It's Easy Being Green

Who says you can’t grow your own food in the winter? Anyone who does has never tried because our ragtag methods prove you can!

After one of our first hard freezes in the fall, Homestead Hottie dug up a very stringy tomato plant that never did much. We planted it late, in a weird spot in the front yard and it just sort of languished there. I’ll blame it on the neighbor’s cigarette butts that often decorated its base. Seriously. That tomato was one hot mess but Talina dug it up anyway, planted it in a pot and brought it into the sunroom/den inside.

That tomato has continued looking lanky, covering most of the 4-foot tall window it sits in. It did put out a flush of new growth though and even set fruit around Christmas thanks to our “hand diddling” of the flowers. That’s right, we pretend we’re a bee and we finger all the flowers to pollinate them. We know have a handful of fresh, window-ripened cherry tomatoes to top our next salad with. It’s an exciting and unexpected taste of summer in the doldrums of winter!

We did the same with three pepper plants that survived the first frost. We now have one hot pepper that’s growing bigger every day and another that just needs to turn red already. Can anyone say home office salsa? So this next gardening season, consider moving some plants inside to a bright sunny windowsill and see if you can keep them growing. They might even reward you with a treat of something fresh to eat in the middle of winter.

Last but not least, our seeds have started sprouting underneath that new grow light we bought for a song. The seedlings look really good. They’re definitely much stronger looking than our window sprouted seedlings from last year and they certainly germinated faster. It took just 4 days for most of them to emerge!

In my opinion, it has already paid for itself. Now we just have to wait on Mother Nature so we can shuffle these early spring seedlings out to the garden and then get the summer fruits and veggies started too. Gardening season can’t get here soon enough.

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If you missed part one of my story, catch up here before continuing on below.

Our 3 year old didn't mind that the face of our dead pig was staring back at her and even accepted that it gave up its life for the food that would soon be on her plate.

At first I was taken aback by the site of a pig’s face, snout and all, skittering across the gravel path in front of me. It was a graphic reminder that the animal that was rutting through a wooded ridge just 24 hours ago was destined for my freezer, plate and belly in just a few short hours. I think every meat eater should have to come to grips with that sight, or something similar, instead of blindly buying conveniently packaged meat from a gleaming refrigerator case in the local supermarket.

My repulsion quickly turned into laughter when I realized two small beagle puppies were tussling over my dead swine’s face and in the process of carrying it off to another barn to enjoy their morning snack. Yes, I thought, I am indeed in the right place. Walking around the back of the barn and through a steady stream of wood smoke, I was greeted by a pleasant Amish woman who is farmer Ben’s wife. She looked busy, commanding three separate fires beneath three cast iron pots big enough to bathe in. She also kept a steady pace in and out of the back of the barn, assisting with the butchering inside and shuttling the necessary tools and byproducts back and forth.

A friend of ours was already at a long folding table in the barn, donning a bloody apron and taking careful meat cutting lessons from farmer Ben’s teenage son and daughter. He wanted to get down and dirty, learning the process, and that he did. Ben, standing casually at the head of the table, seemed to be reading the side of pork before him like a braille book. He felt for bones, analyzed the grain of the meat and plotted his next cut as he and his family whittled a whole hog down to a variety of pork cuts. He flashed a warm smile and greeted me with his quiet, Dutchy voice. He had a twinkle in his eyes like he was on stage, displaying his sustainable skills for all of us to see. Ben apologized for not shaking my hand. He was gloved up and bloody after all. I felt compelled to pat him on the back and told him with a laugh that it was understandable. I immediately felt like we were in the company of lifelong friends.

The first hog took about two hours to butcher and wrap. Meanwhile we poked in and out of Ben’s barns, taking the girls to visit the draft horses and dairy cows who were tucked away all warm and toasty from the chilly December rain falling outside. Everly, our three year old daughter, didn’t shy away from the mess that was butchering. She was intrigued by the process and didn’t avoid chasing after those two beagle pups and soon a whole flock of kittens who were taking turns nibbling on that pig’s face.

