Grain Update

So a few weeks ago I posted about ordering Ethiopian Blue Tinge wheat from Canada. I put my Pay Pal order through and a few days later it was refunded back to me. Homeland security, can't get that suspicious Canadian grain. I don't know why I didn't think about that in the first place. I guess I was just excited. :) Oh my life, to be excited about grains! Clearly aging here.
I let it sit for a bit, and then ordered Melange and Einkorn wheat from GrowSeed.org. I think we're going to plant it in the spring, even though I've been reading about winter planting still being a viable option. GrowSeed will have Ethiopian wheat available in the spring.

I'm feeling seasonally where I should. That is, ready to hibernate. I planted our garlic for next summer a few days ago. My daughter and I tore up the last of the tomato plants and jumped on the compost pile to squash it down. I still have some hearty greens and brussel sprouts carrying on out there, but really, I feel D-O-N-E with the garden.

The freezer is packed with veg and meat, the shelves are full with jars of various fruits, vegetables, soups and pickles. I have loads of dried apples, tomatoes and herbs. Overall, feeling really proud of what we've accomplished this growing season. Not as pessimistic as I appeared a few posts ago. I think we'll get through the winter well on the food we've grown and/or bought locally. Supplies will definitely be diminished by March, but that's all right for our first year.

I'm also back in the bread making groove again, now that the Michigan humidity has subsided and bread rises again.

We're working on plans for a chicken coop at my brother's place, and that needs to be done sooner rather than later. I'd still like to bring some hen ladies to our house here, but there's so much going on.
My great husband has been working on cars for the last few weeks, so we've had to put-off carpentry and new construction. We'll see if we get around to it.
The hens are molting right now anyway, probably best not to mess with them right now.
I've got a lot of respect for transitions of any kind!

Make Room in the Freezer, Folks

Last week I was doing a prenatal with a homeschooling Mama. She's a lovely woman, a repeat client who has sweet children. She told me about their 12 year old son, who raised a hog all on his own so that when it came time to slaughter, they could donate all the meat to the Hope Clinic food bank. Sweet kid.
They also raised two other hogs for themselves and family. They hadn't done it before, but certainly have the land to do so. All in all, the project worked beautifully and they raised fat, healthy hogs. She admitted she was a little sad to see them go.
I told her that if she ever raised more hogs in the future, I'd definitely be interested in buying half of one. She told me that unfortunately, all the pork was spoken for. Oh well...
It's nice buying meat from people we know. Our beef came from a midwife friend in the middle of the state. Our lamb came from my business partner's sister, and our chickens are at our 3 family co-op farm.
Anytime we'd have pork, we'd buy it at the Farmer's Market. But it's expensive when you buy it single portion like that, so I wouldn't do it often.

Over the weekend I was in Traverse City for the Midwives Alliance of North America annual conference.
It was a crazy, hectic weekend, but a good one. At any rate, I got a phone call during a session I was recording on Friday morning from a my client. I recognized the number and went out into the hall to answer, hoping she was okay. (All of our clients knew we were at the conference, we also had a back up midwife back home still on call for anyone who needed a midwife.) I answered my phone in a near whisper, afraid to hear worrisome concerns about miscarriage or something along those lines. Instead, I heard: Great news! I have half a hog available in you want it!
Phew! and Yes!
She gave me a few details and said she'd call later in the day with more details and information about the butcher so that I could order the cuts as specified.
That second phone call came during a Q&A panel with Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein from The Business of Being Born inside Michael Moore's State Theater in downtown Traverse (which is lovely and reminds one of Ann Arbor's State Theater). I stepped out into the lobby to talk to the butcher on my cell, whispering again and taking notes on the back of a ticket stub.
The butcher's wife was super sweet. We talked for at least a half hour. She held my hand through the whole process, discussing the costs between sausage patty and links (brats or breakfast) what roasts I'd have to sacrifice to sausage making, how many pounds of this or that and how much the smoking process costs. I got off the phone happily knowing that in a week, 110 pounds of pork will have to be picked up in Assumption, Ohio (I'm sure that's outside of the 100 Mile mark for eating local, but the hog itself was raised about 30 miles from here.)Then I joined my friend back in the theater. We decided to leave the Q&A in favor of walking the drag in Traverse, getting coffees and loitering lazily in a coffee shop for 2 hours.

