I just figured out how to make proper squeeky cheese curds -- of course unheard of here -- so as soon as i've lost the target 20lbs and am off this stinking sucky diet, I will be eating POUTINE! Hooray!
So here's how to make Squeaky Cheese Curds:
heat a couple of gallons of milk (I did a batch with 12litres, and made most into cheese but kept about 1/3 of it aside for this experiment ) to 38 degrees (celcius), add the appropriate amount of rennet (depending on how much milk and depending on your rennet) and leave until the curd forms, about 30 minutes.
Cut the curd (just google instructions on how to cut curd) in to squares about 2cm, heat slowly up to 60 degrees stirring constantly -- its the stirring combined with the heat that keeps the curd pieces separate and allows a little crust to form on each piece for the squeaky effect.
Allow to cool down, drain the curds and run hot water over will stirring them in the strainer.
Salt and serve...yummmm! Nice and squeaky, they feel and taste just like curds should, but I haven't tried with the fries and gravy yet, so don't know if they will melt right...we'll just have to see!!
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Gino has two cows...
OK, so here's a little math problem that would be a nice one for Mia's fourth grade class:
Gino has two cows. One excellent dairy cow can make as much as 30litres of milk a day. In the super market, "fresh" milk costs about euro 1.60 per litre. If Gino sold his milk to local families at 1 euro per litre, (a nice savings for the families, and their milk is much better and much fresher than the supermarket milk), he would earn approximately how much per month? If the wholesale buyers give him 20 to 30 cents per litre, how many more cows does he need to make the same amount of money?
Milking each cow takes about 40 minutes a day if he does it by hand and is really good at it. Putting the milk in bottles and delivering it from the back of his little 50cc electric cart takes about one hour a day. So how much does Gino earn per hour for his two cows?
That's the math question. The real question, is why is nobody doing it? Gino earns about 1800 euros a month for a bit more than 2 hours of work a day. A factory worker here earns about 1200 euros a month for 9 hours a day of shift work. And yet I can't think of a single farmer that lives with only a few cows.
(Obviously there are too many risks involved in only two cows -- if one gets ill, you're sunk. But 4 cows or even 8 and that's loads to have extras for a rainy day and cover for any sickly ones, and with a milking machine 8 cows are milked in no time at all, and this is for the purposes of the argument anyway!)
But even the smallest of dairy farmers has at least 40 or 50 animals. What's missing?? The direct link between the producer and the consumer is missing. Heh, the missing link!
Antonella's brother-in-law has a Kiwi farm (true story, not like gino!). Recently, he's getting as little as 10 cents per kg. Today the national average retail price for kiwis in season (november) is about euro 1.80 per kg . In between the farmer and me, 1.70 cents has been absorbed into the unproductive part of "the system". (How on earth the farmers can live on 10cents a kg is beyond me, and if it continues, there will be revolutions. Actually, there already are in Tunisia). How happy I would be, and the farmer too, to go straight to him and pay him 1 euro a kg, hey even 1.50! for his kiwis. I save, and he earns appropriate money for his work and production.
And if he is earning 1 euro a kg -- or even 1.50 -- then he has no need to produce quantity. No need to pump chemical fertilizers into his plants because he must get maximum production at all times. No need to continually overwork the land. No need for drastic pesticides. here's another good problem; at 1 euro per kg, how many kgs does the farmer need to produce to make a decent income? How many kgs fewer is that than those he needs to produce at 10 cents per kg? And if he has to produce fewer kiwis, he's left with more spare time...more than enough to take his kiwis to market or to his neighbours and sell them himself.
The Kiwis is an exaggerated example, but this situation is the norm, not the exception -- this situation is systematic. Producer gets 40c per kg for Clementines, I pay 2.25. 8cents per kg for Zucchini, I pay 1 euro. Dairy farmer gets 20c per litre for milk, I pay 1.60... The lions share of the money in our exchanges for food products is not going to those who make it, but to those who control its movement.
The REALLY GREAT thing about this is that the solution is easy, its legal, it doesn't involve any extra work, no revolutions and no suffering on anyone's part, in fact it brings a significant increase in quality of life and the food you eat -- JUST BUY LOCAL!! Go to the farmers market, get to know them, buy your produce from the farmer directly. There's no law against it (well, except for the stupid raw milk thing in Canada, that's just dumb. You can buy raw meat, and that's a whole lot more dangerous).