Once the butcher table was cleaned, Ben’s son lowered our hog from its spot hanging in their buggyport and wheeled it into the back of the butchering barn. They wrestled the hog onto a large scale, took careful measurements and then hefted the 300 pounds of beast onto the table in front of us. I was ready for them to dig in with the butchering but farmer Ben wasn’t. For the next 30 minutes or so he carried on a slow meaningful conversation while he methodically sharpened every knife, using his finger to prick the edge of the blade until it was honed just right.

Finally it was time to dig in. Ben encouraged us to ask questions and reminded us that even though we were paying him, he and his family were there to teach and share their skills with the rest of us. They worked the carcass down to manageable pieces, filling a number of plastic tubs with fat and trimmings, feet, and a variety of other pieces parts that would eventually go into the making of all those “value added” products like stock, lard, sausage and liverwurst. Since I was green on the butchering lingo, Ben discussed each cut with me and ran through the options and uses of each. It was a lot like sitting down to buy a brand new car and choosing each and every bell and whistle you wanted added. By walking us through each cut during the butcher, he dispelled any worries we might have had about not being happy with the outcome of what would soon fill our freezer.

The first round of pork cuts drained while we ate lunch. Clockwise from top left are the Boston butts and picnic roasts, two pork loins, sides of bacon, and pork chops.

About 30 minutes into the butchering, Ben began to get a little twitchy. He finally inquired what time it was. I felt awkward yanking my cell phone out of my pocket to tell the time but knew what was up as soon as I saw it was 11:30am. I rattled off the time, quickly sliding my phone back in to my pocket.

“Ah, almost time for lunch,” Ben quipped. It was then I realized that his wife and daughter had disappeared. With lunch approaching and two toddlers already getting fussy after just two hours, I could tell this process was not going to move quickly. A few minutes later, I could hear a rattling noise grow louder and louder as it approached the barn from their house on the hill. Lydia and Suzie ducked into the back of the barn, pulling behind them a wooden wagon piled high with steaming pots and stack of mismatched dishes and tumblers. With that, Ben and his son Joseph stopped their butchering. Lydia pulled a steaming pot of water and began wiping down a table in the center of the barn to serve as the lunch buffet. The women quickly laid out an unbelievable spread of food: a container with stacks of fresh grilled cheese sandwiches, a steaming hot pot of vegetable soup, a hot pan of liverwurst and several steel tumblers filled with fresh milk.

“Would you please join us for lunch,” Ben asked as he motioned for us to sit around the table with his family. Without hesitation we agreed and Ben asked that we observe a moment of silence before the meal. Sitting there in the barn, in that moment, I experienced a true moment of zen. The sound of the rain falling on the barn was punctuated by the sounds and smells of the animals out in the pastures surrounding us. Add in the warmth of the Amish family hosting us and for that moment of quiet reflective silence, I felt bathed in the joy of life and the everlasting circle that keeps our world going.

We took turns filling bowls and plates. Ben and his son jumped in first then Lydia motioned for the guests to fill theirs before she and her daughter got a plate. I was hesitatingly excited to try the liverwurst and scooped a large dollop onto the side of my steaming bowl of vegetable soup.

“Oh no, you can’t put your liverwurst in your soup,” Ben snorted. “I like to put my liverwurst on top of my grilled cheese. That’s really good!”

“Now Ben,” Lydia retorted without a second to spare, “let him put his liverwurst wherever he wants it. You know as well as I that it is just as good in your soup as it is on your grilled cheese.”

