Every year, I celebrate a cleansing holiday:  Sophie’s Choice day.  And while I would love to say it comes from recognition of the powerful literary and film portrayal of a horrible period in world history, it does not.  If you know the movie, you know Sophie has to make a choice.  I wont tell the rest of the tale, no spoiler alert needed.

So why is it a holiday?  In the cities and ‘burbs, usually there is one day a year designated as “throw anything away” day, where homeowners go into their basements, attics, and garages and drag out half working exercise equipment, old sofas, plant stand, broken lights, and boxes of unknown trash – er – treasure…..because typically once these things hit the curbs, a steady parade of pickers and pick up trucks circles the neighborhoods in search of items to re sell at garage sales or perhaps use in their own homes.

We don’t have trash pick up at Two Mile — the landfill is just down the road — so the big items have piled up next to the Andrew barn, along with the construction waste and the burn barrel.  As I’ve cleared brush, I’ve also found treasures like a for sale sign from at least 2 sales ago, a long metal cable (glad I didn’t hit it with the mower) and scraps of wire fencing.

Off to the landfill I went early one morning before heading into town.

And what does this have to do with Sophie’s Choice.  During clean up day, my inspiration was Sophie from the movie.  I would pick up two items, and make a choice, one could stay, the other went to the trash.  I’ve never managed to pare down to just 100 things, but after cleaning out, it gets tempting to try.

These goslings were hatched May Day.  Here’s shot of a pair of from last year’s hatch and another photo of a full grown White Chinese Goose.  These are great weeders for the garden, good “alarms” or watchdogs, they alert when someone visits or there is a threat.

I have a few remaining for sale, contact me if interested, local pick up only, I’m not set up to ship them. fritz.nordengren AT smallfarmlife.com.

From the deck tonight

Back in the day, if a boy and girl were  dating, he gave her his fraternity “pin”. They were “pinned”.

With Facebook, the dating ritual changed to be “Facebook Official”.

But Facebook is so last decade, the hot new trend in social media is Pinterest…..so as a howdy to all who have pinned images from Small Farm Life, thank you and I’m thrilled we’ve shared inspiration.  I guess we’re “pinned”.

http://pinterest.com/source/smallfarmlife.com/

I need to take care of a little business

UPDATE:  This year’s chickens, turkeys and ducks are SOLD OUT for the season.

This year’s turkeys will be a selection of Blue Slate, Black Spanish, Bourbon Reds, Narragansett, and Royal Palms. These will be processed at state inspected facility and available about November 20.

Air Chilled

The turkeys will be air chilled — not cooled in a water bath — these will be outstanding turkeys this year, unlike any store-bought Thanksgiving you have tasted.

Your reservation lets me know how many birds to plan for and who is interested. An order secures your delivery date and quantity. Final prices are based on dressed weight. I’ll try to guide nature and come as close to your desired weight as possible, but this is natural growing process, not factory controlled.

About our growing season

I’m not a commercial grower, I don’t have stock year around, but instead, raise a small number of birds each year and let their pasture and pens “rest” during the balance of the year. This helps keep diseases in check and gives their foraging pasture time to recover.

Chickens

The chickens are a Freedom Ranger chicken from French breeding stock, originally bred for France’s Label Rouge qualities. These chickens grow well, have nice white meat and dark meat to please all. A few each year top 7 pounds and a few finish closer to 3.5. If you have a preference, let me know

Raised free-range, in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed from all plant (non animal) sources

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: October – November 2011
Payment (Balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Chicken : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $3.00 per pound (Approximately 5 pounds each) (some smaller, some larger)

At the request of some customers, I am sizing a few more birds this year in the 3 – 3..5 pound range, it’s the same great chicken, just less of it.

Turkeys

These are heritage breed birds, not the hybridized, broad-breasted sold in the grocery store. Typically these are Royal Palm, Narragansett, and Bourbon Red breed. Hens run smaller, toms dress under 20 pounds.

Raised free-range, in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed from all plant (non animal) sources

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: November (Thanksgiving week) or December 20, 2011
Payment (Half due in June, balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Turkey : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $4.00 per pound (Approximately 9 – 20 pounds each)

Available:
November 20
December 20

Ducks — contact me

These are Pekin (white feathered) ducks, raised for meat. This duck cleans easily and presents well if serving whole. Necks removed unless requested otherwise

Raised free-range, typically spend most of day on two ponds during day and in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed.

