Brunch is maybe my most favorite thing that humans ever invented. Brunch is especially awesome when its contents are composed of fresh, local ingredients. And in that regard at least, this was a rockstar brunch.

The pretty pink potatoes came out of our garden, and so did the kale that we sautéed them with. The flour in the pancakes was grown and ground down the road from us. The milk, too. I picked the blueberries yesterday at a farm in Bayfield. The eggs came from Sarah & Bob’s chickens, living in our yard. The maple syrup was made by my family. The bacon came from Blaise and Jes’s farm down the road.

We fed our souls with laughter and fellowship, and our bellies with yummy morsels.

See how much happier we all look already? I’m telling ya, brunch is a miracle worker.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- we’re so blessed to live in a community full of family farms and folks who care about their community, the earth, and good food. Couldn’t ask for anything more than this right here.

And after this happened, I got my bum to the beach, read my book and fell asleep for a while, and floated in {the deliciously ice-cold} Lake Superior for two whole hours. So in other words, this was a pretty fantastic weekend.

I brought home some of their wheat berries the other day and made this recipe with them. It was so fresh, summery, and filling {I wish I had doubled the batch because just the two of us gobbled it all down immediately.}

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked farro or wheat berries
1 cup shelled green peas (about 3/4 pound unshelled)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup cubed seeded watermelon
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/3 cup (1 1/2 ounces) shaved fresh pecorino Romano cheese

Steps:

1. Place wheat berries in a large saucepan, and cover with water to 2 inches above berries. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 23 minutes or until desired degree of doneness.
2. Add green peas to pan with wheat berries, and cook for 2 minutes or until crisp-tender. Drain and rinse berry mixture with cold water; drain.
3. Combine berry mixture, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper in a large bowl. Add the watermelon cubes and 1 cup chopped parsley, and toss gently to combine. Top with pecorino cheese.

Enjoy!

Bayfield is situated just so on the peninsula that it’s basically incubated by Lake Superior and the growing season is a whole zone better than it is at our house, just 12 miles to the south. Hence, fruit-growers have flocked to the area and set up shop on every south-facing slope that could be found.

The whole town is full of picturesque orchards {most with ancient, twisted, gnarly rootstocks that have been re-grafted onto many times in their life.} It’s a pretty magical place. We’re lucky to live so near to it, yet far enough away that we’re not quite so bombarded with tourists all summer long.

Anyway, our mission in Bayfield was to pick strawberries, and we chose Northwind Farm because they grow organically and because the farm and homestead is 100% powered by the wind and sun. Even the car has a solar-panel.

The owner, Tom, showed us to a patch ripe for picking and set us loose.

It was pretty glorious out there in the early morning sun, the smell of strawberry hanging in the air, the chickens clucking away behind us, and the crickets singing.

In fact, it was down-right romantic! I love working quietly away at the same task with Mike. We’re both in our element when our hands and minds are busy yet we’re relaxed…not in a rush to be somewhere else or do something else; not thinking about the To Do list at home. Something about the smell of strawberries is romantic, too.

We picked almost 20 lbs. and then moseyed home to begin the jam making {oh, if only we had known at that point how incredibly unprepared we were for how much work jam making is!}

To be continued…

That’s right. Strawberry milkshakes. We whipped them up and called some friends to come over and enjoy them with us, and sat around the table discussing the many merits of strawberries. There’s nothing wrong with eating huge amounts of sugar at 11:00 PM, right? Nahhhhh.

Tonia’s Totally Local Strawberry Shake:

1 carton of Hermit Creek strawberries, green tops removed

6 big scoops of Tetzner’s vanilla ice cream

1/2 cup of Tetzner’s milk {or more if you want to drink it verses eat it with a spoon- and it depends how strong your blender is. The milkier it is, the easier it is to blend.}

Blend it all up and enjoy!

…But, after the strawberry shakes were gone, we decided we wanted more. So we made more:

Tonia’s Not-So Local Pistachio and Honey Shake:

1 cup pistachios, shelled

2 tbs. honey {or to taste- some like it sweeter than others}

6 big scoops of Tetzner’s vanilla ice cream

1/2 cup of Tetzner’s milk {or more}

Blend it all up and you know what to do!

These are our two most favorite shake recipes. Pretty simple, but very satisfying. What’s yours?