Like a couple of dueling New York foodies, I was caught in an Amish crossfire of where it was most appropriate to enjoy your liverwurst. This was a true “back to the farm” experience! Ben finally relinquished the argument to his wife and she motioned for me to go ahead and try it mixed in with my soup. I distinctly remembered when I was a kid, the liverwurst my dad used to squeeze out of plastic tubes so our ailing cocker spaniel would take his daily meds. It wasn’t appetizing at all but this was so different. This liverwurst was fresh and flavorful and filled with those nutritious items many would consider castoffs.

Adalyn enjoyed hanging out in one of the Amish buggies parked in Ben's barn where we did the butchering.

After a 30 minute lunch and good conversations about life on the Amish farmstead, there was a renewed energy to finish butchering our hog and send us packing with our coolers full of meat. Pork chops, loins ribs, and roasts were left to drain of blood while we ate lunch. Now that they were fairly dry, I was slapped into action. The buyer has to put in some legwork in the process and that means you wrap your own meat. I think it’s better that way. I got to decide how many pork chops or ribs I wanted in each wrapper and got to work dividing up the portions and wrapping them up. Ben and Joseph worked to cut the hams and bacon while Lydia and Suzie shuttled fat and bones to those giant wood-fired pots outback, rendering our lard and boiling our stock.

Next came grinding and stuffing the sausage. This took all four of them to hook up the gas generator that powered the system of belts and pulleys that powered the sausage grinder. We were again pressed into action stuffing the sausage packages to our desired weights and before we knew it, we had quite the load of fresh pork to transport back to the Half-Acre Homestead. After 30 minutes of knife sharpening, a 30 minute lunch break, and 3 hours of butchering, we were exhausted. I could see that old fashioned farm life is hard work but oh so rewarding.

Lydia and Suzie hustled about cleaning up the butchering space. Ben slide into his dusty desk tucked into a corner of the barn and jotted down various calculations on paper as he wrote up our receipts. Ben packed us up with the tubs of raw butter we also bought and let us see our bacon and hams lowered into their curing tubs before we took off on our two-hour drive back home.

Three weeks later, just like clockwork and exactly when he said he would, we got a phone call from farmer Ben. He excitedly told me our hams and bacon were out of the smoker and ready for pickup. That next weekend we made the two hour trek back to the Amish farm for some of the most coveted pork cuts in our household. Between the four sections of ham, more than 20 pounds in bacon, several jars of pork stock, a half-dozen large tubs of rendered lard and at least 10 pounds of liverwurst in tubs, it was literally like carting home the whole other half of our hog. The challenge was then reorganizing our freezer so it all fit!

We all learned something new in this process: we could handle the sustainability and self-sufficiency of the process of butchering our own meat. It wasn’t as scary and affronting as we thought it was going to be and we attribute a lot of that to who we had leading us through the process. Farmer Ben and his family welcomed us into their life with open arms and we to welcomed them. The meat we all worked on in our freezer may only last us a year, but the friendship we cultivated over a dead hog on that soggy Saturday in December will last us a lifetime.

Everly walks a barn aisle to check on the draft horses tucked in to their stalls to keep out of the cold December rain.

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Food security and safety become one of our family’s top priorities in 2012. We had been members of a local meat CSA for the past few years and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the farming family that raised our meat products: chicken, beef and pork. For us, it was satisfying to know our meat was humanely raised without added chemicals and hormones. The fact that our dollars were also staying in the community and supporting a small local farm were a huge plus too. Unfortunately they decided to end their CSA operation and that left us looking for other sustainable, bulk-meat buying options.

Here in the land of excess bulk (McDonalds located on every imaginable corner of our nationally ranked, unhealthy city) it’s not easy to find good local, fresh food buying options. I proudly learned to butcher our own organically raised “surprise” roosters this summer and then we also lucked upon a dairy farmer down on his luck. The extreme drought that gripped much of the Midwest was taking a toll on his raw, organic dairy herd. He had to make the difficult decision to cull some of his herd for meat in order to truck in the feed necessary to keep the rest of his dairy herd and family business alive.

