Imagining a Sustainable Lifestyle

John Lennon wondered if we could imagine not having possessions, existing simply as a brotherhood of humankind. This isn't a hope for a utopian future. Rather, it’s been done before. It’s in our history; the fabric of our genetic make-up.

Life as it was.

Early humans were hunters and gatherers. One can suppose that this lifestyle consisted of self sufficiency and oneness with nature. Theory has it that individual tribes were communities in which the needs of all members were attended to. When the hunters and gatherers returned with edibles, the tribe shared. There was no one percent and no ninety-nine percent. Everything was for the tribe, the one hundred percent.

What we gather from knowledge of American Indian, African tribes, and other primitive cultures is that our ancestors had a physical and spiritual relationship with the earth. A successful hunt resulted in celebratory rituals. Art and music were born of this harmony between man and nature. These people took from the earth what was needed and returned what what was not, making a cycle of events that was infinitely sustainable.

And then came the industrial age.

Industrialization changed everything. Industries became a driving force, resulting in urbanization, specialization, militarization, and accumulation of wealth for the individual. The earth became a source of raw materials to feed industry. Great tracts of land are laid waste in the process.

And now the resources are becoming more and more scarce. Although we may not immediately realize it, this is showing up in the headlines in today's news stories. Oil wells dug deep in the oceans, tar sands being mined, natural gas extraction by fracking, entire mountains removed to find coal. The problems resulting from these are reported; oil spills, ground water contamination, local reports of cancers, loss of landscape, loss of useable land, earthquakes. Not to mention climate change.

And here we are.

Our homesteading lifestyle, and that of a growing number of kindred spirits, is our small effort in helping to reverse a disastrous trend toward oblivion. We are doing what we can, like not accumulating things we don’t need, saving energy, using local sources such as obtaining eggs, meat, and produce from local farms. More about this in an earlier post: click here. We share vegetables from our garden with friends and co-workers, make an effort to be involved with the local community, and are involved with a local land trust in their efforts to preserve natural habitat.

When the age of industrialization wears itself out, a simpler, more natural kind of lifestyle will be called for. We feel that we are going in this direction, taking a step back to our origins that actually feels like a step forward. We are closer to the natural give and take of nature; it’s a simpler lifestyle and seems far away from that of accumulating and possessing things.

There are things that each and every one of us can do.

We can grow our own vegetables in back yards, pots on porches, or in community gardens, take a re-usable shopping bag to the market, tote a metal water bottle, use local recycling facilities, and so much more. And, as we redefine our own lives, we can remember to be involved in meaningful ways in our local communities. We are on this planet together. And yes, John Lennon, we can IMAGINE the world as a better place. And we can do more than imagine, we can live simply and sustainably now. -G.H., edited by jmm

Tomato Ketchup

I’ve been asked to post our ketchup recipe and even tho we’re a little past canning season here it is now, and I’ll link back to it next year at the appropriate time. It’s a conglomeration of recipes from several cookbooks; I was looking for a certain blend of flavors. 

This needs a long cooking time, so plan on spending a day making it, or start it one day and finish it the next. It may not get quite as thick as the commercial variety, and you may also find the texture to be slightly different. What it does have is fabulous flavor surpassing the supermarket version by far. To supplement my homemade supply I've tried organic brands which seem to have mastered a ketchupy color- they tend to be nice and red. But, sadly lacking in flavor. Do take note: if you want to go to the trouble, its entirely possible to dump storebought ketchup (the organic variety) into a non-reactive heavy bottomed kettle, put some ketchup spices in (see recipe), and slow cook it until the flavors are infused. If only they would get it right in the first place!

makes 7 - 8 pints

Tie into a square of cheesecloth to make a spice bag:

3 tsps fennel seeds

1 tsp whole allspice

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp celery seeds

optional: 2 cinnamon sticks broken into pieces

Place into a heavy non-reactive saucepan along with the spice bag:

3 cups cider vinegar

Bring the vinegar and spices to a full boil and boil for a minute or two, then remove the kettle from the heat and let stand for 30 minutes. Discard the spice bag.

Combine in a large, heavy, non-reactive saucepan:

6 quarts tomatoes, chopped (its ok to throw some green ones in with the reds)

4 large onions, finely chopped

1 cup of honey

2 tsps tabasco sauce

3 tsps salt

2 tsps ground black pepper

Bring to a boil stirring constantly.  Place a lid on the saucepan, lower the heat and boil gently for 15- to 20 minutes, until the tomatoes and onions are cooked. Optional: if you like smooth ketchup, puree in a blender working carefully and in batches. After blending, pour the ketchup back into the saucepan.

