from scratch magazine - october/november 2013 life on the homestead
DESCRIPTION
The online magazine for the backyard farming, homestead living, animal husbandry, homeschooling enthusiast.TRANSCRIPT
From scratch{life on the homestead} October/November 2013
The Magazine for the Modern Homesteader
Off the Grid
Tractor Revival
with Cody Lundin
The Historyof Fermenting
Backyard Farming • Homestead Living • Animal Husbandry • Homeschooling
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Cheesemaker
page 98
page 42
page 48
page 24
page 32page 60
The HIstory offermenting
The Farmsteadvintage pyrex
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Contents
page 14
page 55
tractor revivial
how to buy the right sewing machine
Growing a Greener World
farm film
Off the Grid with Cody Lundin
getting in touch with your inner cheesemaker
The Farmstead
Phot
o by
: Eri
ka T
racy
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Letter From The Editors
FFall is our favorite time of year. There is something about the leaves changing colors and the crisp air after a long hot summer that just fills our spirits with joy. It is also a very busy time around the homestead. We just planted our fall crops and are busy prepar-ing for the winter.Someone asked me the other day why we decided to start this mag-azine. I took a second to respond and said “Living a homesteading lifestyle is a beautiful thing and it should be documented, celebrated and shared.” We hope you enjoy all this issue has to offer!Check out our article on fermenta-tion — if you want a great way to put up some of your crops and to improve your health.We have a great interview with survival expert and television star Cody Lundin. Take a little time to read about Terry Baker, the owner of B&B Tractors who is working to
revive an American classic.Take some time to learn about a movie we loved, “To Make a Farm.”Don’t forget, we are an interactive publication. If you would like to learn more about a product featured in our From Scratch Finds, or one of our sponsors, click the ad or the image. It will take you to their website where you can support all the wonderful people devoted to making the world a better place for homesteaders.As the days get shorter and the to-do list seems never ending it is important to take a moment and realize how far you have come. Homesteading is a journey not a destination and the strides you make towards a more self sustain-able lifestyle should be celebrated! From one family of homesteaders to another - Well done!
Melissa& Steven Jones
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Contributors
Steven JoneSFrom Scratch Executive
Editor
MeliSSa JoneSFrom Scratch Publisher/
Editor
chriS MclaughlinGardening Editor
gretchen ceranic
renee henry Jennifer burcke
carol alexanderliSa SteeleChicken Columnist
Thank You
This Little Life PhotographyFresh-Eggs-Daily
Keep Your Memories in Your Shoes
1840 Farm
Lessons from the Homestead
A Suburban FarmerHomeschool Columnist
Farm Food Columnist
teri PageHomestead Honey
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photos from
our readers1.
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1. Broody Guinea from Tammy of Our Neck in the Woods. 2. Free range chickens from Tammy Barani of Our Neck in the Woods. 3. Broody Brenda from Khrista of Colored Egg Homestead.
4. Oinky from Krista.
5.
6. 7.
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5. Kay with a new olive egger chick from Colored Egg Homestead. 6. Pumba from Amanda Jones in Alabama. 7. Sunflower from Tammy of Our Neck in the Woods.
Do you have a photo from your homestead to share? Please email your photos to [email protected] and you could be in the next issue!
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14 • from scratch magazine
TractorREvival
Story: Steven Jones Photos: Melissa Jones
Every day, before he opens his doors, he asks the Almighty for protection. Every day, he thanks the
Lord for everything he has and then says “Amen.”And then Terry Baker begins the business of repairing tractors, sometimes reviving machines more than 70 years old, raising them from the dead to spend time in fields and farms and home-steads all over North Carolina and beyond.“I think God brings them to me,” he said, of the old tractors he
rebuilds. For about 200 years, Terry Baker’s family has farmed in Duplin County in North Carolina.“They’re all buried down the road,” Baker said.In 1898, George Rhodes, Terry Baker’s grandfather, was born. As Rhodes grew into a young man, and started a family of his own with his wife Caroline, Baker said, he obtained hundreds of acres of land.A farmer by trade and nature, Rhodes prayed that God would allow him to clear 400 acres, 100 acres for each of his four children,
Every day, before B&B Tractor opens for business, owner and operator Terry Baker gathers his employees and leads them in prayer. }{
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before he died. He started clear-ing land, first by mule and dyna-mite, Baker said, and as technol-ogy caught up with his mission, Rhodes started using tractors and other equipment.“Eventually, it came about,” Baker said. Rhodes died when he was 91.As a child, Terry Baker said his grandfather often watched after him.They would spend time together in the garden, hoeing weeds and tending the rows.“I’ve got a picture of me going to the garden with a diaper on and a hoe on my shoulder,” Baker said. Baker said his grandfather can be seen walking beside him in
the photograph. Baker credits his grandfather for encouraging him to go into business for himself.“He inspired me,” Baker said.
Terry Baker finally took his grand-father’s advice in 1990, after working for a tractor manufacturer in North Carolina.Terry Baker worked out of his home for years, repairing tractors in his workshop there.“I made a lot of foolish mistakes,” he said.Now, however, if you drive out to his shop in Beulaville, you’ll see him surrounded by candy-colored tractors in all states of repair. He actively seeks out the older models.
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They last longer, he says.Farmalls are his favorite, and the bright red tractors — complete with their signature “culti-vision” — stand out above all the others.While at work in manufacturing, Terry Baker became intimately familiar with Farmall tractors. At his shop in Beulaville, Baker repairs and sells all makes and models of tractors, manufacturing and retrofitting parts on all makes and models, working to make sure the engineering heritage of International Harvester and other companies live on.Because many of the tractors he works on are no longer in produc-tion, Baker specializes in manu-facturing, retrofitting and reusing parts.
Since IH stopped making the trac-tors, Baker has dreamed of pro-ducing them himself.Baker, who’s affable humility hides a fierce intelligence, is able to take raw metal and actually craft parts for tractors that haven’t been in use for nearly a hundred years. His joy over his job is palpable.“I think of them (tractors) like raising a puppy,” he said.He always wants to get the antique machines he rebuilds into a good home, where they’ll be appreciated and hopefully put to work.“We’re not here just to make a profit,” Baker said. “We’re here to meet a need.”
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His motivation is simple. Terry Baker wants to keep the old ways alive: Made in America, farm-country ways. Baker remembers growing up with his grandfather and learning how to keep a gar-den and reap the rewards.“Every person should have some-one in their family that can at least garden,” he said. “The most vital thing in life is food. You can’t eat money.”To help keep the farming tradition alive, in addition to reviving and selling old tractors, Baker tries to connect the previous generations with the next.He keeps in contact with his older neighbors to preserve the ances-tral knowledge of farming.
“I think there are people in every neighborhood that are willing to teach,” he said. “I call a lot of old people now (for information on gardening).”And while his children Kyle Baker and Britia Cavanaugh work as a computer tech and a banker, respectively, Baker hopes his granddaughters — Olivia, Kayla and Gabriella (known as “Gabby” by the family) — take up the farming lifestyle.“Sometimes it skips a generation,” Baker said.Even now, despite spending most of his time repairing and rebuild-ing tractors, Baker makes sure he spends time with his three grand-daughters in his garden at home,
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just like his grandfather did with him and like he did with his chil-dren.“I made a point to spend time with family,” he said.
And that the simple beauty of Terry Baker’s life. He spends each day praying, spending time with family and making old things new.While that seems a humble life to lead, Terry Baker will fool a per-son. Along with his ambition of manufacturing Farmall tractors from scratch, he has also spent time in Israel on a kibbutz study-ing their farming methods, with hopes of bringing some of those ideas home with him.So if you are ever near Duplin
County in North Carolina and want to check out one of the finest col-lections of tractors on the East Coast, go to Beulaville and see Terry Baker. Terry Baker will probably invite you into the only air-conditioned room in his shop, a 24 square feet office, and get you a cold drink from the refrigerator on the shop floor.He’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about trac-tors. You’ll learn about his fam-ily, his ambitions and even his wife, Dorothy (“I married a farm girl down the road on January 7, 1977,” he says).And when you leave, you’ll proba-bly feel a little bit better about the world just knowing he’s there.
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After working for decades on all types of farm equipment, Terry Baker knows how to keep a tractor going.
and while fluid changes and regular maintenance are important, Baker said the biggest problem he sees in tractors is water.
Owners, he said, leave tractors exposed to the elements, which means moisture gets in the engine components and the oil pan.
“a lot of my jobs come in because (the tractor) wasn’t covered,” Baker said.
So if you have a tractor, or any other piece of farm equipment, Baker said to keep it covered no matter what.
if you do not have a shed or barn to put the equipment in, at the very least, Baker said, wrap the engine compartment in a tarp or other similar covering. it will save you a lot of money in the end.
TerrY BAker’s ExpErT AdviCE
on TrAcTor mAInTenAnce
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Theresa Loe picking fruit in her orchard in Northern California.
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In September I was tickled (and honored) to catch up with every modern homesteader’s favorite T.V. producer, Theresa Loe, of Growing a Greener World on Public Television. As both the Co-Executive Producer and canning expert for the series, Theresa brings a lot to the table. She is a lifelong canner and a grad-uate of the Master Food Preserver Program. But she also studied sus-tainable horticulture and profes-sional culinary arts and has a BS degree in engineering. This multi-faceted and talented homesteader is an award-winning garden writer for television, print media, as well as video.
Prior to joining the fabulous team at Growing a Greener World, Theresa was the host/producer of a video
series on entertaining from the garden, a syndicated garden & food columnist, and a radio garden correspondent on Talk Radio. She was also sought after by HGTV pro-grams for her expertise as a small-space garden expert.
That’s Theresa’s professional bio. What we want to know is what she’s up to personally. It comes as no surprise to me that Theresa walks the talk — and does so with undeniable class.
Theresa currently homesteads and feeds her family of four on only 1/10th of an acre in the heart of Los Angeles, California (that’s Southern California where the movie stars are). As if that’s not enough, she also manages her family’s 1892
Growing a Greener World' with Theresa Loeby: Chris McLaughlin
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farmstead in Northern California (where the movie stars ski) working to restore an heirloom orchard.
Theresa actually prepares for the rest of the year by preserving her food gardens in canning jars (yes, I am now officially a slacker). Theresa records her homestead-ing and preserving adventures at LivingHomegrown.com.
What is the premise of your TV show “Growing a Greener World”? Growing A Greener World is a national public television series that tells the stories of people making a difference in this world through gardening. Our focus is on organic, sustainable gardening, green liv-ing and farm-to-table cooking. We are in our fourth season and each episode is available on our website after it airs nationally. So you can watch any episode anytime you want!
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Which episode do you think rep-resents you the most? Which one really hit home for you?Well, I guess the episode that rep-resents me the most would be the episode filmed about my urban homestead in Los Angeles. We told the story of how I grow food on less than 1/10th of an acre to feed my family of four. I’ve been gardening there for 23 years and I grow food a little bit differently that most of my friends. I don’t plant rows of anything.
Instead, I grow in drifts and lay-ers. I also “over-plant” and eat the things I thin out. I basically use every square inch of space, which can make it tricky to do crop rota-tion and composting in such a tiny space. But I make it work.That episode ended up being one of our most popular shows. I think that is because so many people want to grow food in small spaces these days. We also did a fun epi-sode on backyard chicken keeping which sort of followed the same
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theme of small scale farming in the city. I enjoyed that one because we built a tiny coop for a family just diving into the chicken keeping world for the first time.Those of us in the homesteading & gardening world already know what a fabulous TV producer you are — Tell us about your personal farmstead in Northern California. Sure! About a year and half ago, my family bought an 1890 run down farmstead in the Sierra Nevada area. It is 14 acres with about 7 acres of cleared farmland. The whole family has come together to restore it to its former glory.
I’m in charge of restoring the land, which includes an heirloom orchard (with over 50 unlabeled fruit trees) and an old kitchen garden next to the farmhouse. Other family mem-bers are in charge of restoring the farmhouse and outbuildings. The land had been barely maintained for 18 years but it is a gem just waiting to be polished.
