We Have Sequestered 162 Tons of Carbon!

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In the first seven years here on our farm, we have sequestered over 325,500 lbs of Soil Organic Carbon on 35 acres. We have sequestered as much carbon as the yearly CO2 output from approximately 146 cars. That was accomplished by increasing the soil organic matter on most of the farmland by almost one percentage point. That is without spreading organic matter or fertilizers other than lime. The only manure was the droppings from chickens when they are on the pasture and from the sheep and cows while they are grazing.

The method that we used to sequester the carbon was letting the grass grow a foot or more tall and then grazing or mowing the grass and letting it decompose into the soil. This is a method that we discovered as we mowed the grass in the American chestnut orchard located here on the farm and observed the significant increased growth of the grass and the increased growth, vigor, health, and blight resistance of the American chestnut trees. Grasses have approximately the same amount of root mass and depth as the mass and height of grass above the ground. When the grass is mowed from a height of 24″ down to 4″, the roots slough off from a depth of 24″ to approximately 4″. As these roots decompose, they build organic matter in the soil to the depth the roots had been. It is not just organic matter on the surface of the ground from the mowed grass.

The soil tests that we took are just of the top 6″ of soil and do not represent any increase in organic matter below 6″. It would be interesting to test the soil at a greater depth. The soil test from A&L Eastern Labs tested at the end of 2013 shows that the front pasture closest to the road had an organic matter percentage of 4.6%. A soil test from the small parcel of ungrazed fallow grassland adjacent to the road was used as a control to compare with the front pasture soil test since we do not have soil tests before we started managing the farmland. That small parcel of fallow grassland in years past had been part of the front pasture. That area had soil organic matter of 3.8%. 3% organic matter is considered good soil and 1% is not uncommon on cropland. The soil tests show an increase of .8% organic matter in the front pasture.

Our goal is to build enough organic matter in the soil to try to “drought proof” the pastures and to make the soil like a sponge so that there is very little water runoff when there is a heavy rain. Carbon acts like a sponge and holds moisture and other nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous and keeps them from being leached out of the soil into the Bay. The carbon then releases the water and nutrients to the plants as needed.

One method that we have experimented with to increase the carbon content of the grasses was to spray the grass with a mist of a mixture that consisted of water, raw milk from our cows, a little honey, and some eggs. The milk, honey and egg mixture increases the photosynthesis of the leaves and increases the brix/sugar (which is high carbon) content of the grasses about three percentage points. The sugar is transported from the leaves to the roots. In theory, if we can increase the sugar/carbon production in the leaves of the pasture grasses we should be able to increase the amount of carbon that we can sequester in the soil. We want to experiment with this some more. Last year we did not have enough milk.

Silvopasture Demonstration Plot

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The Forest Service Department of Maryland Department of Natural Resources has asked us to work with them in developing a Silvopasture Demonstration Plot on 10 acres adjacent to the farmland that we are currently farming. It will combine timber/trees with pasture and will give Maryland landowners an example of how they can use their own land to produce timber and at the same time receive income from the land by grazing livestock while the trees grow. The silvopasture will consist of rows of trees planted in a pasture with 50′ grass spacings between the tree plantings. We will provide the livestock to graze the grass and we will also mow as necessary.

The silvopasture concept appears to be an excellent way to increase carbon sequestration on farmland without totally removing the land from food production. We look forward to working with the Forest Service on this project and applying some of the things that we have learned in carbon sequestering to this test plot. There will be some other tree plantings on adjacent parcels that will be used as controls to compare with the silvopasture experiment.


Daniel and Joel cutting up a dead tree at the edge of the silvopasture to get ready to put up a fence for the sheep.

Our Quest for a Better and More Humane Way to Produce Eggs on Pasture

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One hundred years ago, most eggs were produced by true free-range hens on family farms. But as egg production became more mechanized, the chickens were put into confinement chicken houses, with many of them in tiny cages stacked three or four high to get as many hens in a chicken house as possible. In the past 50+ years, much of the knowledge of how to produce eggs on pasture on a larger scale has been lost. In many ways, we feel like we are trying to reinvent the wheel again in regards to pasture-raising chickens because so many of the important little details have been lost. What works for a small family flock of less than 50 hens becomes far too labor intensive when you have 3,000 hens on pasture.

