Restaurants, chefs, grocers, and food marketers are all very well aware of this.  They spend a lot of time and money feeding our craving for novelty.  Although some innovations fall as flat as a peppermint soufflé (remember green ketchup, garlic ice cream, or olestra?), our produce shelves are burgeoning with fruits and veggies that wouldn’t be recognized just a few years ago.  Portobello mushrooms weren’t common until the ’90s, and neither were daikon radishes, fiddleheads, tomatillos, Jamaican yams, or carrots in any other color but orange.  Producers can generally get a premium price for new offerings.  In our region, ground cherries—that common but largely forgotten roadside plant our grandparents foraged for free—now go for $3.50 a pint.

Value-added products using these new crops generate even more purchasing incentive.  Folks may be a little hesitant to buy something if they don’t know how to cook or eat it.  They may not know what to do with Saskatoon berries, but they sure as heck know what to do with Saskatoon Berry Jam.  Seaweed might be a little intimidating to some, but they wouldn’t hesitate to scarf down a plate of sushi.

Produce aisles sometimes offer recipe cards for shoppers beside the produce they want to sell.  Presenting a photo of a tempting dish entices buyers and eases any hesitation to try it.  Once a new food reaches a tipping point of general acceptance the big manufacturers jump on the bandwagon.  They may not present it in a healthy or even truthful manner, but their promotion solidifies the food as a cultural norm and is a benefit to small producers who no longer have to educate their buyers.

But until there is an established demand, there is risk.

The biggest challenge to growers taking a new path is matching up your current resources to what you want to try, understanding your potential market, and your tolerance for risk.  If possible it’s best to launch your new venture without digging too deeply into your own savings.  That said, you need to be careful about going into debt as well.  How to resolve this conundrum?  Begin with what you know or are producing already.  This means you already have some expertise and an established market that may be more likely to accept new offerings.  The greater the cash outlay needed for your product, the truer this is.

For instance, let’s say you’ve fallen in love with Water Buffaloes.  Don’t laugh.  Water buffalo milk is rich, creamy, and is the very best for making mozzarella cheese.  According to the Archer family who runs Fairburn Farms on Vancouver Island, buffalo milk has fifty-eight percent more calcium than cow’s milk, forty percent more protein, forty-three percent less cholesterol, and is a rich source of iron, phosphorus, vitamin A and protein.  Seventeen percent of the world’s milk comes from the water buffalo.  It’s easier to digest than cow’s milk and is good for many people who are lactose sensitive.

But establishing a water-buffalo herd is not for the novice.  During the Mad Cow Disease scare of the 1990s, all ruminants purchased from Denmark were ordered destroyed and their carcasses tested.  Although this disease has never been found in water buffalo, the Archers lost their entire herd of nineteen Danish-born animals.  They were in debt and without income, but with a few Canadian-born calves and never-say-die determination they rebuilt their herd and began producing milk and breeding stock.

Innovation on this scale is not for the timid.  It’s a better option if you already have the land, or a dairy, and a marketing outlet (Fairburn sells all their milk to local artisans, Natural Pastures Cheese Company).  But the opportunity for growth can make the risk worthwhile.  If you search for “water buffalo yogurt” online, you’ll find several North American farms producing it.  The product fits well with America’s trend toward buying healthier, locally-produced, organic meats, and dairy.

But what about we smaller homesteaders who want to try growing something new?  Luckily there are hundreds of options out there, and small local and/or organic farmers are already well-equipped to meet the needs of niche markets.  The trick is to match up what you already have to the opportunities that exist.  The following is a four-step process to find your perfect fit.

Step One:  Brainstorm

Open your minds and imaginations and get set for an adventure.  Gather up paper, pencils, and some intelligent, optimistic people and write down some ideas.  Anything goes.  No holds barred!  Don’t invite any nay-sayers to the table.  This is the time for creativity to flow, and nothing dampens that process as well as someone exercising “caution”.  Make a rule: no negativity.  So what if you live in Arizona and you imagine growing scented purple rice.  Put it out there and worry about the practicality of irrigated rice paddies in the desert later.  Sometimes a great idea overwhelms the obstacles, so don’t put the obstacles first.  This is where the creative types can go wild.  Give them free rein.

Step Two: Qualify

After you have a couple of hundred wonderful ideas, go get a coffee and take a break.  When you return to the table, it’s time to put those erasers to work.  First, remove anything that doesn’t absolutely excite you.  Then make another list, this time of resources.  How much time can you devote to developing something new?  What are you currently growing?  How do you market your output now?  Do you have any excess funds for your new venture?  What about acreage, soil type, water resources, climate, local pests, etc.?  Even if you don’t have your land yet, don’t skip this step.  You probably have a good idea of where you plan to homestead and what you’d like to grow.  This is where the bean-counters in the group can go to town.  Be as detailed and realistic as possible about your assets.

Step Three: Kill Your Darlings

You now have two lists.  One with innovative ideas, another with realistic assets.  Now is the time to match them up.  Now is the time to kill your darlings.  If you live in a hollow in Arizona with an underground aquifer that seeps out to support rice, then keep your purple rice idea.  Otherwise put it on the back burner for now.  If you worry about diseases that transfer from ranched wildlife to their wild cousins, then an elk farm may not be for you.  If you don’t have the funds to build a fish farm or the acreage to support water buffalo, toss those ideas into the bin.  Pare down your list relentlessly.  If it helps, don’t imagine these ideas are gone for good.  File them for later assessment.  Now is the time to listen to the cautious types, the practical ones who’ve been wriggling in their seats until now.

Step Four:  Pick one and go for it

What you will end up with after all of this is a list of qualified options.  This list is gold.  If you’ve done this right you can fly with whatever is left.  Give yourself enough time to learn and create the best quality before you head to market though.  This is especially true of edibles you plan to sell to specialty customers like chefs.  Consistency, reliability, and reputation are essential in niche markets.The following are a few innovations that have succeeded.  Let them inspire you!

Snails

There’s an old joke about a little snail who painted a big “S” on his car.  When asked, he said it was because he wanted people to look at him as he passed and say, “Hey, look at that big S-car go.”  Cute, but in fact the name “escargot” is a French moniker for any kind of snail.  The Helix polmatia is the large, white-bodied snail most commonly associated with French cuisine, but its cousin, Helix aspersa also makes great escargot.  This is the smaller, grey-bodied critter that decimates gardens across North America.  Raising these as food is a kind of poetic justice.

Demand for escargot is far greater than local supply, with most chefs purchasing tinned snails imported from France.  Locally grown escargot has good growth potential as it offers better value and often better quality for restaurant buyers.  You can start small with low cash outlay.  Mary Stewart is a successful snail rancher in California who supplies top chefs all over the country.  According to NY Times writer, Jeff Gordinier, who calls her “The Snail Wrangler”, Mary’s snails are in high demand because she makes the effort to cultivate the best and thoroughly clean them of grit before market.  Mary advises potential snail-farmers to take time to learn the art of heliculture before approaching chefs who are very particular about quality.

Salt

Hurricane Wilma decimated Midge and Tom’s landscape and irrigation business in the Florida Keys in 2012.  Instead of lingering on the devastation, they looked around and focused on the bounty of salt that surrounded them.  Using the battered remains of their decks and pipes they built two salt houses and began to produce solar-evaporated sea salt.  They now successfully sell their salt online, and through local shops and CSAs.

In Canada’s far east, a Newfoundland farmer named Ward George wondered what to do with an unused greenhouse he had in his nursery business.  The idea of farming salt struck him as he reached for the shaker one morning.  Why the heck buy salt when outside his doorstep was a vast briny ocean full of the stuff?  He laid out a twenty-five-by-fifty-foot sheet of rubber liner in his greenhouse to collect sea water siphoned out of Trinity Bay and let the sun and wind evaporate it off.  He now sells online, to restaurants, to the local Rocket Bakery and at the St. John’s Farmer’s Market.

You might check out “White Gold: A Brief History of Salt” for some useful trivia to schmooze customers.

Mushrooms

At one time the perfect snow-white button mushrooms now decorating produce bins were merely a French dream.  But those renowned connoisseurs of gastronomic delights developed a consistently white strain the world fell in love with.  That is, until the eighties when people began to demand more colorful fare.  The Portobello is actually a marketing invention.  When young, the giant fungus is, in fact, a crimini—that brown sister of the common white mushroom.  When older and larger it was considered too tough and strongly flavored for human consumption and was discarded as pig feed.  Then someone had the bright idea to reinvent the cast-off, call it “portobello”, and sell it as a brand new mushroom.

Now mushroom bins may hold shiitakes, oysters, chanterelles, porcinis, enokis, and morels.  Many edible mushrooms are marketed as having health benefits.  Reishi are listed on fitday.com as the “Super Anti-‘Shroom with anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal benefits”.  Maitake, shimeji, turkey-tail (inedible, but makes a powerful medicinal tea) can all be cultivated.  Mushrooms can be marketed fresh, or dried, through Farmer’s Markets, CSAs, to local restaurants and health food stores, or online.

Mud

When Shelly Egbert noticed the odorless, fine-grained mud oozing out of geothermal mud pots on her family’s property in Nevada, she had a brainstorm.  Why not sell it so people could slather it all over themselves?  She partnered with a friend, Summer Powelson, to extract and market the stuff.  They conscripted their children to help harvest and package the mud and Black Rock Mud Company was born.

They sell their mud online and to nearby spas and casinos in Reno.  The company has a strong eco-culture and adds value to their product with packaging that has been imbedded with non-invasive wildflower seeds that you can plant and grow.

Microgreens

In 1983, the Jones family lost everything they had to crop failure, including their land.  Traditional farmers, they’d grown cash crops of soybeans and corn but now had to start from scratch.  They leased land and began to grow new crops.  When a local chef asked them for squash blossoms their entrepreneurial curiosity was peaked.  What other exotic crops might be of interest to chefs?

They began to grow microgreens that elicited intense interest within their new market.  They developed their craft and now provide tiny, baby herbs and lettuces with the flavor and unique shapes and colors demanded by fine chefs around the world.  The Jones’ have now completely abandoned traditional farming.  They focus on healthy soil and working with nature to provide the best produce.

Booze

You can make wine out of just about anything.  But also look at other fermented products such as mead, sake, or hard cider (which can be made from a variety of fruits from apples to plums).  Check your area’s regulations as distilled alcohol is regulated differently than beer and other fermented products.  In our neck of the woods, cottage wineries are becoming more popular.  If you already have an orchard, why not look into boozing it up?  It’s one of the most lucrative value-added markets.  Product can be sold on the farm, at local markets, or online.  Look up local marketing boards for advice.

Poo

Cattle rancher Annie Haven markets her “Haven Natural Brew Tea” on her website.  Looking just like those tea bags you dip in your mug in the morning, these packets of dried manure are steeped to feed your garden plots or potted plants.  Haven even sells gift packs.  Selling manure can create income, but converting it into compost can increase return dramatically.  At Tandem Park Riding Center in Colorado, manager Laura Voshchenko was paying $450 a month to have manure carted away.  In an article written by Rick Kahl for stablemanagement.com, she says she now charges $40 a truckload for compost made from that same manure.

Chris McLaughlin, a master gardener and writer for vegetablegardener.com, touts the many advantages of rabbit poop.  It’s easy to spread, has all the benefits of animal manure, and doesn’t have to be composted before used.  Doug Knippel keeps rabbits in raised pens and sweeps out rabbit manure frequently.  Once screened, he bags the manure in empty rabbit-feed bags and sells it at $5.00 a bag.  He estimates he takes 33% off the cost of feeding his rabbits this way and money saved flows into profits.  Doug also sells worm poop.  Check out his diverse farm at NWRedworms.com.

Spawn the World Has Never Seen Before

We tend to think of hybrids as GMO-produced Frankenfood, but humans have been developing hybrid strains of fruits, nuts, vegetables, and livestock since farming began.  Familiar veggies common today weren’t around at the dawn of agriculture.  For instance, broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and kohlrabi were all cultivated from the wild mustard plant.  Hybridization occurs naturally through the cross-pollination of related species.  Think rutabaga (a cross between turnips and cabbage) or grapefruit (pummelo and sweet oranges).  Recent developments seen in markets are blood limes (lime and mandarin orange), Tayberries (blackberry raspberry cross), tangelos (tangerine and grapefruit) and Jamaican Ugli fruit (grapefruit, orange, tangerine).  If you have a talent for plant breeding you could produce something truly unique.

Weirdos

Less common fare such as Chinese artichokes, chayote, purple sweet potato, hairy cucumbers, Juneberries, seabeans, quince, baby sea-kale, rat-tail radishes, orach, quinoa, turmeric, Halloween radishes, Buddha’s hand citron, blue-berried honeysuckle, birch sugar, tiger nuts, sunchokes, sorghum, and nopales cactus are only a few of the fascinating options out there.  Check out what suits your climate, and resources.  Also, consider medicinal or culinary herbs or growing landscape or ornamental plants.

Good luck and good innovating!

The post Weird Things to Grow and Market on the Homestead appeared first on Homestead.org.

Before you begin, you’ll need to turn a cold eye to what the market will tolerate.  You may love your anatomically-correct frog figurines, but the rest of the world may not be ready for them.  Do some research first, check your resources (which include that most important one: time!), plan a strategy, and then go for it.

How to Make Money Selling Crafts

Step 1: Research.  Check the internet, shops, craft and art shows, farmers’ markets, everywhere you can think of to see what’s similar to what you make.  Write down the price of the pieces and where they’re sold.  Ask your fellow crafters how they got to where they are.  Many will even share costs and profit margin information.  People who craft for pleasure will feel a kinship with you and will want to help.  On the other hand, people who make money selling crafts for a living might be less forthcoming.

If what you offer is similar to crafts already out there you need to punch it up a little.  According to craftproffesional.com the best selling items aren’t common.  People look for one-of-a-kind quality in handcrafted items.  Of the Ten Best Selling Crafts listed below, the one making the most profit might surprise you.

There’s a good formula in the book Craft Inc. for figuring out pricing and this is part of the research process.  Until you figure out if you can make any money selling crafts, you won’t know where (or if) to start or what kind of venue to consider.

Cost of time + cost of materials = cost of goods

Cost of goods x 2 = wholesale price

Wholesale price x 2 = retail price

The most difficult component is determining the cost of your time.  Imagine working for a company doing the same thing and put in your imagined pay per hour, then be realistic about the length of time it takes to finish your project.  Don’t undercut yourself.  Your time is one of the most valuable commodities you own.  If it turns out you won’t make a profit, don’t sell.

Step 2:  Strategize.  Okay, you’ve decided you have a craft the world will clamor for.  It’s quirky enough, beautiful enough, or unique enough to make a profit.  Now you can plan your venue.  You have many options, but not all are a good fit.  The internet is very popular with crafters, but if you make heavy rustic furniture and take your sweet time to give it loving care, online malls may not be for you.  An auction or consignment shop might be better.  No exorbitant shipping costs and people can run their hands over the surface and really appreciate the craftsmanship.

To find craft shows in your area go to sites such as Festivalnet.com (free and includes Canada), and Craftmasternews.com (you need to pay for a subscription).  Ask the show manager what foot traffic is expected and how long the show has been running.  Newer shows usually have smaller crowds.