As you can imagine, the fruit trees were in poor shape and the garden was completely overgrown. In just over a year, we have already made a lot of progress. In the kitchen garden, we built new raised beds,
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brought in organic compost and had quite a harvest this past sum-mer. But we are still working on it.
In the orchard, I have been metic-ulously working on each tree. It means carefully pruning, address-ing various pest problems organi-cally, and even trying to determine which varieties of apples, pears, cherries, and plums we have there. It is a labor of love to be sure. Our fruit production is already going up and I can barely keep up with the canning and preserving now! We are filming an episode there next year on the restoration process.
How does working on the Growing a Greener World show inspire you on your own farmstead? I am in a very unique position because we feature the rock stars of the sustainable gardening move-ment on our show each week. Not only have I’ve learned from inter-viewing them for the show, but their stories alone are incredible motiva-tion. These people really are doing great things for the planet. But beyond that, I work with a team of people who are all living the exact same lifestyle we fea-ture on our TV show. In fact, our host and executive producer, Joe Lamp’l, is considered one of the
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top green gardening experts in the country and he just happens to be restoring a farmstead of his own in Atlanta, GA. I feel pretty lucky to be able to pick his brain all day long about how best to handle some of my farmstead obstacles in the most sustainable way. And he asks me how best to preserve what he is growing on his farm. It’s actually a miracle we ever get any work done!
What is your best piece of advice for someone who is just setting up a farmstead? As with any garden project, it is best to start small and grow into it. The biggest mistake people make is to start too big. There are only so many hours in the day and you
need to get the system down for each area before you expand.
But my other piece of advice is that if you are starting with unfamiliar land, give yourself time to get to know that land. I am still in that stage myself. I am learning the little microclimates, the soil incon-sistencies across the property, all of that. I have also given myself time to get to know the views out the farmhouse windows through the seasons before I start planning the landscaping around the house. I want to have a lovely garden view from each of the windows in the most popular rooms (like the kitch-en). There is no need to rush that or you end up having to do some of it over again.
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A lot of people are learning to not only grow, but preserve their own harvest. As a master preserver, what’s your best piece of advice for beginners? Great question. Well first, don’t be afraid to start! Many people worry that they will poison someone if they make mistake. But if you stick with high acid foods such as jams, jellies, pickles and acidified toma-toes, you are perfectly safe. Those foods have a pH within the “safe zone” and you cannot get botulism. Of those foods, I recommend start-ing with quick pickles because they are really easy.
You can make dilly green beans or quick pickled carrots with much
success. Of the jams, I suggest starting with something like blue-berry jam. It has so much natural pectin in the fruit, it always works. And always use a recipe that fol-lows USDA guidelines. You can find some on our website or you can use resources like the Ball Blue Book for tried and true recipes. (Don’t forget to check out some expert canning advice from Theresa at Growing a Greener World.) I’ve admired Theresa Loe for many years and am extremely proud to call her my friend. If you’d like to have some sustainable royalty hangin’ around your circle and want to stalk follow Theresa like I do, check out her website Living Homegrown.com.
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Cody Lundin
photo Courtesy of CodyLundin.com
Cody Lundin is a passion-ate man.That comes across in speaking with him on the phone – he is a quick-
witted, highly intelligent conver-sationalist, clearly excited about sustainable living and teaching the fundamentals of survival at his school, the Aboriginal Living Skills School.It also comes across – perhaps even more so – when he talks about his home in Arizona and the philosophy behind its construction.“That’s what I’m passionate about, my homestead,” Lundin said.Lundin may be best known for his work on “Dual Survivor,” a Discovery Channel Show where he works with a co-host to survive different environments: Jungles, arboreal rain forests, deserts and deserted islands.But before taking on that role in 2009, he was a successful educa-
tor, writer and expert in the art of survival, who worked for decades teaching people, as his website describes it, to “do with less in life.”He practices what he preaches.His home, a self-designed cathe-dral to passive solar energy, water conservation and sustainable liv-ing, serves as a personal retreat and an example to others.“People can be comfortable and have what they need and live in beauty,” Lundin said, in contrast to those who think sustainable design means deprivation and unpleasant choices.The home maintains a temperature in the 70s F (about 25 degrees Celsius) all year long.This is done without burning wood in the winter and without any pow-ered cooling system in the sum-mer.Lundin’s home is built into a hill-side, to maximize thermal mass,
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Off the Grid with Cody
lundinBy: Steven Jones
thereby minimizing temperature fluctuations.For Lundin, maintaining tempera-tures is one of the most important aspects of human life.He said a knowledge of physiology, psychology and physics is integral to survival.He put that same knowledge – which keeps him alive in the bush – to use in designing his home.“If you don’t know the physics that’s a huge mistake,” he said.In addition to the thermal mass, the home is lit by sunlight during the day. The paint in the interior walls is impregnated with mica – a reflective mineral – which maxi-mizes the light from skylights and windows throughout the home.
During the night, the home is lit and powered by a solar array.Hot water is provided by solar col-lectors, including a salvaged water heater interior painted black.He cooks with propane, but also uses a solar oven to cook any-thing from “lentil soup to chocolate cake.”“It’s all off grid,” he said. “I’m not opposed to technology, but there has to be a balance.”The home faces South to take advantage of the most amount of warmth and the prevailing Southern weather systems which provide ventilation when necessary.He made use of parabolas om the architecture to provide the overall shape of the home. The curves,
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Cody Lundin’s home in Arizona
much like arches in bridg-es and cathedrals, provide strength to the building and prevent water from collect-ing on the domed roof, which could lead to leaks. It also allowed him to use fewer materials while construct-ing the home, because the natural strength provided by the arches meant he could support much more thermal mass with less material.The home has a green roof – an earth covering with grass-es and other plants growing on it.The plants add to the thermal mass of the home and provide shelter for rabbits, which he hunts for meat, and redirects rain to his fruit trees, which surround the home.Lundin also keeps a garden and a chicken coop, despite spending much of his time filming his show and teach-ing classes in the wilds of Arizona.He is working on installing a hydroponics and aquaculture system.“I’m building infrastructure,” he said.The home blends in effort-lessly with the environ-ment, honoring what Lundin describes as “bioregionalism” – the concept that local envi-ronments must be honored in order to create a home that is practical, efficient and beautiful.
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In short, his home is a monument to his personal style, philosophy and humility in the face of Nature.“You need to focus on what the nat-ural resources are,” Lundin said.Despite the “bio-mimicry,” the solar array, the passive heating and the rabbits, Lundin still feels he is not completely sustainable.“We all do what we can within our … bio-region. To be sustainable you pretty much have to go off into the bush and live off the land. I’m not sustainable, I need to be,” he said. “I choose where I invest my ener-gy. I try to give me my most bang for my buck.”He encourages everyone to do what they can to be more sustainable for the planet and themselves.“We’re chewing up the planet,” he said.
While he understands a lot of people are interested in preparing for “doomsday,” he still believes a more “sustainable” lifestyle is appealing to many people in many walks of life.“A lot of people are interested in paying less utility bills,” he said.He tells people do whatever they can and whatever they feel com-fortable with.“I would make it fun and really cool with no fear involved,” he said. “Especially with children involved.”To achieve this, he said people sim-ply need to go outside and find out more about their surroundings.“The master teacher is Nature,” he said. “I spend time looking to see what she (Nature) wants.In order to be sustainable people must shut up and listen.”
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The interior of Cody Lundin’s home is lit by sunlight during the daytime house which streams in through the various skylights and windows in his home.
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Cody Lundin may be known to most through his Discovery Channel show, “Dual Survival.”
But, as a survival expert with more than 20 years of teaching under his belt, he is also a best-selling writer and lecturer.He learned the art of survival be-ginning in his early years, during which he spent time on his grand-parent’s South Dakota homestead.He moved a lot with his military family, but said he found solace in his love of Nature. After gradu-ating early from high school, Lundin spent years living on city streets, alone in the woods and in a radical commune near the Unit-ed States border with Mexico.He calls those years his “warrior training.”A transcendent experience in the Arizona red rock wilderness in-spired him to share Nature with others as a hands-on educator.In 1991, he founded the Aborigi-nal Living Skills School. He be-came a best-selling author in 2003 with the publication of 98.6 De-grees and again in 2006 with the publication of
When All Hell Breaks Loose.In July 2009, he became the co-host of Dual Survival, now enter-ing its fifth season.Lundin said he knows the show will not last forever.He has big plans for the future, well after the show is over. He plans to continue his work on his homestead and teach as much as possible.“I’m an educator by nature,” he said.He also has several books -- in ad-dition to the two he’s already pub-lished – he would love to write and publish in the coming years.“I’ve already had two books on hold,” he said. “More books are in the pipeline.”If you are interested in learn-ing more about Cody Lundin, purchasing one of his books or attending his school, go to the Aboriginal Living Skills Survival School website. (http://www.co-dylundin.com/)Check the Discovery Channel web-site to find out when “Dual Sur-vival” airs. (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/dual-survival)
All About Cody Lundin
Homesteadingwhile expectingBy: Rachael Taylor
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rachael Taylor poses with her goat on her homestead in Washington state.
As I write this article, I’m weeks away from giving birth to our first baby. Even though we’ve been a couple for over twelve
years, welcoming our first child into the world makes everything seem new and wonderful. We’re beyond excited to meet our daughter.There is something magical about a child being born into a farming lifestyle. Neither one of us had this as I was a military brat who moved every two years and Nick, my husband, grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. When we got pregnant we began to look at the farm through her eyes. The young orchard we put in this year, with the trees we treat like fragile little sticks in the ground, will always be the place she can go to pick an apple, pear or cherry for a snack. The baby goats we added to our dairy herd will be milkers by the time she’s old enough to help milking (yes, I plan to start her young, that’s why children have tiny hands, right?). The raspberries and blueberries we just planted, which caused us to rejoice when we got a handful of berries, will become her berry utopia with rows taller than her.It’s a romantic notion, seeing your farm through your future children’s eyes – and it’s delightful.I had a terrible first trimester, which, luck-ily, overlapped during our slow season this Winter. I lost quite a bit of weight, threw up three to six times a day, and basically struggled to function as a normal human being. The burden fell on Nick who was both my rock and the farm’s salvation. In the future, should we decide to have more children, we will definitely try to time first trimesters during the Winter.Once I started to feel better during the second trimester I found myself confronted
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with a new set of challenges. The electric fence was more than just a potential wake-up zap; it was now a point of worry for the grow-ing body inside of me. Raw milk, sunny side up eggs, gardening in the dirt, all of these were big no-nos. Painting the barn, haul-ing bags of feed and bales of hay, cleaning the cat box – the list of things people were telling me to avoid seemed infinite. Thankfully, I was able to work with my mid-wife to come up with answers to all these “forbidden fruits” that worked for me, our farm, and most importantly, the health of our daughter.After finally finding a rhythm of being pregnant on the farm I now found myself dealing with the third trimester … and the sleepiness. Because Nick and I both have full time jobs while we work to pay off
our farm we’ve always relied on the vigor of our youth (okay, okay, we’re not 20 anymore, but we did just enter our 30s) to pull us through the extended workload. But now, here I am, pregnant, sleeping in the hammock, which Nick surprised me with one day, because he is just that amazing. While I still managed to always get my regular chores done, the extra daylight farmers look for-ward to? Yes, I slept through that.Thankfully I’m blessed to have a husband who firmly believes that growing a tiny human is the ultimate priority and continually reminds me to listen to my body, slow down and enjoy being preg-nant. I am also convinced he is secretly ready to don the elbow length gloves and assist in birth like he has for our goats but we’re going to try and avoid that.
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rachael Taylor with her cat and husband.