Why would a farm want to have 3,000 hens on pasture? The reason is that in order to have 100% of our income from the farm, and to be able to pay our sons a living wage for working full time on the farm, we have to have enough income. Most small, pasture-based farms receive a majority of their income from off farm sources and are stretched thin making a living off-farm and trying to give adequate care to the farm and animals too. For a farm to try to make a living from only 200 hens would be like a doctor who is a general practitioner only having one or two patients a week,  or a mechanic trying to make a living by changing oil in only two cars a day.

As we looked around at the various methods of raising chickens on pasture, we were not pleased with what we saw. The main promoter of pasture raising eggs, Joel Salatin, recommended the use of moveable hen shelters that one moved on a regular basis to new grass areas. It is a method that makes a good story and that works in the warm months of the year, but when winter comes it is a method that becomes very labor intensive with frozen water hoses and difficult access to the hens through mud and snow. In the wintertime, the pastures quickly get torn up and muddy moving the chickens around. If the hens are kept in one spot the ground gets totally denuded of grass and turns to mud with likely manure runoff and erosion. Salatin’s solution is to move his hens into confinement chicken greenhouses for five or six months during the winter with no outdoor access for the hens. The eggs then are no different than white confinement chicken house grocery store eggs for about half the year. That was not acceptable to us.

To learn how to best raise chickens on pasture we did a lot of research. We visited both the Library of Congress, and the National Agricultural Library several times and researched books and publications that were written in the early 1900’s. Then, taking a blend of old technology and modern technology, we developed, over a number of years, a system that provides a good living environment for the hens, protects the soil and grass from being destroyed, and provides you with a high quality, nutritious,  excellent tasting pasture raised egg.

Our first hen shelter design was the one pictured below. It was stationary. The pasture was divided into six paddocks that radiated out from the shelter. There was a door on each end of the shelter and on each side. Each week we let the hens out a different side of the shelter into a new paddock and let the paddock that they were just in rest for the next five weeks.


This shelter and setup had many problems. The picture was taken the last day we used it. The shelter was too low, and too small for the hens on rainy and cold days. There was not enough space to keep them penned up when it was too muddy for them to be outside. The dark sides encouraged them to lay eggs on the floor. The feed and water were outside. In rain, snow, and the bitter cold, the hens had to go outside to eat and drink. As a result the grass got killed and they tracked lots of mud in and onto the eggs.


We worked with a Soil Conservation consultant, and he helped us design a heavy use area for the hens. We call it the picnic area, and it has wood chips on the ground like a playground. It gives the hens a place to scratch, dust bathe, and dig.  The picnic area is an important management tool that we use help protect the pastures from becoming destroyed and denuded of grass. In the picture above, it is the fenced areas to the left of the shelters. The picnic area is always open for the hens 24 hours a day so that as soon as it starts getting light they can go outside. During the warm months of the year, the hens are let out into the pasture about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning and the gate is closed again at dark to protect them from night predators. The hens are confined to the shelter and picnic area any time that it is too muddy and their little feet would trample the grass into the mud. In the winter time when the grass is not growing, the hens are only let out on the pasture for two or three days a week. This protects the pasture, while allowing the hens to have some grass throughout the winter to help keep up the nutrient content of the eggs. Each week we also bring home 10 to 15 big boxes of organic vegetable trimmings from the stores where we sell eggs, and feed the veggies to the hens. This helps them get their greens when they can’t be out on pasture as much. We also significantly increased the size of the shelters to make it more roomy for the hens. We raised the height of the roof to make it easier to work in the shelters and to let the heat rise and escape from the hens on those hot summer days.


This is inside our new hen shelters. The sides are open at floor level so that the hens stay cool in the hot summer months. In the winter, we cover the sides and one end with clear plastic. The light that comes in the sides close to the floor helps to discourage the hens from laying eggs on the floor.


