Vegi Sour Cream

Sunshine is always on the look out for healthy eating ideas. And wow! she is a good cook. She recently produced a new recipe that ranked tops with all our family taste testers. (Some of whom have very discriminating tastes.) The creation? Vegetable based Sour Cream. She had in mind some other spread recipes as ideas, and made this recipe on her own. It is a keeper!

Some may wonder, why go to the trouble to make a Sour Cream from vegetable sources? So let's delve into  the topic of health for just a moment.

Animal products, specifically milk as in this post, contain a significant amount of fat. Fat is one of the features of milk making it so versatile. Think about the progression of concentration in this list: whole milk (3%), sour cream (20%), heavy cream (40%), hard cheese (95%), butter (100%). There are variations of fat percentages in various product brands, but the numbers listed are representative.

It takes one gallon of milk to make a gallon of milk. (profound aye? well, follow on.)
It takes 8 gallons of milk to make a gallon of heavy cream.
It takes 21 gallons of milk to make a gallon of butter.

But along with that concentration of fat there is also the potential of concentration of other items which may be of concern. Let's say the cow has natural or artificial hormones excreted in the milk. These would be concentrated by the same percentages in the milk products produced. To purchase these concentrated products from the store opens yourself to all of the unknown dangers of a vast array of vectors. Any time we concentrate food products, we allow the potential for concentrations of poisons as well.

On top of the factors present in milk itself, we also have external contamination dangers from the modern food inc industry, where foods are consolidated and intermingled, and potentially cross contaminated. Buy local means to buy from a farmer or a retailer who has not had a lot of processing steps between you and the source! Better yet, grow your own!

So, gently stepping off my podium, I will proceed to invite you into our kitchen. Sunshine has a treat for you!

The recipe below does have a lot of fat calories via the oil in the recipe, and Sunshine will continue tweaking things to lower the fat content. This recipe provides you a low cost, vegetable source sour cream substitute.

Vegi Sour Cream by Sunshine:

Blend all ingredients together until smooth:

• 2 boxes of MoriNu Tofu, extra firm (12.3 oz boxes)
• 2/3 cup oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp apple cider vinegar

Thin with soymilk if needed.

Honey Bees

Beekeeping is sweet. Twenty years ago, we had up to 10 hobby hives at one time. Back then we got started with bees by capturing free swarms to start our hives. We are planning to work with bees again, a first for our northern homestead. So we revive the hobby again. Double sweet.

The process of working with animals is fascinating. We enjoyed searching out the queen bee and watching the entire colony interactions. We even created an observation hive, a three frame hive in our dining room. It was glassed on both sides, and one frame thick, so you could easily watch the bees and the queen.


2012 Experience

Today (April 24) we installed our bees, and they are doing great. The weather was sunny and temps in the lower 60's. We got a call at 7 am that the truck was 30 mins out, and to meet them at our pickup location. We got there just before the box truck pulling a trailer eased in behind us. They had driven non-stop from Florida and the vehicle was packed full of bees. Our stop was the fourth for them, and they had two more to go.

We had ordered 2 nucs, and they were at the top of the stack. The rest were packages of bees in the load. We helped them unload the 50 packages for this dropoff location, and then gently headed home with 50,000 girls in the back seat.

Two boys watching the bees. How fun!

Normally when you install a package of bees, they are calm, as they do not have a "hive" to protect. They are just happy to get out of the box and into a normal hive. I found that installing a nuc is not the same. I spritzed them with sugar water, but in retrospect I think some smoke would have been better. The 5 frames of the nuc came out ok with a frame extractor, and I was careful to not roll and kill the bees as I extracted the frames and installed them into their new home. You set the frame in with some space to spare, and then slide it up close to the nearby frame. We were able to locate the queen bee in both hives, so that was nice to be able to see them! The nucs have a good brood pattern, and we saw several new workers hatching out as we inspected the frames.