You pay less money, get better fresher produce, which is also more nutritious because in season, and less dangerous because if produced in small local production its much less likely that scary pesticides and fertilizers have been used. No packaging, no styrofoam trays, no cellophane wrappers, no plastic containers. No transport, so no diesel fumes poisoning the air.
Down side is less choice -- but how much choice do you really need? And here's the thing...why on earth would you want tomatoes or strawberries in february. Out of season vegetables are YUCKY! (and much less nutritious)
And you are left with lots of surplus in your food budget to be able to pay the actual worth of a few special imported items. If you pay 20% less for 90% of your food consumption, you have saved enough money to be able to pay a hefty premium for special imported items. Pay 4 euros a kg for fair trade bio bananas, and you know you're getting quality without someone else suffering for your choice. So the stuff that you can't live without, but just doesn't grow locally -- that stuff we're willing to pay the middle men for, provided they are paying the farmers in the first place. So not even the middle man suffers (much) he still has a job, only his job is providing us with products that add value, not ripping us off from every side of the spectrum.
If there are no local farmers markets, CSA (Community supported agriculture -- GAS in italian) groups are also an excellent way to get food direct from the producer, save money and increase quality while still maintaining a good deal of choice.
Humph, that's me done on the soap box for today! And in other news...we go to sign for the mortgage tomorrow! We should complete on the little farm by next week, yahooo!
Gino has two cows. One excellent dairy cow can make as much as 30litres of milk a day. In the super market, "fresh" milk costs about euro 1.60 per litre. If Gino sold his milk to local families at 1 euro per litre, (a nice savings for the families, and their milk is much better and much fresher than the supermarket milk), he would earn approximately how much per month? If the wholesale buyers give him 20 to 30 cents per litre, how many more cows does he need to make the same amount of money?
Milking each cow takes about 40 minutes a day if he does it by hand and is really good at it. Putting the milk in bottles and delivering it from the back of his little 50cc electric cart takes about one hour a day. So how much does Gino earn per hour for his two cows?
That's the math question. The real question, is why is nobody doing it? Gino earns about 1800 euros a month for a bit more than 2 hours of work a day. A factory worker here earns about 1200 euros a month for 9 hours a day of shift work. And yet I can't think of a single farmer that lives with only a few cows.
(Obviously there are too many risks involved in only two cows -- if one gets ill, you're sunk. But 4 cows or even 8 and that's loads to have extras for a rainy day and cover for any sickly ones, and with a milking machine 8 cows are milked in no time at all, and this is for the purposes of the argument anyway!)
But even the smallest of dairy farmers has at least 40 or 50 animals. What's missing?? The direct link between the producer and the consumer is missing. Heh, the missing link!
Antonella's brother-in-law has a Kiwi farm (true story, not like gino!). Recently, he's getting as little as 10 cents per kg. Today the national average retail price for kiwis in season (november) is about euro 1.80 per kg . In between the farmer and me, 1.70 cents has been absorbed into the unproductive part of "the system". (How on earth the farmers can live on 10cents a kg is beyond me, and if it continues, there will be revolutions. Actually, there already are in Tunisia). How happy I would be, and the farmer too, to go straight to him and pay him 1 euro a kg, hey even 1.50! for his kiwis. I save, and he earns appropriate money for his work and production.
And if he is earning 1 euro a kg -- or even 1.50 -- then he has no need to produce quantity. No need to pump chemical fertilizers into his plants because he must get maximum production at all times. No need to continually overwork the land. No need for drastic pesticides. here's another good problem; at 1 euro per kg, how many kgs does the farmer need to produce to make a decent income? How many kgs fewer is that than those he needs to produce at 10 cents per kg? And if he has to produce fewer kiwis, he's left with more spare time...more than enough to take his kiwis to market or to his neighbours and sell them himself.
The Kiwis is an exaggerated example, but this situation is the norm, not the exception -- this situation is systematic. Producer gets 40c per kg for Clementines, I pay 2.25. 8cents per kg for Zucchini, I pay 1 euro. Dairy farmer gets 20c per litre for milk, I pay 1.60... The lions share of the money in our exchanges for food products is not going to those who make it, but to those who control its movement.
The REALLY GREAT thing about this is that the solution is easy, its legal, it doesn't involve any extra work, no revolutions and no suffering on anyone's part, in fact it brings a significant increase in quality of life and the food you eat -- JUST BUY LOCAL!! Go to the farmers market, get to know them, buy your produce from the farmer directly. There's no law against it (well, except for the stupid raw milk thing in Canada, that's just dumb. You can buy raw meat, and that's a whole lot more dangerous).