These are our hen shelters in the winter time. Each flock has about two acres of pasture. The small sheds along the lane beside the shelters are the nest houses where the hens lay their eggs. The nest house concept was an idea that we got from a book written in the early 1900’s. The central lane makes it efficient for hauling feed to two shelters at each stop and also for gathering eggs.


We designed geo-thermal waterers for the hens. The blue barrel, with the bottom cut out is buried halfway in the ground. The waterline from the well is buried in the ground to keep it from freezing and it comes up through the bottom of the barrel. The geo-thermal heat from the soil keeps the water in the small two gallon bucket on top from freezing on all but the coldest nights. The most that it freezes is about an inch on top, which we remove in the morning when we check on the hens. These waterers also help to keep the water cooler for the hens on the hot summer days. Also, for those hot summer days we installed fogger nozzles under the peak of the roof to help keep the hens cool.


We developed a predator-resistant fence that has made life a lot simpler because we don’t have to move the fence like the electronet fences have to be moved. The wires of this fence are electrified. It does a good job of keeping out foxes and other predators and keeping the hens in.


This is one of the nest houses that we designed and custom built. In the nests and the trays are blue astroturf nest pads. The hens lay their eggs in the nests and the eggs roll out into the tray. This design helps keep the eggs clean and simplifies egg gathering.


Inside the nest house. The hens access the nest house through a covered ramp from their shelter. The floor is slatted to discourage them from laying eggs on the floor and to make the nest house self cleaning. That is also important to keep the eggs clean.

Our method of raising eggs on pasture is part of what goes into making some of the best tasting pasture raised eggs you can buy. We do not feel like we have “arrived”, but we continue our quest to have the best, most humane, environmentally sensitive method of raising chickens that we can. We also are continuing our quest to produce the most nutritious meats and eggs that we can for your health and ours. As our slogan says, we are: “More than a farm — A living laboratory researching the secrets of food, health and life.”

Our Quest for a Better and More Humane Way to Raise Chickens on Pasture

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Like most others who raise chickens on pasture, when we first started farming in 2000, we followed Joel Salatin’s method of raising chickens on pasture. The Salatin method of using 10 foot by 12 foot movable pens sounded great, and the description of the chickens getting a fresh salad bar of grass each day and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine were great selling points. But it was not long into that first year that we realized that putting 75 chickens into a 10 foot by 12 foot pen with no floor was not as great or humane as we had been led to believe that it was.

The problems with the Salatin “pull pen” method
Instead of our chickens being in a large commercial confinement chicken house, they were in a small confinement chicken pen. They had much less space to move around than in a big commercial chicken house. It was confinement chicken raising on pasture. Confinement was the very thing we wanted to avoid. The birds only had about an hour after the pen was moved when they could eat fresh green grass. Within an hour, most of the grass became contaminated with chicken manure from the chickens stepping in their wet droppings and walking around on the grass. For the rest of the day the chickens had to lay in their own filth. By the time the pen was moved the next morning there was a mat of manure covering the ground. Not a very humane situation.

Because the chickens were in such tight confinement, they got very little exercise. Therefore, when the pens were moved they did not like to walk very much and it was easy to trap a chicken’s leg under the back of the pen and cripple it. It would then have to be put down because it could not walk properly. That was especially likely to occur when the pens had to be turned around at the end of the pasture.


This was our “pull pen” patterned after the Salatin method our first year of raising broilers. The rope in the front was used to pull the pen forward one pen length to a new clean section of grass – hence the name “pull pen”.

On an ideal warm sunny day, like the one in the picture above, the pull pen looked great sitting in the green pasture. But in the spring and fall when we had cold nights in the 40’s or 50’s and it rained, it was not a very humane situation. The poor chickens had to be on the cold wet ground 24/7. There was no place for them to get off the damp ground. We tried putting down some hay in the pens, but it took a lot of hay and the hay quickly got wet also. We have heard of chickens dying during a rain storm because their pen was in a low spot or a place in the pasture where the water ran through the pen.