However many items do show well online.  If you decide to try, be sure you know the costs involved.  Etsy is a good online mall for folks selling smaller quantities.  They specialize in handmade crafts and supplies and will list your items at a cost of twenty cents each.  When you sell an item, they charge 3.5% of the item price.  Etsy provides a platform for the cost of shipping and taxes.

Other benefits of online selling include accessing a growing market (online sales are skyrocketing), your “shop” is open 24/7 and someone else handles the technical computer stuff.  Check out the list of online outlets at the end of this article.

Step 3:  Think outside the box.  You don’t always have to sell your craft—you can sell your expertise.  Gardeners are always in demand for presentations on how to grow a green thumb.  At the same time, crafts like your wreaths or herbal concoctions can be sold at the back of the room.  If you make glass, metal, or woodcraft, chances are you have a workshop or studio.  Invite students in, for a fee, for hands-on courses.  If knitting a hundred flowered children’s hats is somewhat daunting, consider selling patterns online instead.  One of the most successful sellers on Etsy, The Velvet Acorn, does just that.

Top Ten Best Selling Crafts

Kitchen Craft

Handmade natural products like soaps, candles, and skin-care items are in hot demand and most can be made relatively easily in your own kitchen.  These are also perishable products—they get used up quickly and create a need to buy more.

Food products made at home have to comply with very stringent regulations.  However, products such as goat milk soap, beeswax lip balm, and essential oils are made with many of the ingredients you’d put in your recipes but have very few restrictions when applied externally.

Because these crafts are small and travel well, mail-order or online sales are an ideal venue.  Other options include craft fairs, local gift and health stores, and farmers’ markets.

Garden Craft

Try making crafts from what you grow.  Herbal infusions are one of the top sellers in the market today.  Creating end-use crafts such as potpourri, scent diffuser oil, and medicinal products brings a much greater return on investment than simply selling dried herbs.

Dried flower arrangements sell, but wreaths go for much more than the cost of creating them and they’re popular.  Consider approaching local gift-, flower-, or health shops, or sell directly at farmers’ markets and craft fairs.  Wreaths do well online but the market is somewhat saturated.  It still might be worth a try—make sure you have a unique item and don’t price too high.

Painted plant pots, birdbaths and houses, signage, and ornamentals are not expensive to make and sell like the proverbial hot-cakes.  These are seasonal and do well at farmers’ markets and garden shows.

Textiles

There are many cottage industries providing textile crafts.  People pay a premium for artisan items, especially if they’re colored with natural dyes from roots, nuts, and flowers.  Be sure to include that information however you sell your items.  If you don’t have sheep, you can buy raw or processed wool locally.  Knit items are light enough to make shipping viable for online sales.

Although wool skeins and quality finished pieces are good sellers, you don’t even need to sell your goods to make some cash—sell patterns instead.  If you have yarn you can include that with your patterns and make higher priced kits.  Far less work, quick results, and good sales potential.

As for larger projects such as rugs or quilts, it’s harder to make a lot of money online.  Smaller items may be worth your while.  They’re quicker to make, take less material, and are popular.  Large quilts sell for a premium price in local tourist or gift shops.  Even consignment shops will take them.  Farmers’ markets and craft fairs are good venues for all textiles and bring better returns as you’re selling directly.

Woodworking

According to Heather Woodlief of Demand Media, wood crafts dominate the craft and hobby industry in sales.  It’s a competitive business, and you need to promote your craft to make it stand out.  Hand out business cards at any public event such as craft fairs.

Smaller items such as toys, bowls, and ornamentals do better online than larger items such as heavy furniture.  Best to sell your carved cherry-wood chests and wardrobes at auctions, craft fairs or consignment stores.

If you opt for selling online, Heather recommends Etsy and Artfire as they are safe and successful outlets for woodcraft.  In an interview for TheWoodWhisperer.com, woodworker Brian Timmons was asked why he decided to make combs for sale on Etsy.  Brian stated he had no expectations his crafts would sell and sat on them for months before listing them.  But then he decided he had nothing to lose and signed up.  He sold out in less than 24 hours and couldn’t believe he’d waited so long.

Metal Craft

Most people can’t do their own metal-smithing, so these items are not seen as common, which increases their value and fetches a better price.  In fact, CODA lists metalwork as the second most profitable craft category.

Metal crafting includes everything from wrought-iron banisters to decorative art to tin-can recycling projects.  Baskets, jewelry, sculptures, framing… you name it, someone’s crafted it out of metal at one time or other.  As with woodcraft, bigger items are easier sellers at craft or specialty fairs or farmers’ markets, but the internet has literally millions of small crafts for sale.

Depending on what you make, roadside sales can even bring in good cash.  If you live in an area with good drive-by traffic, garden sculpture will draw in customers.  Good displays will get attention.  For a market longing for simpler, local and “greener” items, making functional or decorative items out of recycled or repurposed metal objects are selling points.  Use it in your signage or advertising.

Jewelry

Jewelry is a top-selling craft not only because it gifts well and is often an impulse purchase, but because it enhances beauty and uniqueness.  It’s also an “evergreen” marketable item.  This means demand is constant and less prone to seasonal purchasing trends.  Earrings are the most popular pieces no matter what they’re made of.

Pieces sell well online if you take care to photograph them well. Display is also important at craft shows or markets.  If you hang your work, people will be better able to imagine what it looks like when worn.  Prop up mirrors so customers can see the pieces against their skin.

Get creative and go beyond the traditional.  In the seventies, the Freedman family hit hard times.  Chris Freedman used some of her grocery money to buy seed beads and made and sold earrings and bracelets at a local flea market.  Then she found the skull from a steer and adorned it with beads.  This sold quickly, and the search was on.  She found other skulls, cleaned them up and beaded them.  Today, Fire Mountain Gems is a large online business that supports the whole family.

Pottery

Pottery isn’t all crockery.  Beads and pendants, wind chimes and small sculpture, candle holders, and slab artwork are all good sellers.  If you’re selling online, try to make your crafts as close to the original that you’ve advertised, just don’t worry if it doesn’t look like it’s come off a factory line. People don’t expect exact duplicates of your models—a degree of uniqueness only adds to value.

If you’re shipping your work pack it well to avoid breakage and offer a guarantee.  If the buyer sends a photo of a broken piece within a designated period of time you will replace it free of charge.  Check with the delivery company you use beforehand and ask about their damage or loss claims so you can get your money back.

Pottery also does well at farmers’ markets, craft shows, consignment sales, and gift shops.  When Joel Cherrico brainstormed on how to get his pottery noticed, he approached several local restaurants in St. Joseph, Minnesota and managed to get them to take some of his unique mugs.  Customers have the option to buy the mugs they use or are directed to his website online.

Painting/Artwork

Original paintings are often expensive even when done by an amateur.  This is due to the long hours going into creating them as well as the aesthetic value of the piece itself.  That said, most people are used to this higher price tag and shouldn’t balk.  In fact, a higher price can add perceived value.  There are pieces out there that are no more than smudges or squiggly lines selling for thousands of dollars.

We have a coffee shop in our area and local artists are invited to display their work for free.  The walls are adorned with beautiful pieces depicting nature and colourful birds.  The artist gets a free venue to display their work, and the shop gets lovely decor.  All the work is expensive, but people do buy it.

Many artists don’t like selling artwork online as they get lost in the crowd and customers don’t often look for artwork there.  People like to see art on the wall and they also like meeting the artist.  Try art and craft shows or sell through local shops, cafes, and libraries instead.

Glass Crafts

Not the highest seller in volume, glasswork is nevertheless the most profitable of all the Top Ten Best Selling Craft categories.  They’re less common and perceived as difficult to make, giving them an automatic higher value.  Glass pieces can be beautiful and are definitely one-of-a-kind.  You don’t need a furnace to create blown glass pieces.  Most glass crafts are made through a process called lampworking.

With lampworking, glass is melted using small torches.  Sometimes air is blown into the work to create a hollow piece.  The results are extraordinarily pretty or unique and can fetch a good price in gift shops, art and craft shows, and on the internet. If you want to see some good examples,Search “lampwork” on Google images.

Other glass crafts include stained glass, fused glass sculpture, etched, and painted works.  If you want to repurpose glass bottles or other objects you can create tumbled beads or tiles to make beautiful opaque jewelry or mosaics.  People generally shop online for the type of craft they’re looking for, but not for glasswork specifically.  Luckily, glass usually stands out and competes very well.  Other good venues besides online depend on what you make.

Stained glass or window art do well at art and craft shows and consignment shops.  If you make large pieces and can find a place to hang your work, offer a finder’s fee of 15% for any commission work you get.  Glass tiles may do well at a home show.  Other venues for any glass craft are farmers’ markets and tourist and gift shops.

Photography

Any good venue for painted artwork will also work for photography.  Photography will generally be priced less than original artwork, but the advantage is you can create many prints of a popular image.  The problem is in a recession people don’t buy photography (or artwork for that matter) as much as they do in a flush market.

Valerie Jardin, a photographer and writer for The Digital Photography School, suggests finding a local market where people go for other reasons than to view art, then your photographs will become more of an impulse buy.  She also suggests printing four or five of your best images in a large format, matte and frame them or order good quality canvas prints. Then ask coffee shops and restaurants in your area if they will hang your work.  If they ask for a commission, factor that cost into the price of your photos.  Make sure they have plenty of attractive business cards with your contact information to hand out.

In our area, Perkins Restaurant displays framed prints with a country theme in their lobby with a ballot box where customers can make an offer through a silent auction.  Even if you get only one customer this way, you’ve gotten your work displayed for free.  The line-ups on a Sunday morning at popular restaurants are often long and slow and people appreciate something beautiful to look at—it’s better than a gallery showing!

For those hobbyists and craftspeople out there, if you’re already doing something you love why not share it and make money selling crafts?  In a fast world pushing plastic, inferior, cookie-cutter products, there’s a growing appreciation for handmade items crafted the old-fashioned way—with time, attention to detail, and love of the work.

Some Online Options for Selling Handmade Goods:

Artfire

Etsy

Big Cartel

Bonanza

Shop Handmade

Big Commerce

YouCanMakeThis.com

Hyena Cart

Zazzle

CafePress

eBay

Luulla

Woocommerce

The post Crafty Cash: Put Your Hobbies to Work appeared first on Homestead.org.

Then, something happened 7,000 years ago that changed all that.  We’re so used to drinking milk in North America that we think it’s commonplace.  Although many cultures world-wide consume forms of fermented milk, such as kefir and cheese, only 35% of the world’s population can actually drink fresh milk.  That’s because fermentation removes most of the lactose people can’t digest.  So what happened?  Why can some of us, mostly Europeans, Middle Easterners, and some Africans drink milk and others cannot?

Historians generally agree that dairying began soon after animal domestication about 10,000 years ago.  At first, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs supplied meat, hides, and hair.  We can imagine an opportunistic Neolithic shepherd or shepherdess watching young animals nursing from their mothers and thinking, “Hey, I want some of that”.  Their attempts at drinking “some of that” would have had the disastrous effects on the gut already mentioned.

Luckily for our Neolithic innovators, fermented foods had been around for some time.  People well understood that fermentation transformed difficult to digest foods into something more palatable and long lasting (not to mention, occasionally, alcoholic).  Fermentation hugely expanded our larders and dairy lent itself well to this process—in the warmer areas of the Middle East, where agriculture began, milk taken from an animal in the morning would be yogurt by noon.

So in the early years of dairying, cheese, yogurt, and other fermented products were the only milk we ever consumed.  Then something happened: a genetic mutation appeared that enabled the body to continue producing lactase into adulthood.  In a population that ate a lot of dairy this was a distinct advantage.  Raw milk is nutritious, and calorie dense.  Milk stored “on the hoof” can be accessed as needed; it provides some protection against famine caused by crop failure.  Plus, dairying permitted the continuous exploitation of a valuable animal rather than killing it for meat.

People with the mutated gene would have had a better chance at survival and producing children with the same ability.  Soon, 80% of early dairying cultures in the Middle East and Europe carried this gene.  Dairying became a cultural and dietary mainstay.

For those of us who are able to drink milk, the benefits are many.  It’s considered a “complete” food, which means we could live on it exclusively if we had to.  It’s loaded with protein, vitamins, digestive enzymes, 8 essential amino acids, and many important minerals including calcium.  80% of the proteins are easy to digest and raw milk is alive with beneficial bacteria to help digestion and protect against disease.

Despite all the benefits our ancestors received by dairying and drinking raw milk, there were some detractors over time.  As with all animal husbandry, people and animals come into close contact, and many new diseases transferred to people.  Influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, and measles were once unknown to human beings.  Over time, populations developed tolerances and the benefits of dairying outweighed the risks.

The History of Milk

The first dairy animal to be domesticated was the sheep around 9,000 years ago.  This was followed by goats and cattle in the next thousand years, then donkeys, water buffalo, and horses.  In fact, donkeys provide milk that is closest to human mother’s milk and was used for sick or orphaned infants.  Subsequently, camels, llamas, reindeer, and yaks were domesticated.  All of these species were milked by early farmers.

In North America we rarely come across a carton of yak milk in the diary section (at least in my neighborhood!).  According to an article “Milk From Cows and Other Animals” published by the Washington Dairy Products Commission, nine out of every ten glasses of milk we consume in Canada and the U.S. comes from cows.  However, the rest of the world obtains their milk from many other sources.  Water buffalo produce half the milk consumed in India, and ghee, the oil most commonly used for cooking is made from it.  Laplanders in northern Scandinavia drink reindeer milk as they are the only dairy animal that can survive such a brutally cold environment.

Yak-butter tea is a salty, creamy soup whipped up and drunk by people living in the cold Tibetan mountains.  700 years ago, Mongolians dried horse milk into a paste which they carried with them and reconstituted with water when they were on the march.  To this day, Russians use mare’s milk to make kumiss, a fermented, slightly alcoholic beverage similar to kefir.  People living in hot desert climates find camel milk beneficial, in part because it can last for seven days at 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

In North America, goat milk is much more common these days.  The fat globules in goat’s milk are smaller than in cow’s milk, making it easier to digest.  Roquefort, Romanian, and chevre cheeses are all made from sheep’s milk, which has twice the fat content of cow’s milk.

The Mighty Aurochs

It’s the aurochs, those large wild cattle that are illustrated on prehistoric cave paintings.  Popular as prey animals for ancient hunters, they populated the wilds of Europe and Africa for tens of thousands of years.

Aurochs began to be domesticated 8,000 years ago.  According to Dr. Ruth Bollongino of the Johannes Gutenberg University, DNA suggests that all modern cattle originated from about 80 wild female aurochs in the Near East.  From there they moved with herding peoples into Europe, largely replacing the wild populations there.  Sadly, as often happens with domestication, wild aurochs declined with the spread of their domesticated descendants.  The very last of these magnificent animals died in Poland in the 1600’s.

The children of the aurochs are legion.  Over 800 breeds of cattle exist today, with a global population of about 1.5 billion.  They continue to evolve as breeders select for higher milk volume per cow.  Consequently cow population is trending downward as milk production increases.  In the 1970’s, dairy cows produced an average of 21 pints of milk per day.  In 2012, that average was 42 pints per day.  That’s doubled production in 40 years!  A modern cow produces 7 to 10 times more than she’d need to feed her calf.

