I've tried to shy away from political commentary on this blog, but enough is enough. I spent much of last night's VP debate alternately rolling my eyes and being angry. And this morning I feel much the same way. Apparently if you can at least talk and not say anything that a 6th grader would find stupid, you can be a successful VP candidate. Apparently the bar is now so low for Palin that anything counts as a success. The biggest thing I heard last night and this morning is "She did better than I expected". She did better than I expected too, but then again my expectations were terribly low. Is this all we're looking for at this point? It reminds me of that SNL fake commercial for "Lowered Expectations", the dating service for people who aren't quite as good looking or smart or in shape or whatever.
If you could get past the rambling on and on, it became quickly apparently that most of the time Palin was either 1) speaking in gross generalities or 2) contradicting herself or 3) showing herself to be completely in over her head on understanding the nuances of government or 4) just plain saying things that were incorrect. This is the part that made me laugh and roll my eyes.
The part that made me angry is all the stupid Americans who will eat up that hockey mom and Joe Sixpack bullshit hook line and sinker. That's because for a lot of people, it's apparently more important to identify with a candidate than elect someone who will actually help you. Those are the same people who voted for Bush a second time. Can we temporarily suspend their right to vote this election?
Just for grins, here are some of the more crazy things I got from Palin:
- we can't allow Iran to have nuclear energy ... uh make that weapons
- The surge worked so well in Iraq all we have to do is do the same thing in Afghanistan, something the commander on the ground there doesn't even believe.
- Providing a $5000 credit towards health insurance is a zero budget item. Apparently the government doesn't have to pay for that, except with Monopoly money. Luckily Biden called her on this one.
- She kept saying to vote for the party that will give Americans tax cuts. Great idea, that means you are voting for Obama/Biden. The McCain plan mostly gives tax breaks to rich people and corporations.
- She kept saying to vote for the party that wants energy independence, but to her that means drilling for oil that we might have in 10 years rather than focusing on alternative energies and putting money into that. I'm not sure what she means by McCain is using an "all of the above" approach, but she said it a lot of times so I'm sure it will work.
I can go on, but it's just too easy. I hope some people are seeing how ludicrous it is to even have this person in the running besides me.
The Very Good Taste blog has a very interesting idea, put up a list of 100 diverse foods that they think every omnivore should try and have people indicate what they have actually tried. If you want to try this, go to the blog and they have a link to the Wikipedia entry for each food as well if you need a definition or further explanation.
Here are the instructions they are giving. I'm going to do it slightly differently so Kristin can be involved. Anything we've both eaten will be in bold, anything only I've tried will be in italics and anything only Kristin has tried will be underlined. I don't think we've done too badly.
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (Curtis has had alligator)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (do gnats on bike rides count?)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (might have had this as sushi, can't remember)
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer (we've even made our own)
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (can you believe Kristin has never had one)
56. Spaetzle (Kristin makes a mean rendition)
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (all the good ones are)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (used to make sweetbread stew for the B&B)
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (my dad hit a deer with a tractor trailer and brought it home, does that count?)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake
Over the last couple weeks I've run into several folks who are leaving the city for the suburbs and at the same time I'm reading about permaculture, so it's creating some interesting juxtupositions in my head. This morning on NPR they had a story about a lady in the Chicago suburbs who is going around her neighborhood trying to get people to replace lawn with gardens. Their family also recently installed a wind turbine. I applaud her and I'm thankful that some people are making an effort, but ultimately the whole idea of suburbia isn't sustainable long-term, at least given what we know now.
Suburbs are a uniquely American concept, driven by an apparent excess of space, cheap oil and the drive of consumerism to make life as comfortable, private and lavish as possible. Bigger houses, the greenest lawn, strip malls providing all the comforts of the city, albeit in corporate chain stores and cookie-cutter restaurants. But if we really are hitting peak oil, then the current gas prices aren't some short term problem, but merely the beginning of a new reality. Nobody knows for sure, but to borrow an idea from Pascal, I would rather guess we are running out of oil and be wrong than the opposite. Either way, I win.
Some of the power needs of suburbia could potentially be met with alternative energies like wind and solar, but these will take time to ramp up and many suburbanites find the idea of these things in their neighborhoods rather distasteful. That still doesn't answer the question of trucking in all the goods necessary to keep the local economy running, commuting to where the work is and just needing a car to do anything or go anywhere. In Chicago, there is at least light rail to use to get to the city for work, but only major American cities have this option.
