All posts by Erin

Update

Moving forward, and Co-ops

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Small piece of news:  we have engaged the services of a highly-recommended co-op developer, who thinks that we can have things sorted enough to actually move forward Very Soon.  Meetings are going well, and everything that we learn about co-operatives suggests that this mode of business would require very little contorting to shape into the kind of thing that would work for us.  We were initially going to go with a corporate model, but after speaking with some folks that are familiar with co-ops it looked like we’d be contorting a corporate entity into something very like a co-op.  It made sense to start out with an organizational model that was closer to our desired end point.  A corporate model is very flexible, but we don’t think we’ll need all those options.

We have a name:  Cast Iron Farm Co-operative.

And now, to finish up work on those last few hard bits, for which we appear to have needed a deadline.

Onward!

 

Food, Recipies

Pizza (and wheat)

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We are reducing our consumption of wheat, though not eliminating it.  Most of us feel swollen and yucky when we eat a lot of wheat, but no one feels enough of a difference that they have given up wheat entirely.

Good thing, because my attempts at gluten-free pizza crusts have been edible, but not awesome.

Here’s the recipe I use:

In a big bowl, mix 1 Tbsp yeast and 1 Tbsp salt with 3 cups warm water.  Add 5 cups white flour, and 1.5 cups spelt/whole-wheat/rye/whatever-other-kind-of-flour-is-around.  Mix, cover with a pot lid, and let sit in a warm place for at least 4 hours and a maximum of 24 hours.  Do not knead, do not concern yourself with it in any way until you’re ready to use it.  When you’re ready to make pizza, turn the dough out on a floured surface, and mix in enough flour to make it the appropriate texture.  Stretch it into the right shape, then add toppings and cook until done at 450 (15-25 mins).  I find that if one doesn’t oil the pan, it sticks dreadfully, and that thinner crusts work out better than thicker ones.  And sesame seeds on the crust are really nice.

For the gluten-free crust, I just substituted Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-free flour mix. It was fine, just not quite as nice. It needs to be patted in place like a giant cracker instead of rolled and stretched like a wheat crust.

I recently ran out of white flour, and so I used 1 cup of white and the rest spelt flour, and it was fine. More stretchy and squishy with the white flour, but overall it was something I’d probably do again. Once we get a grain mill, I plan to make it with 100% whole wheat – I’ll keep y’all updated.

Happy pizza!

CollectiveHouse, Energy Descent

On Stoves

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Our stove is stupid. I have gotten to know and love many cantankerous and ornery stoves, and I usually come to love their quirks.  This one seems past redemption.

The knobs are reversed, so that we always think we’re turning on the front burner when in fact we have just burnt the bejeezus out of whatever was on the back burner:

Does this look strange to you?
Does this look strange to you?

The elements have only two temperatures, despite their knobs suggesting that they have a normal range: Scorching-Hellmouth-Cooks-Your-Food-To-A-Crisp, and Barely-Melts-An-Ice-Cube-In-Half-An-Hour.

My mounting frustration with this stove makes me daydream about rocket stoves, wood-burning ranges, and commercial-grade gas stovetops. Gas would be easy, of course. Cooking with wood would have its own learning curve, but at least there would be some skill involved instead of our current random soup-scorching.

We keep pinning our hopes for a cure for whatever is currently bothering us on Someday When We Build Our Own House And Grow Food And Everything Will Be Perfect. It won’t be perfect, for sure, but at least our stove will change. I’ll settle for that.

CollectiveHouse, Getting Along

Privacy in a house of 10 people

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It’s tricky, finding quiet in a small house that usually contains 10 people.

We each have a private space, where we can leave things and know that no one else will move them. When private spaces are close together, we can wear earphones or play music when we don’t want to talk.

Here’s Jeremy and Christiana’s office:

for the 9-5ers (8-6ers?)

And mine and Tony’s (yes, it’s the garage.):

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Scott and Sebastien share a bedroom that has a division of space (and I didn’t ask them if I could take a picture).

And the kids each have their own spaces.

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Corner of the closet in the master bedroom
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Behind the reading chairs in the living room

My kids have their own slightly smaller spaces in our bedroom, but our entire bedroom is also off-limits to the other kids.  My kids (one of them, anyway) have quieter temperaments than the other two and need a place to get away. It seemed like a reasonable trade: you get the big master bedroom and ensuite, but the kids all play in YOUR room (sorry, Christiana and Tony!). We are considering raising the bed in our bedroom so that my eldest can have a place to work on projects quietly alone, but we haven’t made time for that yet.  Everyone needs a place to work.

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a tiny box to sit in beside the bed for now
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a place to keep lego, but not much room to play uninterrupted

The other place I’m often finding a need for mental space is in the kitchen. It’s not the clutter; if we’re not on top of that all the time, it gets crazy, so that’s often fine. There are a number of kids that like nothing better than to help in the kitchen, which is wonderful.. in theory. In practice, after having spent the day with short people, I’d much rather have some space to myself when I’m cooking. We have devised an ingenious plan, for the times that we Do Not Want To Answer Any More Questions: THE APRON. When someone wears the apron, they are Not Available.. for ANYTHING. Perhaps if there was a fire, or an accident with blood, the person wearing the apron may take it off, fold it carefully, and then attend to whatever needs doing, but otherwise kids have to go ask someone else. If more is needed, the person wearing the apron can also wear headphones and listen to music. These are things that one can do, when there are other adults around to pick up the slack.

the magical apron!
the magical apron!

