Elastic Mom Stretching a Little Further

The last day in April will mark the end of our sixth year on this Free State farm. We have all grown and changed in this environment. Now we are slowly preparing to move back to the Cape in a few months time. The challenge for me, Elastic Mom, is to hold onto the lessons that I have learned, and they are many. I hope to apply some of them, albeit modified, to a completely different coastal lifestyle.

For now, the task at hand is to continue to stretch my resources and keep to my use-it-don’t-lose-it principles, and all the other thrifty tools I have up my sleeve as we wrap up our farm life. Our four dogs and two cats will be the only animals making the move with us.

This week we sold our last two Jersey cows, Hope and Rosie. They went to join Joy at our friends’ farm. It is so hard letting go of my precious girls, but I know they will be loved and well cared for in their new home. This means the end of farmers markets for us for now, as we no longer have copious amounts of cheese and butter. Had I known that we would be leaving, I would have stored up butter and cream rather than selling it in croissants and pannacottas.

We are left with one bullock that was intended for beef; grass fed, organic prime beef at its best. He will be making the trip to the local butcher quite a bit earlier than planned, but will provide us with beef that we can transport frozen and also sell to a few lucky people.

Winifred, our pig is pregnant and we will sell the piglets when they are weaned, rather than raising them ourselves. Sausage, her brother, has lived up to his name. We will sell Winifred and her future mate, the dashing spotty Houdini once the piglets are weaned as well.

Our chickens will likewise be sold off, and some unlucky young roosters will become coq au vin. We have also promised some chickens to our staff.

Lucy Lamb is going to live with my vegetarian friend where I know she will be safe and loved along with the three other hanslammetjie sheep that already live there. Once her fleece is long enough, it will be shorn and kept for me so that I can spin it.

Meals will be planned around the fresh produce and open jars in the fridge. The last of the harvest in our bountiful vegetable tunnel will be picked before the frost and cooked fresh rather than pickled or frozen for winter. I will dry surplus tomatoes rather than freeze them. There is not all that much left in the tunnel. I won’t plant out the seedlings that I had planned for our winter garden. Once all the fresh produce is used up I will focus on cooking from the contents of our freezer. Jams, pickles and preserves can travel with us to our new destination so I probably won’t open any new jars.

My head is spinning a little with new tasks and a change of focus, but I am confident that we can do this hard thing.

SMOKIN' !

We are anticipating some pork later next year. My sister and her husband are raising two piggies called Hamlet and Bacon. We were going to raise our own and feed them all the whey from the cheese making, like parma ham, but have decided to wait until next Spring to get piglets.

In the meantime, we are educating ourselves in all things pig. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a very educational dvd called Pig in a Day, which covers everything from caring for pigs, to butchering the meat and processing it. After watching it Decadent Dad decided to try his hand at making bacon. This is something he has wanted to try for a long time.

He salted some pork belly for most of last week. The only ingredients added to the meat were slat, bay leaves and some spice. Then, being an all-or-nothing kind of guy, he built an ingenious cold smoker. The smoker funnels the wood smoke from wet wood chips that are heated by a gas burner, into a sealed wooden box where the meat and cheese are hung.

 For two days he smoked the meat along with one of my freshly made gouda cheeses, an onion, a beetroot and some halloumi. He used just-chipped cherry wood which imparts a mild, sweet flavour.

It was a great success. The bacon is very salty, not really breakfast rashers, but rather the kind that you would hang in a cool place and then one would cut off a slice or two for flavouring stews and soups. The flavour is remarkable. The meat loses weight during this natural process, rather than commercial bacon which is often injected with water and chemicals for flavour and volume.

Once hung for a few months more, the meat will become more like a panchetta. In the meantime, it still needs cooking before eating. 

Once the cheese had been smoked, I waxed  fragrantly smoked gouda and it will need to mature for a good four months before we try it. 

I made a superb grilled peach, smoked bacon and halloumi salad for supper last night. Inspiration for the salad came from Jamie Oliver's "Grilled Peach Salad with Bresaola and a Creamy Dressing".

It was really simple. Just a bed of mixed lettuce leaves topped with grilled peaches, crisply grilled bacon, golden smoked halloumi and some grilled smoked onion. I drizzled over a dressing of vinaigrette whisked up with yoghurt and some tarragon.

If this is a taste of things to come, then let's get smoking' again.

The Road Less Travelled

We are taking another big step in our journey towards a more self-sufficient lifestyle. So far we have relied on home grown veggies, dairy produce, eggs and chickens for our food. Now we are heading towards our own home grown meat. As far as I am concerned, it is more heartless to blindly put a pre-packaged piece of meat into your shopping trolley with no thought as to the suffering and abuse the animal went through as it was fattened up for your table, than to lovingly and responsibly raise an animal for the table. In this way we can be sure of its humane treatment at every stage of its life as well as ensuring that it has a healthy diet. The only other ethical alternative, in my opinion, is to become a vegetarian.

How many chickens have to die to provide a package of chicken breasts or thighs? Have you ever seen cattle in a feedlot? Do you know what chemicals are in your bacon?

When we eat one of our own chickens, every bit is used up, and it feeds us for days. The only waste is bones and feathers which we bury at the bottom of the compost heap. Most important, is that we value the life that was taken so that we can be nourished. Never in my past did I consider the animals that had to die so that I could eat meat. In fact, I only ate filleted meat so that I did not have to face the reality of what I was eating. That does not make it any easier to eat the animal we've raised. There's a profound, humbling sense of gratefulness that accompanies home grown meals, but also a realistic acceptance of the responsibility that we have to give the animal the best life that we can for as long as it lives.

This brings me to our own meat. Our lambs are soon to be slaughtered. Our bull calf, once he has grown a whole lot more, will also be slaughtered for beef. Our choices are either to sell him to a feedlot or abattoir , or raise him in a caring environment until he's slaughtered. That, sadly, is the end of almost all bull calves, and male lambs unless they become stud animals. Our farm animals are not pets. We do not eat our pets, but that doesn't stop us from showing our farm animals care and affection as they grow. I named our calf Thorn partly because his mother is Rose and his Father, Bramble, but also because of the thorny irony of his future.

We live in an area where a neighbouring farmer will donate a whole lamb for a spitbraai between a few people, where the men prefer to eat chops and wors than salads and cheese, where meat is eaten at almost every main meal. We, on the other hand, eat meat as a treat. We seldom buy it, rather choosing to mostly eat our own veggies, eggs and dairy produce. A while back we were given a whole lot of mutton. We are eating it sparingly and use it for special occasions. It is treated as something valuable, not commonplace, not taken for granted. How much more will we value our own home grown meat?

If I have to choose between sentimentality about our animals and responsibility, I choose the tough road of responsibility. I would rather we managed every step of their short lives, than handed them over to an uncertain future. Living on a farm has challenged and changed me in many areas of my life, and this is one of them. Organic, free range meat is expensive, and mostly out of our budget. Raising our own organic free range meat helps us to eat locally, ethically and frugally.