What Milk Makes

Most archaeologists believe cheese was first “discovered” when milk was stored and carried in the stomach of an animal.  When the milk mixed with the rennet present in the stomach, the milk separated into curds and whey.  The first cheese thus produced would have been soft, white, and virtually tasteless, somewhat like modern cottage cheese.  Over time people learned that aged cheese tasted better and salt helped flavor and preserve it.

Scientists exploring an ancient Neolithic site in Poland recently discovered shards of pottery that had been perforated before firing to create a sieve.  This was suspected to be the first physical evidence of cheese making.  This was confirmed when chemical analysis found milk proteins in the clay.  The age of the find was 7,000 years, in the earliest days of dairy consumption.

Since then, cheese and cheese-making has been found on wall murals in Egyptian tombs and has been described in Homer’s Odyssey.  Our experimentation with different types of processing, milks, and added ingredients has led to over 900 types of modern cheeses.  Cheddar was first created around 1500 years ago, with Parmesan following close behind.  Gouda was first made in 1697, and Camembert only appeared in 1791.

In 1815, the first cheese-making factory opened in Switzerland.  The United States took manufacturing to the next level when Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, used the assembly line system in his factory in 1851.  This created a cheese-making industry, with hundreds of factories buying local farmers milk by the wagon loads.

With mass-produced rennet and pure microbial cultures in the 1860s, standards became much more reliable, cheese became cheaper to produce and its popularity soared. Today, most North America factory-made cheeses are artificially aged with enzymes.  Naturally-aged cheeses are the norm in Europe, and are becoming more available here with artisanal cheese-makers.

Yogurt was likely the very first dairy product ever eaten.  Milk ferments quickly, and enzymes produced would have enabled a lactose-intolerant people to benefit from all the proteins and goodness of milk.  The word “yogurt” is Turkish, which is where dairying is now believed to have begun.  According to dairygoodness.ca/history the first industrialized production of yogurt is attributed to Isaac Carasso in 1919 in Barcelona—his company “Danone” was named for his son, “Little Daniel”.

Today there are three types of yogurt: Balkan, Swiss, and Greek.  Balkan is cultured and then poured into vats to set.  Swiss is cultured in vats, and when cooled it’s stirred, giving it a thinner, creamier texture.  Greek is strained of its whey until it’s almost cheese-like.  This is the yogurt used for tzatziki.  It keeps the longest and can be used wherever you’d use sour cream.

Butter, that creamy delight, was once so rare and valuable that people used it in religious ceremonies.  Ancient Romans and Greeks applied it to their hair to make it shine.  Ancient tribes in the north of India ate butter but also used it on their skin and as a lamp oil.

Butter is the fat of milk and is made from cream.  Before homogenization, milk was left for the fat to separate and float to the top of the container where it would be skimmed off.  Fat molecules are kept suspended in milk by proteins that surround them.  When cream is agitated, these proteins break up, releasing the fat which congeals into butter.  The liquid remaining is called buttermilk.

Cultured butter is made from fermented milk and has a stronger flavor.  Traditional homemade butter may only have 65% fat and 30% water and be much lighter than commercial butter which is about 80% fat and 15% water.  Ghee is an exception as it is pure butterfat with milk solids rendered out of it.  Ghee has a higher smoke point making it useful for cooking and can last unrefrigerated for three months.  Butter itself can be fermented but this practice is rare.  An exception is smen, a stinky Moroccan fermented butter made from cow, sheep or goat milk.

Buttermilk can be drunk fresh or fermented into cultured buttermilk.  It’s lower in fat and calories than milk, and high in vitamins, potassium, and calcium.  It’s soothing to the stomach and was known in the past as “Grandma’s probiotic”.  The buttermilk we drink today, however, is not the same our grandparents enjoyed as it’s rarely naturally fermented.

Icy desserts, such as sherbet, have been around for around 4,000 years, but it wasn’t until the 1600’s when it was served as a delicacy to royalty.  Over time it became more available and in the 1700’s jumped the pond to America.  Before refrigeration, however, ice cream was difficult and expensive to produce and was mostly enjoyed by the elite.  Technical innovations in the late 1800’s made it possible for nearly everyone to enjoy this treat.  Perhaps not the most nutritious form of dairy, ice cream is still one of the most delightful ways to enjoy it.

Processed Milk – What’s In That Carton Anyway?

Let’s face it—the healthy “complete food” once known to our ancestors is hard to find these days.

Homogenization simply means preventing the natural separation of fat and milk.  This is achieved by a purely mechanical process and not by chemicals or heating—it’s generally considered as having no impact on the health benefits of milk.  Pasteurization, however, is the cause of some hot debate.  It was developed not only to kill harmful bacteria, but also to increase shelf life.

There are some differences in pasteurization processes.  Home pasteurization requires milk to be heated to 63 °C (145 °F) for 30 minutes.   High Temperature Short Time (HTST) milk is heated to 72 °C (161 °F) for 15 seconds creating milk that can be stored 5 to 12 days.  Most store-bought milk follows this process.  Ultra High Temperature (UHT) processing heats milk to of 140 °C (284 °F) for 4 seconds.  This sterilizes the milk—an important difference.  This product can be held for several months without refrigeration.  Extended Shelf Life (ESL) milk is high heat processed and filtered to screen out microbes.

According to thekitchen.com, high heat processes are no safer than regular pasteurization.  It seems the benefit is in the shelf life of the product.  On the other hand, raw milk will only last 1-3 days in the refrigerator.  No wonder our ancestors commonly fermented their raw milk.

Regulations around raw milk and its products vary widely worldwide.  Only 10 states in the US can sell raw milk, and it’s been banned in Canada since 1991.  The European Union allows sales of raw milk, but in Australia it’s illegal.  The debate rages on and its best to check all resources before making a decision regarding consuming raw milk.

The Dairy Barn – How Things Have Changed

In 1879, Anna Baldwin patented a milking machine with rubber cups that were placed over cow’s teats.  These were connected to a pump lever and bucket.  Although her process had flaws, mechanical milking took off, replacing hand-milking virtually everywhere but the family farm.

Since then, dairying has become a major industry that’s affected the milk we drink, the animals we grow, and the regulations we follow.   GMOinside.org reports that the majority of dairy cows today are raised in large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).  The majority of feed these operations give their cows is GMO corn and soy.  Since GMO crops need more herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers these enter the “milk stream”, eventually ending up in our bodies.  Since cows did not evolve to eat corn and soy, they suffer terrible health problems.  New strains of E. coli develop in the fermented contents of cow stomachs, ever increasing the need for antibiotics in these operations.

As for milking, mechanization is the name of the game.  In an Automatic Milking System (AMS) it’s possible to keep a herd of animals in a barn and milk them without any human interaction.  Monitors scan animals as they move from an open stall area into an enclosed milking station.  When the cow steps on a metal platform, a laser sensor identifies the position of the teats, prompting a robotic arm to automatically apply teat cups.  Once the machine has milked the cow, she is released into an enclosed feeding area with a one way door back into the barn.

Computer monitoring of the animal’s temperature and bacteria in the milk is meant to flag the farmer as to a health issue.  A dairy farmer can check his/her cell phone for this information without ever entering the barn.  In her book, Project Animal Farm, Sonia Faruqi writes that when farmers worked with their animals in their environment, barns were cleaner and the animals healthier.  The problem with extremely automated systems is that farmers have no personal incentive to make conditions more livable for their animals.  The result is often a living hell where air and environmental quality actually make people who visit the barns physically sick.

Regulation of the dairy industry is promoted as the protection of public health, but more and more it serves the needs of the industry it regulates.  BigAg has a lot of power in Washington and they use it to protect and build systems that generate profits for themselves and control small producers.  Some would also say protecting business interests is done at the expense of the animals living with these systems and the people who consume their products.

The Good News

We create history with every decision we make.  Trends start with an individual choice.  More and more, people are becoming aware of the impact of their personal choices and the growth of small, local and organic farms is evidence of that.  As is the large distribution chains who are cow-towing to public demand by offering more organic or natural choices.

For 35% of us, milk is a nourishing and delicious food.  For the rest, fermented milk and products made from it offer the same benefits we’ve enjoyed since we first began domesticating dairy animals.  Life today without cheese, yogurt, or butter is unimaginable.

 Oh, and ice cream.  Let’s not forget ice cream.

The post A Brief History of Milk appeared first on Homestead.org.

But recently I’ve begun to rethink this. There’s a great deal of sense in eating what our bodies have naturally evolved to process. We haven’t changed much at all from the fully human Paleolithic hunter-gatherer that emerged some 200,000 years ago. In fact, since agriculture took hold about 10,000 years ago, our species has actually declined physically. We are now shorter, less healthy, and have a smaller brain capacity than our Paleo ancestors. Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, has called agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”.

Not great news for farmers or homesteaders. We have outgrown the world’s capacity to support our immense human population solely on a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Besides, cultivating a staple diet of grains is what has made our species great: created a stratified social structure that allowed for artists, thinkers, traders, administrators, builders, and scientists to develop and eventually create our amazing modern civilization.

The problem is what’s been good for civilization isn’t always so swell for the individuals living in it. Our Western culture is plagued by obesity, diabetes, heart disease, allergies, and bowel disease to a degree virtually unheard of in our ancient past. The biggest killers of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were the environment, childbirth, infectious disease, accidents, and murder (more common than you’d think). It’s a myth that cavemen and women were designed to live only thirty years. The few who did survive calamity had the potential to live as long as we do now.

So why are we beset by diseases unknown to our deep ancestors? Could it have something to do with our food? Just what is our digestive system designed to digest? Recent studies are uncovering some amazing facts about our guts and what we put in them.

Our Gut and How it Evolved

It’s been discovered that our gut has a brain of its own. If you gathered up all the 500 million nerve cells and 100 million neurons that direct our digestive system’s efforts to convert food to energy, you would wind up with a brain about the size of a cat’s. Now I don’t know about you, but the thought of an intelligent brain living within my abdomen that is as smart as my cat is rather eerie. This brain is what communicates to that “other” brain in our head, letting us know when it’s hungry. Rather like a cat yowling at her bowl, come to think of it.

If that isn’t strange enough, it turns out that our bodies, cell for cell, are mostly bacteria. There’s a teeming bacterial population living in the gut called the microbiome. According to Dr. Siri Carpenter of the American Psychological Association, bacteria actually outnumber all the human cells in our bodies by ten to one. The gut brain “leverages th(is) living bacterial ecosystem for the sake of both physical and psychological well-being”.

Yes, the state of the bacteria in our gut can actually affect the state of our mind.

Research done by neuroimmunologist John Bienenstock, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario reveals that a healthy microbiome can make animals in a lab bolder, smarter, more relaxed, and more tolerant of pain. Effects on learning, memory, and mood are caused by neurochemicals produced by gut bacteria. 95 percent of the body’s supply of serotonin is produced by the microbiome. In reverse, even a mildly stressed mind can affect the balance of bacteria in the gut, leading to disease.

Microbiome bacteria have evolved alongside their human hosts. Because they are bacteria with very short life spans, their potential for rapid evolutionary change and adaptability offers us the advantage of flexibility of diet—a great boon for omnivores on the move. Bacteria can evolve to break down new foods, or dismantle newly encountered toxins. They can become distinct population groups, swapping genes and pieces of DNA. Michael Pollen in a recent New York Times article describes how researchers discovered that Japanese people can digest raw seaweed, something the rest of us can’t do as well. This is due to a certain microbe in their guts acquired 40,000 years ago when they first arrived on the islands of Japan and began ingesting a marine bacterium gene in the seaweed they found there.

So, is our ingenious gut and its army of bacteria adaptable enough to handle our modern post-Paleo diet? What about grain?

Is Too Much Grain Bad for Us?

As soon as you attempt to research this question you discover grain is either the best thing since, well, sliced bread, and something our bodies naturally benefit from, or grain is a villain that causes a plague of troubles. Proponents of both sides have persuasive arguments. Both “sound” right.

Grains are the seeds of grasses that have been cultivated by humans for millennia. They include wheat, corn, rye, oats, rice, and millet among others. However, even with Asia’s rice and Mesoamerica’s corn, wheat is Queen, taking up more than 590,000,000 acres on the planet and trading more on the worldwide market that all other grain crops combined. Although advocates of the Paleo Diet recommend not eating any grains (paleoplan.com bans wheat, rice, millet, oats, spelt, kamut, quinoa, buckwheat, wild rice, amaranth, sorghum, rye, barley, and corn) we will focus on wheat in this article as it’s the grain North Americans are most familiar with.

Those who support wheat as a staple in our diet offer ideas that are not new. We grew up thinking cream of wheat was a healthy breakfast, fortified white bread puts roses in your cheeks, and wheat is a “complete” food, dense with vitamins, minerals, energy rich starches and proteins to build healthy bodies. References to wheat are in the Bible (give us this day our daily bread), in our history books (think ancient Egyptians and their bee-hive shaped grain elevators), and is deeply rooted in American culture (O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain). However, just because something is “ingrained” doesn’t make it good.

It seems one of the problems with wheat is it isn’t what it was. According to cardiologist William Davis, MD, author of Wheat Belly, all forms of wheat product North Americans now consume, from refined white bread to sprouted multigrain cereal, are both addictive and toxic. It isn’t the same grain people ate as little as fifty years ago. The new strains were created not for nutritional benefits, but to resist fungi and drought and increase yield per acre. Worse, wheat is now super gluten-ized to make dough more elastic and create fluffier bread, flakier pastries and enhance characteristics of wheat additives for a cornucopia of commercial products.

Some years ago I wanted to lose some weight and gave up starches for awhile, including bread. Within four days, although I was eating plenty of food, my body was screaming for sugar. Now, I rarely eat sweets, I just don’t have a craving for them. However, when I stopped eating bread I actually started to dream of candy bars. The intense cravings I had were identical to those I experienced when I gave up smoking many years ago Luckily this craving subsided after about four weeks on my diet. But wheat was one of the hardest things I ever gave up.

I’ve since learned that wheat now contains a special protein called gliatin. Gliatin is highly addictive – the body reacts to it in the same way it does to opium. Eating gliatin makes you incessantly hungry and creates cravings for more wheat products and refined carbs. Try cutting all wheat from your diet and you’ll see just how true this is.

According to Carolyn Akens, a NY holistic health coach, “Wheat intolerance is consistently rising in huge numbers.” She states that humans don’t fully digest wheat the way herbivorous ruminants like sheep and cows do. Undigested wheat gluten fermenting in the human gut causes gas, bloating and leaky gut that releases toxins into the bloodstream”. This opinion is shared by many in the holistic health field.

A Chicago Tribune article written by Josephine Marcotty quotes a Minnesota study that found wheat gluten intolerance, a debilitating digestive condition, is four times more common today than it was in the 1950s and mortality rates have also increased. About 1 percent of the population has been diagnosed with Celiac disease, where gluten damages the intestinal walls. Many more, about 12 percent, have gluten sensitivity, which means the body produces antibodies in response to what it sees as a foreign substance in wheat, rye and barley protein.

The immune system is then directed to attack the lining of the small intestine, which causes diarrhea, nausea and pain. It’s likely there are many more people who have minor reactions to wheat but who don’t know the source. After all gas, bloating and indigestion are so common we simply consider it part of daily life.