We’re chugging along, contacting co-op developers, and hope to have something together on paper soon so that we can go ahead and Actually Buy Something.  More news soon, I hope!

Practicefarming

Farmsitting

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For the past little while, we have been taking care of the animals on a farm nearby while their people are away. Every morning, someone goes to the farm, lets the chickens and turkeys out, and distributes appropriate quantities of food and water.

We bring carefully selected compost for the chickens to pick through, muscle our way through the turkey scrum, and hold still-warm eggs in cold hands.

In the evening, as it gets dark, the chickens put themselves to bed and make sleepy chicken noises as we check for eggs. The turkeys are lured back into their shelter using yet more food.

And it’s fun.

(of course, I know that there are days that I will not be interested in getting out of bed to let out my own annoying chickens, but for today, it’s fun to pretend.)

Energy Descent, Maunderings

Definitions

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Here are a few things that we are using as guiding principles, in decision-making and sorting through scare-mongering (ie: Fukushima).

Permaculture:  The idea that, just as forests sustain themselves, we can build gardens/farms/communities that are both productive and self-sustaining.  There’s a whole bunch of people that are using permaculture principles to inform their horticulture, and it seems to make farming both less effort and more beautiful/lush/alive than traditional annual fieldcropping.

Transition Towns:  Transition is what’s going to happen when we run out of accessible oil and the economy crashes.  This might happen next year, or in 20 years, but I’d be surprised if it took that long.  Yes, every generation thinks both that the End Of Time is nigh, and that they invented sex, and neither has ever been true, but things seem a bit more doomy this time.  The Transition Town movement is a framework for doing some of the transitioning before we have to, which makes the whole thing a bit more comfortable.  And if we make a city friendlier for people and less friendly for multi-nationals at the same time, then more yay.  Transition Town as a concept was started by permaculturalist Rob Hopkins in Totnes, UK, in 2006, and has spread around the world relatively quickly.  “Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come” (Victor Hugo), &c.

Localism:  The idea that the best place to take care of a community’s basic needs is within a specific geographical area.  This is how the world used to work, before the age of cheap transportation, and is how it will work again once oil becomes too expensive for the casual shipping of junk from China (for example).

Anarchy:  The idea that each person is best able to determine how they live their lives, within the boundaries of contract law.  Unless someone has specifically and voluntarily signed a contract, no one could compel them to do anything.  No government, no bylaws, just voluntary association.  Of course, this requires that people not be assholes (or that we collectively learn how to stand up to assholes, or cultivate our own assholes [sorry for any unintended visual]), which may be too much to ask.

Energy Slave:  If we translate our oil use into people-power, we each have about 200 people working for us (given 8 hour days, and weekends and holidays off).  We are used to having this amount of energy available to us, 24/7, but it won’t last.

Peak oil:  Once we have extracted half the available oil in the world, demand will keep rising but production will peak and then start to decline.  We will have removed all the easiest oil, and what is left will be harder and more expensive to extract, leading to a significant rise in oil prices.  This will depress the oil-based economy, which will lower the price of oil, which will cause the economy to look like it will recover, which will raise the price of oil, and then repeat the recession.  Eventually this cycle will crash the economy.  Consensus on this varies, but I’m pretty convinced that we passed peak oil in 2007.   I’m also convinced that tar-sands extraction is a desperate attempt by our can’t-see-the-nose-on-their-face government to keep things ‘normal’ for as long as possible, and damn the consequences.

All of this combined presents an interesting picture of the future, but it doesn’t tell us what will happen for us, personally.  All possible futures are currently happening somewhere, for someone.  Some child is forced into slavery to produce cheap chocolate, and at the same time women are taking control of their own destinies somewhere else.  New parks are being created somewhere, and somewhere else corrupt officials are allowing dedicated parkland to be logged.  Some people live in Portland, and others live in (not THE) Ukraine, and nobody really knows in which direction a city will go in the next 10 years (see Detroit!) We don’t know what is going to happen, but these are the sorts of things that are informing my decision making process.

Want more info about any of the above (because I have the Mad Links and love to share)?  What about your decision making process?  Are you thinking about changing how you live?

Maunderings

Rehoming, becoming native to a place

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Part of what we merry folk are doing here is figuring out how to become native to a place.  So much of our civilization is built on the movement of people from rural to urban, from community-sufficient to industrially-dependent, and we have lost the knack for knowing how to stay rooted.

I was talking to a friend, recently, and she was experiencing a sense of panic when she thought about the fact that she plans on living in the same place for the foreseeable future.  She’d always moved around, as school and jobs dictated, and fully committing to a place brought what looked like a sense of claustrophobia.  We’ve been taught that mobility is freedom for so long; choosing to become native to a place can feel confining.