Pregnancy has changed the way I feel about a few unique aspects of homesteading. Normally, I love being at the births of our animals, but when our beauti-ful white Saanen goat ate her gigantic placenta right in front of me the sound of the chewing and the trace marks of blood all over her face were almost more than I could stomach. Along the same lines, wielding the scalpel while we castrated our pigs made me feel especially vulnerable, but it was either that or be the person to hold them down which was not an option with my belly. These few hiccups aside, I personally believe you’re never more in tune with life on your farm then when
you have life growing inside of you. I also have a new respect for animals, who you never hear com-plain about morning sickness.We worry of course that our daughter will hate animals (yikes!) or despise being outdoors (double yikes!) so we’re crossing our fin-gers that the world we’ve created, which we love to call our home, will also become her sanctuary. A small part of me hopes that because she was a farmer before she was born this way of life is in her blood. That same part of me also hopes that our homemade goat’s milk soap naturally deters stretch marks. A new mom can dream, right?
from scratch magazine • 41
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42 • from scratch magazine
Vintagepyrex
Story by: Steven Jones • Photos by: Melissa Jones
from scratch magazine • 43
pyrexStory by: Steven Jones • Photos by: Melissa Jones
Maybe it’s the memories of having pyrex at the nightly dinner table or the fact that my mother gave me a piece of orange Pyrex that she received as a wedding gift. Whatever the reason — there is no doubt that pyrex captured a generation of homemakers and inserted itself into every day life. Now, it seems that people are trying to recap-ture that nostalgia by collecting pieces of vintage Pyrex. Easy access — you can find pieces at flea markets, garage sales and even your own kitchen — and the small price tag make it a functional and obtainable item to collect.
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from scratch magazine • 45
Pyrex brand cook-ware has an unusual origin story.
The cookware, made of Borosilicate glass first pro-duced by a German scien-tist in 1893, began as lan-tern and battery jar glass.Corning, in 1908, devel-oped the product to use, according to the Pyrex history on the company’s website, to prevent break-age. Railroad lanterns made with normal glass shattered when exposed to the temperature difference between the hot flame of the lantern and cold winter air.Corning used “low-expan-sion” borosilicate glass to produce the lantern glass and for glass battery jars used at the time.Bessie Littleton, the wife of a Jesse Littleton, a scientist working with Corning, in 1913 asked her husband to bring home glass to replace a broken casserole dish. He sawed off the bottom of battery jars and gave it to his wife.She used it to bake a cake and Jesse Littleton took the idea back to work with him.The product was named Pyrex and debuted to the American public in 1915.The huge success of the
46 • from scratch magazine
from scratch magazine • 47
product, fueled by a patriot-ic-themed advertising blitz, led to the development of more products, including Pyrex Flameware and later Pyrex Colors in 1947.Since then, Pyrex, loved by cooks for its inherent dura-bility and functionality, has also become a popular col-lectible. The website pyrex-love.com states “Pyrex is one of the most popular types of kitchen glassware collectibles today ... There are tons of different designs and colors of various rar-ity for collectors to choose from.”Featuring designs with names like dandelion duet, crazy quilt and midnight bloom, the colors and designs are beguiling to a lot of collectors.And, pyrexlove.com states getting started in collecting is easy for novices, making it even more popular.“Many collectors need not go farther than grandma’s or even their own kitchen to find a piece of vintage Pyrex,” the site states.If you would like to start col-lecting Vintage Pyrex check flea markets, swap meets, yard sales and antique stores. Then check sites like pyrex-love.com for help in identi-fying your patterns and get involved in a vibrant online community.
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Whether you sew all of your own clothes, use it to make curtains, or just keep it on hand
for mending, the sewing machine is one tool no homestead should be without. However, with the myriad of choices available today on the market ranging from antique to vintage; from used to brand new; how do you choose the best fit for your lifestyle all the while stay-ing within the homestead mental-
ity of “keeping it simple?” Once you have decided what to look for where to you find one at a reason-able price? First there are two things you should consider:
WHAT Are You GoInG To use IT For?
Are you planning to sew a bridal gown? Do you need draperies for that west window in the bedroom?
How to Buy a Sewing MachineBy: Jennifer Cazzola
48 • from scratch magazine
Do you just want to sew a patch on that pair of overalls with a hole at the knee? In most of these situa-tions a very basic machine will suf-fice, one that will perform an excel-lent straight stitch, a nice zigzag, a decent buttonhole; and one that includes a zipper foot that can be easily installed. On the other hand, if you want to machine to quilt or appliqué you may need something that will provide you with addi-tional features and functions. Think
it through carefully. You may not need something with all the bells and whistles.
Do keep it simple.
The first sewing machine that was completely my own did nearly everything but make the bed. Apart from adjusting the thread tension at the touch of a button, it came complete with a vast library of embroidery stitches including the
from scratch magazine • 49
“Sewing machines, if cared for properly, can last for generations. The Singer pictured here belonged to my great grandma and sewed my grandma’s wedding gown when my grandpa came home from the war.”
alphabet in three different fonts. However, after about fifteen years of repeated use it started to give out. When I took it to the repair shop, I was told that the computerized parts were obsolete. My expensive, amazing machine could not be repaired.It has since been replaced with a 1960’s vintage Sears Kenmore. Embroidery stitches are not in her
repertoire. She only performs the basics, but she does them very well. She has run steady for the past 50 years and with a consistent maintenance schedule should con-tinue to do so.With that in mind then, it’s time to go shopping! There are a number of different resources for a sewing machine but these are those you would most likely find in your com-munity:
50 • from scratch magazine
• A sewing mAchine store
Typically these specialty stores will offer several models of just one or two brands. The advantages of shopping here are a knowledge-able staff that will readily be able to answer any questions you might have. Often times the store will offer classes on how to use your machine and be available later on down the line for repairs and ser-vice. The disadvantage is cost. While most stores will offer used mod-els, you will be paying more, and you may be paying for special features that, while they look fun in the store, will rarely be used at home. My vast library of embroi-dery stitches? It was hardly used. The latest model may not be the best purchase.
• A sewing mAchine repAir shop
Often times these little jewels will sell used machines in excellent condition or in some cases may be able to secure a new model. The advantage of a repair shop is a knowledgeable individual who knows machines and will be able to direct you to one with the fea-tures that best suit you. They usu-ally offer a wide variety and aren’t typically limited to any one brand, therefore they can give you solid advice on a good purchase. Another advantage is cost. Usually you will pay less at a repair shop than you
would at a sewing machine store. One disadvantage, however, is that while the store will help guide you in your purchase and be available for maintenance and repairs, they won’t offer the back-up service by way of additional classes. You’ll need to have some knowledge of operating your machine on your own.
• ebAy
My Sears Kenmore was purchased through a reputable used machine dealer on eBay. The advantage was a great machine at a good price delivered right to my front door. The disadvantage here, obviously is the risk. You are purchasing some-thing you haven’t seen. Before you hit the purchase button, make sure you have contacted the seller with any questions you have, checked to see if there is a return policy, and checked the seller’s history.
• crAigslist, estAte sAles, gArAge sAles
The advantage of situations like these is going to be a machine at a very low cost. The disadvan-tage obviously is that you may not always be in a situation where you can try out the machine before pur-chase and the machine may need to be repaired or serviced before it can be used. Unless it is a great bargain or your are experienced enough to know exactly what you are looking at this may or may not be a good choice.
from scratch magazine • 51
Regardless of where or how you purchase your machine you will want to test the following:
The straight stitch, adjusting the • length several times, and the zigzag stitch. Test them both for a good thread tension as well as the overall feel of the machine.The buttonhole stitch. The but-• tonhole stitch of some machines may be manual, or it may be as simple as pushing a button. Make sure that you are comfortable with how it operates. Make a few buttonholes on a scrap piece of fabric and slash them. Are you happy with the end result? Does it look professional?Any additional stitches or fea-• tures the machine offers.
And finally:
Don’t underestimate the power of the old fashioned treadle machineAlthough these machines typically only perform one function they perform it well. The lack of but-tonholes and other fancy stitches will force you to improve your hand sewing skills. What could be more enjoyable than an afternoon on the back porch swing sewing a hem or a series of buttonholes by hand? The rhythm of the pedal is a bit like learning how to ride a bike, but once mastered the experience is therapeutic, not to mention the fact that you are free from the need of electricity making this a great option for one who is wanting to be completely self sufficient.
52 • from scratch magazine
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from scratch magazine • 53
54 • from scratch magazine
from scratch magazine • 55
“To Make A Farm,” a movie by Canadian director Steve Suderman, premiered at the Vancouver Film Festival in 2011. Since then, the independent documentary has been shown at festivals all over the world and is available online and in DVD formats.The film follows five farmers on three different farms in Canada as they try to become profitable and in some cases just break even.Tarrah Young and Nathan Carey pasture raise sheep, chickens and pigs. Over the course of the film, they work hard to make their farm self-sufficient while honoring the animals they raise.Leslie Moskovits and Jeff Boesch, after years of apprenticeship on other farms are working on their own piece of land for the first time. As they deal with soil deficien-cies and exhaustion, the couple struggles to break even on their project.Wes Huyghe is a first time farmer who borrows land after traveling all over the world in his youth. He faces a steep learning curve, but his devotion to the task cannot be questioned as the new farmer lives
in a tent next to his fields. Over the course of the film, viewers experi-ence the physical, emotional, eco-nomic and spiritual challenges of the young farmers as they attempt to eek a living out of the land.Steve Suderman allowed us to interview him about the film after screening it online.
whAt Do you hoPe TO aCCOMPliSH WiTH THiS filM?
I guess there’s an element of social awareness that I hope I can con-tribute to in terms of how we understand food and farming. But there are a million different ways to do that. For me it was about making a documentary film that’s hopefully honest while drawing us into a good story.
HOW iS THE filM BEiNG DiSTRiBUTED?To Make A Farm is being distributed online through iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and other Video On Demand providers. DVDs can be
FArM CiNEMadoCuMENTAriAN STEvE SudErMAN FoLLoWS
FivE YouNg NEW FArMErS AS ThEY FACE ThEir FirST FArMiNg SEASoN.
by: Steven JoneS
56 • from scratch magazine
purchased on the film’s website at: www.tomakeafarm.ca
Do you think thiS filM Will iNSPiRE OTHERS TO tAke uP fArMing?
Some people have told me that it has inspired them to pursue farm-ing, or to keep farming. But that was never my intention. Farming is extremely challenging, and there are many new farmers who don’t succeed in terms of finding their passion or making a living at it. I didn’t want to be responsible for telling people that farming will be something it isn’t. That’s why you also see a lot of challenges and frustrations in the film. And in fact
some people have said the film focuses too much on the struggle and problems. Even the farmers featured in the film told me they were worried it didn’t celebrate the joy of farming enough after see-ing it for the first time. I took their concerns seriously, and made a few small changes to the final cut to see if I could draw out some of the joy a bit more. In the end, I think the film is pretty balanced, and depending on a person’s expe-rience with farming, they will take away something different.
whAt Do you think the BiGGEST CHallENGE faC-iNG SMall, SUSTaiNaBlE
Leslie Moskovits and Jeff Boesch harvest beets on their farm.
from scratch magazine • 57
faRMiNG iS NOW?
There are so many challenges, and they vary greatly around the world. If I were to pick an over arching issue, I think it comes down to the destruction of cultural and biological diversity by global industrialized agriculture. Right now, even with the resurgence of small-scale agriculture, I think we are losing the battle. You can’t separate the current dominant agricultural model from global capitalism, and on that front we are facing a lot of hurt before we can ever hope for something bet-ter. However, at the individual level, there are a lot of small farmers out there who are find-
ing ways to build a meaningful life with minimal participation in that global structure, and that’s beauti-ful.
DURiNG THE COURSE Of THE filM, viEWERS SEEM to reAlly StArt to root fOR THE faRMERS HiGH-liGHTED. iS THaT SOME-thing you’ve founD to be true in your exPeri-ence? why Do you think THaT iS?
From the very first screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival I was amazed to see how
Tarrah Young and Nathan Carey work on their farm in Canada.