We, along with several other families, each bought a half-share of one of his cows and consequently stocked our freezers full of organic ground beef, minute steaks, roasts and stew meat at prices unheard of in any organic grocery store. Six months later, half our freezer is still taken up by that beef but we knew we needed some more carniverous variety and began looking for some pork.

Word of mouth led us to an Amish farmer named Ben located near the town of Cadiz (just think of a thick Kentucky accent drawling out “kay-dizz”). We were told Ben prides himself on raising good quality, chemical-free meat and the pricing seemed just right. Because we live about 2 hours away from Ben, I was going to have to place a phone call to start the ordering process. If you’ve ever tried to contact an Amish family by way of their community telephone, you’ll know how much of a challenge this can be.

If you’ve never had this unique experience in communications, just think back to the days of telephoning before there was voicemail, answering machines, and cell phones. Ben happened to have one 30 minute window of reachability only two days out of the week. Any other time and you’re liable to get a constant ring or end up exchanging niceties with another Amish family who will eventually pass on word of your call to the recipient the next time they see them. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Two weeks passed before I finally received a phone call back from farmer Ben, during his published phone hours of course. Ben meandered through my many questions about the process, returning slow and methodical answers that told me he’s done all of this before. I placed our pre-order for a whole hog and waited another month or two before Ben called me to let me know the time for slaughter was near.

You truly begin to look at the food that graces your plate differently when you know that one specific animal has a marked date for its death; a death that will carry on the life of you and your family. The date was set for early December. I clearly had more questions than answers but just knew the guidance of this wise Amish man would parlay any fears of the process.

I took a day off work, packed Homestead Hottie and the girls into the car and headed south through the driving rain to reach Ben’s farm. His 19th century Amish directions (based mainly on guidance by positions of water towers, number of hills crested and mailbox colors) were surprisingly far more accurate than our 21st century GPS. Locating Ben’s pale blue rural mailbox (yes, he is indeed the only farm in the area sporting a baby blue package receptacle) was easy, especially since it was sitting next to a large hand-painted sign advertising chemical-free meat. You don’t see one of those every day!

A farm dog patiently stands guard of our whole hog, hanging and ready for butchering in the buggyport.

Pulling down a tiny gravel drive toward a cluster of barns, I questioned if we were in the right place. Stepping out of the car I could hear hushed voices coming from inside a long, quonset-style barn. Any notion that I might be in the wrong place quickly evaporated when out from the corner or the barn walked a pig’s face, skittering across the gravel path just steps in front of me.

Continue the rest of the story by clicking here: Going Amish for Pork part 2.

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The dance with freezing temperatures has started here at the Half-Acre Homestead as the calendar pushes ever closer to winter. Most in the TriState put their gardens to bed a long time ago but we always try to eek out as much late season produce as we can possibly gather.

In years past, boxes of green tomatoes have ripened in the garage and lasted us well into February, leaving us with just a 3 or 4 month gap before those red ripe orbs grace our countertops again. While we don’t adhere to a strict diet of eating in season, we do a pretty good job of fitting within the confines of availability or work with whatever we might have preserved.

There is the occasional “treat” but more often than not we’re faced with disappointment when we break down and buy that store-bought tomato in the dead of winter…unless it’s a hella expensive UglyRipe but that’s a different story.

This year we maxed out at 12 tomato plants in the garden. Most were random volunteers that sprouted from the bunny poo we spread around the beds to fertilize. I think only about 3 plants were planted intentionally by seed in the window of our den and then transfered out very late into the season. This summer’s extreme heat and drought left us with little to harvest. Once we made way into August though, the tables began to turn.

Buckets of cherry and volunteer paste tomatoes could be had about once a week. A nice slicer or two would ripen around the same time. Because of the heat crippled growing season, most of the plants produced new fruit toward the end of the summer and that has left us with plants overloaded with green tomatoes.

Our little red wagon has seen better days but it still works for hauling in the huge tomato harvest each fall.

