Monday, July 30, 2007

Guess what?

If you laugh at any of the t-shirts on this page, you will go directly to H-E-double-hockey-sticks. Look me up when you get there.

If you don't want to risk eternal damnation, here and here are some non-blasphemous but still funny t-shirts.

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

One Local Summer - Week of 7/22/2007

I think we got doubled up on one OLS week, and missed the next one or something. Anyway, I took a turn at cooking our local meal this week. At my favorite, favorite farmer's market, they were conspiring to make me fire up the grill this week. (A grill/smoker/steamer that I affectionately refer to as R2BQ.)

So first, a youth group was selling some charcoal they made, for a fundraiser. Next, one of my favorite market gardeners had a bag full of tiny peppers, baby squash, mini zucchini, and undersized onions, which she was pitching as perfect for roasting on the grill. (They certainly were.) And finally, I realized that the naturally raised (and delicious) pork tenderloin chops that we enjoyed a while back were priced at $4.00 for four chops. How can you go wrong with one-dollar slabs of tenderloin? And that's not even a sale price.

And what goes better with pork than apple cider? Of course I get the cider every week anyway. Better than canned soft drinks, eh? I had to give some of my precious cider to the meal, but it was a worthy cause.

So you're probably thinking, "Get to the meal already!" Alright, you savages, simmer down...


Grilled Pork Tenderloin Chops
(recipe improvised)
Pork tenderloin chops - VanMeter Farm, Latham, OH (57 miles)
Apple cider (marinade) - Hirsch Fruit Farms, Chillicothe, Ohio (25 miles)
Rosemary - Our herb garden (0 miles)
Pepper seasoning - non-local

Roasted Potatoes with Garlic
(recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Gas Grill Cookbook)
Fingerling potatoes, green onions, garlic - Kinnikinnick Gardens, Chillicothe, Ohio (20 miles)
Rosemary - Our herb garden (0 miles)
Non-local ingredients - less than a tablespoon each of: oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, dijon mustard

Roasted vegetables
(recipe improvised)
Green, purple, yellow and red peppers, white and red onions, baby zucchini, baby patty-pan squash - Kinnikinnick Gardens, Chillicothe, Ohio (20 miles)
Non-local ingredients - Italian dressing marinade

Beverage
Milk - Our goats (0 miles)
(I know, I got the cider for the meal, but for some reason, milk sounded better.)

I cheated a little on the marinades, but I made up for it by cooking with local charcoal. Or something like that.

Unfortunately, the potatoes were very undercooked, despite an hour wrapped in a foil tent over the charcoal. I'm not sure what went wrong there. I'll try something different next time. The pork was a tiny bit overcooked, but still very tasty. The roasted vegetables were excellent.

I'm finding that my favorite thing about local cooking is the forced creativity. Often, you can't just follow a recipe exactly, so you end up swapping, omitting, adding, or otherwise improvising, which always leads to something new and different. And so far at least, it almost always works out well...

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Friday, July 20, 2007

On the plus side...

I've been face-to-face with some frustrating, sad, depressing, and otherwise negative things this week, including one last goodbye to my Uncle Steve. When I was about four, I told him I wanted to measure his nose. He told me to go get a ruler. I replied, much to everyone's dismay, that I'd need a yardstick. He was a genuinely good person. So long, Steve...

Meanwhile, let's pack this blog entry full of positive things:

- Our electricity usage for June was 43% less than June of last year. Total for the year, we're down 35%. (Or if you prefer, almost 4000 lbs less CO2 emissions.) I'd love to keep dropping it, but it starts getting harder now.

- We've had more rain and cooler temperatures in July than we did in June. That'll be nice for our electric bill, but it's also nice for our grocery bill, since the garden is finally looking like it should.

- I got to spend an afternoon with one of my favorite authors, Gene Logsdon (The Contrary Farmer) a few weekends ago. I plan on writing about it at some point, but oddly enough, I'm having a bit of writer's block with it.

- I got at least 100 mason jars at a garage sale today - maybe closer to 150 - for the low, low price of $15. Woohoo! The milk alone was using up our previous supply of jars.

- I picked up a big fat jar of honey from a local (fifth-generation!) beekeeper today. We chatted for a bit. I told him we'd thought about getting into bees some day, and he said he was thinking about getting out of bees sometime soon. He said to call him this winter. Hmmm.....

- Willow over at Contemplating Change has nominated me as a "Blogger for Positive Global Change." And Pea at Mustard Seed Journal tagged me with a "Thinking Blogger" award. Thanks, Willow and Pea! I haven't been this popular since, well, ever. Not bad for a guy who didn't know hay from straw or Pike's Peak from Hubbert's Peak just a couple years ago.

