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If we are looking at producing our own grains in this bio-region, maize (field corn) is obviously one of the best suited for our particular conditions. Kevin and I are starting an experimental crop of Indian Flint Corn this season, in hopes of starting ourselves down the path of producing our own grains.

In preparation for producing and processing our own maize, we thought it would be a good idea to start practicing with some bought maize. It was amazingly difficult to find a source of New Zealand whole kernel maize for human consumption. Finally, through a friend, we found a way to get hold of some 50kg sacks of maize for a reasonable price. It wasn’t easy, but now we finally have 100kg of whole-kernel maize (a yellow dent variety) here on the Farmlet. 100kg is a lot of maize! Still, since the price of grain seems to be going nowhere but up these days, we figured we might do well to keep a little stockpile! We hope this supply will tide us over until we are producing enough maize of our own.

50KG sacks of maize (left), 25KG sacks of hard wheat berries (right)

Maize is much more nutritious if it is “nixtamalized” (soaked and boiled in an alkali solution) before being eaten, so that is what we want to do. We are full of plans for trying to make our own posole, tamales, and grits.

I had a first try at nixtamalising some of the maize yesterday. As per the instructions in “The Encyclopedia of Country Living,” I soaked it in a baking soda solution and then boiled it for quite a while to loosen the skins. They came off much easier than the book said they would — but I think that was because I got distracted and left the pot boiling longer than I should have. Oops! It was good that the skins came off easily, but the kernels had become very fragile and some were rather falling to bits! We have a lot to learn about this matter! After a great deal of rinsing, I further boiled the resulting product. It tastes a lot like the posole (hominy) that we used to be able to buy in a tin in the USA, except it’s yellow rather than white, and the kernels are falling apart rather than staying intact. I don’t know why it failed to turn white as I believe it ought to. Perhaps the alkali solution wasn’t strong enough?? Is it because of the type of corn we’re using? Since the kernels haven’t turned white, I’m not sure if we can actually say that the corn has been nixtamalized successfully. This is all very perplexing! Still, we are going to try some of this corn product for dinner tonight — trying to eat it as a polenta/hominy-type hybrid. It seems like it will taste ok, even if further experimentation is still needed to get it just right. (I made a bunch of it, and am hoping it tastes good enough to merit freezing in meal-sized batches for “fast-food” dinners!)

Plans for further maize-preparation experiments:
*Try using lime water or lye (if I can find any lye around here) to soak the maize instead of baking soda.
*Try the cold-soak (no-boil) method mentioned in “The Encyclopedia of Country Living.” This takes a lot longer, but would be much more energy-efficient
*”Nourishing Traditions” gives a recipe where you first grind the maize, and then soak it in lime water before cooking. I’d like to grind some of the maize in our grain mill and see how this recipe works out as well.

We hope that with time and practice we’ll learn which methods of preparing the maize are easiest, tastiest, and most nutritious.

Update:
We had some of the corn mixture for dinner, cooked up with a little salt, butter and rapadura. We served it with beef chili and cheese, plus a green salad from the garden, and found it very tasty.

Corn chili meal

A while back, we decided to purchase an electric dehydrator. This was a tricky decision for us, intent as we are on cutting back on electricity use. We decided to get the electric dehydrator because it is much more energy-efficient than our electric oven when it comes to drying food. Ideally, we would use the sun for drying extra food, but in a humid and changeable climate such as this, open-air solar dehydration is difficult or impossible much of the time. I have seen designs for solar dehydrators that would work here, at least on fine dry summer days. It would be fun to experiment with one of these at some stage. Also, once we install a wood-burning stove in our kitchen-living room (yes, this step is on our medium-term “to do” list), we will be able to use it to dehydrate food, as well as for cooking and drying laundry during the winter. In short, we hope we will be able to cut down our use of the electric dehydrator as we implement further improvements here on the Farmlet. In the mean time, it seems like a relatively energy-efficient method of preserving and preparing certain kinds of food.

Austrian Hull-Less Pumpkin Seeds

Once the dehydrator arrived, our first project was to dry the Austrian hull-less pumpkin seeds that we grew last year. (We attempted to dry the first of these in the sun late last summer, and ended up having to finish them in the electric oven when the weather changed.) We were relieved to find that all but one of the pumpkins were in fine condition, despite many months of storage. It took quite a while to pick all the seeds out of the twelve pumpkins we had saved, but it was gratifying to see the quantity of plump green seed yielded from each fruit. We washed and soaked the seeds overnight in brine, before spreading them on the dehydrator trays. We were pleased to note how quickly they dried (a few hours at 60 degrees centigrade).

Now Kevin and I are both enjoying these tasty and nutritious treats. We look forward to growing more of these delicious seeds in the garden this summer.

