I was trying to figure out how to explain my local food preferences to someone whose only concerns about food are “cheap” and “easy.” I thought of this way of explaining it:

Everybody has certain things they are willing to pay for in food. You might be willing to pay more for convenience (pre-washed salad greens), for a particular flavor (those perfect ginger snaps from World Market), or tradition (must have Saunders Hot Fudge at Christmas). I am willing to pay more for food for two main reasons: preserving the environment and grocery insurance.

When I say I buy organic foods to “save the earth,” most people understand that well enough to be getting along with. I don’t like to pollute, I want to be nice to the plants and animals, I’m a tree-hugging liberal hippie freak and that’s just what they do, etc. I think it’s a little more nuanced than that – or perhaps not nuanced at all; I don’t think anyone should have to drink poisoned well water as a result of agriculture – but it’s close enough that I don’t feel a need to explain any further.

My preference for local food is a bit more complex. Yes, I want to keep my money in my community. Yes, it’s often fresher, and also organic (whether certified or not). But the real reason I do it is so my community will have something to eat thirty years from now.

Look, gas prices are going to continue to rise. At some point – and maybe that will be in ten years or thirty or fifty, but I’m sure I’ll see it in my lifetime – gas will hit such a price that we won’t be able to afford to truck products across the country. Not to mention the price of producing the beef in the first place, fed on irrigated, petrochemical-soaked corn. At some point, it will cost more to produce and ship a pound of hamburger from the Plains states than anyone is willing or able to pay for that hamburger – so Plains states farmers will produce less of it.

No problem. That’s when it will make financial sense to buy beef from the local farmer who raises her cattle on grass, right?

Wrong. Because if, up until that date, I refuse to pay a little more per pound for local grass-fed beef, my local cattle farmers will go out of business and probably sell their farms to developers because they can’t make a living farming. So not only will the farmer not be in business, the farm itself might be gone, too.

I am currently financially able to buy the majority of my groceries from local sources. I see it as my responsibility to do so, not just to support my local farmers, but to create conditions that will keep my local foodshed thriving so it is available to feed as many people as possible when the day comes when we really need it.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Think this argument will sway any WalMart devotees?

All photos by Walter Jeffries

Sugar Mountain Farm, owned by Walter Jeffries and his stellar family, is what you want a pig farm to be. Pig range freely in a series of padocks, rotated frequently to avoid over-stressing the land. Walter plants root vegetables, like turnips, in some of the fields for the pigs to forage in the fall. In addition, they get a varied diet of hay, whey (leftovers from a local cheesemaking plant), and high-protein and -calorie treats, such as expired peanut butter from the Ben and Jerry’s factory. Pigs are not castrated and do not have their tails or teel trimmed, as is usual even on family farms. These pigs are smart, lively, and well-respected. They live life like pigs – not boxed into crates on a concrete pad – and the meat is (I hear) fabulous.

Walter and his family are pretty fabulous, too. Walter’s a master-of-all-trades, from raising and breeding hogs to building his family’s barrel-vaulted “tiny cottage” house. His wife and kids (especially the older boys) help out on the farm, learning animal husbandry and construction as part of their home schooling. I have come to admire the whole clan immensely as I’ve followed their blog over the last couple years. It’s tempting to compare Walter to an undiscovered Joel Salatin, but where Salatin build chicken tractors, Jeffries pours concrete.

Design and image by Walter Jeffries

Walter’s next endeavor is to build an on-site, USDA-inspected hog processing facility where he can slaughter, cut, and cure the meat from his own hogs. This facility will be tiny – 1500 square feet – and he estimates the cost will be about 6% of the cost of a typical “small” USDA facility ($150,000 vs. $2.4 million). Currently, 47% of his sales go directly to the butcher shops, which routinely mis-cut, waste, lose, or allow meat to spoil. He also drives 600+ miles per week dropping off and picking up pigs. Building his own on-farm facility would circumvent all these issues. Walter’s also generously offered to share the plans with anyone who wants them – meaning folks around the world could benefit from his expertise and help their own farms keep more dollars in the family.

