eatkamloops.org

Industrial Food Sickness

All disease begins in the gut.
Hippocrates

Since my family has been eating exclusively whole, unprocessed foods for over three years, I have noticed a strange occurrence. When my girls go to birthday parties or indulge in holiday festivities such as Halloween or Easter, they don’t feel very well afterward. After eating the processed foods out of the Industrial Food System, the girls become nauseous and complain about stomach pain within a few hours. My eldest daughter has vomited a number of times after these meals. My youngest daughter is very sensitive to something in these foods. More often than not, it causes behavioral problems for a day or two after eating the processed food. My husband occasionally eats out at restaurants and complains about not feeling well after most meals. Even our cat Tabs, who has been on a raw meat diet since we got her, has become sick from getting into a friend’s processed cat food. As I observe their sickness, I notice it is like a mild flu that includes stomach upset or vomiting.

Now my family has not eaten unprocessed foods our whole lives. We used to eat processed foods everyday without feeling sick. (Okay, my family wasn’t the picture of health, but we weren’t vomiting after a meal either.) One would hope that eating nourishing traditional foods regularly would strengthen a person’s constitution so an occasional meal of highly processed foods would have no effect. But the reverse appears to be true. The longer my family eats nourishing traditional foods, the more sensitive we become to these processed foods.

Why are they now having industrial food sickness? Why in the past did these same processed foods not cause sickness? What has changed? I have been thinking about this question for quite some time. It is hypothesized that the healing action of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is that it changes the composition of gut flora or reverses gut dysbiosis. Gut dysbiosis is the lack of gut flora or an unhealthy gut flora imbalance which causes illness.

What if this progressive industrial food sickness is caused by changes in the gut flora community? Do the processed foods damage or kill healthy gut flora? Does the gut flora “communicate” this damage to the “gut brain” causing the feeling of sickness? The gut brain is an extensive grouping of neurons in the digestive system, which gut flora attaches to and chemically communicates with the nervous system. What if the gut flora community is causing the feeling of being sick after my family eats the processed foods?

This would explain the progressive nature of industrial food sickness and why it seems to worsen the longer my family eats nourishing traditional foods. The longer my family eat better, the stronger the population of healthy gut flora becomes. As the healthy gut flora population increases, it can send a very strong message to the nervous system that the processed food is making the gut flora’s environment poisonous to them. The reason why the processed food did not cause illness before eating nourishing traditional foods is because of gut dysbiosis. There was not enough healthy gut flora to send a strong message of dismay to the nervous system about our food choices.

One thing I notice is that it is getting easier to get my children to eat better. Every round of industrial food sickness reinforces good eating patterns. The sad part is thinking about all of the people walking around with very sick gut flora communities, too weak to send a danger warning. Most people are not aware that we are indeed “individuals” but our bodies are a vast and complex microcosm of interrelating organisms. We are in peril if we forget that we interface with the environment on a microscope level and our first line of defense is our symbiotic gut flora community.

For more information about gut dysbiosis please read Gut and Psychology Syndrome and GAPS In Our Medical Knowledge. For more information about the gut brain connection please read Breaking the Vicious Cycle.

Chicks, Chicks and More Chicks

Last year a neighbor lent us an incubator and we hatched two loads of eggs. The first hatch was Quail eggs which went very well. For the second hatch, we ordered fertile eggs from a small backyard breeder of heritage birds. Unfortunately, this hatch did not go very well. We had what is known as a sticky hatch. This is when something goes wrong with the hatching and the chicks have trouble getting out of the shell. We had about 50% mortality in the shell and in the first few days of life. There was also a number of birth defects in the chicks. This sticky hatch really put us back last year. We ended up having to buy some point of lay hens to get the right number of birds.

A few days ago, we received our order of day old chicks from Miller Hatcheries. The chicks come in the mail from Westlock, AB. When the call from Canada Post came in, we drove down to the post office and picked up the birds. We have found getting live chicks from a respected hatchery will ensure healthy birds and less mortality. We get the chicks without immunization and do not have them de-beaked. Chickens that are not in confinement do not need be de-beaked for their own safety and actually need their beaks for foraging in the pasture. We ordered 50 Cornish Giants, a meat bird, and 50 sexed Red Rock Cross laying hens.

It is very important for the chicks to be kept at a constant temperature, so for the first week we have the chicks in our living room. Shaen got two large cardboard boxes, which he joined together into one very large box. He covered the bottom of the box with a few inches of spelt hulls from Fieldstone Granary. He set up the water and food. We use a standard un-medicated chick starter. When the chicks get a bit bigger we will put them on pasture and a homemade chick scratch made from organic grains from Fieldstone Granary. Shaen uses a red heat lamp for warmth. Miller Hatchery sends detailed instructions about the care of chicks, but Shaen likes watching the chick’s behavior for a better gauge of comfort. If the chicks are crowded around underneath the heat lamp, it is too cold, and he will lower the lamp to increase the temperature. If the chicks are crowded around the perimeter of the box, it is too hot, and he will raise the heat lamp. Shaen likes to see the chicks actively moving around in comfort.