On the flip side, when it was hot, the pen turned into an “easy bake oven”. We lost chickens because of heat stress. The pens were too far out in the pasture to run electric for fans.

The pull pens also required a lot more labor than what we had thought they would. So we looked for a better method.

Day Range Method
The next year we tried the Day Range method of raising broiler chickens. The shelter was stationary and had a slatted wood floor to keep the chickens up off the ground. The feed and water were outside on the pasture. We set up an electric fence on one side of the shelter and the chickens had full access to the grass in that paddock. That solved a lot of the problems with the Salatin pull pen method. The grass stayed much cleaner and there was much more fresh clean grass for the chickens to eat. The chickens got a lot more exercise and because of the exercise, it took a week longer for them to get to market weight. They had a floor that kept them up off of the damp cold ground and the higher roof of the shelter allowed the heat to rise away from the birds better on hot days. A number of our customers commented that the chicken meat had a better flavor and texture.


Our Day Range shelter in our early years of raising chickens on pasture.

The Day Range method had its problems too. The raised slatted floor created a breeding ground for flies and we produced an abundance of flies. Sigh!! Chickens wake up just before dawn, which is about 5:00 am in the summer. By the time we opened up their shelter at 7:00 or 8:00 am they were starved and would dash out to the feeders, fill up and then go back into the shelter to rest. They did not eat as much of the pasture as we wanted them to. The mixture of feed and manure around the feeders killed the grass and made bare spots that would last for several months. The bare spots became a problem after a number of batches of chickens had been run through the shelter. I did not feel like I was being a good steward of the soil and the pasture because the grass was being destroyed rather than being built up.

We continued to modify things in the Day Range method over the next number of years until we developed the method that we use now which we call the Jehovah-Jireh Method.

The Jehovah-Jireh Method – Let Them Run
“Jehovah-Jireh” means “The Lord will provide”. Over and over, we ask God to teach us how to farm and to give us answers to our problems. The method that we now use is one of those answers. We feel it is a much better and more humane method of raising chickens on pasture than anything else that we have seen or tried.

The shelters are large, airy, and stationary. The sides are open on all four sides. The roof has an 11 foot high peak that allows the heat in the summer to rise and escape away from the chickens. We also installed fogger nozzles on the shelters to provide a cooling mist on those really hot days. In the early spring and late fall, if it is cold and windy, we close up one end and a side of the shelter to provide a windbreak.

The floor is a bedding pack of wood chips. When the wood chips become contaminated with manure, we rototill the manure into the bedding pack and bring up drier bedding. Periodically we also add more wood chips to keep the bedding dry. It solved our fly problem. The manure and wood chips in the lower layers of the bedding pack decompose into compost which we apply to our gardens.

The feed and water are kept inside the shelters. Now, when the chickens wake up at 5:00am, they can have their breakfast right away. Then when the doors on the shelter are opened a little later in the morning, they are more ready to roam around and eat grass and look for bugs. The grass in the broiler pasture has been steadily improving in quality and is now the best pasture on the farm. We can see that difference in quality when we put the cows in that pasture. They always give more milk. The chickens now have access to a lot of fresh clean grass, even at the end of the summer.


The broiler chicken shelters in our current setup.


The broiler chickens on fresh, clean pasture.

We continue our quest to have the best, most humane, environmentally sensitive method of raising chickens that we can. At the same time, we also are continuing our quest to produce the most nutritious meats and eggs that we can for your health and ours.

Homesteading In the City

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Homesteading in the city is a practical, efficient, and cost effective way of providing high quality, great tasting, nutrient dense food for your household. It is a method of homesteading that many people have overlooked. Homesteading in the city does not require any land, and you don’t have to move or quit your job. It also avoids a lot of the problems with the traditional method of homesteading, plus it significantly reduces the amount of work required. First we will look at the problems with the traditional method of homesteading and then look at the advantages of homesteading in the city.