On the other hand, many nutritionists believe that not only are we able to assimilate grains, but they are actually very good for us. Kimberly Snyder, a New York Times bestselling author and nutritionist for many celebrities, says “We’re designed to eat grains. We’ve evolved to eat them because the human body adapts in order to survive, and can get vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, and even antioxidants from whole grains… humans have evolved to have more amylase, which breaks down starchy foods.”

The USDA supports wheat consumption, although it recommends eating whole grains to get the most nutritional benefit. The Canadian Food Guide recommends up to 7 servings of grain per day for adults, although they do recommend a variety of mostly whole grains. The original American Food Guide Pyramid proposed grain in the form of bread, cereal, rice and pasta as the foundation for our diet. This gradually changed until 2011, when the pyramid was replaced by MyPlate, which recommends around 30 percent grains in daily intake, with at least half of these to be from whole grains.

Anthropologists have found evidence of grain consumption as far back as 105,000 years ago. This only makes sense. We evolved on the grasslands of Africa. Grasses would naturally have been on the menu. But comparing these ancient grains to modern wheat strains would be a mistake.

The first known wheat grains to be consumed by people were two Wild Einkorn varieties and Goat Grass. When hunter-gathers first arrived in the Fertile Crescent they discovered these grasses growing among the open woodland. They chewed the raw grains, roasted them, pounded them to mush and certainly would have fermented them. They didn’t cultivate them. Einkorn and Goat Grass have tough shells protecting the thin seed so extraction was time-consuming. Combined with the fact the ears would readily shatter, a technique the plant uses to spread its seed, meant collecting and eating a lot of grain would be problematic. These grasses would be picked and relished, but they’d hardly be a staple of the Paleolithic diet.

About 30,000 years ago, before we had anything resembling modern agriculture, Wild Einkorn and Goat Grass combined their genes to create a hybrid called Wild Emmer. Emmer still had tough seed coverings and fragile ears, but the grains were larger, making the effort of gathering them more rewarding. It was Wild Emmer that was selected for cultivation once agriculture began in earnest some 10,000 years ago. New farmers favored traits that would be a disadvantage to any grass in the wild—bulkier grains, thinner seed casings, and the tendency to hold onto their seed rather than disperse them with shattering. Eventually, wheat began to look more like some of the grains we’re familiar with today. Cultivated Emmer gave rise to spelt and eventually to modern Durum and bread wheat.

Did ancient hunter-gather peoples eat grain? Certainly. So why was it good for them and bad for us? Probably because they didn’t eat the 146 lbs of refined, modified wheat products per year that each of us do. The amylase in our guts may have evolved to process some grain, but even our amazing gut can’t handle that kind of onslaught.

Many believe a return to the foods of our early ancestors is a return to health. But, what were these ancient foods? Are they still around? How do we obtain them?

What is (and was) the Paleolithic Diet?

Try to imagine someone from the Paleolithic era and you’ll likely envision a fur-clad cave man, club in hand, on the hunt for his next meal. This might be a wooly mammoth or one of the large wild herbivores painted on cave walls. We tend to think of pre-agricultural people as eating a lot of meat. Meat is important in our evolution, but big game was rarely the staple food.

Evidence found in ancient camps and dump sites (and observation of modern hunter-gatherer peoples) supports a diverse diet based on wild vegetables, tubers, fruits, berries, mushrooms, seaweed, nuts, and meats. Some groups relied more heavily on hunting big game animals, but the majority of protein for most humans came from other sources like fish and shellfish, snakes and reptiles, birds, small animals, nuts, eggs, grubs, and insects.

For the last 100,000 years or so, people cooked their food and this enhanced the variety of foods they could eat. However, many of the species of plants and animals they ate are now rare, extinct, or forgotten. Reproducing a similar diet would be very challenging in today’s kitchen.

However, there are many who believe we should try. According to Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution, most of what ails us today is directly due to the food we now grow. “The Paleo diet is the healthiest way you can eat because it is the ONLY nutritional approach that works with your genetics to help you stay lean, strong and energetic!”

There’s some debate even within the Paleo community about what is acceptable to eat. Most avoid dairy, grains, legumes, refined sweeteners, and highly processed oils. They restrict coffee, chocolate, dried fruit, alcohol, caffeinated teas and natural sweeteners such as honey. They advise getting plenty of vegetables, fruits, grass-fed and free-range meats and eggs, fish, shell fish, eggs, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, and fats from animals, nuts and olives.

On the Homestead: Can We Grow Hunter-gatherer-type Crops and Animals?

Well, yes and no. It depends on your interpretation of Paleo, what ancient foods are still available, and what you want to eat (snake, anyone?).

Grain as a staple is out. However, since grain was a part of ancient people’s diets, Spelt and some other ancient grains might be feasible as long as it’s grown as a small component of the diet and not as its foundation.

Aurochs, the wild ox that gave rise to our domesticated cattle is now extinct. Wild boars are notoriously hard to handle. Many of the wild animals we used to hunt are now gone. However, there are thousands of animals kept on farms or ranches that have changed little from their ancestors over the millennia. These include yaks, bison, goats, llamas, emu, ostrich, reindeer, honey bees, pigeons, elk, quail, deer, and pheasant. Domesticated heirloom breeds of pigs, sheep, fowl, rabbits, and cattle produce a higher quality of meat and by-products than more modern breeds.

We may not eat much sea asparagus anymore, but we can still grow “forage” crops of berries, tree nuts, mushrooms, and heirloom varieties of herbs, vegetables, and fruits. A browse through many of the new heritage seed catalogues opens up many exciting options for getting earlier varieties of food on our plates.

And that’s the key: Variety, Variety, Variety. Hunter-gatherers were opportunistic nomads, following the seasons, eating whatever they found along the way. We can reproduce much of that variety of unadulterated, natural foods. Herbivores that eat grass the way their ancestors did are healthier and provide better nutrition. Permaculture produces foods that access nutrients from a naturally rich soil ecosystem. Multiple small plots with a variety of organic heritage foods offer the diversity our bodies were evolved to utilize. Homesteaders getting “back to basics” are already on the right track to creating a more natural, healthy way of eating.

Our ancestors would be proud.

The post Against the Grain: The Paleolithic Diet appeared first on Homestead.org.

This is now changing. Many roles remain the same, but attitudes are evolving. For female farmers (or the throngs of would-like-to-bes), resources are opening up in the form of support groups, educational programs, and importantly, mainstream finance that has begun to recognize women’s impact, skills, and reliability. Two key factors that will influence new gender trends in agriculture are women’s past financial disadvantage, and their interest in producing healthy, ethically grown food.

Where We Are Now: The Emerging Female Farmer

According to the USDA, between 2002 and 2007 American farms operated principally by women grew by thirty percent. It was estimated that one million women ran their own operations and this year’s numbers are expected to be higher. This represents fourteen percent of American farms. These numbers are conservatively skewed however, as the survey listed males as primary owners even if the farm was co-operated with female partners. In Canada, surveys asked the question differently to account for both genders, and the number of women-operated farms shot up to twenty-six percent. If the USDA posed their questions in a similar way, these numbers are likely to be reflected in the U.S. as well.

This trend is driven by several factors: aging ‘boomers; developing financial clout of women; educational demographics; and the recent movement toward artisanal, organic, and/or local food have opened up new opportunities for women. Traditional skills and capabilities associated with women are also serving them well. Women generally take a more holistic approach to systems, with an interest in longer-term benefits for their families and communities. They are willing to seek and take advice, develop self-help groups, and manage finances more responsibly than their male counterparts.

As we all know, in most of the developed world, women tend to outlive men. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average age of farmers is over fifty-five, and this trend is reflected in Canada. Farmers are aging and children don’t always take over the farm. The consequences are more women finding themselves inheriting the whole kit-n-caboodle. This applies to all types and sizes of farms, even cattle ranches and Big Ag commodity crops of soybeans and wheat, which are traditionally dominated by men.

Another new trend is older men and women buying small farms to start retirement careers or to support themselves in an increasingly unpredictable economy (to many people, land and self-produced food are perceived to be more reliable than pension checks). As the longer lived partners, older women will find themselves running a lot of these farms. Lastly, with attitudes about women evolving within all aspects of life— including careers—daughters, as well as sons, are encouraged to take over the “business” as their parents age.

However, buying—or keeping—a farm is financially challenging for anyone, but even more so for women, who have often been denigrated by banks wary of the unique “risks” of lending them money. Although slow to start, financial opportunities for women are beginning to expand and improve. Many banks and loan companies who have their “finger on the pulse” of trends now offer financing that is specifically targeted to women.

Marketing has long understood the purchasing power of women, and marketing research has sought to know “what women want”. They have come up with a plethora of terminology thought to best capture female interest. Financial institutions use this information when forming product offerings to women. For instance, Bankers South offers loans to farmers and has a web page created especially for women. They woo “female farmers new to ag” with the promise of “that personal approach we hope will become a long-lasting relationship”. Personal approach? Relationships? Hardly phraseology they’d use to attract men.

The USDA Farm Service Agency now offers loans to women farmers and ranchers. They list women as a part of a “socially disadvantaged applicants” group that includes African-Americans, North American natives, and other ethnic groups. However, the FSA hasn’t always been so open. Notorious in the past for its reluctance to offer farm loans to women and minority farmers, they are now looking at claims by both these groups and are offering cash or loans to counter past discrimination.

Unfortunately, even though the FSA and financial institutions are beginning to recognize the value women bring to farming, women are still often disadvantaged. Equal pay for equal work is a relatively modern initiative, and generations of women working for less than men, often in ghettoized jobs, come to the table with less cash and collateral. This will likely continue to contribute to gender-inequality with financing for some time.

So, unless you inherit the ranch or the soybean empire, what’s a woman to do? The answer: think small. The USDA Economic Resource Service 2013 report on the characteristics of women and their farms revealed the number of women farming increased compared to men (whose numbers were actually dropping), but most of these farms are very small, with annual sales less than $10,000. Five percent of woman-operated farms did have sales of $100,000. “These farms specialized in grains and oilseeds, specialty crops, poultry and eggs, beef cattle, or dairy.” The study also finds nearly half of women-operated farms in the U.S. raise some kind of livestock.

So, there are women riding the range and managing large cash-crop operations, but most own small specialty-type farms focusing on organics, artisanal foods, heritage plants and breeds, horses, and hay. They are more diverse in what they raise than larger ventures. This is happening at the same time as consumers become increasingly aware of the shortfalls and dangers of the established food system.

According to the Organic Trade Association organic foods have shown a consistent annual sales increase of 15% to 21% since 1997. That’s astounding growth and it benefits smaller specialty farms. Farmer’s markets, CSAs, and sales to local restaurants are great outlets for a small farmer who provides responsibly and ethically raised produce and meats to a growing number of consumers.

It has to be said that local, organic food will probably never replace the super-sized, mechanized, centralized, bottom-line-is-God conglomerates producing most of the mainstream fare people eat today. However, the increasing demand for “real food”, ethically raised, is poking Big Ag in the side, and they are noticing. “Traditionally raised” meats, “free-range” eggs, and branded “organics” now line the supermarket shelves. It’s women driving this demand with their purchasing power, and it’s the growing number of small women-operated farms that will provide a lot of the goods to this surging market.

The agricultural field also encompasses many areas outside, well, the field. In Canada, Dinah Ceplis, International Program Gender Equality Officer, reports that in the recent past there has been a shift from generalists to specialists within agriculture extension services. “There are more women than men in animal/science/crop disciplines within the provincial government,” she says. In the U.S., more women than men are flocking to higher education and achieving more post-secondary degrees. In the near future, these female graduates will populate every professional arena, including agricultural services.

For those seeking to run their own farms, educational resources and self-help groups for women abound. Iowa State University offers education to farm women through Annie’s Project, which is listed as “an educational program dedicated to strengthening women’s roles in the modern farm enterprise”. Courses teach problem-solving, record keeping, and decision making in twenty-seven states. Holistic Management International’s mission is to “educate people to manage land for a sustainable future”. In their Beginning Farmers & Ranchers Program, they provide education, mentoring and support for women in Texas and the Northeastern U.S..

Women are natural collaborators. The Women, Food, and Agriculture Network (WFAN), is a group of women supporting each other in sustainable agriculture. They provide education and advocacy for holistic farming, and networking opportunities for women. American Agri-Women has been around for more than twenty years, advocating for women in farming on local and national levels. They also promote educational programs and leadership for women through scholarships, projects and training.

With all the resources and support out there to redress past discriminatory practices and help women continue to, or begin, farming, one might wonder how we ever got into such a mess in the first place. Women have been credited by many anthropologists as having discovered agriculture, so what happened to turn the tables so dramatically? The answer isn’t simple. The transition from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one doesn’t take a linear path through history. But let’s give it a shot anyway.

Women Farmers in the Beginning

The Paleolithic Age was a time when all people in the world were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Labor was divided along gender lines, although there’s evidence of some flexibility within these roles. Generally, women with children did the gathering, while older boys and men hunted. The average workday for men and women would have been very different. Men had the job of protecting the tribe from predators and outsiders. They occasionally took short excursions from camp, but otherwise stayed close to home.

Hunting was done during monthly week-long treks to catch bigger game. They’d eat their fill and then bring the remainder back to camp. Women foraged the surrounding area for small game, wild berries, nuts, tubers, herbs, and fruit daily.

Men provided twenty percent of the tribe’s food with hunting, while women brought in the remaining eighty percent. People in those days would have been intensely connected to their environment. They had to be: a shadow in the grass could be a saber-toothed cat or a small game animal; berries and nuts could be poisonous or good to eat. Seasonal changes affecting herds of animals and the fruiting plants would have been well studied.

Both men and women would have noticed that seeds passed through the guts of animals and sprouted in the manure left behind. Grasses growing from the droppings of herbivores roaming the plains, however, would have been less interesting to women than the berries and edible plants growing around their camp’s latrines and garbage dumps. Certainly, these accidental plantings would have been talked about and taken advantage of.

Fire was used as a tool by men to clear forest and tall grass so game would be easier to see. The resulting flush of edible plants growing out of the ashes would have been a boon. Women may have orchestrated some of these burnings to facilitate their foraging. It’s not known when the first woman decided to take some seed to plant along their migratory routes, but the late Paleolithic Age was the time our full understanding of the relationship between seeds, fertilizer, sun, and water was born.

By the dawn of the Neolithic Age, about 10,000 years ago, permanent settlements began showing up throughout the Near East. No longer did these people follow the herds or the cycles of wild edibles; instead they relied on agriculture and hunting. Women planted groves of fig trees from branch cuttings. They developed planting tools, such as fire-hardened, sharpened sticks with rounded stones for handles. They utilized irrigation and fertilization to plant the first peas, herbs, vegetables, tubers, bottle gourds, grasses, and early forms of grain. With these, they produced food, medicine, and beverages; as well as materials for weaving ropes, nets, mats, and baskets.

Life was no easier for these people than it was for their ancestors, but it was a little more secure. Women still provided most of what the settlement ate. They’d learned that fire-hardened clay would make pots to keep seeds and food safe from rodents and insects. They knew how to cure, dry, and preserve the harvest for the lean times. They conscripted their children to help with weeding and protecting their crops from wild goats and sheep.

Men hunted for wild game, but agriculture was the domain of women, and much of the group’s religion was centered on this relationship. The cycles of the moon, so important in the timing of planting and harvesting, corresponded with the cycles of their own bodies. Fertility of the earth was now well understood, sacred, and deeply connected to women. Goddess worship was prevalent, and women enjoyed respect and equality with men that was unsurpassed at any other time in human history.