Currently, the plan and foundation are in place, but there’s a snag. Banks just aren’t lending, even to someone like Walter with stellar credit. The tiny cottage is too small for a second mortgage, and banks are just not taking risks right now.

I am so impressed with the Jeffries family’s operation, and his generosity for sharing knowledge and plans that can help local farmers make a good living. I want to help them out in thanks for all the good work they’ve done, how much they’ve taught me, how they model sustainable farming practices, and the vision Walter and his family have for the future.

So here’s what I suggest.

• If you have a local food lover in your life, give them the gift of a small slice of a great farm by making a donation to the Sugar Mountain Farm Fund Drive in their honor. Walter pledges to “pay it forward” to others!
• If you live in Vermont, order a pig (or half) for yourself. Or, find it at local retailers and restaurants (scroll down to “retail cuts”).
• If you live far from Vermont, order a pig and designate it to be delivered to a food bank close to the farm.
• If you’re independently wealthy, give Walter a loan! He’ll pay you back in five years. Really.
• If you, too, are strapped for cash in this crazy economy, “signal boost” this post by reposting it to your blog, Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking mechanisms.

Here’s to sustainable farming! Do you know of amazing farms like this in your area? Tell us about them!

Emily

I realized the other day that the next realistic steps my household might take to reduce carbon emissions are to carpool more (we commute to work together but could add up to 2 more people in our car) and to move to geothermal heat.

Geothermal systems – even with the rebates – would probably cost $15,000. That’s a ton of money. Even supposing we had $15K to spend on a system (and that’s a big “if”), would it be the best way to spend it? What would truly be the most carbon-reduction-bang for fifteen thousand bucks?

Some initial ideas:

• Help 15 households insulate their attics to R-60
• Buy super-efficient furnaces for several households
• Help 3-5 farmers build hoophouses to produce local veggies through the winter
• Invest in a “neighborhood energy startup” with a gasifier (makes heat and electricity and biodiesel), possibly with a permaculture system of greenhouses, coppice groves, etc.
• Just buy land and start a coppice grove for sustainable heating fuel production, and possibly invest in a pelletizer
• Some kind of education program? I’m thinking the actual return is hard to measure, and it’s not education about global warming that folks around here lack.

Anyone have data on any of these? Or other ideas? bonus points for things that are done once and keep on saving energy and reducing emissions without any further attention or work.

Naming our food is a long tradition in my family, starting with Boris the Bull, who I believed would cause my parents’ divorce (do YOU really understand how large a whole steer is? Yeah, us neither…). Last year we bought half a hog and named it Eric. This year’s participant has been dubbed Señor Porcus. No absent referent here!

We picked up our 1/2 hog from Old Pine Farm on Oct. 17th. They have a very nice farm – hogs are pastured with some supplemental feed, not confined to a muddy sty. They are slaughtered on-farm and then sent to the butcher, so there’s no travel stress for the pigs. I feel extremely grateful that we have such a farm near us, and that we can afford to buy our food from them.

Looks like we ended up with about 85 lb of meat (for $300, including cutting and smoking, so somewhere around $3.50/lb). Old Pine Farm is unusual in that they charge a flat price for your hog, no matter what size, and they do not charge extra for cutting and smoking. You get to pick how you’d like your meat cut up. Here’s what we got – showing our strong preference for sausage and pulled pork in this house! My only complaint so far is that the meat is wrapped in Saran Wrap, which I find hard to remove from the meat. Hopefully it will fend off freezer burn – since there’s no air inside the wrapping, it should do that. So long as the wrap is thick enough. We’ll see.

• Loin roast: 10lb in 3 large packages. Wonder if we should have gotten this sliced into chops?
• Shoulder roast: 20+lb in about 10 packages (will become pulled pork)
• Bulk Sausage: 18 one-pound packages
• Smoked kielbasa: 10 – two to four links per pkg
• Ground pork: 6 – 1.5 lb packs
• Bacon: 5 lb in one-pound blocks
• Smoked hocks: 8lb in 2 hocks
• Ribs, pork butt, other misc: 8lb
• Plus about 5 pounds of soup bones and 5 lb of fat for lard
• The tail, the bladder, and possibly the squeal for the Cooking with Laura Project, which I will get to in a few weeks

This filled 2 large coolers and a paper grocery bag; it takes up about 2/3 of our tiny 7cu ft chest freezer and close to half the space above the fridge.

I think this was a steal for $300. I think prices are going up for next year, and they will be worth it.

I’m doing my first workshop on stocking a pantry to live out of! This workshop aims to appeal to a variety of folks: those who want to save money, those who want quick meal prep, and those who think the economy is going to collapse but aren’t quite ready to join a peak oil group or move to a commune. Here’s the announcement: [EDIT 8-13 4:30pm - revised location]

Oct 10: Stocking your Pantry

Join us at 10 AM on Saturday Oct 10 at St. Paul Church elementary school (495 Earhart Rd., Ann Arbor) when Emily Springfield, a member and organizer of Ann Arbor’s Preserving Traditions club (http://preservingtraditions.wordpress.com), will present a workshop on Pantry Staples. Having easily-stored staples on hand will make meal preps easy, and Emily will even share some simple recipes to which you need only add vegetables or meat. In addition, Emily will share tips on basics to have on hand in case of emergency (think blizzard or tight funds), items you could buy in bulk or on sale to stockpile.

Cost is only $5 and includes the workshop and munchies. We promise to let you go by noon. Please RSVP to Ruth Zielke 994 3718 (azielke914@comcast.net). Bring your friends. Ask that nice woman who sits in front of you every Sunday if she will join you. There will be time for sharing tips and stories, too. It will be great to be together. There is no home game, so you won’t even have to worry about traffic! Treat yourself to great fellowship!

Last summer, we were told that our well was getting up there in years and would soon need to be replaced. So we started a New Well Fund, and by this spring, we’d saved up enough to have the new well drilled.

Out here in the boonies (only 5 miles from “civilization” like cable, natural gas, city water, and Meijer’s), we are plagued by power outages. It’s better than it was a couple years ago, when every heavy rain would kill our power for hours at a time, but we still lose power for 8 – 72 hours about once or twice a year. And as you probably know, when you’re on a well, no power means no water. We keep jugs of water in the house, but we decided that an even better solution would be to have a hand pump on the well.

We opted for a Simple Pump. The beauties of this pump are many. It needs no priming. (Older-style pumps require you to pour water into the pump before it will start to draw water, so you’re out of luck if you’re completely out of water, or your priming water is frozen). The pump won’t freeze in the winter – you can use it all year with no modifications. It installs alongside your existing electric pump, so there’s no switchover between electric and manual. In fact, both can be running at the same time. And supposedly, you can run a hose from the Simple Pump to the pressure tank in your basement, charge the pressure tank, and continue to get water flowing out of your faucets. I need a male/male hose adapter, and then I’ll try this out and report on how it goes. [Update: here's the review. The verdict? Possible but maybe not preferable.]

For pumping into a bucket or hose, the Simple Pump is very easy to use. I can operate it with one hand, though I prefer the balance of using two hands. Our well is about 100’ deep, and it takes 5 strokes to get the water going, then an additional 10 strokes to pump a gallon of water. There are two handle settings; the other setting makes pumping easier, but you get less water per stroke. I actually found that setting too easy at our depth, like riding a bike in first gear downhill. A child could definitely pump water, and because of the hose attachment, you could use the pump action to move the water rather than relying on hauling buckets.

The cost of having the Simple Pump installed during new well installation was $1300 (parts and labor). That was a bit steep, especially on top of the $4300-5000 for a typical well installation, but we think it’s worth it. Cribley Well Drilling did the installation; they said this is the 6^th or 7^th they’ve done this year – so apparently, lots of folks are thinking this is a good idea. It might be something that a group of neighbors could pitch in for, or perhaps a church or Grange.

