First Haul

This is our first haul with our new utility trailer, which we assembled ourselves. We have big plans for this baby, which I promise to divulge to you soon. In the meantime, my little car was able to haul 8, 50lb bales of straw like a champ. Go little Hyundai go!

The straw is being split between the chicken pen and the garden. Last year we attempted to procure all of our mulch from the dump for free. Not only was that impossible in a sedan (sans trailer), but the quality of the mulch was pretty poor. This year we're springing for straw. We wanted to get a hefty layer of mulch down on the beds before we lose the moisture from all of the recent snow. Bare dirt is dead dirt, especially here in arid New Mexico.

New Mexico Sunsets

Can't beat 'em. Just sayin'.

Homemade, Homegrown Garlic Powder

Tristan found an abandoned head of our homegrown garlic lurking at the bottom of a basket. The head was completely dried out, but thanks to our NM climate, not moldy. Ever a resourceful man, he pulled out the spice grinder and...voila! Homemade, homegrown garlic powder! This stuff maintains the more-intense-than-average spicitude of our native variety of garlic. One small head yielded a tablespoon or two of powder. Not much, but certainly better than tossing it. And plenty to flavor the homemade chicken noodle soup we're having for dinner (made from the stock I made yesterday).

I'm not sure of the value of garlic powder as a regular addition to the homemade arsenal. I suppose ideally you'd store your garlic properly and have fresh stuff for almost all of the year. But if you were growing a lot of garlic, you could intentionally dry a portion of the crop to get you through the inevitable few months past practical the storage point for cured garlic. Thoughts?

Cat Bed

My cat has a tendency to choose inappropriate perching places that result in losing books and such between shelf and wall. In an attempt to give her a place of her own, I took an old wooden inbox, lined it with fabric, added her favorite stuffed animal Symmetrical Moose, and voila! With this cozy nook placed in her favorite window, Lionshead is one happy feline.

Roast-Off

Is this picture too subtle for the internet? The coffee in my left hand is the Nicaraguan bean we ordered green and roasted ourselves. The coffee in my right hand is the Peruvian bean we ordered, also home-roasted. The Peruvian beans were noticeably larger and plumper than the Nicaraguan, and I liked this coffee much better. It was rich, without a hint of bitterness, and tasted chocolatey or smoky or something along those lines.

I'm hooked on roasting. It takes about 10 minutes in the oven, and little to no effort--you just can't forget about it. The only foresight you need is to remember to roast it at least 4 hours before you plan to drink it. The night before is perfect.

A Yolk of a Different Color

Lots of things affect the color of an egg's yolk--freshness, quality of the chickens' feed, and...color of feed? I read an article last summer about a farmer here in NM who feeds his bumper crop of red chile to his chickens, which turns their yolks red. (Another fun fact about chickens--they can't taste spicy, making them the perfect natural distributors for the seeds of plants like chiles.) Well, it just so happens that we have ended up with our own bumper crop of peppers--a trash bag of bell peppers, mostly red, from the local dumpster. We've been feeding them to our girls at the rate of about three per day. Check out the difference in yolk color between the egg laid prior to the pepper addition to their diet, and the egg laid after eating peppers for a few days in a row. Wow!

From Whittled Down

New Mexico Farmer Protection Act???

Interesting news in the local paper here. A bill introduced in the state legislature here would protect farmers from liability if their fields are unintentionally contaminated with genetically modified seed. As I'm sure most of you are aware, GM seed companies, especially Monsanto, are notorious for suing farmers for patent infringement when GM contamination blown in from neighboring farms affects their crop. In some cases, the farmer has painstakingly saved seed for decades, developing their own variety of a crop that is wiped out forever when this contamination occurs.

Perhaps the best-known example of this type of litigation is the case of Percy Schmeiser, a canola farmer in Canada whose 50 years of seed saving were wiped out when contaminated "roundup ready" GM seed or pollen blew in from a neighboring farm. Monsanto sued Schmeiser for patent infringement, and won.

Passing this legislation in New Mexico, is so, so important. Furthermore, we need to see legislation like this introduced at the federal level. Unfortunately, the bill has been sent to the Senate Conservation Committee--a bad sign. This fight is going on right now, and you can call your state senator today to ask for his/her support of this bill. Protect our Farmers (and our food)!!!

If you're in NM, you can go to http://www.gmofreenm.com/ or join this facebook group to show your support for the bill and get more information on its progress.