By the end of the Neolithic—some five hundred generations after our Paleolithic heroines made the association between seeds, fertilizer, and soil—a thriving town of two-story mud and beam houses crowded the shore of the Danube in what is now Romania. Writing was in its infancy. Grand temples had yet to be built. But the groundwork for modern civilization was firmly in place and a major change in the status of women was on the horizon.

Danube culture still recognized women’s contribution to agriculture and society, but roles were beginning to shift. Wild game had become scarce around growing settlements, and domesticated sheep and goats had been conscripted to replace them. Since they no longer provided the main source of meat from hunting, boys and men became more involved in agriculture. They took care of the larger herds, and women began to look after the smaller animals.

With the invention of the plough—and the domestication of oxen and other animals to pull them—agriculture evolved to sustain larger populations. Men were fast becoming the producers of the high-carbohydrate grains that had become the staple food people now ate. Once civilization began in earnest—with expanded trade routes, copper smelting, and creation of early textiles—commerce and trade became the driving force behind growth, and women’s roles became more devalued and restricted.

Until this time most people still traced their lineage through the female line and agricultural land was largely communal. Original settlements were more egalitarian and private property was an unknown concept. Related people used to make up an entire tribe, but now there were many smaller groups living within larger populations. Over time, men began to compete with each other more than against predators and outsiders. The people to benefit from this competition were close relatives. Although extended families living together was not new, their importance as political units began to grow.

The commerce made possible with stable communities and reliable food sources created wealth, but not equally. In the growing hierarchal societies, access to prime land began to be claimed by larger, more influential families. With men’s status advanced through this new social system, patriarchies (and the beginning of class systems) began to be the norm. Fathers now arranged their children’s marriages to best advance the family’s position, allying themselves with trading partners or to curry favour. Women came to be viewed more as property than equals. Land was passed from father to son.

Female Farmers into the Future

Cultural shifts generally occur slowly over time, with occasional spurts and diversions along the way. Environment, technology and population growth all affect how cultures evolve. There wasn’t a time when men got together and plotted ways to take power from women. The loss of status would have been so gradual, and supported by seemingly advantageous and logical rearrangements of gender-assigned labor, that few would have noticed the change. History is reborn with each generation who grow up thinking their reality is the “norm”.

Today, there are women farmers all over the world. In the developing world, they still provide the majority of food for their families and communities. The difference between the lives of these women farmers of today and those of their deep ancestors is in respect for what they do and their status in society. We in the U.S. and Canada place value on having basic human rights protected, including gender equality. Although women have had difficulty in gaining recognition for their contributions to farming here, we should remember that we are still far ahead of much of the rest of the world. And we’re rapidly gaining ground (pun intended).

All that said, the new feminization of farming in North America will not be a continuation of “business as usual” with female heads of conglomerates taking over from men. Certainly, some of that will happen, but the majority of the change we’ll see in the near future will be in the types of food we eat and how they get to market. The importance of local, real food grown on smaller farms will continue to build, offering women farmers a growing opportunity.

And who knows? Female ingenuity may discover ways to decentralize our current distribution channels, at least for meats, produce, honey, eggs, and a myriad of specialty and artisanal foods. Picture local networks of cooperatives surrounding cities and towns, giving people back their right to access diverse, wholesome, sustainable, and ethically grown food. Then picture the farmer providing this wholesome food, and you’ll likely see a woman in overalls, pitchfork in hand, working hard to create a better tomorrow for herself, her family, and you.

The post Right On, Sister! The Feminization of Farming in North America appeared first on Homestead.org.

I was oblivious to the fog around me.  Steam is good for the skin after all, and my growing stash of ground-cherry jam, tomato sauce, hot-pepper sauce, and pickled beets so engrossed me I didn’t notice the peeling wallpaper or streaking paint on the walls around me.  It was only after hubby and I opened the windows and banished the steam that we saw what a bad idea canning in a tiny, closed kitchen was.

Our modest house was built in 1936, apparently in the days before the idea of a vented kitchen was born.  The house is only 1,200 square feet and the kitchen is tiny.  The walls are plasterboard and, at one time, someone thought wallpapering above the chair rail would be an excellent idea.  We’d often thought about removing it, but once paper is stuck to plasterboard there’s no going back.  Now the steam had lifted the edges and streaked the eggshell-painted walls in adjoining rooms.  Any more canning done in this kitchen meant we’d have to invent some steam-proofing.

We bought a two-burner outdoor stove for canning and that was a good idea, but only if covered by a tarp to protect against the bird droppings, bugs, and leaves that continually drop from the giant tree that dominates our backyard.  A better idea has been to ensure every window in the house is open when canning.  This creates a cross-draft to ventilate any steam.  It’s a stop-gap measure only.  The more time we spend preparing and preserving the food we grow, the more we long for a summer kitchen.

The first summer kitchen we’d ever seen was at a local pioneer village.  In the doctor’s house—a lovely Victorian rambler—the large kitchen at the back opened onto a smaller functional summer kitchen.  This is where the weekly laundering took place, where the children were bathed, and where all cooking was done during the heat of summer.

Casks crowded the space beneath a long heavy wooden work table.  As in any pioneer kitchen, the wood stove in the corner dominated the room, and a double dry-sink stood beneath a set of large open windows.  It seemed this room was handy as a storage area, too.  Corn brooms, clean rags, and utensils hung on the walls and dried flowers and herbs festooned the ceiling near the stove.  Two sets of windows on either side of the room and a door to the outside created a cross-draft.

I dream about this kitchen.  I am determined to have one very much like it.  I may not launder or wash children out there, but, to my mind, no homestead is complete without one.  It’s an essential workroom.  If you have a range hood to draw out heat, steam, and smells, you may not benefit quite so much from a summer kitchen, but I believe the reduced reliance on electricity that a summer kitchen offers can only be good.  The extra storage and cooking space, working in the fresh air, and honoring tradition are all richly rewarding.

The benefits of a summer kitchen are many.  Besides avoiding steaming off wallpaper or melting paint, the most obvious is keeping the heat out of the house.  Summers in Canada can be surprisingly hot and humid, and with global weather patterns changing, Hubby and I have also noticed that September is no longer as brisk and dry as it was in the long-ago days of our youth.  Autumn is also the time the kitchen is used the most as the harvest comes in, and we are loath to turn on the air-conditioner in September.

Our predecessors had no air conditioning and so taking the heat outside made a lot of sense.  When wood or coal was the main source of fuel for cooking, the risk of fire was also a consideration.  Some kitchens were actually separate buildings, many not even walled in—more like a covered patio with stove or fireplace and a worktable.  In the doctor’s house, the brick exterior of the house acted as some protection against any fire that might happen in the attached kitchen.

Summer kitchens were used for myriad tasks including processing poultry and small game, making sausage and rendering lard (at one time, the main source of fat for cooking and baking).  Homesteaders brined hams and pork bellies in the fall, keeping them in wooden casks until ready for smoking in the spring.

Many cooks know processing food can create a little stinkiness.  I tried making sauerkraut last year for the first time; Hubby has Ukrainian ancestry on his father’s side, and I wanted to surprise him with healthy, homemade, fermented cabbage.  What we ended up with wasn’t quite what his Baba used to make, but it was still delicious.  We still have some in the freezer.  However, there was no way I could keep my little culinary experiment a secret.  That large cheesecloth covered crock of shredded, salted cabbage needed to sit for about six weeks and hubby swore he could smell it no matter where I tried to hide it in the house.   I like to think it made the place feel homier, but after awhile, even I could stand it no longer.  Out to our tiny shed it went till it was ready.  I kept my fingers crossed that one of our genius neighborhood raccoons wouldn’t be drawn in by the scent and break in to sample some.

I also love hot and spicy foods like curries but Hubby does not (if you haven’t already guessed, he’s a bit of a culinary wimp, bless him).  We’re resolved to the fact our palates are quite different.  I often brew up a batch of something truly stinky when he’s out of the house and then freeze it for later.  A summer kitchen would be ideal as I wouldn’t have to push him out the door every time I wanted to make my beef and curried eggs.  Garlic, cabbage, onions, fish, and even boiling eggs can also emit a not-so-sweet perfume when cooking.  With no vent over the stove, it would also be nice to keep those odors out of the house.

Of course, we could spend the money to get the kitchen we have vented, and we just might do that before we sell.  That will be to add value and avoid any raised eyebrows.  Kitchen hoods are ubiquitous in new houses around here and ours seems quaint without one.  But we don’t want to spend the money on upgrades until we’ve saved enough to pay cash for them.  We have only three years to go before we uproot and head for the country.  We’re determined to start debt-free.  But that’s another story.

With an outdoor kitchen, you can cook meals in the summertime that you might not bother with if you had to make them inside.  Imagine being able to boil vats of pasta for a spaghetti party in August.  After you’ve roasted your chicken dinner outside, keep the bones and make stock without concern for steam.  Make cheese out there, or even candles or soap.  We make our own liquid laundry soap by boiling the berries of the Sapindus tree in a large but shallow pot.  The water has to reduce by about a third to concentrate the saponins.  That creates quite a bit of steam!

It can also be a charming place to eat.  Almost everyone with a house and a backyard has a barbeque.  It’s the modern interpretation of a summer kitchen, in a way.  We no longer cook outside to avoid heat or steam, we do it for leisure.  If you choose to eat at the summer kitchen, you’re outside in the fresh air, just like a picnic or a barbeque, but without the bugs.  If you have a lot of guests, this extra room not only doubles your cooking capacity, it provides more seating area.

On some of the early homesteads where several generations lived under the same roof, the summer kitchen was often used as a honeymoon suite.  It must have been nice to get out of the house and have some privacy.  People would also sleep out there on summer nights as it was cooler.  Farmhands would sometimes be given the summer kitchen as living space during harvest.

A summer kitchen is factored into our plans for our future homestead.  We’re going with a prefab-home-building company that Hubby has had personal experience with.  It will be our responsibility to excavate the basement and build foundation walls.  Included in the design we’ve chosen is a screened back porch.  This we plan to have on the north side of the house, away from the worst of the sun’s heat.  We have the option of extending this porch along the length of the back wall.  We intend to leave the original open area, then close in the rest to make a walk-in pantry and storage areas, and include a stairway down to a root cellar.  When we dig the foundation, we will extend part of it beneath this storage area to include the root cellar and possibly a chilled meat locker.

The reason for this design goes beyond keeping heat, steam, and stinkiness out of the house, but to create a safe-and-separate, critter-proof area for storage.  The full screens of the original design will be replaced by a half wall lined with screened windows.  These windows will either be shuttered or have pull-down windows to keep anything out that might like to sample what smells so darn good inside. Even if they make it inside, the pantry door will be closed and latched.  If there are raccoons in the area, we’ll make it lockable.  We’ve had experience with raccoons before, and give the little beggars plenty of respect for their ingenuity at opening latches.

The house will be clad in concrete siding which will help protect the porch area from any potential fire risk from a cookstove.

The pantry will hold dry goods and canned and preserved food.  Currently, we buy dry ingredients like beans, flour, and baking soda (which we use for cleaning) in bulk.  Our tiny kitchen is bulging at the seams.  Since these items do better in cooler, dry conditions, storage in a summer kitchen pantry would be ideal.  Since the pantry doesn’t need to be fully heated in the winter, many other items can be stored there like butter, cheese, and cider.  The storage area beyond will hold canning supplies and items that aren’t frequently used like roasting pans, oversized pots, baking pans, mandolin, tureens, and extra dishes.

We don’t plan to have a refrigerator or dishwasher in our summer kitchen.  Since it will be just a step into our regular kitchen there’s no need for them, and we save on electricity.  We will have a stove and double sink, though.  Placement of plumbing will need to be considered carefully so pipes don’t freeze in winter.  We need this extra kitchen to be fully functional and I’d like it to be somewhat roomy.  The screened in porch in our prefab is a fair size, about 15’x15′.  That’s the same size as the kitchen we now have!  With no refrigerator, this room will seem even bigger.  I can hardly wait.

Nowadays, outdoor cooking is mostly seen as having a patio area set aside in the backyard for grilling.  This idea is recently expanding however, and many builders now offer large outdoor cooking areas that are often attached to the house.  Pizza and bread ovens, large grills with spits, and storage are some of the offerings factored into these designs.  Some outdoor kitchens are rustic, others are gloriously modern and look like they might double the energy output of the whole house.

Above all else we want functionality, and that includes a low energy output.  I have yet to master the art of wood-fired bread baking so the stove in our kitchen will likely be electrical, and—we hope—powered by the wind turbine we plan to put up.  Winter heat will be minimal and used only to keep pipes from bursting or when the room is in use in the coldest months.  We will put a separate thermostat in the kitchen.  There will be plugs for small appliances, but we don’t use those much now anyway.

Not quite like the charming summer kitchen in the Doctor’s house, but we intend to use ours at least as much as those Victorians used theirs.  If you haven’t considered building one why not give it some thought?  It will save you money, create extra food processing and storage space, and keep your house cooler in the summer.  Check out summer kitchens online—forgo the Ponderosa-style, Italian-tiled uber-kitchens and look at some of the small add-ons people have put together.  Charm meets delight meets functionality.  You just can’t go wrong there.

The post The Summer Kitchen: Why It’s Still a Good Idea appeared first on Homestead.org.

Moving to the Country Step 1: The Mind – Wrap Your Head Around It.

Annie Plessinger wrote a report for the Vanderbilt University psychology department in 2007 called “The Mental Edge”.  She cites scientific studies comparing control groups with those who are trained in visualization in preparation for a variety of sports.  The outcomes of these studies found a significant improvement in performance for the visualizers.  Imagery works because it lays down the same neural patterns in your brain as if you had just performed the action.  It appears your brain doesn’t know the difference between what you visualize, and what you’ve actually experienced.  (This also works for negative visualization, by the way, so beware.)

Get a binder, something with loose-leaf pages you can rip out and replace when life throws you a curve.  Any time you read an article or see a picture in a magazine that inspires you, cut it out and put it in your binder.  We have floor plans, pictures of homes we like, garden layouts, wind turbines, ads for metal outbuildings, beautiful scenery, goat cheese recipes, photos of goats—get creative!

Make a wish list and stick it in your binder.  Imagine yourself on your property.  What does it look like?  What will your days be like?  What critters, plants, and chores will you encounter?  Create a timeline with tangible mileposts like paying off the mortgage or getting a blacksmith license… whatever!  Include any idea, no matter how unlikely you may be to follow it.

Update your binder regularly.  Hone your plan as time goes by.  Keep the vision alive.

Moving to the Country Step 2: The Body – How Old are You? How Healthy? How Strong?

Don’t limit yourself.  If you’re a single woman, you can do this.  If you want to retire to homesteading, you will be able to.  Anyone, no matter who they are, has physical strengths and limitations.  Get to know what yours are.

For instance, we’re closing in on the “golden years”.  What this means is we need to get real about our physical age and what’s to come.  So far we’re doing very well, but no matter how old you are, you should be aware of your blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), blood sugar, etc.  Are you fit?  Are you doing everything you can to stay (or get) that way:

This is even more important if you’re older.  In a 2013 report, Canada’s Heart and Stroke Foundation warns that, without immediate action, the average Baby Boomer may spend his or her last ten years in sickness, disability and immobility.  The good news: you can radically change this with exercise now.  Weight training is one of the best ways to fight the effects of aging.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exercises using weights “have been shown to increase the strength of your muscles, maintain the integrity of your bones, and improve your balance, coordination, and mobility.  In addition, strength training can help reduce the signs and symptoms of many chronic diseases, including arthritis.”