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: November (Thanksgiving week) or December 20, 2011
Payment (Half due in June, balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Duck : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $4.00 per pound (Approximately 5 pounds each)

Available:

Please let me know about the poultry you would like to buy for this season.

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My neighbors are wonderful for many reasons, mostly for the ways we look out for each other and share the foods of our labor.  I’ve mentioned a few of them here, here and here.  A neighbor who has the right tool, like Brian and his skid steer, or a neighbor who is willing to help build a barn like Glenn and Norman, are some of the best of the best. For now, let’s talk about a neighbor and her cows….no, her “beefs” as she likes to say.

I met Shanen Ebersole early in 2005 when she stopped by to talk about the sagging fence line that marked the east end of Two Mile from the land she and her husband Beau rented for part of their cattle ranch.  It turned out to be the neighbor’s fence to the north and since then, we’ve shared ideas and brainstormed a few businesses and grants, and bounced Facebook status updates over the years.  She and Beau market their grass feed beef from “Ebersole Cattle Company” (Facebook page) and it’s about the only beef I buy or eat.  Naturally when it came time to think about the 2012 St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef, a quick ping on Shanen’s Facebook page resulted in her dropping a nice brisket off in my fridge.

Back in the day before wide-spread refrigeration, the butcher or the garde manger (chef de garde manger) was responsible for keeping and preserving food.  Charcuterie is the keeping and preserving of meats , often salted or preserved in brine and that is where corned beef gets its origin.  While not originally Irish, it’s become associated with St. Patrick’s day in the US.  I’ve heard that the traditional Irish St Patrick’s meal is bacon and cabbage and perhaps that corned beef was cheaper than bacon for early Irish immigrants.  Like many foods, there is a social, political, cultural and economic heritage to what we eat.

“Corning” meat

Before the 1900′s salting was done with salt and saltpeter, but with the discovery of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, the results are more predictable. “Corning” beef gets its name from the British term for treating meat with “corns” of salt. A traditional corned beef is soaked in a brine of spices, salt and a curing salt mix called “prague powder” or “insta cure #1″ which is a mix of 94% sodium chloride and 6 % sodium nitrite.  Dry sausages are preserved with a different salt mix using sodium nitrate.

The recipe I work from comes from John Kowalski of the Culinary Institute of America and he shared it here.  You may also want to buy his book The Art of Charcuterie.  Essentially, the recipe includes mixing a brine of salt, sugar, pickling spice, garlic and  insta cure #1.  Be sure to carefully measure all the ingredients in the correct ratio.  Using too much can burn the meat and give it a metallic flavor, and in high amounts, it can make you sick or be fatal.

The brine is first heated to a boil, then cooled before the meat is submerged in the brine.  I can remember my father making this a traditional way, with the beef submerged in a large crock in the basement.  I opt for a more modern approach, sealed in a freezer bag and kept in the refrigerator.

Pickling spices look  something like the dried leaves and twigs headed for the compost pile after being hit by the mower.  The smell and flavor make this dish.  Pickling spices are a mix of bay leaves, coves, cinnamon, cardamom (cardamon), coriander, ginger mustard seeds and or peppercorns.  You can buy it off the shelf or make your own.

After it’s all put together, let the meat sit in the brine.  Depending on your recipe and tradition, let this soak for as little as 3 days, others as long as 2 -3 weeks or more. (A long chemistry discussion here about nitrate to nitrite conversion as a result of bacteria as well as the role of iron in the meat can be saved for another day.)  Below is the brisket before it went into the brine.  A full brisket has two sections, the point half and the flat half.  If you want to inspire your inner butcher,  see the virtual brisket here.

Small Farm Life

While the first sign of spring for much of the Midwest is the return of Robins, for gardeners, it’s the arrival of seed catalogs in the mail.  I’ve blogged about this before.  This year’s Two Mile Ranch garden not only expands, but takes on a few new crops.

Along side the peppers, potatoes, snap peas, cucumbers and melons will be trial sections of a few varieties of dried beans, and some quinoa and wheat.  This first year I’m looking for very small quantities to get a feel for the growing and cultivation, and later, harvest, storage, and flavor in cooking.  Next year will include more test plots and also plots of this year’s successes on a scale to provide a self-sustaining pantry.

The costs of growing small quantities of shelf staples like these may seem high compared to buying a bulk bag at the local grocery or big box store.  In fact, the economics of gardening in general are the subject of both humorous and serious debate, for example the story on NPR from 2006 about William Alexander’s The $64 Tomato

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

Beyond my personal garden, there is a larger curiosity to my planting this year. Let me tell you why.