You pay less money, get better fresher produce, which is also more nutritious because in season, and less dangerous because if produced in small local production its much less likely that scary pesticides and fertilizers have been used. No packaging, no styrofoam trays, no cellophane wrappers, no plastic containers. No transport, so no diesel fumes poisoning the air.
Down side is less choice -- but how much choice do you really need? And here's the thing...why on earth would you want tomatoes or strawberries in february. Out of season vegetables are YUCKY! (and much less nutritious)
And you are left with lots of surplus in your food budget to be able to pay the actual worth of a few special imported items. If you pay 20% less for 90% of your food consumption, you have saved enough money to be able to pay a hefty premium for special imported items. Pay 4 euros a kg for fair trade bio bananas, and you know you're getting quality without someone else suffering for your choice. So the stuff that you can't live without, but just doesn't grow locally -- that stuff we're willing to pay the middle men for, provided they are paying the farmers in the first place. So not even the middle man suffers (much) he still has a job, only his job is providing us with products that add value, not ripping us off from every side of the spectrum.
If there are no local farmers markets, CSA (Community supported agriculture -- GAS in italian) groups are also an excellent way to get food direct from the producer, save money and increase quality while still maintaining a good deal of choice.
Humph, that's me done on the soap box for today! And in other news...we go to sign for the mortgage tomorrow! We should complete on the little farm by next week, yahooo!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
What's better than a farm???
Two Farms!
Yes, two farms! We have pretty much concluded our exhaustive search of the area we've chosen -- we even knocked on doors and left letters in people's mail boxes "hey, wanna sell this??", and have seen just about everything on offer, and nothing, on its own, was absolutely perfect.
But we have the perfect solution in combining two different properties -- one is ex-parkland where the zoning was changed to allow for only small non-intensive farming just last month, big and beautiful and completely untouched. The other is a small weekend retreat that has been cultivated lovingly for years, and has an orchard that makes my knees go weak. (little farm is the one in all the photos)
The little farm is about 1.5 acres, (6500sqm) and has a tiny little house with a big fireplace in the main room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, clean clear spring water creek, a small section of woods on a slope (goat heaven, but not for too many of them!), and mature fruit trees that are just amazing. The previous owner was a real fruit gardening fanatic, and knew just what to do to make strong healthy trees. There are pears, apples (4 or 5 different types), plums (about 4 different types), figs, cherries (sour and red), grapes, hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts -- there are so many chestnuts that in the fall you couldn't see the ground for all the chestnut casings, you have to plod through them about 3 or 4 deep...wow! It is on the south facing slope of a beautiful valley just above Sabbio Chiese, about 3km from the town centre and 2.5 from Grandpa Angelo's house and restaurant.
The big farm is 8 acres (about 30,000sqm) about 2km on the other side of town from the little farm (so they are about 5km apart), and the school is an easy 2km bike ride away. That's, like, closer than the YMCA camp from my house in Dunrobin...easy peasy! Actually, I have visions of taking the kids to school in a cart pulled by a donkey with a straw hat with a flower in it. Every kid needs a donkey with a hat, don't you think? It backs on to a public park, and most of the land around is owned by the town and restricted against building or development, except for one neighbour who also raises goats and is totally happy that we are coming and we can pasture our herds together, take alternate days off!
The great thing is that the land is completely empty, a tabularasa that we can use to build our dream precisely to our specifications. The sucky thing about it is that the land is completely empty, we have to build everything from scratch and there are no plants to inherit, no fruit, no nuts, the ones that take a good 20 years before they start really producing. But that's OK, cause we have the other farm! So we have a space that we can use to start off with, big enough for 50 chickens or so, a couple of goats, and all our fruit and veg, but not much else. Then, in the meantime, we build the homestead exactly as we want it to be, taking into account all of the new research and technology to build something that fully realises the ideas of permaculture. Probably about 2 years until we can move in...
The great thing about having the park nearby is that is brings lots of people around -- we won't have to lug all our cheeses to market on saturdays, because the people will come to us...they will be at the park anyway! I picture a Salt Spring Island kind of scene, a handpainted sign saying "come get your fresh organic eggs and goat cheeses, just 50m up the road".
And the great thing about the surrounding land being all public is that it is open for use of all residents, unfenced but tended, so we can pasture our goats there and the town council thanks us for helping to keep the undergrowth clear and the land fertile. The town is also interested in maybe doing some didactic activities with the local schools, teaching about permaculture and local varieties of plants and animals.