So quit smoking, limit alcohol, eat right, and exercise.

Moving to the Country Step 3: The Soul – Match Your Homestead to Your Philosophy.

Are you a strict vegetarian?  If not, do you think you could “do in” your own chickens?  What about rabbits, cattle, or other animals?  If you are a sensitive person likely to make pets of all your critters, then that’s splendid; you just need to take that into consideration when planning your homestead.

If you long for wide-open spaces with few neighbors, you’ll either need to win the lottery or move to the parts of the country that offer this kind of land at cheaper prices.  Don’t go looking for them in Florida or Maryland.  On the other hand, if you thrive in a communal setting, there are many successful and long-standing cooperative homesteads out there.  It seems we’ve learned a lot since the failed back-to-the-land movement in the sixties.

For us, a diversified small farm with a large garden area and enough pasture to support some animals is good, but owning some natural woodland where we can go to recharge is also a requirement.   We want peace and quiet and a natural setting.  So a property adjacent to a dirt bike track or snowmobile trail is probably not a good idea.

Take some time to consider what gives you joy and what bugs you.  You won’t last long if you’re successful at feeding yourself and your family, but don’t have peace of mind.

Moving to the Country Step 4: Your Character – Know Your Strengths and Your Limitations.

Look at your past behavior; do you have a slew of unfinished projects strung behind you?  Procrastination makes achieving goals almost impossible.  On the other hand, are you so goal-oriented you miss out on the journey and neglect family or friends?  Ask people you know well and trust to be honest with you to give you a good personality assessment.  What they tell you will help you design your homestead.

For instance, I am an introvert, but Hubby is an extrovert.  What turns his crank is having a gang of people over, listening to music, and having loud conversations.  The more he gets of this, the more energized he becomes.  His people skills are excellent, and we’re sure to have a lot of company.  All this, for me, is a recipe for a nervous breakdown.  I like company, but after a while, I need a break—somewhere to go for a breather.

Knowing this, we’re building our home so that there is a cozy, quiet place far from the main living area.  Hubby and I are well aware of our different personalities, and we have learned to accept who we are and the need to adapt.  This kind of self-awareness will help when you make your essentials list for your homestead.

Moving to the Country Step 5: The People – Like It or Not, You Will Need Them.

I grew up in a small agricultural community of about 1,000 people.  Everyone knew everyone.  If you sneezed, the news went out and furthest neighbor over called to say “bless you”.  This can be a good thing, and it can be a little trying at times.  If you’ve always lived in a larger urban area you may be a little disconcerted by this when you make your move to the country.

Expect drop-ins.  People will want to get to know you.  Prepare for this and count your blessings.  Develop your people skills.  If you’ll need help, consider farm interns or apprentices.  These are usually younger people who want to learn more about farming.  There are many options for this: you can offer free room and board and the chance for people to learn without any cash outlay, or you can pay them something.  Many agrarian colleges and universities offer courses where field-work is mandatory.  See if you can sign up and be prepared to keep work records for students.

If you plan to participate in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture group), farms often ask members if they’d like to volunteer.  Having the first choice of pickings or the chance to see where their food comes from is a good incentive for city folk who don’t mind putting in a few hours on a weekend.

You could also try WWOOFers (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms).  These are folks from all over the world who will work for free.  All they need is room and board and an opportunity to learn.  They can stay for years or weeks, whatever suits you both.  WWOOF.net links up workers with farmers.

Moving to the Country Step 6: The Place – Research Different Locations.

Make a checklist of what you’re going to grow.  If primarily veggies, good soil is important.  If you’re going to raise grass-fed beef then you want land that provides good pasture.  Know the ground you’re looking for.  Will you grow your own winter forage?  How much acreage will you need to do that?  There are online calculators for figuring out how much land you need per animal to provide enough pasture and hay.  And, of course, you’ll want access to good, clean water.

What are your plans for energy?  Focus on the energy options that make the most sense for where you’re going.  We plan on moving to the Maritimes, where nor’easter winds make windmill power commonsense.  This area is also famous as the cloudiest in the country.  Even so, we will have solar, but it may not be our main source of energy.

Once you’ve determined where you want to go, get as many maps as possible.  You want to know topography, watersheds, population densities, and type of farms around you.  Are there a lot of factory farms in your location?  Do you really want to be downwind of a giant manure pit?  Is the water source downstream from a city or mining field?

Look at development: are people moving into or out of the area?  What zoning is currently in place?  Go to the local Chamber of Commerce and see what zoning applications have been submitted.  If your area is zoned for forestry, that beautiful view might change.  It also might limit the type of homestead you can have.

Check out mineral rights.  Could someone else make a claim on your property?  If you want deep woods, how prepared are you for the annual hunting season?  Is your area slated for “development”?  You might not want to plant yourself beside a road that will become a major artery in the near future.

Make a list of all potential negatives.  Don’t be scared.  Be prepared.

Moving to the Country Step 7: Your Product – What Will You Grow and Why Will You Grow It?

What are your reasons for homesteading?  If you aim to be as self-reliant as possible, take a look at your pantry.  Can you grow what you see?  If you love bread, will you be able to grow your own wheat?  If not, consider your location and the communities or farms around it.  Is there a farmers’ market near you?  If your area is covered mostly by corn or soybeans, you might find yourself driving to town for supplies more often than you like.

If you plan to sell some of what you grow how will you distribute your produce?  If you start a CSA, you’ll need to be within reach of your market.  Draw circles around any urban areas where you plan to locate.  Where the circles intersect will be the best distribution point.  If not a CSA, is there a local farmers’ market or another outlet where you can sell what you produce?  If you intend to sell items online, what is the internet service like where you’re going?  What about courier services if you need them?

If you want to raise meat animals and won’t be processing them on-site, how far is the nearest abattoir?  Does it meet your personal standards?  Is there a portable service available?  Make a wish list of everything you want to grow or raise and reference it often.  Make an A-list for “must-haves”, and a B-list for “would-like-to-haves”.  This will help you keep your eye on the prize, and you’ll be able to make adjustments to your B-list as you get closer to your move.

Moving to the Country Step 8: The Market – Self-sustainability or Business, How to Get the Word Out.

The very best way to start a business is to buy one that’s already doing well.  The same goes for a small farm.  We looked for a while at a greenhouse growing operation that had a well-established market.  The factors that turned us against it were the size of the business (too large for us) and the price.  For now, we want to be self-sustaining and perhaps just sell our excess.

However, you may want to make your homestead a money-making venture.  Good for you!  Be prepared for paperwork.  You need to keep track of output vs. input and eliminate anything that drains your bankbook without giving something back.  There’s nothing wrong with being sensible about profit.

Check to see what folks are already doing in your preferred area.  You could partner with other farmers at farmers’ markets: offer homemade jams to go with freshly baked bread, homemade pickles to sell alongside grass-fed beef or pork for instance.  Ask market organizers about costs; a stand facing an incoming door or along the main aisle may be the best position and could cost more, but you’ll make it up by selling more.

If you want to market online, check out sites that already sell what you have to offer.  Tell the web host what you want to do and ask how they’d drive business to your site.  If you’re not selling online but want to bring people to you, a website with information about your farm, when you’re open and driving directions is invaluable.  Many people now use the internet to plan their day-trips to the country.  Websites are also invaluable for CSAs to get volunteers or let people know what they grow.

Local fairs and events may offer vendor’s free listings in brochures.  Local newspapers are always looking for a new story.  Consider offering tours and tastings, or write food or opinion columns.

Moving to the Country Step 9: The Money – Try to Get Lots of It.

I was once told to buy guns with credit and butter with cash.  The idea is that a gun is an investment, something that will last a long time and bring meat to the table.  Butter on the other hand is a perishable item.  A luxury to be enjoyed with no future potential beyond that savory melting moment on the tongue.  Credit, therefore, is worth it if there’s a long-term return on your investment.  So finance businesses with credit and groceries with cash; get mortgages for housing and greenbacks for toys.  Trouble is we’ve gotten into a very bad habit of borrowing against future income for virtually everything.

Old-timers will tell you it’s always better to pay cash upfront.  That’s partially true.  You need a good credit rating, and cash won’t give you that.  Besides, it’s just not do-able to ask everyone to wait twenty years to pay for their home with cash.  Perhaps a better way to look at it is to say that credit isn’t bad, but debt is.

The less debt you have when you start your venture the better.  One of the reasons you’re doing this is to assert some control over your own life.  Debt means someone else can call in your loan and kill your dream.  With the economy the way it is, we just can’t rely on the traditional financial process anymore.  Being as debt-free as possible is power.

You also don’t want all your cash tied up in assets.  Like it or not, you’ll need some cash flow to counter those unplanned for costs that crop up almost as often as garden weeds.  You won’t be able to sell your tractor to pay for a flooded basement or dental emergency.  Credit might get you the farm, but cash is the oil that keeps the engine running.

Moving to the Country Step 10: Your Experience – Learn Before You Leap

While you’re saving for that day you pack up the family and head for the farm, there are skills you can learn now that will help when you get there.  Make up your own list and get going!  Here’s a good place to start:

•      Learn simple accounting.
•      Join and volunteer at a CSA.
•      Take a farm vacation.
•      Research locations, regulations, soil types, breeds, and seeds as if you’re ready to buy.  You might not become an expert this way, but you’ll have better questions when you’re ready.
•      Volunteer with urban gardening groups working to improve food accessibility in cities.
•      Grow a garden.  Save your seeds.
•      Meet like-minded people in your area.
•      Learn how to drive stick-shift.
•      Check your regulations and get some backyard chickens if you can.
•      Learn to sew, preserve food, make soap, cheese, or bake bread.
•      Read everything you can get your hands on about homesteading.
•      Do light weight-training.  Eat right.  Exercise.
•      Make your own compost.
•      Grow mushrooms.
•      Volunteer with community support groups like Habitat for Humanity.
•      Organize a farmers’ market in your community.

Have faith.  The time will come when you can implement everything you’ve learned on your very own homestead.  Create the future you want to live in.  And don’t forget to dream.

The post Countdown to the Country: Ten Steps on the Road to Your Homestead appeared first on Homestead.org.

Despite our modern culture of planned redundancy, throwaways, and over consumption, recycling is finally becoming important again.  However it’s still largely within the venue of the system.  Few are we individuals who tinker, sew, and transform things old into things once again useful.  Pretty much all reconfigurations are practical and frugal, but some can be beautiful as well.

Nothing marries frugality, practicality, and beauty quite like a quilt.  Handmade quilts tell stories of family, friendship, and new beginnings.  Quilts were often given to travelers heading out on the long trails west during the time of the American frontier.  As people started feeling the effects of the grueling trek, they lightened their loads.  Treasured furniture, pianos, and fine china were left behind to litter the trail, but quilts were kept—to protect against the cold, the hard ground, and to wrap those intrepid pioneers and their families in the memories and well wishes of loved ones left behind.

The word “quilt” is derived from the Latin word “culcita”, meaning a mattress or stuffed sack.  A quilt is usually considered to be made of an insulating material sandwiched between two layers of fabric.  Batting has been made of many things throughout history: wool, cotton, hair, and even crumpled up nylon stockings; anything that gives the finished piece some padding.  The outer layers can be multiple pieces stitched together or single cloths of linen, cotton, wool or silk.  Stitching can be highly decorative, simple running stitches, or single ties positioned throughout the quilt to keep the filling from shifting.

We may never know when the first quilt was ever stitched.  Fabric doesn’t always preserve well, but images on monuments and statues fare better.  A 5,400 year old statuette of an early Egyptian pharaoh shows the first depiction of a quilted garment.

The Tristan Quilt, made between 1250 and 1300 AD was stitched in a pattern depicting an ancient love story.  Although certainly many other quilts were made before this time, the Tristan quilt is one of the first to survive to modern times.

The first quilts were used as rugs, mattresses, and blankets, and were hung against walls, windows and doors to provide insulation and decoration.  By the Middle Ages, quilted vests and caps were worn under armor for padding and even as a substitute for armor.  When stuffed with layers of compressed cotton, quilting offered surprising protection against the weapons of the time.

Many people believe the modern pieced-quilt is an American invention, born during Colonial times, when women created much of what their families wore.  The truth is, these early settlers had little time and resources for making piecework quilts, and the quilt-crafts they stitched were very different than the multi-colored geometric creations we’re familiar with today.  Before 1799, few folks had access to manufactured goods and fabric was made at home.  Cotton, linen, and wool were plucked, harvested, or shorn; washed, prepared, and woven into material for everything from underwear to trousers to bedding.

When they weren’t making fabrics these women were raising large broods of children, laundering (that took a whole day), doing farm chores, making butter and cheese, cooking, gardening, and preserving the harvest.  Very little time would have been left for fancy needlework.  Patchwork was often just that: saving as much as they could from worn out items to make patches to extend the life of newer clothing and blankets.

Women who could afford servants had more time for needlework and did make fancy quilts.  They brought over patterns and quilting styles from the old country, which included whole-cloth bed covers, appliques, and medallion quilts.

The popular medallion quilt had a central image surrounded by border rows of pieced squares.  Quilts were treasures, passed from mother to daughter, and given as wedding gifts.  Unfortunately, none of the earliest American quilts has survived.

According to WomenFolk.com, it wasn’t until about 1840—when the North American textile industry made manufactured fabrics commonly available—that quilting became widespread.  Without the need to make their own cloth, women had more time for needlework and quilting began to take on the form we are familiar with today.

The Quilting Bee

Imagine a woman living on a homestead on the prairies in the mid 1800’s.  Neighbors were generally miles away.  Roads were often muddy and difficult to travel.  Her days were filled with physically challenging chores and taking care of her large family, which included aging parents.  She looked forward to Sunday when she would see her friends and neighbors at church.

Think of the quiet days before the internet, Twitter and Facebook, cell phones and landlines, television and radio filled our every waking hour with chatter.  Men’s and women’s worlds were very different and a woman’s friends would be cherished.  Isolation and loneliness were some of the challenges our female ancestors had to overcome on the frontier.  Any opportunity for folks to get together was eagerly taken advantage of.

Chores are easier when done with friends and so the “bee” was born, a practical gathering where work was combined with socializing.  Bees were organized around harvesting, husking corn, slaughtering animals, or building a barn.  For women, who had the responsibility of keeping the home and making sure the family was clothed, having many hands available to make a quilt was invaluable.  Quilting Bees were formed that not only produced quilts, but a lot of fun as well.

All winter, women gathered their scraps and created their patchwork squares for their quilts, usually by lamplight in the only heated room in the house.  Come spring, these women stitched their pieces together and brought down the quilting frame that was often stored against the ceiling.  Neighbors from miles away would be invited to the bee, and the frame would be taken outside so that everyone could sit around it.

People arrived early in the day.  Women and girls with varying degrees of creative talent and experience sat around the frame.  It was an opportunity for girls to learn the essential female art of needlework.  Quilting bees were also the 19th century version of social networking, introducing new people to each other, learning new skills, catching up on gossip, news, and trends.  They could also be political gatherings.  Women held bees to create and sell quilts to support their causes: abolition, temperance, and suffrage.