Later we got a call from Rochester Hatchery. They specialize in heritage breeds. Originally, they had no extra birds available for this year, so we got put on their call list for order cancellations. We got the Rochester’s Heritage Group Pack. There is a mixture of 50 Ameraucana, Buff Orpingtons, Danish Brown Leghorns and Buff Brahams. There are a lot of chicks in my living room this week!

Morels and Mushroom Season

It has been a very wet spring and summer in Kamloops. I have talked to long term residents of Kamloops who say this is the greenest they have seen the mountains in over ten years. The pastures are lush and green and the grasses have full heads of grain. The wild flowers are a wonder to behold. Nature abhors a vacuum. The areas ravaged by fire in the last few years are seeing an explosion of growth. The rain has brought us the best mushroom season in many years.

I have had the pleasure of enjoying the bounty found in these fire ravaged areas. As I dry about five pounds of morels, my house is filled with their rich, dark smell. Actually, it smells like the forest is in my house. These mushrooms have a brainy look to them and a very strong meaty flavor that reminds me of deep dark places in the earth.

I like my morels fried in lots of butter with a bit of sea salt. The mushrooms can be eaten by themselves but most of us would find their rich flavor overwhelming. Food from the forest is wild and rich. Real food has a strong flavor. Most of us have only eaten foods tamed by the cultivating hand of humans, and have forgotten the pleasure of these deep rich flavors.

Dehydrating morels is a good way to enjoy this fragrant food throughout the year. I have never used dried morels before but I can tell already they will be a wonderful addition to soups, stews and sauces. Louise Freedman of the Mycological Society of San Francisco says that morels dry very well: “The intensity and character of the morel flavor is not lost in drying. We have used them after three years of storage and found them to be just as aromatic, if not more so, as when fresh.”

Getting foods from the wild is called wildcrafting. There are environmental concerns with gathering food from the wild. But if you compare the environmental impact of wildcrafting to the environmental disaster of the Industrial Food System, this argument rings false. Enjoy your wild foods knowing that an intact ecosystem such as a forest will recover from your meal very quickly. It is our modern food system based on oil and externalizing costs into the greater environment that may not fair as well in the long run.

If you are in Kamloops and interested in trying wild mushrooms, please call Al Cadorette at 250.819.8260. Fresh black morels are $10.00 per pound but are almost done for the year. Yellow morels will be coming up later in the season. He also has whole or flake dried mushrooms for sale. Al says: “I will be getting shaggy manes which are a choice mushroom but not many people are aware of. They are great. Also, chicken of the woods are picked in the fall. I will be looking for king boletus. They should be coming up soon.”

Sauteed Morels
10 large morels cut in half
1/2c organic butter
sea salt to taste
1/8c raw cream (optional)
Saute the morels in butter until tender. Add salt. Add the raw cream if desired for a creamy steak sauce. Serve with a blue rare barbecued pastured beef steak.

Wild Mushroom Soup
2c finely chopped onions
1tsp sea salt
1/2c organic butter
4c chopped mushrooms
1/4c fresh morels or 1/8c dried morels finely chopped
6c beef or chicken bone broth
finely chopped fresh herbs from the garden: thyme, chives, parsley, or rosemary (optional)
2T fresh raw cream in each bowl
Saute onions in a small amount of butter until soft. In another pan saute mushrooms in small batches in butter. Add each batch to the onions. You can add a splash of wine if you desire, but the morels have a complex wine-like flavor of their own. If you would like a creamy texture, puree some of the onion and mushrooms. Add the bone broth to the onions and mushrooms and warm through. In each bowl of soup add some chopped herbs and the fresh raw cream on top.

Milk, Milk and More Milk

Patty is into her flush of milk. Even though Patty is feeding two adopted calves, she is producing over 56L of milk and cream a week. It is time to freeze milk for the winter even through it is hard to think about the cold winter months when the summer heat has just started. There are some good reasons to milk seasonally and freeze milk:

1. The best milk is from cows on fresh green pasture which is only available for part of the year in Kamloops.
2. Unless you have a herd of dairy cows and can stagger pregnancies, having fresh raw milk all year round is almost impossible. Milking cows need to be dried off at some point in their pregnancy. The milking cow will be physically stressed by any third trimester milking. This stress may negatively affect the calf’s health and the cow’s longevity.
3. The Milker needs a break from the twice a day labor of milking. Milking in winter, in the dark and cold, isn’t any fun.

