This-n-that

I can't believe it's been three weeks since I've posted on here! My goal is to post something at least once a week, but the past three weeks have been crazy. If you read my Antiquity Oaks blog, you know what's been happening on the farm, but there was also a bit of author drama in the past month that I wrote about on my writer's blog.

The quick summary is that we've been having lots of babies (chicks, goats, lambs, and ducklings), predator problems (lost three chickens and a pregnant ewe), and terrible heat (upper 90s). On the author front, I was finishing up edits on my next book, which will be out this fall, and we received word that the title used a trademarked word, so there was much discussion, many emails, lawyers consulted, and finally a new title chosen, which meant a revised cover. So, Ecothrifty is now in the hands of the graphic designer that is turning the Word document into a book!

There is good news about Homegrown and Handmade though! It is going back to the presses for a second printing! And it is a finalist for the Book of the Year Award in the "home and garden" category, which is a huge honor and a wonderful surprise.

I'm also coordinating a homesteading conference for Joliet Junior College in Joliet, IL, on September 1, followed by a goat workshop the next day out on my farm. Click here for more details on the conference.

This next weekend, I'll be flying out to Seattle to speak at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup. I'll be talking about "Choosing Livestock For Your Homestead," "The Traditional Home Dairy," and "Why Homegrown and Handmade." I am also hoping to attend some sessions and tell you all about the interesting things I learn. If you are in the Pacific Northwest and are able to attend the fair, I hope you'll introduce yourself!

Green Festival: French bread

If you were at the Chicago Green Festival Sunday afternoon, welcome to my blog! {waving wildly} And if you weren't there, well, you still get to check out the French bread recipe that I demonstrated. This is a super easy bread and one of my favorites! For each baguette, you need the following ingredients:

1 cup warm water (bath temperature)
1/2 tablespoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2-3 cups unbleached flour

 If you were at the Green Festival, you know that some of these instructions are merely suggestions -- you can bake bread with little or no salt (but it's going to taste different than what you're used to), and you know that if the water isn't quite warm, it will just take longer for the bread to rise. But bread happens! If you put water, yeast, and flour into the same bowl, mix a little, it's going to turn into something that resembles some kind of bread.

So, put the first three ingredients into a bowl, as well as two cups of flour. Once you get that mixed up as much as you can with a spoon, put down the spoon and dig in with both hands. As long as the dough sticks to your hands, add flour about 1/4 cup at a time. Mix it thoroughly, and if it still sticks, add another 1/4 cup. Once it's all mixed up, you can let it rise for a bit, or you can shape it into a baguette, let it rise for about half an hour, and bake it for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. For a crunchier crust, you can spritz it with water before baking, but it will still make a perfectly good baguette without spritzing.

Feel free to double or triple if you'd like more than one loaf. Happy baking!

Quarantining new animals

It's spring, which means babies on the farm, and often, buying babies from other farms! A couple of months ago a fairly new farmer was telling me about a boar he bought that brought a whole lot of health issues to his whole herd, and he said the vet told him, "All of your health problems are bought and sold," meaning that you buy new animals and bring health problems onto your farm. This is why it's important to quarantine new animals for about a month after they arrive on your farm.

Sometimes I hear new people say that they don't have a place to quarantine new animals, but seriously, if you don't have space to quarantine new animals, you shouldn't be buying them. Just for regular farm operations, you need a space for animals that get sick or injured and need to be separated from the rest of the herd or flock. Why is quarantine so important?

The fourth buck that I ever bought died only a few weeks after I brought him home, AND a couple months later, I lost two additional bucks to the same problem -- parasites. If only I had quarantined him, at most, I would have lost only him. But I put him in the pasture with the other bucks, so he scattered his parasite eggs all over the pasture, where the other bucks could ingest them. Although I dewormed and moved the surviving bucks to a new pasture, it ultimately proved to be too late. Solving problems is always harder than preventing them!

You should also quarantine a new animal for their own health. Coming to a new farm is very stressful for an animal, and they are going to be especially susceptible to parasites and other health challenges. It is less stressful for their body to be in the barn on clean straw or in a "clean" pasture, which is one that hasn't had the same species grazing there for the past year.