I always struggle with these award memes. I love to share the love, but eventually they run into the same problem as chain letters and pyramid schemes. The recipients all start overlapping. I'm finding that the names on my list end up looking very much like the names on everybody else's lists.

But I do appreciate the compliments. I previously did a Thinking Blogger response here.

As for Positive Global Change, let's see... Emme and Sharon seem to be on a hundred lists already. I'm resisting the urge to bounce either of these awards back to my benefactors, willow and pea. I'm also resisting the urge to repeat anybody from my Thinking Blogger list. No sense making this easy or anything!

Even with all my self-imposed restrictions, some of these are repeat offenders, I'm sure...

- Bryan at My Fair Share. I like the way Bryan thinks, and the way he writes.

- Wendy at Home is... Wendy has gone all out on the local food thing, and has a great mix of mindfulness, thoughtfulness, humor, and experimentation.

- Liz at Pocket Farm. She's the originator of One Local Summer. Plus she's got all those great mini-farm stories

- Crunchy Chicken. She's the hardest working blogger in town, with a book club, the Diva Cup challenge, a local food month, lining up celebrity interviews, learning to sew, and provoking thought.

- Barefoot Gardener. She's taking lots of little steps, honestly sharing her successes and failures, overcoming insecurities and gaining confidence, and implementing more positive changes than most people I know... in between caring for a baby.

I really believe that the best way to achieve Positive Global Change is through many Positive Local Changes. Don't wait for somebody else. Go do something positive!

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Woohoo!!! ....... D'oh!

I see on the news that core inflation is low, and projected to get lower. The stock market is sky high. Unemployment is low.

So why are we still broke?

Well, let's see... Core inflation is the measure of rising prices, but it now excludes frivolities like, oh, food, housing, and energy costs. Great, so at least flat screen TV's and convertibles aren't going up.

Meanwhile, corn prices have doubled due to the ethanol boondoggle. Wheat, soy, and other field crops have gone up because everybody's planting corn instead. Milk, eggs, and meat prices have gone up because of the aforementioned feed increases. Gas is high and will soon be higher because, well, we'll save that for another post.

Put it all together, and suddenly paydays seem farther apart.

Until today. You see, I got paid today. After logging into our bank's web site to check on some transactions, Lori noticed a surprisingly high balance. There was an extra deposit in there, listed as "other", with no details available yet.

So I called the bank to find out what gives. A deposit roughly equivalent to a second paycheck isn't something that normally appears unexpectedly. Well, maybe for you, but not for me.

As it turns out, it was a second paycheck. My direct deposit was deposited twice! Party time, and you're all invited!

Okay, not really. If I did get an extra paycheck, we've got a long list of projects we'd put it toward. Sadly though, the bank says we can't spend it. I tried the "finders keepers" defense, but apparently their name for it would be "theft".

Well, maybe next time.

What?

I can dream, can't I? It worked for this guy.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Scratch-built weekend

We're loving the local food challenge so far. It's pushing us to do more, get more creative, and eat what we have instead of eating whatever we want. The food's been better despite the limits of what's in season. (Of course, just about everything is in season at the moment...)

But we have one steadfastly non-local eater: Amelia. Due to her sensory and communication issues, she has quite a limited range of textures that she'll willingly eat. We know all the food tricks and techniques and ideas for picky eaters, and as far as we can tell, she's totally immune to all of them. (Our son is a champion non-picky eater, eager to try almost anything he doesn't recognize.)

In fact with Amelia, sometimes it's even hard to get her to eat the foods she loves. Despite the fact that she 's been eating yogurt or applesauce (with medication mixed in) every single night for over half her life, the first bite is literally a struggle almost every night. Once she gets a taste, she realizes that we weren't actually trying to poison her, and (usually) happily gobbles down the rest of the bowl.

Her preferred food textures are crispy or pureed/creamy. And the latter is pretty dicey. So mostly crispy. We decided to see if we could make anything for her from scratch.

The first attempt was yogurt. I know - Make yogurt from scratch, are you crazy? Well, actually it was incredibly simple. Following instructions from Pat Meadows found here, I successfully made a quart of yogurt. (As much as I enjoyed Madcap's recipe, Pat's was the link I had on hand...)