When the nuc box was empty of frames there remained several hundred bees hanging inside. I gave the box a rap onto the hive box to knock them out. That just made them MAD. They came out with stingers barred. I was expecting very docile behavior, but these guard bees meant serious business. They did have an active hive to defend. Within moments we were all running and wishing we had tightened down the access points of our clothing. I had bees inside my bee hat and veil, inside my shirt pockets and inside my shirt. Our dog was a victim as well. She was standing nearby and soon was a bee target, and she ran with good reason as we all retreated. The wiser, we approached the second hive with more preparation and better clothing.

One of the nucs was bulging at the seams with bees, the other was mostly full, but not crowded. As soon as we set them up the workers were out and looking for pollen and nectar. There was no wasting time looking around at the "new house." They got to work! We could see streams of bees coming in with pollen sacs on their back legs loaded with bright yellow pollen. It is fun to see them have something local to enjoy on their first day in their new home.

July 4, 2012 update: The bees have been busy! We have added a hive body a little faster than 1 per month. We are now at 4 hive bodies on each hive, and the bees are bringing in loads of nectar. We have entire hive bodies full of capped honey. In the two upper bodies on each hive, we have placed 9 frames, and spaced them evenly with a 9-frame spacer tool. This allows the bees to draw the comb out a little longer per frame. This is beneficial for honey extraction, as there are 2 less sides to uncap per hive body for the same total volume of honey obtained.

July 26, 2012 update: The bees have filled all four large hive bodies. Rather than go up and make the stack 5 bodies tall, I chose to remove some of the super honey frames, and replace them with new frames of un-drawn foundation. We have pulled 24 full sized frames, capped on both sides of honey. It is a lot of honey, and we will be extracting this first batch in a few days. The honey flow seems to be continuing even through the heat and drought. Lots of bee activity each day!

July 30, 2012 update: We extracted the honey from the 24 full sized frames using our 9 frame radial extractor, and obtained 12 gallons of honey.


Colony members

1. Queen - her primary duty is to lay eggs, around 1500 a day. She also secretes pheremones that keep the workers happy. Queen bees can live for 3-7 years. A queen will emerge from a queen cell in 16 days.
2. Drones - the drones only duty is to fly out and mate with a queen. I believe queens need only mate once. Drones take 24 days to emerge from the drone cell.
3. Workers - as the name implies, the workers do all of the work. They are non-fertile female bees and they have a very structured life from the moment they emerge from their cocoons. Throughout their life they will serve as nursery bees, construction bees, storage bees, guard bees and foraging bees. They live, on average, only 20-30 days from the time they emerge from cocoon. The time from egg to capping is 9 days, and the bee will emerge in a total of 21 days.

Hive construction

I have removed swarms from hollow logs and under houses. Bees can enter a hole and build a hive within a wall (making extraction difficult.) While bees can make their own home, it is more convenient for them to have the bee keeper construct a hive to their exact preferences. Bee hives, or boxes, have a specific size, and are slotted to hold the frames, suspended from a ledge at the top of the box. This gives the bees free access to the frames. The frames are "started" with a foundation sheet, imprinted with the honey comb pattern, and it jump starts the bees into comb production in an organized way.

Bees rear their young, and store honey and pollen in the wax comb, so it is a wonderful multipurpose structure.

I found it easier to purchase tools and hive parts and assemble the hives myself. If you have wood working tools, I don't think it would be difficult to construct the wood parts from scratch, but I would still suggest following the time proven patterns that bees prefer. If you wanted a home based business, producing hive parts could be a viable small income option.

The bee box is made of wood, painted on the outside and left bare on the inside. The bee box comes in three heights, the 12" box and the 6" super (or honey box) and I have seen reference to an even smaller height box. I used 12" boxes through out my bee system. A hive body full of honey (wood parts plus honey) can weigh 80 lbs. The 6" super would weigh in at around 40 lbs, and would be easier to lug around. My view was that if I can handle the weight, it would be half the work and parts, to use the full size or "deep" frames for both brood as well as honey production. The full sized frames yield 40-50 lbs of extracted honey per hive body or super. This yield equals 4-5 gallons of extracted honey per super.

For overwintering, a hive in the north where we live should have two deep hive boxes of honey stores, and they should be checked periodically on warm winter days to make sure they are not running low on honey. It is possible to feed your bees sugar water or sugar candy to keep them alive through the winter.


