Women Of The Dirt

Bringing It To The Table ~ A Book Review By Betsy Hicks

A Couple of Post Worth Reading!

Here's a delicious post by our own Holly from Norris Hot Springs.

And yet another informative post by Jenny!

Enjoy!

A Magazine Review ~~Acres USA

Words to Live By

This quote comes to us from Licia.

 Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient~~Aristotle

Recommended Reading

It's difficult to say where each of us happens to be in our journey, but one thing is for sure, there are a lot of books out there to help enable us in our quest for better food and cleaner living, no matter where you're at.

My friend Angie, who is a Tasha Tudor Kindred Spirit from the coast of Washington, happened to be reading this blog and sent me a list of books she loves.  I will use excerpts from her email to explain.  I've added some of them to the librarything widget. 

I used to collect homesteading books.  I have a fondness for the back to the land attitudes of the 70's. I'm sure most of my suggestions will be woefully outdated but I guess I'm getting that way myself!  The books that spring to mind are:
 
Number one on my list would be The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. What a great book.  When Carla passed away I felt like I lost a friend.  I just love her. Our edition is stained with jam, pickle juice and turkey blood....
 
I love anything by Gene Logsdon, contrary farmer that he is.   He's written so much on the subject of self-sufficiency.  I love Gene but you and I have to deal with his obvious dislike of sheep.  He had bad luck with them and is pretty biased against them, unfortunately.
 
Five Acres and Independence- springs to mind here. I don't think Logsdon wrote this but this is a classic.

Food preservation:
 
How about Stocking Up? Rodale Press, right?  They come out with new editions of that pretty often. Always handy.
 
The Ball Blue Book of Canning.  My 99 year old grandma called me excitedly a couple years ago when this new edition came out.  Said it still had all her favorite old recipes in it that we've enjoyed for years and years.  I wouldn't be without it.
 
Magazines:
 
Countryside and Small Stock Journal.  Pretty good.  Used to be better.  Used to be more like:
 
Backwoods Home.  I love Backwoods Home.  Great gardening, livestock and  food preservation info. 
 
Organic Gardening 

Mother Earth News
 
Misc.
 
And IMHO, you must throw in Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden.  Even though Edith is writing and drawing about the flora and fauna in her native England we have many of the same things here.  And her poems and thoughts through each month of the year help us notice and appreciate nature all around us.  Such a wonderful, beautiful book. 
 

And for the fiber people out there:  Though it feels very desert-southwest I do like the large Spinning Weaving and Dying Book. 

Thanks, Angie, for taking the time to write! 

Buffalo Berries, By Our Very Own Lorca!

Picking buffaloberries is necessarily a mindful proposition. The thorns are terrific and the leaves come off more easily than the juniper-sized berries. But once you happen to be mindful, the colors explode into you – rich grey green, translucent gold and a carnelian red that makes you a believer in everything.  Eating a berry a few weeks ago would suck all moisture from your mouth, but now the cold has sweetened them. The frosts increase the sugar and decrease the natural pectin so in making jam you never are quite sure where you are in adding sugar and gelling pectins, but at the worst there is syrup for buckwheat pancakes with Greek yogurt. The jars are the color of attar of roses.

Bring your bowl back home, two delicately pricked sticky hands curved around it (you were mindful). Remove a reasonable number of leaves and tiny spiders of differing colors.

Combine the grated rind of a fresh orange, two cups of water and two cups of granulated sugar in a saucepan. Mix and cook over moderate heat for ten minutes. Add four cups of cleaned berries. (Patience is the quality most nearly approximating happiness.) Cook until berries pop. Then add a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a pinch of ground cloves and cook for five minutes, stirring frequently. Spoon this mixture into a bowl and place in a refrigerator. Serve chilled with tiny, delicate antelope chops, elk tenderloin or tender beef medallions.   Fresh bread. Real butter.  Red wine.  Not bad as mantras go.

Enjoy,

Lorca

Lucky Duck!

At some point during the process of processing, Lorca's friend Lisa said something to me about helping to get the group started.  Humbly, I quickly tried to dismiss it.  Then Lorca pipes up that I am the "anchor" of the group.  I thought she said "agar".  (Is my hearing getting that bad?)  I let out a belly laugh that probably scared the small children and responded with, "Yes, I am the agar and you're all my little spores!"  Admittedly not very many of the women knew what agar is, but since my son is into growing (legal) mushrooms, I knew the word.  Agar is the jelly like substance in a petri dish used to grow cultures. 