58 • from scratch magazine
quickly audiences get caught up in the story in this film. That’s an extremely rewarding thing for me as a filmmaker. I think it’s because farmers live an intense narrative that in some ways rewrites itself every season. The challenge for me was to figure out how to translate that story into something a gen-eral audience could understand. If viewers are rooting for the main characters, I hope that’s a sign of success.
hAve you hAD Any CRiTiCiSM Of THE MOviE?
This isn’t a Hollywood flick, so some people are a little challenged by
that. But most reviews have been very positive. There have been some arguments about whether it’s a realistic portrayal of farming or not, and I think that’s a very healthy debate to have.
iS there Any wAy to fOllOW UP ON THE PROGRESS Of THE faRMERS HiGHliGHTED iN THE filM?
There are some updates on the website that have been written by each of the farmers featured in the film.
Wes huyghe surveys his farm in the movie “To Make A Farm.”
from scratch magazine • 59
Are there Any PlAnS to fOllOW UP THE MOviE WiTH aNOTHER SHOW-ing how they Are Doing SiNCE THE RElEaSE Of THiS filM?
I expect to keep updates on the website for some time to come. And I may do some more filming in the future. Over the two years of making this film I became quite attached to these guys, and for now I’m happy to leave the camera at home and just visit them when I can.
how Do you feel MAking the filM hAS iMPAct you AS A filMMAker?
I discovered while making this film that documentary filmmaking gives you an excuse to ask questions you wouldn’t normally get to ask. I have a lot of questions and I hope I get to keep asking them.To learn more about “To Make A Farm,” visit their website to find information about purchasing the film and to get updates about the farmers featured in the film.(www.tomakeafarm.ca)
We at From Scratch Magazine give the movie four ears of corn up.
Wes huyghe works on his to-do list outside his tent.
Getting in Touch with your Inner CheesemakerBy: Melissa Jones
A cheese press in action. using the cheese press shapes your cheese into nice round wheels.
60 • from scratch magazine
Farmhouse Cheddar
from scratch magazine • 61
I bake my own bread. I don’t understand why anyone would use a box mix to bake a cake. I take pride in cooking things
with real ingredients. So, it just seems natural that the next step in my culinary journey would be cheesemaking.
Especially since we have milking goats. I won’t say that the process didn’t intimidate me — because it did. There are a lot of steps and strange ingredients. But, once you get past the initial challenge, it is a very rewarding process.
goat Milk heating up the milk
Curds forming62 • from scratch magazine
3 gallons whole milk•Mesophilic Culture (1/4 tsp Abiasa, 1/8 tsp Danisco, or 1/16 tsp Sacco)•2 teaspoons calcium chloride (only needed for store bought milk)•1.5 tablet rennet or 3/4 tsp liquid rennet•1/4 cup unchlorinated water•1 Tbsp salt•
Combine milk, (calcium chloride) in 16 qt stock pot (double boiler to prevent •scorching)Slowly heat mixture to 86 degrees. Turn off heat and stir in lactic cheese •culture. (Different types of culture create different flavors of cheese) Stir gently throughout. Cover mixture and allow to rest undisturbed at 86 degrees for 45 minutes.Dissolve rennet tablet or liquid rennet in 1/4 cup water.•Keep the milk at 86 degrees. Stir the rennet mixture into milk slowly but •thoroughly. Allow milk to set undisturbed for 30 - 45 minutes or until curd shows a clean break.Using long knife, cut the curds into 1/2 inch squares, then stir gently just to •break the strips of curds into chunks. Let it sit to rest for 5 minutes.Slowly heat the curds and whey to 102 degrees, raising the temperature 2 •degrees every 5 minutes. Stir curd gently to prevent matting and reduce their size to half peanut size. A large whisk works well by placing it at the bottom of the pot and pulling it up right so curds break as they fall through the whisk. Hold curds for additional 30 minutes at this temperature.Place a colander — pre-warmed with hot water — over a pot and pour the •curds into it.Reserve 1/3 of the whey and pour back into the cheese pot. Set colander of •curds onto the cheese pot. Cover top with cheese cloth and lid to keep in warmth. Allow curds to drain for 45 to 60 minutes. This is called the cheddaring process.Cut slab into pieces and press through french fry cutter or cut by hand.•Add 1 tablespoon course salt. Using your hands, gently mix the salt into •curds. You can eat these curds now, or press into a wheel.Place the curds into cheese press and follow the directions for dressing •with cheese cloth for the next 12 hours.Remove cheese from press, unwrap the cloth, place cheese on drying mat to •air dry for 12 hours, creating a nice skin over the whole cheese. Cheese is ready to slice and eat or you can wax and age for stronger cheddar flavor.Mix 1 tablespoon of salt with 1/2 cup of water. Use a corner of the cheese •cloth to lightly apply a saltwater wash to the cheese.
Farmhouse CheddarIngredients
Directions
* Recipe from www.homesteadersupply.com
Heating up the milk
Curds formingfrom scratch magazine • 63
1 - 3 gal whole milk• 1/4 tsp MESOPHiliC abiasa Culture ( 1/8 tsp Danisco, or 1/16 tsp Sacco • italian)1/2 rennet tablet per gallon dissolved in 1/4 cup unchlorinated water,• 1 Tbsp salt •
Warm milk to 86 f. add culture and mix gently but thoroughly. let it • ripen undisturbed at 86 degrees for one hour.add dissolved rennet and gently but thoroughly stir into milk. Then top • stir. let milk set for 30 minutes or until curd shows a “clean break”.Cut the curd into 3/8” cubes. Stir gently. let curd rest for 5 minutes to • firm up.Raise temperature of the curd 2 degrees every 5 minutes until tempera-• ture reaches 102 f. Stir gently so curd particles do not mat together. Hold at 102 f for 30 minutes undisturbed. Gently stir curd. Then let curd set undisturbed for 5 minutes to settle at bottom of pot.Drain off the whey to level of the curd. add tap water at 60 degrees until • temperature of curd water reaches 80 f. Stir while adding the water. Hold curd at 80 degrees for 15 minutes. Stir to keep from matting. (Moisture content of the cheese is controlled by temperature of the water added...
Colby CheeseIngredients
Directions
* Recipe from www.homesteadersupply.com
Farmhouse Cheddar
64 • from scratch magazine
for dryer cheese keep at a few degrees higher than 80 degrees, if a moist-er cheese is desired keep at few degrees below 80 degrees.)Pour curds into cheesecloth lined colander. Allow curds to drain 20 min-•utes.Place curds into large bowl, add salt, add seasonings/herbs as desired. •Mix thoroughly yet gently, breaking curds into thumbnail size pieces.Place cheese into cheesecloth lined mold (Tome Mold for 2-3 gallon milk •cheese, or Reblochon Mold for 1 gallon milk cheese) Press with 8-10 lbs for about 4 hours allowing all the whey to release from the cheese.Flip cheese, cheesecloth and all, into the mold with 8 to 10 lbs for about •12 hours.Remove cheese from mold. Remove cheesecloth and place on drying rack •to air dry for a day or two to develop a skin all around the cheese. It is now ready to eat or you can age it.Wax and store at 50 degrees for 2-3 months. Turn the cheese daily for •first couple of days, then at least once a week until eaten.Cheese can also be frozen for storage, but this does stop the aging process.•Remove cheese from press, unwrap the cloth, place cheese on drying mat to air dry for 12 hours, creating a nice skin over the whole cheese. Cheese is ready to slice and eat or you can wax and age for stronger flavor.Mix 1 tablespoon of salt with 1/2 cup of water. Use a corner of the cheese •cloth to lightly apply a saltwater wash to the cheese.
* Recipe from www.homesteadersupply.com from scratch magazine • 65
A Cheesemaker’s Shopping List
66 • from scratch magazine
The Cheesemaker’s Manual, Homesteader’s Supply $39.95
Calcium Chloride is used when making cheese from homogenized, pasteurized or frozen milk to help
restabilize milk structure and hasten curd set -
Homesteader’s Supply $7.95
Cheesecloth- 1 yard, Homesteader’s Supply $5.95
16 qt. Stainless Steel Stock Pot -
From Scratch Finds - $79.99
The Ultimate Hardwood Cheese Press -
thevatpasteurizer.com $159.95
Thermometer - Stainless Steel Large Dial, Long Stem -
Homesteader’s Supply $14.50
Danisco Mesophilic 4001-4002 direct starter for Colby, Cheddar,
Roquefort, Cambozola, Castello Blue, Gouda and Brick cheeses -
Homesteader’s Supply $12.88
Supreme Kit includes all the cheese making products you will need to
make cheese - Homesteader’s Supply $162.96
68 • from scratch magazine
Many homesteaders and small farmers often get started in livestock with chickens, but there are
other options available that may be just enjoyable and rewarding.Rabbits are one of those options. While the animals do not pro-vide eggs, for a dedicated home-steader, a few rabbits can produce hundreds of pounds of meat every year. If an operation is large enough, selling the skins either to whole-salers for fur production or local craftsmen can mean extra income, which is always appreciated by small scale farmers.According to the Mississippi State University Extension Service, rais-ing rabbits for meat animals has many benefits for farmers:• Rabbits can provide extra income through the sale of meat and skins
• Rabbits do not require much space• Rabbits do not require the same physical demands as other live-stock operations, like cows
What do you need to raise rabbits?
Rabbits, like any other animals raised on a farm, require shelter, food and water.Penn State’s Agricultural Department suggests sheltering rabbits inside an enclosed struc-ture to minimize extreme tem-peratures, but many small scale breeders deal with the issue by using heating lights and fans in their shelters.A rabbit shelter, or hutch, should be made with the rabbits com-fort in mind. While many differ-ent recommendations for size are
Raising Rabbits
for MeatBy: Steven Jones
from scratch magazine • 69
70 • from scratch magazine
made, a good rule of thumb is for every pound the rabbit weighs, it requires one square foot of space.Many breeders keep their rabbits in hutches with wire mesh floor-ing, including a “resting board” for the rabbits to lie on for comfort. The mesh allows droppings to fall through facilitating cleanliness. Some breeders, however, feel a resting board is not enough and use a solid, untreated wood floor-ing to maximize comfort for the animals.Make sure, if you do decide to use solid flooring, to keep the cage cleaned at least once a week to promote good health for your rab-bits.The sides of the hutch can be
made of metal or wood, but prop-er ventilation and predator protec-tion must be a factor.A nesting box should be provided to allow rabbits a place to sleep, stay warm and — in the case of pregnant does — give birth (known as kindling).Does, castrated bucks and juve-nile males can be kept in the same enclosure, bearing in mind the size requirements mentioned above. Intact bucks, however, should be kept separately to pre-vent fighting and out of control breeding.Many breeders also provide runs for rabbits to allow them a chance to exercise and remain stress free. Some breeders, however, feel this
A Californian rabbit. Californians are sought after because of their high weight and white fur.
72 • from scratch magazine
A New Zealand rabbit eats grass outside its pen.
from scratch magazine • 73
slows meat production. If you do provide a run for your rabbits, make sure the run is enclosed on the sides and top to prevent predators. Use stones, bricks or pavers around the inside edge of the run to keep the animals from digging out. Breeders can use 6 inch corrugated drain-age pipe to make a “tunnel” to the run from the hutch to allow unfettered access to the area.
What do rabbits eat?