“You are what you eat.” -Unknown

Mike and I have had several great conversations over food about food recently. We go around and around trying to figure out how best to stay healthy while cutting back on the impact that our food consumption has on the environment. We’re extremely interested in the idea of a local diet. Exclusively local. Sounds great, especially when we live in a town with an organic family farm around every corner. But there are some real challenges with this lifestyle, like making sure we still get a diversity of food and nutrients in our diet.

Since moving here, we have already cut way back on buying food products that are processed and packaged. But we still buy a lot of things like nuts and fruits that were grown far, far away and then transported here.

How do we get away from that? We have come to the conclusion that there is not one solution/alternative to big agriculture for the whole country, let alone the world, or even a state. It comes down to a person’s region, and the type of foods that are abundant in that region. We need to eat more of what is native here.

In northern WI we have wild rice growing in abundance in our rivers and lakes. We have thick forestland and lakes where fish, deer, rabbits, ducks, and other game live. We have maple syrup. We have farmland.  We really have everything we need in order to feed a bunch of humans. What we don’t have is bananas…avocados…exotic fruit and veggies that need tropical or Mediterranean climates in order to survive.

If we’re going to do this eating local thing the right way, we would have to give up those things. But could they possibly be grown here? According to Eliot Coleman in his book The Winter Harvest Handbook, you can actually garden all winter long, even in cold climates. We’ve been reading his book and thinking hard about how we can put some of his ideas for winter growing into practice around here. Mr. Coleman’s main strategy is to build a greenhouse within a greenhouse- to really capitalize on the sun’s heat during the day and retain that heat all night long.

If these techniques work to grow regular veggies during the cold months, might they also work for growing exotic veggies and fruit during the warm months? We intend to find out. First on the list is peaches. We would love to grow fresh peaches here, but it’s just a tad too cold. If we can figure out a way to keep a peach tree alive and happy, we’ll move on to crazier things like olives and maybe even mangoes!

But there is another possible solution- a seasonal diet. Basically every animal on the planet has a season diet, besides modern-day humans. Deer eat bugs and birds and grass all summer long, but during the winter they eat the bark off of trees. Bear enjoy an enormously diverse diet all summer long, and eat very little of anything during the winter. Native Americans way back in the day had very seasonal diets.

Most people today have season cravings, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a seasonal diet. We crave apples and pumpkin in the fall, melons and strawberries in the summer, root veggies and hardy meat stews in the winter. Our cravings happen because our bodies know what foods are in season and therefore are the tastiest. But because modern technology and big agriculture make it possible, our society has grown accustomed to supplementing those seasonal goodies with so many other foods, imported from far away.

I am always shocked to see watermelon sitting in the produce section of the grocery store in mid-December. WHY? Does anyone even feel like eating a watermelon in December?? My guess is 75% of those melons end up going bad and being chucked out by the produce guy. Sad! Why even have them in the store at all, until June?

I challenge you all to be more sensitive to what is in season in your area and what is not. Find out what foods are native to your area, and increase those in your diet. Treat exotic foods as luxuries and cut way back on them if you can. Appreciate the technology that makes it possible for you to eat them. Maybe even make a family outing to a Native American reservation and shadow someone as they go out for the annual wild rice harvest in the fall, or collect and boil maple syrup in the spring. I bet they’d be happy to share and teach their traditions with those who are interested, and they are usually very skilled and knowledgeable in ways to use our area’s natural resources for survival.

One last thing, check out this great website for videos and recipes for local and seasonal eating.

Mike and I are not alone…basically every human on earth eats food, usually at least three times a day. Through food- the production, harvest, transportation, preservation, consumption, and disposal of food- the human race greatly impacts the world. Take, for example, the banana fruit. In the 1880s Americans did not consume, or did not even know about the existence of bananas. By the 1890s this fruit was sold in the main American cities in individual packages as a luxury good. By 1910 they were considered a cheap fruit, part of the basic diet of the growing American working class. After the 1930s Americans could find bananas in any grocery store in the country at any time of the year.

Bananas stopped being considered an exotic fruit and became common. A national mass consumption of bananas was possible because of the production and distribution network made by Chiquita and Dole. In the early twentieth-century, these companies created a network that included plantations in Central America, railways, steamships, telegraph lines, harbors, and a distribution system in the US. Bananas are an extreme example, but it’s true that most of the food we eat, not just “exotic” types like bananas, travel over 1300 miles from farm to grocery store.

Have you ever heard Brian Regan’s joke about logging trucks passing each other on the highway? This is the same question I am asking about food. If we have it over here…why are we getting it from way over there?

