So, a few days have passed since I finished up the local food challenge. I did go out to breakfast with a friend or two to mark the end. That was nice, and of course started a sugar spiral.
Locally there is no "sugar". There is honey and I went through most of a pint of honey during the 10 days. That was spendy. But also apparently healthier. It was in the berry puddings. I did not then go sugar binge so apparently sugar-sugar makes me binge-y and honey not so much. I might try the berry pudding with some of the stevia I have around. I think I could grow my own stevia and some day I might have bees that produce enough honey to harvest so local sweetener is totally doable. So is living with much much less sweetener. The minute I eat sugary crap, fruit tastes less sweet.
I also found out that eating locally is not that hard for me if I focus. Now that I'm not focused it's easy to just stop at the store and grab something. I think the focus is better.
It made me appreciate the local food a bit more. I do appreciate it in general. This took it up a half a notch. If I lived in an apartment in a city, I probably would not know farmers or have good access to so many gardeners. Certainly wouldn't have chickens and eggs. Or my giant garden just steps out of the door and a couple of apple trees.
This also pointed out that without sugar and convenience foods, cooking from scratch with actual ingredients and not too much flour...it's hard to overeat. It can be done, but there were days I was putting extra honey in the berries to keep the calories up because I was tired of eating. This is not something that happens when I am not doing a local challenge or other challenge that makes me cook at home.
I think I will try to focus more and more on local. Reading the book Plenty is eye opening. I knew about "local washing" (making things seem local but still shipping them hither and yon...like the fake eco stuff that is 'green washed'). E.g. the honey at walmart or costco that says "from the northwest"! BUT it is actually gathered from many beekeepers who travel their bees and then the raw honey is SHIPPED to Colorado for processing and SHIPPED back!!! Cripes. I got the honey for the local challenge from a local bee keeper, though through a local grocery store, who spins the frames himself and didn't travel his bees this year.
The book also pointed out that if you are buying local beef or local eggs but the producer is buying feed from god knows where, often other continents, then you're not getting the full localness. Often there are thousands of miles, fossil fueled carbon dumping miles, in the feed. Buying local pastured beef, yes. Local feedlot beef, probably not much carbon/fuel savings but some contribution to the local food economy. It might be a transitional move if the farmer is moving toward finding local feed.
I'm lucky to have a local non-gmo feed supplier for my chicken feed, and the free range means I feed less. Since the hens are molting right now they need more protein and the cheapest supplement seemed to be cat kibble. OOPS! Hardly local. It's a small portion of the intake, but looking at the added miles...hmmm. Better to trap some local mice. Also, I checked on the protein levels in my feed supplier's chick grower feed and it's high enough. About 6cents more per lb of feed (so 6cents more per chicken per week...including roosters since I'm not trying to segregate them from the food bowl). Not bad. Not much more than the cat kibble and one 40lb bag should do it. Might donate the cat food to the lady down the way and put the kibble to a better use or keep feeding it to the hens since it's getting cold and they will need more food in general to stay warm. I only have a a couple of week's supply. But seriously...DOH! Missed a trick there.
My garden fertilizer is pretty local. I get manure the same place I help butcher chickens. With my new turd unloader on the pick up, and the friend's use of a bobcat to load the truck, I only hand move the poop ONE TIME! It's a bit more fossil fuel for the bobcat. The turd unloader is manual but so much easier than a pitchfork. Compared to bagged fertilizer (plastic bagged of course) shipped from godknows where and probably from feedlot cattle, my fertilizer has traveled very few miles and cost very little carbon. The sheep are pooping out local hay and feed from about 100 miles away. I'm also using my chicken poop which is mixed with their bedding straw, which while not organic, is local AND recycled. I've already used it elsewhere.
My diatomaceous earth is not local. It's a small input in the garden to control some bugs and into the coop in the winter when the hens can't dust bath outside. Keeps the mites down. I will watch my quantities.
The other chicken input that is non-local is the oyster shells. Chickens that lay a lot, and my hens are bred to lay even if they are off casts and freebies, need more calcium than their usual diet gives them. I tried drying and grinding the egg shell and giving those back, but of course it's a losing game, not a 100% efficient closed loop. Once I started giving ground oyster shells on the side, the eggs hardened right up. Soft shelled eggs break and turn your hens into egg peckers, no production there. It's also a sign that their calcium is too low and their bones go next, bending and breaking. I do think one hen looks like a banty size egg, is eating too much calcium. Her eggs are pimpled with gritty protuberances. But the banties are old so she probably can't manager her calcium anyway.
I'm looking for a local source of calcium or perhaps a source of recycled oyster shells...like friends who eat such things or a restaurant with a seafood night. I'm also wondering about roasting bones from my own meat consumption or road kill, what could be more local?, and grinding those for a calcium supplement. Archaeologically we find lots of burnt bone in old fire pits and we call it "calcined bone". Might work. Might stink. I'd just put them in the wood stove in a little cast iron pan I have hanging on the wall. I should be able to get enough road kill and bone scraps to make it work if it is a calcium they can digest.
Back to my diet...kind of off the rails local-wise for the last few days. Too much sugar and crap. For a longer term more local focus I think I will start smaller and keep adding things in a bit at a time. Need to adjust habits like sugar intake.
The experiment has made me more alert to local food sources. Last night on the way home from work I saw two of the cutest little kids ever by the side of the road, sitting at a card table with a sign saying "Fresh Plums". So I doubled back and got some. The kids were young, maybe 6 or 7 years old tops. One had a walkie-talkie and seemed to report into someone that a customer had arrived. They did indeed have fresh local plums. Big sugary sweet ones. 5$ for a gallon zip-type bag full, or a solo cup full for a dollar. I took the gallon. The kids were quite pleased. Apparently they are making a killing. Good for them. They weren't there today so maybe sold out. Anyway, I might not have done that in the past but I don't have plums producing yet and what the heck. I'm spitting the pits in a cup and will plant them. I did make the mistake of absentmindedly eating plums this morning. 20 of them. With 3 cups of coffee...thanks immodium! OOPS. I told people at the office to just go to a different department if they needed the bathroom today. I still have MOST Of the bag! I think I will cook up a bit of plum sauce maybe tomorrow night and put it in the freezer at work. It might be nice on some of the canned chicken and duck I've got in my work pantry cupboard.
I also made the effort last night to pick more of the apples off my own trees. Upper Deer Poop tree had about 3 apples left on it and zero on the ground. The deer must have eaten everything including those that fell. Lower deer poop still had lots. I got about 8 gallons in 20 minutes. I didn't get them all but I got plenty. The rest will be for the other creatures. Wish I could can some of these. Once I have a kitchen I will get back to canning. Some years I don't bother as much with the apples but the timing of my local challenge made me more aware right now. And we're getting a couple of nights in the teens later this week. That could make the apples unstorable. Better to get them now. I already had 3 or 4 gallons from a previous harvest on Upper Deer Poop so I'm set for fruit for quite a while.
That's enough of this now. More will occur to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment