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Food Security in Pictures: Gallery #1

Posted on August 28, 2014 by David

There are a lot of crazy and misguided ideas about food security floating around, so I thought I would post pictures here of what true food security is:

A larder full of dried (dehydrated) foods is a mighty safe way to preserve the bounty of the harvest:

A trailer full of canned tomatoes headed for the shelves in our basement:

Corn growing in your front yard and headed for the freezer!

A place to process chickens and good friends to lend a hand!

What does your food security look like? If it’s loads of .22 ammo and piles of freeze dried food, think again. If it’s the empty statement that “I’ll let God take care of that kind of a disaster,” check your Bible. God has given us an indescribable gift in the land; the very surface that we trod on each day is just waiting for a gentle hand to cultivate and husband it into a prosperous bounty of harvestable, storable, delicious, healthful food to nourish our bodies, our families, and our communities. Think twice before we demand that God supply us with food when the grocery store runs out when He has already given us a means to do that ourselves! Does your city have country roads?

Posted in Food Security | Tagged drying, food security, preserving | 2 Comments

Yummy Sourdough Pizza

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Leah

Guest post by Leah (Hammond) Warrak. Leah helped work on the farm before marrying Tina’s brother, Michael, four and a half years ago. Pizza has always been a specialty of hers.

Who doesn’t love pizza? There are endless options these days that a quick google search will yield for gluten free and grain free options. Cauliflower, zucchini, spaghetti squash, cheese, etc. all provide a base by which you can still enjoy that pizza without eating the unhealthy version that’s in every freezer section of the grocery store. Sometimes, though, you want pizza you can pick up with your hand instead of eating with a fork. Sometimes you just need the chewiness and flavor that only a good bread dough can provide. Enter My Dad & Me Family Farm’s Iron Skillet Bread Dough.

This delicious and nutritious sourdough in the freezer affords an amazing crust and a super quick meal. A few easy steps will give your family an easy Friday night pizza dinner without the toxic overload or the planning ahead!

Thaw your Iron Skillet Bread Dough for an hour or so. Then, dust your pizza pan with cornmeal, like the non-GMO cornmeal that you can pick up from My Dad & Me Family Farm. Take the thawed dough out of the bag and stretch onto your pan. I just used my hands, but you could also use a rolling pin. Next, bake your crust in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until it bubbles nicely. Now it’s ready for all your yummy toppings!

Our favorite sauce can be whipped up as fast as you can chop and saute your onion, especially if you have a jar of tomatoes ready that you canned from your summer garden. If not, fresh tomatoes from the farm will work well, too, just be sure to drop them in a pot of boiling water for a couple of minutes first so you can slip the skins off, then they are ready to go!

Simply dice your onion and cook in a cast iron skillet with a generous drizzle of olive oil, a large handful of fresh oregano, several garlic cloves, and a sprinkle of freshly ground pepper. When the onion is tender, put it in a blender along with your tomatoes and a dash of salt and blend until smooth enough for your liking. Now spread onto your pizza.

Cook your toppings. We used ground pork and ground beef this time, and a mixture of mozarella and italian parmona cheeses, all available at My Dad & Me Family Farm. The mozarella melts beautifully and the italian parmona adds the extra flavor needed to turn it up a notch. Then grind a little more black pepper on top and broil your pizza for a couple of minutes (watch closely!) and enjoy!

Now you have a quick and easy whole food pizza that you can enjoy guilt free. Eating healthy has never tasted better!

Sourdough Pizza (makes 2 pizzas)

2 lbs Iron Skillet Bread Dough

2 lbs Ground Pork or Beef or Sausage

1 pkg Mozzarella Cheese

1 pkg Italian Parmona Cheese

Pizza Sauce:

1 jar Canned Tomatoes (I drained off part of the liquid)

or 3 cups fresh tomatoes with skins removed

1 Onion, diced

4-6 Garlic cloves

1/4 cup Olive Oil

6-8 sprigs Fresh Oregano

Freshly ground Black Pepper

Salt to taste

Saute onion, garlic, oregano and black pepper in olive oil on low heat until onion is cooked through. Blend in blender with tomatoes and salt.

