Traditional Foods (NT) Mamas-June Thread - Page 6

[toraji]

aah, you all are making me drool with the food descriptions!

goatlady, right now we have 3 layers (barred rock and black australorp) but only one is laying currently. One of the others is a mama right now (10 chicks!) and the other I think is just a bum hen. Then we have the 10 chicks mentioned earlier, plus 4 extra chicks that we hatched ourselves from the same batch of eggs (some are mixed black australorp and barred rock, some are pure barred rock), 5 cornish crosses (meat birds), 2 female fawn runner ducks, and 2 toulouse geese (a breeding pair). We have a bunch of land fenced off for all the fowl so that they have constant access to pasture. We really notice a difference in the eggs!

We are giving them organic chicken feed, so there is some soy in there. My main deal is to give them as much pasture as possible so that they don't eat as much feed. We don't like being reliant on commercial feed, organic or not. That is why we have the geese, we are hoping to have them for meat next year and rely less on the chickens because geese can grow just fine solely on pasture.

I'll get back to this thread with the sourdough recipe...DH is the bread baker in the family so I'll bug him for that.

[goatlady]

Originally Posted by toraji

I'll get back to this thread with the sourdough recipe...DH is the bread baker in the family so I'll bug him for that.

I know. I printed off the working stiff bread recipe from HA a while ago!!

Thanks for the info on chickens and such. I can't wait to be a food growing mama!

[toraji]

goatlady, are you talking about MG? I can't remember if I posted the recipe to HA before it blew up! What's your username there? I love MG, it's my favorite little hidey hole.

That's the recipe that we used for the pizza! We just do our basic bread dough except instead of forming a loaf, we just roll it out, put it on a pizza pan, and top with tomato sauce and every veggie we can get a hold of that sounds good. Usually it's onion, broccoli, eggplant, and peppers. We don't do any cheese in the oven since we are raw dairy fanatics, though one time we had some raw goat cheese that we put on our individual slices. Tasty!

xenabyte posted some really good looking recipes on her "Good Eats with wheat" thread that you may want to check out!

Food growing is so fulfilling. I totally love being here on this land. The day that we did the chicken we made soup, and it was an amazing feeling knowing that everything in the soup pot except for the carrots, salt and pepper was home-grown.

[TigerTail]

lol, carrots are a bitch, aren't they? i'd have better luck extracting salt from my soil. (i'm trying again, wish me luck! friggin' clay!)

suse

[TigerTail]

the nice thing about farm fresh aracauna eggs: i could serve my 'sam i am' green eggs & ham for breakfast, lol. (the blue ones are gorgeous, too. when i get chickens again i will definately want some aracaunas.)

suse

[xenomama]

Can anyone point me to some good sites that deal with raising chickens on a homestead level. I mean, how do I find out if it's even legal to have them? How much space do they need, etc? You guys got me interested now!

[moss]

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathpro...chickens.shtml

i like looking around this site. they do urban chickens! we're not even allowed to have a cat where i live, so i think poultry's probably out for us right now.

[mountain mom]

How about goats? Does anyone raise goats, have goats and/or milk their goats? Do you know a good link to some good information on milking goats, raising goats and the types of goats that there are.

Thanks!

[toraji]

Here's a good link about raising goats:
http://fiascofarm.com/goats/

My friend is raising nubians and pygmys, and the lady that I get my goat milk from raises oberhaslis. They are gorgeous (the oberhaslis), mild mannered, and look like little deer in their pasture.

[Persephone]

Hi all! I'm so glad you all are here, I've been learning so much from you! I have another question now:

If you could only pick one thing, dietary wise, to change, what would it be?

I'm slowly changing our diet around for the better, and I just don't know where to go from here. I have begun to make our own bread, and we eat more (soaked) beans, but that's all right now. What should my next step be?

[xenabyte]

Persephone,

How about some nice sprouts? Or some yogurt, kefir or lacto fermented foods?

[OceanMomma]

The one thing I would pick is to avoid all hydrogenated fats. You could also cut out homogonised milk & substitute it for whole milk. Or whole raw milk if you can get it.

In terms of making stuff, one easy thing to do is to lacto-ferment oatmeal for breakfast. You can make kefir or yoghurt & use some of that. Or let it overdo to get some whey. Then all you do is soak your oatmeal in a tbsp or so of either yoghurt or whey overnight. I put it out to soak every night when I am doing the dinner dishes. In the morning, I swoosh in the blender & cook with some grated nutmeg. When it is done, I stir in some butter & pour on top some maple syrup.

[morsan]

Hi again.

I'd like to keep up with this thread more regularly. I only go online on weekends (I use my "landlords"'s computer while they're away selling their crafts), bummer. So, dh and I are getting excited about making our own beer, any good recipes or tips? A frined of mine asked if I had a honey mead recipe, anyone? I remember a while back some of you were discussing beer and mead brewing.

