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Hens Starting to Lay6

One of our Barred Rock hens started laying about two weeks ago. Bask in the glory of the first egg (it was pouring rain, so this was taken inside):

A couple of days ago, another hen started laying as well. She dropped a couple while she was on the perch and they cracked on the floor of the chook house. “Silly chook,” is such a perfect phrase, isn’t it? Oh well, she has figured out how the nesting boxes work now.

How do the eggs taste? As you might expect, they’re absolutely delicious. The yolks are a deep, saturated orange/yellow.

It’s hard to put into words how satisfying it is to be eating these eggs. Keeping chickens has been a dream of mine for a long time. As I toiled in the depths of my last corporate job in the U.S., I used a picture of some chooks in a field as the wallpaper image on my screen. Thinking about having chickens helped me make it through the day, believe it or not.

I should order a large print of that egg, frame it and hang it up proudly in our lounge. HAHA.

Posted: Chickens, Food and Recipes

Country Calendar: Growing Strong — Whangarei Growers Market7

Crossposted from Cryptogon.

We were over at my mother and father in laws’ house on Saturday. They have a television, so we all watched Country Calendar.

Country Calendar is usually very good, but it was particularly good this time.

Most of the food purchased in New Zealand is sold through the retail networks of just two large corporations. There’s New Zealand based Foodstuffs (which operate New World, Pak’n Save and Four Square stores) and Australian based Woolworths Limited (which operate Woolworths, Countdown and Foodtown stores). This duopoly has led to New Zealand having the second highest food price increases in the world over the last decade. (The cost of food in South Korea increased the most.)

The duopoly that has a death grip on most of New Zealand in the retail food sector exists to screw everyone over, except shareholders, to the extent possible. The people who produce the food are paid the minimum possible price. The people who buy the food are charged the maximum possible price. Yes, while that sounds like a good business model for the vampire middlemen, it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

Now, you know how I’m always going on about the power of many small scale producers selling directly to the retail customers.

Well, don’t worry, I’m not going to write it all out again.

Just feast your eyes on what happened when a couple of small scale growers got fed up with being screwed over by Foodstuffs and Woolworths. HAHA! This is fantastic.

Behold: The Whangarei Growers Market.

The retail customers are buying more varieties of higher quality food for lower prices. The growers are earning more, having eliminated the vampire middlemen. Foodstuffs and Woolworths, aren’t allowed to have stalls at the Whangarei Growers Market because they’re not growers. The purpose of the market is for local producers to sell locally produced food. And by the look of it, people seem to like the arrangement quite a lot. The vampire squid duopoly middlemen… Not so much.

Watch: Country Calendar: Growing Strong.

Here’s a bit more from Transition Towns Whangarei:

Via: TVNZ Country Calendar:

When supermarket price-setting was threatening the livelihood of Northland growers, they fought back by cutting out the middle man and selling their produce direct to consumers.

Today the Whangarei Growers Market is a thriving venture providing a living for around 30 local producers. Many more seasonal suppliers jostle for space throughout the year.

The market was started 12 years ago by Robert Bradley and Murray Burns in what has been likened to a David and Goliath struggle.

Robert Bradley says the supermarket chains were using their buying power to dictate prices, with low returns driving small to medium sized growers out of business.

Tomato grower and market co-founder Murray Burns was one of those whose margins were being whittled away.

“The only way to deal with that was to get much bigger or close down – and we wanted to do neither,” says Murray.

The pair were inspired by the concept of village markets in Europe and the United Kingdom, and a resurgence of farmers’ markets in the United States.

They found other growers who shared their predicament and a group of 12 held the first market in a car-park in Whangarei in 1998.

It now takes place every Saturday morning and, when Country Calendar visited, everything from fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk and cheese to macadamia nuts and olive oil was on sale. The market has a rule that all produce must originate in Northland.

The local-only principle has kept struggling growers afloat and encouraged new businesses that may not otherwise have been viable. Asparagus, for example, is now grown in Northland for the first time in many years.

The market is also a venue for growers and consumers to meet face-to-face – there is a requirement that growers are also the stallholders.

At the peak of the growing season, the market attracts up to 6000 shoppers over the four hours it is open. Around 50 pallets, or 2000 cases, of produce is sold each Saturday.

Robert Bradley says the key to success has been offering significant qualities of high quality local produce at moderate prices.