Last year, I experimented with freezing milk with and without the cream. Skimmed milk freezes very well and when unfrozen is similar to a commercial 2% milk. Milk with a cream layer has a lumpy texture when unfrozen. Last year, I tried freezing in glass jars to avoid using plastics. This did not go very well. I had some breakages which made me realize that sometimes it is better to use plastics even though I do not consider plastics in contact with food safe.

This year, I will skim off the cream and freeze the milk in 2L rectangle plastic containers. I will pop the frozen milk out of the plastic container, use two layers of plastic bags to protect the milk from off flavors, and date each brick. I will need put away about 110, 2L bricks of milk to make it through Patty’s dry period. This spring, we consumed frozen milk which was about five months old. I could not detect any off flavors, so storing for six months seems possible.

Freezing milk is easy and can save money. My family goes through about 8L of milk and about 1L of cream a week. Of course, I can’t get raw milk from the Industrial Food System but the closest product, organic milk, would cost my family over $2000 a year. My family goes through about two or three pounds of organic butter a week, which costs over $1000 a year. If you are interested in how to make butter please read Making Raw Sweet Butter or Raw Cultured Butter.

Another product we make is ice cream. High quality ice cream is very expensive. During the hot summer months, we make about 1L of ice cream ever day. If you would like to learn some of our favorite ice cream recipes, please read Cream, Cream and More Ice Cream Recipes. Our girls can eat as much of this delicious food as they want. I feel very good about the quality of the ice cream knowing every ingredient that went into the dessert. I know the raw cream is full of healthy fats that will help my girls grow into strong women.

Cream, Cream and More Ice Cream Recipes

Making ice cream at home, will save you money, and the product will be better than anything available commercially. There are so many nasty additives in commercial ice cream. None of these additives are necessary, and some may harm your family members. In fact, commercial ice cream has become an ersatz food and should be avoided. Raw ice cream made at home is a superfood. Do not worry if your children eat a lot of this delicious food.

I have just started using a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, but a machine is not needed for making ice cream. I do not like the idea that ice cream makers have an inner lining made of aluminum. The Wise Traditions Study Group considers the aluminum used in this manner is “safe”. There is no heat used so no metal is transferred to the food.

If you do not have a ice cream maker, pour the ingredients into a shallow container and place in the freezer. Every hour, remove the container and mix the contents vigorously to break up the ice crystals. This will give a creamy smooth texture to the ice cream. If you forget about the ice cream and it freezes solid, just cut the ice cream up into small squares and blend in the food processor until smooth and creamy. I made ice cream for years with this method.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
4 cups raw cream
3 raw pastured egg yolks
1/4c raw local honey
2T organic vanilla extract
small amount of freshly ground vanilla bean (optional)
This ice cream is an all time favorite in our household. If you cannot find raw cream, use a quality organic whipping cream without additives. Using a raw local honey is a great way to help your immune system if you have seasonal allergies, but the honey must be local and raw to be helpful. Blend the honey, egg yolks and vanilla together and then add the cream. Pour the ingredients into an ice cream maker or use a shallow container in the freezer. The egg yolks gives this ice cream a rich yellow color. You will never look at the “white” color of commercial vanilla ice cream the same again.

Very Berry Ice Cream
3c raw cream
2c frozen strawberries, blueberries or cherries
2 raw pastured egg yolks
1/8c raw local honey (optional)
At this time of year, I am digging into the bottom of my deep freezers, emptying out fruit picked last season. Use a food processor to puree the frozen fruit. If you cannot find raw cream, use a quality organic whipping cream without additives. Add the other ingredients and blend. Pour the ingredients into an ice cream maker or, if you do not have a ice cream maker, pour into a shallow container and place in the freezer. This ice cream will be ready very quickly because of the frozen fruit.

Updated July 6, 2010: Here is a recipe for Birthday Chocolate Ice Cream.

Pastures, Electric Fences and Milking Problems

About 2 weeks ago, Joe and Eric finished the perimeter fencing and one cross fence on the far side of the gully. Joe dug out the spring with a big excavator and there is a 3000 gallon accumulation tank which works as a reservoir for the spring. Joe did some work with a backhoe putting in a road into the middle of the lower four acres.

Shaen worked every free minute he had to get the pasture ready for moving Patty and the calves. Shaen has 700′ of 3/4″ black poly hose running from the spring. There is a filter to reduce particulates in the line. He has about 45psi at the bottom of the hose but this pressure increases as the accumulation tank is drawn down. He finished off the roadway with a backhoe and made a turnaround large enough for us to bring in our big truck.