Bake your crust in a 400 degree oven for 10 mins. Spread with sauce, then meat, then cheeses. Crack black pepper on top and broil for a couple of minutes. Enjoy!

Posted in Main Dishes, Recipes | Tagged beef, cheese, iron skillet bread, pizza, pork, tomatoes | 2 Comments

Pickin’ Pears the Easy Way!

Posted on August 14, 2014 by David

We’re fortunate to have good neighbors. The folks just across the street and down one house have been exceptional ones. Tina and I spent our first married year in a small upstairs apartment in a remodeled barn on their property. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there until we could remodel the farmhouse for our now growing family. The Williams also have 4 Kefir Pear trees on their property. They use some of the pears themselves, but these old Kefir Pear trees just get a little occasional pruning and they manage to rain pears every year!

They called us a few days ago and offered the pears to us again this year. My dad, my son, and I drove over with some five gallon buckets and the front end loader of our tractor and went to picking. Twenty-five gallons of pears later; now on to juicing, drying, and making pear sauce!

Posted in Garden Produce | Tagged pears, tractor | Leave a comment

Living Foods Dehydrator

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Tina

As promised, this post is about our wonderful dehydrator. We like our dehydrator. Actually, we really, really like our dehydrator. As a matter-of-fact, we love our dehydrator!

We purchased it several years ago and have dried all sorts of food from our gardens and orchards with it. One of Willie’s favorite things to do is walk through the food pantry naming all the different dried goods he can see…..sweet corn, peppers (sweet, cayenne, & chili), onions, garlic, green beans, okra, zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes (large & cherry), raisins, apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and over 15 different herbs!!! Yes, he’s a growing boy and really likes food.

There’s a lot of information on the internet and in books about drying foods, but it does take a bit of trial and error to figure out exactly what you can ‘get away with.’ There are many things to consider since each food has a different moisture content and each dehydrator is different, too. Some also have a skin on them, which can hold moisture in. Some you can slice thicker while others must be sliced thin lest they get moldy from a longer drying time.

But drying foods is really a lot of fun. Tomatoes, though very tasty fresh from the garden, suddenly turn into sweet candy! Onions turn into delicious, little chewy snacks. You can make your own pepper flakes, chili powder, garlic powder, and the list goes on and on…

We purchased our Living Foods Dehydrator from www.dryit.com. They have a lot of good information on their website and also sell an informative book about drying foods. They offer two different sizes to suit different needs or available space you may have. The Mini has 7.32 sq. ft. of drying space, while The Master has a capacity of up to 21.98 sq. ft.! You can dehydrate one trays worth, fill up the whole dehydrator, or anywhere in between.

The heating element is called a WAG. Here’s a snippet from their website about it:

WARM AIR GENERATOR

The WAG control is adjustable and provides an even, constant heat. It was created specifically for the low temperature requirements of food drying and can operate safely for 24 hours a day for day after day.

Safe
Thermostatically controlled
Designed for long-term constant use
Clean and quiet
Efficient and cheap to run
Dependable
Best possible heat source for producing top-quality dried foods
Only uses about as much power as a large light bulb

One trick we learned is to put really wet foods, like large tomato slices, on the trays and then in the sun or greenhouse during the day to begin the drying process. Then, you can simply transfer the trays to the dehydrator in the evening to ensure it continues drying quickly and doesn’t grow any mold.

Dehydrating food is most certainly a more sustainable method of food preservation than freezing or even canning. A little cost up front, to purchase a dehydrator, but then no reoccurring costs such as you’d have in freezer upkeep. Some dehydrating can also be done in the oven or strictly in the sun, but this is much more limited than a good, efficient dehydrator.