It is also less stressful for herd animals to not be alone, so it's a good idea to buy two or more animals from a farm. It is also a good idea from a biosecurity perspective to limit the number of farms from where you buy your animals. I always cringe inside when I hear someone say that they're starting their herd from five or six other herds. And usually they're bringing them all home and putting them together from day one. Even if all of those herds had healthy animals, the stress of moving will take its toll. And all of those animals had their own physiological challenges that they were successfully combating on their farm, but when you bring them together, and they start sharing their germs, someone is going to get sick -- and you will have no idea where the problem originated. This is one reason modern feedlots are such a bad idea and why they have to rely so heavily on drugs to keep the animals alive. You don't see organic feedlots.

Quarantining should be relatively easy if you have a barn with multiple stalls, but what if you don't have that luxury? If you have a large open barn, you can create separate pens with pig panels (for animals that don't jump) or combination livestock panels, which are taller. New animals really should not share a fenceline because some germs can spread via nasal secretions or saliva, and certainly many can be spread via blood. If you have goats or sheep, they may butt heads through the fence until one or both is bleeding. Other diseases can be spread via feces, and animals can wind up pooping in the next pasture or pen if they are backed up against the fence. And all of us with animals know that "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," so animals will be sticking their heads through the fence to eat the grass on the other side.

It is okay if different species share a fenceline
because they have different diseases and parasites.
Pigs and goats share a fenceline here.

One reason we love temporary electric netting fencing is because you can set up a temporary pasture almost anywhere. You can also create a quarantine pen using four livestock panels outside. It makes a 16-by-16-foot pen, which can be moved every day or two. You can put it in an area where you don't normally have livestock grazing like a side yard next to your house. That way, you can also keep a close eye on the new animals. If they are baby goats or lambs, you can give them a large plastic dog house for shelter. Although I've never used them myself, a lot of people really like the dog igloos because they remove the bottom, which means it can be moved to clean grass daily, rather than requiring regular cleaning.

It is easy to say that you don't have the money or time to create a quarantine area, but the price is small compared to the loss of a valuable animal -- or in my case seven years ago, the loss of three valuable animals.

Are people really so clueless?

A couple of years ago I read this great post online about composting, and in the comment section someone posted a very long comment that said compost was fool's gold, not black gold, and that we can do so much better with modern fertilizers. At first I was shocked that someone could be so clueless about compost, and then I started to wonder if maybe that comment came from someone who works for a fertilizer company. I know that public relations professionals use Google Alerts to keep them informed about what people are saying about their companies, but they could just as easily use it to keep track of -- and comment on -- articles and other posts that might hurt business.

I recently discovered a six-month-old post in which Slow Food USA wrote about their $5 challenge -- make a meal at home for under $5. The writer went on to say that in New York City, an Egg McMuffin costs $2.99, but you can make the same thing at home with organic ingredients for $2.49. It was a really great post. However, the comment section once again had me shaking my head, wondering if people are so out of touch with reality or if the PR people for fast food companies are stalking blogs and writing comments to confuse the issue. "TBONE," who claims to be an organic farmer, wrote:

the one thing you did not consider is the costs to prepare said food. I agree with you that organic food is cheaper than many people think, especially if you consider growing ANY of it yourself, but the time it takes to prepare an “egg mcmuffin” is about 15 mins(by MY calculations)...thats time to gather, prepare, and clean up.  If said person earns $16.27(the national average) then you need to add $4.07 to that meal.  A far cry from the $2.99 McD’s charges. You cant compare prepared food prices to unprepared food prices without considering the time you lose preparing said meal.

Seriously? I'd love to know who is paying this person $16.27 an hour to sleep late instead of cooking his own breakfast. I say this a lot, but telling us to consider "the value of our time" is still the most ridiculous thing Corporate America spouts. No one is paid for every minute of their time, so unless this person is taking off 15 minutes unpaid from his $16.27 an hour job, then his time is worth exactly $0. And if your time is so valuable, then what about the time you spend sitting in the drive-thru at McD's? The fact that this person thinks it will take fifteen minutes to scramble an egg and toast an English muffin also tells me that he hasn't scrambled an egg in a very long time! (Here's a tip for the really clueless -- the English muffin can toast while the egg is scrambling.) I can guarantee you that you will spend less time scrambling an egg than you will spend in the McD's drive-thru.