Shean moved an 8′x12′ tool shed to the property. It was scary for me to watch him move the heavy building but he got it into place without anyone getting injured. This building is a secure storage area for equipment and supplies for the cattle. It will also be one side wall for a hay, feed and chip shed which we will be building this summer. We built a small paddock about 30′x30′ to train the cattle on electric fencing. Shaen called it the ugliest fence he’d ever seen. The fence is pretty rickety too, but we were running out of time and just needed to move the cattle. The idea was to use the paddock to train the cattle on electric fences. Thus, strength wasn’t really needed.

We moved the cattle to the new pasture on May 30, 2010. Patty immediately started eating the wonderful rich forage. The calves started running around, leaping and jumping. But the training on electric fencing in the small paddock did not go well. Patty hit her nose on the electric fence then backed up in a hurry and hit her butt into another electric fence. She was quite upset, having no place to go but up. The calves found ways to break out of the paddock and would walk through the electric fencing taking the shock over stopping their romping. Then Patty walked through an un-electrified gate as we madly chased the calves around the property. It was not an auspicious start!

Shaen was worried we would never catch them again on the property. We stopped chasing and started working to secure the paddock so the calves could not get out. Patty headed up the gully to feast on some delicious forage. The calves leaped and jumped for joy at their new found freedom. After we got the paddock secure we worked together to catch the calves which were tired after all that wonderful play. I caught Patty and we milked her. But she did not want to go back into the paddock. As I led her towards the paddock she took me for a run. I did not let go but instinctively dropped to the ground on my knees. This spun Patty around. I weigh about 125lbs and Patty weighs about 800lbs. After that incident we got her into the paddock but without power to the electric fence. We were betting Patty wouldn’t walk through the fence, even through she likely could. We thought Patty, having been trained to fences, would not consider the idea that she could just walk through our weak fence. This proved to be true and we found Patty and the calves in the paddock in the morning.

The next day’s milking went better. Our netted electric fencing arrived too. Shean worked to get the fencing up and make a new pasture area for Patty and another area for the calves. We also had another problem. Two of Patty’s teats had sores from the vigorous feeding of the calves. One teat was especially damaged. We decided to try two controlled feedings a day. This time we protected the damaged teats with our hands and would allow each calf one undamaged teat to drain. When the calves started to seriously butt Patty they would be pulled off and returned to their electrified pasture area. We carefully milked out the damaged teats. After we were finished milking, we used Bag Balm on her teats and udder. I am somewhat uncomfortable using Bag Balm because of the petroleum product and antiseptic chemical in the preparation. We will shift over to straight coconut oil as soon as possible.

Within a few days Patty and the calves got used to the netted electric fences and the double strand electric wire. We are getting used to the twice a day milking. We are getting about 14 gallons of milk a week, even though Patty is feeding twins. With the fresh forage the cream line is going up from about 10% of the volume to 30% for night milking and 50% for morning milking. Patty’s teats are healing but we have to clear brush in the pasture area because Patty is getting scratches on her udder as she moves around to feed. We are starting to understand why farmers coddled their dairy cows. They do have special needs.

Undated July 11, 2010: After about a week of controlled feeding, Shaen decided to go back to bottle feeding for the male calf. He is just too rough on Patty’s teats. We have to allow the female calf to suckle on Patty or Patty will not let-down her milk. The calves are always in a separate pasture from Patty, though Patty can see the calves throughout the day. We cannot understand why the female calf fights us going to the feeding. We understand why she would fight us when we pull her off to milk Patty. It’s a lot of extra work to manage the cow calf relationship. I hope we will not have to do this for Patty’s next calf.

Krystal, our relief milker, started using an Ouch Cream on Patty’s damaged teat. This cream finished off the healing of this very big wound on one of Patty’s teats.

Patty has been plagued by hordes of flies so we have moved our layers to the pasture. It took about a week for the chickens to realize the wonderful maggots to be found in the cow patties. Our little manure spreaders are enjoying a wonderful meal while cleaning up the pasture. The number of flies on Patty has halved.

Recipes for Nourishing Traditional Travel Foods

Beef Jerky
2 large lean beef roasts (about 6 pounds)
1tsp Himalayan salt per pound of meat (or to taste)
Let the pastured beef roasts thaw in the fridge for 3-4 days. This gives the roasts a bit more aging which improves the end flavor. Cut the roasts into 1/4 inch strips the width of the roast, if possible. Add Himalayan salt to the strips of meat and mix well. Let the meat sit for a few hours or overnight, if you have time. Himalayan salt is a “pink salt”. Traditional pink salts were used for curing meats. These pink salts have natural sodium nitrites and sodium nitrates. Himalayan salt is great for curing meat. Put the salted meat into the dehydrator at a low temperature for 12-24 hours. The best beef jerky is dried but chewy. For travel, store a day’s supply in paper bags with a plastic zip-lock outer bag.