Add the spiced vinegar to the tomato mixture and stir. Simmer gently on low heat, stirring occasionally until reduced by about half. This can take several hours. Cook until it is the thickness you want. Taste test and adjust for salt, pepper, and tabasco sauce if needed.

Ladle the hot ketchup into hot pint jars leaving 1/2 inch head space. Wipe the jar rims, and seal. Process in a *steam canner or hot water bath for 15 minutes. Remove to a towel covered countertop and let sit for 12 hours. Place into cool storage and use within a year.

*Note: a steam canner is quicker and more efficient than the water bath method. More on steam canning here. -jmm

Reflections on the 2011 Garden

Now is a great time to look back on last year's garden. This morning I cleared snow and ice off the cold frames. Besides moving snow around, there's not much else to do outdoors, so I've been perusing seed catalogs and thinking about what has been successful and what hasn't.

Right at the beginning, last spring, we enjoyed parsnips and this year we plan to expand this crop. There are never enough! And turnips and rutabagas, which we used for soups and stews. Kale plants started growing new shoots in spring, and in summer we let the plants reseed the crop, so it did well with almost no care.

Asparagus is another tale. One of these years we expect to have some to eat! Meanwhile we keep adding compost, manure, and rabbit food (alfalfa) to build the soil.

Garlic has not been a great crop in the past but in 2011 we apparently hit the jackpot. I had planted 30 cloves the previous fall. They grew well and we replanted some of the biggest cloves last September.

Salads are part of nearly every meal we eat. Last winter, mache and claytonia grew in the cold frames until spring. Lettuce planted in March had baby leaves ready to eat in April. This winter, except for the lettuce, the cold frames were disappointing. Mache, claytonia and spinach planted in August did not produce so we've been forced to actually buy our salad ingredients.

Some crops did very well, and between freezing, canning and root cellar storage, we're still enjoying them in February. Delicata squash is keeping well in the upstairs closet. There are still Swiss chard, green beans, collards, beets and cabbage in the freezer. There are jars of plum chutney, home made ketchup, a crock of sauerkraut, and bags of potatoes in the root cellar.

Summer veggies were a mixed bag. There were zucchinis but not enough to delight our friends. Cucumbers did delight our friends and they even asked for more. Peppers did better than ever; the sweet ones were small, but plentiful, and we still have a string of Habeneros hanging in the kitchen window. They are hot!

The tomato plants put out one good crop and then stopped producing. We're thinking there might be some lingering fungal blight from the previous year.

Some crops that did well will be getting more garden space this year; peas and basil among them. The peas will not only have a row of their own, but we plan to use them as companion crops just about everywhere.

Other crops just don't seem to do well for us and take up garden space that could be better used. Radishes are supposed to be easy to grow but not here, apparently. We love leeks and keep planting them but have yet to get the results we want. I'll try them once more this year before giving up. Onions also haven't done very well but I'm not ready to give up on them yet.

Every year we add at least one new fruit plant to our orchard. It will be years until most of these produce. The old plum tree has been consistently prolific, and raspberries, blueberries, and table grapes have given us a few more bowlfuls every year. The birds seem to enjoy these as much as we do.

Organic gardening is an annual dance with Mother Nature. What does well one year may not have the same result the next. We try to build on successes and limit our efforts on crops that don't get the desired result. Every year we try a new plant or two. Last year I was surprised with a small section of pac choi I had planted. They did great and I wished I had planted more. I guess that's what it's all about. There are disappointments and pleasant surprises to go along with things that seem to do well year by year. C'est la vie! - G.H.

Summer Flowers

The main theme of this blog has been and still is about growing the fruit and veggie crops that add amazing flavors and nutrients to our food supply. Raising food plants has been at the core of our gardening focus, but there’s more to the garden; there are the flowers.

Flowers are food for the soul; what would life be without them? Through the summer I capture digital images of the blooms for no other reason than that they are there and colorful and interesting. And not just photogenic, but they are ideal subjects for photography. They don’t act camera shy nor do they stick out their tongues at that critical nano second before the shutter clicks. The most that happens is a bee crawling out of the middle of a flower as the picture is being taken.