What most people promoting homesteading will not tell you is that the traditional method of homesteading is a life of poverty unless you have a source of outside income. Homesteading is a smaller version of a small farm and has little income. The great difficulty of trying to make a living from a homestead is seen in the following statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest statistics that the USDA has for farm income is for 2004. While those statistics are not current, what they reveal has probably not changed much. According to the statistics, 82 percent of all the farms in the U.S. had less than $100,000 in sales of farm products, while 18 percent had more than $100,000 in sales, and only 8 percent had more than $250,000 in sales. For a farm to have $100,000 in sales may sound like it is doing well, but the profit margin is very low. After all the expenses are subtracted off – farmland land rent or mortgage, fertilizer, seeds, fuel, equipment costs, animal purchases, vet bills, feed, electric, supplies, etc. there is very little left of the $100,000 to pay the farmer or homesteader for their labor. The USDA report states: “For the 82 percent of U.S. farming operations that have annual sales of $100,000 or less, off farm income typically accounts for all but a negligible amount of farm household income.” (http://www.usda.gov/documents/FARM_FAMILY_INCOME.pdf) This is an incredible and sad statistic. 82 percent of all the farmers in the U.S. make practically nothing off of farming.

The bottom line is that homesteading is not self sufficient financially. A person almost has to have off homestead income in order to have enough income to cover living expenses and medical costs.

Another problem with the traditional concept of homesteading is the economy of scale is too small. A homestead tries to raise everything it needs and has a little of this and a little of that. The homesteader can end up spending almost all their time raising their own food, preserving it, spinning, weaving, splitting firewood, developing the homestead, etc. just trying to exist. For example, it takes almost as much time to care for one beef cow as it would to take care of 50. Each type of animal, type of poultry, each species of vegetable or fruit requires a certain amount of time, equipment, and expertise. The more different kinds of things that one tries to raise, the greater the chance that other things will suffer because there is not enough time and expertise to produce the quality and quantity of food that is desired.

Homesteading in the city (or in the country) that I am recommending takes on a different approach. My mother practiced homesteading in the city and I got the concept from her, even though she never called it homesteading. Our family lived on a small 1/3 acre lot in town with 40 full grown trees on it. There was no place to have a garden. She did have a spot where she was able to have several tomato plants. Instead of growing our own food, my parents sourced some of it from local sources that they trusted. My parents bought a large 20+ cubic foot chest freezer which they kept well stocked with food. They bought a quarter of a beef each year from a farmer. Sometimes they bought a number of jugs of milk from my uncle that had a dairy farm and put them in the freezer. Another uncle planted a number of rows of sweet corn at the edge of his corn field each year. We would go to their farm for corn day and process 1200 to 1500 ears of corn, cutting the corn off the cob and putting it into freezer boxes. It was like a holiday, except we socialized by working together. My mother would go to a local orchard each year and buy three to five bushels of Red Haven peaches. We would help her can them so that we would have great tasting peaches to eat that winter. She would often buy several 20 pound boxes of blueberries when they were in season and put them in smaller containers and put them in her big freezer treasure chest.

Homesteading in the city is not about trying to grow all of your food or even to preserve all your own food. It is about buying food from local farmers and sources that you know that have a great tasting product and that is nutrient dense. It is buying food in bulk in season and freezing it or canning it for the rest of the year. Homesteading in the city is letting others do the hard work of raising the meats or fruits and vegetables, and you reap the rewards of their labor. It is about being part of community rather than being individualistic.

And since you are homesteading, don’t forget to buy “insurance” for your big freezer that is filled with all those delicious, nutritious treasures. If the power goes out you don’t want to lose all that wonderful food. The “insurance” is a generator. It does not have to be a whole house generator, and it only needs to run several hours each day to keep the freezer and your refrigerator from warming up too much. A 3000 watt generator can be purchased for a little over $300 or a 5000 watt generator for about $600 and will last for many years.