In addition, all those huge lawns are a major environmental issue. In addition to using up land that could be used to grow food closer to urban centers, many of them take massive amounts of water and chemicals because lawns are an immature ecosystem in a constant fight against nature. All the plants that are considered weeds in a lawn are simply nature's attempt to take back the soil and turn it into something usable again, to heal the land. If you instead have a diverse variety of trees, shrubs and plants, particularly perennials and native plants, water is conserved, the soil is renewed with all the green matter naturally and you won't need to use pesticides.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what the landscape of America looks like in 50 years. I predict massive moves to either cities or more integrated rural living incorporating alternate energies and food production. Suburbia may end up looking like an incredibly stupid experiment in America's history by the time it's all said and done.
Okay, so today the base sales tax rate for the city of Chicago went up to a whopping 10.25%, the highest in the nation. While I can arguably afford this better than some other folks, anybody who cares about urban poverty knows how regressive sales taxes are. This is courtesy of our idiot a**hole "I got in because my dad was somebody" Cook County Board president Todd Stroger. This guy is a piece of work and this is all going to backfire eventually. You can't just keep taxing people into oblivion and a) expect them to stay and b) expect the economy to flourish. And this obviously comes at a time when so many people are already struggling and gas is over $4 a gallon. Real intelligent.
There has been a ton of stuff going on this summer related to our research into farming and trying to learn new things. I'm getting behind on blogging about it, so here are a few highlights.
Over Memorial Day weekend, we visited our friends James and Esther our in Boulder Colorado. They work as one of the "live on the farm" couples for Haystack Mountain goat dairy. Haystack Mountain is a pretty well established cheese producer, having products in Whole Foods and other national stores. They make all of their fresh cheese at their main cheese factory and they buy much of the goat milk for that from various sources. James and Esther work on the farm where the artisan cheeses are made from goat milk produced right there on the farm. These include raw milk cheeses that are aged anywhere from 2 - 6 months or more. We got to help out with a fairly large cheese make on Memorial Day, Kristin and I were up to our shoulders in the curds and whey for awhile. We helped out with making the Red Cloud and Queso de Mano. You can see all the cheeses here.
We also got to visit a restaurant we've seen featured in some cooking magazines called The Kitchen. They are one of the most eco-friendly restaurants in the country, reusing or recycle almost 100% of their various types of garbage and sourcing about 80% of their food locally. They have a community night where you sit around a long table and eat family-style with about 60 strangers for only $35/person. It's pretty amazing and we got to meet some cool folks. We also visited the Boulder farmer's market, which has some pretty amazing people producing some cool food.
At home, we had the opportunity this year to dig up the backyard of our friends and neighbors Keith and Joni and create a small garden. While it could use more sun for best results, we finally have a small plot of ground to grow some veggies and herbs. We prepped the ground, some of which was under an old sidewalk that we had to break up, using a deep bed concept. We put some composted cow manure and mushroom soil, along with some blood meal and organic fertilizer in the soil as we prepared it. It seems to be working pretty well for the most part. We also added a bunch of our worm compost a week or so ago and noticed a big growth spurt in a lot of the plants, particularly the tomatoes and squashes. We also have several varieties of peppers, several types of basil, a lettuce mix, a mesclun mix, beets, chard, oregano, rosemary, thyme, leeks, beans, sunflowers and some other flowers to attract beneficial insects. I'm probably missing a few things. All in all, quite a nice mix for a small urban garden. So far the only thing we've harvested is some salad greens. We got a bit of a late start and also started a lot from seed, so we're still waiting for some things to really get started. This is mainly an experimental year, so we are learning a lot about how much sun things need, starting plants inside, fertilizer needs and so on.
We are also participating in a CSA this year with Scotch Hill Farms. We picked them partly because they also do goats and grow a number of herbs as well. It's been a bit of a rough start to the season with all the rain (they are just south of Madison), but we've been getting some good stuff and eating a lot more vegetables which is always good. They drop off at the Southport Green Market which is just south of us. They are a fairly new market and still a bit sparse to be honest, but it's great they are trying to do something in that community. A few weeks ago I got to meet Bob and Jenny from Harvest Moon Farms, another couple who are professionals from Chicago who just started farming a few years ago. So they are kind of a few years ahead of where we might like to be. They grow a lot of organic vegetables, including 15 kinds of garlic and plan to start doing pastured beef soon. They also represent a number of other farmers in the Madison area, so their stand at Southport has items from other farms like cheese, maple syrup, whole organic chickens and so on. We are planning to go up to visit them and help out on our way to a college reunion weekend with a bunch of Kristin's Wheaton friends in July. That should be a wonderful trip as we'll get to visit a couple farms and see a bunch of our favorite people.