I thought it was funny.

I will leave you with the only bird that went home with her feathers on.  It was decided she was probably a hen and would be useful to give beautiful duck eggs, so her life was spared......for now. 

What about Bob?

From the gutting table the birds are rinsed and put into big tubs and sinks of ice-cold water to chill.  Once the body heat is gone, it's much easier to reach inside and do a little more cleaning.  The lungs come out much easier after cooling. 

The final stage is to singe the hairs off of the chickens.  Yes, chickens have hair!  It was getting late and everyone was cold and tired, so the ladies decided to do their hair at home! 

I mentioned earlier that we had to leave for a bit and go up the road to a neighbors birthday party, and we did.  While we were gone, Codie decided it was time to process Bob the turkey.  Bob had been put in a large dog crate for the ride over and was sitting in the yard during this whole process.  My turkey hens were quite impressed with the new guy on the block, but Codie assured me he was too big to be of any use to them!  I am partial to turkeys and was actually relieved when we returned from the party and Bob was on the gutting table.  Well, sort of relieved.  I was relieved I didn't have to be a part of that process. 

Here sat one massive bird, plucking almost complete.  Bob had lived out his full life at Codie's and was now going to provide their entire family with a delicious Thanksgiving meal, if Codie can find a pan big enough to cook him in! 

A bit later I lifted him out of the cold water to see just how big of a turkey we were dealing with.  My guess was 40 lbs.  He seemed a bit lighter than a 50 lb. feed sack to me.  Before Codie left with him I just HAD to get out the scale.  He weighed in at 39 lbs. and 1 oz.  AMAZING!  Codie sent out a plea to the WOTD for cooking suggestions.  Lots of offers came flowing back including a small pig roaster as well as an electric roaster.  Many suggested the bar-b-que and others suggested cutting him up.  I am sure this will be a Thanksgiving her family will not forget!  Thanks Bob!

 This picture doesn't do Bob justice.  The cooler was almost too small! 

The Yucky Part! Part 4

Gutting.  I don't like the gutting part and if I had to gut my own birds, I am not sure that I would raise them.  I shall always endeavor to have a gutter in my life!  On the other hand (were screaming yellow rubber gloves, but that's beside the point here), there were plenty of women and children here willing and ready to tackle that job! 

Tamara arrived with a taco platter in hand from the local fast food joint.  That just cracked me up.  She cracks me up!  Here we are, a group of women wishing to grow wholesome food for our families and she arrives with her kidlets and fast food.  She's also the one who brought a can of whipping cream to a gathering.  We have so many women who milk their own cows and we could have FRESH whipped cream and she brings a can of it.  I had lots of fun with that one.  I promptly ripped the lid off and squirted some in my mouth.  When the kids came in to eat and some of the moms went outside, I started squirting it in their mouths and told them not to tell their mothers!    Taco platter aside, Tamara went to work gutting.  She's very careful in the "dissection" process and shows the kids the various identifiable parts.  It was a great learning experience for them.  When she was gutting a duck she screamed, "I think I just found the quacker!"  Sure enough there was a very hard, transparent part of the duck that we were certain helps them make their quacking noise.  One kid wanted her to pop it.  It looked like you could, but it was as hard as a rock.

The gutting table!

A couple of serious gutters!

Now mind you, this was a cool, October day and with all of the trees in our yard, not a lot of sun was shining on us.  When I snapped these pictures Gracie's comment was, "Ooohhhhhhh!  It's nice and warm in there!"  She was happier than a pig in slop!

A WOTD in training?  I think she's almost there!

I do feel that the enthusiasm of the kids is a direct result of the enthusiasm of their moms!  It was amazing to me to see how they all jumped in to do the necessary steps of processing these birds for their freezers.  I did warn Tamara, however.  I told her to enjoy these times.  My daughter, who is 24, won't have a thing to do with butchering chickens.

The Continuing Saga.......Part 3

The next step for us after chopping off heads is to hang the chickens and let them bleed out.  This picture was taken a week earlier when we did our own Cornish Cross meat birds.  The contraption we use to hang them on was a make-shift saw horse made by the workers who built my barn.  We just nailed some twine on and it's worked fine for us for many years.  Use what you have, I say! 