What is not caught in the click of the camera, or in bytes, however you want to think of it, never shows up in the picture and is left to the imagination. There are the aromatics, the scents- most notably those that of the roses. And there is often the shy slither of garden snake hidden in the vinca, the melodic voices of birds, and the loud and constant buzzing of bees. As you squat down to get a better angle on a bloom you see that Mr. toad is wiggling his behind into the dirt, and you find that a garden spider has been busy because your hair is getting full of sticky strands of web. And you hear the indistinguishable whir of hummingbird zooming by. There’s lots going on there, and the mere image of a bloom is far from the whole picture.

I like to look at the flower photos in the middle of the chilly season. I can see how beautiful the flowers were, and more than that, the images spark memories of the constant hum of activity all around them. I can almost smell the roses. -jmm

Jens Munk rose

Hosta

Siberian iris

Iris

Maidens Blush rose

3 kinds of roses

Stone pathway

Snowball bush

Weigela

The Yellow Rose of Texas

Heather and an ancient tree stump

Alba Alba roses

Apothecary rose and Feverfew

Bearded iris

Bellflower and roses

Goatsbeard

A groundcover mix

Food & Water Watch

Food & Water Watch is a national non-profit based in Washington D.C., dedicated to ensuring that we all have clean water and safe food. I became familiar with them when I started researching GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and companies like the Monsanto Corporation.

Recently, a local branch of Food & Water Watch hosted a potluck dinner for interested people to get together and catch up on local Watch activities. This was held at the home of Mark, his wife, and their rescued greyhounds in East Waterboro.

We talked about a range of topics including local control of aquifers, damage to water sources by fracking, organic gardening, labeling of GMO's and even the recent declaration that pizza in school lunches is a vegetable because it contains a little tomato paste.

Though our conversations covered many themes, a couple of our topics are close to my heart. By growing most of our food, we are able to avoid chemicals and GMO's that are prevalent in much of the commercial foodstuffs on the market. And, though we have safe, chemical free water here, this is not the case for much of the world's people. It's not enough for us to merely homestead to care for ourselves. Consumers are often not aware of sources of their food and of the dangers of the additives in many things they eat. Water in many places is becoming privatized and placed in the hands of corporations more concerned with profits than public safety. Since the corporations that control such a large percentage of food are not willing to voluntarily label products that contain GMO's, we are for legislation that requires them to. We support indigenous people in Bolivia and India that are trying to take back local control of their water rights.

GMO's are in many grocery store products, especially in processed foods. Problem is, there is no requirement to let consumers know that they are in so many foods. The multi-national corporations that produce the majority of packaged and processed foods send their lobbyists (with boat loads of contributions) to convince politicians that the public doesn't need to know what is in the food they produce and market.

As consumers, we want and need to know what is in the food we eat. Only then can we make educated choices about what ends up in our shopping carts and on our dinner tables.

There is legislation to require clear labeling of food products to let us know when genetically modified ingredients are in them. The GE Food Right to Know Act, sponsored by Dennis Kucinich, has been introduced in the House of Representatives. This act MUST be passed. Contact your representatives in Congress to support this legislation. Here in Maine, our House Representative is Chellie Pingree who has experience with organic farming. Thank you, Dennis and Chellie.

Our water, also, must be kept out of the hands of corporations that want to extract and put it into plastic bottles that end up in land fills. Clean drinking water is becoming scarce world wide. Climate change and population growth, among other things, are affecting its supply. Future wars will be waged over water, or its lack. We're fortunate here in Maine to have adequate water supplies and we need to make sure that this continues. Local communities are working to ensure that control of water stays local. Communities like Shapleigh- two towns over- have prevented multi-national corporations from extracting their water.

We can't allow politicians, who are often bought and paid for by these corporations, to give away this precious resource. We need to act now, while we still have an adequate water supply, to be sure we always do. Our Maine politicians need to know that our drinking water must remain a public resource.

For our part, we need to be educated about factors involving food and water, share this knowledge with others and let politicians know that the 99% of us are paying attention, speaking up and voting for those that share our values. Getting involved with organizations like Food & Water Watch may take a little bit of our time, but can go a long ways in helping to protect our access to healthy food and water. -G.H.

Making Tallow

I'd heard about rendering beef fat (rendered fat is called tallow) to use for cooking. Every year we stock the freezer with a organic, grass-fed beef, and last year we decided to ask for the suet. Suet is thick, solid fat that surrounds the liver and kidneys of the animal. The suet stayed in the freezer for almost a year until I got brave enough to figure out what to do with it.