Soaked and Dried Nut Granola
3c soaked and dried pecans
3c soaked and dried walnuts
6-12 pitted and soaked dates
1T vanilla extract
1T ground cinnamon
1/2tsp sea salt (optional)
1c soaked and dried pumpkin and sunflower seeds (optional)
Soak the pecans and walnuts in lightly salted water for 12 hours. Pour off salted water and dehydrate nuts of 12-24 hours at a low temperature. When the nuts are dried they can be stored in the freezer for later use. Grind the nuts into a course meal in a food processor and put aside in a large bowl. In a small bowl, cover the dates with very hot water. Soak the dates until soft. Grind up the dates in a food processor and add some of the date water to make a smooth paste. Add the vanilla extract, ground cinnamon and sea salt. Mix in nuts and add more date water, if needed. Add whole pumpkin and sunflower seeds, if desired. You can shape the mixture into granola bars or crumble into irregular shapes for a granola cereal. For travel, store a day’s supply in paper bags with a plastic zip-lock outer bag.

Dried Bananas
2-3 bunches of over ripe bananas
Peel the bananas and cut in half. Then cut down the mid-line of the banana. You will have four pieces for each banana. Place the cut bananas in the dehydrator with the curved side down, to avoid sticking. Dry at low temperature for 24-36 hours. My girls call these dried bananas candy.

Frozen Tomato Salsa
6 large frozen garden tomatoes
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 fresh red or green pepper, chopped
1 small fresh carrot, chopped
1 small onion, chopped (optional)
small amount of fresh hot pepper, minced (optional)
1tsp sea salt
Frozen tomatoes make wonderful salsa. Let the tomatoes unfreeze overnight and pour off extra liquid from the tomatoes. (This liquid is great for thinning out guacamole.) Chop or food process the fresh vegetables. Add unfrozen, drained and hand-crushed tomatoes. You can remove the tomato skins, if desired. Add sea salt to taste. For travel, store the salsa in a glass mason jar with a plastic lid.

Frozen Berry Sauce
2c frozen garden raspberries
2c frozen garden blueberries
small amount of local raw honey (optional)
Lightly simmer at very low temperature until the berries lose their shape. (You can use any frozen fruit you have leftover after the winter.) Do not over cook the sauce. When the sauce cools, add a small amount of local raw honey, if desired. For travel, store the berry sauce in a glass mason jar with a plastic lid.

Caesar Dressing Base
4 cloves garlic, finely grated or minced
1/2c olive oil
juice of one lemon
1/2tsp sea salt
Mix all the ingredients together and store in a small mason jar. When ready to make the salad, rip up most of a head of romaine lettuce. Soft boil two eggs for five minutes and add half of the Caesar dressing to the eggs and mix well. Pour over romaine lettuce and serve.

Spelt Sourdough Pancakes
10c whole spelt grains, soaked, sprouted and dehydrated
sourdough culture with Kefir culture
2c ground spelt flour
2-3 pastured eggs
1/2tsp baking soda
1tsp sea salt
Take the whole spelt grains and cover with filtered water. Soak the spelt for 2-3 days, changing the water 2 times each day. When the spelt has small sprouts, rinse and drain one more time. Dehydrate the grains for 12 hours or until dry and store in the freezer for later use. Grind the spelt into flour and add to sourdough culture. (I use a Vita-Mix for grinding grains.) Add raw milk Kefir to culture and stir. Return culture to fridge for the night. When ready to make pancakes in the morning, preheat two or three cast iron pans on the stove-top. Use a small amount of lard or schmaltz in the pan. The pans are at the right temperature when the grease is just below the smoking point. Fill a large bowl with about 2 cups ground spelt flour, baking soda, and sea salt. Mix well. Add eggs and about 3 cups of the sourdough culture. Add more culture to thin out the mixture. Pour about 1/2 cup of batter onto the hot grill. Turn pancakes when brown and bubbly. For travel, I cool the pancakes and layer with wax paper. I divide the pancakes into daily amounts and wrap the stack in wax paper bags.

Eating Nourishing Traditional Foods While Traveling

I have had a number of people ask me how I travel on a restrictive diet like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Actually, it’s very easy and I do not suffer at all. For example, our family just spent five days canoeing Clearwater Lake in Wells Gray Park. Here are some tips for eating nourishing traditional meals while doing wilderness travel. These tips could easily be used for camping road trips, though we would do our cooking on a small gas barbecue or camp stove. Here are Recipes for Eating Nourishing Traditional Travel Foods.