From here we pick the one by one and take them to the scalding pot.  I use a turkey fryer I purchased at a garage sale.  It had been used once and was priced at $10.  An awesome deal!  The flame will go out for a couple of reasons, water and wind.  If a breeze comes up, it will blow the flame out and if you drip a lot of water from the bird over the sides, that will obviously put it out as well.  It's best to keep the matches in your pocket, but for the price, it works great.

The temperature should be at least 160 and no hotter than 165.  If you get the water too hot you run the risk of starting to cook the bird and the skin will come off during plucking.   Too cold and the feathers won't come out.  We dip and swish for a count of 5.  Lift the bird, check the feathers and then repeat.  If you leave the bird in too long it can set the feathers. 

From the scalding pot we go to the plucker.  I purchased this plucker online about 3 years ago and it's been worth every penny.  The fact that 362 days a year it just sits in the shed doesn't bother me a bit.  The 2 or 3 days per year that we use it, we NEED it.  It cuts your work time down considerably.

Here's Lorca at the plucker with one of her turkeys.

Off With Your Head! Part 2

Bear with me.  I call all of this "chicken reality".  Maybe this should be called "Fowl Reality"!  It's part of what we do and how we live our lives, being responsible stewards of the land and the animals on the land.

The first part in the process of butchering, harvesting, processing (whatever you chose to call it), is the chopping block.  In the instance where a rogue chicken might escape its confines, one must chase down the escapee.  This did happen 2 or 3 times.  I had my son come out with his pistol to shoot the bird, rather than have it run for its life, being chased by more than a half dozen small children and one large one.  (My son is 27).  The first bird he actually caught using the handy-dandy chicken catcher.  It's like a mini shepherd's crook, made of strong wire.  You hook a leg and there you have it.  The second escapee he shot.  He got the biggest kick out of Lorca's little boy.  After he shot the bird he looked up at him and simply said, "Thank you"!  He's still laughing about that.  Only at a WOTD gathering!

We place 2 nails on a stump, put the chicken's head between the nails and then hold the legs and chop off the head.  Tamara's daughter couldn't wait to chop off Silkie Boy's head. 

As told by Tamara:

"The little silkie was our first chicken one year ago. We called him Silkie Boy and the kiddos held him and carried him around giving him lots of love. Then the hens came and we soon realized Silkie Boy was really Silkie Brat.  Gracie has wanted to put him in the stew pot since last fall."

She was informing him in the car on the way over, "I can't wait to put you in the stew pot Silkie Boy!"  She was bound and determined to chop his head off.

Samuel watches Gracie with the ax while his mom holds Silkie Boy.

Codie takes a whack at a turkey!

Oh yes, there's more to come!  Stay tuned!

I just have to share this link!  It's awesome!  Women Farmers of the World!

Butchering Chickens With Kids and Newbies Part 1

Ok, I am being nice.  I didn't use the word "green horn" in the title!   

Yesterday I hosted a small contingent of WOTD to butcher chickens, turkeys and ducks.  There were a few women who had old layers, mean birds, too many roosters, ducks and turkeys, so we made a day of it here at my house.  I told them up front that I didn't cut or gut.  Someone else needed to do that.  I also told them that I had to sneak away for a bit in the afternoon to go to a neighbor's 80th birthday party.  Knowing that my husband would be off hunting on opening day, we wouldn't have his cutting and gutting experience.  All of that was fine with them.  They were just over feeding these birds that needed to go into the freezer quite some time ago, but for various reasons, it got put off until now.  As it turned out, my son and husband were both home to offer their help and show us how to properly cut and gut.  My son just laughed and shook his head.  Then he looked at me and said, "What amazes me is the women you find who are willing to do this and no husbands in sight......and you keep coming up with them!"  We had just done 68 meat birds last weekend with mostly female help!  I just laughed.

One by one the women started showing up, some with children, some without, some with birds, some without.  Two women came to check it all out, one stayed for some hands-on experience and speaking of hands-on, THREE of them brought RUBBER GLOVES!  I am still laughing about that one.  Never in all of my butchering days had the thought of rubber gloves ever crossed my mind.  I promptly told them that if they wore them, they would be banned from WOTD forever.  One woman put hers on anyway.  Then I turned around to see a second one wearing them!  HORRORS!

Caught yellow-handed!

Stay tuned for part 2!