Just to prove to you that it's easy, here are the basic steps:
1. Mix milk with dry (instant) milk
2. Heat to 180F
3. Cool to 110F
4. Mix in a little plain yogurt
5. Keep warm for 4-6 hours

Despite the simplicity, my first attempt didn't work for a variety of reasons. (I never said I was smart.) I was using whole goat's milk rather than 2% from the store, which could have affected things. I got the proportions of milk and dry milk wrong. I also accidentally grabbed the peach flavored yogurt rather than the plain, which I'm sure was the main problem. I realized my mistake as bits of peach flavored goo from the bottom appeared in my mix. I went ahead and strained them out, but I imagine even without that, the yogurt itself was probably sweetened. But I kept going, just to see what would happen. My final mistake was not keeping it warm long enough.

So for my next attempt, I made some adjustments. First, I made sure to use plain yogurt as my starter. (Powdered starter next time, probably.) Second, I let it stay warm longer. I checked it after about 5 hours and it was still liquid, so I went to bed. When I got up in the morning, it was still quite warm and had thickened to a yogurt-like consistency. It passed the taste test too.

I was using Pat's "haybox" method to keep it warm. A haybox is essentially a well-insulated box. I used a cooler with a bunch of newspaper in the bottom (to take up extra space). I lined the remaining space with foil, put a pot of warm water in, put the yogurt in the water, put the lid on the pot, and wrapped the whole thing up in a blanket to take up the remaining air space, and then closed up the cooler.

On my second attempt, I decided to make another adjustment. We use this cooler for many things, so I didn't want to use new foil every time I needed to line the inside again. So I got one of those shiny reflective windshield shades out of the garage and stuffed that in instead.

So the bottom line is that Pat's instructions, if followed work well. It looks like in adjusting for whole goat's milk, we may need a longer "warm" period, but with the haybox setup, that's trivial.

Our second Amelia replacement recipe was graham crackers. We tried a recipe from Organic To Be (where Gene Logsdon contributes from time to time). They were not a big hit. I didn't really care for them, nor did e5. Lori thought they were passable. Amelia (not surprisingly) wanted nothing to do with the unfamiliar, somewhat irregular monstrosities. We'd have to persist for a while to get her to consider even trying them. We'll probably try some different recipes before we settle on one to be persistent with.

We dug up a few other recipes for things like saltines and windmill cookies that we'll experiment with as well. The yogurt is definitely a keeper, especially since we have more milk than we can handle these days...

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Sunday, July 15, 2007

One Local Summer - Week of 7/15/2007


Pork Sausage with Potatoes and Onions
(Recipe heavily adapted from BH&G's Big Book of 30-Minute Dinners)
Pork sausage from VanMeter Farm, Latham, OH (57 mi.)
Onions from a Ross Co. farmer (20-30 mi.)
Red potatoes from Jones Farm, Chillicothe, OH (20 mi.)
Oil, salt & pepper, not local

Blanched Green Beans
Green beans from a Ross Co. farmer (20-30 mi.)
Localish(?) butter, "Amish Gourmet," purportedly from Minerva, OH (168 mi.)
Salt, not local

.... And local well water.

Everything turned out pretty well, considering I had to kind of wing it in places. (I was absurdly pleased to be using both the bulbs and the greens of the onions in the same dish....)

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Saturday, July 14, 2007

The Garden in July

At long last, a garden update. But first, a few disclaimers:

1. I've not been a good gardener this year. I added loads of compost to the soil, but it came with some weed seeds. The weeds have been thrilled with my garden prep. I haven't kept up on them nearly as well as I should.

2. It's been incredibly dry and generally hot here. I've watered the garden a few times, but not as much as it might like.

3. Because my indoor seed starts were a disaster, because I was creating four 4x50' beds by hand, and because we were also birthin' goats, starting a batch of chicks, and waiting on our pole barn all around planting time, I cut some corners on a few crops. I generally know where I went wrong, but I figured a lame attempt was better than none.

So now, on with an early Summer status report...

Chickens, eagerly awaiting the contents of the weed bucket...



Row #1

Corn - Ohio Blue Clarage (semi-dent)
Germination: Good
Growth: Very Good
Issues: None

Peas - Mammoth Melting Sugar
Germination: Good
Growth: Fair
Issues: Planted them too late.

Watermelon - Orangeglo
Germination: 1 of 2
Growth: Fair
Issues: Slow growth so far.

Wheat - Praire Gold
Germination: Poor
Growth: Poor
Issues: Wheat emerged looking like grass. The compost and/or soil had too much grass seed in it. It was hard to tell what to weed. The germination rate was not good at all. We'll make some adjustments and give it another try. This year, I ended up just mowing it down, as it ended up 95% weeds.



Row #2

Amaranth - Opopeo
Germination: Fair
Growth: Very Good
Issues: Low germination

Tomates - Various heirloom varieties
Germination: N/A
Growth: Very Good to Excellent
Issues: None. All are thriving.

