups made with stock have a tendency to make us a bit comatose. Lard adds a creamy texture and flakiness to pastries that is to die for.

We do hope to be able to grow other oils in the future (peanut, sunflower, and olive) so that we can add additional flavor options to our food. And as soon as we throw Squeaks her retirement party we should have room to build the permanent fencing structure to keep the ducks, geese, and pigs out of our main crop production area. The work is never done, but it is very worth it just to get a bite.

Fall

I decided to randomly add an image of Ivan. This was taken while he was helping Jed grind some flour for some baked goodies.

It's finally starting to feel like fall, I was even able to smell some woodsmoke the other morning which made me want to curl up inside and eat some warm soup.

I greatly enjoy Fall because all the other seasons seem so hectic. Winter I'm prepping all the tools, making sure that the animals have adequate coverage, pruning the trees and vines, fertilizing, clearing up the plants, and making sure nothing drowns if there is a lot of flooding. Spring consists of harvesting winter plants, baking, starting projects, working with the baby explosions (baby chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys, lambs, goats, and now calf), starting to process the dairy products, checking on garlics and aliums, and planting new plants. Summer is crazy harvest time as well as food processing time even though all you really want to do in the heat is tell it all to jog on. And when you get to Fall, you just want to relax a bit, maybe sit back and enjoy a warm cup of tea while wondering about what awesomeness you will be playing with next year. I guess you can call this my dreaming time. I get to image the construction of new infrastructure. I greatly look forward to the slaughtering and processing of the last of the nomnom animals. It's just mellow. It's a time to pick up a new book and read. A time to snuggle up in a blanket or make a new blanket. You can work on more indoor projects but also have the sunlight and weather to leisurely go about the garden and plant new things or weed and clear. I look a the last of my summer fruit and veg and invite it into the house to join us for a meal. I'm also looking at the pumpkins and I can imagine what the pies are going to taste like. What the house will smell like with pumpkin seeds roasting. I also get to wonder just how all this will change with Ivan running around the house.

For those of you who have been going full speed the rest of the year - cheers! enjoy some tea and a book and if any of you are in the area and just happen to stop on by, then we can see about making some pies and enjoying them while talking about plants and food. Cheers!

Grain Mills

We rarely do recommendations for companies on our blog, so when we do it is because we think that their product is amazing for the modern homestead.

Last Xmas I was able to buy Rosie a Country Living Grain Mill. and we have been using it off and on for a little less than a year now and I wanted to let our readers know what I thought of it.

This mill is amazing.

Most of the mills I looked into stated right up front that you would probably have to run your grain threw them more than once to get a fine flour. The County Living people claimed that one pass was all you would need with their mill, and they where right. We have been grinding hard wheat, buckwheat, and corn almost every day for the last few weeks and this mill has never given us any problems. Every batch of flour has been very fine and surprisingly consistent. 

There are a few issues with the mill that I would like to see done differently but the usefulness of the mill more than make up for them. One Issue I have is that the mill body is made from aluminum, this has not been an issue but I would rather see it made from steel. Another correctable issue is that the flywheel is a little small and grinding hard wheat without the "power arm" can be a little tough but not undoable. Lastly the price of this mill is a little high, the next cheapest mills are about 1/2 the price of the Country Living Mill although the next mill in quality above the Country Living Mill is about 2-3 times the price.

If you are thinking of adding a grain mill to your own homestead  this is the mill you want to get. The flavor and texture of fresh ground flour or meal is as far beyond store bought as our fresh farm eggs are above store eggs. Some things I would suggest if you are going to invest in this mill; get the power arm, it will be worth it in the long run. After all if it is a pain in the butt to use the mill you are less likely to use it and then why even get one? Also get the corn and bean auger, this part can be  used when you want to grind something bigger than a wheat berry, you could "probably" make do without it and just try and grind corn meal with the standard auger but it would be a pain and may not work very well. Now this mill is not cheap, it will run in the $400 range but it is of the highest quality and will last you the rest of your life (you will have to replace the grinding plates every so often). There are some cheaper mills that will also do a fair job but you will have to run your flour threw them up to 4-6 times to get a good consistent flour. It takes about 15 min to make a couple of cups of flour in our mill, if you had to run it threw even 4 times then you area looking at an hour of work rather than 15 min, and that is a huge difference. The Country Living Grain Mill is fast enough that I will grind flour for the breakfast scones while I am waiting for my coffee to finish brewing.

Grinding our own flour has been a surprisingly satisfying experiment and next time you are able to join us for a meal that includes some sort of bread it will be from flour that was ground be hand in our kitchen. And that act of grinding our own flour is as strangely liberating as the flour is strangely better tasting than any flour I have ever used.