Wedding announcements were often followed by a bee, for few girls were ever married without a hope chest well stocked with quilts.  Women often had patch pieces left over and trading was common.  While the women sewed, the men played horseshoes or other games and got caught up with their own gossip.  Come dinnertime, the hostess fed everyone, and the evening usually ended with music, dancing (and probably a jug or two).

Quilting Patterns

According to A Quilter’s Complete Guide by Marianne Fons and Liz Porter, the evolution of a distinctly American patchwork and applique design only began during the nineteenth century.  Block patterns became recognizable and somewhat standardized, and each with their own name, although these did vary by region.

Jacob’s Ladder

Although this pattern was once thought to have arisen in Colonial times when many quilts had Bible themes, and is associated with the quilts laid out to guide slaves escaping to freedom on the underground railroad, it actually first appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century.  At this time, many of the popular myths surrounding quilts and their patterns were born.  People realized that much of what had created American culture was passing away as modernity took hold, and a popular romantic nostalgia began to embrace (and largely recreate) history.

Log Cabin

According to Barbara Brackman, a modern quilt historian and author, the Log Cabin pattern has been around a long time.  However, the image of a cabin with a hearth at its center became most popular during the great trek west in America in the middle of the 1800’s.  Women would make Log Cabin quilts for friends and family to keep the dream alive on the hard journey.  This pattern made use of those many narrow scraps taken from around the edges of worn clothing, blankets, etc.  However, since these strips were narrow and materials are of different weights, strips were laid out and stitched onto a backing.  The quilt would then be tied together, rather than held with a running stitch.

Wedding Ring

This design has evolved over time, and has been known by many different names and configurations.  The Wedding Ring may have evolved from an older 19th century design called called Pickle Dish:  “By the Depression, Pickle Dish was sometimes referred to as Indian Wedding Ring, which may be how Double Wedding Ring eventually obtained its name.”  The Wedding Ring design was created and became popular during the 1920’s and 30’s.  This patch is difficult to create because of its many rounded edged pieces and intrinsic design.  It is not for the beginner.

Crazy Quilt

This has to be my favorite quilting design; as easy or as complex as you wish to make it, you just can’t go wrong with a crazy quilt.  Another plus is these quilts can use up most of your left-overs as they are a hodge-podge of different weights and patterned fabrics.  Add orphaned buttons, leftover embroidery thread and ribbon… the more the better.  A great way to transform scraps into a thing of beauty.

In 1876, Americans caught their first glimpse of the crazy quilt design at the Japanese Exhibit of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.  According to Cindy Brick, author of Crazy Quilts, the Japanese occasionally wore asymmetrically designed embroidered and painted kimonos that displayed their political associations, family history, animals and flowers.  These bright, intricate quilt patterns were an inspiration to Americans, and the Crazy Quilt fad was born.

Since Crazy Quilts were originally used for clothing, batting was not normally used.  However, as time passed, women began to simplify their embellishments and created Crazy Quilt squares that could be stitched into more serviceable, batting filled bed covers.  Tie these together rather than stitch the ditch.  Easy!

So, why is quilting still, and possibly even more, relevant today?

One: it’s easier than ever before!  Nowadays most everyone owns a sewing machine.  Start with a simple design and go from there.  The simplest design I know of is a patch quilt: just cut same-sized squares of any good, used fabric of similar weight without too much fuss about pattern or color.  Sew them together then stitch onto batting and backing using a single tie-stitch at the corner of each square.  If the material is heavy enough, you might not even need batting.  Add a border and you’re done!  You have the added delight that you’re making a quilt that was common on the first American homesteads.

Two: you’re recycling!  That shirt frayed beyond repair?  That old beloved blanket seen better days?  Those jeans can’t be made into shorter shorts and still be decent?  Anything too battered for the donation box but that still has portions of good material can be made into a quilt.  Many modern synthetics don’t bleed and will retain their color for years. True, some materials are better than others, but almost everything can be adapted and recycled into quilted clothing, bedding, window insulation, or art.

Three: you’re carrying on tradition!  Homesteading is all about self-sustainability.  Crafting your own clothes, blankets, bedding, curtains, etc., honors the values of your ancestors, those folks for whom the idea of “waste not, want not” was a necessity and a spiritual mantra.

Four: you’re socializing!  Find a quilting group or class and join up.  There will be a few older women who will love the opportunity to teach you tips and techniques.  These groups usually have women at various skill levels, so even the beginner will feel at home.  You can create your pieces and stitch them together at home, but layering and pinning (or basting) the top, batting, and backing is a job made easier by many hands.  If you’re hand-quilting, they will likely have the larger frames, and you can get help with your stitching.  When you do the same for others you make friends as well as quilts.

Some things to remember when quilting:

• Pre-wash everything.  Even “preshrunk” materials will shrink (trust me).  Use hot water if you can.  Wash like colors together just in case one of them bleeds.  If you find a material that bleeds, try washing again till all the excess dye is gone and/or resolve to dry-clean the finished piece. This problem isn’t all that common with older, recycled materials that have gone through many washes in their lifetime.
• Iron everything before you cut.  You want flat pieces so you can cut precision edges.
• Buy/borrow/make the best tools.  You can buy rotary cutters, self-healing mats, and transparent quilting rulers; they will make your project easier.  But if you’ve got a ruler and a really good pair of sharp scissors you have what you need.  I’ve made cardboard cutting templates that do just fine.  Do spend a little on good thread to avoid knots, tangles, and the headaches that come with them.  You’ll need a frame, but this can be as simple as boards nailed together and the fabric pinned around the ends to secure it.  Lighter projects can be piece-quilted on an embroidery hoop or ring.
• Oh, yes, if you’re hand stitching, get a thimble.  You will need it.
• Don’t get complicated.  You may be a natural, or you may be like the rest of us.  Pick a simple design like a patch or crazy quilt and develop your skills.
• Learn a little before you start.  Your local library will have step-by-step instruction manuals that include patterns.  Join a class or quilting group.  I’m a tactile learner who needs “hands-on” to really get it, but once you have the basics you can learn a lot from the internet.  YouTube videos abound with live demonstrations of every step in the process, even including how to make your own frames.  If you haven’t checked it out already, Google “how to quilt” and you’ll find hundreds (nay, thousands!) of women eager to teach and share what they know.

Cheri Arthurs proudly displays her grandmother, Louise Budd’s, Canadian Centennial Quilt.

In the end, quilts have always been a testament to friendship, practicality, frugality and they are a tribute to the past.  Old bits of cherished things, memories, and cloth recycled into something to keep both body and soul warm.

The post Quilting: Recycling Made Beautiful appeared first on Homestead.org.

So, is monoculture really such a bad idea?   Why not celebrate it?

It’s Not Just About Farming Anymore.

The Free Dictionary defines monoculture in two ways:

1. The cultivation of a single crop on a farm or in a region or country.

2. A single, homogeneous culture without diversity or dissension.

We’ve come to associate monoculture with genetic uniformity, deep tillage, as well as pesticide and herbicide use.  We think of it as an artificial system that wouldn’t exist in nature.  This is partially true.  Modern broccoli and kale couldn’t exist, as they are, in the wild.  They’d provide a banquet for insects and disease in very short time.  If lucky, there’d be enough genetic diversity for a few individuals to survive and seed, eventually returning the species to its wild state.  But is that true for all crops?  Why were crops like cereals the first to be widely cultivated?  Why have these plants become our modern dietary staple around the world?

The second definition of monoculture is quite different.  It may not be obvious, but our modern mono-“culture” goes hand-in-hand with our agricultural practices.  It all boils down to economy of scale and something called Hotelling’s Law.

In 1929 Harold Hotelling described how manufacturers of consumer goods aim to satisfy the needs of the broadest segments of our populations.  Niche markets can be profitable, but they’re smaller, more fickle and so less attractive to big sellers.  This is why fast-food chains serve up meals that are so similar.  It’s why trends happen—one chain will offer smoothies, for instance, and the next year or two all the competition sells the exact same item.

Harold’s law is also called “the principle of minimum differentiation” and can apply to everything from business to politics and ideas.  Having one pioneer take on the risks of introducing something new, then waiting to see if they’re successful before following suit makes good economic and political sense.  Unfortunately, for a healthy culture, we need the innovators and risk takers.  An ultra-conservative society afraid to step outside the mainstream or even to voice an idea that may be unpopular leads to stagnation.

This focus on uniformity is well represented in agriculture, where Big Ag wants to make the biggest buck for the least effort.  Big Ag is comprised of a relatively few food producers.  Centralized production and food management create an economy of scale that increases the bottom line.  This is paramount to big companies like General Mills, ConAgra, Cargill, and Coca-Cola who are buying up smaller organic producers and now dominate the organic market in North America.  One of the results of this lack of producer diversity is the desertification of the grocery aisle.

Natural Law: Where Does Monoculture Fit In?

There turns out to be many instances of naturally occurring monocultures in nature.  Single plant species that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments are the most likely to dominate an ecological niche.  Flood and fire are two of natures more common means of causing mischief.  Cereals and others that simultaneously produce large seeds that germinate and grow quickly are best able to survive such disruptions, and their dense growth habit naturally inhibits competition from other plant species.  In the same way that we might grow a cover crop to damp down weeds, wild cereal crops crowd out most other species besides their own.

But wild cereals are not only better equipped to survive natural disturbances, they thrive on them.  Wild relatives of wheat like einkorn form dense stands, and researchers testing yields discovered these grasses often produced as much seed per square meter as modern cultivated wheat.  Wild emmer also grows in huge stands as dense as their cultivated cousins.

David Wood, a writer for LEISA Magazine, a publication promoting sustainable agriculture in India, defends natural monoculture citing many instances where it can be found in the wild.  Natural monoculture occurs more often in marginal areas between land and water sources.  An example is the wild rice that our Neolithic ancestors discovered when they first entered southeastern Asia, where regular flooding of rivers draining from the Himalayas nourished the swamps where wild rice grew.

Rice also produces large seeds and grows quickly, and so outperforms its competition in the continually disturbed environment of seasonal flooding.  By taking advantage of this natural bounty and replicating the environment that supports it through terracing and diverting flood water, rice eventually became the staple diet for much of the world.

There are also examples of animal monocultures that thrive in nature.  Wasps, bees, ants, termites, and mole rats all form colonies of sisters that are driven to forgo individualism for the sake of the family group.  The unquestioned success of these animals in nature stumped Darwin, who regarded them as the biggest challenge to his theory that diversity within species drove evolution.

The millions of buffalo that once roamed the plains of North America were certainly not as closely related as hive insects, but they could be considered a natural monoculture.  If you have a herd that is so large it covers the landscape to the horizon in all directions, it’s safe to say you have a single species dominating an environment.  The thing that buffalo, insects, and wild cereal crops have in common though is genetic diversity within the species.  This is even true of hive insects, although Darwin couldn’t have known that.  Individual differences still drive natural evolution, whereas profits drive modern cultivated monoculture, with crops becoming less and less genetically diverse.

The Risks of Cultivated Monoculture

When we first started to scratch the ground and plant some seeds, the first crops we grew were already well represented in nature.  They were grasses like wheat and rice that thrive as natural monocultures.  We quickly began to grow other plant varieties and learned how fertilization and rotating crops kept the soil fertile and the plants healthy.  The first successful crops we grew had a healthy genetic diversity, and cultivation enhanced that diversity.  The potato has a single wild ancestor that was developed by early farmers into over a thousand sub-species.  Most of these sub-species were developed to thrive in other areas with different pest and ecological pressures.  This diversity can be a resource as our climate and environment changes.

The decline of genetic diversity within all species, both wild and cultivated, plant and animal, has scientists around the world ringing alarm bells.  They warn of another collapse of a staple crop that could have devastating results.  Examples of this already exist, a famous one being the Irish potato famine.  In the 1500’s, the Spanish first encountered potatoes in the Andean highlands of the new world.   Out of the thousands of cultivated species the Peruvians had developed, only a handful were introduced to Europe.  One of these was the famous Irish Lumper.

The Lumper was grown successfully for three hundred years in Ireland and became the staple diet of the poor.  But whatever genetic inventory was present in the original potatoes was lost over time as tubers were simply saved from season to season, creating generations of clones susceptible to disease.  In 1845 the country was swept by a potato blight the Lumper had no defense against.  As a result over a million people died of starvation.

Of the 80,000 edible plants in the world, 20 species such as wheat and corn provide 90% of the world’s food.  Big Ag manipulates genes to enhance traits that create reliable and diverse products and profits, rather than to provide nutritious food or protect diversity.  It’s not the agricultural industry driving the effort to create seed banks of endangered plants – it’s independent scientists, conservation groups and those farmers and homesteaders who save their own seeds, grow the older strains and raise rare heritage animals.

So, perhaps agricultural monoculture per se isn’t bad, as long as genetic variation within a species is protected, and the relationship of natural monoculture crops to their environment is understood and respected.

Monoculture in the Present:  Oh! The Blandness of It All

We had the experience recently of visiting some friends in a new modern suburb and becoming quite lost.  Of course not all the street signs were up yet and the place was a maze of cul de sacs and circular lanes flanked by houses that were all variations of a similar theme.  We discovered what’s called “power centers”.  These are outdoor malls with big box stores selling everything from electronics to bedding to furniture surrounding immense parking lots.  Restaurant franchises were limited to about a dozen.  To folks used to an eclectic mix of small single owner shops and family run restaurants, this landscape was a desert.  No matter where we turned, the view was identical.  The blandness of it all was breathtaking.

We finally got to where we were going, but it took a phone call and some determined navigational skills to make it.  Although the house turned out quite nice and it was a great visit, we were never happier to leave a neighborhood.

Have you ever purchased one of those gift cards you can pick up in drug stores and other places that are good in several different restaurants?  Take a look at these.  All of these restaurants are owned by the same company who bundle purchase incentives for any of their outlets onto one card.  All the meats and produce are acquired, warehoused, processed according to the menus of the restaurant franchise, then distributed to each location.  If you think you’re eating different fare at different restaurants, you’re not.  It’s the same food, just repackaged.

Monoculture is well represented even on those colorful, well stocked store shelves.  Look at the store brands and no-name brands in your grocery aisles and read the labels.  There are many that contain exactly the same ingredients as the big name brand items do.  The generic apple juice you buy at a discount is identical to the one you pay premium for in the bright branded label.  It’s often sourced from the same supplier and packaged in one facility.  Only the labels are switched.

We may think we’re buying diversity, but we’re not.  What are we missing in this bland landscape?  Independence from the tyranny of ever growing corporate power centers?  Lack of competition to provide value?  Some nutritional element processed out of our food?  Protection against another potato famine, or perhaps worse?

If there’s a flaw in the system, who do you turn to?

Polyculture: Can We (Should We) Return?

Polyculture by definition is a system of agriculture that understands, respects and works within parameters set down by nature.  It involves crop rotation, multi-cropping, companion planting and encouraging beneficial insects.  Its goal is to increase the genetic diversity within a species.  It’s more labor-intensive than artificial monoculture.  Although not all crops are organically grown, farmers and homesteaders who follow polyculture practices are more often interested in sustainable farming growing crops for their disease resistance, nutritional and flavor value.  None of these things are generally attractive to Big Ag.