If you’ve never tried dehydrating food, harvest time is a great time of year to begin! After your first drying experiment, share your results in the comment section below. We’d love to hear about it!

Posted in Gardening, Preserving Garden Produce | Tagged dehydrator, drying food | 35 Comments

My First Bite

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Ellie

You may have heard that I’m growing up on a farm. As you can imagine, there’s always lots of good food around. Well, can you believe they finally let me take a bit of all that yummy food that I’ve been smelling for 6 months? That’s right, 6 months without food…well, I guess that’s not really a fair assessment. I’ve been drinking the best thing for a baby like me since minutes after I was born so, I’m not complaining at all. But it’s much nicer to actually eat food than to just smell it and intently watch my family eat it.

So, what did I get to eat, you ask? Rabbit Liver and Egg Yolk! The very best foods for babies to begin with.

My papa made a cherry spoon when my big brother was just starting to eat food…that was a looong time ago. It’s a nice little spoon just my size!

Yummy! I really love eating warm egg yolk with a little sea salt.

Papa also made a beautiful egg cup that Mama uses sometimes.

Yum…..it’s so delicious I have two egg yolks per day!

Mama…why did you have to stick that picture of me in here?

Posted in Kids on the Farm | Tagged egg, liver | 2 Comments

Sugar Snap Peas

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Willie

What is long, thin, green, crunchy, delicious, and one of the first garden crops to harvest after the spring planting? You guessed it, Sugar Snap Peas!

I really like these tasty little critters that grow early in spring when it’s usually quite too cold for summer crops to grow and produce. They have a pretty white pea flower and a wonderful tasting pod.

I love to eat the whole pod straight from the garden…

…or for fun, I like to pop open the pods…

…and eat the sweet-tasting little peas one-at-a-time.

This year, we had planted the peas down the middle of the asparagus bed and they yielded a very good crop that I got to help pick!

Posted in Garden Produce | Tagged sugar snap peas | 4 Comments

Preserving Luscious Sweet Corn

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Tina

This year, we tried the sweet corn variety “Luscious” and boy, is it good!

With all the wonderful rain the Lord sent earlier this year, our sweet corn patch really took off and produced wonderfully. We began with Certified Organic Luscious Hybrid Sweet Corn and only added chicken litter (no sprays whatsoever!).

The ears are mostly full and good sized with very few corn worms.

The patch produced many more ears of corn that we could possibly eat fresh and sell so we had to find good ways to put up some corn for later in the year.

Our usual method of preserving our sweet corn includes cutting it off the cob, cooking it, and then freezing the corn. This year, we’ve tried a couple other methods and have really enjoyed their simplicity and the way they’ve turned out.

To freeze the corn, we first husked it…

…then, we washed the rest of the corn silk off…

…next, we put it into boiling water in a large pot on our propane turkey burner, brought it to a rolling boil, and boiled it for 3 minutes…

…after 3 minutes, we removed the corn (a strainer basket works great) and rinsed it with cold water to chill it…

…the next step is to cut off the corn from the cob…

…of course, each cob must be tested to make sure it meets the quality standard…

…then, the corn is weighed into a freezer bag…

…and into the freezer it goes!

The other preservation method we tried this year was drying the corn. We did one batch in our extra large dehydrator (more about our dehydrator in a future post) and another batch in the oven with both batches turning out well. Drying the corn to preserve it is much more sustainable since it can be dried by the sun and doesn’t need to be frozen.

It will be easy to rehydrate the corn to eat later, but it also tastes good dry and crunchy just like that!

Posted in Gardening, Preserving Garden Produce | Tagged corn-on-the-cob, sweet corn | 11 Comments

My Four Hundred Dollar Crosscut Saw… Or Questions About Sustainability.

Posted on July 12, 2014 by David

No, I’m not a collector, but I did spend $407.44 on a crosscut saw that was given to me (for free). Let me explain, because I’ve got a really nice Husqvarna chainsaw from my woodturning days so what in the world do I need a crosscut saw for?