The right tools make homesteading in the city easier. We bought several of these propane burner units this year and are very pleased with them. They are similar to a turkey fryer burner, but they produce a lot more heat (170,000 BTU’s) than a turkey fryer ( 40,000 BTU’s). It is also much more fuel efficient than the propane weed burning torch that we used to use. You could use a large galvanized wash tub with this burner to can 19 quarts at a time. The burner is available from Agri Supply for only $39.95 http://www.agrisupply.com/carolina-cooker-12-in-cooker-stand-and-burner/p/49469/

In addition to keeping the heat out of the house, we feel this method is much safer than canning on a stove top. A person is not as likely to burn themselves with the hot water when taking jars out of the canner. The burner is only 12 inches high and very sturdy, which keeps the canner close to the ground. It is much easier to take the jars out as well.


You can also make your own mini walk in cooler with a window air conditioner and a Coolbot. I first saw this idea used at Cathy’s uncle and aunt’s house. He had made a closet (about two feet deep and six feet wide) into a reach in refrigerator where they could put things from the garden. He used a small 6,000 btu window air conditioner as the cooling unit. There are many times when a fruit or vegetable is available, but you don’t have time that day to freeze or can it. It needs to be refrigerated so that it can hold until you have time to get it put up. This summer when we put in a new walk in cooler for the eggs, we used a Coolbot controller and a high efficiency window air conditioner. With this setup, we use 30% less electricity than with a conventional walk in cooler refrigeration unit and it is a fraction of the cost.

The Coolbot was designed by a farmer for their CSA farm. It can be purchased here: http://www.storeitcold.com/

Here is a suggestion for a homesteading food gathering trip in the Lancaster Pa. area:
The first stop is Community of Oasis at Bird-in-Hand 60 N. Ronks Rd, Ronks Pa 17572 http://www.reallivefood.org/
Oasis has organic, grass fed, raw milk for a reasonable price. They also have a large variety of cheeses. Their drinkable yogurt is very good.  .

Next door in the same building is Lancaster Ag. There you can buy soft rock phosphate and high calcium lime for your garden or raised beds. They also carry garden blends of organic fertilizers.

Continue north on Ronks Rd. several miles to the village of Bird-in-Hand. There, just down from the corner at 2805 Old Philadelphia Pike is the Bird-in-Hand Farm Supply store. It is an Amish hardware store with prices that are considerably lower than Lowes or Home Depot. There you can buy a quality Amish made pulley style clothes line. But the real find is their food room hidden on the left side of the store. We did not find it until the second time we visited the store. There you can buy raw organic cheese for $4.35 a pound in five pound blocks. The price is a little higher for smaller sizes. They also have some of the best prices on canning supplies. You have to look carefully, most of the food is not organic, but there are some great deals on some other food items as well.

If you need some organic potatoes, continue east on Old Philadelphia Pike toward the town of Intercourse. On the left is an Amish farm with a white house that has a sign for organic potatoes. We have purchased 50 pound bags of potatoes from them several times when we ran out of potatoes. Note: most Amish farms are not organic and do not use organic practices. Just because Amish farms are selling produce along the side of the road does not mean that it is nutrient dense, health giving food.

The last stop is several miles north of Bird-in-Hand on Ronks Rd. On the right you will find Miller’s Natural Foods. It is a large health food store on an Amish farm.

One of the real joys of homesteading in the city is the satisfaction of having a bunch of good food in the freezer, or canned on the shelf. It gives you a feeling of self-sufficiency knowing that you don’t have to run to the grocery store every time they are calling for a snowstorm to make sure you don’t run out of food. It also gives you a satisfied feeling, knowing that you have stored away some really good healthy food for the winter.

Happy homesteading!

How to Make Great Tasting Stuffed Eggs

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Have you ever noticed how popular stuffed eggs are at picnics? It seems they are often all eaten. They are a wonderful way to eat eggs.

