The $64,000 Question

It's funny how life takes shape, how we end up on paths that we never intended, but which come to feel deeply right to us nevertheless. When I began this blog, it was mostly about figuring out how to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible, with a vaguely defined notion of financial independence at the end of that road. Any technique that saved money, which could then be put towards an extra principle payment, was worth considering. We started changing our habits, and kept changing them, and bit by bit those changes added up to a pretty radical lifestyle overhaul.

Along the way though, other things began to motivate me. I'd always considered myself an "environmentalist," even when my behaviors weren't particularly worthy of the name. "Green" and frugal go together quite often, so it was easy for that to become more of a priority in my life. And then the whole issue of social justice came in - using our fair share of the world's remaining resources and doing as little damage as possible. Self-sufficient lifestyles have also always had my admiration. My frugal journey became heavily flavored with homesteading elements, such that I now feel justified (albeit a little shy) in calling our suburban residential lot a homestead, or at least a budding homestead.

Then there's the elephant in the living room. I believe that we are headed into a future of increasingly expensive and scarce energy. I believe that more people in my country will have to do more for themselves than we have recently been accustomed to, that many things we now take for granted will become luxuries few can afford. There are plenty of people who discuss these things with more knowledge and eloquence than I can. Read them. But there's a little piece of the puzzle that I might - just might - have a corner on. Not that I've figured it all out, but I think I have a chance of helping to answer an important question.

Our property technically exists in a suburb, even though it doesn't look like what you think of as a typical suburb. For one thing, our house is 130 years old, and in a tiny little neighborhood of similarly aged homes surrounded by much newer development. Our lot is 2/3 of an acre. By comparison, those newer developments consist of larger parcels. Like I said, not a typical suburb. In this part of Pennsylvania, recent zoning codes were written with low-density development in mind. So new construction happened on lots of at least an acre, and often more than that. Our own parcel was established decades ago, and left with less land. The average suburbanite across the US would think our property large, but in our area it's significantly smaller than average.

So here's the question in my mind: I want to know how much food this 2/3 acre residential parcel can produce. We harvested 600 pounds of fruit and vegetables, plus 458 chicken eggs in 2009. Not only has it been a bad year for crops, but we had a backyard flock for only 8 months out of 12. We also had no yields at all from half a dozen perennial species that are planted but not yet in production. I wasn't particularly diligent about succession planting, season extension, or efficient use of the garden space we already have cleared. Nor have we yet used all the available space on our property that could be turned to food production. How much will we harvest in two, five, or ten years as our fruit trees, berries, and grapes begin to produce, as our experience grows, and we make more efficient use of the available space? I'll take a wild guess and say I think 1200 pounds sounds completely achievable to me. As a more ambitious goal, I would aim for a 2000 pound tally or even more. That would be in addition to eggs and, I hope soon, honey. Admittedly, those yields take for granted the good precipitation and high quality soils of our area, as well as the fact that one able-bodied adult makes this food production a very high priority, with occasional help from a second healthy able adult. But I anticipate that my experience is going to be of most interest to those in my area anyway, so these pre-conditions aren't much of an issue.

This question of how much food can be produced from a suburban backyard isn't just a personal lark for me. I'll admit, I'm curious and I will derive great satisfaction each year that we show an increase in our harvest tally. But I believe that the answers I collect over the next few years are going to be very important sooner or later. Those of us looking to a future beyond peak oil know that food production and perhaps more importantly, food distribution, are going to be a huge crisis. We need to begin feeding ourselves more locally, and not just as a trendy lifestyle choice. Locavorism is going to become a given, not an option. If my community doesn't know what's possible on our residential lots, then we will be poorly equipped to make plans for our own needs.

There are small scale farmers doing what they can with parcels of 5, 10, or 20 acres. There are urban farmers maxing out production in tiny spaces. And there are many hobby gardeners with modest vegetable plots. There are some consciously working towards sustainable food security, and others gaining gardening skills without any such goal in mind. But very little of the prime farmland that was converted into suburban sprawl is being used as well as it will one day need to be used. There's also an important difference between urban spaces occupied largely by renters, and the suburbs largely occupied by homeowners - however heavily mortgaged those properties may be. It's not the size of their properties. Homeowners, broadly speaking, are more fixed in their residences than renters, and likely to become only more so. That means there's a better return on investment for the expense and effort of planting perennial food plants such as asparagus, fruit trees, nut trees, and berries, among many others. These plants give yields for years and even decades, but not immediately. If you don't think you'll be in the same place two years from now, only a Johnny Appleseed altruism will motivate you to plant these crops. And those perennial crops are going to be important to us one day.