1. Start preparing dried goods a week before leaving. These foods are for emergency rations and quick snacks. I soaked, sprouted and dehydrated whole spelt grains. I dehydrated two large lean roasts for beef jerky. I prepared some soaked and dried nuts and seeds. I made a few pounds of soaked and dried nut granola for snacks. I packed some raisins, dates and dried bananas. I have a L’Equip Food Dehydrator but, because of the amounts I was processing, I used my sister’s Excalibur Food Dehydrator and really liked it too. For travel, store a day’s supply of each item in paper bags with a plastic zip-lock outer bag. By processing my own dried snacks at home, I save money and produce a higher quality product.
2. Start preparing condiments two days before leaving. This trip I prepared three special condiments. I prepared salsa, berry sauce and Caesar dressing base. I stored the condiments in a glass mason jar with a Bernardin plastic lid. I find these plastic lids easier to use and clean and the plastic does not touch the food. Portion homemade fermented condiments for your trip in appropriately sized wide mouth mason jars. Examples of homemade condiments are: horseradish sauce, mustard, ketchups, and fermented vegetables. Recipes for these condiments can be found in Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions. I stored the condiments in the cooler. By processing my own homemade condiments, I save money and produce a much higher quality product.
3. Think about your cooking methods and organize appropriate equipment. Wells Gray Park has developed wilderness camps with fire pits and metal grills, so we planned on cooking over an open fire. (We brought along a MSR stove for emergency use, which we didn’t use during the trip.) We brought a normal camping set of stainless steal pots for boiling water, but these light pots tend to burn food very easily. We decided to try doing all our cooking with my Mother’s cast iron Dutch oven. We found the lid worked great for warming food or frying even with the ringed grooves in the lid. I would definitely bring the Dutch oven for cooking over open fires again. Early explorers used cast iron Dutch ovens for all their food preparation including baking bread. Here is an example of a camp Dutch oven with three legs on the pot and the lid.
4. Use your frozen foods as ice. Traveling by canoe allows the use of a hard shelled cooler for frozen foods. This trip I used two thermal bags, one inside the other, inside the hard shelled cooler to store our frozen foods. I brought along 3lbs of pastured ground beef, 1lb of pastured lamb, 2lbs pastured sirloin steaks, 1lb of pasteurized butter and 1lb of raw butter. After five days we brought home half the meat and butter which was partly frozen. The cooler didn’t fill with dirty icy water. It was an easy cleanup after the trip. I would definitely use the thermal bags again.
5. Organize your storage system and eat your fresh supplies first. With canoe travel, extra weight isn’t really an issue, but space is limited. We had one hard shelled cooler for frozen foods and one bin for dried and fresh foods. In the cooler was the layered thermal bags with the frozen meat and butter. On the other side of the cooler was 2L of raw milk, two precooked and sliced beef roasts, and the condiments. In the bin was all the dried stores, 2 dozen pastured eggs, 2lbs of raw gouda cheese, 3lbs of dried cured bacon, and 3lbs of cured sausage. On top of all this was 2 heads of romaine lettuce, 6 apples, 6 mangoes, 6 tomatoes, green onions and carrots. The morning of the trip, I made up about 30 sourdough pancakes, which I cooled, layered in wax paper and divided into daily amounts. The sourdough pancakes lasted very well throughout the trip. The girls enjoyed the pancakes cold with raw butter or warmed with bacon, butter and berry sauce. We had food for about eight days for four people.
6. Start travel days with a good breakfast and a prepared dinner. At home we cooked two chickens in the Dutch oven. One chicken would have been enough. We cooked some brown rice in bone broth. Both pots were placed in a traditional straw hot box. A simple hot box can be made with a cardboard box filled with straw or any insulating material. Five hours later we had a hot meal after loading the canoe.
7. Use a stainless steel thermos for hot drinks and bring raw cider vinegar for drinking water. Start the trip with a full thermos and keep the thermos full. The last thing I do in a day is fill the thermos so the family will have hot drinks first thing in the morning. This is a good safety practice during wilderness travel. Putting a teaspoon of cider vinegar in drinking water makes a very refreshing drink. It is also reputed to relieve muscle stiffness, which I have found to be true.
8. What about the bugs? I am not fond of putting poison on my skin so I do not use bug spray. I have noticed that if I do not eat anything sweet while out in the woods, the bugs do not feed on me. As soon as I eat even a piece of fruit, the bugs are biting within the hour. I remember complaining to an old hunter about being eaten alive by bugs. He say to me: “You have sweet blood. That’s why the bugs eat you.” Sweet blood. I have gone from being the person eaten alive, to the one in the group not bothered by bugs. It makes me wonder if others have had this experience too. So, if you are bothered by bugs in the woods, try going low carbohydrate a few days before and during the trip. If it works for you, please contact me.

