OrganicJen
-
Posts
914 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by OrganicJen
-
-
This doesn't quite match the post I was answering about schools having greenhouses on their roof to be able to eat from it year round. ;)
FWIW, some schools are experimenting with greenhouses around us (though not on the roof). I think it's a wonderful idea.
My youngest son wants to turn our farm into more of a permaculture deal. He did a presentation in Jordan about it (permaculture) and how it could help (and is helping in trials) their country with food production too - very well received.
He's more than welcome to try. We're pretty much retired now. With just the two of us living here we even opted to give away a lot of our extra veggies this year rather than freeze them. We froze some, but not the same amounts we did with 5 (or 4) of us living here.
Oh sorry, I see what you mean. Well my son had done some reading on it and he said the roof greenhouses are becoming popular in some areas of the world but I didn't ask him how cold places deal with that, but I would think they could use solar and that the heat from the warmth of being on top of a large building could help. I would love if all the big flat roofed stores grew hydroponic food on their roofs, I think it would be great for communities. I also think it would be a nice skill for kids in school to learn. I think with space and time being an issue more and more that hydroponics, especially the non circulating type, will be a more and more popular way to grow a ton of food for little money in a small space. I know a lot of people who have changed their lawns to food gardens though and they manage to grow a lot in the ground too of course.
-
Plus, just the one tub I have in the house gives us a lot of fresh heirloom salad greens all year round.
-
What about temperature?
It just depends on your situation. I started with a tiny little above ground greenhouse and packed it with hydroponics and the water stored enough heat it didn't freeze. But even before I did that I just grew a lot in warm months and dehydrated and canned extra food so we could have it in winter too. To me it was better to at least have some home grown food in the winter dehydrated or canned than to buy it, especially with how inexpensive it was to grow a ton of food all summer with the non circulating hydroponics since it uses no electricity and makes so much food in so little space. Now I have it in mainly below ground greenhouses so the cold is less of an issue. But even when the bulk of my growing had to be in the warm months and we dehydrated and canned the extra, we still had tons to give away because it just created so much in so little space.
-
2
-
-
It's expensive because not much grows here. If you can't grow much and have very little to sell, then whatever bits you do have are going to be expensive.
We have a garden every year. It's a wash in terms of cost because we have to rent a small plot of land AND half of what we grow doesn't make it. Sometimes most of it does not make it. The weather does not cooperate or we have to deal with animals that we aren't allowed to do anything about in terms of getting rid of them.
The farmer's markers are mostly craft food fairs. Stuff like homemade jam, honey, artisan bread. I mean "nice", but not really everyday sort of food stuff either. And I don't really eat those things most of the time.
You should look into non circulating hydroponics. It yields a lot of food in a small space with little money, time and effort. Kratky has some instructional videos on it on the web. I have amazing success with it. I also grow some things in the ground using permaculture methods, but the bulk of our daily food is from the Kratky method. I use raft tables in greenhouses mainly with some tubs and buckets too, and even have a tub with greens inside by a window.
-
2
-
-
There are several ways around the greenhouse heating issue in cold areas. We have never fuel heated ours even when we lived in northern Idaho for a time. There are a several books on the issue. Some people build greenhouses down in the ground where the temperature stays pretty stable. Walipinis are one example of this. There are more elaborate methods too where you actually dig a trench for a cold sink. Then some people use cold frames and hoop houses and just grow cold tolerant plants. Also a lot of people use water barrels positioned to trap the heat of the sun.
-
2
-
-
I'm a cookbook lover. Lots of the vegetarian cookbooks are written by non-vegetarians, and those are usually the ones with boring, just-sub-the-meat types. And there are vegetarian cookbooks for people who can't cook or are living in dorms, so those are filled with processed foods. Ditto with books written specifically to help meat-eaters transition to vegetarian.
I'm a much better cook as a vegan, and I cook far healthier food than I did before my switch. My spice cabinet is breathtaking (to me). :)
Again, I'm obviously not vegan, but one of my favorite cookbooks is vegan. It's by Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company. I love it because it has so many recipes for the heirloom veggies we love to eat. You can get it from their same website where they sell their seeds.
-
2
-
-
My son liked passages from 20k leagues under the sea, the time machine, those type of books.
-
2
-
-
I haven't met too many people who even talk about this (except on-line). They just eat.
