There wasn’t much interest in this giveaway but I’m guessing it’s because we limited the area. So here are the winners:
Which means Laura and Beth, you win!
Thanks everyone for entering! I’m gearing up to do the child’s garden giveaway just as soon as my antibiotics kick in and I can once again function normally so don’t nod off too long.
I’m convinced I have the bubonic plague. How else could I still be sick going on SIX WEEKS? And people, I’m not sickly. I’m finally trying to get in to see a doctor this week so hopefully the menu here will pick up soon beyond Met Market chicken noodle soup and homemade breadsticks.
These were made using hard white wheat grown in Dufur, OR. It’s my pizza dough recipe which I don’t think I’ve posted yet but will shortly. I simply roll it out on a cookie sheet press course salt in it and roll it in, cut into strips, then twist and bake. You can bake them until they are soft or leave them in until they are crunchy. It’s nice to have something crunchy to dip in your soup that doesn’t take long to chew when you can’t breathe through your nose.
Garden kale and carrots combined with juiced Tonnamaker apples that I had previously made and frozen made the basis for chocolate breakfast shakes using local milk and freezer peaches from Rama Farms. Of course the cocoa powder wasn’t local and neither was the yogurt.
I made yogurt last year but I had too many fermentation projects in my tiny kitchen and my fil milk, yogurt and buttermilk cultures all married in the same way all the women in a group end up in the red tent together. I may start yogurt up again but while I am sick is just not the time.
A caramelized onion, Willipa Blue and Met Market mozzarella pizza. Just missing pears and walnuts, neither of which I had or it would have been perfection. I’ve taken my whole wheat pizza dough all over the board this winter and finally realized it’s the technique and not the combination of gluten or grain, or how finely you mill the grain that gets you the bubbles. I’ll share my secret when I post my dough recipe later this week since we also had tacos which I forgot to photograph and we have some meat left. Sounds like a taco pizza on the menu for week 15.
The tacos were my standby recipe using Cascade Range Beef hamburger, freezer corn and I had to use canned tomato sauce finally since I had made 2 gallons of tomato ketsup/sauce but overcooked it with the spice bag and it’s gross. Next year I swear I will not buy tomato products! I do still have some jars of canned romas but that won’t give you that saucey-ness you need for a taco or sloppy joe. Rather than make tortillas I stuffed large mustard leaves from the garden and we ate them spring roll style. I was thinking what a great option that would be for someone on a no-grain diet.
Here is my ace in the hole. My plan B for when the recipes don’t work out and I don’t have any little freezer squares to pull out for dinner or tortillas to whip up burritos. My plan C is always eat out but we’ve only had to resort to it once. I won’t tell you how many melt downs I’ve had trying to force a recipe to work or rebundle it as something else for the dinner table. Azure Standard in Dufur, OR grows their own duram wheat and makes their own line of pasta. It’s outside the 150 mile radius for dark days but it meets my personal guidelines by being the closest dried pasta that I can find for those times when I just can’t make it myself. And that’s pretty frequently these days.
I used it to make a quick carbonara using ham from our Akyla Farms pig, backyard eggs, Golden Glen cream and Rumiana parmeson (again out of range but there is no local parmeson and montasio is not an equal substitute.) At least it’s from California and not back east.
I served it with kale and turnip greens from the garden.
And finally, blueberry spelt muffins with nearly the last of the freezer blueberries, backyard eggs, Lentz spelt and home clabbered buttermilk from Dungeness Farms milk. I’m sad to see the blueberries go but hopeful that this summer we’ll have loaded bushes that we aren’t able to keep up with.
Happy Dark Days Everyone!
Chicken Little came home from school one day with something he was so exciting to give to me. He handed over a slip of paper covered with little cut out hearts and a poem of sorts penciled in newly learned letters of #2 lead.
It took me awhile to make out what it said but it gradually dawned on me it was about me. It read “Cook Hug Garden. She makes me feel loved.” It was one of those moments where I get all weepy and all I could do was throw my arms around him speechlessly.
If I died tomorrow I would want this on my tombstone. I know he’s only six and a half and his opinion of me will change dramatically over the years but right now this is more than I ever dreamed he would get out of this lifestyle of urban farming and cooking everything from scratch. We constantly talk about food, what the seeds look like, what the plants look like and how you prepare it. Despite that he never seems to tire of it.