Oh yes, we have fun!

If you're logging on here for more good info about WOTD, I apologize.  We are a busy group and I haven't had time to post a lot here. 

You will find a little info about some of the women who gather and like to eat good food, but I am delinquent in updating this, so check back soon.  I promise to have an awesome chicken "harvest" post!

LaVonne

Time

Time has a way of slipping, passing, rushing by.  You blink your eyes or turn your head and before you know it a year or two has passed.

I have not been very diligent about keeping up with this blog.  My hope was that some of the other WOTD would submit some things to post here, but it's that time thing again!

Some of you may have read about us in the current Edible Bozeman magazine.  I am sorry there's not a whole lot more to read about for your inquiring minds, but do enjoy what there is so far.

LaVonne

New Beginnings~~~~~~~~~~

Things are happening with WOTD, even though we've experienced some grey days and lots of snow! 

Yvonne and Jason welcomed a new baby girl into this world on the 13th of Feb.  She had her at home.  Another WOTD in training!

Lexi is a WOTD who lives in Ennis, MT.  She grows tomatoes.  I had the pleasure of meeting her at Jenny's house one day and although I can't tell you a lot about her personally, she did offer up this to all of us!

I have been getting really desperate to garden. I waded through snowdrifts to finish mulching the hoop house, which may have been silly, but it made me feel better. I now have it all mulched for the coming season, which is the earliest I have ever done that.

I am now cleaning and organizing the insulated section. The hoop house is 20’ by 40’ and I have one section inside it approximately 9’ by 16’ that has the north and west walls made of wood and insulation, a top of double insulated glass panels, and the south and east walls are heavy plastic I roll up and down for temperature regulation.

As the insulated section is completely inside the hoop house I do not have to worry about the nearly constant wind blowing it apart or damaging the wee seedlings. I can open up the hoop house in the daytime if it gets too hot in the sun, and raise the plastic walls on the insulated section as needed. It works great.

It has a 4’ by 16’ hot frame in it where I start my seedlings, a bench over that, as well as two 8’ benches I bring inside for holding the plants when they come out of the hot frame. I heat it with a little electric heater from Charley’s Greenhouse.

I am forcing myself to wait until March to start my first tomatoes, due to the ridiculous possibility of below zero weather at any time and the cost of heating.

However, I thought I would share with anyone who is interested some photo tutorials I wrote for my blog, in case it might help someone else wanting a head start on the season. My goal is a ripe tomato before June. Last year I missed by a few days, but maybe this year…

Lexi

A New Year and New Beginnings!

Various and assorted WOTD gathered yesterday at Jenny Sabo's in Harrison.  It's always a great time and wonderful food.  So many meat dishes yesterday and I was thrilled!  I needed some protein.

Gathering with other women who have no agenda other than sharing things they know and asking questions about what they'd like to know all under the umbrella of "real" food, better living & health for all is so energizing.  Sometimes there are two or three conversations going on at once, depending on how many are there.  That's the only frustrating part becasue you're so afraid you might miss something important that someone has just shared.  Our conversations are many and varied!  Never dull.

Yvonne is hoping to NOT be at the next gathering and if she is there, she's hoping to have a new baby in a carrier and not still in the womb.  She was late with both her others and is anticipating the same with this one.  She will have a home birth with a midwife.

Jacy and Matt just closed on their property (finally) on Friday.  It has been a long haul for them, but they are well on their way to their own little chunk of land.  As luck would have it, I found them a barn in the newspaper with living quarters up above.  They "only" have to have it moved to their property.  We were discussing the hoops that a person has to jump through in this valley in order to buy raw land and establish a farm.  It would be more than some people could take and others might just throw in the towel.  It has taken almost a year for everything to get state or county approval for them, but they have hung in there and will be seeing their own fields green up sometime after the snow melts this spring!

Cherylin is pondering new ideas.  A greenhouse & expanding the garden were two of the things on her mind.  She's been burning the candle at both ends by making healthy crackers for sale.  She does that when the kids are asleep!

Jenny was the effervescent Jenny.  Always wide-eyed and full of information to share as well as gathering any new information to further her expanding knowledge of good living.  She orders kelp in from the east coast by the truck load and allows any of us to purchase from her.  My sheep, goats and chickens love it and I was able to take home 3 bags for them as well as 3 bags for a friend of Sarah's.