So I've gotten really behind on my blogging, my current project schedule isn't very conducive to blogging. I often blog on my lunch break, but I've only been taking a half hour lunch lately so I can leave work early enough to beat most of the evening traffic rush.
Anyway, the second farm we visited on our Urbana trip was Prairie Fruits. We were super excited to see their operation as they were the first farmstead goat Grade A certified goat dairy in Illinois. They sell their cheese at the Green City Market and also some Chicago cheese shops and restaurants. We got to hear a lot of stories about the travails of getting a small dairy certified, the current USDA system is just not built to really address the smaller sustainable farming operation. This is something that is ultimately going to need to be fixed if this country is ever to move away from the factory farm system.
Here's a prime example. Typically you have your large factory farm dairy operation with hundreds of cows. The milk is supposed to be tested for antibiotic residue, but due to the volume it really doesn't happen. They just do samples. And yet an operation like Prairie Fruits has to test every batch of milk they do and they don't really use antibiotics in the first place. They ended up getting their own license and certification as a lab so they can do their own testing because it's such a hassle for a small producer otherwise. Another bit of weirdness, you have to have a license to transport milk. So normally, a milk tanker truck pulls up to the farm and carries it off to wherever, sometimes a cheese factory. Since they do everything in the same location, they need the same license to move the milk from the milking parlor to the cheese make room and the two rooms can't share a wall. It's just ridiculous. That's Illinois, who has little experience with farmstead cheese making. Not sure if it's quite that bad in other states.
Visiting this farm was a pretty big deal for us, with a lot of firsts. First time to milk a goat for both of us. First time Kristin got to bottle feed baby goats. First time to use an automatic milking system. We also learned about small batch pasteurizers and some of the other necessary equipment. It gets pretty expensive. So I think we figured out a couple of things on this trip. One, we do really like dairy goats and a lot of the work involved with raising goats. Two, it's a huge time and money investment to get a real artisan farmstead cheese operation off the ground. So we need to do a lot more thinking about that. I've told a couple of people I feel like we learned more from that one day than from reading a book. There are a lot of practical things you really just have to see, like how goats are fed and housed, how long things take to do for a particular herd size, that sort of thing.
So actually a lot has been going on in our ongoing research of all things farming, organic and gardening. We are learning a lot, but there is still a lot to process and I don't want to do too much thinking in public. But I can at least talk about what we've been up to and what we have learned so far. I'll have to do a bit of catching up.
A few weeks ago we took a trip down to Urbana to visit a couple of farms. We drove down on a Saturday morning and spent the day with the Millers on Rush Creek Farm. We met the Millers at a slow food event on the farm where the heritage turkeys are raised that we have purchased for the last couple of Thanksgiving dinners. They both work pretty much full time, but also raise Kiko meat goats on about 10 acres of pasture. They also have some pastured poultry and a horse.
Some more pictures are here.
I've been talking to Kristin about chickens a bit on and off because I really want to have some fresh eggs even if we just do a small hobby farm. And maybe some fresh pastured chicken to eat as well. I grew up on a commercial chicken farm and I have no desire to do that, but heritage or specialty breeds on pasture does interest me. Kristin has never been around chickens and doesn't particularly like birds as a species, so she was skeptical. When we got to the Millers, we found out they had about 60-80 chicks about 8 weeks old in their garage. They were planning to move them out to a pen to get them ready to go on pasture, so we got to jump in and help them catch and move chickens. Kind of a trial by fire for Kristin, but she gamely stepped up and did it and it wasn't as scary as she thought it might be. It was really cool that she got a chance to hold some chicks and also just watch their behavior, which is fascinating. They are such funny creatures. Within about 5-10 minutes of being out of the garage, they were foraging around the small pen, scratching and pecking around and having a good old time. It's pretty obvious when watching chickens that they are really made to be wandering around plenty of pasture, finding worms and grubs and eating vegetation rather than being stuffed in a pen (or even worse a cage) hardly able to move.
As far as the meat goats, they aren't bottle fed and so they are tolerant of human contact, but don't exactly seek it out. The kids were playing up a storm though and reminded us of some extreme sports show as they played around on an old set of concrete steps. Meat goats are certainly not as loveable in general as dairy goats, but they are also quite a bit less work as we were to find out when we visited Prairie Fruits the following day. So the jury is still out for us whether we would ever go that route, but it was good to see what was involved even from just a practical standpoint, such as fencing, cost and type of feed, how they are pastured and so forth.
