The Simple Things
Yesterday evening I came in from the unseasonal February cold and approached to what to many people would be a chore, with joyous anticipation. The fire had been burning steadily all the night before and Dick had "fed" it very well in the morning so there were lots of coals and ashes to rake over... this isn't a pleasurable task but it gives great satisfaction, to get the ashes out and have a bed of glowing coals awaiting a fresh supply of wood, but when it's done to be able to add the fuel and see the fire come alive is very rewarding.

I think of the many people coming in from the cold and turning the thermostat up, and wondered how it makes them feel? Maybe it warms their body, but that's about all, there cannot be the same feeling of satisfaction that one gets from adding the wood that has been waiting in the woodshed since we split it in the Autumn. Splitting wood is work, there is no denying that, but with our easy to use splitter it's a thing that all our family can participate in, the girls love to see the piece of wood split then take it and stack it in the shed. Dick and Nathan prefer to swing a mall to split the wood, it gives them a better workout than many men get after paying out good money to go to a gym.

Writing this made me think of all the simple things that make my life more fulfilling and made me think of my following story:

{August 2001} Two days in a row we went into Econo-Foods to collect the food waste only to find our barrels emptied into the compactor.... on the first day we asked a young manager what was going on, his reply was "there are new maintenance people, they must have emptied them by mistake" on the second day he went to see the store manager who was not in so the assistant manager showed Dick a memo from the top "The hog farmer program finishes on August 27." Finished! Just like that after three years seven days a week only missing Christmas day [because the store was closed]. The manager had told us on several occasions just how much money we saved the store and how much better it is without all that food rotting and smelling in the compactor. Nash Finch took over Econo-Foods two years ago and we have been worried ever since the take over that we may get the boot, but after this length of time we had relaxed about that. It seems that a few other stores used to have "hog farmer programs" but Econo-Foods at Winona was the last of Nash-Finch's stores not throwing their waste food into landfill and was made to get in line with all the other stores. What a forward thinking group our Nash-Finch must be.

You cannot begin to imagine the amount of perfectly good food that gets thrown out in supermarkets every day of the year... we averaged twelve 32 gallon Rubbermaid barrels every day and only a fraction of this was truly waste... There would be about three barrels of baked goods every day, breads, bagels, donuts, pies all sorts of pies; apple, pecan, blueberry just to name a few, cookies; m&m, peanut, raisin & oatmeal, etc. Most of it was not very good, as it was made with white flour, and way too much sugar, I didn't like even feeding that to the animals, the chickens wouldn't touch donuts and I had tried to talk Dick into composting them instead of feeding them to the cattle and pigs.

Produce was thrown out just because there was one bad apple, orange, potato [or whatever] in the bag, bananas discarded merely because a new shipment arrived. I'll never forget one day as I walked through the store seeing customers selecting bananas then five minutes later a young man who works in the produce department was removing these perfectly good bananas [some still not ripe and unmarked] and placing them in our barrels, that day we had three barrels full of just bananas. Bagged salads, these were thrown out two or three days before the sell-by date, so every night we had some for our supper. Also from the produce department there was "Natural Ovens" breads and cookies, we really missed those.

Some days we would arrive to find that the dairy department had a big clean up, the most we got from them was ten barrels in one day, usually it was only four at a time about two or three times a week. There would be fruit juice and milk two or three days before the sell-by date, we would pour out hundreds of gallons of it to the cows and pigs, they just loved orange juice! One time we had a barrel full of cheese, a few days before the magic date, but that cheese didn't know it was no longer a food item but garbage and we were still eating cheese three months beyond the date. We often had three barrels of yogurt at a time, there is only so much yogurt that you can eat, some of the Yoplait in tubes which I froze months ago, the kids eat like icy poles. Everything imaginable from the refrigerator section would find it's way into our barrels, nearly all perfectly edible. We approached the local food shelf, but they were unable to accept food that had been hauled in a garbage truck", even if that food was still cold and in sealed packages... oh well the pigs, cows and chickens never complained.

Another good event was when the "freezer fairy" came, generally just before we arrived or while we were there, all the frozen food in damaged packages were put into our barrels in a freezer room, then when the barrel was full it was left out for us. Pizzas, dinners, vegetables, ice-cream [the kids sure miss the ice-cream], all sorts of goods, we always hurried home when we had this precious cargo in the truck so that we could get it into the freezer, except in winter when I could leave it out overnight and clear room in one of our three freezers. Those freezers... one is now empty and the other two have more healthy goods in them, our own free range, non-medicated, hormone free chicken.

One thing that I do miss which used to inhabit our freezers is fish, all sorts of fish; blue marlin, salmon, tuna, cod, catfish... which brings me to another thing, the meat barrels; these often had packaged fish, sometimes still frozen and often many days prior to the sell-by date. There was also often all sorts of hamburger, steaks, chicken, sandwich meats... none of which we really bothered too much about saving. So all this good meat was turned into compost.

But this sudden loss of our food supply and also the associated income of over $1000 each month wasn't all bad...

