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How much wood, would a human chuck...

This totally grosses me out...

15 Food Companies that Serve You ‘Wood’

Manufacturers use cellulose in food as an extender, providing structure and reducing breakage, said Dan Inman, director of research and development at J. Rettenmaier USA, a company that supplies “organic” cellulose fibers for use in a variety of processed foods and meats meant for human and pet consumption, as well as for plastics, cleaning detergents, welding electrodes, pet litter, automotive brake pads, glue and reinforcing compounds, construction materials, roof coating, asphalt and even emulsion paints, among many other products.

[shudder]

Garden freedom

Watch this video: Michigan Woman facing jail time for her vegetable garden

I can hear my neighbor mowing his five acre, chemically enhanced, monoculture front lawn right now, at nearly 9 pm on a Friday.

My favorite part of the video is when the government official defines "suitable." We must all be lawn-loving lemmings in America!!

Garden planted

We got a bit of a late start on the garden this year due to a prolonged monsoon season. But on Friday all the tomato seedlings went in. They are (hopefully) protected from deer by adorable chicken wire cylinders.

Pumpkins and squash were planted last week and are starting to poke up. The turkeys rather enjoy dust bathing in the tilled up garden. They made a nice hole in this pumpkin mound:

Gobs of potatoes were planted about a month ago. They need some burying. Potatoes grow from the stem of the plant, so as the plant grows you keep piling dirt around it and you get layers and layers of potatoes.

Corn just sprouting. We have hope of knee-height by Independence Day.


Cultivated black caps starting to turn purple. We also have a million billion of these in the woods. This morning we did a taste test between the two. The cultivated ones are definitely bigger and sweeter. The wild ones have a nice tartness.

This is Bill's top-bar hive. He built it himself and baited it with lemongrass oil with the hope of catching a wild swarm of bees. So far, it looks empty. Which is ok by me...


...because he put it way up in a tree. As he was struggling to get it up there, I said "are you really going to try to get that down when it is full of bees?" He said "no problem."


Since that time, however, he has started reconsidering. I would be very happy if bees didn't move in until the hive is relocated to a less acrobatic position.

Farm to Consumer Legal Defense

First off - did you know there was such a thing as the "Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund?" I'm sad to think of the circumstances that led to its creation. How uncool is it that in AMERICA we have the need of a fund to defend farmers who want to sell their products to people.

Last month they did report on something pretty cool though. Three towns in Maine have voted to adopt the Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance (pdf). I'm not a fancy lawyer or constitutional scholar that gets paid lots of money to determine the legality of the ordinance, but it basically has the groundbreaking audacity to say that farmers can sell food directly to their neighbors without having to navigate a system of rules, regulations and licenses.

In other words, farmers don't have to pay the state and conform to the arbitrary (and often costly) whims of bureaucrats to earn a living.

How novel, eh? It's like people want freedom in America. Crazy stuff.

The preamble is rather pretty:

We the People of the Town of (name of town) , (name of county) County, Maine have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms, and local food traditions.

We have faith in our citizens’ ability to educate themselves and make informed decisions... We support food that fundamentally respects human dignity and health, nourishes individuals and the community, and sustains producers, processors and the environment.

Though I didn't ever meet them myself, I feel as if this is really one of those things the founders of this country would say is a pillar of America. Small farmers selling pumpkins to their neighbors without the state inspecting their pumpkin fields and demanding that there be an accessible toilet outside of the house and at least 50 feet from any pumpkins that is cleaned 5 times a day by a certified and licensed toilet bowl cleaner.

Eggs!

This is a chicken. A Barred Rock hen. I don't think she has a name.

She lays TONS of eggs! Today our 10 hens gave us 9 eggs. They've been laying regularly for about a month. Prior to that, they were molting - replacing their feathers and not laying eggs.

We keep our eggs in order by dating the carton when we fill it....like so:

As you can imagine, with 5 to 9 eggs a day, we're filling cartons and adding dates pretty quickly. Until February, we the last carton we had with eggs in it was dated November. Now, we're filling a carton every two days. Our fridge looks like this:

Soon, hopefully, a few of the hens will decide to go broody and hatch out some chicks, which means a few of them will stop laying for a while. So, we're stocking up!

This is Elvis, our rooster. He doesn't lay eggs.

Ball jar geekery

Yesterday, Bill and I had a little cabin fever and decided to go on a hot date to Goodwill. I love Goodwill. A lot. Previous purchases include two lamps and an awesome dresser. This time, I just got a single Ball jar. It cost a dollar...plus 7 cents tax.


It's blue! The color comes from the Lake Michigan sand used in the glass as well as the amount of oxygen in the furnaces when it was made. Ball jars were "famously" blue until 1937, and I presume the color was an important part of their brand, as their home canning guide has been called the Blue Book since 1909, even though recent editions have not been blue.

Thanks to the help of the interwebs, we've dated our jar to 1913-1914. The Ball logo on this jar was used from 1910 to 1923:

The offset "Perfect" (due to the reworking of old molds for a new purpose) was used in 1913-1914 - it was centered in 1915.

There are markings on the bottom - 4 and H. These are mold numbers which identify the machine and mold that made the jar.

It's also round, as Ball jars were until 1942. The current rounded square shape was said to be more efficient by a WWII war board.


I am completely enamored with my old jar. Like my roman oil lamp, I could spend hours wondering about its functional history. There is something magical to me about the basic tools of the past. This old jar could have preserved the contents of a victory garden. The woman who initially filled it didn't have the right to vote. What did the jar hold during the Depression?

Bill likes to think it was squirrel brains.

I won't be using it for canning myself. It's a little grotey for food and the rim has been chipped, which means a seal would be unreliable.


I'm thinking that during its time with me, this jar will hold mostly wildflowers. Hopefully, it will be part of a little collection of neat old jars.

One of my current Ball jars is holding my second batch of homemade yogurt. It is delicious, as expected. I used this recipe with the powdered milk. Yum! We have just a tiny bit of yogurt left from a local diary and Bill refuses to eat it...I guess it will be the culture for our next batch!