I also have to say, the quality of water from the new well just floors me. Our old well was at least 40 years old, we think, and the steel casing was starting to disintegrate. We used a whole-house sediment filter and a Britta pitcher filter, and the water tasted like iron and stained everything. Bathwater was gray from suspended manganese sediment. From time to time, I would switch to store-filtered water for drinking, and it tasted so…clean. (Although even the old well water tasted cleaner than chlorinated city water.)

The water from the new well tastes decent right out of the tap. I’ll be curious to see if that lasts; the well was just bleached, after all. And I know that the plastic (PVC?) lining is not the best thing to be in contact with drinking water, but well water is 55 degrees, and plastic leaches the least when it’s cold. And honestly, after drinking rust flakes and fine particle sediment, I think I’ll risk it. The well driller said we should be able to quit filtering the water completely, too.

So all in all, I’m really pleased. The service from Cribley was fantastic (they even ran a PVC conduit through the basement wall for the hose to charge the pressure tank), the water is great, and the hand pump is everything I’d hoped for. I’m also wondering if the country curse of “iron in the water” is a misnomer, if the iron is actually your disintegrating well casing.

I dropped off my first produce donation to Food Gatherers of the summer (19 lbs of turnips and greens) and got caught up in conversation with Dan, the head gardener for Food Gatherers. We chatted on the edge of a huge garden – or small field – of proto-produce: spinach, peas, 300 tomato plants, with room for hundreds of square feet of winter squash. If the plot was less than an acre, it wasn’t by much. In addition, there’s another plot out back with collards, cauliflower, and other brassicas. They call this the Gathering Farm.

The idea is twofold: They’ll distribute some of the goodies directly to clients and to the non-profits Food Gatherers serves. But they’ll also send large shipments of produce to the DeLonis Center, where Food Gatherers runs a kitchen skills training program. The participants there will process the tomatoes and such into tomato sauce and other heat-and-eat foods and freeze them. These products will then be distributed to shelters through the winter, when fresh produce is scarce

They’re also partnering this year with Growing Hope to establish community gardens in Ypsilanti, called the Faith and Food project. The basic idea is that Growing Hope helps churches and other neighborhood institutions with the logistics of turning city lots into vegetable gardens. The gardens are tended by the neighborhood and congregation, and food is shared out among them. But a bunch of that food is also earmarked for Food Gatherers, to be distributed to people who don’t have a garden in their neighborhood.

Man, I’m proud to live in this area. And inspired, too. I’ve been thinking that now that Preserving Traditions is up and running pretty well as far as monthly workshops go (I’m set for topics and presenters through 2009), I will focus more on the community-building side. Specifically, getting the community kitchen up and running. I want folks to come to view the kitchen as an extension of their own kitchen, where they can come and do larger food prep/preservation projects that they may not have the space or equipment for at home.

At lunch, I met with Robin, the president of the Pittsfield Grange. It was a very cool meeting! They are excited to partner with us on the as-yet unnamed community food venture. The kitchen is large, and if the workflow layout isn’t ideal, there is at least a lot of counter space, big sinks, and two stoves. Plus dishes, punch bowls, chafing racks, etc. It will be a fine space for most activities.

The hall rental deal is, if we have more than 6 events a year, we can rent it all day Sunday for $80 a pop (or, I think, the afternoon/evening for $40, but I’d need to check). But, if a few of us join the Grange and it becomes a Grange-sponsored event, there is no rental fee. I think he also alluded to being able to have a treasury for this project, specifically, as opposed to having any money we make go into the general Grange fund.

Next steps: attend a Grange meeting (end of January) and decide if our first event will be in January or February. I don’t want to join until I’ve been to at least one meeting, but I don’t want to wait until Feb to do an event, so I think I’ll schedule 6 events at the $80 rate, starting in January, and if I join in Feb or so, they can just waive the fee for those.