For the best tasting stuffed eggs you need to begin with eggs that have been raised right; eggs that taste wonderful because of the wonderful grass and nutritious feed the hens ate. Of course, fresh eggs are the best. But you may have noticed that fresh eggs don’t typically peel well. There is an easy remedy for this. If the eggs are less than 2 weeks old, bring the water in your kettle to a boil before you put the eggs into the kettle. When the water is boiling, add the eggs with a slotted spoon into the cooking pot and bring the water to a boil again. Then immediately turn the burner down as low as possible and cook the eggs for 10 minutes. As soon as your 10 minute timer goes off, let the coldest tap water run into the kettle until the eggs are cooled. If you don’t want the water to run that long, run the water for a little and then add ice to cool down the eggs quickly. This also helps to avoid making the eggs in which the outside of the yolks turn gray. There is nothing wrong with an egg like that, but it doesn’t look as appetizing.

When the eggs are cooled, peel them and cut each egg in half lengthwise. Carefully pop the yolks into a pie plate or other flat dish. Use a potato masher or fork to mash the yolks.

Now for the great taste I’m going to give some general instructions rather than exact measurements. It is the cook’s prerogative to taste the food to make sure it is just how you want it.

Add some mayonnaise and a little mustard; enough to make the mashed yolks creamy instead of dry. Add a little onion powder or maybe a little minced onion. Sprinkle on a little salt if it needs it. Stuffed eggs are also wonderful with a little dill weed in the yolks or some curry powder. Be creative and add whatever spices you think you’d like. Just remember that you can always add more, but you can’t take out spices so start with a little.

I like plenty of yolk mixture in my stuffed eggs so I always get rid of a few misshapen egg whites. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture so that it is mounded a little over the egg white shell and so that you can’t tell which end of the egg white the yolk was. When the eggs are all stuffed, you can sprinkle some dill or paprika or some other spice on top of the eggs if you so desire.

Happy Egging!

Eating Nutrient Dense Foods – The Role of Brix is Not What We Thought

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Testing fruits and vegetables for brix, the percent sugar, does not appear to be as reliable a method for testing their mineral density as previously thought. International Ag Labs released a report earlier this year in which they tested butternut squash samples for nutrient density from 29 different sources. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the explanation of the nutrient density standard that was used to rank the samples. However, the results show some interesting things:
The brix reading does not correlate with protein content.
The brix reading does not correlate with calcium content.
The brix reading does not seem to correlate with any other mineral content.

What this report shows is that testing the brix of fruits and vegetables produced by someone else, such as from the grocery store or from a farmer’s market, or even from your own garden, is not a reliable indicator of nutrient density. However, that does not mean that testing the brix content is worthless. In general, a higher brix squash tended to have a higher mineral content. Also, this test was an evaluation of only butternut squashes and not all fruits and vegetables.

Last summer, I started questioning the accuracy of testing fruits and vegetables for brix to find the mineral content. Our green beans were only 7 brix (between good and average on the brix chart with 10 being excellent), but the yield was incredible, and the taste was some of the best I had ever eaten and the beans were very tender. The leaves of the green bean plants were 15 brix. I did a little testing and found that doubling the moisture content cuts the brix reading in half. Cutting the moisture content in half doubles the brix reading. Therefore, knowing the moisture content (dry matter percent) is important if you are comparing the brix between two fruits or vegetables grown in two different locations.

But! Before you throw out your refractometer as a worthless test instrument, the refractometer is an important test instrument in your garden. If you can get the brix of the leaf of the plants above 12 brix, the bugs will pretty much leave the plants alone. You can test the plants to make sure that any nutritional spray, such as milk, honey and egg spray, is increasing the brix reading in the leaf. Also, if you have put down soft rock phosphate and high calcium limestone on your garden, you know that the minerals are there at a higher level, even if the brix reading of the vegetables does not test in the excellent range, especially if the leaves of the plant test 12 brix or higher.

This summer, it has been difficult to keep the brix reading of the leaf high because of all the rain and cloudy weather that we have had. It is the sun shining on the leaf that helps make the sugar in the leaf. We have had a lot more problems with Japanese beetles this year, and I believe it is because of all the rainy weather.