Many similar markets have sprung up around the country in the last decade but the Whangarei enterprise deliberately distances itself from the popular farmers’ market movement.

Robert believes some of the newer markets have got sidetracked into “food fashion”.

“For us it is a matter of ‘keep it simple stupid’ – and it has really worked.”

Posted: Fellowship, Food and Recipes

Rendering Lard12

Hello out there! I got swept away from updating our beloved website for a while. . . by life and all its demands. I’ve missed writing Farmlet posts! It feels like high time to be getting back to writing regular updates again.

I’m breaking my long silence with a few words about something very dear to my heart: lard.

We were lucky enough to find a source of local free-range pork fat. Finally! I was actually given this precious fat for free because nobody else wants it. The farmer told me he doesn’t kill many fat pigs any more, except for the occasional older sow. He and his wife now aim to breed and raise lean animals, which are preferred by the “health conscious consumer.” This is a sad state of affairs for those of us who recognise lard as a delicious, nourishing and healthy food.

I decided to try rendering batches of lard three different ways: stovetop, oven, and slow cooker. The slow cooker (crock pot) got the thumbs down. My usually-reliable recipe book claimed that much of the fat would have liquefied after 4 to 5 hours on low heat in the slow cooker. I left it for three times this long and still felt that I was wasting too much of the fat due to incomplete rendering. Both the stovetop and oven methods worked well, though.

How to render lard

I used about 2kg of pork fat for each batch (belly fat is especially good), cut into small pieces.

Put it in a large enameled cast iron casserole (any heavy-bottomed pot or casserole with a lid will do) with about 1/4 cup of water.

Add an onion and a handful of herbs if you want to give your lard some extra savoury flavour. We rendered some of our lard with onion and herbs and kept some plain.

Heat the casserole on the stove (over medium heat) until the fat is cooking nicely. Then turn the stove down very low or transfer to an oven preheated to about 140 centigrade.

Cook for about 4 hours, or until most of the fat has turned to liquid.

Strain the lard and cool it a little before pouring it into glass jars. I warm the jars before pouring in the lard, so that they don’t crack from the heat of the hot fat.

Let the lard cool to room temperature before storing it in the fridge or freezer. Lard should keep for a few months in the fridge, and will stay good for over a year in the freezer.

Please be very careful handling the hot fat!

Posted: Fellowship, Food and Recipes

Camembert-Style Cheese20

I am very happy to say that we have been enjoying some home made cheeses at last! I’ve been making several kinds, but the one I’ve made most often so far is a camembert-style cheese, also known as coulommiers. That’s the kind of cheese I’m going to write about today. I thought I’d share a detailed recipe in case anyone else is curious or wants to have a go at making some.

I have made this kind of cheese fairly often because it requires less milk, and is less labour-intensive than most of the other kinds of cheese I’ve been making. It only needs to ripen for one to two weeks before eating, and we find the result delicious!

Please don’t be put off by the long list of equipment below. You’ll probably most of the stuff in your kitchen already, and the rest can be obtained very cheaply. In New Zealand, starters and other cheese-making supplies are available online from “Curds and Whey” or “Cottage Crafts.”

Equipment needed:

*Gas or electric element

*Tea towel (good to have tea towels that you wash separately and keep solely for cheese making)

*Stainless steel double boiler (doesn’t have to be good quality, non copper bottoms are fine. Be inventive with combinations of pots and buckets.)

*Medicine measuring cup (available from pharmacy)

*Stainless steel skimmer or slotted spoon

*Whisk

*Glass thermometer (Sold by Kowhai Cheese, Curds and Whey, or kitchen hardware shops sell candy thermometers)

*Bucket (for putting sterilised water into)

*Cheese mat (you can use shade cloth or sushi mats as cheaper options)

*Molds (You can poke drainage holes in tupperware containers or sections of pipe for these. I’ve also heard of people drilling holes in sections cut from large stalks of bamboo. I’d love to try making some of these!)

*Draining rack

*Wine fridge, ice packs and cooler box, or cellar for keeping cheese at correct temperature

*Steriliser tablets (baby bottle steriliser tablets) optional

Ingredients:

3 litres whole milk (I use fresh raw milk)

3 ml rennet diluted in 3ml boiled and cooled water (I use calf rennet)

A few grains of Flora Danica starter culture

A very tiny amount of Penicillum Candidum starter culture

Salt (not iodised)

Method:

Day One:

Before you start: Ensure all equipment is sterile. Most home cheese making failures are caused by unsterile equipment or mishandling of the milk. Either soak equipment in boiling water for 5 minutes or in hot water that has been treated with steriliser tablets. I half fill a 9 litre bucket with hot water and add a steriliser tablet. All equipment is treated with this liquid before it touches the milk or cheese.