I've already got one year of data showing harvest quantities on my property. I'm in a position to continue documenting how much food can be produced on a small piece of residential land in zone 6a by able-bodied adults with no background in farming. And that's exactly what I'm going to do as our perennials come "on-line." I'm going to push hard to make those numbers as high as possible while still maintaining good soil fertility in a sustainable system. I believe the answers I come up with will be extremely important for my area.

But my findings won't necessarily be relevant to a property in Mississippi, or the Pacific northwest, or New Zealand. They won't say much about what might be achievable for an elderly person living alone, nor for a family with four children of an age to pitch in. Your area is going to need answers just as much as any other. So why not join me in documenting what is possible in your area, with your abilities, on your property?

Winter Quarters for the Girls

A few weeks back an ice storm and temperatures falling below freezing overnight finally gave us the nudge we needed to finish up the modifications to the shed to house the girls for the next few months. I don't like keeping them inside round the clock, but I also don't want them to get frostbite and suffer needlessly. Fortunately, we're experimenting with the deep litter method for their confinement, and they seem to like it so far.

The basic idea with deep litter is that if chickens are kept on bedding both sufficiently deep (12" is the rule of thumb), and sufficiently spacious (at least 4 square feet per chicken), and if the litter is "inoculated" with living soil organisms, the bedding will be able to absorb the manure the hens produce without ever turning foul, if you'll pardon the pun. Ideally such an arrangement would happen directly on healthy soil. Since I didn't have that option, I put a tarp down in my shed and added soil from my garden to a depth of 2". So far I've added about 9" of mulch on top of the soil. (I need to add more soon to handle the manure output and get the litter to a total of 12" of depth. I figure since my stocking density is more generous than 4 square feet per hen, I have some leeway.) Around the tarp is a 5' x 6' framework of garden caging to keep the girls confined. They each have 7.5 square feet of floor space, or exactly as much as they have in their mobile pen during the rest of the year.


They were initially quite intrigued by the looseness of the mulch, and they scratched happily at it for far longer than they do with either garden soil or lawn turf. When it's frozen, they can't scratch it, so I go in there with a pitchfork every once in a while and turn things over for them. Then they get to scratching again. I also throw some of their feed directly on the mulch from time to time so that they have additional motivation to scratch through it and keep the mulch aerated and loose.

Our shed has electricity but no heat. We rigged the fluorescent lights up on a timer, which comes on around 2 am to provide sufficient hours of light to keep the girls laying. It shuts off as the sun comes up, about the time I'm out there with their breakfast and fresh water. On really wet and miserably cold days I keep the shed doors closed and light them with a single CF bulb. If I left the shed doors open on rainy days, the rain would get in and rot the flooring. On better days I can latch the double doors in a fully open position so the girls get lots of fresh air and indirect lighting. The doors face north, so they don't get any direct sun. But when we've had snow there's lots of reflected light from all the white surfaces out there. I don't like depriving them of lots of light, but I don't like to expose them to the bitter cold either. Life is compromise.

Their water does freeze overnight if the temperatures are low enough. I've had to buy a second waterer can to have a spare one ready to go each morning. I swap them out, always keeping one in the sink in our unheated garage, which is warm enough to thaw the water overnight and have it ready for filling the next morning. Because the water needed to be shut off to the hoses and garage work sink, that means I need to make an extra trip each morning in order to clean and fill the waterer inside the house. I fill it with warm water, knowing that it'll take many hours to freeze, and that the hens will peck through thin films of ice to get at the remaining liquid. At this time of year, there's about a 50-50 chance that the water is frozen when I go out in the mornings. The girls don't seem any worse for the inconvenience, so I'm leaving it at that.

As you can see, I totally went the easy route with the nesting box, which is really a plastic bucket. I got this idea from a picture on The City Chicken. It looked great to me, since the other option was to build a wooden box with a lid sufficiently sloping that the girls wouldn't decide to perch up there and poop on it. This is a lesson learned early with chickens: give them as few surfaces as possible to poop on so there's less to clean. The bucket was simplicity itself and the girls took right to it. I cut a piece out of the bottom of the bucket, which is now the back of the nesting "box," so that I can reach in and remove the eggs without needing to get inside with the hens.

