Fruit tree inventory...a moment of boasting,sorry!

we've done the full count of the fruit at the little farm and catalogued it for registering with the farmer's association, and I just can't resist a moment to be proud of our new place...

here's the inventory -- total number of trees is about 92, give or take because the chestnuts are just so many we didn't count them precisely.  The bold italic number is how many total trees per type, and the column of numbers to the right of that is the approximate age of each individual tree

Tree	Total no per	estimated age of each tree
Apple, various types	11	20	15	5	15	20	50	20	10	30	30	15
pear, Various types	5	20	5	5	5	10
Figs, various types	8	20	20	20	20	10	1	1	1
Walnut	8	15	15	20	30	20	30	15	30
Plum, various types	10	15	15	10	50	15	30	15	10	10	10
peach	2	10	5
Cherry, various types	7	50	15	15	50	50	30	30
Susine (plum cousin)	5	50	20	30	20	30
Nespolo (local fruit)	1	15
Heritage Apples	2	50	50
Almond	1	50
Marron Chestnut	1	100
Chestnut	25	(approximate number, there is a wood full of them, all varying ages)
Grapes	6	15

Yummmmmm!!  Gab has been approached already by the heads of two different CSAs who want to buy our excess fruit...with all those trees, I'm thinking there will be quite a bit of excess!

We picked up the Ape today, and now have farmer wheels, woohoo!

A day in the life of a raw milk lover

Raw milk RULES.  If harvested and stored hygienically, from healthy, well fed and well kept cows,  it is perfectly safe.  And when it comes raw, it comes with all the components for making every type of dairy product.  When its sterilized, the good bacteria go with the bad, and it is no longer usable for anything but drinking (unless you add bacteria from another source).  

Italy has among the most intense food hygiene regulations in the world -- the UK reacted to BSE after 20,000 or so infected beasts were confirmed.  Germany and france reacted at around 4,000 or more.  Italy was freaking out with a country wide beef on the bone ban instantly without debate over just 2 infected cows.   Angelo had to pay a fine of 2,000 euros because the sanitary ceramic tile in his kitchen was only 2m high up the wall instead of 2.12m.  Food delivery is not the norm because the regulations for carrying food are so strict -- pizza guy on a motor scooter is not so easy here, so mostly people make do with take away.  And yet raw milk is available in every community, large or small, from automatic dispensers that fulfill the sanitary requirments for safety.  Raw milk is NOT illegal in Canada because it is hazardous -- in the 30s, without consistent refrigeration and with little public information on germs and hygiene, maybe.  But not anymore.

So here is what I do once a week.  I go to the raw milk dispenser just down the hill in Salo.  Every morning at about 6am, after the morning milking, the farmer brings the milk -- he removes the leftover old milk, (which is then pasteurized, bottled and sold to the supermarkets -- yes, you pay more for the seconds) sanitizes the tank, and places the new milk.  The new milk stays at perfect temperature, perfectly safe and sanitary.

I buy 20litres of milk from the distributor, and at 1 euro per litre instead of 1.60 from the supermarket, and the farmer gets all of that money.  If I went all the way to Gavardo, closer to the farmer (5km away), the dispenser costs only 60c per litre.

5 litres of my milk goes into the fridge for fresh consumption.  5 litres goes into the pot for processing into yogurt and soft cheese, and 10 litres goes into the pot for processing "aging" cheese.  I get 5l of milk to drink, 3l of yogurt to eat, 1 pot of cottage cheese and 1 pot of soft spreadable cheese, and 2 harder cheeses for slicing, grating, and eating just like that.  Oh, and with no packaging to throw away.

Making yogurt and cheese with nothing but milk:
(ever wonder how they made cheese before all this wonderful and poisonous factory farming? )
With raw milk, you can use the bacteria in the milk itself for all of these processes, eliminating the need for adding yogurt bacterias or rennet or other assistants to the coagulation -- the bacteria does the work itself.  To do this, you first need to make "latte inesto", or inocculated milk.  Bring the milk to 61 degrees.  This kills off the bacteria that you don't want, and leaves the bacteria that you do want -- the thermophyllics (or resistant to heat) stay, and these are the base of all italian cheeses.  If you heat any more, you will start to pasteurize and lose the good bacteria as well.

Allow the milk to cool just to 40 degrees, then isolate it (wrap in a towel or blanket) to keep the warmth in and store in a warm place overnight -- I use the oven with the light on.  10 hours later you will have yogurt, with no other ingredients at all.  The consistency is kind of custard-like. (and I prefer pudding like, so I usually make it with added bacterial culture after pasteurizing, as below).  You can eat this like yogurt, put it in the fridge and it will solidify more, but the consistency is not what we are used too.  If you take this yogurt and simply heat it until it separates, you get cheese.  The hotter you heat it, the bigger and firmer the kibblets of cheese, so the more like cottage cheese.  If you heat it just hot enough that it separates, you get a softer spreadable cheese.  Once separated, spoon into a cheesecloth lined collander to drain, and hang for a few hours.  The longer it hangs, the drier and harder the cheese product.  lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge.