Protective clothing

You need to assume that you will be stung when working with bees. Generally they don't sting, especially if you do not rush and have a calm spirit when you work with your hives. Bees do crawl, and when they get under your clothing, it can create some excitement. As you move around, you may start to squeeze a bee, who likely was not in the best mood to begin with, resulting in a sting. Excluding the bees from clothing is a good plan. I found them rarely able to sting through denim. I would wear one pair of jeans, double socks, and rubber band the socks outside to the jean legs. Long sleeve flannel shirt, or double shirt. If it was cool I would wear a bulky sweat shirt. Their stingers are not all that long, so you just need to hold them away from your skin a bit. Bee gloves and a bee hat exclude them nicely.


Tools

• Hive tool (web order)
• Bee smoker (web order)
• Bee brush (web order)

Start up costs

It has been several years since I have worked with bees. I have kept my deep boxes, but other than that, I am basically starting over. When we moved prior, I sold all my frames and bees. My smoker was rusted through, and by bee hat and gloves destroyed by mice. I just placed my order for the needed frames and equipment, totaling around $500.00. I am planning on purchase of 2 nucleus hives at $100 each. If I was starting from scratch, I would guess it would total close to $1000. With that investment, you can start with two active hives, and grow with not much more cost up to 10 hives. In a good year, a hive could offer $400 value in honey.


Time required

Bees generally do very well just being left alone. There are some cases where it is good to know what is going on, but it does not take a lot of time to assess how the hive is doing. If the hive fills all the available space with honey and they need more space for the flow of nectar into the hive, they will prepare to swarm. If left to their own devices, they will swarm, and you will loose a strong productive hive. You would check for disease, pests, and queen cells signaling a coming swarm. A good management practice is to inspect your hives every two weeks. This should only take about 15 minutes per hive. For two hives, that could be an hour a month.

Extracting honey takes more time, but wow, you are richly paid for that time investment! With a few hives, you can definitely work with bees as a hobby. You don't have to be on a strict schedule, and they are busy working while you leave them to their own activities.


Bee Facts

• It takes 12 bees their entire lives to produce one teaspoon of honey. (web)
• A honey bee can fly up to 15 miles per hour. (web)
• A bee will visit 50 - 100 flowers per foraging flight. (web)
• Bees will visit two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles to produce one pound of honey. (web)
• Bees generally forage within 2 miles of their hive, but could travel further if needed. (web)
• A teaspoon of honey contains 22 calories (sugar = 18), and a table spoon of honey contains 64 calories (sugar = 46). (web)
• The queen will lay 1,000 - 2,000 eggs per day with warm temperatures and honey flow. (web)
• A strong hive will have 70,000 - 100,000 bees. (web)
• There are around 3,300 individuals in a pound of bees. (web)
• Bees will fly 150,000 miles, the equivalent of 6 times around the earth, to produce one pound of beeswax. (web)

Pests

Varroa mites to a bee are like fleas on a dog. Only the mites do more damage to the overall health of a hive if they get out of control. They are flat, saucer shaped red colored insects that bite under the honey bee scales. Watching the bees it is obvious that the bee is bothered by the mites presence. The bees are sometimes able to flick the mites off, and they fall to the bottom of the hive. There are screens that you can place in the bottom of the hive that will allow the mites to fall through to a sticky pad, trapping them from climbing back up to find a new bee victim, but the screen keeps the bees away from the sticky pad. Treat with 1 cup of powdered sugar all over the tops of the frames (1 cup per deep box). Perform this treatment exactly once a week for three weeks. The bees become covered with this dusty sugar, and so in an effort to clean themselves up, they also clean off the mites.

To address the tracheal mite naturally use a grease patty in the hive. Mix 2 parts powdered sugar with one part Crisco vegetable shortening. You can add a bit of honey-b-healthy or lemon grass oil extract. Compact this mixture between two sheets of wax paper to the size of a hamburger patty and lay on the top bar of each deep brood body. The grease patty cuts the tracheal mite population by disrupting the mite life cycle. It makes it more difficult to for mites to pass from older bees to younger bees either physically or by masking the scent of younger bees. It is ok to leave grease patties in the hive year round.