Making Friends with Deadlines

When starting any new project there is usually a natural deadline. This is a time where research and development must be stopped and some action taken one way or another. With farming, natural deadlines are the changing seasons. If action isn’t taken during a given window of opportunity, the window closes until the next season. Sometimes the best action is just to wait and do more research until the next seasonal opportunity. But sometimes forging ahead without complete knowledge is the better choice. Sometimes there isn’t a choice.

Since Patty gave birth, we have been doing one to three trips each day out to Elizabeth’s farm. Each trip requires about one hour of work and forty minutes of driving time. We help with milking, general cow chores, and care of the calves. In the last week, we have started cutting fresh grass from the railroad area to feed to Patty because she is not on pasture. She is being kept in the paddock to control the calves feeding. This schedule has been very tiring on top of our regular paid work, household tasks, spring gardening, and home schooling. For more information about our urban homesteading activities please read Terracing a Slope and Planning a Pasture.

We have been given a deadline from Elizabeth to move the cows. She wants to downsize her farm work because she doesn’t have enough help. Family and friends help but it just isn’t enough. This makes me sad, because like many farmers she is aging and doesn’t have some young, energetic person to help out and leverage her wealth of food producing experience. We are trying to get the leased property ready by June 1, 2010 so we can move Patty and the calves onto the new property. I feel a great amount of gratitude for how Elizabeth has helped my family. Without her help, I would have never considered buying a cow, nor would I have a supply of raw milk for my family. Elizabeth has educated Shaen and me about the care of cattle which has prepared us for this next big step.

The perimeter fencing on the leased land is almost completed. Shaen is using black poly hose to run water from the well on the upper property down to the leased area. With the drop on the property, Shaen has estimated that there will be about 80psi of pressure at the bottom of the hose. This will be enough pressure to power a spray emitter to irrigate the pasture. We call it a pasture but it is mostly bunch grass and sage right now. Shaen will have to do some Bobcat work to finish off a small roadway and turnaround area into a central location on the four acres. We will build a hay shed in this area before winter. We think we have enough electric fencing to cross fence part of the four acres so we can move Patty and her adopted calves to the area. The cows will have to learn about electric fences which can take some time. We will be purchasing some Electrified Poultry Netting when we run our boilers later in the summer. The gully screams for hogs, but we may not have the time nor the energy to get that off the ground this year. Nevertheless, the thought of homemade smoked bacon is wonderful incentive.

Here are a few wonderful essays from the Modern Homestead:
Achieving Food Independence on the Modern Homestead
Pasture, the Heart of the Homestead
Managing Poultry on Pasture with Electronet

Patty’s Second Birth

Our cow Patty gave birth on Monday. Our day started at 2:30am and ended at 8:30pm. The birth did not go well. There was no vet available but it was likely too late anyway. We had to intervene in the birth. Patty was in labor for over three hours which is too long for a cow. The vet worker at Kamloops Large Animal Veterinary Clinic gave Shaen a five minute lecture on how to pull a calf.

We tied Patty up and tried to hold her as still as we could. I held Patty’s tail up, which helps control the cow, and Elizabeth tried to calm her with ear scratching and soft talking. Shaen prepared an 8 foot long rope with two quick splices and slip knots on each end. Shaen entered Patty’s birth canal with the end of the rope and tightened the slip knot around one of the front hooves of the calf. The second slip knot was much harder to do. It took a number of tries. I was surprised that Patty didn’t kick my knee out from under me as I held her tail. After the second hoof was tied off, both Shaen and I grabbed hold of the rope and pulled the calf out during contractions. It was heavy work. I got down in the manure and gave artificial respiration to the calf. We hung the calf upside down. Tons of fluid came out. We did artificial respiration again and tried massaging the heart. The calf was a perfectly formed heifer stillbirth. She was a beautiful, totally black Jersey Dexter cross.

We intervened too late. If we had been more experienced, we would have known to intervene sooner. The woman who takes care of our cow asked us to get a calf for Patty. Some cows will adopt other calves, most will not. We were pretty sure Patty would being very maternal. I phoned around to about ten places and found twins. The male and female are a Shorthorn Brown Swiss cross. Male and female twins makes the female a freemartin with a 90% chance of being sterile. I got the pair for almost nothing at $20. A normal calf would be $150-200. The breeds I’m looking for could not be found for sale anywhere. Dairy cows are almost impossible to find now. Government regulation has almost completely eliminated all small family dairies.