Rabbits are herbivores. Commercial rabbit food, usually made from alfalfa, is widely available and provides most of the nutritional needs of a rabbit. Rabbits should also have hay available by choice. The food should be kept in a durable container, preferably anchored to the hutch somehow.Avoid plastic feed containers, as rabbits will chew them to pieces. Hay hangers and commer-
74 • from scratch magazine
cially available feeders can be pur-chased at any pet supply or feed store.Breeders who want to achieve maximum sustainability can culti-vate their own rabbit food, either for use exclusively or as a supple-ment to store-bought feeds.Rabbits enjoy oats, red clover, wheat grass and other assorted grains. Avoid whole corn, as many rabbits have trouble digesting it. The animals often enjoy “weeds” from the garden, including most grasses and dandelions.In our experience, rabbits will not eat weeds from the garden that are harmful to them, but do not take this as “gospel.” Use your own judgment and do as much research as possible. And while
everyone knows rabbits enjoy the occasional carrot, do not depend on it as a staple of your bunny’s diet.As with all livestock, the impor-tant thing to remember is animals enjoy a diet rich in variety which also helps ensure good health through the life of the animal.In addition to a solid feed man-agement plan, rabbits also require salt and mineral blocks. An unlimited supply of water should always be available. The well-known water bottle is a great way to provide it for rabbits, just make sure enough bottles are pro-vided. One per rabbit helps make sure the bunnies stay hydrated throughout the day.
Californian rabbits in a wire mesh pen.
from scratch magazine • 75
Breeding raBBits
Breeding rabbits is notoriously easy, but some key tips should make the process safer and more productive.Rabbits are territorial, so when the time comes to breed a doe (which should be at least six months old) place the doe inside the buck’s hutch. If you put the buck inside the doe’s hutch, she could become violent toward what she considers an intruder onto her space.Mating should take about 15 min-utes. You can tell a doe is mated when a buck throws itself off the doe. Many bucks thump their hind legs after mating (although some do not, so do not take this as a sign of mating).At this point remove the doe from the buck’s hutch and return her to her own. A buck can be bred to several does in a single day, pro-
vided there is an ample rest peri-od between matings.Once the doe is pregnant, kindling (birth) takes place about 30 days after the breeding. Make sure, if you haven’t already, a nesting box is in the hutch for the doe to give birth in and care for her litter.Make sure to keep an eye on the baby rabbits (kits) after birth. Many young does will attack and even kill their offspring.When the kits are weaned, they can be removed from their moth-ers and put into a “growing” hutch, when they are raised until big enough for slaughter.A doe can be bred again almost immediately after birth, but for the health of the rabbit and her kits, it is best to wait two weeks after weaning to breed her again.With a little work and some prepa-ration, you willl be enjoying rabbit meat in no time.
What kind of raBBits should i Breed?
Most breeders, according to the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA), raise New Zealand White or Californians for meat. New Zealand Whites can grow up to 9-12 pounds in weight, while Californians can grow to weigh 7-12 pounds. Both rabbits are suitable for fur, as their naturally white coloring makes it easier for furriers to dye the skins. Many other breeds are suitable for meat production, according to ARBA. Check out the ARBA website for a complete list and a directory of breeders near you (https://www.arba.net/). Make sure you sex the rabbits when you buy them. A good breeder should be able to show you how to do it. And remember, if you have a concern or need help, do not be afraid to ask. ARBA and the USDA have many resources online. Local breeders, like all farmers, are usually willing to help.
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Lisa Steele poses for a photograph with one of her chickens.
Fresh Eggs Daily By: Melissa Jones
from scratch magazine • 77
What is your new book, Fresh Eggs Daily, about? My book focuses on lots of natu-ral preventives and immune sys-tem boosters to help backyard chicken keepers raise their chick-ens economically, naturally and many times in the absence of the availability of a local avian vet. I grow many varieties of herbs and edible flowers that I use in my chicken keeping and in my book I share what I have learned about using them, along with common herbs, as dietary supplements and home remedies, as well as to help make a coop and run area more appealing and a healthier
environment for chickens to live in. Raising chickens is far easier when they are able to fight illness and infections on their own, from the inside, so providing them the tools to build strong immune sys-tems is the cornerstone, at least to me, of successfully raising a backyard flock. Chickens are pro-grammed to hide symptoms of ill-ness or injury. In addition to being on nearly every predator’s menu, they have their own (often brutal) pecking order within the flock, and therefore any signs of weakness can cause them to be targeted. Therefore, they work very hard to appear healthy, even when something is very wrong, so keep-ing a close eye and being in tune with what’s ‘normal’ is of course very important to treat and nip
Lisa Steele is the power house behind the hugely successful blog, Fresh Eggs Daily. Her new book is sure to be a must have for every chicken keeper.
Fresh Eggs Daily By: Melissa Jones
78 • from scratch magazine
problems in the bud, but also by ensuring your flock is as healthy as possible often allows their body to naturally fight whatever is ail-ing them. This kind of information isn’t readily available all in one place, so I decided to write a book concentrating on natural remedies and preventives. I also share a few fun recipes for coop sprays, natural fly spray, treats for your flock and a DIY project or two for the run.
What encouraged you to take an all-natural approach to raising chickens?
We raise horses, dogs and a cat as well as ducks, in addition to our chickens, and try to raise them all as naturally as possible. Between the commercial product recalls, expense and horror stories about medications and chemicals harm-ing or killing pets, I have always gone the natural route with all our animals whenever I can. We use food-grade DE to dust our dogs for fleas and rose geranium oil spray for ticks instead of applying any commercial flea and tick prep-arations, we use non-chemical fly spray on our horses. With a bit of research and trial and error, you can generally find a safer, health-ier option instead of just reaching for a chemical-laden commercial product.
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So when we started raising chick-ens, I expanded my reading and research to include treatments that would be safe for the chick-ens. Since we eat their eggs, it’s even MORE important to me that our chickens are raised without using antibiotics, chemicals or other unnatural medications. In addition to that, there aren’t very many products that ARE labeled for use with poultry and many of those that are, warn about a ‘withdrawal’ period during which it’s not considered safe to eat the eggs from treated chick-ens. In some cases, the withdraw-al period is indefinite — meaning if you treat your chickens with that particular product, you should
NEVER eat their eggs. Now that’s pretty scary to me! We consider our chickens pets first and foremost, and they will live their entire lives here on our farm whether they lay eggs or not, but I certainly love their fresh eggs and pumping our chickens full of medications and chemicals isn’t on our agenda. Kind of cancels out the benefits of raising them for fresh eggs.
Why do you think more and more people are raising chickens?
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As the economy gets worse and more people find themselves out of work, that leaves more time at home and less money. I think the backyard chicken movement is growing in part because more time at home trans-lates for many people into grow-ing and raising more in an effort to save money and also feed their families as healthy as they can. So many are finding such a sense of accomplishment in homestead-ing, maybe to replace the sense of accomplishment they are no longer finding in the workplace. I think also a greater awareness about the conditions at commer-
cial farms, as well as some of their practices, has turned many off to store bought eggs. You only need to eat one egg from your own chickens to realize how superior in freshness and taste they are.
What made you decide to start keeping chickens?
When we bought our farm here in Virginia and moved in with our horses, I originally wanted goats. My husband counter-offered with chickens.
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Chickens actually made more sense because I am the grand-daughter of honest-to-goodness chicken farmers who supported their family during the 40s and 50s selling meat and eggs from their flock. I grew up across the street from their farm in fact and raised chick-ens of my own as a kid. My adult experience raising chickens start-ed five years ago, but I like to think I already had quite a solid background in it!
Tell us about your flock.Right now we have only a hand-ful of laying hens — my cur-rent breeds include Lavender Orpington, Chocolate Orpington, Olive Egger, Ameraucana and Australorp. I have downsized quite a bit, real-ly putting some thought into the direction I want my flock to go. I have had a high of around 30 hens plus a few roosters, but at this point, I have whittled my flock down to just my few favorites and am looking forward to this spring
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84 • from scratch magazine
hatching a few different rare breeds on the ALBC critical list to try and help those breeds and give them exposure through my blog and Facebook page. I successfully rehomed a large portion of our flock this summer all to loving homes, some to brand
new chicken keepers and some to well-seasoned chicken keep-ers who were looking to expand their current flock, and everyone commented on how friendly and gorgeously healthy the birds they bought were, so that feels good.
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What is the best piece of advice you have for a new chicken keeper?Everything will want to eat your chickens and as soon as you start rais-ing them, every predator within miles will know about it. If you think there are no predators where you live, try setting up a trail cam on your coop — you will be surprised what comes to check out your flock! A safe, secure coop and enclosed run is the saf-est option, as least until you can assess your own particular preda-tor situation and can safely free range, hope-fully with the help of a specially trained guard dog or employing the ‘supervised free range’ that I practice where I am outside with them. Neighbors’ dogs are the #1 cause of death of backyard chickens — so you need to be respon-sible even if your neigh-bors aren’t and provide a safe, clean, healthy envi-ronment for your flock.
Chicken Columnist
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There has been some debate amongst the old timers that my mom sells her eggs to, and I was hoping I could get your input. Some of her customers feel that green eggs have the most nu-trition out of all other eggshell colors. My mom and I believe the shell color doesn’t play that much into it. Who’s right? Also, does it matter what breed the chicken is versus how healthy/nutritious the egg is.
Breed plays no part in egg nutrition or taste, although some French chefs claim that Marans eggs taste better and are superior to other breeds’ eggs. This may stem from the fact that the pores in the shells of Marans eggs are smaller and therefore the eggs stay fresher longer and have less risk of salmo-nella or bacterial contamination. But bottom line, a hen’s diet and the freshness of the egg is what af-fects an egg’s nutritional value and taste.
Lisa SteeleFresh Eggs Daily
talking chicken scratch with lisa
Q.
Chicken Columnist
A.
from scratch magazine • 87
Q.
Lisa Steele from Fresh Eggs Daily The resident From Scratch Chicken Expert.
I have heard that white potatoes can be toxic to chickens but what about sweet potatoes?
You are correct that white pota-toes can be toxic. They are part of the nightshade family, along with to-matoes, eggplant and rhubarb. The leaves, vines and peels of these veg-etables, as well as the flesh to a less-er extent, contain the toxin solanine. Sweet potatoes, however, are part of the morning glory family and are per-fectly safe for chickens to eat: Flesh, leaves, peels and all.
I have been told that I need to light my coop over the winter in order to keep my hens laying? Is this true?
No, it’s not true. While the shorter days in winter do result in lower egg production, pullets generally lay well through their first winter as do some of the better-laying breeds. Some hens will stop completely, while oth-ers will just slow down. It’s a mat-ter of personal preference if you want to give your flock a natural break or ‘force’ them to lay by increasing the number of daylight hours artificially. I personally give my flock a natural break.
Q.
A.
Q.
A.
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88 • from scratch magazine
More than a decade ago, Byron Parker was shopping for dog treats with his then 6-year-old
daughter Kassidi. She asked her father if they could buy treats for their chickens.He explained to the girl no one sold treats for chickens. She told her father it was unfair and got upset.As any father would, he tried to explain why treats were not made or sold for chickens. And then as any father, he decided he would try and make his daughter happy.“It suddenly hit me that she might
be on to something,” he said. “Treats are sold for just about every pet imaginable. Somehow chickens had been overlooked.”Unlike other fathers, Parker was in a position to do something about it.“I’ve worked 21 years for a com-pany that sells poultry equipment,” he said.And after a few months of prod-uct testing, Parker discovered Mealworm Frenzy.Happy Hen Treats were born.Launched in 2009, the treats have since then proved a smash hit.In fact, other companies are follow-
SpoiledChickensBy: Steven Jones
from scratch magazine • 89
ing suit. Happy Hen Treats, Byron says, feature all natural ingredients and now come in a variety of “fla-vors”: Mealworm Frenzy, Mealworm & Corn, Mealworm & Oats, and Sunflower & Raisin.For chicken lovers, keepers and farmers, the treats provide a chance to not only give their chickens a lit-tle extra, but also help supplement their diets.Mealworms are naturally high in protein, while the other ingredients help provide a varied diet that help keep chickens healthy.Many people who keep chickens also raise mealworms as a supple-
mental food source. For others, who might not have the room to raise mealworms, Happy Hen Treats represent an opportunity for urban and small farmers to provide the same attention.That is one of the reasons, Parker said, he developed the product.“I could see a gradual change in the market. Manufacturers of dog houses were now manufacturing small chicken coops to house 3 to 5 chickens,” Parker said. “Hatcheries lowered their minimum chick orders from 25 down to 15 and then even-tually as low as 3 to accommodate customers in urban settings.”