As we contemplate what sustainability really means on our farm, I’ve been exploring the world of antique hand tools which has been a hobby of mine for years anyway. I’ve got hand planes and hand drills, braces and bits that I have used to build a little furniture for my wife and now, I’m gradually expanding into a few tools that I use around the farm.

Here’s a few of the tools I’ve collected over the years, in a tool chest I built to house them.

I’ve been working on a cherry tree carving spreaders (did you see that post?) and I’ve used a little hand saw for cutting up the limbs. Here’s a picture of the tree.

It died last winter and needed to come down, so I’ve been knocking two birds out with one stone as they say, converting a dead tree into useful spreaders. But as I approached the larger trunk of the tree I had two options:

This is conflicting to me, philosophically. The chainsaw was expensive, but it’s been paid for years ago and will last many years to come with a little care. And the chainsaw is fast, extremely fast. I could have cut up that cherry tree in a half hour. The chainsaw is versatile too; it can cut the smallest of limbs as well as the biggest of stumps. And I’ve been using a chainsaw for fifteen years, so I know how to use one, I know how to sharpen one, etc. But it runs on petroleum which quite simply isn’t sustainable. I can’t produce gasoline and mix oil myself and the world manages to stay in a state of warfare over it so, I thought it would be nice to use a crosscut saw.

That hand saw? An older gentleman I used to work for gave it too me; it was his father’s so, it’s over 100 years old. The saw was covered in rust, the handle had a few cracks, and it was missing the helper handle. I spent 3-4 hours sanding rust and restoring the handle and brass nuts. Then came the expensive part. Have you seen helper handles and sharpening equipment for this kind of saw at the hardware store down the street? Well, the hardware stores are gone, so now it’s Lowes and Home Depot and I don’t think they ever carried hand saw maintenance tools. So I turned to the Internet and found the Crosscut Saw Company out of Seneca Falls, NY. Come to find out, there are still a few guys that use these saws clearing trails in the National Parks and the like out West. So by the time I bought the helper handles, the manual on sharpening, the saw files, the jigs for filing, the peening hammer and anvil, well, I’m over four hundred dollars into this thing.

Here’s a shot of some of the tools I needed to maintain this saw:

And my predicament with the cherry tree gets worse. I’ve restored the crosscut saw, but I haven’t learned how to sharpen it yet. It’s not rocket science, but it does take some learning to joint all the teeth to the same height, then to swage the rakers and actually sharpen the teeth. So that’s on the list, but I haven’t gotten to it. And I kind of know how to use it, but I have no real experience with it like I do my chainsaw.

If that wasn’t enough obstacles to cloud my decision, a one man crosscut saw works for stuff down to about 5″ in diameter, but it doesn’t cut small limbs very well. So now I needed an axe. I don’t remember what I paid for this axe, but add that to the list of how expensive it was to cut down a tree “sustainably.”

As I contemplated which tool to use to cut up that cherry tree, I figured, I’m making the spreaders by hand, but I don’t have time to stop and learn to sharpen this hand saw and then cut up the tree by hand. By then I’ll be sold out of spreaders and too far behind to catch up. So, decision made, I grabbed my big chainsaw. Thirty minutes and I’d be done, on to carving with my axe and knife. Then, the saw wouldn’t crank. It needs a carburetor rebuild, fuel line and filter, spark plug and a general clean-up…

Actually, it’s been giving me trouble for months because of the ~~stupid~~ ethanol gasoline our government is pumping my money into. Now I had to use the hand saw. But it’s dull. Really dull. So the sustainable but slower option became even slower, and all I could do was get enough cuts made with the hand saw so that I could cut up the big pieces with my band saw in the shop – which runs on an electric motor which isn’t really any more sustainable than petroleum, but my four hundred dollar hand saw was dull…