Then "Hollie" commented,

I love the idea that you can make an organic mcmuffin for 2.59 vs the Mcd’s one at 2.99. But we also have to think about the fact that you cannot buy one egg, and 1 english muffin, 1 piece of cheese and one piece of bacon. You can buy all the stuff u need, but when your food budget is 40 dollars a week for a family of 2, you can choose to eat McMuffins most of the week, 3 meals a day, or have some variety. I tend to go into the store with 40 dollars and buy the cheapest food i can with as much food groups I can (whole wheat, veggies, cheese, ect) It is true though, that the cheaper food will fill you more and give you more variety when buying with such little money. 

Seriously? Does Hollie seriously believe that the only thing you can do with eggs and the other ingredients is to make Egg McMuffins? I find it very hard to believe this person buys any food in the grocery store or does any cooking if she believes what she wrote. English muffins are sold in packages of six, so two people would be able to eat them three times a week, which is not "most of the week, three meals a day." Eggs are an extremely versatile food, and they are one of the cheapest protein sources available. With four eggs, a little milk, cheese, and vegetables, you can make a quiche that will feed four people. Saying that you only have $40 a week to feed two people does not negate the fact that it is cheaper to cook from scratch.

And the ridiculous comments just go on and on, including a woman who says that she has to bake all of their bread products from scratch because they can't have soy, and it takes too much time to make English muffins. Does she really believe that McDonald's makes soy-free muffins from scratch every morning? It does not even make sense that most of these people are reading the Slow Foods blog if they have such contempt for the concept.

I suppose it should not continue to surprise me when I see people arguing that fast food is a good deal financially. I really want to believe that all of these clueless posts are made by PR pros -- and that people are smart enough to see how ridiculous these comments are. But there is a part of me that worries that these are real people who truly believe their completely illogical arguments.

What's so bad about TV?

Need more time? You might be able to find two or three extra hours a day by eliminating most of your television viewing, if you're like most Americans. In addition to having more time, you might also lose weight, be happier, eat better, and buy less stuff. If you reduce your children's viewing time, they will likely see similar results.

If you think you need to watch TV to unwind or relax, consider the fact that a number of studies have linked depression and excessive television viewing. A thirty-year study with 30,000 participants found that although people may feel happier while watching television, they tend to be less happy the rest of the time.

One study that looked at the habits of 50,000 women from 1992 to 2006 showed that women who watched television for three hours or more a day were more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who rarely watched television.

In a British study of ten- to thirteen-year-old children, researchers found that the more a child watched TV, the more materialistic they became and the worse their relationship with their parents. The researchers said that when children watch a lot of television, they are exposed to people who are richer, more beautiful and glamorous, and lifestyles that are more extravagant than their own, which lowers their self esteem and ultimately makes them unhappy and materialistic.

Many studies have linked exercise, time spent with friends, and even reading with lower rates of depression than TV viewing. Another disadvantages to watching television is increased consumerism. I even heard a radio host once say that she got dressed late one night and drove to a fast food restaurant to get a burger after seeing one of their ads on television. Although you may have never done this yourself, the reason that companies advertise on television is because they see a definite correlation between ads and sales. When they stop advertising, their sales go down.

There have also been many studies that have linked television watching with obesity. When you are watching television you are not moving, and you are being exposed to ads for processed foods, which tend to be high in fat, sugar, and salt. One study showed that children who watch television are less likely to snack on fruits and vegetables, and another one found that many people snack more when watching television.

Yet another study “found a significant association between the number of hours of television watched per day and body fat mass, with every extra hour/day spent watching television associated with a 2.2 pound increase in body fat.”