Now we are just waiting for the bank to come through with the money, and then we are off and running! And we just got the news today, the mortgage was approved -- we can get started and get building without selling the house first, woohooo!
Sorry, its been ages since the last post, and we have been very busy -- mostly with regular work, and a long overdue upgrading to new software that took over a month of concentrated work, ugh! But now that its done, and now that the bank money is here, we will get started in earnest and there will be more regular Blog posts.
There are 15 eggs of uncertain origin in the incubator that should hatch on friday...but I'm not counting! So friday or saturday i will hopefully have tales to tell of newborn chicks!
Happy new year everyone!!
Yes, two farms! We have pretty much concluded our exhaustive search of the area we've chosen -- we even knocked on doors and left letters in people's mail boxes "hey, wanna sell this??", and have seen just about everything on offer, and nothing, on its own, was absolutely perfect.
The little farm is about 1.5 acres, (6500sqm) and has a tiny little house with a big fireplace in the main room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, clean clear spring water creek, a small section of woods on a slope (goat heaven, but not for too many of them!), and mature fruit trees that are just amazing. The previous owner was a real fruit gardening fanatic, and knew just what to do to make strong healthy trees. There are pears, apples (4 or 5 different types), plums (about 4 different types), figs, cherries (sour and red), grapes, hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts -- there are so many chestnuts that in the fall you couldn't see the ground for all the chestnut casings, you have to plod through them about 3 or 4 deep...wow! It is on the south facing slope of a beautiful valley just above Sabbio Chiese, about 3km from the town centre and 2.5 from Grandpa Angelo's house and restaurant.
The big farm is 8 acres (about 30,000sqm) about 2km on the other side of town from the little farm (so they are about 5km apart), and the school is an easy 2km bike ride away. That's, like, closer than the YMCA camp from my house in Dunrobin...easy peasy! Actually, I have visions of taking the kids to school in a cart pulled by a donkey with a straw hat with a flower in it. Every kid needs a donkey with a hat, don't you think? It backs on to a public park, and most of the land around is owned by the town and restricted against building or development, except for one neighbour who also raises goats and is totally happy that we are coming and we can pasture our herds together, take alternate days off!The land itself is beautiful. Mostly flat with some gently sloping areas and a cliff or two dropping down. A river runs through it, big enough to have a name (Its called the "Reale") and to think seriously about putting in a little water mill, but small enough that most Canadians would call it a "crick" rather than a river. The water from the river comes straight from Vallio Terme on the mountain above and behind us, a famous spring that sells its water for gobs per bottle (and has a health farm resort based on the spring where a 20 minute massage costs 120 euros. Ack!) And we get it for free! With all that running water, we will definitely be farming fish as well as the rest of the usual.
The great thing is that the land is completely empty, a tabularasa that we can use to build our dream precisely to our specifications. The sucky thing about it is that the land is completely empty, we have to build everything from scratch and there are no plants to inherit, no fruit, no nuts, the ones that take a good 20 years before they start really producing. But that's OK, cause we have the other farm! So we have a space that we can use to start off with, big enough for 50 chickens or so, a couple of goats, and all our fruit and veg, but not much else. Then, in the meantime, we build the homestead exactly as we want it to be, taking into account all of the new research and technology to build something that fully realises the ideas of permaculture. Probably about 2 years until we can move in...
The great thing about having the park nearby is that is brings lots of people around -- we won't have to lug all our cheeses to market on saturdays, because the people will come to us...they will be at the park anyway! I picture a Salt Spring Island kind of scene, a handpainted sign saying "come get your fresh organic eggs and goat cheeses, just 50m up the road".
And the great thing about the surrounding land being all public is that it is open for use of all residents, unfenced but tended, so we can pasture our goats there and the town council thanks us for helping to keep the undergrowth clear and the land fertile. The town is also interested in maybe doing some didactic activities with the local schools, teaching about permaculture and local varieties of plants and animals.
Now we are just waiting for the bank to come through with the money, and then we are off and running! And we just got the news today, the mortgage was approved -- we can get started and get building without selling the house first, woohooo!
Sorry, its been ages since the last post, and we have been very busy -- mostly with regular work, and a long overdue upgrading to new software that took over a month of concentrated work, ugh! But now that its done, and now that the bank money is here, we will get started in earnest and there will be more regular Blog posts.
There are 15 eggs of uncertain origin in the incubator that should hatch on friday...but I'm not counting! So friday or saturday i will hopefully have tales to tell of newborn chicks!
Happy new year everyone!!
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