An Evening with Joel Salatin

Yesterday, we enjoyed "An Evening with Joel Salatin" of Polyface Farm, courtesy of InJoy Foods.  It was a very interesting event and the first time Dh, Dd15 and I had seen Joel Salatin in person.  We first saw him when we watched the movie, Food, Inc., earlier this year.  Since then, his name keeps popping up and we feel very lucky to have someone pushing on this front right here in our own state. 

The flyer for the event says that Mr. Salatin is a "biodynamic farmer" who won the Heinz Award in 2009 for  “creating alternative, environmentally-friendly farming techniques, spawning a movement towards local, sustainable agriculture.” He has “developed a new paradigm for agriculture by successfully challenging the commercial production of chicken and beef by food industry giants." 

The evening started with a viewing of the movie, Fresh, which is sort of a continuation of Food, Inc.  It kept Dd15 on the edge of her seat with footage of tiny chicks being manhandled in a dark, cavernous industrial chicken house and the day to day existence of other sad, diseased animals.  In contrast, it showed scenes of happy animals busily munching away in the sunshine in a large field filled with a variety of grasses, herbs and flowers. 

After the movie, Mr. Salatin gave a short, but very entertaining talk about his philosophy and warned us that companies that experiment with animals to squeeze every last drop out of them and treat them as inhumanly as the large corporate operations in our industrialized food system do, might not hesitate to treat people that way as well.  Food for thought.

Mr. Salatin has published several books, which I have not read yet, but plan to add to my reading list.  He is expected to have a new book available this fall.

New, Old Freezer

New to us that is.  We had been looking for a used freezer to augment our pantry area when a friend offered us an old freezer that had been standing open and unused on her back porch for the better part of a year.  With a $70 replacement gasket and a load of TLC from Dh, we now have a frost free upright freezer that seems almost new.  We don't have much in it yet, but I have visions of filling it with veggies from our garden boxes, food items purchase at deep discount prices and a quarter of a grass fed cow. 

I have been doing my research on the grass fed beef and I think we have narrowed our search down to Autumn Grove Farm.  They are located within our state and will sell one-quarter cow for about $4.97 a pound which includes processing.  We should receive about 100 to 120 pounds of beef from this quarter.  If anyone has any advice or comments to share regarding this, I'd love to hear them

Garden Update

We have been hard at work doubling the size of our container garden.  We now have 12 3'x6' boxes to work with.  So far, we have garlic, shallots & rosemary that were planted last fall.  We just added beets, lettuce, radishes & spinach.  The seedlings that we started from seed are ready to spend a few hours each day outdoors: 4 types of tomatoes, mild peppers and several herbs.  I also purchased seedlings: yellow squash and cucumber.  Our goal is to get everything into the ground by May 15th, the last frost date in our area.  We are doing much better than last year (our first year gardening), but still feel that we are behind.  Is that how every gardener feels this time of year?

Ahhhhh Spring!

Dd15 is on spring break, so dh and I decided to take a vacation week and enjoy our own backyard.  On Easter Sunday, we had a fabulous time visiting our friends, J and L and their 5 children.  We had an Easter egg hunt, ate good food, checked out their chickens, horses and dog, watched the sun set over the water and generally enjoyed a very memorable day.

Yesterday, Monday, the first official day of spring break, we had topsoil delivered and purchased supplies to install 6 more boxes in our raised bed garden.  This is our second year of gardening and we are hoping to build on last year's success.  After purchasing our supplies, I worked on a second recipe in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book.  A photo of the Soft American-Style White Bread that I made is above.  It was as delicious as it was beautiful!  I have found what I have been searching for to replace the regular sandwich bread that we buy from the store.  And it was truly very easy and fast.

On to today's agenda: building boxes, shoveling dirt and planting things.