February on the Homestead

The Kale feels confused! 

With a bit of warm weather, it had started growing new leaves again.  

Now - another cold snap!

But Kale assures me, it can take it!

Why Homesteading?

I almost can't believe that I've lived on this piece of land for nearly 17 years.  When I first found it, we were desperate to find a place to buy.  We grabbed this place, because it was on a half acre lot, and we could afford it.  I had visions of growing my own food, keeping chickens and bees.

I was used to having fertile land to work with.  We always had gardens when I was growing up.  Even as a renter, I could grow food.  But this place!  The soil was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was like trying to grow food in a dessert.  And I'm not just joking.

It's the Maritime Pacific Northwest. The land of rain.  But the water would only penetrate about an inch into the soil.  Further down...dry, dry sand.  Hydrophobic sand.

I didn't find out how to deal with it until I got chickens.  After that, a soil miracle occurred.

I thought, my number one reason for Homesteading was to grow food, it turns out that my primary reason for homesteading has become, to heal the land I live on.  And it, in turn, is providing for many of my food needs.

A secondary reason, but every bit as important to me, has grown out of my desire to be a more conscious consumer.  My evolution of awareness has gone from, organics, to fair trade, to ethically sourced, to food miles, to the curse of plastic packaging.  I hit the wall with zero waste.

I realized immediately, that I couldn't fool myself with delusions of zero waste.  Because I couldn't see how I could live a zero waste life unless I was living a life in nature, like the birds, fish, animals, insects, etc. Nature doesn't generate waste.  Humans get to take all the credit for that practice...aren't we cleaver?

My plan then, has to do with meeting as many of my needs on this little piece of land as I possibly can, thus reducing my reliance on anything that may come packaged in plastic.  It's my goal to run this as an experiment, and see what can be grown-right here.  I want to find out, what can be substituted and what I can do without, if I can't find a way to provide it plastic free.

I have been starting tentatively with some easy things, and hope to work my way up to bigger things that have so far, been harder to overcome.

I have this land to work with, and I am beginning to grasp some concepts which may help me reach my goals.

First Experiment

Mike's Birthday was last month.  Once a year I make him a cake.  I've been making cakes from scratch for the last 15 or 20 years.  But even though I am not generating plastic trash from a box mix, I have been buying ingredients that may come packaged in plastic.  I say may come, because even though I buy many ingredients from the bulk bins, I don't always see how they came to the store in their original packaging.  One thing I do know is that, even if the bulk sugar isn't coming packaged in plastic, the powdered sugar I use to make butter cream frosting, most certainly is.  A very thick plastic package with a zip style closure.  I was determined to make that one change if nothing else, and it occurred to me that making powdered sugar wasn't rocket science.  Confectioner's sugar has been around a long time.  It must be something anyone can make.  

And so it is.  Simply put, regular sugar pulverized in a blender is powdered sugar.  However, it's much sweeter because factory powdered sugar is mixed with corn starch to keep it from sticking.  So in future I will use less in the butter cream frosting.

I had a little powdered sugar left over, and it has been sitting on the shelf in a bowl with a plate over it for 3 weeks.  I thought it might have gathered moisture and clumped, but it is still the same as when I first made it.

Second Experiment

I have the option of buying bread packaged in a brown paper sack, which I did for a couple of years.  But Even though it is a local organic sourdough bread, it has just never really agreed with me.  Another local organic bread which comes packaged in plastic does actually agree with me.  But because of the plastic packaging, I was avoiding it.

I don't know how it happened.  Maybe I just got too busy to pay attention, or maybe it was an issue of convenience, but somehow, I started buying the brand of bread that comes packaged in plastic.  Three or four months went by before I noticed I was building up a huge supply of plastic bread bags.  Yikes!  Somehow, I had closed my eyes to this for the sake of convenience.  I immediately stopped buying bread.  The bread in the paper packing is not sold in my neighborhood, so I have to drive across town to get it-which is probably how this all got started in the first place.  The more food I grow, the less often I need to make that trip across town to buy groceries at the co op or the farmer's market.  Now what do I do?

I've tried making sourdough before, and even though I had good luck with it, it didn't agree with me.  I was determined to try a different sourdough method.  The process on the new recipe was so involved, that I realized what my issue had been.  The recipe I was originally using was too quick.  The starter was too quick, and the bread recipes I was using were too quick.  If that wasn't enough, I was leaving steps out to make it even quicker.

I remember seeing Bill Mollison talking about being a baker when he was younger.  He talked about how the leavening times were regulated by law for bakers.  In other words, in order to be digestible, bread needs to go through a longer process before baking.

In hearing people talk about old world bread making, they always talk about a very long process.  I've heard of bread from that era taking anywhere from two days to two weeks to make.

I am in the process of making the sourdough starter right now.  It is very cold in my house, and so it has been taking longer to get to the point where it's ready to make bread, but I can see that it is very much alive, and I think the starter is almost complete.

Today's Experiment

Today I made my monthly trip to go grocery shopping.  I have been really wanting ice cream even though it's been really cold out.  Finally, I decided on this trip I would buy ice cream.  Then I remembered the packing.  There is a thick plastic tamper proof rim around the lid of the carton, and that deterred me.  I did my two pints of cream though, so when I got home, I was making a little whipped cream to go on my coffee, and I decided to experiment to see if I could make ice cream just by putting whipped cream in the freezer and giving it a stir now and again.

The answer is yes.  Whipped cream, with some left over homemade powdered sugar, and some powdered vanilla bean, makes lovely homemade ice cream. Mine was a very small batch to keep in manageable.  I put it in the freezer and gave it a stir with a spoon every 20 minutes until I couldn't stir it anymore.  Deluxe!

I won't apologize for buying cream in a paper carton that most likely is lined with plastic.  It was a plain carton, and didn't have a plastic pour spout, which is at least something.  I hope to one day find a local source for cream.  It's my go to dairy product.  I can live without milk, but I love cream, and creamy yogurt, and butter, and just about anything you can make with cream.

That is my goal.  To find local raw organic grass-fed cream in sustainable packing.  I know its time is coming!