Mike and I decided to sell our home, leave our jobs, and move out of the city in part {a large part} because we want to grow our own produce and raise our own poultry. We’re ecstatic that we moved to an area of the state where locally grown organic produce, meat and dairy is available in glorious abundance. If we thought cooking was fun before, it’s 100 times more fun now that we’re working with beautiful local ingredients!  As the snow melts we will start our own garden, but in the meantime we feel fantastic about the fact that we’re supporting our farming neighbors by buying their goods.

Recently some friends from the city came to visit and offered to buy the ingredients we needed for making dinner that night. They commented on the comparatively high prices at the grocery store- one big bag came to about $70. It’s true, prices are higher here than at a big chain grocery store. But I believe that the high prices are the true cost of food.

The discount prices at those big stores are part of a larger problem- commercial agriculture- supported by low fossil fuel prices- killing off small family farms. When you’re only paying $1.35 for a bunch of bananas that were grown in a completely different country and then transported thousands of miles, ask yourself, “If I’m not paying for the true cost of the production and transportation of these bananas, who is?” Believe me, someone is paying for it.

“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” – John F. Kennedy

And if you’ve ever had a garden yourself, you know how much work goes into raising a successful crop of anything. Would you want to {or be able to afford to} sell your goods for anything less than an amount that makes all that work worth it? No way. After considering that, Mike and I realized that the prices at our grocery store were more than fair, and we are happy to pay them even though it means we have to skim from other areas of our budget to make it happen. Our budget is all about priorities, and food is a major priority.

Even so, we realize we’re blessed to be able to afford the kind of food we want to eat. Not everyone is so lucky. Which is kind of crazy…since when is organic/local/whole food only for those affluent enough to be able to afford it? Back in the day, it was the opposite: poor folks grew their own food or traded with neighbors for what they needed, rich folks were able to buy packaged/processed food…the very foods that are the most affordable nowadays.

“Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we’ve designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.”  – Michael Pollan

Dan Barber, the celebrated chef behind Blue Hill Farm, was interviewed by Krista Tippet on her NPR show {listen to it here} and he said that we’re in the beginning stages of a food revolution in which the tables will turn once again, and local agriculture will win out over large commercial agriculture. According to him, social change in many cases starts with the affluent and then trickles down to everyone else. He uses women suffrage as an example {affluent, well-educated women were the front-runners of that movement}.

Chef Barber is probably mostly right…but he’s forgetting about grassroots movements like urban farming programs, where entire inner-city communities are working together to convert abandoned lots into productive gardens {watch this short video}.

“Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.” – Thomas Jefferson

No matter where or how the revolution is starting, it’s important that we all do our part. Start small: cut out meat from your diet unless it comes from a local/free-range/organic source…Treat exotic produce as a luxury {anything that can’t be grown in your local environment and needs to be transported from far away qualifies as “exotic”. For us, this means bananas, mangos, avocados, etc}…Start a garden, even if it’s just in a few planters on your fire escape…Join a CSA if there is one in your area.

Recommended readings on this topic/resources: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan / Slow Food / Local Harvest / Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

We used to discuss how to cut back waste and minimize our impact while living relatively “normal” urban lives.  But since the urban bit is no longer part of the story, the blog will naturally be focusing more and more on rural life, subsistence farming, and of course as always, low-impact living.

So, today, I am so excited to present our first real farm-focused post, written by…well, actually she does a great job introducing herself, so I’ll just get out of the way and let her do the talking.

Welcome to the IttyBitty chicken tutorial!

My name is Beth, and I am the proprietor of a small and completely over-funded corner of the internet called six orange carrots. My husband and I live on a small, adorably weedy half-acre in semi-urban California, where we grow our own vegetables, cook food obsessively from scratch and raise our own chickens.

Full disclosure, this isn’t the first tutorial Tonia has asked me to do for IttyBitty. We’ve talked about my limited adventures in worm farming, composting, and home canning, and each time I was flattered, but not sure I was the right person to pull together a tutorial. But chickens? Where chickens are concerned, I left dabbling (and moderation, self-restraint, all sensible behavior befitting an adult…) far behind long ago. I can totally do a tutorial about chickens, and I’ve been harassing Tonia for weeks to give me the chance.