Making yogurt and cheese with pasteurized milk and added bacteria 
For the sad Canadian readers under the regime of the evil milk marketing board (doesn't it just make you think of big steely cavernous government buildings a la orwell or clockwork orange? but maybe with cows behind the clerks wickets...), alas the above is not possible.

But also, for yogurt in the pudding consistency that i like, the yogurt has to be pasteurized first, so you have a clean slate, and then you add only the bacteria you want to grow in the milk.  I use greek yogurt with live bacteria. It makes nice thick and creamy yogurt.  Then, of course, once you have the mother batch, you can use your own yogurt to make the next batch.  It will eventually weaken (yogurt inbreeding...) and you will need to add fresh, but it will go for a few rounds.

To pasteurize raw milk, I bring it to 71 degrees C and there it stays for 30 seconds before removing from the fire.  For yogurt, do the same as described above, let cool to 40 degrees, then add your live yogurt bacteria (for 5 litres, I add about 1l of greek yogurt), then isolate with a towel and keep warm overnight in the lighted closed oven.

With the resultant yogurt the next morning, again you can make cottage cheese and soft cheese just by heating it, as described for the raw milk process above.

Making hard(er) cheese with either raw or pasteurised milk
To make a cheese you can slice rather than spread, you really do need rennet.  Without rennet, you can just up the heat for your overnight bucket of yogurt -- put the oven on at 55 degrees -- then next morning drain in a cheese mould basket for a day, and you will have a decent sliceable cheese without rennet, but its not ideal.

For traditional farmhouse italian cheese, heat the milk to 38 degrees, add the right portion of rennet (depends on the type of rennet and how much milk.  leave 40 minutes.  Cut the curd.  heat to 45 degrees.  let sit for 5 minutes. Spoon curd into cheese mould baskets and leave drain for about 5 hours.  Turn out onto a cheese board, and leave to air dry, turning every day, for about a week to 10 days.  you can rub salt into the outside of the cheese on the second day.  Then just keep in a cool dry place, turning every few days, until you want to eat it.  If mould forms outside, just brush/scrub it off.

The canadian controversy over raw milk
Thanks to my mom for the link to this article that got me out and defending raw milk.  The comments after the article are all very interesting.
 http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/24/MilkWarriors/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=240111,

Signing off because we are taking a roasted chicken up to the little farm for a picnic and some leaf raking and jumping.  Gab's been up all week pruning and cutting paths in the woods and generally winter maintenance.  next week we should get our load of shit to spread in the orchard, yahoo!  Also next week the pick-up comes (its a three wheeled piaggio Ape Max...too cool!  Ours is white) and the specialist will come up to see about hooking up the electricity and setting up a well and the water tanks.

I can have POUTINE!! YAYAYAY

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!!

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!

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 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!!

Autumn recipes

There's been quite a gap in posts -- I was hoping the next post would be all about our new farm and how we found it and how gorgeous it is and when we get to move in etc.  Nope, not to be.  Its not as easy as all that!  We've found a few places, but they've all fallen through for one reason or another (one was snatched away from us, after it should have been ours, by a guy willing to pay cash in the black...that so sucked!) so we just keep on looking. And now I'm resigned to the search taking its time, I can't wait until we have a farm to make the next post!

But, you don't need a farm to eat local all year round, though.  I don't have my farm yet, but lots of other folks have theirs, and the abundant harvests of late summer and autumn make for cheap and plentiful veggies and fruits by the case or by the crate, so now i trawl the farmers markets looking for good excess harvest deals in bulk.

I was really expecting the canning and preserving and such to be a horrid nightmare of work and sweat and tomato peels in everything, but actually its lots of fun.  I've so far put up 20kg of tomatoes, 11kg of apples, and 6kg of figs.  And its so satisfying to see the shelf in the cellar fill up with jars of delicious fresh local and cheap food that I made myself and that will sustain us through the winter.  Well, its not anywhere near enough to sustain us through the winter, but its a start!

To can tomatoes, boil them first, about one minute.  Then dump them in a sink full of cold cold water, and the peels just slip right off.  The flesh kind of pops out of the skin, easy peasy.  Then cut them in chunks and heat to boiling. Boil for about 3 minutes, then put them in jars.  Make sure the mouth is clean, and twist on the lids. At this point the recipes differ -- most people I know turn them upside down, and the air is pushed out and the seal pops in as the jar cools down.  This is usually enough for tomatoes because they are pretty acidic, but not all tomatoes are acidic enough, so it could be risky.  You could add citric acid to bring up the acidity if you are not sure how acid they are, or you could proceed with the totally sure hot water bath canning method instead of turning them upside down.  Plop the jars into a canner with water covering them by at least a couple of centimeters over the lid, then boil continuously for about 40 minutes.  Ugh, that's a bit of a pain, but its not actually work, just waiting.  John Seymour has an alternative method using the oven instead of the boiling water, but I haven't tried that yet, and honestly i find it a bit scary...