We drove to Salmon Arm and picked up the twins from Gort’s Gouda Cheese Farm. We introduced the calves to Patty. The two calves ran around the yard leaping and jumping for joy. It was the first time the calves had been outside in their lives. Patty was very interested in the calves especially the little female. We tied up Patty and tried to milk her down because her udder was tight and hard with milk. A calf would not be able to latch on. Her udder is about three times the size of last year when she had her first calf.

The calves did not know how to suckle. They had been bottle fed from birth. For the twins, food comes from humans not cows. Shaen and I would start the milk flowing, then try to get the calf to suckle on Patty’s teat. We had to do this over and over. The little female caught on quickly but the male seemed to have trouble assuming the correct feeding position and his tongue action was ineffective. In the correct feeding position the calf has a bent neck which causes the milk to be directed into the esophageal groove which goes directly into the fourth stomach of the calf. We got them both fed and left for the night.

In the morning the male was on his side and cold to the touch. He was almost too weak to feed. Shaen and Elizabeth got what they could into him and covered him with blankets. The little female was fine. Patty seems to have totally accepted her.

I called the farmer and said the male wasn’t doing very well and asked if he had any problems. I found out he had been on antibiotics for scour but had been near the end of the course. I went down to the Kamloops Large Animal Veterinary Clinic to get antibiotics and the staff were incredibly helpful. The antibiotics are injected so the drug will not negatively affect the calf’s gut. I was given detailed instruction on how to save the calf. I was told to cover up the calf and use a hot water bottle to increase his temperature. They gave me some electrolyte mix to help with dehydration.

Elizabeth and I heated up water for the electrolyte mixture and hot water bottle. We got the bottle under the calf’s core area and fed the calf the mixture. We tried to feed the calf a small amount of fresh green grass which he ate with relish. After we made the calf as comfortable as possible, I gave the calf an intramuscular injection. This was the first time I have ever given an injection. Elizabeth said to inject in the neck area towards the body. The calf decided if we were going to stick things into him, he was going to get up. Elizabeth was very happy to see him get up because this would improve his circulation. He stood unsteadily for a few minutes. Elizabeth told me to rub him from the front of his body to his back end. She told me mother cows lick their calves in this way to get the calf to pass stool. After a few minutes of massage the calf passed a small amount of stool. We helped the calf down and placed the hot water bottle under the calf’s core and covered the calf with warm blankets.

By the evening visit the calf was looking a lot better. He had a really good feed with Shaen assisting him. He still doesn’t have a very good position to feed and his tongue doesn’t seem to know what to do. He walked around with a little help and touched noses with the Dexter bull in the adjacent pen. Patty still seems a bit wary of him. Patty follows and licks the little female, a good sign of acceptance.

We have five days of injections to do. The vet worker warned us the calf may die if he did not get enough colostrum in the first 24 hours after birth. The calves were four days old when I got them so I have no idea if he got enough colostrum. If he didn’t get enough colostrum, after the course of antibiotics is stopped, he will pick up an infection and die.

We have been enjoying our first raw milk of the season. Patty is easily producing 8L a day plus feeding the twins.

When the calf is born, the rumen is small and the fourth stomach is by far the largest of the compartments. Thus, digestion in the young calf is more like that of a simple-stomached animal than that of a ruminant. The milk which the calf normally consumes by-passes the first two compartments by way of the esophageal groove and goes almost directly to the fourth stomach in which the rennin and other compounds for the digestion of milk are produced. If the calf gulps too rapidly, or gorges itself, the milk may go into the rumen where it is not digested properly and may cause upsets of the calf’s digestive system. As the calf nibbles at hay, small amounts of material get into the rumen. When certain bacteria become established, the rumen develops and the calf gradually becomes a full-fledged ruminant.
Dairy Cattle Science by M. E. Ensminger

Updated May 4, 2010: By Thursday last week the male calf had recovered from his scour. Patty has totally accepted both calves. Unfortunately, the little female came down with scour on Friday. We started electrolyte solution and antibiotics to deal with secondary infection, but we never stopped all her milk consumption. The female calf has not improved over the weekend. Her scour is worse. She has fluid bowel movements that are white with a slight greenish tinge. She is developing a hemorrhoid from all the straining. Shaen and I have been feeling ambivalent about the antibiotic treatment and decided to use Newman Turner’s method of curing scour. His method involves fasting the animal on water for 24 hours or until the scour stops. We are using electrolyte solution in place of plain water. When the scour stops, the calf is given short, controlled feeds of 3 minutes, four times a day to avoid over indulging. Newman Turner considers scour a condition of over consumption with bacterial infection as a totally secondary condition of over-eating.