We finally made our first trip to a dairy goat operation this past weekend. Hopefully more details later, but in the meantime, enjoy a couple of photos.
So the release date for the new Portishead has finally drawing nigh. April 28th in the UK, April 29th in the states. I've heard about 3 tracks now on BBC Radio 1 and it's pretty great. Very big and gloomy. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years. I also hear Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird may be coming out with new stuff as well. Bristol back in the house? Maybe.
One of my favorite cookbook authors, Suvir Saran, waxes philosophical on the wonder of home grown eggs. They have some of the South American Araucana hens, which produce eggs in wonderful shades of blue and green. The deep brown ones are quite lovely as well. Who needs Easter Egg dye when nature creates such a wonderful spectrum of design and color naturally?
Over this past winter I've been reading a lot of books related to sustainable/organic farming and animal husbandry. One recent book I can highly recommend is The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman.
The book is chock full of dense, useable information, much of it applicable for even the backyard gardener with a small plot. Coleman focuses on the amount of land that can be readily maintained by a couple or small family, usually 5 acres or less. He is also a big proponent of using good hand tools and small garden tractors rather than buying a lot of specialized equipment that must be depreciated and cost capitalized before the farmer is making money off the equipment. In this sense, he would probably share a lot of views with Joel Salatin.
There are too many ideas to mention, so I'll just throw out a few highlights that really stuck with me.
- There is still a lot of innovation in small organic farming techniques in certain parts of Europe, where small farms still account for much of the local food supply. Coleman has visited a lot of farms in Europe and in the rest of the world and has lots of tidbits learned from those farmers. In addition, he points out a lot of resources anyone can use to keep up with the latest techniques from these farmers. Also, farming is still considered a high art here and the farmer is considered a professional, a technician, a highly educated person who takes his job seriously and really has to be good at a lot of things to succeed. Contrast that with many modern North American farmers, where government interference, the incompetence of the USDA, the encroachment of chemical companies hawking fertilizers and pesticides as best practice and the loss of a relationship between grower and consumer has left them downtrodden, lacking passion and vision and barely scraping by.
- Crop rotation is your friend. Coleman talks a lot about crop rotation and provides a lot of practical examples and schemes, lots of hints on what plants best follow other plants, the soil impact of various plants and so forth. This used to be standard operating procedure back in the day, but now on today's giant mono-crop farms this idea has been thrown away along with much other practical knowledge. Instead, the soil is treated as nothing more than a growing medium with no value of its own while a vicious cycle of pesticides and herbicides are required for growth. This leaves the soil more and more destitute of nutrients, while impacting the surrounding land and wildlife as well. Not to mention the food just isn't good for you. Instead, Coleman encourages the grower to think of the soil as the most valuable asset you have, one you need to nurture with plenty of organic material and educated care.
- Weak plants attract pests. This was a very interesting concept to me. Coleman says that once you get healthy soil with the right balance of pH, organic matter, minerals, etc. and your plants are healthy, pests tend to be less of a problem. Pests typically attack plants that are already on an unhealthy trend. I'm curious to see if experience bears this out some day. It makes sense though, as much of the rest of nature works that way as well. Coleman doesn't say this will completely end the pest problem, but it goes a long way. Part of the reason as well is due to healthy soil with all the good organisms, as well as a micro-culture in the way you grow that attracts birds and other natural predators to help you keep pests under control. One thing I'm still not clear on, what do you do while you get to this state with your soil and environment. Typically you don't start with the best soil (unless you buy a working organic farm potentially) and it takes at least several years to get to where you want to be.
All in all, I quite liked this book and it gave me a lot of food for thought. It will be one I'm sure I'll return to when the time comes that I actually can put some of these principles into practice. In the meantime, I'm going to try some of the suggestions in our small back porch growing area. One thing we noticed last year is we bought some "cured" manure and it made a huge difference in our plants. This year we also hope to use some of our worm compost and "worm tea", as well as experimenting with some soil amendments if we get a chance.
So I don't usually do these "tagged" things, but I kinda think this one is cool. I was tagged by Scott, he has a pretty obscure set of quotes up. Plus I'm curious if my movie geek friends will get some of these. I'm not sure if the point is to be obscure (something I tend to be without trying) or to pick a quote that is easily guessed. There are some of both here. It helps if you know my varied taste in movies and favorite directors. I'm not going to tag anyone else though, sorry. (Correct guesses I will put in italics)
By the way, here is the premise.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDb. Take a quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly, cross it off the list. I trust you will not cheat (Google).