I once found a mouse carcass in the bottom of a hive. It appeared stung to death, and was encased in the bees propolus glue. Pests best not mess with a strong hive.

Consider working with bees. You will find is a rewarding study, and oh so sweet!


Resources

• Bee Keeping Lessons (web)
• Michigan Beekeepers (web)
• Mann Lake bee sales (web, catalog)
• Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, Fairmount, IL (web)
• Candy board instructions (pdf)
• Making Soap with Beeswax and Honey (web), Basic Soap Recipe (pdf)
• Tracheal mites info (pdf)

Common Sense Nutrition Rules

In my study of nutrition and food, I have come face to face with a startling fact. Americans eat very poorly. In an article I will post tomorrow explaining the value of organic foods, I have come to the realization that organic is not the prime issue of concern in the American diet. Our young people are getting far more calories from soft drinks than from all their combined vegetable consumption (web). To argue that the few vegetables that they eat be organic is missing the point of eating healthfully.

So what are we eating rather than food? What is an edible food like substance? The classic example is the Twinkie. It can sit on the shelf and not rot or mold and hold its texture for years. It seems the fungi and bacteria have better sense as to what is good food than most Americans!


So here are some simple diet rules:

1. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
2. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
3. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
4. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
5. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
6. Always leave the table a little hungry.
7. Enjoy meals with the people you love.
8. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. (rule 1-8 from web)
9. Don't purchase a cereal that will color the milk. (video)
10. The whiter the bread, the sooner you'l be dead. (video)
11. Cook for yourself, it's going to be healthier than what you're buying. (web and video)
12. Don't buy a food that is advertised on TV. (video)
13. Wash hands and food with running water.
14. Don't eat foods that once had a face. 

Do you have a favorite rule that helps your family eat healthfully?


Resources:

• Edible Food Like Substances (web)
• 'Real Food' vs. 'Edible, Food-Like Substances' (video)
• 7 Words & 7 Rules for Eating per Michael Pollen (web)

Chickens

I really like chickens. Chickens are sociable, personable, inquisitive and have a happy disposition. Chickens on the homestead provide eggs and/or meat. Being vegetarians, Sunshine wonders why I am so interested in Chickens at all! I do eat an occasional egg white, but have tended to avoid the yolk not wanting extra cholesterol in my diet. One thing is sure, if you are going to eat meat, dairy or eggs, raise it yourself! I know exactly what has gone into the diet and environment of our birds, and I enjoy giving them greens and clean kitchen scraps to augment their vegetarian feed diet.

All of our chickens absolutely love kale. There is a load of calcium and minerals in kale, and these birds are smart enough to devour it before anything else. They also enjoyed the corn on the cob we gave them. One of our really bright birds would stand right beside me as I shucked the corn cobs, ever ready to spy a worm at the corn tip. It was as if we were working together as a team. She was talking the entire time, looking and always eager to inspect each ear as I opened it!

You should hear the chickens call and sing as any of us approach their coup. They are excited to have us as their guests, and always want to see what we have brought them.


Getting started

We started with Chickens in the spring of 2011, with the purchase of 7 pullets. Six have survived to laying maturity. We purchased the seventh, just in case we had a rooster, as we had wanted 6 layers. We purchased our as sexed female pullets (90+% female rather than 50% "free run") and kept them under a heat lamp to avoid chilling. They need to be able to move closer or farther away from the heat to regulate their body temperature. Reduce the temperature by 5 degrees per week until the supplemental heat is no longer needed. Pullet food is the "stratch" or "crumbles" feed, and an available supply of water is needed.

Decide what you want the birds for, and purchase a breed that fits that goal. Since we do not eat flesh, our goal was egg laying production, predominantly for sale. In our experience Isa Browns are good egg layers. We tried three varieties, and the Isa's are tops. They do not have a large body for meat production, but seem very efficient at laying. The blue eggs from the Americanas are just a bit smaller, but we find our customers really like the variety of natural egg color, and some even prefer the blue eggs.