90 • from scratch magazine
from scratch magazine • 91
Since the initial start of Happy Hen Treats, Randall Burkey, the distributor of the treats, has begun selling other prod-ucts devoted to mak-ing chickens and other animals happy. The company sells treat balls for chickens, which are designed to hold cabbages and Happy Squirrel Treats and Happy Bird Treats for wild birds.Check out their web-site at happyhen-treats.com.
Happy Hen TreatsPremium Treats for Chickens
HappyHenTreats.comVisit us online to find a dealer near you!
Meal Frenzy$28.49
Treat Cakes - Seed & Worm$2.49
Treat Ball$4.99
92 • from scratch magazine
Baking powder, baking soda: what’s the difference? Actually, there’s a big difference both in what they contain and what they should be used for. They’re both leavening agents, but they react differently and impart different flavors on the recipes that contain them.Baking soda contains sodium bicar-bonate and reacts to acidic liquids by creating bubbles of carbon diox-ide. Those bubbles expand while in a warm oven and cause a baked good to rise. Recipes made with baking soda must be baked imme-diately, before the bubbles have time to dissipate.Baking powder contains the same
sodium bicarbonate as baking soda along with a few other components. Baking powder also contains cream of tartar to acidify the dry mixture and a drying agent, usually corn starch. Baking powder is available in single and double acting variet-ies.Single acting baking powder func-tions in much the same manner as baking soda. They require liquid to activate their bubbling activ-ity to leaven a recipe and should be baked immediately after being mixed. Double acting powders work in two stages, making them ideal for recipes that will rest before baking. Double acting baking pow-
Kitchen Science: Baking Powder vs. Baking SodaBy: Jennifer Burcke
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Kitchen Science: Baking Powder vs. Baking SodaBy: Jennifer Burcke
Homemade Baking PowderMakes three Tablespoons.
Ingredients:2 Tablespoons cream of tartar1 Tablespoon baking soda
Directions:Combine both ingredients in a small container with a lid. Stir to mix the two dry ingredients completely. Use as you would store bought bak-ing powder in your favorite reci-pes. This homemade, fresh baking powder can be stored in the airtight container in a cool, dark place for several weeks.
der will begin to have a leavening effect on a recipe while at room temperature or even cooler tem-peratures. They will undergo their second phase only after experienc-ing the much warmer temperature created by baking.Baking Soda and Baking Powder also differ when it comes to flavor. If you have ever mixed acidic vine-gar with baking soda, then you are already aware that baking soda is a basic substance. That basic prop-erty delivers a slightly bitter flavor that must be tempered by an acidic ingredient such as yogurt or but-termilk or balanced by the addition of enough sugar to compensate for the bitterness.
For example, baking soda is used in Pumpkin Bars with Dark Chocolate Chips. The final recipe is not at all bitter. The batter includes yogurt to help temper the acidity as well as sugar, pumpkin, and chocolate, to balance it.Baking Powder contains both an acid and a base. Because of this, baking powder delivers a neutral flavor. Many recipes that include baking powder also include other neutral tasting ingredients. Baking powder is used in our Wholegrain Buttermilk Biscuits. Finally, there’s one last difference between baking soda and baking powder. You can make your own fresh baking pow-der right in your own kitchen.
94 • from scratch magazine
Fall is in the air here at 1840 Farm and another homeschooling semester is underway.
This year, one of our homeschool-ing goals is to spend more time together in the kitchen baking and cooking. We’ll be learning the basics and adding in a few family and holiday favorites for good measure. We’ll also be sharing many of the recipes and techniques with you so that you can try them in your kitchen.I decided to start with a simple recipe and a bit of kitchen science for good measure. So, we gathered around our kitch-en table to learn more about bak-ing soda and baking powder.
You can learn all about the sub-ject by reading my post: Kitchen Science: Baking Soda vs Baking Powder. In my opinion, few recipes high-light baking powder in the way that a great homemade biscuit does, so we started gathering our ingredients and preparing to make a batch of buttermilk biscuits from scratch. In moments, we had our ingredi-ents and tools. We were ready to mill a batch of organic, non-GMO flour, make our own baking powder, and finish the biscuits by using a biscuit cutter that had been passed down from my Great Grandmother. First, we milled a batch of whole wheat flour using our WonderMill.
Making ButtermilkBiscuitsBy: Jennifer Burcke
from scratch magazine • 95
If you don’t mill your own flour, a high quality whole wheat flour can be substituted or you can use All-purpose flour if you prefer. We mixed up enough fresh baking powder for each child to make their own batch of biscuits and started weighing our ingredients.Then it was time to mix up the dough and break out our rolling pins. We talked while we rolled out the dough. We couldn’t help but discuss the generations of our family that had come before us as we used a bis-cuit cutter that showed signs of wear from its decades of use. I watched them fill with pride as they gently transferred each round
of biscuit dough to the baking pan. That evening, we gathered around our family table and enjoyed the biscuits as the centerpiece of our meal. They were delicious used as the bread for our heirloom Green Zebra Tomato BLT sandwiches. They had a light, flaky texture that was just as delicious when enjoyed for breakfast the next morning, warm with a pat of butter and driz-zle of our own maple syrup.These biscuits were so popular that we have already enjoyed them a second time. I’m quite certain that we’ll be mak-ing them again soon. I hope that your family will enjoy them as much as mine did.
Making ButtermilkBiscuitsBy: Jennifer Burcke
heirloom green Zebra Tomato BLT biscuits.
96 • from scratch magazine
Buttermilk Biscuitsmakes 8 biscuits
The key to making a light, flaky biscuit is to mix the dough enough to break the butter into very small pieces without mixing it so much as to develop the gluten in the flour. Don’t worry, there’s a simple trick to ensuring that you achieve that state consistently when mak-ing biscuits. Simply grate the butter before adding it to the dry ingredients. While it may sound unconventional, grating the but-ter makes all the difference. The butter will be in small shards and easily distributed through the dry
ingredients with little effort. Take care not to over flour the dough while rolling. Too much flour will create a dry, heavy biscuit. I like to use a seasoned French rolling pin or silicone covered rolling pin and rolling mat when making bis-cuits. Both are less likely to need excess flour in order to prevent sticking.
Ingredients1 cup (120 grams) whole wheat • flour1 cup (120 grams) All-purpose • flour1/2 teaspoon salt• 2 Tablespoons baking powder• 6 Tablespoons butter, grated• 3/4 cup (6 ounces) buttermilk•
from scratch magazine • 97
Directions
In a large bowl, combine the • flours, salt, and baking powder.. Use your dry fingers or a whisk to combine the dry ingredients before adding the grated butter to the bowl. Using your fingers, gently toss the grated butter and the dry ingredients until the small shards of butter are evenly dis-tributed through the dry ingredi-ents.Make a well in the center of the • dry ingredients before adding the buttermilk all at once. Use a spoon or your hands to mix the dry ingredients into the butter-milk. Continue to mix until the dry and wet ingredients are fully combined .Take care not to over-mix, stopping as soon as the dough is evenly moist.Transfer the dough to a lightly • floured surface. Add a sprinkling of flour to the top of the dough and pat into a rectangular shape. With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 1/2 inch thick. Fold the top third down to the middle of the dough. Fold the bottom third up to the middle of the dough. Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll until 1/2 inch thick. Repeat this folding and turning two more times. The folding and turning will help to create buttery layers in the dough and yield a very flaky biscuit.Roll the dough into a final rect-• angle 1/2 inch thick. Dip a biscuit cutter in flour and cut out each biscuit, disturbing the dough as little as possible. Gently transfer each round to a baking tray or
pan.Place the pan of biscuits in the • refrigerator for at least 30 min-utes to allow the butter to solid-ify. Take any remaining scraps of dough and gently shape into a rectangle before wrapping with plastic wrap and placing in the refrigerator. If allowed to rest, this dough can be rolled and cut into biscuits or pressed into the bottom of a pie pan to serve as the crust for sweet or savory dishes.Preheat the oven to 400 degrees • Fahrenheit. Remove the biscuits from the refrigerator and allow them to come to room tem-perature as the oven preheats. Transfer the biscuits to the hot oven. Bake for 12-16 minutes or until lightly browned with a dry exterior. Remove from the oven and brush the tops of the biscuits with melted butter if desired. Serve warm.
98 • from scratch magazine
Cabbage surrounds a fermenting crock used to make sauerkraut.
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Bajillions of years ago, approximately, scientists say single-celled bacteria were formed, according to the Art of Fermentation. Those bacteria were
probably fermenting organisms, as fermenta-tion produces energy without oxygen. As the world was brand new, the scientists say, there was not much oxygen floating around.Later, other bacteria came along and started eating the little fermenters. The ferment-ers, through no fault of their own, slowly — through the power of evolution, or God, or Nature, depending on your preference — con-trived a way to survive the process of being eaten.Then the clever little creatures set up shop. They infected the predators, breaking down the materials consumed by their predators for food. The by-products, lactic acid and alcohol, among others, were then processed by their predator hosts by aerobic metabolism, that is, the name scientists give the process of pro-ducing energy with the aid of oxygen.The little fermenters remained there ever since, in the guts of all sorts of living things, including humans.Thus a symbiotic relationship was born, between tiny microbes and us, big clumsy humans.While an untold number of scientists will view that explanation as simplistic (and it most assuredly is) the fact remains that anaero-
The History of fermentation
Story by: Steven JonesPhotos by: Melissa Jones
100 • from scratch magazine
bic fermenters — those microbial organisms, including yeast and bacteria — have been a major force in human history.Some archeologists, including Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada, cite the fer-mentation of beer as a driving force in the rise of civilization.While the production of beer — and other spirits, like wine, mead and liquor — represent probably the most attractive side of fer-mentation, a different kind of fer-mentation, lactic acid fermentation has played a key role in human history as well.We might take it for granted, but
the simple concept of food storage has only in recent history become a simple concept.Before the 20th Century and the rise of refrigeration, farmers and housewives (and it was almost always housewives) were respon-sible for storing their food in what we may consider novel ways. Meat was dried and even baked into pies for long-term use. Vegetables were stored under-ground. And many things were fermented to keep them through cold winters and long voyages: Cultured milk, kimchi, dry sausages and sauer-kraut.
freshlyshredded cabbage
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The process is deceptively simple. Using sauerkraut as an example, a person combines salt — and sometimes other spices — with cabbage. The material is placed into an airtight container — as oxygen retards fermentation — and micro-organisms break down starches and produce by-products. In the case of sauerkraut, the major by-products are lactic acid and car-bon dioxide.The presence of salt and lactic acid then prevents bacteria and other organisms which would nat-urally decompose the sauerkraut into an inedible mess, thereby
preserving it for future consump-tion.With the rise of the industrial age, The Art of Fermentation states, refrigeration, wide availability of pressure canners and factory can-ning pushed lactic acid fermenta-tion into the background of most Westerners’ lives.New evidence, however, suggests we may have lost some benefi-cial bacteria along with the art of home preservation.The Art of Fermentation states that fermented foods help people stay healthy. The reason is those same benefi-cial bacteria that set up shop in
Raw Rutes Sauerkraut Seasoning can be seen inside its envelope (center) and in a bowl (right).
102 • from scratch magazine
our guts Bajillions of years ago, benefit from the by-products and enzymes we consume when we eat fermented foods.A Washington Post article last year cited The Art of Fermentation on the benefits of fermented food:
The nutrition in fermented •food is already partially broken down, thereby making it easier for humans to digest.Lactic-acid fermented foods •contain lots of enzymes that helps break down food in our digestive tract, helping us absorb more nutrients from our food.A happy digestive system, •which helps absorb more nutri-ents, supports a healthier immune system, reducing the
rate of sickness and disease.