Yes, I found some pasture-raised beef in Ashland and I should be able to get bones from them as well. In the meantime I bought some free-range chicken and made delicious stock. We served the meat with curry sauce from NT--it tasted great, along with fried rice (from NT as well). Everyone loved it.
And I finally got around to making whey, and grape cooler (love it). It's been so hot here (yesterday it was 111) but the cultures did alright. I get so carried away in the kitchen once I start making one of those wonderful recipes in NT and so yesterday I came down with a cold. I'm exhausted. I guess I should be taking it easier in this hot weather.

[TigerTail]

hey, morsan! good to see ya!

i've got 'making wild wines & meads', vargas/gulling, & 'more homebrew favorites', lutzen/stevens, right now, & am not really impressed with the first much- VERY additive promoting, by the book etc. we'll see how my plum wine turns out with my more lackadaisical methods, lol. (i still haven't bottled my mead! i really must get to it, but dh is at end of quarter & it is definately a two-person job.) i like the beer book- also very chemical-precise measurement oriented, but it is more of a guide & can give great advice & ideas. i'm thinking up my next batch, i'm about halfway thru the barney (wild blueberry purple) ale. i thought i'd never drink it all! even one every few days goes thru it pretty steadily!

suse

[Gale Force]

We've got chickens for eggs and are working on building an area for meat chickens or ducks. So far, we've fenced an area in (the area will also be planted with fruit trees this winter) and next we will build a little structure for them. It is designed so that there are two distinct sections of area for them to roam. The house will have a door on each end so that we can let them out on either side of the pasture area. We'll be able to plant one area for them as they are using the other. I hope that makes sense. We considered allowing them to free range but we are on a hill and they tear up the area pretty badly with their scratching. We'd end up with an erosion problem. The egg chickens have a house and yard but we let them free range most of the day if we are here.

We've talked about milk goats as well, but don't feel like we can be tied down that much at this point. When the children are older and when we've got a neighbor kid or two who could milk, we may consider it. We've got the space here -- about 5 acres, though a lot of it is slope.

[toraji]

Originally Posted by Persephone

Hi all! I'm so glad you all are here, I've been learning so much from you! I have another question now:

If you could only pick one thing, dietary wise, to change, what would it be?

I'm slowly changing our diet around for the better, and I just don't know where to go from here. I have begun to make our own bread, and we eat more (soaked) beans, but that's all right now. What should my next step be?

My personal next step would be to make sure that any animal products that I consume are of the highest quality, only grassfed, organic, and raw (dairy). Also, kicking out any packaged/processed foods and using only good fats like olive, coconut etc.

Hi Morsan!

[xenomama]

Originally Posted by Persephone

Hi all! I'm so glad you all are here, I've been learning so much from you! I have another question now:

If you could only pick one thing, dietary wise, to change, what would it be?

I'm slowly changing our diet around for the better, and I just don't know where to go from here. I have begun to make our own bread, and we eat more (soaked) beans, but that's all right now. What should my next step be?

Well, on a good day, this is what we're doing:

- No frozen, canned, or packaged food
- Bread made from freshly ground grain
- Eliminated "icky" fats and switched to lard & coconut oil
- Use no processed sugar, mostly Rapadura, honey, or stevia instead
- About 2 cups of Kombucha daily
- Free range, fresh, local, organic everything
- All dairy is from real milk

We need to work on:
- Our cravings (and cavings) for sugar/ white stuff (This would be our "one thing")
- Soda & caffeine consumption
- More fermented goodies
- Actually reading NT, etc :LOL

[Persephone]

Wow, are any of you guys on a budget? I went to the health food store today, and was so excited to see raw milk cheese there, and organic chicken, but it's SO expensive! I know this is nothing new, but seriously, I don't think we can afford it! (And this is coming from the woman with the hardcore view of "I'm willing to pay more for quality" *blush*)

[TigerTail]

my good local eggs are a buck and a half a dozen, and my buffalo sirloin steaks are 7 bucks a lb (as opposed to 14.99 for the nasty ones in publix.) local, local, local! :P

(i'm getting a gorgeous buffalo chuck roast today to cook tonight; ideas y'all? never done one before. the only 'root' veggies i have on hand is a lone kohlrabi in the garden.)

suse

suse

[yitlan]

Budget: I buy in bulk when organic meat is on sale and freeze. I also just bought a bunch of organic berries to make the syrup from. I also know someone getting a grass fed cow. I'm going in for 1/8th of it and sharing it with a friend.
We don't eat meat every day. Grains are not very expensive. Butter can be frozen, as can cheese. So I sometimes buy in bulk and freeze.
I've never had excess goat's milk, but hear it freezes much better than cow's.
I know most of this relies on a freezer! But even before I got mine (a few months back), I would just stuff my little freezer. There's much more room when it's not holding ice cream and convenience foods!