As winter deepened, the few green things that had held on through the fall chill were buried in snow. Very few fresh greens now to keep the girls happy. They really had enjoyed cuttings of the winter wheat cover crop my husband had sown along our south fence. Maybe that wheat will rebound in the spring, but right now it's not looking too good. Fortunately, I cut and dried quite a bit of comfrey during late summer, specifically for use as a winter time feed supplement. Wearing gloves to protect me from the prickles, I crush a handful or two of the dried comfrey into the sack of chicken feed every week. The girls get small bits of the comfrey with their grain feed. So far the color of the yolks still looks good. Not quite as deeply colored as when they're on grass, but still far better than store bought.

We're just about out of the acorns I collected. The girls sure did enjoy them. I was most pleased that they could eat a few acorns every other day without any noticeable change in the flavor of the eggs. Jamon Iberico, the cured Spanish ham from pigs fed entirely on acorns was not to my liking, so I was a little worried that feeding acorns to the hens might result in off flavors. But none that we can detect. Collecting a lot more acorns for wintertime feed supplementation is going to be a fall project for next year.

Keeping the girls in this way gives me more access to physical contact with them. I've started handling them every so often when I need to get into their enclosure. I'm surprised how easily they've accepted me picking them up for a few moments from time to time. Perhaps it helps that there's no urgency to me catching and holding them. I'm only trying to acclimate them to being handled, not trying to catch an escaped hen. I'm really not sure how I feel about this extra handling. It makes me a little fonder of them, and them a little more trusting of me. That may make things practically easier on me when it comes time to slaughter these girls, but emotionally harder. Though perhaps slaughter day will be less traumatic for girls used to being picked up and handled, so I suppose I could live with it being more emotionally difficult for me.

We're getting lots of eggs from our girls, and they're of a good size too. That's the benefit of having young layers, though lighting them doesn't hurt either. At three or four eggs per day from this tiny flock of four hens, we had enough eggs to give away a few dozen as Christmas gifts. Chickens are definitely the "gateway" livestock. So easy to care for, so rewarding, and yes, they'll lead you to stronger stuff. Post coming soon on the beekeeping equipment that was under the Christmas tree.

Did You Serve Honorably?

I'm from a long line of people who have served in various branches of the US military. Though I never enlisted myself, I still benefit from my father's service in that I'm a member of USAA. This is a private banking and insurance agency that is known for top-notch customer service, and also for being run on a non-profit basis. As the child of a USAA member, I've always been eligible. It's one of the few military benefits that those who serve can pass on to their children. I've found it to be extremely worthwhile, since their homeowner's and auto insurance rates and policies can't be beat. I also use their totally, 100% free banking services. Anytime I have a question or concern, I can call USAA and quickly get a real, live, competant, polite human being on the phone to help me. I couldn't be happier with USAA, and I don't say that lightly.

The reason I'm posting about USAA is that they recently changed their eligibility rules. It used to be that active duty military personnel could enroll anytime, and then there was a window of opportunity after discharge. After a certain amount of time had passed after discharge, you could no longer enroll, though the children of any USAA member could enroll at any time. Now USAA has opened eligibility to anyone who served honorably in any branch of the US military.

If this applies to you and you're not a USAA member, I urge you to consider becoming one. We save a lot of money and hassle with the services USAA provides. We just got our auto insurance dividends, and next month we'll get our annual rebate from our USAA credit card. And yes, those checks arrive at a particularly nice time of year. Even if it didn't make obvious sense from a financial perspective to use USAA for our banking and insurance, I would seriously consider paying for their services just for the outstanding level of customer service they provide. The sweet thing is, we pay less for that service. A lot less.

So if you or someone you know qualifies under the new eligibility rules, especially if that person is your spouse or parent, check out USAA. I would use any service they provide, with confidence that they would do right by me.

Harvest Meal: Cream of Roasted Parsnip Soup, Plus Scallion Biscuits

I've sort of been on a cream-of kick. Soup has been much desired lately, and I've been wanting to highlight the root vegetables that are still available in the winter garden. Cream-of soups do the trick and are so easy to prepare. We were taught in culinary school how to make cream-of soup out of just about anything. This time around, a predicted blizzard sent us out digging for parsnips. I had in mind a roasted parsnip soup. We dug up a little under two pounds of them as we waited for the storm to begin in earnest. Despite the lower than freezing air temperature, the ground is not yet frozen below the surface. Digging the parsnips was pretty easy.