If done properly, fermented foods offer people a chance to improve their general health and reconnect with our ancient forebears.The Art of Fermentation is a great place to start. Instructional guides are available on Amazon.com and companies like rawrutes.com sells crocks which include instruction guides on the basics of fermenting food.So, if you would like to try it, buy a book, a crock and do a little research and get to it. You will enjoy the process (fer-menting foods bubble like little mad scientist kitchen projects) and make your family healthier.
Kneading salt and spices into shredded cabbage.
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SauerkrautIngredients: 5-6 lbs. of Cabbage2 tbsp of Sea Salt, Pickling Salt or one envelope Raw Rutes Sauerkraut Seasoning.
Directions:after removing the green outer leaves of your cabbage, shred the cab-• bage into a large bowl.Sprinkle with Sea Salt, Pickling Salt or contents of seasoning envelope. • knead the cabbage until it begins to release its juices. • Start packing the cabbage into your crock in small layers, using your • fist or cabbage stomper to firmly press the cabbage in. add boiled, cooled salt water if liquid does not rise 1-3” above the • stones. Close your pot with lid and pour water into the water channel above.leave the pot in a warm place. The temperature should be between 68 • degrees and 72 degrees for the first few days. after fermentation has started, you will hear a bubbling sound, put the pot in a cool place for 2-3 weeks. ideally between 59 degrees and 64 degrees. Basements make a great spot for fermenting. after 4-6 weeks your sauerkraut is ready to eat! The longer it sits, the • more “sauer” the cabbage will become.
104 • from scratch magazine
We asked for homeschooling questions on the Facebook page and what a dis-
cussion that ensued. I could write several columns trying to tackle them all. But here’s my pick for the month:
Can you tell me how I make sure my children learn everything a kid is supposed to learn to “keep up” with public school students of the same age/grade level?
I can answer this question in one sentence. But I’d rather take a
more circuitous route by asking a few questions of my own and encouraging you to think outside the box.
As a parent, your child’s edu-cation is your responsibility. If you choose to homeschool, you assume full weight of that respon-sibility. If you choose to send your child to a school, you employ another adult in the education process, but you are still ulti-mately responsible. With that in mind, why aren’t you, as a home-schooling parent, deciding what your child “is supposed to learn”? If you want the right to educate your child at home, don’t you also want the right to educate him as
By: Carol J. Alexander
Homeschool Columnist
Lessonsfrom theHomestead
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Lessonsfrom theHomestead
you see fit, the subjects you think are important, at the pace that you think is right for him?
I’ve often wondered what makes a politician the best person to judge what my child should learn in a particular grade. Where I live, children in the public schools study the history of our state in the 4th grade. Why the 4th grade? Why not the 5th or 6th? What if my 4th grader wanted to study Ancient Egypt? Children learn best what interests them. If they aren’t interested, they are able to mem-orize facts long enough to spit them back out for a test, and then they promptly forget the material.
If they are interested, they will immerse themselves in a topic and make it a part of their lives — for-ever. If you doubt what I am say-ing, ask yourself how much you remember from 4th grade history class.
Another thing to consider is that we homeschool by families, not grades. At one time I had a 10th grader, a 7th grader, a 6th grad-er, and a 4th grader. It is a lot easier for all of them to study the same thing (with age-appropriate assignments) than to study four different periods of history.
You want your child to keep up
106 • from scratch magazine
with his grade level. I suppose you would be embarrassed if your four-year-old, public-schooled nephew were reading to your homeschooled eight-year-old. Why? Don’t you want your child to learn at his own pace? Don’t you want him to enjoy his schooling?
I have finished homeschooling four of my six children. I have had early readers and late read-ers. I have had math whizzes and those inept in mathematics. But the bottom line has always been, when they are ready, they get it. At home, I can wait. In the school system, they cannot wait so they label the child “slow learner” and send him to a special class. He is humiliated.
When one of my sons got his first job, all the kids he worked with gave him a hard time because he was homeschooled. They would drill him with questions about subjects he knew nothing about. But as a homeschooler, he stud-ied things that they knew nothing about. So, I encouraged him to give it right back at them by ask-ing them questions about those topics. And if it truly does take 10,000 hours to master a skill, how many school-attending chil-dren have that kind of time? God made each person an individual and requiring children to conform to a set of standards just for the sake of order in the classroom is denying that God-given individual-ity.
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Homeschooling for 18 years and homesteading for 12, Carol J. Alexander looks for the lessons in every aspect of her family’s homesteading lifestyle. She is the author of a series of e-books entitled Lessons from the Homestead which help parents find those lessons as well. For down-to-earth support for homesteading homeschoolers visit www.les-sonsfromthehome-stead.com
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The last point I’d like to bring up is that I assume because you are reading this mag-azine that you live, or aspire to live, on some type of homestead or farm. As you may know, homesteading is hard work. Growing your own food, canning and pre-serving that food, milking, building fence, sheering sheep, mucking stalls, gathering eggs, and everything else there is to do on the homestead takes time and muscle and stamina. Homesteaders need their kids to help. Homesteaders want their kids to help so that they can pass down the same self-sustainable lifestyle values. But kids trying to “keep up” do not have the time to milk, build fence, sheer sheep, muck stalls or gather eggs. They are too busy keeping up. They are too busy cramming all those facts into their heads so that they can pass the tests that the politicians (not their parents) say they must pass. But if your kids aren’t busy trying to keep up, they can use those farm chores as academic power supplies. Nothing teaches or reinforces math skills like build-ing a chicken coop. You really don’t need to order formaldehyde-preserved fetal pigs to dissect when you butcher your own hog. And if you play into a child’s natural entrepre-neurial spirit, you can turn their farm chores into micro-businesses from which they earn a little money. And that endeavor will teach them business, marketing, and communica-tion skills.
Now that I have you thinking, I hope you’re saying “never-mind” to your question. But, if for some reason that I’m not privy to, you really need to keep your child up with the public schools here’s the short answer to your question:
Contact your local school board and ask for a copy of your state’s standards of learn-ing. They will be thrilled that you asked and, most likely, they will even be happy to mail it to you.
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and Be Nice
Bake Bread Story and Photos
By: Gretchen Ceranic
"Good Bread is the most fundamentally satisfying
of all foods
"
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There are so many satisfy-ing things about bread and bread making. Forming something nourishing in your hands, seeing that
puffed up swell of risen dough, the aroma of comfort and the satisfy-ing feel in your stomach. I really can’t think of any other food that any other food that satisfies the senses the way bread does. In fact, I just read an article pub-lished in the Journal of Social Psychology that says the smell of freshly-baked bread has more than just the power to make you a nicer person and we could all use a little more niceness in this world. According to the Daily Mail, researchers at the University of Southern Brittany in France found that shoppers were more
likely to alert a random passerby that they had dropped something if, at the time, they were also passing a bakery giving off the sweet scent of baking bread. We have come to love making our own bread. And now with cooler weather coming and lots of soups in the making, this is the perfect bread. The best part, aside from it being delicious, is that it’s so easy to make. So easy in fact, that my seven year old is able to make it. After reading that article about the smell of baking bread making us all nicer, I may be making it even more often. It’s kinda like sneaking veggies into spaghetti sauce to make kids eat healthier, except this works on their heart.
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A FEW THInGS To noTE BEFoRE MAKInG:
It does need to be made in advance but once you make it you can store it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Just cut some off, whatever size you may want, let it rise, bake and enjoy.
In fact, if you’re a first time baker, you may want to refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight because it’s a little easier to work with than room-temperature dough. And the bonus is that even one day’s storage improves the flavor and texture of bread. If you decide to bake it before refrigerating - it will be sticky. Don’t worry. Just use flour on your hands and sprinkle the dough with flour.
Dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in air-tight containers or plastic wrap and defrosted over-night in refrigerator prior to baking day.
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Ingredients1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (about 1-1/2 packets)•1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt•6-1/2 cups unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting dough•Cornmeal•
Instructions1. In a large bowl, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups warm water. Using a large spoon, stir in flour, mixing until mixture is uniformly moist with no dry areas. Dough will be wet and loose. Cover with loose lid or towel.2. Let dough rise at room temperature for 2 to 5 hours. At this point, dough can be refrigerated up to 2 weeks in loosely covered container.3. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and on your hands. Grab a grapefruit size portion (about 1 pound) and cut using a serrated knife. Turn dough and form into ball, stretching the surface until it’s smooth at the top and bunched at the bottom. Sprinkle with flour as needed as it will be sticky.4. Sprinkle pizza peel or large wooden cutting board with cornmeal and let rest for 40 minutes if fresh, one hour if refrigerated. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate. 5. While dough is resting and rising, preheat oven to 450. Place a broiler pan in the bottom of the oven and a baking stone on the middle rack (this is different, but trust me). Or if you don’t have a pizza stone you may use a greased, non-stick loaf pan and let it rest in the pan before baking.6. Using a serrated knife, slash top of the dough with an x or 3 parallel lines. Slide dough onto preheated baking stone. Pour 1 cup water into broiler pan and quickly close oven door to trap steam. Bake until crust is well-browned about 30 min-utes. Remove from oven to a wire rack and cool.
Simple Crusty Bread
Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). Copyright 2007 by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.
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Simple Crusty Bread
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Bread Dipping Spice
Ingredients1 tablespoon fresh minced garlic1 teaspoon ground black pepper½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)2 tablespoons dried Italian seasoning½ teaspoon olive oil1/8 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (or bottled if you don’t have fresh lemons laying around)
InstructionsCombine all ingredients. Serve about 1 ½ teaspoon on a plate and pour about 3-4 tablespoons olive oil on top (or do what I do and just spoon a pile out and pour as much oil as I think we’ll eat). Dip warm, fresh bread into oil, making sure to pick up the garlic and spices and enjoy.Store remaining spice mixture in a container in the refrigerator.
Now if you really want to impress your friends or get your spouse to do all the dishes make this dipping spice to go with the bread. It’s very similar to one of my favorite things to eat at Carrabba’s restaurant. And if you’ve ever eaten there you’ll know that it’s the little plate of spices the waiter brings to your table and then pours olive oil over it to create this golden pool of garlicky goodness. I always forget that I eat so much of it that I should just ask to get my meal in a to-go box.
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1pound ground beef (or venison if you prefer)1-2 can(s) dark red kidney beans, your preference2 cans diced roasted garlic tomatoes, including the juice1 can, or 1cup fresh/frozen corn1/2 chopped onion2 cloves diced garlic1 jar meaty pasta sauce1-1/2 cup water2 TBSP chili powder3 TBSP honey1TSP dried basil1/2 tsp cinnamon1/4 tsp allspice
InstructionsIn a skillet, brown the meat over medium heat and drain any grease off. Transfer to a crock pot and combine with rest of ingredients. Cook in crock pot on high heat for 4-5 hours, or low heat for 7-8 hours, adding additional water if liquid level becomes low. Stir occasionally.
Ingredients
A sweet, spicy chili that was invented the day the roof caved in on our front entry room and we had to call on family and friends to come over and get a new roof on that day!
Roofing Day Chili
bFavorite
Fall RecipesBy: Renee Henry
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3 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cubed2 cups carrots, peeled and chopped1/2 onion chopped1-2 cloves garlic chopped1 apple peeled and chopped2-1/2 cups chicken broth1/2 tsp salt1/2 tsp ground ginger1/2 tsp cinnamon Water (if needed as vegetables cook down)1 cup heavy whipping cream
InstructionsAdd all ingredients EXCEPT the heavy cream to a large stock pot and bring to a boil, then simmer on medium for about 40 minutes or until veggies are soft enough to split w/ a fork. Remove from heat and cool a bit. Transfer vegetables and some liquid to a food processor (or blender) and run through until smooth. Add back to the stock pot and remain-ing stock. Stir in 1/2 cup of room temp whipping cream (Don’t add cold cream to the hot soup- it may curdle) OR you can add the cream as desired to each individual bowl when ready to serve.
