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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] What's wrong in "Thanksgiving's Hidden Costs"

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com>
  • To: "self-reliance, networking, and simple living, for small farm sustainability, rural independence and security." <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] What's wrong in "Thanksgiving's Hidden Costs"
  • Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 08:14:55 -0500

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:46:33 -0700, you wrote:

>
>And you're probably ahead of me on home growing. We're working on small
>scale production in high desert ranchland here in west central NM with
>90-day growing season. Too many around on welfare have lots of room to grow
>but not a clue. I'm not familiar with soy and wheat - how do you process
>it?
>

Our frost-free season is theoretically 120 days, but more
often the reality is less. Let's see: this last summer:
last frost on June 4, first frost on September 19. So that
was 105 frost-free days. Sometimes it's less.

Soy and wheat:

We have a grain mill - a small electric one, meant for home
use. Ours is a Whisper Mill but there are many brands and
models available. The wheat is ground into flour, and made
into our bread. That's hard winter wheat, bread wheat.

I also buy soft wheat and grind it into whole-wheat pastry
flour for pancakes, muffins, coffee cakes, etc. (URLs
below, for people who are interested.) As it happens, I
also have a hand-powered flour mill (a Corona). The Corona
is NOT good for making fine flour, but it makes great
cracked wheat for hot cereal. So we do this too. You can,
of course, cook wheat berries whole and use them in soups,
or as a pilaf (like rice), etc. You can sprout wheat
berries too, into wheat grass and juice it and drink it (ugh
- doesn't appeal to me). Home grinding of grain and home
baking is a terrific money-saver, btw.

With the Whisper Mill, grinding the wheat freshly adds about
3 or 4 minutes of time to bread-baking. If you've never had
bread made from freshly-ground flour, it is WAY better.
Much, much nicer.

Soy beans: I have a soymilk maker. This is a wonderful
machine - like magic. :) I love my soymilk maker!

>From the soybeans, I make soymilk. The soymilk can be drunk
as milk, or used in cooking, and I do this. (Incidentally,
it's worlds better than commercial soymilk - and worlds
cheaper: it costs me about $0.11 for a quart and a half of
soymilk.) But I also often use soymilk to make tofu: the
tofu - again - is worlds better and cheaper than commercial
tofu. I can make regular tofu or silken tofu (the latter
being used a lot for desserts - cheesecakes, and the like).
It costs me about $0.25 to make about a pound of regular
tofu.

I also have a tempeh-incubating chamber we made from a foam
cooler, a thermostat, and a light bulb, and we can make
tempeh from soybeans as well.

Whisper Mill and other mills:
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com

Soymilk Maker: http://www.soymilkmaker.com

Hard winter wheat for bread: http://www.wheatmontana.com

Soft wheat for other purposes: lots of places, but I buy
mine from http://www.bulkfoods.com

Soybeans direct from the grower - and these are the Laura
variety of soybeans, non-GMO and said to be better for use
in tofu than others (I don't know if this is correct -
certainly I think that the tofu and soymilk I make are
really delicious):
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/fftosteds-store/20pounnonlau.html

It would be better if I located *local* sources. I haven't,
partly because I haven't had the time or energy to deal with
it yet. Maybe someday.

We are not, however, in a farming area, except for dairy
farming. The hills here are too steep for anything but
grazing (with a few valleys being exceptions), the season is
short, winters are cold, and the soil is terrible. Even the
dairy farming is, sadly, dying off.

You can garden here successfully, however, although not many
people seem to do it.

Pat




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