If you grow a variety of crops and are careful in their management, a small farm can provide for much of your nutritional needs.  A collective of farms and gardens can provide for the nutritional needs of the areas around them.  Polyculture is the answer to eating local.  Artificial monoculture, on the other hand, is highly attractive to Big Ag.  Their attention is on creating efficient channels moving raw materials to manufacturing plants to grocery chains.  Their advertising is directed to the end user – you and me – but their product is designed to withstand their process, not to feed us.  They manipulate nature rather than work with it.

But, monoculture doesn’t have to be this way.  There are examples from around the world where monoculture works.  Many single-crop farms rotate their fields and grow a single species with genetic depth.  In China, a study reported in Nature magazine revealed that planting several varieties of rice in the same field increased yields by 89%.  Pesticides were no longer needed because crop diversity created a 94% decrease in disease.

It isn’t the waving fields of wheat or corn that are the problem.  It’s a system that has at its core a love of profit over people.  Cereal crops are natural choices for monoculture.  Most other plants are not.  If you grow a single crop and keep an eye on genetic diversity within the species and its natural relationships within its environment, you can grow a healthy harvest that’s good for you and for the planet.  We’ve been doing this since the very beginning of farming.

It’s only recently we’ve elbowed Mother Nature aside to replace whole ecosystems with artificial, genetically uniform crops.  Yes, growing the staples we’ve come to rely on did create civilization and all the technology, art and luxury we enjoy today.  But the modern trend toward the desertification of our food supply just might be the undoing of all that.

Check Out These Seeds! Grow Hardy Plants and Preserve the Food Chain with a Seed Library

https://www.homestead.org/gardening/in-favor-of-a-naturalized-lawn/

The post Monoculture: Is It Really So Bad? appeared first on Homestead.org.

Today, it’s still prudent to treat snakes on the homestead with caution.  Although North America has nowhere near the number of venomous reptiles found elsewhere, those we do have warrant respect.  We need to know what potentially dangerous species look like, how to avoid them, and how to keep them away from our chickens and our children.

For all snakes though—even the dangerous ones—some appreciation is called for.  They are worthy allies in the war against insects and rodents that carry disease or dig holes in our fields and gardens.  Some species can be amazingly beautiful.  And most are harmless.

Types of Snakes and Where You’ll Find Them

There are 151 species of snakes in North America and of these, 20 species are venomous.  Snakes can be found everywhere: parched deserts, humid swamplands, prairie grasslands, and the cold heartland of the northern states and Canada.  They are most often found in rural or wilderness areas.  They are common on many farms.

The following are some harmless and some venomous snakes you may have on your place, tips on how to snake-proof your henhouse, and finally what to do if you meet a snake on the homestead.

Garter Snake

Found from Mexico to Alaska, by far the most frequently encountered snake in North America and perhaps the world (almost 90% of all snakes here are garter snakes).  These guys rarely reach four feet long.  Harmless, beneficial, and cute to boot.

Often found near water as they love to swim, they live in marshes, fields, and woodlands.  While they are not considered beneficial in controlling rodents as they are generally too small, this limits their prey to slugs (yeah!), earthworms, leeches, lizards, amphibians, ants, grasshoppers, crickets, frog eggs, toads, minnows, small or baby rodents, and small eggs.  They’re great to have in the garden or boggy patches.  Kathy Green of BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com welcomes garter snakes.  She says, “While Garter Snakes may eat beneficial insects, they more than make up for that fault by keeping the gardens free of pests I don’t want.”

Pretty little creatures with blue, green, yellow, or white stripes along the length of their bodies.  One of the few snakes that bear live young instead of eggs.  They don’t constrict or envenom their prey, but either kill or stun it with their bite and eat them alive (oh, don’t grimace—they are snakes after all).

Rat Snake

Aptly named, these critters consider brown rats haute cuisine.  Constrictors, they’re beneficial when predating mice, rats, moles, and other rodents, but not so much when downing your eggs or even your small birds (they’re also called Chicken Snakes because of their penchant for chicken eggs).  If you have Rat Snakes in your area, count your blessings but take measures to keep them out of your henhouse.

They range from forest, floodplains, swamps, and fields throughout the south-eastern and central United States and up into southern Quebec and Ontario in Canada.

Their average length is six feet but some can reach up to ten feet long.  Depending on the species they come in every color of the rainbow, including red, yellow, grey, green, and indigo.  Commonly found in barns and suburban areas, they’re also good tree climbers.  Although they are nowhere near rare, their numbers are declining due to tree-cutting and land development.

These shy snakes react to threat by freezing.  The Texas and Black Rat Snakes are more aggressive and may snap at you if you harass them.  Although these snakes are non-venomous, their bites can be painful.

Farmers have long welcomed Rat Snakes in barns and outbuildings.  Old-timers would move snakes found near the henhouse and relocate them to the fields or woodlands instead of killing them.  Later in this article, I’ll give you some tips for protecting your chickens.

Corn Snake

A subspecies of Rat Snake, Corn Snakes are so named because of its habit of snaking through corn cribs in search of mice and rats.  Beneficial?  You betcha.

Unfortunately, their coloring is similar to the venomous Copperhead and many are killed because of it.  But Corn Snakes are one of the most docile snakes and the most popular reptile pets in the world.  Shy, secretive, they like to hide under brush, logs, and rocks when not actively hunting.  These are slender snakes, averaging three to six feet long.  They live in fallow fields, meadows, and farm outbuildings.  They’re good climbers, following rodents from bedding stalls into haylofts.  You’ll find them throughout the eastern U.S. and as far west as Texas.

Gopher Snakes

There are several sub-species of Gopher Snake that include Bull and Pine Snakes and they deserve a special mention as they are a boon to farmers.  These are some of the larger species in North America, averaging five to six feet long.  Famed as rattlesnake imposters, they are nonetheless described as harmless.  Unfortunately, if you find them downing your prized quail chicks you may tend to disagree.

These snakes mimic rattlesnakes with similar coloring and behaviour when threatened.  They puff their bodies up to look as large as they can and coil like a rattler.  They have no rattles but they’ll shake their tail and if in leaf litter create a rustling sound.  Pine and Bull Snakes will force air through their throats making a rattling sound.  Gopher Snakes may strike out with their noses, trying to poke or push you away.  Not to say they won’t bite, but it is very rare.  Any injury should be minor and not very painful.  If bitten, clean and swab the wound with antiseptic.

There are a couple of ways you can tell these snakes from rattlers: they hiss, rattlers do not; they are sleeker than rattlers and have beautiful round eyes and pupils, where rattlers have elongated eyes with elliptical pupils like a cat’s.  Bull Snakes most resemble rattlesnakes.  This is advantageous against predators that avoid venomous snakes, but does little to endear them to humans.

Bull and Gopher snakes can be found from Western Canada to Northern Mexico, although Bull Snakes prefer the more arid regions of the west.  Gopher Snakes can also be found in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and western Texas and prefer woodland and its edges, marshlands, and cultivated fields.  Pine Snakes live in deciduous and pine woodlands, prairies, fields, and brush land in the American southeast.

Kingsnake

This guy eats snakes, including venomous ones.  They’ll also eat rodents, lizards, birds, and eggs.  The Scarlet Kingsnake and its cousin the Milksnake have yellow, black, and red stripes.  They’re often confused with the venomous coral snake and suffer the consequences.

Milksnakes earned their name from frequenting barns looking for mice and gained a reputation for suckling cows!   This is, however, completely false.  These beautiful creatures prefer slugs, insects, crickets, and earthworms, but their entrée of choice is mice, and plenty of them.  They may grow fond of your chicken eggs, too, so be prepared.

All Kingsnakes are constrictors that range from three to six feet long.  This family of snakes can be found from south-eastern Canada and throughout the United States in a wide range of habitats, from your kitchen to fields and forests, near rivers and rocky outcrops.

Poisonous Snakes

Even these snakes can benefit the homesteader or rancher.  Imagine a landscape filled with thousands of gophers, digging thousands of holes, eating everything from your forage to the roots of your roses.  Imagine thousands of rabbits doing the same.  That’s what many areas would look like without these animals, even the venomous ones.

That said, these snakes on the homestead can be dangerous and if you live in their territory you need to know about them.

Coral Snakes

This species is small and slender with beautiful red, yellow, and black bands.  You can distinguish the Coral snake from the non-venomous Milksnake by remembering the rhyme “Red touches yellow, kills a fellow; red touches black, friend to Jack”.

Corals eat other snakes and small rodents.  Shy and reclusive, they don’t normally live near populated areas and would rather slip away than engage you in a fight.  However, if bitten you need medical help as soon as possible as their venom is the most potent in North America.  Despite this, Big Pharm stopped making coral snake anti-venom—not enough people were being bitten to make it profitable.  There is still some anti-venom available though.  Check with the hospital in your area if you live in Coral Snake habitat to see if they have it.

Pit Vipers

Distinguishable from other species by their oblong (not round) eyes, narrower neck area, and larger triangular head.  Pit vipers all use venom to efficiently dispatch rodents, but you might not want them in the cowshed.

Cottonmouth

Also known as the Water Moccasin, Cottonmouths are strong swimmers and you’ll often find them near lakes, streams, and marshes in the south-eastern U.S.  Thick bodied, they average four feet long.  Their bite is painful and often fatal.  They have a habit of standing their ground when threatened and display their rather formidable open mouth and fangs.  Although most will give you a wide berth, there are rare reports of territorial males being aggressive to people.  Their diet varies, although they rely heavily on fish.  They eat small alligators, toads, birds, snails, bird eggs, and rodents.

Copperhead

Short, stocky, and known for their buff-colored hourglass pattern, 90% of their diet is small rodents.  Responsible for most venomous bites in the U.S., their bite, although extremely unpleasant, is rarely fatal.  Despite that, you need to get to the hospital if bitten for a regimen of pain management and antibiotics.  Most at home in woodlands, this snake can also be found in swamps and rocky outcrops.  They’ll freeze if they see danger coming, relying on excellent camouflage to conceal themselves, which often means people don’t see them until they’re almost on top of them.  The Copperhead typically ranges from Massachusetts to Nebraska, to Texas and the south-east United States.

Rattlesnake

Most are shorter than five feet long.  Heavy bodied and with the wedge-shaped head typical of vipers, and with the familiar rattle at the end of its tail.  Found from southern Canada to Argentina, its prey includes rabbits, ground and tree squirrels, chipmunks, prairie dogs, gophers, rats, and mice.  Although rattlesnake bites are the leading cause of snake injury in the United States, you are far more likely to die of a dog attack than by snakebite.  Despite this, rattlesnakes evoke fear bordering on panic in many people.

Although bites caused by accidental encounters do happen, most occur because of human interference.  Snakes being attacked or injured become terrified and will strike back.  Interestingly, in more populated areas, rattlesnakes are evolving without their hallmark rattles.  It seems evolution is selecting against identifying the snake like a rattler as that brings down a heap of trouble from humans.

How to Snake-Proof the Hen House, Rabbit Hutch, and Smaller Bird Enclosures

Snakes can be the farmer’s friend, but they can raid your chicken house for eggs and chicks, or rabbit hutches for kits, if you don’t protect them.

• Plan to predator-proof the coop or hutch before you build it.  Raise it off the ground or put it on a concrete floor or a mat of hardware cloth.  Build it of sturdy materials.
• 1/4” or 1/2” hardware cloth screwed in place over any opening to your coop and run should keep out any snake that can do harm.  Dig a trench and bury the cloth a couple of inches at the base to deter snakes; bury it a foot to deter snakes and everything else.
• A line of electric wire on perimeter boards laid on the ground will keep snakes out.
• Keep the run and coop as clean as possible to deter rodents.  Most often that’s what the snake is after.  Use treadle feeders to contain feed.  If you feed scraps, clean out leftovers at the end of the day.
• Collect eggs daily.
• Clear the area around the coop from brush, tall grass, and debris that might provide cover for a snake.
• Mothballs are said to be a good deterrent if you’re willing to live with nerve toxin near your animals.  Many people use cinnamon, clove, or cedar oil, and turpentine repellents.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
• Guardian Guinea hens or chickens (yes, they’ll attack and even eat snakes).  If you have a brave soul that will take on a snake cherish him or her.  If the snake is too big to intimidate they’ll at least sound the alarm.
• Build brooder boxes inside snake-proof coops or wrap them in hardware wire.
• Remember a snake can get through any opening the diameter of its head.  Caulk or seal any gaps.

What to Do If You Encounter a Snake

My mother once found a Milksnake in her garden, recognized it as harmless, and picked it up to take a look.  Unfortunately, the snake bit her on the hand between the thumb and forefinger.  More startled than hurt (the bite was trifling), it taught her and us kids a lesson.  Even the most benign species need to be treated with respect.

On the other hand a friend with a cottage in Tobermory, an area known for its usually shy Massasauga rattlesnakes, once found herself inches away from one coiled up in full, furious rattle.  She’d pulled a deck chair out from a table and startled the snake that’d been hiding there.  She froze.  After a few heart-pounding moments, the snake saw sense and slithered quickly away.

So how do you avoid an encounter and what do you do if that doesn’t work?

Snakes are a vital part of the web of life.  They have their niche in nature and should be valued for it.  With a clear understanding of their behaviour and some common-sense planning, we can partner with them in our war against disease-carrying vermin.

Learn as much as you can about the snakes on the homestead and develop strategies in advance on how to deal with an encounter.  Teach these to your children.

• Keep your homestead clear of debris and tall grass.
• Store wood off the ground by eighteen inches.
• Be careful when working with brush or woodpiles.  Wear gloves, boots, and long sleeves and pants if you know there are snakes around.
• Keep snakes out of the house by caulking and sealing openings in foundations and around pipes.
• Use a flashlight when walking outside at dusk or at night; this is when many species are active.
• If you meet a snake, remain calm.  I know this can be easier said than done, but the worst thing you can do is begin flailing and screaming.  If you think you’re Rambo, attack the snake.  It’s the best way to get bitten.
• If possible back away calmly, especially if you’ve accidentally cornered a snake.
• Leave it alone and the snake will retreat.  Chances are it’s more scared by the encounter than you are.
• If the snake is trapped somewhere on your property or in your house, don’t be a hero.  If you don’t know the species of snake in your bathroom call in the experts to remove it.  If you’re more experienced, you can place an open box on the floor and gently guide the snake into it with a stick or pole.  Never prod the snake.  Place the tip of the pole on the ground where you don’t want the snake to go and corral it into the box.  Take it to the woods and let it go.

~~~~~~~

As children, we caught small striped garter snakes in the tall grass by a nearby river.  They were fun to catch and a hoot as they slithered out between our fingers.  We never hurt them, although the game was probably more fun for us than it was for them.  They were tiny with mouths too small to get a grip and we were never bitten (I can’t even remember one trying).  Even now I enjoy the sight of these pretty little snakes on the homestead, in the brush or streaking across a pathway.

Not everything has to be functional to benefit the homesteader.  An appreciation of nature’s balance, of the beauty of the land, and the creatures on it, is something close to the heart of most of us seeking a simpler, sustainable, more natural lifestyle.

~~~~~~~

Sources:

Beautifulwildlifegarden.com

A Field Guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants: North America North of Mexico (Peterson Field Guides)

The-chicken-chick.com

Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

The post Snakes on the Homestead appeared first on Homestead.org.