The idea of mobility is one of the ways that our culture disconnects us from each other and the land around us.  Why make an effort to get along with neighbors, if we’re all just moving all the time?  Why form a relationship with a local businessperson, when you can just go shop at the superstore down the street?  What does it matter, if we build houses on top of this old farm; there are a million others like it!  When no one needs each other and our livelihoods are disconnected from the land around us, there’s little reason to make the effort.

In choosing Sooke, we have chosen our home.  Friends that we make now may be the friends around us when we’re old.  People are forming opinions about us that they may hold for years (What are all those crazy people doing living in one house?  Are they all married to each other?  Do they EVER buy new clothes?).  We seem to be meeting lots of great people, and they all wish us well with our project (or want to help!), so it seems like there’s more of the former than the latter.

Once we’ve lived here, for a little while, I might think more about an idea is calling to me.  People refresh all the cells in our bodies within 7 years.  If someone ate local (however one defines it) food for 7 years, every cell in their body would belong to that place.  What would it feel like, to fully and completely belong to BC?  Vancouver Island?  Sooke?

Maunderings

Vegetable Anarchy

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I’ve been thinking about what we’re intending to do, farmishly, and I think that a lot of my drive has to do with eating.  We spend a lot of effort (both in income-generating paid-work hours and in sourcing) to get good-quality food.  Good food is important, because we make ourselves out of what we put in our mouths, and I don’t want to have a useless finger made out of cheezy-poofs.  Or children made out of misery-bacon, which I suspect cannot avoid making them more prone to whining.

All joking aside, I think that the more energy and intention we put into our food, the healthier it will be.  We’ve mastered the first step towards intentional eating, which is cooking good food for ourselves.  The next step would be sourcing food grown by someone that puts a little bit more than the standard industrial practice into their food production, and we’re working on that.  Third, growing for ourselves as much as is reasonable, which is where we are planning to go.

The fourth is something that is pulling at me a little, right now.  I am planning to experiment with letting the plants decide where they grow, like Fukuoka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka) does.  He spreads a mixture of food-plant seed in various different places, and lets plants come up in glorious profusion.  I bet that adding plant intentionality will make for healthier food, because the intrinsic wisdom of the seed would know better than me where a plant would grow best.  With animals, this would look like shifting pastures frequently, and planting things that the animals like so they can choose their own food.  We’re going to sort out some basic systems, first, but I hope to be playing around in this arena soon.

It might be fantastic… or we might end up learning to eat scotch broom.  Good thing we’re not planning to have a market garden.  Vegetable anarchy!

Food, Recipies

More food: Eggs Ranchero (WCH Style)

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It might seem that eating is all we do here!  It is the biggest part of our budget, for sure; 10 people eat a lot.  With little kids, we need to make three square meals a day.  Not everyone takes part in all the meals, but we mostly eat together.

And breakfast mostly involves eggs.  Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, eggs in pancake batter with eggs on top.  Eggs.  We get about half of our eggs from Inishoge Farm (http://www.inishoge.ca/), and half from whichever farm gate we happen to be driving past (or The Horrible, AKA the grocery store).

When I was a kid, my father used to make Eggs Ranchero: toast, with salsa on top, a poached egg on that, and melted cheddar on top of that.  Delicious!  In 2005, Jeremy and I went to Japan to travel and WWOOF (www.wwoof.net), and I came home with what we termed a ‘rice hole’; if a meal didn’t include rice, I didn’t feel full.  I found all kinds of ways to include rice, including Modified Eggs Ranchero.

As you gaze long into the breakfast, the breakfast gazes also into you.
As you gaze long into the breakfast, the breakfast gazes also into you.

Eggs, on top of salsa and rice, with cheese melted on top.  Even though it does’t have any Braggs sauce or tahini, I labeled it West Coast Hippie (WCH) Style. That’s mostly tongue in cheek, due to the short-grain brown rice and locally-sourced ingredients.  Sometimes I add homemade nettle gomaishio, for extra WCH++.  Delicious!

 

Food, Recipies

Neep Noodles

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We’ve been eating a lot of root vegetables, because they’re seasonal and CHEAP.  Plus, I love them, and when we’re feeding more than two adults it makes sense to make a dish that is mostly just for us.  We do roasted roots (we call them Rude Vegetables, or ‘Neeps [turnips] and ‘Nips [parsnips], depending on the constituents), Bashed Neeps, and roots cut into wedges and dipped in coconut oil before roasting.  Turnip saurkraut.  So good.

Tonight, we have something new to add to the roster: Neep Noodles.  Tony took a raw turnip, peeled it, and then kept peeling long strips with the vegetable peeler so that the pieces resembled long, flat noodles.  We boiled them in salty water for a scant few minutes, then served them with butter, salt and parmesan cheese.  I think it’s my new favourite way to enjoy turnips.  You may ask, “Isn’t anything good, covered with butter and salt and cheese?”, and you may be right, but there was a certain turnipiness that comes through.

All hail the noble turnip, oft-scorned, but deserving of toothsome adoration!

(Next time we make it, I’ll take pictures.)