{Ha! Yeah, ok, Beth! If I (Tonia) may butt in here- I was the one harassing you, not the other way around.  And I’m SO very pleased you’re doing this series on my blog!!}

Because there’s a lot to say, we’re planning on doing this in installments. Here in this post I want to talk about my experience as a backyard chicken farmer, why I chose to become one and the reasons I think you might enjoy it yourself. Then moving forward, we’ll cover:

• Building a coop and gathering supplies
• Choosing, finding and buying your chickens
• Raising baby chicks
• Caring for your laying flock

In addition, Tonia’s been kind enough to set up an FAQ page here, which has few starter questions that we’ll add to as we go.

Why chickens?

A good question to start with. Though they are surprisingly easy and rewarding pets, the most common answer is eggs!

Delicious, delicious, delicious eggs. However, given that a dozen eggs is clearly something you can find in your corner supermarket, the real question might be: Why go to the trouble of raising chickens yourself?

See the FAQ page for more about this, but eggs you raise yourself are tastier, better for the environment, kinder (x 1,000,000) to the chickens that lay them, and are actually more nutritious than eggs you buy in the store. This year’s salmonella epidemic brought the low standards of industrial egg production into the spotlight again, which makes it very easy to doubt the safety and humaneness of eggs widely on offer.

You could say that the goodness of your egg depends on the life of the chicken that laid it—and therein lies the part of raising chickens that’s good for your soul. They’re no Einsteins, but chickens are alert, personable animals. They talk among themselves, have distinct and occasionally hilarious personalities, and some (like the one napping on my Billy’s lap above) take obvious pleasure in human companionship. Most of all, they have an incredible capacity for pleasure and enjoyment of life—good food, their time outside, and their connection to each other.

What I thought would be a hobby has become a great and unexpected source of happiness in my life, because it comes with the knowledge that the food that sustains my family is based in happiness and health of animals we know by name. Not everyone has the space, time or inclination to add chickens to their family, and that’s completely okay. For those that can, I hope what this has meant to me will inspire you to set out on a new adventure, and that our tutorial helps you out along the way.

Thanks very much to Tonia for letting me share my hobby with you—feel free ask questions in the comments, especially if there’s something you want to make sure we cover. Until next time!

We have so many things to be grateful for this year- it’s a little ridiculous.  I kind of feel like we hit the celestial jackpot in 2010…Mike’s brother got married to an incredible woman, Mike’s sister & brother-in-law had their first child {making us an aunt and uncle for the first time in our lives}, we got married and took an incredible honeymoon, we purchased our dream-hobby-farm and moved, I started working from home {a very welcome change that makes having a somewhat-boring-full-time-job a WHOLE lot more bearable}, and so much more.  AND the Packers aren’t half bad this year.  WHEW!

In other words, this Thanksgiving is kind of extra-special because of the remarkably fantastic year it has been, and I am really looking forward to the big feast and the moment just before we all dig in, when we bow our heads and collectively lift up our prayers of thanks.

SO!  For Thanksgiving 2010, I challenge you to break the status quoe and try something a little different.  It’s called the 100-Mile Thanksgiving Challenge and it’s brought to you by TreeHugger, which is a fantastic website and you should check it out if you don’t already have it bookmarked and read it religiously every day…ahem.  I’m slightly addicted.

The challenge is very simple: make your Thanksgiving meal local.  Buy groceries that were grown/raised within 100 miles of your home.  Send TreeHugger your 100-mile menu.  They will be voting on the best local Thanksgiving meal and announce the winner on the week of Thanksgiving!!

Eating local is one of the most important and best things we can do as a society.  It’s good for the economy AND the environment.  Mike and I are thrilled to live in a town that is highly supportive of local farms.  The bakery down the road uses locally grown wheat for all their goods, we’re able to get our milk, cheese, and ice-cream from a dairy that is about five minutes from our house, there are apple and cherry orchards everywhere around here, and 15 minutes to our north is a beautiful free-range pig farm where we get brats, bacon, ribs and the likes.  You’ve never seen happier, healthier pigs.

This challenge will be more difficult for those of you living in urban areas, I know, but get creative with it: do you have a relative coming to visit from a farming area?  Ask them to bring along some local produce or meat if they’re able.  And if you’re not able to make everythingon the table be from local sources, at least try to make some of it be- the turkey, the sweet potatoes, the green beans, the cranberries {this one shouldn’t be tough for anyone in WI…it’s the cranberry STATE!  So I don’t wanna hear no excuses.} 

We haven’t done an Itty Bits Challenge for some time now, so you’ve been off the hook.  Make this one count!  Happy Thanksgiving!