After being cleaned the parsnips were roasted using a method I usually use for potatoes. I greased a large casserole dish lightly with butter, cut up the parsnips and laid them in the dish, ground some white pepper over them, sprinkled with kosher salt and then drizzled them lightly with olive oil. I tossed everything together with my hands to coat the parsnips evenly, then arranged everything evenly again in the casserole. To this I added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of water and then tightly covered the dish with a sheet of aluminum foil. Into a 400 F (205 C) oven for 35 minutes, and then the foil was removed. I put the dish back in the oven uncovered, and raised the temperature to 425 F (220 C) to let the roots brown up a bit. This took about 15 minutes. (Note that most of the caramelization (browning) takes place on the side of the parsnip in contact with the casserole. If you wait until the tops are browned, they'll probably be burned underneath.) Meanwhile, I was also baking two medium potatoes in the same oven.

I waited until the vegetables were done before proceeding, but if you're in a hurry you can start on the next step as soon as the root vegetables are in the oven. I medium diced two medium onions (boughten) and sauteed them in butter with a pinch of salt until they became somewhat translucent, soft but not browned. Then I put the nicely browned parsnips, and roughly chopped baked potatoes (ours) into the pot and added enough chicken stock (ours) to cover everything and make the parsnips float freely (about 2 quarts). I also added a couple of cloves from a head of roasted garlic (ours) we happened to have around and two bay leaves (boughten). All this was brought to a gentle simmer and then the heat under the pan was reduced. I let it all simmer together gently for about 15 minutes.

The next step is the one that's a pain. I fished out the bay leaves, then strained out the liquid from the solid ingredients, but reserved the liquid. Working in batches, I pureed the solids with a little of the liquid added back in to help everything blend up nicely. The puree and extra reserved liquid was returned to the pot. (I tried the pureeing step first with an immersion/wand blender. It didn't work.) Then I added about 3/4 cup of whole milk (local) and tasted to adjust for salt and seasonings. I brought the pot back to a very gentle simmer and let it go for 5 more minutes. Each serving was garnished with a brilliantly colored slice of parsley butter (our parsley, boughten butter).

It's a simple soup that tastes richly of sweet parsnips. Not something that will necessarily wow guests, but pretty satisfying as a winter harvest meal, and very warming on a chilly night. If I were feeling more adventurous, I might try adding a slice of fresh ginger during the initial simmer (probably best not pureed) or some freshly grated nutmeg.

Moving on to the non-harvest part of our snowstorm feast, I also made scallion biscuits. Ceridwen asked for a recipe, so I'll go ahead and list one. But first, an absolutely necessary little digression into etymology. Blame Ceridwen, or skip ahead a bit if this stuff bores you.

"Biscuit" literally means twice-cooked. The German word Zwieback, and the Italian word biscotti are cognates for the English word biscuit. But the Germans and the Italians actually mean what they say when they use their terms. Both Zwieback and biscotti are hard little farinaceous things baked once, and then sliced and baked again. The English word "biscuit" is an excellent example of the two nations divided by a common language. The Brits, when they use the term, mean what Americans call a cookie. Yet neither American cookies nor English biscuits are generally baked twice. When Americans say "biscuit" they mean something in the general ballpark of what the Brits call scones, and American biscuits are not twice-baked either. Americans eat their biscuits in a savory rather than a sweet capacity. In the US, biscuits are vehicles for ham, eggs, cheese, or gravy, usually showing up at either breakfast or dinner, where they are associated with heavy meals. Though Brits don't put sugar in their scones, they often slather them with jam and cream; and dried fruit might be included in the dough. Usually in the UK scones are associated with tea, rather than a full meal. (Please correct me if I'm wrong in this, British readers.) Americans on the other hand will bake scones with sugar in them or on top of them, but don't add jam to them after baking as commonly as the Brits. So to conclude, an American biscuit is pretty close to a British scone when it comes out of the oven, but not in the way it's eaten; a British biscuit is nothing like an American one; and a British scone may not bear much resemblance to an American scone. -There! I've had my foodie-word-geek catharsis for the day! Here endeth the lesson.

Oh, and Ceridwen, I too was thinking of adding cheese to my scallion (green onion) biscuits (scones). I just hadn't decided which cheese to add.