One study broke down the type of television that a child watched and found they were more likely to be obese if they watched commercial television than if they watched DVDs or educational TV. “By the time they are 5 years old, children have seen an average of more than 4,000 television commercials for food annually. During Saturday morning cartoons, children see an average of one food ad every five minutes. The vast majority of these ads -- up to 95 percent -- are for foods with poor nutritional value.” Junk food also uses a lot of packaging and is expensive compared to natural foods.

I used to be addicted to television about as badly as a person could be, but we got rid of cable when we lived in the burbs and never really missed it. We still have a television and use it to watch DVDs or stream movies once or twice a week.

Imagine what you could do if you had an extra hour every day. You could bake your own bread, tend a flock of backyard hens, or maybe even milk a few goats to make your own cheese!

Interview with beekeeper Zan Asha

On Sunday, April 22, we'll be hosting two beekeeping classes with Zan Asha, one of the New York City beekeepers that appeared in the documentary Queen of the Sun. Here is a chance for you to get to know her better and learn a little about beekeeping. If you'd like to join us on April 22, click here to register for the classes on Antiquity Oaks in Cornell, IL.

Deborah: How long have you been keeping bees? 

Zan: I've actually been keeping bees for 6 years, but as a 3rd generation beekeeper, there is a wealth of knowledge through speaking with my mother, the daughter of the original beekeeper, my grandfather. Much of what I do with beekeeping is founded in the same WWII era, European principles my grandfather had: no pesticides and limited use of medications, and working with the bees based on their behavior and social structure, which is far more natural and productive, from bees' perspective, and therefore for the keepers.
 
Why do you keep bees?

There are many reasons, not least of which is preserving a lovely family legacy and history of keeping bees. There are a great number of interesting, if not funny, stories of my family keeping bees before some of the more modern amenities for beekeeping existed, and it's a good feeling to know that you are carrying some of those traditions along. But the beauty of keeping bees, themselves, is rewarding unto itself. Obviously, there is the prospect of having your own local, raw honey (which is farm more medicinal and beneficial than store brought honey, which has recently proven to be ultra-diluted, void of beneficial products, and often cheaply shipped from China!) but there are so many intricacies in learning how to care for bees, that is fascinating just working with them and observing them. You will also, in a sense, be helping yourself, in that bees have been estimated to pollinate up to one-half of all staple crops in the world. So you will continue survivability of what you eat and also the grazing material your MEAT eats. 

Tell us about your set-up -- number of hives, located where, what type of hives, etc.

I currently work with my landlady, who is a well known environmental activist in New York City, and this beekeeping project is known as Bronx Bees. We currently have 8 hives on the green roof of her building, in the Bronx. The green roof is an ideal space, and I'd recommend them in more urban operations: the location is out of line-sight of most people, the height allows for a clean and unblocked take-off for the bees (no bushes, people, or other obstacles to fly over), and the green-roof has been proven to keep a constant temp of 70 degrees in most weather. We currently use the Langstroth (box) hive, which is the most commonly used hive throughout the world. I would prefer to change some of these out for the Top Barre or even Warre hive, but this is the compromise that we have between her and I. Since the Langstroth is quite common, it is easy to change parts out, should we need to. 

What's the biggest challenge for a city beekeeper? Cities, by nature, are more crowded with people, and this is probably the hardest aspect in beekeeping: convincing people that bees are actually not going to automatically attack them on sight. Bees are actually much more REACTIONARY than people think, and will rarely attack first, unless you are directly over, or in, their hives. In that case, they WILL sting to defend their offspring or honey stores. Otherwise, I've actually stood in front and around their hives, and they will simply fly around you. But you may need to convince your neighbors otherwise, and this kind of diplomacy might be hard, especially during swarm season! This might also work against you, if you wish to keep bees but your landlord rejects the idea. Luckily, more and more cities are taking up beekeeping clubs and classes, so that's a good way to learn beekeeping. Other than that, in my experience, beekeeping seems no different in urban areas than anywhere else. 

What would you like to do with your bees in the future?