Not everyone has access to stuff direct from a local farm. Not everyone has the money or energy to even pursue such a thing. Hell, I'd say even where I am, the concept of farmer's market is mostly some sort of foo foo fad because it's completely unpractical to spend $10 for a bulb of garlic or three to four times the price for produce (that the farm stand person possibly got from a local grocery store anyways because not a lot grows in my area so where are they getting it I always wonder). Once a year I trek to some "somewhat" local dairy farms for cheese (we do have a lot of dairy farms in the state). This is a complete splurge for me and certainly not something I could afford to do on any sort of regular basis.
Wow...I had no idea, this is heartbreaking. It's awful to think that local fresh produce is that expensive in some areas that it's a luxury. For us it's less expensive to eat local produce, although our favorite things we just grow. The farmers markets I've been to are less expensive than grocery stores. This makes me sad for our society. My son had this idea that I thought was great, that every flat roofed building should have a hydroponic greenhouse on the roof. So in schools they could grow fresh pesticide and herbicide free foods for lunches, grocery stores with flat roofs could grow food right on their roofs etc.
-
Beeswax candles everywhere. The scent is marvelous.
Oh I love those so much too, I never thought about making them a Christmas thing, what a good idea.
-
1
-
-
I think it depends on the type of vegetarian you are.
There are vegetarians who simply don't eat meat. Many of these rely on meat substitutes and carb heavy foods so they aren't usually particularly healthy.
Then there are the vegetarians who have opted for a plant based diet and choose mainly fruits, veggie sand whole grains. I have found many of these people to be healthier than normal because they are looking at food/diet in an entirely different way, rather than just cutting out meat (if that makes sense).
I have found this to also be reflected in the cookbooks. Although we eat pasture raised meats, we eat more plant based foods than anything else and grow a lot of it ourselves using permaculture techniques and also hydroponics. I really love growing heirloom veggies. So I often read vegan or vegetarian cookbooks because I'm always looking for more ways to prepare all the veggies we eat that are less common in general cookbooks such as kohlrabi, daikon, etc. But I have been surprised on many occasions to find a vegetarian cookbook will just have recipes that are meat based recipes with meat substitutes. I was really surprised by this the first time because I used to think vegetarian meant more focused on vegetables and fruits and for some it does, but for many it just means no meat but with no real increase in vegetables. I think as others have said, it's a big part of why people's experiences with trying vegetarianism are often so varied.
-
1
-
-
We've used both building thinking skills and mind benders and liked them a lot, but they are more for getting started with the foundations of skills needed for formal logic later. I recommend them as my son even found them enjoyable to do.
-
2
-
-
What do they do with the male chicks hatched there? And what about the laying hens when their production slows?
Lol, they eat them, and we eat some of them too, especially young roosters, and some older hens become pets, but usually they are eaten too, but typically not sold for customers to buy because they can be tougher and need to be stewed or used for bone broth often. Do people actually think that you can't eat roosters? We often buy roosters to eat from them at a lower price than hens.
-
As an ethical vegan for over a decade, IMO, it's the death that is the largest ethical issue.
My comment had nothing to do with what is the largest ethical issue, it merely addressed one specific ethical issue that was brought up.
-
1
-
-
We are very different people if a cabbage can substitute for cookies in terms of satisfaction :)
We are at a very high elevation at the moment and I have noticed that bread doesn't work in the bread machine. It never worked for me (because of how much I hate measuring) but DD12 is a conscientious baker and used to have good luck.
Lol...well cookies are actually one of the items that seem to work well at any altitude thankfully. It's the bread loaves and rolls and muffins and cakes that make me sad to look at now. And I make all of our bread and baked goods so I just have to deal with it, but I miss when my loaves of bread were so beautiful they could have been on a magazine cover.
-
I don't think when someone shares advice or their own experiences in what they feel is a good way to parent that it necessarily means they think it will work for everyone, I just assume the idea is that maybe it will help someone else out there in some way. I love reading other's opinions about parenting and I know some things just obviously wouldn't work in my own reality, but I appreciate knowing what other parents feel worked for them. Part of it I think is seeing that maybe I'm not crazy having a particular rule in my house because, look, other parents do it that way too and they feel like it was a good choice.
-
2
-
-
I didn't take it as obnoxious...to me it was just him explaining what worked for his family in his opinion. I guess I saw it more as him expressing what he thought he did right and how he believed it led to his kids all paying for their own college.
-
1
-
-
Another note about baking: I think I’m ready to switch over to all British recipes so that I can measure the ingredients. Going by volume is so inexact. I think most of my “keeper†recipes are probably the most forgiving. I mean “a cup of brown sugar lightly packed?†That’s just annoying.
I have recipe books from America's Test Kitchen that all use weight. I mainly only bake by weighing ingredients. I love the science and precision of baking.