1. In a water bath, heat the milk to 31 degrees C. Stir gently with whisk to ensure even heating

2. Sprinkle the starter cultures onto the surface of the milk and stir in thoroughly.

3. Add diluted rennet to the milk and stir gently but thoroughly for one or two minutes.

4. Cover with a tea towel and leave for about half an hour for the curd to set.

5. Place mould(s) on cheese mat.

6. Using a stainless steel skimmer or slotted spoon, skim thin layers of curd from the pot and gently lower them into the mould. Continue until the mould is filled to the top. The thinner the layers of curd, the faster the cheese will drain.

7. Cover with a tea towel and leave to drain overnight.

Day 2:

1. When the curd has reduced to about half of its original size, it should be firm enough to turn out onto a second cheese mat.

2. Sprinkle salt on all surfaces of the cheese.

3. Age the cheese on a rack in a cool place (about 45 degrees F) at about 80-90% humidity, turning every couple of days.

4. Once it is ready to eat, wrap the cheese in wax paper or cheese wrap and keep it in the fridge.

For aging the cheese, it would be very nice to have a wine fridge or cellar at the right temperature. I don’t, so here’s what I do: put the cheeses on a rack in an ice chest (chilly bin) with a couple of ice packs. I use 2 ice packs for a large ice chest, and change one each morning and one each evening. (I need to have 3 ice packs to do this, so that one can be in the freezer.) So far, this method seems to be working out fine.

This cheese can be eaten after about a week, at which time it will have a milder taste and less white mould. For a stronger cheese covered in a thick growth of white mould, age for about 2 weeks.

We love to eat this cheese on sourdough crackers or bread. Kevin prefers to eat it after about one week, while I prefer to have it aged longer. Needless to say, Owen is very fond of some of our home made cheeses as well. I’ve also been experimenting with feta (cow’s milk feta), soft cheese and gouda, so will be writing about those in due course.

Sources: This cheese recipe is based on the one in Ricki Carroll’s “Home Cheese Making,” plus another recipe that a friend passed on to me. I think the recipe from my friend may be from Katherine Mowbray’s book, which you can buy from her “Kowhai Cheese” website. (Katherine Mowbray is famous in New Zealand cheese-making circles for her fabulous cheese-making classes.) The equipment list and notes on hygiene come from my friend and cheese-making teacher, Natalie.

Posted: Food and Recipes, Owen

Pickled Grapes1

It’s grape season, and I’ve been trying out a new recipe for preserving some of our extra grapes. This recipe suits our situation especially well, since we also have lots of tarragon in the garden at the moment. The recipe comes from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning. I’ve been curious for quite a while about some of the recipes in this book, but this is the first one I’ve actually tried.

Note: The original recipe is called “Bicolored Grapes” and calls for white and black grapes packed into the jar in layers. This sounds very decorative, but unfortunately our white grapes finished cropping quite a while ago now.

I did not exactly follow the original recipe, since I used apple cider vinegar instead of wine vineger, and rapadura instead of sugar.

Here is my version of the recipe:

Pickled Grapes

*Snip plenty of fresh ripe grapes off their bunches with a pair of scissors, leaving a short stem attached to each one.

*Wash the grapes and dry each one carefully with a cloth.

*Pack the grapes into jam jars.

*In each jar, put some bits of fresh tarragon, a clove, and a couple of white pepper corns, plus about a teaspoon of rapadura (dehydrated cane juice). I varied these quantities depending on the sizes of the jars.

*Then cover the grapes with apple cider vinegar, put the lids on the jars, and put them away in a dark cupboard. They are supposed to be stored for about 6 weeks before using.

This recipe fascinated me as I’d never heard of pickled grapes before! The recipe book describes them thus: “Both sweet and sour in taste, these grapes go impeccably well with poultry or game terrines.” Sounds good, but we won’t know if we like the result for a good while yet since they need to be stored before eating! I’ll be sure to report back once we have finally tasted them.

Posted: Food and Recipes