When I leave the farm and do my big-city job at the university –  this is where I  put on my “good boots” and make sure the truck is washed — there is a real need for these kinds of gardens.

In my public health, food policy, and education work, we look at the food system.  The food system is everything from the initial beginnings (seeds or new animals) through the growing, harvesting, processing, storage, distribution and waste management connected with food and eating.  This includes energy, carbon use, soil and water conservation.

What we used to think of only as “hunger” has a broader term called “food insecurity” and it essentially includes not only people who can not eat today, but who are unsure if they will have a reliable source of food in the future.  The policy folks at the USDA report during 2010 about 14 percent of us were food insecure during some part of the year.

Some of that food insecurity is the result of living in “food desert” another fancy, policy-wonkish phase.  But a food desert is an area with limited or difficult access to a large supermarket or grocery store.  You can read more about one official definition here.

So if you can’t get to a supermarket, and you don’t have a household supply of food, one solution is grow your own.  And what the Two Mile Ranch garden will help me share with you is the time, space, and materials necessary to grow some shelf stable basics.

Gene Logsdson, in his book Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmersshares  specific ideas, planting, yield, and other information to look at small-scale grain and bean growing.  In one example, he highlights that 1/4 acre can produce 9 bushels of mixed grains.

And while a 1/4 acre (100 foot by 100) foot garden may be out of the question, for some families, community gardens and other innovative space use in both urban and rural areas open the door for gardens that may help fill in the gaps of a personal food system.

Sometimes each summer or fall the USDA Aerial photo is taken and the folks at the GIS center at Iowa State University publish them, along with digitizing aerials from years gone by.

This year’s photo of Two Mile Ranch clearly shows what’s hard to see at ground level, the area of new habitats that was cleared, and replanted in a mix of native grasses and forbs.

Next year’s photo will include the Writer’s Loft barn, and if you look just north of the bend in the driveway, you can see the general area where it stands now

It’s been a while since I updated the photos of the inside of the dogtrot cabin at Two Mile. The original post construction post is here.

Today is a bluebird blue sky and low wind day, our temps are in the 40′s and the doors are open — perhaps the last time until our January thaw.  So with smart phone camera in hand, I tried to capture the progress on the interiors here.

Background:

The two cabins are bisected by a 16 x 44 foot deck.  The deck runs east – west and the two cabins orient north – south.  Both cabins entry doors face the center under a tin roof which covers the deck/cabin intersection.

The big cabin

The big cabin is 14 x 24 and includes 9 windows and the glass pane entry door.  It includes living, dining cooking, storage and a guest sleeping area.

The original cooking space was a small two burner electric cook top inspired by summer homes I saw in Norway in 2003,  These small cottages use wood for heat, small hotplates for cooking, and often did dishes outdoors.

Other cooking was often done outside on a small grill with a griddle surface.  Over time, as I began cooking more and cooking for more guests, my thoughts returned to a gas range and some higher BTU burners.  The result was a Premier Pro Series that included an oven and broiler as well as some storage for cooking sheets.

The griddle over the center burners has become a standard fixture.

The prep table I crafted over ayear ago from some large planking I recoved from the grain bin in the Andrew barn, the old, leaning barn here build in the late 30′s or early 40′s by Art Andrew.  A pair of contemporary cast iron legs support it at each end.

Above it is a bakers center and the Two Mile collection of hand-me-down pots and pans.  I added a power strip above the table from the outlet below.  I rarely use appliances at the same time, but its easy to plug a few in and use them, they tuck them back away.

The baskets and organizers are hand made by my friends Eli and Carolyn Troyer and their family.  Their sons Ephram and Dan also helped with the roof framing on the barn and Writer’s Loft.

The center of the cooking area is a kitchen island and at the end is an IKEA Norden table (the name is coincidence).  The gateleg table folds to a narrow foot print (less than a foot) and opens to seat 4 – 6 people.  The slide out drawers hide office supplies and power cords, adapters and chargers for devices.

Above the island, a retractible ladder leads to the guest loft overhead.

Above is two singe beds and artwork by my twins from their elementary days.

The Small Cabin

Across the deck is the little cabin, measuring 14 x 18, it also has a sleeping loft over the bath and storage.

A work area and deck are used for work, video editing, fly tying, plant starting in spring, and occasional laundry and clothes folding.

There are bookshelves, a clothes wardrobe,  a deep freeze (for now until it moves to the barn) and some general storage.

The sleeping loft in the little cabin is accessed by a permanent, site built ladder.