Katherine was pretty quiet.  Almost too quiet.  I may need to give her a call and see what's up. 

Becky shared some of her health concerns with us which opened up a lot of dialog about doctors and health care now.  It was all so enlightening.  We all live and learn.  We cannot go back, but we can all go forward.  With WOTD, we can go forward with much more knowledge and the security that we have each other beside us all the way.

I know there were others, Mona, Paula, Rebecca.  They are the 3 quiet ones.  You can tell they are drinking it all in.  If I have forgotten anyone, I am sorry.  I'll write about you next time.

What's new here with me?  Not a lot.  I've got a Nubian buck out there with my girls, so I will have baby goats in June.  Chris bought a boar to breed the 2 Hereford cross gilts he kept last fall.  We are hoping one is bred and that he will breed the other one soon.  Baby pigs will be a first here and it's very exciting.

I have given up on finding someone to take over the garden or even part of it.  I just figured if it was meant to be it would happen and it just hasn't happened, so I guess it will be put back into alfalfa for rotational pig/sheep pasture.  I am ok with that, but I will miss the life that was there the past 5 years immensely.  I am hoping to have a small garden plot myself.  We will see what comes.

LaVonne

Long Overdue!

Where does the time go?  It's was May when I last posted here and as with the seasons, things change! 

Just a little WOTD upadte.

Peggy has moved on to presumably greener pastures in OK.  That is up for debate, in more ways than one.

Susie has fallen off the face of the earth with marital problems.

On a lighter note, Yvonne & Jason are expecting child # 3, although it was a surprise!  Living on a farm I thought they might have figured out by now how that happens! 

Jacy and her husband Matt are finishing up their last season here at our place.  Since I've not written about them or myself, it probably means nothing to all of you.  They have been good stewards of 5 acres here for 5 years now.  They have found property of their own and will be moving to it sometime this fall.  The process has begun (mostly just dialog) as to what to do with the land and who to have on it after they leave.  I guess I've got some blogging to do to catch everyone up!

LaVonne

The Dedicated WOTD, Yvonne!

Introducing Another WOTD, Becky!

Becky lives on 160 acres North of Bozeman with her husband, Dave.  They raise sheep and cattle on their land to utilize the lush grass on their farm.  Along with that they have a few bee hives as well as guard dogs and llamas.  Her Border Collie is a constant companion and is Becky's favorite farm animal.  We can't forget her farm cat too!

In addition to all of the above, Becky has turned her antique barn into a wool washing and processing shop.  You can have your fiber washed, carded, made into quilt batts or roving or even spun into yarn right in her barn!  There's a link to Becky's mill on the left.  They sell and ship lamb, yarn, blankets, hats, handspinners fleeces, roving, batts.  Becky and Dave have installed solar panels on the South side of the barn.  They are used to heat the water for washing the wool.  A tour of the barn is fascinating, to say the least.   I love having a wool mill just 7 miles from my home! 

Becky is living this lifestyle because, in her words,  "I’m a little bit crazy, and because I want to know if small-scale agriculture can work, and because I’m only at home outdoors."  She isn't passionate about just one thing on the farm, but several.  "It's the puzzle of trying to fit the pieces together in a way that allows small-scale grass-farming connected to small-scale industry (wool processing) to survive without wrecking the neighborhood that’s interesting,  she states.  The world’s best meat and fiber and wildlife grow from grass, just grass, but we’ve spent the last half century eliminating grasslands....something to think about....!"  She recommends these books.  Why Grassfed is Best, The Unsettling of America & Farming With the Wild. 
If you desire to live this kind of life and don't know where to begin, Becky suggests you read a lot and talk to many sources but don’t take anything as gospel;
things have to fit your microclimate, your land, your psyche, your family.

Becky's favorite quote is a Chinese Proverb and sums up what Becky is all about:  “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

Check out her website and don't forget to read the news section to learn more about their operation!

Any WOTD Checking In?

I am just sending out this message to my fellow WOTD to see if anyone is paying attention.  I know it's fast approaching the busiest time of the year and then you'll have a legit excuse as to why you haven't answered my questionaire.  I have several I'd LOVE to write about, but they haven't filled it out yet, so here I am begging them to get off the stick and send me your info! I think they are all pretty fascinating women and worth writing and reading about,   If you don't I'll be forced to write about myself and everyone's totally bored with that.