A bit more information about the dehydrator:

*We purchased the dehydrator second-hand off Trademe (New Zealand’s equivalent of Ebay). I was able to get a good deal on one with a broken lid, since one of my cousins happens to have a spare lid for this kind of dehydrator.

*It is a “Harvest Maid” dehydrator (the 1,500 watt model), in good condition other than the lid! It can work at temperature settings up to 70 degrees centigrade.

*On my cousin’s advice, we got one with lots of trays. We will give some of these to her in exchange for the lid! Having more trays will allow us to dry more items at once, for greater energy efficiency. Slicing the food nice and thin will also help cut down on electricity use.

There are a number of other dehydrator projects that we are hoping to try when the time is right. We’ll let you know how they work out.

One of our aims here on the Farmlet is to produce as much of our own food as possible, reducing our expenses and our dependence on outside food sources. We still have a long way to go, but it feels very good to have started working towards this goal.

What have we done so far?

1. So far, our biggest step has been starting the vegetable garden. We now grow most of our own vegetables.

2. Buying cows and goats has been another major step. We are now waiting to get milk from our dear cows (due to calve in a couple of months).

3. We are making an effort to buy from local, organic and/or bulk sources as much as we can.

4. As far as possible, we make our own food from unprocessed whole ingredients. We make our own bread, crackers and snacks, beer* and sodas, yoghurt and kefir, stocks and sauces, and sauerkraut, and avoid pre-processed, packaged foods almost entirely. [* I brew with Coopers— Kevin]

5. We have started to plant fruit and berries, and to plan out orchard and “food forest” areas on our farmlet.

Purple “Maori” Potatoes

So. . . how much do we actually spend on food? Over the last couple of months, we have been itemising and tracking our expenses in order to find out.

I have come up with a total of NZ$265.75 per month, or NZ$66.44 per week. That comes out to about US$49 per week. I don’t have enough information at the moment to see whether there is a big seasonal difference in our spending. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the totals through winter and early spring when our supply of home-grown vegetables will be running low. Of course, by then we will (hopefully!) not be buying milk any more, so our overall spending might not change much.

Market wonder and Dalmatian climbing (purple speckled) beans

Recently, I read a Path to Freedom post on this same topic that quotes some statistics from the US Department of Labor on the average American food budget in 2005. I don’t have comparable statistics for New Zealand, but we think these US figures provide an interesting point of comparison.

1 person in the family, one wage earner: $68 a week
2+ persons in the family, one wage earner: $121 a week
2+ persons in the family, 2 wage earners: $144 a week
2+ persons in the family, 3+ wage earners: $184 a week

Path to Freedom (who grow a lot of their own food, and are committed to buying from local sources as much as possible) add that their own expenses are as follows:

4 persons in the PTF family (+ 1 volunteer), 4+(?) wage earners: $100-$125 a week (winter) & $60-$80 (summer)

Of course, while reducing expenses on food is a worthwhile goal, it is also a simplistic one. We try to reduce costs by buying in bulk, and buying seasonally, but it also makes sense to spend more money on goods that are local, organic, and higher quality. Our food costs are higher due to certain choices we make regarding source and quality.

Fresh beet salad

What steps are we planning to take in the future, in order to increase our food independence?

1. As it is, we are growing most of our own potatoes. We have saved more seed potatoes for next season, and hope to expand our potato beds to grow all the potatoes we need. Potatoes are an important and easy-to-grow staple for us.

2. Work on growing more garlic and some large beds of onions. Now that our soil is more workable, we also hope to begin growing more root vegetables, such as sweet potato, carrots, and Jerusalem artichoke. Next year, we plan to grow a larger quantity of long-keeping winter squash.

3. Start growing some maize to grind into corn meal. Try growing some grain amaranth — with adequate protection from birds! (Corn and amaranth seem to be the grains most likely to yield successfully in this bio-region — and can be processed relatively easily at home on a small scale for human consumption.) We long to make polenta and tamales from home-grown corn!

4. Continue to plant fruit, berries and nuts, so that in time we will be producing all the fruit we need. Most high-calorie tree crops such as nuts and avocados take a while to start producing, so we are trying to get some started as soon as we can. We are dreaming of food forests!

5. Milk our own cows (nearly there!) and goats. We already make some of our own dairy products from scratch. Once we are milking the cows, we hope to make all our butter, and hopefully cheese, as well as yoghurt and kefir.

6. Get some chickens to raise for eggs and meat.

7. Once our animals produce offspring, we will be able to start fattening some for meat. We look forward to the good taste and savings of home-grown beef steak and goat curry.

8. Plant more olives, in hopes of producing enough to press for oil at the local olive oil press.