Chickens grow up quickly, and before we had the coup finished, we were ready for them to be out of our house. They stir up a lot of dust.

We have raccoon, coyotes and weasels on our land, so we had to build the coup like Fort Knox. Our wire mesh is hardware cloth with 1/2 inch squares. Predators can enter through the ground, roof or any crack larger than 1/2 inch. Our design seems to work well for a small flock. The coup is elevated off the ground to give them more space to run, and we suspend food and heated water under the coup dangling above the ground. Chickens should have 2-3 square foot of enclosed coup space, and 4-5 square foot open run space, per bird.


Following is our chicken calendar for 2011

May 4        We purchased 7 pullets from a local farm supply. (1 day old)
May 10      Chickens have doubled in size, some hopping flights
July 8         Working (feverishly) on the chicken coup.
July 14       Chickens move into the coup.
Sept 27      First egg laid by a Isa Brown.
Nov 9        One chicken dies
Dec           Steady egg production of 4-6 per day.


Our boys are selling our surplus to neighbors. The demand is so great we are increasing our flock in 2012. There is a demand for both local food, knowing where it has come from, and that the birds are treated humanely. This is important for us as well. In actuality, our birds are treated a bit too much like pets! But people who purchase from us know how we care for our birds; how we treat them and feed them, and give them supervised free range time. We do not medicate our birds, nor stimulate them artificially with lights or chemicals. Our customers seek us out, knowing that these eggs are not the result of a hens life spent in a 1x1 foot prison, never touching the grass or any semblance of natural life, as I fear is the case with mass production hen houses.

I think eggs would be an easy item to add to a CSA. The eggs keep well, and you could easily give some each week or every other week depending on your customers interest, and the size of your flock.

On egg laying, a friend told me that when they first started with chickens, their chickens were not laying. They put in a plastic egg in their nest box, and that get them "going" and production started. I could not really see how this related to when the chickens would start laying, but we gave it a try. I tease you not in this story! On the morning of Sept 27 our boys put in a plastic egg into the nest box, and within a few hours, they presented Sunshine with a very real chicken egg. I don't know if this is some kind of chicken mind game or what, but it worked for us just like what we were told. The very same day! I wonder if the chicken was thankful, like, "wow, I sure am glad they showed me where to put that thing!"

We have been told that chickens lay fewer eggs in the winter. We get 4-6 eggs a day, and we have not had any drop off yet because of winter. The weather is starting to get colder, so we will see how they respond to that stress. I have read that the egg production drops off because of the daylight being shorter, which means they have less time to eat for egg production. But we have not seen any egg quantity change so far with the shorter day length, and actually, our day length is now getting longer. We do not use lights on the chickens at night. Our chickens are getting a lot of nutrient rich greens, so perhaps that is a factor in their not having to slow down production. I will return to this paragraph with more analysis in the spring, to see if we had any decline and if so what we could attribute it toward.

We have not had any real problems with the Chickens to date. We do not heat their living space, but shield them from the cold winds and drifting snow with clear plastic attached to the outside of the framing members. It looks a bit more like a green house right now. There are two schools of thought related to coup temperature. One is to provide heat, and the other is to provide more fresh air, no matter the temperature. We follow the fresh air thought, and our birds do not seem to suffer in the cold. The coup is more protected than the run, but even on cold days, our birds spend most of their day "outside" in the run. It is important to keep their feet dry. In the night, they need a roost where they can grab the roost beam, and cover their toes with their feathers to protect their toes. With that allowance, we find no need to heat their coup.

We have a electric water warmer which is very important during the winter to keep it from freezing over. Chickens need water, not a lot, but when they need it, they need it. We have been told that a thirsty chicken can have impaired egg production for life. We always have water available to them. My ideal would be to have them free range all the time, but I am sure we would loose them from predation over time.

In summary, our experience has been thumbs up! Join us and get some chickens this spring.


Trivia

There is an air sack within the egg. Water can pass through the egg shell. As the water in the egg slowly evaporates, the air sack becomes larger. You can tell a fresh egg from an older egg by looking at the comparative size of the air sack. These samples are hard boiled. Can you see which egg is 2 week older than the other?


