Day 19 of 365 days of live on our small family farm

I met a very nice man yesterday who grows corn and wheat using chicken poo as fertilizer.  I am planning on buying all our home and animal use corn and wheat from him in the future and can hook up anyone else that is interested.  The price is better than the feed store and we know where it came from, not mention, if you know me, I have this goofy 50 mile rule, I try very hard to live by when it comes to food and that is that it should come from within a 50 mile circle of us.  The first reason I do this, is that it does not need to be transported as far, the second, is that food grown in the soilfrom the area you live in, is better for you, the third reason, we need to support local farmers, otherwise they will be gone and we will be forced to either grow our own food or buy from China.

Tonight we are having beef stew and I plan to use some beef…lol.  We are making meat balls instead of solidmeat chunks, it will make the meat go further and when I mix it with fake meat,it will be more with nutritious and have less of the bad stuff.  The meat is from our cow, so it is good meat to start with.  I will add tvp to it.  TVP is texturized Vegetable Protein,I know you are thinking, gross but you have eaten it before most likely and never even knew.  Many fast food restaurants add it to their meat to stretch it out and lower the overall cost, a lot of processed meat products as well.  If you cook tvp right you will never tell the difference, I use it a lot in soups, it comes in a range of flavors and types and contains no real meat or meat flavors. 

Here is a link to the site I buy it at:    
http://www.harmonyhousefoods.com/?AffId=52



You can get it in many different forms as well, from granulated, to small chucks, to larger chunks, it comes dehydrated,so you have to reconstitute it, but that is easy, boil water add water, let sit and then use.  You can you it to replace much of the meat you eat and it is better for you and in most cases about half the cost of real meat.  Ok to what flavors it comes in, beef, chicken, taco, sausage and ham.

On to growing our own
green vegetables and fruits.  I thought this was neat; I already grow my own pineapple, and in the past have grown ginger.  Ginger is now coming out of China so I guess I will be back to growing my own. 

 

http://dinnergarden.org/specialPlants.html

If you need garden seeds and maybe you don’t have a lot of money you can talk to this group of people, they are fighting poverty in America, one dinner plate at a time. The sites name is the dinner plate and they are great about helping people, to help themselves. 

 

Here is their link: http://dinnergarden.org/needSeeds.html

 

You know it does not take a lot of space to grow a garden, for years I practiced square foot guarding and grew many things in pots(I still do, Arkansas soil, is rough on a good day). 

News From The Doghouse and on the
Invasion of the Abominable Snowmen...

Monday it snowed quite well, so it
was a "Bum Bear Day" for us, it was so cold you could see the breath
of the ducks when they quacked....

Today we took it easy as well, just

the usual chores and stuff. Dah’veed and I rolled a bay of hay to Wiggle the

calf/cow and the goats out in that pen. No head butting there...Still problems with the

menace/meance <--sp? or mean ass --> Goggle...not typing its name for

fear it will appear sorta like Santa a.k.a.(anagram known as)Satan...

We watched a program on RFD-TV was
suppose to be about Mississippi farming @ beekeeping and other things, but was
about Virginia and its progressive and intelligent Farm Bureau, and its fight
in court with the EPA and other "ngo" entities..well anyway, my point
is that this Virginia episode had 2 dairy farms on the show, different
approaches ect. But the one farmer said what I had always thought as well, that
the work was not necessarily hard work but it was constant, consistant work.
Kind of like dedication to the routine and abstract monotony with nuances and
variations as a constant variable.

Well hope everyone has a good day
and not too snowed in.

Be blessed our dear friends and loved ones...I am logging of to get some more stuff done as I am way behind today.
Shekhinah, Michael and the kids and critters of Mahanaim Farm USA