It got me thinking about two years ago before we started this experiment and how our relationship with food has completely changed. Before we would go through the grocery store. Anything he would point to and whine about we would stop and read the labels, discuss what was bad in it for his body and put it back. We would drive by McDonald’s and Baskin Robbins, more whining ensued, we would discuss toxins that were sprayed onto McNuggets or the merits of grass fed beef and keep driving. We constantly argued about food with me wielding ultimate power since I had the money.
But I felt awful about it. I felt like I was denying them simple childhood pleasures. At times I felt like I was a terrible mom and he assured me frequently that I was.
Fast forward one year into this buying local or growing all inputs and making everything from scratch. We always have an arsenal of homemade ice cream or pudding or homemade breakfast cookies made from just a few pure ingredients. If they want french fries or potato chips I happily fry them up using local potatoes and pastured lard. I’ll barbecue them grass fed burgers or make homemade jerky till the cows come home…
We don’t argue about food anymore. Now that they know they can have things at home they’ve stopped begging for things and instead talk about why our version is so much healthier. They are beginning to value health because it doesn’t involve giving things up.
They still miss the prizes and the packaging but in time they’ll grow up and leave home. What they remember won’t be those prizes they missed out on. It will be the experience of choosing seeds, planting a garden and eating sun ripened cherry tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries fresh off the bush. They’ll remember wandering through the garden and picking crisp, sweet peas or carrots to eat when they are hungry. And in a few years they will remember climbing up the apple, pear, peach, plum, fig and cherry trees to hide in the branches and eat fruit.
Even though I think of this often, it’s hard for me to fathom how life changing this is in the eyes of a child. How empowering for someone who needs to frequently ask help getting something from a high shelf in the fridge or cupboard or help pouring from a full carton of milk to be able to forage their own food with no restrictions.
This is how so many kids grew up just a few generations ago. And hopefully we’ll recognize some of the health benefits those kids had a few generations ago as well. Longer lives and better health. Stronger family units who grow and eat and cook together. Kids who value food and health and spend time out of doors. Just imagine if this is the wave of the future!
As soon as I wrap up the chicken feed giveaway I’ll be launching a kid’s garden giveaway and am working on a down-loadable gardening plan for fail proof 3 season gardening with selected seeds kids will love. It’s my hope to build the materials into something that schools and home schoolers can use for gardening units so that as many kids as possible can enjoy the experience of gardening. It would even be a good plan for adults new to gardening. I can’t wait!
I’m so excited to bring you this first guest post by reader Auburn in southern New Hampshire.
Buying Bulk Meat – What you Need to Know
There’s a lot of info online about “freezer meat” or “bulk meat” and many people blog about their experiences buying 1/4 or 1/2 cow, though most focus on the meat itself (quantity and quality), having to buy a second freezer and the many “new” cuts they get to try by purchasing meat this way.
So I thought it would be useful to write about the buying process, from my own experience.
I started reading FAQs on freezer beef, pork, lamb and goat and, while some of the information was very useful, some of it was also inconsistent and, at times, downright misleading.
So I decided to contact the beef and pork farmers in my area (Southern New Hampshire), asked a lot of questions and, surprisingly, most of them took the time to reply with the answers and an invitation to visit their farm. Nice. 
Then, when I was sure I knew everything I needed to know about buying bulk meat, and was about to place an order with the “farmer” who offered the cheapest deal for pastured beef ($3.25/lb hanging weight) and pork ($2.40/lb hanging weight), by chance, I happened to find out that she was a middle person. Aha! And this lady is not the only one who does this in my area – a greedier middleman wanted $4/lb for the beef and $3.50 for the pork!
Guess what? The farmer these middlemen buy from also has an internet presence but he doesn’t list the prices. You have to call, which I did. He charges $2.50/lb for beef and $1.80/lb pork, hanging weight, butcher fees included. See?
Also, the hanging weight the middlemen “estimated” was 50 pounds higher than what the farmer quoted me – they both claimed that a side of beef would be about 350 pounds. This is very important for you to know because when you deal with a middleman, you may not get the invoice from the original farmer stating the actual hanging weight of the animal.
So be sure to do your homework and ask the right questions because that can save you a lot of money and headaches.
Buying from the cheapest middlemen, a side of beef would have cost me $1,137 ($3.25/lb) with an “estimated” hanging weight of 350 pounds and about 210 pounds dressed weight (what you take home).
Buying directly from the farmer I paid $750 ($2.50/lb) for 300 pounds of beef which yielded 240 pounds of dressed weight.