Ingredients
Butternut Squash Soup
bFavorite
Fall RecipesBy: Renee Henry
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The Homesteading Truth By: Steven Jones
Life on a Homestead Column
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Years ago, when we first conceived Sunshine Sisters Farms, me and the entire Sunshine family thought
the enterprise would be one that was immensely rewarding.And it has been.We’ve learned about agriculture in a real and positive way, we have developed close personal relation-ships with a vast worldwide com-munity of sustainable farmers and homesteaders and we have come to expand our family with a veri-table menagerie of animals.This whole project, however, may have been the worst decision we ever made.Let me explain.When we first came up with our genius idea to start a homestead, I personally envisioned sunny days filled with cooling breezes as I tilled the soil, planted seed, marshaled growth and reaped the rewards of a bountiful harvest.I imagined handmade baskets filled with a rainbow array of organic pro-duce. I believed my work with the earth would allow me to commune with nature, filling my hands with beautiful dark soil, like a prayer for a hopeful future.I believed our animals would fill our lives with meaning, as we stewarded them through a fruitful life. They would provide us with eggs, milk — and when the time came — they would nobly, yet tragically, sacrifice themselves to provide wholesome meat to sus-tain us through our lives.I was wrong. Dead wrong.
I spend my day dragging loads of topsoil around acres of land. The weather is a fickle mistress, deter-mined to keep me in the optimum levels of discomfort. I lost count of the number of times I have had to sit down to avoid passing out from the heat.Bugs are evil creatures determined to make me cry.Seeds do not germinate as adver-tised, if they germinate at all. Plants put into the ground are prone to whither, blight, fungal infections and infestations and epi-demics of all manner.And the animals, Oh my gosh, the animals.I have snobby chickens who I swear have some sort of chicken powers they are using to try and kill me with.I have no idea how they man-age to poop so much, over so many things. I think they tried to blind me at one point (It’s a long story).Ducks are messy, ill-mannered animals. I learned recently they cannot control their bowels. They destroy things just for the sake of seeing them destroyed.Guineas are funny looking and loud.Our goats bite me constantly. One head-butted me as I tried to repair a gate.We also have rabbits, who I think know we purchased them solely as a meat source. As such, they treat us with constant suspicion, punc-tuated by ugly claw marks when-ever we try to treat them with the
Life on a Homestead Column
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dignity and respect we believe ani-mals deserve. And one of them has the worst teeth you have ever seen on an animal. I did not know ortho-dontics applied to small rodents, but I have been proven wrong sev-eral times now.At the end of every day, even an “easy” day, I am usually wet, filthy in ways a sewer worker would be repulsed by, exhausted, dehydrat-ed and incredibly uncomfortable.Along with our close personal rela-tionships with sustainable farmers and homesteaders the world over, we often get in stupid, exhausted arguments about ridiculous topics among ourselves. No doubt driven by the constant worry and vastly reduced blood sugar that is a farm-er’s lot in life.
I mean, really, does anybody real-ly care exactly what kind of kale we plant. I have been involved in extensive discussions about such things for hours at a time. I have no idea why.I am, as my wife, Sunshine Sister Melissa, is apt to remind me, an “unusual” individual (she also says I am somewhat of a “crybaby.” I disagree, usually through tears). As such, I have a vast array of inter-ests, all of which I have ignored for almost a year now.I used to be a person who cared about things like books and movies and the world around me.Now, my entire focus is on our thousands of square feet of raised beds and what it means when ani-mals make any of their extremely
“i personally envisioned sunny days filled with cooling breezes as i tilled the soil, planted seed, marshaled growth and reaped the rewards of a bountiful harvest.”
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varied noises. One Sunshine Sister swears she heard a hen attempt to crow yesterday. I do not know what that means, but I am con-cerned it is some sort of apocalyp-tic omen which we would be unwise to ignore.I think this entire experience has made me crazy … well, crazier.See, in spite of that laundry list of concerns, especially the thing about the chickens trying to blind me, I would not trade any of it for the world.How messed up is that?After spending an average day of feeding and watering animals, watering plants twice a day, plant-ing seed, hoeing beds, mulching, mucking and staring at various and assorted animal body parts for signs of ill health, I do end up filthy.
I usually find myself washing five, sometimes six, different types of animal poop from my hands, face, body and — worst of all — mouth.While I am performing my cleaning rituals, I sometimes find an imbe-cilic grin on my face.Through the body aches, the sore eyes, the runny nose from my aller-gies, I am grinning like a fool.I end my day thinking about how well my kale crop is doing; thinking about how silly the chickens looked while scratching in the dirt; think-ing about something my kids said to my while they helped trim rab-bit teeth (never thought I would be doing that in a million years).I am absurdly happy. It is surreal.My life has never been better.How stupid is that?
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The Straight Poop on Composting ToiletsBy: Steven Jones
The bathroom shown here is outfitted with a Sun Mar Excel White composting toilet.
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The Straight Poop on Composting Toilets
Particularly human poop. Or humanure as it is sometimes called by users of composting toi-lets.Homesteaders and gardeners are quite com-fortable using animal waste to fertilize vegeta-ble and flower gardens.But, according to a lot of sustainable living enthusiasts, we may be overlooking humanure as a sustainable and viable alternative or addi-tion to using animal manure.Composting toilets enjoy a long and varied his-tory. Vastly different from using a traditional outhouse, composting toilets use a system of adding material to human waste to produce an encouraging environment for microbes.After properly disposing of the humanure mate-rial and allowing for microbial activity to occur, humanure can be used as fertilizer, providing carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to a wide array of plants, according to the Humanure Handbook (http://humanurehand-book.com/manual.html)The setup is deceptively simple.Human waste, including urine and feces, is col-lected, either in a homemade receptacle or a commercial composting toilet.The waste is covered with a “filler” mate-rial: Sawdust, rice hulls, coco coir, sugar cane bagasse, peat moss, rotted leaves and some-times even finely shredded junk mail.The Humanure Handbook states these materi-als provide space for oxygen to help with aero-bic decomposition.
it is time to discuss an uncomfortable subject: poop.
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The material is then piled into a com-post pile. Once full (the Humanure Handbook states it takes a family of four about a year to fill a cubic meter or so sized compost bin) the compost pile is covered and sits for a year while any pathogens in the waste material dies off or is killed by the aerobic process.Then the material can be used to fertilize gardens and flower beds.If people are not comfortable with using the material in vegetable gar-dens, they can use it in ornamental beds, food forests or bury it under soil before planting over it.The compost can be tested for pathogens, and if necessary, can sit for another year to provide an
extra layer of protection.Commercial systems, like Sun Mar toilets, use separate chambers to treat the waste, providing cham-bers for liquid and solid compo-nents. Sun Mar uses a patented bio-drum system to add oxygen and heating elements to evaporate liquids in the waste.They also provide an easy “in” for some users, as commercial sys-tems, which can include flushing systems, tend to look more like traditional water toilets.One of our contributors Teri Page, has used a composting system for years and helped others establish their own systems.
A Sun Mar Centrex 3000.
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It’s a beautiful morning here on my homestead, and I head outside to visit the privy. Lifting the lid on a five-gallon bucket,
I place a toilet seat upon it and make a deposit in our “humanure” system. I toss toilet paper and a handful of sawdust into the bucket, close the lid, and return to the kitchen to wash up. In a few days, the contents of the bucket will be added to an enclosed compost pile, separate from the one we use in our garden, and over time, my own human poop will turn into rich, dark compost that we will use on our orchard and shrubs.
My family’s bucket toilet is a very basic example of a composting toi-let, a waterless system that takes
advantage of the natural process of decomposition to turn human waste into a soil amendment. In an off-grid situation, composting toi-lets are an ideal solution for waste management because they do not require water or electricity. But increasingly, even urban or rural dwellers concerned with the envi-ronmental impact of our modern sewer system are turning to com-posting toilets as an alternative to traditional flush toilets.
What is a composting toilet?Composting toilets run the gamut from simple DIY systems like the bucket approach described above,
Composting Toilets on the HomesteadBy: Teri Page
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to commercial systems that con-form to building codes. For the past 14 years, my family has used a variety of composting toilets, including a simple bucket, a hand-dug pit latrine, a homemade Clivus multrum-style unit, and a commer-cial Sun-Mar composting toilet. The process of using each of these com-posting toilets is relatively simple and consistent – do your business, and add a “bulking agent” such as peat moss or sawdust to provide air space for aerobic decomposi-tion, and to control odors and insects. What happens next varies from system to system.
For instance, when our bucket fills, we manually transfer the contents to a larger pile, where it com-posts in isolation. Microorganisms, including heat-loving bacteria break down the human excrement in a relatively rapid aerobic process, akin to a garden compost pile. In some commercial systems, a fan provides a flow of oxygen and removes odors and excess mois-ture, and the waste decomposes in the unit, to be removed when it has been composted. Potential pathogens present in the waste are either killed by the high tempera-tures of decomposition, or die-off after composting for long periods of time. The end result is topsoil-like material that is appropriate for use on fruit trees or shrubs, or even in the garden.
Benefits of Using a Composting ToiletFor the modern homesteader, com-posting toilets offer many benefits. My family is currently camping on raw land while we build our home. At this stage, we do not have the option of a flush toilet, and our composting toilet has been a sim-ple and effective way to manage human waste. But even for home-steaders with access to city or well water, a waterless composting toi-let system represents a significant decrease in water consumption, and minimizes the environmental impacts of adding human excre-ment to our potable water system. Diverting solid waste also facili-tates creating a greywater system for your homestead. Humanure, when fully decomposed, is a safe and rich source of fertilizer for your food forest. And finally, composting toilets provide you with a practi-cally fail-proof way to go to the bathroom, even in situations such as water-shortages or plumbing problems.
What are some of the challenges?
There are some inherent challeng-es with a composting toilet sys-tem, namely odor, bug problems, and effort (and perhaps cost, if you’re considering purchasing a code-approved commercial unit). Sawdust and peat moss are incred-
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ibly effective at controlling odor, but when a system gets more use than it is designed for, such as when you’re hosting house guests, compositing toilets can develop an odor. In ourlast home, we had a horrible infestation of what I referred to as “poo moths.” We simply could not rid our toilet of these pests without resorting to an insecticide. And while many commer-cial systems are created to minimize human contact with waste, there may be effort required to remove the com-posted humanure from your system.
It is also important to consider local building codes, and to employ com-mon sense when designing a com-posting toilet system. A pit latrine, for instance, should only be used in areas where groundwater contamination is not a concern. Some rural areas do not have building codes governing small parcels, allowing you to install your system of choice. But most cities require code-approved commercially made composting toilets.
The Bottom LineHomesteaders wanting to increase self-sufficiency, lighten their load on the earth, create closed loop systems on their land, and lower costs should seriously consider a composting toi-let system. It’s empowering to watch something that most people consider an unpleasant waste product become something of value, simply through the natural process of decomposi-tion. And our apple orchard certainly thrived with the addition of rich huma-nure compost.
CommerCiaL ComposTing ToiLeTs
Sun-Mar Corporation is one of the major manufacturers of com-posting toilet systems in North America.The company is only one certified through the National Sanitation Foundation for residential and cottage use.Like all composting toilet systems, they require no plumbing and are guaranteed to be odor free.Commercial systems, like Sun-Mar’s, are inexpensive when compared to systems requiring plumbing and septic tanks. And, unlike home-built systems, they also require much less “maturation” time for the humanure before it can be safely disposed of.Other companies include Enviro-let, Clivismultrum, Nature-Loo and Eco-Toilets, among others.Systems are sometimes standalone – like Sun-Mar’s Excel – some feature foam-flush systems – like some Clivismultrum systems – and others – like Sun-Mar’s Cen-trex 1000 – feature flush systems where the humanure material is collected on a different level than the toilet itself.Whether you decide to build your own system or use a commercial system similar to those above, be sure you take into account your own comfort, commitment and needs, and of course, research, re-search, research.
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