Peppers - Various heirloom varieties
Germination: N/A
Growth: Fair to Poor
Issues: Very slow growth. They range from three inches to six inches - not much bigger than they started. But then I never do well with peppers. Any suggestions out there?

Eggplant
Germination: N/A
Growth: Fair
Issues: Slow growing, a good bit of bug damage

Beans - Kentucky Wonder
Germination: Very good
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Potato - King Harry
Germination: Very Good
Growth: Very Good
Issues: None



Row #3

Corn - Ladyfinger (popcorn)
Germination: Fair
Growth: Fair
Issues: Looks pretty weak compared to the Blue Clarage a couple rows away

Gourd - Birdhouse gourd
Germination: 2/2
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Lettuce - 2 kinds, variety unknown
Germination: Not applicable (purchased seedlings)
Growth: Fair
Issues: Bolted by June 1 due to hot weather

Brussels Sprouts - variety unknown
Germination: Not applicable (purchased seedlings)
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Cauliflower
Germination: Not applicable (purchased seedlings)
Growth: Fair
Issues: None

Cabbage
Germination: Not applicable (purchased seedlings)
Growth: Good
Issues: None



Row #4

Beans - Purple pod (bush)
Germination: Fair
Growth: Very good
Issues: None

Beans - Gator Green (bush)
Germination: Excellent
Growth: Excellent
Issues: Some insect damage

Cowpeas - Purple Hull Pinkeye
Germination: Poor
Growth: Good
Issues: Low germination

Peas - Sugar Snap
Germination: Fair
Growth: Fair
Issues: None

Beans - Black
Germination: Excellent
Growth: Excellent
Issues: None. Best performing beans in the garden this year

Beans - Fava
Germination: Fair
Growth: Good
Issues: Low germination. Don't seem to be handling drought conditions as well as the other beans. I hear their tasty, but I also hear they're a pain to prepare. And I'm seeing they're finicky in the garden. Maybe that's why I've never even had them...

Cucumber - Lemon
Germination: 1 of 2
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Cucumber - Parisian Pickling
Germination: 1 of 2
Growth: Very good
Issues: None

Cucumber - Diva
Germination: 1 of 2
Growth: Fair
Issues: Very slow-growing so far. They were old seeds, which I know can affect germination, but I don't know if that affects vigor.

Summer squash - Yellow
Germination: 1 of 4
Growth: Excellent
Issues: None

Summer squash - Spaghetti
Germination: 2 of 4
Growth: Excellent
Issues: None

Winter squash - Black Futsu
Germination: 2 of 4
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Winter squash - Delicata
Germination: 2 of 4
Growth: Good
Issues: None

Winter squash - White Scallop
Germination: 1 of 4
Growth: Fair
Issues: None

Melon - Sakata's Sweet (Asian)
Germination: 1 of 2
Growth: Poor
Issues: Very slow growth.

Melon - Minnesota Midget
Germination: 0 of 2
Growth: None
Issues: No seeds germinated

Onion - Flat of Italy
Germination: None
Growth: None
Issues: Should have been started indoors, early. I just planted some outdoors at the last frost date, on the off chance they'd make it. No dice.

Potato - Island Sunshine
Germination: Very good
Growth: Very good
Issues: None




Not included in the big garden are the strawberries (not particularly productive), the herb garden (doing well) and the asparagus patch (still getting established). And of course lots of fruit trees, berry bushes and so on, but they're not ready to produce yet.

So that's it for now. We're behind the farm markets on production. We've only had a couple tomatoes, a little summer squash, and a couple meals' worth of snap beans. But it's coming... I'm hoping to try some fall crops before long here too. In the meantime, we're getting lots of fabulous stuff from our new favorite market.

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

One Local Summer - Week of 7/8/2007


Roast Chicken with Rosemary - Our own chicken, butchered on Sunday (0 mi.), roasted with butter (local-ish, 168 mi.... maybe?) and fresh rosemary from our herb garden (0 mi.), with salt and pepper (not local)

Roasted Beets - Beets from a Ross Co. farmer (20-30 mi.), roasted in their skins, then peeled, sliced and tossed with our localish butter and salt

Blanched Green Beans - Green and purple pod beans from our garden (0 mi.), blanched in salted water. These beans start out looking like this:


The purple color (somewhat disappointingly) fades with cooking. They end up a shade darker than the other beans but definitely green.
This was a very simple dinner, but satisfying. The chicken was really good, although I couldn't bring myself to eat the skin. (I spent a lot of time trying to pluck all the @#$%! pinfeathers out - so much that most of the following day and night I was haunted by thoughts of pinfeathers. I still didn't get them all, either. I'm forecasting a lot of skinless chickens in our future.) One interesting note which I forgot to document with a photo: The dark meat was very dark indeed.

