Re-thinking Our Food Patterns

When you homestead for a few years you fall in to a natural rhythm of when and what you do. The seasons come and go and you repeat the patterns of each season. Each season we add a few projects and they become part of our rhythm and pattern. We are busy identifying the new projects we should add, but we are also re-thinking our patterns and rhythms of raising our own food. 

Our food patterns for our geographic area involve planting in the Spring and harvesting in the Summer and either canning or freezing fruits and veggies. Our diet has been heavily focused on protein and starches with the fruit and veggies adding variety and flavor. How much we grow and preserve is based on this level of consumption. For our family of 10, we preserve about 1200 jars/packages.

We have been shifting our diet to be more focused on protein and veggies. This change is for a variety of reasons, but we have realized how much closer this diet will bring us to producing all of our own food. With our increased consumption we would need 3 times our current level of preservation or we need to re-think the pattern. In re-thinking the pattern we are focusing on three things: 

1) extending our fresh harvest season by packing the hoop house full of cold hardy vegetables to be harvested as needed;

2) growing more throughout our normal season by taking out rows of finished items and re-planting; and

3) growing more squash and corn as starchy veggies to fill our diet. 

Focusing on these three goals has significantly increased my gardening time. I spend about 25 to 30 hours per week weeding, removing rows, and planting. This does not count the time I spend harvesting, planning, researching, and ordering seeds. My husband maintains a separate garden and spend about 10 to 12 hours per week weeding and managing water. The kids and I do almost all the planting for that garden. The children also contribute a few hours each week to weeding. 

During the last few weeks I have been starting my Fall garden seeds in my little greenhouse and transplanting seedlings to the garden. I put in brussel sprouts and two more rows of cabbage.  I ripped out the peas and started 3 new rows. I plan on at least one more planting of peas in the garden and one in the hoop house. I have also put together a detailed planting plan for the hoop house for winter.

I have had to completely re-think how we do things and it takes a lot of time upfront to make these changes. In seasons to come it will be part of my rhythm and pattern and I won't have to think as hard about it. 

The garden is doing fabulous and my motto this year has been - plant carrots anywhere there is room! We are also working on some new projects l hope to write about soon. 

Pizza

Pizza is one of those quick meals that you pick up or have delivered when you don't feel like cooking - for most people. Dedicated to making our food from scratch and as nutritious as possible, we usually avoid take out pizza. My kids asked for me to put it on the menu, so I did for the next 6 months. I did, but I was not excited. Here is why. 

The ingredients for pizza, when sourced from the farm, take a long time to put together. If I start at the beginning I have to grow the tomatoes, milk the cow, and grow the hog and butcher it. If I start from the mid-point it is still alot of work. The cheese has to made, tomatoes canned as sauce, and canadian bacon cured and smoked. Pizza day the wheat has to be ground into flour and the dough mixed and kneaded. 

Any way you look at it, there are a lot of steps in pizza. This morning I grated some cheese and chopped some canadian bacon for the freezer, which will make the next pizzas a little less time consuming. But food is time consuming.

In reality I spend the majority of my days, as do some of my helpers, consumed with food preparation. From planting and weeding the garden to feeding animals, we work on food in come capacity. Mornings we make cheese, sprout wheat, dehydrate chicken stock, or preserve food. We spend hours every day preparing meals from scratch. 

Just this morning, I worked on the following food projects and I made breakfast. 

- Processed ham, bacon, pancetta, and canadian bacon that was smoked yesterday. Some were cut up and froze, some soaked in water, and some hung to age. 

- Made butter and canned it for the summer when the cows are dry. 

- Grated cheese and froze. 

- Took minced green onions from the dehydrator and stored away. 

- Dehydrated sprouted wheat. 

- Stocked the snack trays with dehydrated kale chips. Stored the rest for winter. 

- Pulverized the dried celery to celery powder. The celery is growing in the hoop house and we are harvesting the tops for drying and then making celery powder. The celery powder will be used to cure meat in place of pink salt in the future. 

So why do we do it - well I have written about that before. 

Great Hope and Possibilities

The grass is green and growing fast, the fruit trees are blossoming, and it is a lovely time of year on the farm. Our new farm plan is working great and helping things to run very smoothly. We have been finishing butchering and filling the freezers for summer. We are gardening like crazy and will start our daily weeding next week. I am preparing the fields for planting - field corn, clover, oats/peas, dry beans, squash, and sunflowers. Some of these crops are for our food storage and some for the animals. We are planning our summer projects and identifying priorities around the farm. Spring is such a wonderful time of hope and possibilities. 