Just like our yearly tradition, we’ve rolled out our battered little red wagon, climbed into tomato trellises and done the dirty task of picking the plants bare. Even our 3 year old Darling Daughter gets in on the action, picking armloads of tomatoes to put up in the house. They really do keep and ripen well!

I wrote about how to store and ripen tomatoes well into the winter here. I’ve made an instructional video on canning your own tomato sauce or you can try out a recipe for pickled green tomatoes. They will make a perfect hostess gift for your next holiday gathering!

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I got excited earlier this summer when First Lady Michelle Obama released her new book American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America
. In an interview with NPR, the First Lady revealed they were brewing beer at the White House using honey harvested from their garden hives.

Thrilled about the prospects of a President interested in homebrew and a First Family enjoying the fruits of the garden, I was hoping they would some day reveal their brew recipes. No, there’s no “POTUS Porter” (that ought to be the next named recipe though) but they did release the recipe for their White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter.

I’ve posted the recipes below along with the video featuring Sam Kass, White House Assistant Chef and Tafari Campbell, White House Sous Chef as they brew up a fresh batch of beer in the Presidential kitchen. It’s also great to see their homebrew setup is no more complicated than mine. Now I just wish everybody could settle down and have a gentlemanly discussion over a cold one and toast Ales to the Chief!

Download a printable PDF of both recipes.

WHITE HOUSE HONEY PORTER

Ingredients

• 2 (3.3 lb) cans light unhopped malt extract
• 3/4 lb Munich Malt (cracked)
• 1 lb crystal 20 malt (cracked)
• 6 oz black malt (cracked)
• 3 oz chocolate malt (cracked)
• 1 lb White House Honey
• 10 HBUs bittering hops
• 1/2 oz Hallertaur Aroma hops
• 1 pkg Nottingham dry yeast
• 3/4 cup corn sugar for bottling

Directions

1. In a 6 qt pot, add grains to 2.25 qts of 168˚ water. Mix well to bring temp down to 155˚. Steep on stovetop at 155˚ for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, bring 2 gallons of water to 165˚ in a 12 qt pot. Place strainer over, then pour and spoon all the grains and liquid in. Rinse with 2 gallons of 165˚ water. Let liquid drain through. Discard the grains and bring the liquid to a boil. Set aside.
2. Add the 2 cans of malt extract and honey into the pot. Stir well.
3. Boil for an hour. Add half of the bittering hops at the 15 minute mark, the other half at 30 minute mark, then the aroma hops at the 60 minute mark.
4. Set aside and let stand for 15 minutes.
5. Place 2 gallons of chilled water into the primary fermenter and add the hot wort into it. Top with more water to total 5 gallons if necessary. Place into an ice bath to cool down to 70-80˚.
6. Activate dry yeast in 1 cup of sterilized water at 75-90˚ for fifteen minutes. Pitch yeast into the fermenter. Fill airlock halfway with water. Ferment at room temp (64-68˚) for 3-4 days.
7. Siphon over to a secondary glass fermenter for another 4-7 days.
8. To bottle, make a priming syrup on the stove with 1 cup sterile water and 3/4 cup priming sugar, bring to a boil for five minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter over it. Distribute priming sugar evenly. Siphon into bottles and cap. Let sit for 1-2 weeks at 75˚.

WHITE HOUSE HONEY ALE

Ingredients

• 2 (3.3 lb) cans light malt extract
• 1 lb light dried malt extract
• 12 oz crushed amber crystal malt
• 8 oz Biscuit Malt
• 1 lb White House Honey
• 1 1/2 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets
• 1 1/2 oz Fuggles Hop pellets
• 2 tsp gypsum
• 1 pkg Windsor dry ale yeast
• 3/4 cup corn sugar for priming