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Saturday, July 07, 2007

One Local Summer - Week of 7/1/2007


Slipping in under the wire....

Beef & Summer Squash with Basil
(Recipe modified from Recipezaar's Italian Beef & Zucchini Dinner)
Beef cubed steaks from Buckskin Valley Farms, Greenfield, Ohio (36 mi.)
Greek basil from our herb garden (0 mi.)
Summer squash and tomatoes from our garden (0 mi.), supplemented by a tomato from the Chillicothe farm market; again, I forgot to ask the vendor, but I'm going to assume it came from Ross County* (20-30 mi.)
Salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil - not local

Boiled New Potatoes with Parsley
Red potatoes from Jones Farm, Chillicothe, Ohio (20 mi.)
Parsley from our herb garden (0 mi.)
Salt, pepper, butter** - not local

The steaks were rather chewy, although the flavor was pretty good. We still have another package of these and I'm hoping we'll find some local flour (or a flour substitute? Any ideas?) to make them into country fried steak. The summer squash and tomatoes, cooked in olive oil with garlic and fresh basil, were very good - I'm sure we'll use that combination again. The potatoes were simple and tasty.




* This is not a terribly shaky assumption, as we've found out that the rules for the Chillicothe farm market are that at least 51% of a vendor's produce must be grown by them, and all the produce must be from the area.

** I did attempt to find local butter, with dubious success. At the Clintonville Community Market I found "Amish Gourmet" butter which purported to be from a dairy in Minerva, Ohio (168 mi.); however, upon closer examination, the words "distributed by" make me suspect it doesn't actually come from there. I could be wrong. I forgot to use it tonight, anyway....

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Eight Random Things

Eight random things about me, as requested by dguzman:

1. My lovely wife took both of our kids out for about 2 1/2 hours today. Free time like this is a luxury at our house. So what did I do with my precious solitude? ... I weeded the garden. Yes, by choice. Yes, there's something wrong with me. (I did a couple other things too, but that was most of it...)

2. I should by all accounts like science fiction and fantasy novels. But I usually don't. Over the course of my life, I've liked only about a tenth of sci-fi/fantasy books I've read (or attempted to read). I can't say why. A couple authors I did like were Ursula LeGuin and Neal Stephenson.

3. For somebody who's interested in sustainability and afraid of peak oil, I eat waaaaaaaay too much fast food. There, I said it. I've eliminated all but a few restaurants, but I just can't shake the habit entirely. I am ashamed.

4. I'm trying a very small scale, unscientific, and primitive terra preta experiment in my garden. I've got two sections of swiss chard planted - one with some Royal Oak natural charcoal worked into the soil, and one without.

5. I have freakish toes. You know how some people have a second toe that's longer than their big toe? My third toe is also than my big toe. You're going to have nightmares about that tonight...

6. Some of our best friends in the world (who we haven't seen in years) stayed with us a couple nights this week. Lori taught Morgan to knit, Liam fixed and/or tweaked a variety of problems with my tractor, Rose and e5 were inseparable the entire time, and tiny baby Anwyn just sat around looking cute, occasionally flailing, and cooing to the ceiling fan. While we were sitting around BS-ing, we discovered something funny about an electronic toy we have. One of the things it does is encourage kids to spell three-letter words. If you press C-A-T, it says "cat". But it's teenager-proof - If you type in A it says "A". If you then press S, it says "S". And if you press S again, it says, "Good job!" and then deftly changes the subject.

7. My first and middle names have been passed down five generations now, and could easily pass for Portuguese. But nobody in my family knows why.

8. I am fascinated by the Riot for Austerity. Participants are trying to spend one year reducing their overall resource usage, with the goal of getting down to 90% below the US average. Click this link for the nitty gritty details, or the link above for the reasons behind it. So what does that 90% reduction amount to? Check this out and compare to your own bills...

Gasoline: 50 gallons of gasoline per person, per year.
Electricity: 1100 kWh per household, per year.
Heating & cooking: 1000 therms of natural gas, or 750 gallons of heating oil per household, per year.
Trash: 0.45 lbs, per person, per day.
Water: 10 gallons of water, per person, per day.
Consumer goods: $1000 worth of household goods, per person, per year.
Food: 70% locally produced, 25% bulk dry goods, and 5% wet goods.

Now there is a challenge for you. How low can you go?

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