We are now in touch with our food again, when it was handed to us on a platter every day, all sorts of things in perfect condition in an assortment that I personally would never consider buying it was too easy. Food lost any meaning, here we are producing good quality beef, pork, lamb, chevon and chicken and we never even considered eating any of them, we even had about twenty of our chickens from a couple of years earlier in the very bottom of the big chest freezer, we have been eating them since last August, usually as roast chicken one day then as chicken soup from the left-over the next day. In Autumn the girls went down to the orchard and collected some of the small apples that grow on these old trees, normally we leave them all for the deer, but now that food is more valuable to us I diced them up and dehydrated them and use these in my bread baking. The girls milk a goat to keep us supplied with fresh milk; at first the taste of the goat milk was a little strange to the girls, but now they prefer it and they feel good about keeping us supplied with it.

I'm sure we are now eating a lot healthier diet. Bread was a big issue for me, I knew we couldn't afford the Natural Ovens bread we were used to eating and I wasn't going to be happy with the stuff that the supermarket bakeries call bread so that only left me one option; bake my own. So I looked into bread recipes and realized that I wouldn't have time to do it the old fashioned way, bread likes to be kneaded and let rise at just the right times and I knew I wouldn't be able to be indoors at those times, that left me with the thought that a bread machine was the answer to the problem, so I started looking and was pleasantly surprised at the prices. I tried to talk Dick into buying one and he suggested that I just do it the normal way, I pointed out the fact that it would either rise too long or not long enough and we would have either something too light and fluffy or something resembling a brick. Just after we finally ran out of bread, we were in Fleet Farm and I steered Dick toward the bread machines, he grudgingly put one in the cart and off we went. He now thinks it was about the best $58 he ever spent, each day I bake about two loaves of bread and all the time each loaf takes me is around five minutes.

For Christmas I received a really exciting present, a grain mill so I can mill my own flour [OK so I'm boring]. This puts us even more in touch with our food, the girls were very interested in watching wheat and corn turn into flour to add to our next loaf of bread. Dick also bought a 50lb bag of organic wheat, and I will mill flour every few days. From what I have been reading lately I have discovered that most of the food value in this valuable grain oxidizes rapidly after milling so that flour that we purchase, no matter what quality it is has only a fraction of it's original food value.

There was great excitement planting our first vegetable garden in the Spring. I have always wanted to grow vegetables but Dick would remark that it was pointless as we got more vegetables than we could ever consume. We didn't have all success with the garden, I lost many pumpkin and squash plants to bugs, most of the carrot plants didn't thrive and the weeds grew quicker than any plants... maybe because it's the first year this patch has had a garden on it. On a positive note we have had strawberries, herbs, and tomatoes and will soon hopefully have our own sweet corn, potatoes, pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes, onions and melons. It is so much more satisfying to eat fresh home grown produce than anything out of a store [even if it is free].

As well as the above benefit I have more time. Sorting the Econo-Food waste would take about two hours a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year... some days were a lot quicker but when we got several barrels of dairy goods in one day it would take forever to deal with them, sometimes they would sit around until we could get to them, small tubs of yogurt were the most time consuming, but the chickens sure did like it. Now I have time to do some much needed jobs that I never managed to get to, such as cleaning out cupboards, folding the washing instead of just leaving it in a big pile, even just getting the wash done before we run out of clean clothes....

Even now almost a year after our last pick-up every time I drive by Econo-Foods I think of all that once good food rotting in landfill, I know there is nothing we can do about that, the owners are nothing but environmental terrorists. After three years of free food buying food bothered me a little too, but this is becoming less of a problem in my mind as time progresses.

I hope one day to get the food waste from all the supermarkets in town but if we do I will not be going back to eating free. We will be eating our chickens, beef and pork instead of the packaged medicated synthetic meat we were eating, making our meals mostly from scratch instead of out of packages and I will still be growing our own vegetables. I like to spend time preparing food, and making our own bread and I am very excited about harvesting our own vegetables. The girls and I spend more quality time together, instead of helping me open little tubs of yogurt, packages of cheese etc to feed to animals they are enjoying helping in the kitchen, whereas I must admit I used to just rush and prepare the food without involving them.

{February 2003} I reread what I had written [above] over a year ago and still feel mostly the same, I am pleased that we do not have access to all that supermarket food any more. Making cheese from the milk from your own cow or goat is so rewarding, it puts you in touch with your food in ways that no purchased cheese could ever do. As well as that there is the undeniable health benefit of eating a pure food whose ingredients don't sound like a chemistry experiment.

Our first vegetable garden wasn't a huge success, but we did learn where not to plant potatoes, and how not to start our squash and pumpkin seeds. In my ignorance I didn't know that sweet potatoes don't grow here, but fortunately the sweet potato was as ignorant as me on planting zones and produced a good crop. Our tomatoes, squash [second try] and sweet potatoes were very successful, the sweet corn was a good crop but I was a little late in harvesting it and while still edible wasn't as sweet and tender as it should have been.

After learning how not to do some things I feel better equipped for this year's garden.

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