Living with Intention...what we eat

The other night I was at a discussion group talking about living with intention and how we treat our bodies.   It has definitely been something I have thought about for quite awhile and totally ties into why I homestead. I think this will be the first part of a series. This one is about the food we eat.

What I eat has been a concern since I was very young.  (That doesn't mean that I was always good about not eating junk).  When I was 18 I stopped eating meat because of the industry and animal rights.... even back then I knew how horrible CAFO's were.  Over the years my thoughts on animal rights have not really changed but have matured. After working in, and burning out of, the animal rescue field I knew where my beliefs were but getting there was not something I was sure how it was going to work out.  My thoughts on animal rights/pets/shelters is a topic for another discussion, lets just say I understand why "no kill shelters" won't work until people's attitudes and sense of responsibility changes and in my darkest days of animal rescue I had/have doubts of it ever happening, faith in humans is hard sometimes when you see what they can do to animals.

Anyway, for me, I realized, that I was not against humans eating meat...it is natural.  What I was against was the treatment of those animals that became our food and the blinders that people wear.  Not until the last couple generations have people started to eat meat they did not know where it came from or even what it was.  The concept of going to the grocery store and picking out a package of meat and not wanting or caring to know its source is just plain wrong, in my view.  I dealt with people with blinders a lot in the animal rescue field and I found that the amount of blinders people purposely wear about where their food comes from is unbelievable.  My thoughts were that if I couldn't have the courage and honor to kill it, I couldn't eat it.  The very least is people (kids) should learn where their food comes from. Chicken is not a square in breading...it is an animal with a life, though sadly a very short miserable one usually - I live in a very big CAFO chicken farm state. I know people who will not eat meat that actually looks like the animal. I also know people that will not eat meat or even eggs that are from a farm but only if it is packaged at walmart...not because of any safety reasons but because they actually do not want to think about the animal the meat came from. A perfect example of blinders.

My concern was at first and mainly for where meat came from and for that I was a vegetarian, with occasionally eating seafood, for about 20 years.  But then I started to learn about what monoculture farming is doing to the land and realized that it is as much of a concern as CAFO's.  The monoculture farming requires an unbelievable amount of fertilizer and that fertilizer not only taints the food but is one of the major reasons for pollution in our waterways.

So I started homesteading and buying primarily local.  The only meat I put in my body is raised by me, hunted by me or someone I know or is from a local farm.  The vegetables are from my garden or local farms and the CSA I belong to...all organic or very close to it.  All my fruit is from a local orchard except for the bit of avocado, mango, banana and citrus - if I still lived in Florida I would grow all this myself but even though the zones are shifting we aren't there yet.

I have really been concentrating on eating whole foods, meaning "real food", real milk (raw), real butter, nothing boxed or canned.  I have learned to can and I have been doing more and more each year.  This next year I hope to double my garden and start providing even more food for the animals I raise here.

The next part of living with intention is (moving my body)...

Shared on http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/02/homestead-barn-hop-97.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThePrairieHomestead+%28The+Prairie+Homestead%29

and  http://www.backyardfarmingconnection.com/2013/02/the-backyard-farming-connection-hop-18.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:

and:
http://frugallysustainable.com/2013/02/frugal-days-sustainable-ways-64/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:


and: http://www.theselfsufficienthomeacre.com/2013/02/the-homeacre-hop.html

Little Rooster Croft Goals for the Year

Personally, I don't make "New Year's Resolutions", I just do what needs to be done.  However, sometimes it is good to take stock and refocus.  In my personal life it is just a confirmation to move forward with school, career, home organization, spiritual growth and remembering to take time doing things I enjoy like kayaking, hiking and diving.

For the homestead, it means the same but with an effort to move forward, learn and remain positive even when I learn the lessons the hard way.  I do have to step back and remember that I didn't grow up doing this, I don't have a direct mentor to learn from and I don't have much help and I do still have to work full time and attend school.  And most of all, to remember the goals... I do all this because I believe whole heartedly in my goals.  My goals are simple, to live a simple life eating real food, knowing how my food is raised and to step as lightly on Mother Earth as I can.  In order to accomplish this goal, I am learning to raise my own food both vegetable and animal and with it comes many frustrations and heart aches but also comes satisfaction of goals attained and movement forward. I have only been doing this a few years and if I think back to how I started... I really have come a long way.

Sometimes that is hard to remember when things are going wrong and particularly a bunch goes wrong all around the same time like last month.  There are two things that have kept me going recently besides that I love my animals and I really don't want to think about being without them.  One of the things that gave me some encouragement was the outpouring of support when my turkey tom went missing... that meant a lot.  The other was something my father said to me in an email... he said that he was really proud of me with my homesteading and that he really thought it was a great thing I was doing. My father and I have not often seen eye to eye but this simple statement meant a lot to me.