I guess you could say I am currently doing the things, in regards to beekeeping, that I had always hoped to do. My vision was always two fold: keeping bees in a natural (dare I say kind) way, and provide quality raw honey in New York City and teaching others to keep bees in this same fashion, and break a long cycle of commercialized beekeeping methods, which are probably more prevalent than people realize. I've been very lucky in the teaching aspect: last year, a fellow writer and farmer in Iowa, Maggie Howe, invited me out and actively promoted me in such a way that it actually became possible for me to teach large groups of people the amazing art of beekeeping. Since then I have been in Iowa and Illinois teaching these methods, which I think are particularly important in areas where commercial farming, GMOs, and pesticides are the norm. I feel I am teaching a lost generation of beekeepers to take up more organic practices and hopefully we can begin the process of learning and healing ourselves and our planet, in some small way, in our work with these extraordinary creatures.

Who picks your fruit?

If it were not for illegal immigrants, most Americans would be starving -- and this is not simply my little opinion. This is what "specialty growers" will tell you, and they are the farmers who grow the food that people actually eat, like fruits and vegetables. And they rely heavily on the labor of illegal immigrants. Depending on whom you ask, it is estimated that somewhere between 30-70% of our food is picked by illegal immigrants. And based upon my conversations with growers, I'm pretty sure the 70% number is closer to the truth. Last year I was at a conference and mistakenly wound up in a session on how to hire legal immigrant workers. Although I realized fairly quickly that I would not be using any of the information in the session, I couldn't leave because I was shocked by what I was hearing. Although the topic was not new to me, it was a perspective I had never heard.

All three of the Illinois fruit growers openly admitted to hiring illegal immigrants to work on their farms because they were unable to find enough employees otherwise. Even then, one man talked about watching thousands of dollars of apples rot on the trees a couple years earlier because he couldn't get enough people -- legal or illegal -- to pick them. So, then they talked about the guest worker program, which is very expensive. They said it cost about $5,000 to get a single worker into this country legally. And before you can do that, you have to prove that you tried really hard to hire citizens. In addition to providing copies of ads run in your local newspapers, you also have to run ads in three other communities with high unemployment rates, proving that you can't find Americans to do the jobs.

Since that day more than a year ago, when I saw a gray-haired man on the verge of tears worried about the future of his orchard, I've been paying attention to the labor articles when my copies of American Fruit Grower and Vegetable Grower News arrive every month. Because we have no employees, I foolishly ignored those articles in the past, assuming they didn't affect me. But this situation affects every person in this country because we all eat.

In US Apple Urges Congress to Act on Agricultural Labor, Dale Foreman, who grows apples, pears, and cherries, in Wenatchee, WA, was quoted from his testimony before the U. S. House of Representatives:

In 2011, we experienced the worst labor shortages I have ever seen. Tragically, we did not have nearly enough workers. The situation grew so dire that in early October we ran radio ads throughout our area asking for workers and offering them up to $150 per day to help us pick our apples. Even with the barrage of radio ads, we were only able to recruit three additional pickers. We needed more than 100.

In Help Wanted in the Fight For Labor, blackberry grower Gary Paulk in Georgia said that his state's new anti-immigrant law cost him $250,000 last year because he didn't have enough workers to pick all of his berries. The law kept many illegal immigrants out of the state, and he found himself 150 workers short of what he needed, as he watched 25 acres of blackberries rot and fall to the ground. The article goes on to say,

It wasn’t like Paulk just threw up his hands. He tried working with the state Department of Labor, just like state legislators suggested, because Georgia has a 10% unemployment rate. “I asked for 25 workers for starters, and I got one,” he says. “We have a family operation, and we all own a piece, so we all put applications in for workers, but we never got any more applicants.”

And Paulk is just one of many growers negatively impacted by Georgia's new hard stance against illegal immigrants. The Help Wanted article also says, "A study conducted by the University of Georgia noted that total losses to the state economy from the first year of its law against illegal immigration were estimated at $391 million." And that only includes what the farmers lost.

The U.S. government also lost all of those Social Security dollars. A lot of people mistakenly believe that illegal immigrants don't pay taxes, but that's not true. Typically they have a SS number that is fake, so when the employer pays them, they also pay into the SS system -- and that is money that will never be taken out by the worker because they will not be retiring in this country and collecting the money that they paid into the system. If all illegal immigrants were deported tomorrow, the Social Security Administration would suddenly find itself with $7 billion less paid into it next year, which is obviously not good.