The middlemen “cut” would have been almost $400 plus 30 pounds of dressed weight. Yep. 
And how do you know when you are dealing with middlemen? When you land on a website and read something like “I purchase steers from another local farmer who also raises his animals humanely and naturally” or “I raise my own lamb and chicken here but I do not have the facilities or hay fields to raise beef and pork. I buy from a friend who raises them the way I would if I could.”
Buyer beware.
Other things I’ve learned:
You will get a lot more for your money if you tell the farmer that you want:
- All cuts “bone-in.” This will get you plenty of roasts and steaks with bones that you’ll then use to make wonderfully nutritious stock.
- A thick “fat cap” on all cuts. You want them to trim as little fat as possible. You can use that fat to cook with or you can feed it to your birds, chickens and other animals.
- No ground meat. Instead, you’ll want all scrap meat packaged in 1 lb or 2 lb packages. This way you don’t end up with 80 pounds of hamburger but with scrap meat that you can grind yourself as needed or shave/cube it for use in dishes like quesadillas, stir-fry, etc.
- Flank and skirt cuts whole. You can make delicious recipes with them.
- All bones: dog bones, lower leg bone/heels and tail which you will use for stock (braised beef tail is exquisite, by the way).
- All organ meats. If you don’t cook these, you can feed them to pets or give them to people who appreciate them.
If you decide to buy half a side (1/4 of the animal) ask if they’ll include cuts from the front and also the back of the animal, otherwise you’ll end up with all roasts or all steaks.
The standard thickness, at least in this area, for steaks is one inch. If you happen to like thinner steaks (say, 3/4″) you can ask for this at no extra cost.
This is very important: Be sure to ask if the meat will be vacuum packed and if it will be fresh or frozen. This you really need to know because 200+ pounds of fresh meat is a lot more than what you can safely freeze at once in a regular freezer. Non commercial freezers can only adequately freeze no more than 3 pounds of fresh meat per cubic foot of freezer space within 24 hours.
Here’s a nice beef cuts chart, very helpful to have at hand when you are going over the cut sheet with the farmer over the phone.
Thanks Auburn for the great meat buying tips! We saved a lot of money by buying a local 1/4 cow and 1/2 pig this year as well. And now I don’t have to frantically check the freezer for bar codes every time there is a meat recall.
This also popped up in my google reader today about buying in bulk.
Before introducing this local chicken feed company I need to make the caveat that the giveaway is restricted to this company’s delivery area which is basically from Olympia up to Bellingham and includes the peninsula and greater Seattle area. I’m sorry for anyone out of that range!
I’ve been using this chicken feed since the insanity of trying to make my own chicken feed last summer. What I love about it is that all the ingredients come from a fairly local area but even as I write this the proprietor is sourcing ingredients from even more local sources. Yet another thing I love about this company – one of the blends contains no corn or soy at all. I’m ok with using some corn in the winter to fatten the birds up and help them weather the elements but corn is not a part of a chicken’s normal diet and soy is something I want in no way, shape or form in my family’s diet.
The only way I can truly get soy out is to raise my own chickens on a soy free feed and be sure that any meat we eat is 100% grass fed or wild. So I heart Scratch and Peck Feed from the bottom of my soy-free heart. Here is some info on them:
My name is Diana Ambauen-Meade and I own a local, small feed company called “Scratch and Peck … an eggsellent feed company” www.scratchandpeck.com.
I offer Certified Organic chicken feed in Starter, Grower and Layer Blends as well as my own proprietary whole grain Non-gmo Grower and Layer blends.
Both brands of feed are soy-free and the organic feed is also corn-free. Please take a look at the Products page on my website for the full lists of ingredients.
I am in the process of studying the feasibility of building a feed mill in which I will produce various feeds with grains sourced directly from Washington State organic farmers.
Locally sourced, locally milled and soy-free will be my focus.
If anyone has any questions please feel free to email me at drameade(at)gmail.com or call me at 360-981-8597
So to enter the drawing, which is for 2 five pound bags of chicken feed (that’s right, there will be 2 winners!) please comment to this post and on Sunday, February 21 at midnight I will close the drawing and announce a winner sometime the next day. The winners will be chosen using www.random.org’s truly random number service. Again, feel free to comment but do let me know in your comment if you are outside the delivery area to make the process a little easier on me.
Good luck!
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THE URBAN FARM HANDBOOK: Authors: Annette Cottrell, Get Social!
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