For the apples, I made half into apple sauce and the other half into apple jam.  I was going to make jelly, and then I read the recipe...ugh!  you have to let it drain all night in a jelly bag, that's a pain in the butt!  And I like jam better anyway!  The apple sauce is really easy, just peel, core and section the apples (this would be hard without an apple corer sectioner thingy, I bought one right away before starting!), then cook 'em.  A bit of water in the bottom of the pot so they don't stick, and cook 'em till they're soft.  Then if you like it fine, whizz 'em or put them through a mill, but i like it chunky, so just squish with a potato masher.  Then can as with the tomatoes.  Apples are more acidic than tomatoes, so the upside down should work better, but I boiled em in the canner for 40 minutes just to be safe.

The jam was just 4kg cored, peeled, sectioned apples cooked with 1kg of sugar and 200gms of brown sugar, a big shake of cinnamon, and cook and cook and cook.  I used a candy thermometer and brought it over 200f (it will splat everywhere, so I used a splatter guard cover thingie -- dishtowel works too, but is a bit cumbersome), then in the jars and upside down, and away it went.  I like to use less sugar in my jam, and find that, depending on the fruit, I can substitute cooking time for sugar and pectin.  If I cook it longer and hotter, it boils down and thickens enough anyway, even with little sugar and no added pectin.  Not that there's anything wrong with pectin -- its a naturally occuring thing, not an icky chemical additive, i just have trouble finding it here so do without.

Now its coming up on pumpkin time, so I'm getting ready for soups and pies.  We made a huge batch of pumpkin gnocchi this weekend, deeeeelicious!  I prepare pumpkin puree by baking the pumpkin until its good and soft, then i just scoop it out, and its ready to use or put in plastic bags in the freezer.

Gab's off to see another property this afternoon, so still keeping optimistic, but in the meantime, there's still plenty to learn and do and experiment with...all will come in its own good time!

Cat in the Hen House

Guess what??  Turns out cats like to chase chickens.  Who'd a thunk it?

Only a day after FB's first escape, I took Mirco back to look at them and ALL the chickens were missing.  AAGH!  We went off searching for them, and found all but fat bastard...the only one that couldn't fly...coincidence?  We're hoping so.  There were no feathers around, anyway.  We like to imagine him in the woods, re-establishing the wild chicken population.

Next day again, they all flew the coop...but this time we heard a major commotion first and saw the cat in hunting stance in the hedge.  Cat got hosed, chickens caught.  We thought she learned her lesson, but no -- two days later, another cat attack and alpacino ended up in the swimming pool.  Gab was right there and picked him out before he got waterlogged, and the cat got hosed again.

A couple of days without incident, and then the neighbour brought me Alpha and Beta, who had wandered into her hedge.  Then again the next day: this time we could only find Alpha, Beta and Al...Annie was missing. We searched for her everywhere, high and low, and didn't find her until Gab cleaned the pool that evening...in the filter skimmer.  First casualty.  (Picture shows Al and Beta)

And that was that -- next day was Friday, and Gab, Mia and Raff went back to the farmers market. They came home with a beautiful rooster, a grown bantam hen, a fully grown normal egg layer, and a beautiful little "pheonix" chicken.  Its been fascinating watching them integrate and establish their relationships and pecking order.

The rooster is called Mr. President 'cause he's more beautiful than he is smart, and he likes the ladies.  And we had just seen AlBorosie in concert and had been singing the song for a few days straight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tl1G995uPE.  His wife, the white broody bantam with black tail, is of course Mrs. President.  The phoenix is Fawkes (what else could we have called her?).  And the layer is just "ovaiola". In the picture:  Mr & Mrs President, Ovaiola (the big brown hen) and Beta.

Mr. President has taken to putting the girls to bed (we are having our doubts about Al...maybe he's a girl...no spurs, and no fighting with the Prez yet) and then he roosts outside up high in the trees behind the fence.  Drama yesterday morning, when in classic politician style, Mr President swooped down from his high perch and landed on the wrong side of the fence.  He was in a panic, trying to reach his ladies, crying all around.  Too stupid to climb back up and try again, not creative enough to use the ramp Gab put for him, and too freaked out to let gab catch him, Gab eventually cut a hole in the fence and put bread by the hole.  He had one direction only, straight ahead!  Once he was through, we fixed the fence and all was fine!

Oh yeah, and no more cat problems.  He may be stupid, but he keeps the cat away!

Gab is off to see about a piece of land today...maybe these characters will soon have a bigger better abode!  Everyone send luck wishes that it works out, and the next post will be all about our new farm!