Paulk said, "A lot of campaign promises were made, saying these people are taking jobs from Georgia residents, and myths like they don’t pay taxes, and that’s just not true."

There are a lot of reasons that Americans don't want these jobs, such as long days, no overtime, and often high temperatures. The incidence of heat stroke is twenty times higher in farm workers than other jobs. The biggest deterrent, however, is probably the fact that a job only lasts a few weeks. They're called migrant farm workers because they move from farm to farm and often state to state to pick whatever fruit or vegetable is in season. There is no job security, no benefits, and little room for advancement.

In Common Sense and Immigration, Pennsylvania grower Brad Hollabaugh said,

“Should the politics of the day result in America abandoning agriculture in favor of implementing restrictive immigration policies that have no transitory worker solutions, there will be a massive collapse in our food system. We all want a safe food supply. But the security of our nation lies in our ability to feed our nation. Jeopardizing our ability to feed ourselves is diametrically opposed to the intent of securing our borders.”

And his wife, Kay Hollabaugh, testified before the Pennsylvania Senate, asking legislators to not make E-verify mandatory:

“The E-Verify program has proven to be flawed. Simple reading of what has happened in Arizona should make that painfully clear. Unauthorized workers are slipping through, while U.S. citizens are being flagged as illegal. How can we possibly think that this is a system that is working? As a small business owner, this is yet the next piece of legislation that causes further paperwork and more man hours for the management of our business. We are already stretched painfully thin simply keeping up with the mountains of paperwork and regulations that already exist. Further, if we are required to use the E-Verify system and if our workers are found to be undocumented, where is the work force that is ready to step to the plate to harvest our fruits and vegetables? They do not exist. If our workers are found to be undocumented and they are taken away, we will no longer be able to harvest our crops. If you are scared of immigrant laborers, just wait until we have to be at the mercy of other countries to obtain our food. Now that’s scary.”

I really don't like talking or writing about anything remotely close to politics because everyone has their own pundits and politicians whom they love and trust, and if you say anything opposite to them, people tend to ignore you or get mad at you. That said, I had to go out on a limb here to talk about something that will never be solved by politics until people start talking about this honestly. And since I'm not running for office, I can be brutally honest. You see, politicians have a tough time talking about this honestly because it's complicated. It can't be summed up in a five-second sound bite. And even worse, their opponent could take a couple comments out of context and make it sound really bad. It is just easier for them to say what people want to hear -- export all the illegal immigrants and then everyone will have jobs. But that's not true. There is a labor shortage in agriculture, and it is only being made worse by this political rhetoric.

The sad thing is that the only people in Georgia and Arizona who are in pain are the farmers, and since less than two percent of the population is farmers, they don't wield much political power. And don't let the farm lobbyists fool you -- they represent the Big Ag corporations. Because we have a global food supply, the shelves in the grocery stores in Georgia and Arizona are still full, so the average voters there have no clue what's happening. After losing a quarter of a million dollars last year, Paulk has plowed under his 25 acres of blueberries and is planning to plant it in something that can be machine harvested like cotton. So, financially he might be okay down the road. However, as more farmers can't find people to pick their fruits and vegetables, more will move to crops that can be harvested by machine, and then we will find ourselves in the same position as Great Britain during World War II when people were starving because they had been importing most of their food.

Importation of food in the U.S. has been growing steadily. As I wrote in Homegrown & Handmade, between 1995 and 2005, we increased importation of tree nuts from 40 to 54 percent and processed fruit from 20 to 37 percent. By 2009, 30 percent of our produce was imported from other countries. This isn't happening overnight. Our food security is gradually slipping away, from one state to another, one farmer to another. As each blueberry field or apple orchard is abandoned, we will simply import a little more fruit. And before you know it, we will be as dependent upon the rest of the world for our food as we are today for our fuel. Instead of fighting wars for oil, we'll be fighting for pistachios.