So I’ve been wanting to “do something with local food” for a good long while now. This blog started as part of that desire. I’ve probably spent a couple years thinking about what I might do and trying to join in various existing efforts. None of it felt like “enough,” and none of it felt like what I really wanted to do.

I’ve thought a lot about self-sufficiency in the last year, and the most important thing I’ve learned is that self-sufficiency is not a worthwhile goal. It’s fricken’ hard, for one thing; it’s not an efficient use of human energy; and, if my household is flush and my neighbors are starving, I’m not going to be self-sufficient for long, anyway. What I’d rather strive for is community sufficiency, where we’re less dependent on produce from China but we don’t each have to have our own wheat field.

That idea and some inspiration from a whole lot of folks (for example) have gotten me thinking about starting some kind of community kitchen where we could get together, share equipment and knowledge, and build a community around good food. And I’ve decided it’s time to move forward and try to bring this around.

I’m starting small, and I’m trying to keep my expectations reasonable and flexible. Here’s what I’ve got so far, and a call for your creative brainpower, after the break:

The mission of the group would be to share resources and skills in the preparation and preservation of food (with a heavy emphasis on local, sustainable, and/or organic foods). We would start off having events, like Pasta Making Night, or Press Your Own Cider, or Canning 101. Each event would be led by someone with solid experience in that skill – usually not me! – and we’d pool together as much equipment as we could for that event from people willing to loan it for the day.

That might be enough to do, or we might someday have a space where we could leave the equipment for members to use as they need it (a pressure canner, for example). We might find it natural to do some bulk buying of pantry staples. We might collect dues and use the money to buy some club-owned equipment, fancier than what an individual would buy for home use (like a very nice hand-cranked grain mill). In the beginning though, we’ll keep it flexible and efficient, with as little overhead as possible.

I have started a conversation with the folks at the Pittsfield Grange, and we’ll be meeting this week or next to talk about using the Grange Hall for activities. The Grange is a farmers’ fraternal organization, and activities like community potlucks, cooking, canning, and such used to be very common. My contact, Helen, said that this group would be a “very good fit” for the Grange’s mission, so I’m hopeful we will be able to work something out. I’m hoping some of the current members of the Grange might be interested in sharing their wisdom about skills that might be in danger of dying out – anything from canning to curing pork to plucking chickens. I also bet that folks who are interested in this new group’s activities might want to join the Grange.

Whew. There it is…out of my own head and there for y’all to see. Now it’s public, and knowing you’re all watching will help keep me moving forward!

But first, I need your help. What should I call this group? Here are the guidelines:

• Should evoke community without sounding sappy or flower-child-ish
• Should evoke good, wholesome food (and the preparation thereof) but not sound like a food pantry
• Should appeal to a wide variety of people who want to learn to cook/preserve food: back-to-the-landers, peak oil activists, locavores, and just ol’ fashioned folk who think homemade always tastes better
• Can’t use these words: “Community Kitchen” (that’s too similar to Mary’s Community Farm Kitchen, and I don’t want to poach her name!) or “Cooperative.” (I’m into co-ops, but I’m told that’s viewed with suspicion by folks who think being a tree-hugging hippie freak is a bad thing.)

UPDATE 1-30-09: The group is going to be called “Preserving Traditions,” and you can find info on it at http://preservingtraditions.wordpress.com/

The Crosby Mint Farm in St. Johns, Michigan, was founded in 1912 by J.E. Crosby Sr. on two acres. The now 140-acre farm has produced chemical-free spearmint and peppermint essential oils for 96 years. They are facing foreclosure, even though they have enough mint oil in stock to pay off their debt. So they’re having a mint oil sale! Pure, chemical-free, steam-distilled peppermint or spearmint oil is $5/dram (1/8 oz). Free shipping if you order 6 or more. Help a neighbor and local chem-free farm! Buy some mint oil!