One definitely gets over-saturated with birth at a midwifery conference. I sadly realized that my only vacation this year, the only time to truly be off-call and not be obsessive with my cell phone, was spent around 250+ other midwives talking about birth and scary legislation issues. Not so relaxing.
At least I got a half a hog out of it, and a nice conference tshirt from our own VG Kids.

Books I've Enjoyed This Summer

A mix of homesteading, food preserving, the female body and sex. Here's my summer reading list.

The Joy of Pickling, It must be the large percentage of Polish girl in me, but I really love pickled foods.

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, Where would me, my canning buddy husband and the jars be without this bible?

Woman, an Intimate Geography, This woman is a prose/poetry writer and a scientist, so the writing is strangely technical and scientific but flowery and sometimes, a little too much...but the book was fascinating and it's long over due to my pal Amy who loaned it to me months ago. Her husband gave it to her for Mother's Day, what a cool gift.

Bonk, The Coupling of Science and Sex, this book is written by Mary Roach who wrote that book STIFF (about dead bodies and forensic work, I believe--I've not read that one). She's a very witty lady and the book was hilarious and interesting. You get a sense of how funding for sex research has ebbed and flowed over the years depending on who is in political office and how conservative the country happens to be. And that's creepy.

Storey's Basic Country Skills, This is an awesome reference book for any novice homesteader, Urban or otherwise. There are so many things to look up or learn about in this book! Seriously, you can learn how to do everything from start vegetable seedlings to butcher and dress a hog (and I'm not talking motorcycles). The Ypsiville Hysterical Committee might not like that in my back yard, but it would be terribly historical.

Alex Stewart, Portrait of a Pioneer, Just go get a copy. It's great. Alex Stewart was considered one of the last living pioneers. He continued to live as he always had until the end-- very, very simply and happily.

Time to get the oldest up for school.
Let me know what great books you've read this summer!

Contraband and Root Vegetables

Last week, we had a plague sweep through the house. My husband and daughter seemed to only get the lightest version of it, while my son had a good 12 hours of being sick and I was literally knocked off my butt for a good 3 days. In the middle of that, we had to help our daughter put together an enormous school project about fossil insects (which is fine, but she left ALL her notes at school the night before the project was due, leaving us to totally wing it from memory as we put together the big poster board). We also had a little head lice scare, which lead me to do countless loads of laundry in scalding hot water while treating my daughter's head with Cetaphil and a hairdryer while swooning about with a 102 temperature. It sucked, people. And I'm fully aware of my whining. I'm done now.

At the end of the plague week, our son, age 4, asked me for a banana at bedtime. Even though we started eating truly local June 1st, I stopped buying tropical fruit over a year ago. I explained to him that we didn't have any bananas. He said, "But we haven't had any bananas in such a long, long time!"
I made him a jam sandwich and put him to bed.
The next day he asked for bananas again. And then again, and again. Such a strange request! My midwife partner pointed out that perhaps he needed potassium after being so sick and was asking for what his body was craving. Good point.
So later in the day, after dropping my daughter off at a friend's house (they had the plague the previous week), I surprised little E by taking him to Kroger's and buying 5 yellow bananas. You would have thought I bought a box of Ben & Jerry's and gave him a spoon to dig in. Woo hoo! Mama can show a kid a good time! He ate two bananas and I had one, sitting in the car of Kroger's parking lot. It felt like an exciting date of sorts. Here's to potassium and secret bananas...

In other news, I "harvested" my ahem, 5 sweet potato plants since we've had some chilly nights lately. They were beautiful and well-formed and had a gorgeous red skin on them. I also found a few left-over wee carrots and potatoes to dig up. After everything was pulled up, I realized I had a big enough harvest for...that night's dinner. So we had roasted sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and a few white potatoes, all from our garden along with (our) chicken and salsa verde (also from our garden). It was a delicious meal and it was so pleasing to eat such visually lovely food.