A Litlle Downtime and Stormy Weather

Last week tornadoes and thunderstorms rolled through Iowa. When we heard this was in the forecast, we cancelled apple picking and planned for a downtime day.

The summer was full of perfect days, very little rain. Still, Lily has become a weather fanatic, watching radar and maps, paying attention to what animals and water and the wind does too. We have a fantastic southern view of the horizon, from east to west. She will sit and work on art while watching the storms roll in. Holly will watch too, but her interest lies in the planes and other sky craft that fly low when the storms move in. Isaac just stands at the window looking forlorn and sad about not going outside. His favourite place in a rain storm is at the tree fort under the shade canopy with his sisters.

The thing she is most excited about is packing the emergency bags. She loves packing. Loves packing for overnight, for going on a day trip, her fishing kit, her art bags.....organising and choosing items, getting it all to fit, just so.

Here is what she came up with when I asked her to pack what she thought we would need, no prompting:

First aid kit
Activity books
Diapers and wipes for Isaac
apples and mason jars full of cold water
a box of crackers
markers
our travel connect 4
head lamp flashlights
empty mason jars filled with tea lights and a lighter
2 blankets or towels
dvd player and charger
weather radio (is actually a walkie talkie with a weather radio built in. It picks up signal from others in the area too, so if we needed to call for help and the cell phone doesn't work, we have this method of signal too and....fresh batteries for it, taped too it, will be a good idea...must remember this)
phone charger (that's where the missing one is, Chad)

Compacted into two bags and set by the basement door.

We have not ever had to use them though. The summer before we bought the farmhouse a straight-line wind storm imploded the stone barn and took out several over out buildings. An architectural tragedy befell the farm. The ice house was a rare gem, now gone. Since then though, no severe storms or tornadoes have dared near our farm. Wind, yes. Rain, snow, ice, yes....but nothing that requires grabbing an emergency bag and hiding in the basement. We have not even had more than a power flicker since we've been on the farm. Our old neighbourhood still has days of power outages in the city....affecting those same neighbours that had warned us to expect worse in the rural landscape.

If that ever does happen, Lily is ready.

What's in your emergency, head to the basement bag?

Farm Crawl 2013

Whew.

That was a long day.

It rained and even ice slushed for a few minutes. It was cold. Wet, you know, from the raining.

Our tent wasn't set at the top correctly and leaked, pretty much right on my head.

We sold 200 packages of breakfast sausage. 8 jars of spice. A couple bags of bean mix. We ran out of business cards. We talked to folks about permaculture, Ossabaw Island pigs, milk and apple fed pork, bacon, soup making, recipes, gardening, and babywearing.

We grilled up sausage samples. We danced with our children in the rain.

It was a good day.

Our first farm crawl, in 2007, was when Lily was three years old. It was the best day. I was pregnant with Holly. I ate chevre for the first time. Lily picked apples. We saw a real beehive for the first time. Watched a kid rescue a wooly bear caterpillar from chickens. We lived in the city and were still longing for a farm. Longing is a soft word for it. We were suddenly brokenhearted at the thought of raising our children in the city. We needed this life.

In 2008 we toured farm crawl, meeting our soon to be neighbors and mentors.

2013, setting up our booth at Farm Crawl is still like a dream for us. I think the folks we were in 2007 imagined having a farm, but never having a vendor booth. We just wanted to do this for our own family. Now we teach others how to get started. That's pretty cool.

Through farm crawl we have met so many wonderful people. People from all over Iowa, people we have learned so much from, people we pass knowledge on to.

I am so grateful.

Sadly we didn't get a single picture.

Farm Crawl and New Blog Navigation

Today was the annual Farm Crawl. We've been preparing all week and very busy.

For those of you new to the blog there is a navigation tab system at the top. If you just want recipes, click on the Farmhouse Kitchen. If you only want to read about Isaac's story, and how our family lives with 22q deletion syndrome there is a tab for that too.

This blog includes all of our life, the farm, the kids, unschooling, cooking, motherhood reflections, writing about writing, and sometimes long rambling posts about body politics and feminism. That's just who I am, what I love, and I write about it. I write about all of it.

I thought about making multiple topic blogs but ultimately decided that the model of that didn't work for me. That's why you get it all here. The good, the yummy, and the barnyard.

Cheers!

Meet the Meat....

I've been thinking a lot lately about food budgets. My own especially since my two almost three year old has the appetite of a teenager. He eats almost as much as I do at a meal! So I thought I would go through our budget again and figure out where and when we can make improvements in both expense and quality.

To take it back I thought I would talk about meat first. About 7 years ago we started buying pork in bulk, whole animal. Then about 5 years ago we started buying beef that way too. Now we raise our own chickens, get a deer, and if we can afford it we also buy a lamb (this year we are raising lamb and maybe a beef too!). We also fish our pond for fresh fish and have duck and turkey now and then. All fresh, all local. That's a LOT of variety. This year if we had paid for our own pork as a customer, the cost for 175 lbs of meat would have been approx 614$. Our pastured beef side was $850. So pretend that we didn't get all the other meat and just bought beef and pork in bulk....that's 1464$.... 121$ per month, $35 a week for enough really good meat to host several large parties and serve T-Bones and Iowa Chops and our family eats really well, not just on sale poor quality ground meat and cheap cuts.

I get to be creative. I get to learn about new cuts of meat and how to prepare them. I get to use my heirloom cast iron skillets. My family eats well. We eat together. We eat at home.

That last bit saves us a lot of money. We eat at home. Quite often, the cuts of meat and quality of meat we eat here at home is better than what is served at the restaurants we can afford. I won't pretend I am a sous chef, but I know I have put on the table meals that were better than Cracker Barrel or Applebees menu fare. I know my Iowa Chops rival the State Fair on a stick variety (and those are really good!). Plus, this is for weeknight fare and regular breakfasts not special occasion meals.

I also know that we are paying premium price for our bulk meat and it is still cheaper than store bought. Easily found in our area are cheaper bulk rates, for example we charge $2.75 per lb hanging weight for our pork and a neighboring farmer charged $0.60 cents per lb last year. I cannot figure out how he can charge that AND pay for feed for the animal since our feed costs are double that at least.