I don’t know why I waited so long to do this. Tallow is great for frying potatoes, for deep frying, and, my favorite use, pie crust. 

The problem was, I had no one to ask how to do it. The person to ask would have been Grandma, but she has been gone for many years. She had to have known how to render fat way before she ever went to the store for a can of crisco. So I googled.

The search landed on a question, among other entries. “What the heck is suet?”, someone asked. I already knew what suet was having bought little cages of it to feed wild birds. But the question led me to think about how knowledge of real food has tumbled off some cliff in favor of brand named packaged stuff. Anyway, the search turned up two methods of rendering suet. One consists of boiling it in water, then separating the water from the fat. Is this an older method designed for wood stoves with erratic heat? The second one said to heat it for considerable time on very low heat.

I chose the low heat version. Here’s how it went.

First, I get the brown paper bag of suet out of the freezer and let it sit for awhile to thaw. A few hours later I tear open the bag and find two big, solid slabs of whitish stuff.

I decide to do one slab today and tackle the other tomorrow, giving me a second chance to get it right if things don't go well the first time. Only one of the slabs will fit in the kettle anyway.

After finding in my google search that the stuff gums up food processors and meat grinders, two little facts I would have guessed anyway since it is solid, greasy fat, I opt for a chefs knife. As it turns out, suet cuts up very easily. I cut the slab into one- to two-inch cubes, and at the same time trimming away anything that is a color other than white.

Acting on advice to use a heavy pot, I choose a cast iron dutch oven. I set the burner on very, very low heat, exactly at the point where a speck lower is no heat at all, and then went off to do other things. 

When I return to check on progress, not expecting any due to the low heat setting, I’m surprised to find the heat has worked magic- under the cubes I see that liquid has started to seep out.

As I keep returning to check on it, I find the chunks becoming smaller. Eventually liquid predominates. Somewhat later the chunks seem to be gradually turning brownish. My research says these are cracklins. The cracklins continue to brown as I keep checking on the pot.

Warning! Do not be tempted at any point to raise the heat. I tried this just to let you know it should not be done. I thought that maybe turning up the heat would darken the cracklins sooner. Well, they didn’t get much browner but the entire pot of fat started smoking. That, you know is a sign of danger. Never let your fat smoke. With no further ado I slide the kettle onto an unheated burner and slap the lid on. And open windows and put on fans. It takes a long time to stop smoking. Hairy scary.

The second slab rendered the next day entirely on very, very low heat. This worked perfectly with no smoke. None. As things turn out it was a good idea to do this in two batches; a-a-ah, learning curves...!

To finish the process I take out the cracklings with a fine strainer. After the liquid cools down a little I pour it into jars. There was plenty of google advice saying to use wide mouth jars, so I did't mess with it and chose wide mouth canning jars. Both batches got me about three quarts. They say it lasts a year in the fridge. 

Tallow is solid, especially if you store it in the fridge. When you need some stick a butter knife into it and crack off a chunk. If you need a quantity for deep frying, take it out of the fridge a few hours ahead of time.

As for the the trimmings and the greasy cracklins, I scrapped those way back in the woods. -jmm

Fried Tortilla Tacos

Marsha doesn’t like tortillas heated in a dry skillet. She says they taste "raw." So I tried frying them in our homemade beef tallow, and she loved them! Here’s how I fried tortillas to make delicious crispy taco shells.

Place a cast iron pan on the stove, and with the burner set on medium add chunks of tallow to the pan. Keep adding until there is a half inch of melted fat. When the fat is hot, place a tortilla in the pan and fold it in half. Using tongs, turn it a few times until it just begins to get crisp. Remove it from the pan and place it on a paper towel to absorb excess fat. Add another tortilla to the pan and repeat.

Before frying the taco shells, I made a filling and salsa. For the filling I cooked some ground organic range fed beef, onions, green pepper, garlic and a Habanero pepper.

For the salsa, I diced a tomato, and chopped an onion and some garlic and fresh cilantro and placed them into a saucepan with a little cumin. After this simmered for about 15 minutes I chopped a dried Jalepeno and added it. Another 5 minutes of simmering and then I let it cool.

To assemble your taco put some filling in the shell, and sprinkle on some chopped lettuce and some grated cheese. Add a spoonful of salsa and enjoy! -G.H.