In the Spring everything is possible. The weather is not too warm and you are not yet escaping the heat. The grass is green and the soil damp while you work. There is great anticipation that everything will grow and provide great abundance. The weeds have not yet filled every crevice and you have hopes of a weed free existence. Every project has hope of being completed and you are yet to realize there may not be enough time or money this year. Yes, great hope and possibilities. 

2014 CSA

We are excited to announce we are opening enrollment for our 2014 CSA. Prices and details are at http://www.localharvest.org/makalea-maple-grove-farm-M44409

Space is limited to 15 spots, so sign up early.  

Around the Farm

January Farm Plan

Updated with progress 1/18

This year we have put together a farm plan to keep us on track for the coming year. I thought I would share it each month along with updates about what we have completed. 

Gardening:

Start lettuce

Start onions - done

Start sweet potatoe slips

Start cilantro - done

Order seeds - in progress

Animals:

Get pig farrowing shed ready - both sows are expected to farrow.  - done and pigs in shed

Note - we are maintaining 2 sows and a boar. Both sows farrow once per year and we expect to raise out 10-12 pigs for fall butchering. One sow will be replaced this year from off farm. 

Incubate first batch of chicks. 

Crops and Feed:

Disc garden - we usually get an early dry spell before the rainy season and if I want to plant peas in February, I have to disc early. - done

Finish threshing out seed for next year - sorghum and dry beans - beans done

Harvesting and Food Presrvation:

Can pumpkin - done

Dehydrate garlic - done

Can and dry hominy - done

Gather sap and make maple syrup - taps in but weather no cooperating

Can butter - goal 5 pints per week - in progress 12 pints so far

Dehydrate milk - in progress

Dehydrate buttermilk - in progress

Dehydrate eggs

Crack and shell nuts - walnuts and hazelnuts - walnuts done

Butcher steer (this would usually be done in Dec)

Butcher pigs (this would usually be done in Nov)

Miscellaneous Farm:

Gather downed limbs for firewood - pulled out of forest, need to haul to wood shed

Tan cow hide

Cut firewood

Fabric and Fiber:

Sew personal items - partially done

Make beeswax bags and food wraps - partially done

Spin wool for knitting - 2 balls done, need at least 1 more this onth

Knit 4 sets of socks - in progress

Cut out and piece a quilt top

Family Medicine Chest:

Make tallow soap

Make family de-wormer

Orchard and Berries:

Spray for peach curl

Prune blueberries and grapes -done

Root desired bushes and vines - done

Projects:

Finish processing room and get outside wood cookstove in operation. 

Horse training is on-going by older girls. 

I Love My Life

I love my life ... Living here in our little homestead, nestled away from many aspects of modern life. I struggle keeping up on this blog because modern technology is just not a big part of my life. Typing out information about my old fashioned life seems contrary the purposeful way we live without technology. On the other hand, I know I enjoy reading other blogs of those living this life. I have some go to blogs that help me identify what we should be doing and how to do many of those things. 

We have been busy planning and setting goals for 2014. In the new year I am planning on not buying food at the grocery store. Now I frankly know that we will not be able to go without a grocery store for a year, but I would like to see how well we could do without shopping. I won't be depriving anyone. We have plenty of food and raise enough to meet our needs, but we have been in the habit of buying at the grocery store our every food whim.

We like food and we like good food and we love food adventures. We cook from many different continents and different ethnic foods fill our diets. Many of those items require specialty stores and I will even travel an hour and a half to shop at an ethnic store. After praying at the end of last year, God revealed a few things to me about our diet. 

After a disappointing growing season, I began seeking God about our farm and gardening practices. Where were we going wrong? Why so many failures? Why does it feel we are spinning our wheels and not getting any where? God revealed to me that I was taking the wrong approach to our homestead. 

I kept trying to grow what we wanted to eat. I spent significant time on things like trying to grow sugar beets, researching rice growing, raising geese, growing soybeans in order to ferment our own soy sauce and other such projects. Instead I need to focus on eating what we grow. 

We can raise lots of potatoes, dry beans, and dry corn. Enough hard wheat for all the bread we currently eat, would be more challenging. Soft wheat grows better here. We eat a lot of rice, but growing it is not practical in the PNW. The chickens stop laying in the Fall and don't start again until after winter solsitice. I kept supplementing with store eggs so I didn't have to change my menu plans. We make sausage but not enough to feed us all year, so sometimes I got store sausage. 

We kept trying to raise enough animal feed for all the animals all winter. We fed animals for significant lengths of time when we should have been butchering them. I didn't have storage space for all the meat at one time and I preferred frozen to canned meat. So we stretched out the butchering and fed to many animals through the winter. We went through too much feed.  

Why were we doing these types of things - gluttonany. We wanted what we wanted and were not willing to live with and enjoy what God had provided. We are going to work on making some changes and doing things a little differently. We are looking forward to a great gardening and farming year.