Resources

• Chicken illness, injury and disease (web)

Diversity

When you are planning your farm, you need to think about diversity. Mono crop farming is not being self reliant. You are growing one crop, in the desire to sell that crop and then purchase what you need. While I don't suggest the goal is financial isolation, the model of years past was not mono crop farming. It is not sustainable or self-supportive if one crop fails, or you fail to find a buyer for your one crop. The idea of independence is harmonious with diversity. Farmers of the past may have had a cash crop, but they also had a personal garden to support the variety of food needs for their families.

Diversity is good for being able to supply all of your home needs. It allows you to offer this same diverse spread of food for your customers. It protects against a complete loss with one crop failure. Diversity allows more complete crop rotation, in mini-rotation cycles, and ultimately aids in soil-development.

Currently, we are participating in four areas of farm diversity as self support and cash crop income. Our current list is: 1) full spectrum vegetable crops, 2) perennial fruit crops, 3) plant propagation and 4) animals. Items we could add in the future: medicinal herbs, essential oils, candles, wood fuel, fiber arts, crafts, flowers (fresh or dried), CSA/ASC, farmers markets, road side vegetable stand, and I am sure the list could continue to even more diversity.


Vegetable crops: are naturally diverse, and we want to offer a balanced diet with our produce. Garden development has a lot of pre-work, in amending and healing your soil to be balanced, complete and mineral rich, good organic matter content, etc. Some vegetables will grow best in your area, and we suggest planning your balance from what your climate and area supports best. For homestead use, you will want to plan on your food preservation and storage capacity. For public sales, you will want to find the best interface in your area. Some venues to consider: road-side stand, CSA/ASC, restaurant contracts, grocery wholesale, and/or farmers market. You can consider the time of picking, and quickly chilling food in the field to preserve freshness.

Some farmers we talk with enjoy the CSA/ASC repeated contacts with their customers, while others find the weekly schedule rigorous to fulfill a weekly demand. While I am suggesting diversity, you need to start only what you can handle, and this likely means you need to ramp up what ever production level you want to commit to in a sane and family friendly way.


Perennial fruit crops: these range from easy to hard depending on the types of fruit to be grown, and the climate and pest pressures around your farm. In Michigan, it was common to hear of some fruit crop failure each year.

The list would include: apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, pomegranates, nut trees, grapes, raspberries, black berries, blue berries, strawberries, etc. The advantage of the perennial fruits is that they are generally more established, and require less frequent intensive care as compared to vegetable annuals. In some areas, fruit pests are a problem, and bringing organic fruit to market is a challenge. We need to educate consumers that surface imperfections are not the problem, rather insecticide drenched fruit is the problem.

Customer contact could be similar to the vegetable markets. I have seen one organic tree farm offer a "rent a tree CSA" in which you could purchase the produce to be harvested (and even harvest it yourself) from one specific tree. This makes a direct connection between the tree and the customer, which is very satisfying.


Plant propagation: is working with trees, bushes, ornamentals, etc, where you are multiplying a plant. The focus could be on developing stock for your own orchard, or to sell as a cash crop. It can still be diversified but time is the key. Taking cuttings, allowing them to root, grafting if needed, growing to sell-able age, will in total be several years.

Find markets for plants, and focus on what these markets need. Plan to offer your product at a good price when entering a new market, but establish being local to your advantage. Avoid the rush to the bottom when it comes to price. You could sell retail to the public, and consider mail order options as well. I would think that wholesale to a store would provide more volume, especially if you are in a very remote or rural location.


Animals: are a long standing tradition for historic farms. Farm animals were used to assist with farm work, like oxen and horses to production animals such as chickens and bees. There may be interest in milk or hair products (fiber arts) from various animals. Some animals would require significant infrastructure and tools, such as dairy barns, and milk processing facilities, or bee hives and tools. Expand as your knowledge can afford and as the Lord opens the way.


So, how can you diversity? Consider the options available to you, and the income sources that may avail you a living and support your budget. I encourage diversity as long as you can effectively give adequate attention to the existing operation. The word for today: diversity.