So, my goals for the homestead are simple...move forward. Specifically I want to be sucessful at breeding and raising my birds and rabbits and to expand my garden so I am providing even more of my own food and food for my animals.  I provide about 40% of my own food now, another 40% is local and the rest is mostly things that aren't grown around here like citrus, flour, etc.  I want to be at 60% grown myself by this time next year.  I want to grow more of the animal feed too, I already supplemented quite a bit from my garden and local this fall but I want to be able to do more. 

My biggest challenge is raising the animals. My thought of letting the turkeys, ducks and geese raise their own young last year didn't really work well. None of the turkey eggs came to term although I know they were fertilized and started, I think my 3 hens fighting for the nest and the heat did them in.  The duck and goose eggs were taken by a snake I believe.  The chickens managaed to hatch a couple chicks but the mothers didn't keep track of their babies and they were lost to the weather and/or predators. This year I will be incubating. I have a decent incubator so hope to be successful with that and if I am then I will let my broodies raise some later in the season. 

I have settled on breeds that I will be concentrating on:
Ducks: I already have a couple pairs that were given to me (Daffy and Donald are the Pekins and Ivanhoe and Rowena are the Roens so I will raise a batch of each)
The two breeds I am concentrating on though are the Muscovies and Khaki Campbells.  The Muscovies for meat and the Khaki's to sell the babies and for eggs.  I have my breeding groups with a group of black and white muscovies lead by Lancelot II and Gwenafar and a couple other girls and a group of brown lead by Cynric and Sabrina with the rest of Charlie's brood (Sabrina is the brood's mama).

Daffy and Rowena

Sabrina and a young Cynric

Turkeys: I am concentrating on the Standard Bronze and Buff breeds.  Big Tom is my stud for the Bronzes with Spring and the young girl who doesn't have a name yet.  Beowulf is the stud for the buffs and he has 2 Buff girls and a Royal Palm girl because I didn't want to keep the royal tom, he was a jerk.

Beowulf

Big Tom

For Chickens:
I have Henry and his girls but some of them are getting pretty old, particularly Henrietta (Astralorp), Buffy (Buff Orpington) and Lucy (RIR) and Vivienne and Merlin (Americauna).  So, I have decided to concentrate on the Buff Orpingtons, Astralorps and Americaunas.  I have some babies growing right now and hopefully they will survive to adulthood and I will be breeding them.




Henry and Buffy



Merlin







Henrietta



Vivienne



Lucy



A start to the new year

December was kind of a yoyo month, some good things, some not so good, the end of the semester finals, holidays, being sick, new landlords, etc.

So I have been trying to get organized, house and homestead cleaned, etc slowly, a bit at a time.  The to do list is overwhelming sometimes and I think stress has been a good part of me getting sick and feeling so tired all the time...so, taking it a little chunk at a time is how I am trying to handle it. Today I got a bit of that chunk done...still lots more to do but it is a start.

I have laundry mostly caught up, fresh sheets on the bed, clothes set for the rest of the week. I have food set for the week for breakfast and lunches at work and dinners at home so I am not tempted to eat out. I made scones this morning so I have 3 more for breakfasts with the blueberry cheese I made. I have the rest of the french bread I made from last night's oyster po boys so I will have that with the salmon cakes I made the other day and the rosemary cheese I made. For dinners I have soup that I am making now, black eyed peas and tomato. The kitchen is mostly cleaned and organized and so are my other rooms.  

On the homestead, I got my last wayward Khaki girl in the pen thanks to some help.  Her partner is in the garden, so within fence but not in the secure pen but he isn't leaving her so hopefully he will be in there soon too.  I got some pins in to secure the other up front pen that the duck boys are in.  

I also got a bit done in the big barn:

1. I got the turkey girls out of the small coop and into the shed with the ducks for the time being.  I also got Beo (my Buff tom Beowulf) into the shed because the boys are starting to fight. Believe it or not it is the beginning of spring for everyone... the girls (turkeys and ducks) are just starting to lay eggs and the boys are starting their turf wars and giving the girls lots of attention! So Beo is with 2 of his 3 girls and I will be moving his 4th in some time this week.  I hope to get the big pen started in the next couple weeks so the ducks and Beo's crew will have more room outside...until then they have enough room in the shed but will have to stay locked up, I can not afford to lose any more of them.  

Beowulf

2. Since the turkeys are out of the small coop, I put the babies in with the polish featherheads.  Hopefully they do okay but it is past time for them to get out of the baby brooder. 

3. I got the barn raked out and hopefully will get all of that into the garden tomorrow evening.

The rest of this week/weekend I want to get some work done in the shed (light with timer up); clean the rabbit cages and get their poo into the garden; get some prep work done for new big pen attached to the shed and make some plans set for a decent turkey poult brooder and separate duckling brooder since I know brooding time will be upon me way too quickly particularly with classes starting again next week. And this year, I am going to brood my own babies! 

So...that is the start of my new year with determination to make things good and successful.