Do you see the predicament? I mean sure, who cares about the little bit of fuel a chainsaw eats up. My Ford farm truck has a 460 engine in it which drinks more gas than I care to think about, but going back to a mule-drawn wagon is beyond ridiculous in the suburbs of Atlanta. As a side note, the gentleman that gave me the crosscut saw also has a picture of the Marietta Square from the early 1900’s, and the Square is piled full of mule-drawn wagons loaded down with cotton! So, what do we do in a world gone mad for speed? I love my hand tools; I love learning how to sharpen, use and maintain them, but they are painfully slow in light of chainsaws, weed-eaters, tractors, trucks and the like. I don’t even mind that the hand tools are slow, or that they require sweat to operate, but eventually you run out of daylight to do enough work fast enough to pay the bills. And here’s the two sticking points:

It’s the taxes and burdensome laws that keep us from moving back completely to a sustainable way of life in this debt-laden country. Never-mind that no one wants to go back to doing everything by hand, but no one could afford to. We could spend our lives learning the skills we need to grow all our own food and build and make all the tools, furniture, etc. we need to live without a Chinese factory pumping out cheap goods for us. We could pull the plug on this unsustainable way of life with hard work and help from our Mighty God – but how can we do all of that and pay the exorbitant taxes the government demands (as Rush reminds us, at gunpoint!). If we have an economic crash tomorrow, like ’29, we’ll need to be self-sufficient overnight, but we won’t be able to for the absurd level of taxes we’re expected to pay. How’s that for a problem?

The other obstacle is the expense of sustainability. Crosscut saws are all but obsolete today. I mean, I like hand tools and even I was taken aback that I needed as much money to sharpen a hand saw as I did to buy a new, smaller chainsaw. I mean, how do you justify that? I can’t not own the chainsaw because I need to work on my farm at the speed that tractors, trucks and chainsaws allow me to work. But then to move towards sustainability I need to spend even more money on terribly slow hand tools?!

There’s no clear cut answer to this problem, of course. In light of high taxes and hard to find tools, do we give up on the idea of human-powered, local-community driven sustainability? I say, No! I might not change the world, but my goal is just to quietly do what I can on our farm with my Daddy and my little boy. I can’t get rid of my truck for that mule-drawn wagon today, but I saved my pennies and did manage to buy the tools to sharpen my crosscut saw. And maybe I’ll have some time to learn to sharpen it soon, and I’ll just use it when I can. Then, when that economic disaster hits, that saw may be mighty important for putting up a little firewood to keep my family warm this winter.

What are you doing about sustainability in your life?

Posted in Woodworking | Tagged saw, sustainability | 25 Comments

Rainbow Veggie Juice

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Tina

You may have heard the phrase, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” But what do you make when your garden over produces vegetables?

Fresh-pressed Veggie Juice!!!

Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve done this year since our gardens and raised beds produced lots and lots of veggies. All you need is a juicer and an assortment of fresh veggies straight from your garden. Insert the veggies into the juicer and nutritious juice will pour into one bowl while the dry pulp goes into a separate bowl.

There are two common types of juicers on the market, high-speed and slow-speed. My understanding is that the high-speed juicers create heat and thereby destroy some of the nutrients and enzymes in the juice. They are also not as effective in squeezing out all the juice from the pulp. The slow-speed juicers usually cost more and are slower at juicing but will leave all the nutrients and enzymes intact while squeezing out every drop of juice. Another option would be to simply put your veggies in a blender with a little water, blend them up, and then strain the pulp out with a cheesecloth or very fine-meshed strainer.

When juicing, you usually don’t even need a recipe…simply collect what is currently growing, juice it, and have a sip of the yummy juice you’ve created.

Many vegetables can be juiced including, but not limited to:

Carrots

Beets

Radishes (careful, too many will provide some spicy heat)

Swiss Chard

Spinach

Kale

Beet Greens

Lettuce (in moderation as it can make the juice rather bitter)

Celery

Other things that will round out the flavor of the juice and make it taste even better are:

Apples (tart ones are best)

Fresh Ginger Root (small amounts as this will also create some heat)

Not only is juicing veggies a great way to use up extras your garden may create, it’s very nutritious! For one, you can consume a lot more veggies this way then sitting down to eat a plate-full. This means you’ll also be getting a lot more of the important vitamins and minerals found in all those vegetables than you would if just having a few servings of veggies with your meal.