-
That was interesting I agree with a lot of the author's ideas.
-
I bake a lot and I used to live near sea level and everything I baked was just gorgeous looking. But then I moved to a higher elevation and it really has put a damper on my baking. I still bake because I like to eat baked goods made with freshly milled whole grains so if I want to eat that, I don't have a choice but to bake, but it just isn't as enjoyable as it once was. I get a lot of pleasure from the visual beauty of foods so it's sad that I can't bake the gorgeous loaves I used to. They taste good, but just don't look as good. I've replaced it as best as I can with red cabbage though. Cutting a red cabbage in half is just so darn beautiful I eat a lot more of it just because it's so pretty lol.
-
1
-
-
Stressing about things that have not happened yet and may never happen. ;)
I am the absolute worst at this! I have found a way to sleep better recently but I can't stop stressing when I'm awake :)
-
4
-
-
I meet a fair number of people who eat largely humanely raised animal products, but have never met anyone who is serious about it. That's pretty cool! I don't live in (or particularly near) the country and never have, so that might be part of it. To go to a local family farm I'd have to drive down the mountain about an hour, and at any rate I called them to ask if they hatch their own layers and meat chickens or get the hatchlings from pullet factories and the conversation did not go well, hah.
Wow I didn't realize it was so hard to find in some areas. All the family farms around us let people come tour any time to see just how the animals are raised. The chickens are definitely like pets and they breed their own and let them lay whenever and wherever they want. It can be like an Easter egg hunt on their farms.
-
2
-
-
At any rate, it ends up being the same thing in practical terms - as I said, I've never met another meat eater who doesn't occasionally eat or use things made via the suffering of animals, not through death but through inhumane living conditions. Not one, nowhere, never, nada. I am the only one I have ever met (besides DH).
So I lump all meat eaters together because in my experience, they display varying levels of the same tendency - to put personal preference (for cost, or taste, or convenience, or whatever) above the suffering of the animals they're eating. Yes, it is better to eat grass-fed beef when you can - but if you get fries at McDonald's once a month, I fail to see the moral purity, honestly.
I am really surprised about you not meeting people like us who don't eat factory farmed animal products. Among my friends it's extremely common. We get our beef, elk, chicken, pork, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese from local family farms. Since most of what we eat we grow ourselves in greenhouses, we don't eat a ton of meat and we've so far never run out of pasture raised and had any reason to buy factory farmed meat at all. I can't imagine why we would need to. Any bread products I make with freshly milled flour I make from my electric grain mill so I know the ingredients in my baked goods. If I eat out I usually just get a salad and I eat out very rarely. I certainly wouldn't consider anything at a fast food restaurant to be actual food so I don't eat french fries beyond the ones I make at home. I guess from my perspective it's easy not to eat factory farmed animals so I find it interesting that you don't know other people like us.
-
3
-
-
Totally not confused. Ethical vegans think that killing animals makes for bad conditions for the animals.
But that has nothing to do with my post or the comment I was responding to. I'm not sure what you are taking issue with.
-
1
-
-
Has anyone else ever read the article about the roomba and the dog poo disaster? Anytime people mention roombas I can't help but remember that story and laugh.
-
3
-
Your experiences being vegetarian
in The Chat Board
Posted
I'm not trying to convince you that it would work for you, it's simply something that has worked for us and I recommend it and have found a lot of people aren't aware of the options out there for growing food so I'm happy to share my experiences. I went from a kid who used to think the food from grocery stores was real food and the stuff from my grandparents farm was fake, to slowly experimenting with growing things here and there, to providing the bulk of my family's veggies successfully with what to me feels like little time and effort. There is a very inexpensive book that a man wrote, who I think lived in way northern Idaho, about how he built an earth sheltered or underground greenhouse for pretty cheap to grow food in winter, but I haven't used his exact methods so I can't endorse it. Anyway, there are a lot of cold hardy veggies that can be grown in even small hoop tunnels and a very healthy one is cabbage that can be fermented into sauerkraut with a high vitamin C content which is great to eat in the winter months when it's hard to get things like citrus. So one of the ways people have dealt with the seasonal issues of growing their food in addition to dehydrating and canning is lactofermentation. My personal favorite way to store food in the winter though is dehydration because it preserves a lot of nutrients if done at a low temp, and it takes up so little space to store dehydrated food. It also makes it easy to add a little of everything into a smoothie when it's dehydrated too and I will often throw in a dehydrated sweet pepper to a smoothie for more vitamin C lol.