Directions

1. In an 12 qt pot, steep the grains in a hop bag in 1 1/2 gallons of sterile water at 155 degrees for half an hour. Remove the grains.
2. Add the 2 cans of the malt extract and the dried extract and bring to a boil.
3. For the first flavoring, add the 1 1/2 oz Kent Goldings and 2 tsp of gypsum. Boil for 45 minutes.
4. For the second flavoring, add the 1/2 oz Fuggles hop pellets at the last minute of the boil.
5. Add the honey and boil for 5 more minutes.
6. Add 2 gallons chilled sterile water into the primary fermenter and add the hot wort into it. Top with more water to total 5 gallons. There is no need to strain.
7. Pitch yeast when wort temperature is between 70-80˚. Fill airlock halfway with water.
8. Ferment at 68-72˚ for about seven days.
9. Rack to a secondary fermenter after five days and ferment for 14 more days.
10. To bottle, dissolve the corn sugar into 2 pints of boiling water for 15 minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter over it. Distribute priming sugar evenly. Siphon into bottles and cap. Let sit for 2 to 3 weeks at 75˚.

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We’ve done it again! We took a trip to the local Rural King yesterday and it was an adventure as always. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rural King, it’s like the everything farm and ranch store but in classic old K-Mart style (at least the K-Mart from my childhood). The buildings and parking lots aren’t inviting or attractive. Trails of dropped popcorn (a fresh popped freebie you get as you walk in the door and a true treat while shopping) on the rough, uneven concrete floor shows you where your fellow shoppers have been.

Our mission was to pick up some Shoreklear to get rid of all the reeds choking our pond at the Half-Acre Homestead. Dodging corn kernels all the way, we found what we came for and a little bit more (of course). That’s the fun part about the Rural King: you never know what odds and ends you’re going to find that you can’t imagine living without. Pushing toward the back of the store we heard the seasonal cheeps of baby chickens coming from the stock tanks turned brooding pens.

We already have three ladies who inhabit our Backyard Bodega: Bertha, Bernice and Blue-Red. We picked up the three Auracanas last year with a friend and they’ve been happily laying their quintessential pastel-colored eggs ever since. Realizing chickens aren’t that difficult to care for, we couldn’t help ourselves when we saw the price of baby chicks was dropped down to just a buck each (minimum of 6 to buy). So we bought six more little pullets. Three are Rhode Island Reds and the other three are Silver Laced Wyandottes. We quickly divided a place for them in the Triple-B Bodega and these spring chicks seem to be interested in getting to know their bigger counterparts! With time ladies…with time.

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As you round out your seed orders for the 2012 vegetable garden, have you considered adding any heirloom vegetables or fruits to your shopping list? This year we are making the push to dive even deeper into heirlooms and I encourage every gardener and homesteader to do the same.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties of plants that are often 60 or more years old. Most date back 100 years or more. Heirlooms are the truest plants, often showcasing eyestopping individuality and some of the finest flavors you can get in a fruit or vegetable. Aside from sticking it to large agri-business based seed companies who deal in hybrid or Genitically Modified seeds, heirloom seed can be saved and replanted year after year. You can read more about it here.

If you’d like to learn more about heirloom gardening, you should pick up a copy of a brand new book on the subject. The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables: The 100 Easiest-to-Grow, Tastiest Vegetables for Your Garden by Marie Iannotti.

If the 250 pages of scintillating photographs of heirlooms don’t have your taste buds watering and your green thumb twitching, I’m not sure what will. Iannotti gracefully shares her 100 favorite heirlooms, treasures that should be kept under lock and key. She also shares the wonderful stories that round out the unique history of each featured heirloom.

Don’t let the title fool you either. This book should also be a prize for any gardener with more advanced skills. I give it two green thumbs up!

Now you can win a copy of the book along with a spectacular heirloom garden prize pack including 35 packets of heirloom seeds and a bareroot tree! Click the link to head to Timber Press and enter The Heirloom Garden Giveaway

What’s your favorite heirloom fruit or vegetable to grow?

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