Removing the pulp and only drinking the juice also has a very detoxing effect on your body. It helps remove toxins making it great for your skin and really your whole body.

Try some delicious, fresh, rainbow juice today!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged juicing, veggies | Leave a comment

Diggin’ for Freedom!

Posted on June 30, 2014 by David

Freedom. The Fourth of July. Independence Day. Liberty! What are those words evoking in your mind? Mine? Well, it’s not a six pack of coke and a bunch of fireworks. Don’t get me wrong, my heart swells as much as yours does when the Blue Angels scream by overhead and the fireworks are crashing in the night but, don’t forget this Fourth that the party on a long weekend isn’t all this holiday is about.

If you missed our music video, ‘Does Your City Have Country Roads‘ check it out. Did you see the clip of my son Willie planting potatoes? I went with my father and with my son just a few days ago to dig those same potatoes and wow, what a harvest! Rich, red goodness rolling out of some of the blackest dirt you’ve ever seen. Folks, this is freedom!

Let us not forget in all our lounge-around-the-lake weekend lovin’ time this Fourth that there was blood shed so we could quietly grow our own food, on land we could own, to provide for our families through some hard-earned sweat. Men didn’t draft a Constitution and die for such a radical act so we could soak up the A/C on the couch, work for some God-forsaken Corporation, race toward a retirement so we can float around with no purpose in life (did you read my dad’s post?!). Are we content to just watch as our Federal Government steadily intrudes so deep in our lives we will be robots of the State before we know it? We now live in a time and place in this once-free country where slaughtering unborn children is legal and growing tomatoes in your front yard is a punishable crime. Men are marrying men and women are marrying women, but have you seen a gallon of raw milk in the grocery store lately? How about a good old-fashioned jar of homemade pickles? Have you tried raising a hog, butchering it yourself and selling a pound of sausage to your neighbor? If it isn’t enough thrill to watch the Food Police come down on you for such a heinous crime, just try and make a little artisan cheese and age it on a piece of wood.

The call today is to stand up and use what freedoms we do have left. The ones we do have are rapidly going away folks! Turn off the television, get out of the stock market, sell your townhouse, buy some land, and grow some food! Food safety and food security – do those issues concern you? They should, for they are some of the most critical in our world today. But there is only one answer and it’s repentance towards God and a rebuilding of a good old fashioned larder stocked with food you grew with your hands, preserved, and put up to carry you through to the next season of harvest. A little more chlorine, a dose of irradiation, some 2-4D, a few more advancements in cancer treatments, just a handful more regulations about bacterial count and some more cheap fuel is not going to fix the problems we’re facing today.

I challenge you to take a step towards Freedom in your life in some kind of way as we mull over what this Fourth of July really means. Jesus Christ has died on the Cross to forgive us our sins and provide us a means of escape from Hell, but He isn’t going to plant our potatoes for us. And leaving the growing of our food to multi-national, global corporate conglomerates isn’t exactly providing us with the local, nutrient-dense, whole food we need to feed our families with. We need a new paradigm, but I do believe it’s the oldest one around that we need to return to. Genesis 3:23 “Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.”

Check out this garden. It’s one of our customers, Anne Mogul, and she fertilized with a little cow manure from our Jerseys. This is where it starts!

So let’s count our blessings. We are not in a Revolution fueled by bloodshed. We have a little precious time left in which we can fight for our independence through gardening, by raising some chickens, in keeping a family milk cow, by simply working each day towards a little more self-sufficiency with our God’s help.

May God bless your Fourth of July!

Posted in Working on the Farm | Tagged Independence Day, potatoes | 1 Comment