Scallion-Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh scallions (green onions)
5 Tbsp. cold butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese*
3/4 cup well shaken buttermilk**, plus extra for brushing

Preheat oven to 450 F (230 C) and grease a baking sheet or line it with baker's parchment. Sift/stir together dry ingredients. Using your fingertips, blend in butter very quickly until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Stop before you think you should, and try not to warm up the butter any more than really necessary. Stir in the scallions and grated cheddar. Add buttermilk and stir just until dough forms. Gather into a ball and knead on floured surface, gently, just 6 times. Pat dough into a square or rectangle. Cut into 9 (sorta) equal pieces (the corner pieces will probably be irregular - don't sweat it) and arrange them on your baking sheet. Brush the tops of the biscuits with a little extra buttermilk. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

*Plenty of other cheeses will work here too. If you don't have cheddar, try whatever you've got. But firm, somewhat assertively flavored cheeses tend to do best.
**If you have no buttermilk on hand, put 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar or lemon juice in a 1 cup measure. Fill the measure the rest of the way with whole milk, stir gently, and let the mixture sit for ten minutes before proceeding with the recipe. This makes just a bit more than is needed for this recipe.

By the way, this recipe doubles well, which I strongly recommend doing if you've got a house full of biscuit eaters. They'll keep a few days at room temperature in a sealed bag, and you can freeze some if you need to. Fresh sage (in smaller quantities) makes an excellent substitute for the scallions. All in all, it's a pretty flexible recipe. Enjoy!

Guanciale Update

I thought an in-progress report would be appropriate for my first home curing experiment. After removing the guanciale from the refrigerator, I succumbed to temptation and smoked one of them in my homemade garbage can smoker, with wood chips from our own apple tree. This is entirely inauthentic, and I'm not even sure I should continue to call that jowl guanciale. But what can I say? We like smoked pork products, and I thought a side-by-side comparison would be interesting. I smoked the one jowl for about four hours. The smoker was quite warm during that time, but not what I would call truly hot.

The jowls have now been air curing for over two weeks. I rigged up a pretty crude hanging system in the unheated garage, using a tomato cage plucked from the garden supplies. I just wanted to make sure no critters could climb up to them. If rats were a concern, this simple design wouldn't cut it. But all we've ever seen evidence of in the garage is mice, and none lately. So this should be fine.

I was surprised to find that the jowls started dripping again after bringing them into the garage. When they hung in the refrigerator, they lost enough moisture to drip for a day or two, and then stopped for three or four days. I suppose the slightly higher temperature of the garage changed things. Even with very low overnight temperatures, the garage has been consistently in the low- to mid-40's F. I keep them over newspaper so that salty meat goo doesn't fall on the garage floor.

The smell of the jowls is nice. The smoked one obviously smells smoky and delicious. The unsmoked one has very little smell at all, just a faint meaty scent like what you'd get from a very firm hard salami. I can see that both of the cuts are getting smaller as they lose moisture. Unfortunately, I didn't weigh them before I started the curing process, so I have no idea what the figures are. They are also becoming noticeably stiffer as they cure.

The plan is to let the jowls cure for at least two more weeks. After that, it's carbonara time, baby! I recently picked up a couple good sized hunks of Asiago-style grating cheese from a local grass-based dairy. I'd prefer a pecorino for carbonara, but I'll take what I can find in my own area. Since the cheese is so well aged, it'll hold for months in the refrigerator. Not that it's likely to last that long.

Links of Note

I don't do roundups of stuff I come across in my online reading as often as I probably ought. But here's a collection of random stuff, some of it posted a while ago, that struck a chord with me.

We're not from around here - If you've yet to acquaint yourself with Jenna Woginrich's gorgeous writing over at Cold Antler Farm, start here. She really knocks it outta the ballpark.

The Onion is always good for a laugh whenever a cynical mood strikes. Here's why you simply must run right out and buy the new device. The old, repellent; the new must be bliss.

Rob over at One Straw is looking for input on an awesomely ambitious project of developing a permaculture hoop house design that will produce food, fuel, and other resources solely from local inputs. Go on over, check out the ideas already tossed around, and chime in with a few of your own.

Finally, this short film about the premiere Transition town in the UK, Totnes, recently lifted my spirits.


We're hunkered down for a storm that should bring us several inches of snow over the next few days. Maybe we'll get a white Christmas. Our supplies of bread and milk are laid in, and the chickens are laying very well despite the cold. I may have to make some scallion biscuits. Or a big pot of soup. Or maybe both.