The squash study by International Ag Labs highlights the importance of growing our own food or purchasing it from someone we know who has put the minerals into the soil. Eating nutrient dense foods is not as easy to accomplish as we would like it to be, but it is vitally important for our health.

The results of the butternut squash study can be found at this link:
http://marketgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Compiled-Butternut-Squash-Data.pdf

Pulled Chicken

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This recipe is a form of BBQ chicken, but has a unique flavor because of the orange juice and lots of cayenne pepper sauce. Yes, 1/3 cup is the right amount of hot sauce. Cayenne pepper sauce is a milder variety of hot sauce that adds tang and flavor, not just heat. If your chicken is large, just double the amount of sauce you prepare. This recipe is delicious served with mashed potatoes.

2 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pounds), cut into quarters
1/3 cup cayenne pepper sauce*
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

In a 5-quart Dutch oven or sauce pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and green pepper and cook until tender and browned, about 20 minutes. When vegetables are tender, add chicken quarters, cayenne pepper sauce, orange juice, brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 1 hour or until chicken is very tender.

With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken to large plate, cool slightly. Skim fat from sauce in Dutch oven. Remove meat from bones; discard bones and skin. With two forks, pull meat into large shreds. Return meat to Dutch oven. Cook, uncovered, over medium-high heat until heated through.

From Good Housekeeping Best Chicken Dishes.

Sunday Fried Chicken

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This chicken recipe is a little more involved, but always worth it. There’s always extra coating left after I’ve coated the chicken pieces. I put the extra coating in a ziploc bag in the freezer and label it. Then I use it for a coating for any meat I want to fry.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon pepper (optional)
Chicken pieces from Jehovah-Jireh Farm
Cooking oil (I recommend coconut oil)

Combine all ingredients except chicken and oil. Place about 1 cup flour mixture in a paper or plastic  bag. Shake a few chicken pieces in the bag at a time, coating well. On medium-high, heat 1/4 inch of oil in a large skillet. Brown chicken on all sides; remove to a shallow baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes or until done. Recipe makes enough coating for three chickens. Store unused mixture in an airtight container.

Newly Revealed Dangers of Eating Roundup® Tainted Food

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Most pastured poultry producers use conventionally grown feed (either GMO or non-GMO) for their chickens because it is half the cost of organic chicken feed. They are able to offer what appears to many as the same product at a much lower cost than what we can provide. We remain committed to using organic feed because in the end, when all the health care costs are figured in, it is probably at least half the cost of using conventionally grown chicken feed. Actually, a person’s health can’t be measured in dollars. Many terminally ill people would gladly give all they had just to have true health.

GMO grain is only part of the problem in causing health problems. Newly released research shows that trace amounts of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, are slowly and silently degrading people’s health. Farmers us glyphosate to kill cover crops, grass, and weeds so that they can plant the new crop. It is an important part of no-till farming, which is the method most conventional farmers use.

I remember, back when we first started farming, that farmers were being told that Roundup was completely harmless to people. We were told it only affected plants, and when it touched the soil it was neutralized. That was false information. I believe that most farmers are totally ignorant of what they are doing to other people’s health by their use of herbicides, pesticides, and GMO’s in the food that they are producing. In addition, for many farmers, money clouds their thinking and practice; not because they are greedy, but many of them have their backs to the wall financially and do not see it as possible financially for them to produce organic food.

New research shows that trace amounts of glyphosate is found in corn, soybeans, wheat and sugar grown on ground where Roundup was applied. These trace amounts of glyphosate inhibit enzymes in the gut and prevent the body from detoxifying other chemical residues and toxins. The result is many of the modern diseases.

The abstract of the new report in Entropy reads:

“Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the “textbook example” of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins.” (Emphasis added)

You can read the full report at this link: http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

The bottom line is: if you want to get sick, eat as much food as you can that has ingredients from conventionally produced corn, soybeans, wheat, and sugar beet sugar. Eating out for lunch or dinner is a great way to get these glyphosate contaminated foods.

Our family is committed to providing you with food that will give you health. Thank you for your support by purchasing our products and making it possible.