If you know one of these, put it in the comments and I'll update. I think after a week or so, I'll just put up the answers because some of these are kinda cool.
1. She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
2. Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.
3. I got the pool, she got the pool-man.
4. Hang on tightly, let go lightly.
5. Don't you think one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties? May I ask why a beautiful woman who could have any man in this room wants to be married?
6. Not only did I enjoy that kiss last night, I was awed by its efficiency.
7. -- She sure is the "eat, drink and be merry" girl.
-- Yeah, she'll wind up fat, alcoholic and miserable.
8. My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!
9. I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a ***.
10. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire.
11. -- Who are you?
-- Doesn't matter.
-- What do you want?
-- To kill you.
12. Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have *** for brains.
13. And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.
14. To eat good food is to be close to God.
15. Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Growing up in a Mennonite church, worship and singing meant acapella, 4 part (at least) harmony with no instruments. While I grew to love all sorts of instruments in music and even learned to play some, that experience shaped a love of vocal music in me that remains. There is nothing like a magnificent harmony of human voices in this world.
When the movie Cold Mountain came out a number of years ago, there were a lot of things I loved about it. But one unexpected thing was the use of Sacred Harp singing, something I hadn't exactly been exposed to before. It's a very old American music tradition based in the South which uses an old hymn book called "The Sacred Harp" which uses shaped notes. I was exposed to shape notes growing up, they used to use it to teach sight singing at my school. If you are familiar with the "Do Re Mi" approach, where each note of the scale has a name, it's similar with the addition of a shape to represent each interval in the scale.
Sacred Harp singing always starts with a "sing through" where the singers sing the name of the note first for their part (Do Do Do Re Mi Re Mi). It sounds rather other worldly, until you figure out what they are doing. If you've never been exposed to shape note singing, it probably still doesn't make sense. Combine that with a very joyful and boisterous singing style, not always exactly on pitch, with slides up and down to notes and the end result is quite electrifying. The tradition hasn't really died because there is enough interest that new people are taught in each generation and the singing carries on.
Anyway, there is now a documentary on this American folk art form made by a couple from Atlanta who got into Sacred Harp singing in college. It's actually produced by a couple of the guys from Third Day. The great songwriter Jim Lauderdale from Nashville narrates. It's been playing on some PBS stations, but looks like it might have come and gone before I noticed. You can buy the special edition 2 DVD set on the Awake My Soul website or through Amazon. I really need to check this out. You can also go to the web site to hear some examples.
Boy, do I love this guy. Really great Biblical understanding of the kingdom and God's plans for creation. The fact that what he says sounds unorthodox to many modern evangelicals just shows how far we've slipped from a Biblical understanding of what happens after we die and God's final plans to remake creation. Here he is on Nightline, discussing his new book Surprised By Hope. I'm curious to read this even though I've already read The Resurrection of the Son of God, it's a more accessible approach to all the ideas there that can be more easily understood by everyone. Highly recommended.
I just finished the classic Joel Salatin book "You Can Farm" and found it to be very thought-provoking. One of the things I like most about it is he doesn't just have good ideas and suggestions, I really like his philosophy. He talks about philosophy driving your decisions and while that sounds pretty much "no duh", it's amazing how hard it is to do consistently.
The book was mostly encouraging to me because a lot of his suggestions fall in line with the direction my thinking was already going as far as interests and approach. Some examples include the types of products and services that make money, the idea of using a layered approach to making money (don't do single crop farms) and also that is more important to go slow and make sure you can make money off a little land before you buy a lot of land.
One of the things I'm torn about is one of our main ideas is a dairy goat/artisan cheese farm, which does require a bit more capital and infrastructure. Many of Salatin's ideas are built around low-investment high-yield enterprises, like pastured broilers and hogs. The idea behind these enterprises is you get out more than you put in and you really don't need a barn, a tractor or even a ton of land to get started. One nice thing about goats is you can start small, even as more of a hobby at first. They do require pretty much the most extensive fencing of almost any domesticated animal because they are super smart and love to climb. The other great thing is they aren't particularly picky eaters, making them easy to pasture and they just don't take up nearly the room or feed requirements of larger animals like cows.
Some other important ideas from "You Can Farm": Make education an important part of your marketing scheme. Explain to people why your food is better and why it is worth more. Make sure you are making enough money per hour at whatever you are doing that it is worthwhile. Otherwise, what's the point. Be creative, think function more than form. Don't buy into the corporate farming "wisdom". Don't be a lone wolf, help everyone and accept help from everyone, even those whose methods you don't agree with.
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