thoughtful consumption

Got enough to get through Thanksgiving?

We won’t get vegetables the week of Thanksgiving, so if you need to stock up or get extra for Thanksgiving dinner, it’s time to visit the store.

Patricia usually updates the store with the latest stuff available by noon Sunday. The cutoff to make the coming week’s delivery is Monday at noon. (more…)

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Twice this week (and it’s only Wednesday) I’ve thought, “I don’t have the time or energy to stop and make something.”

But I hung in there, went to the kitchen, and whipped up stuff. And it was so much better.

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Monday I went to visit Nancy and Jacque of Red Hott Tomatoes. (Yep, I needed goat cheese bad enough to drive to Bowdon.) Even more fun, Chris came with me.

We had a swell time hanging with the dairy goats and a grey cat with too much personality. And meeting new chickens and rabbits. And being bowled over by the amount of work that goes into being a farmer.

Speaking of new rabbits, check out this little girl.

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A couple of months ago, I wrote about problems with bugs in the summertime. So I wanted to report two relative successes with fruit flies and chiggers.

Fruit fly trap

We’ve nearly eliminated the fruit flies with this trap.

The solution consists of water, about a teaspoon of sugar, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, and a couple of drops of dishwashing soap. The yellow color of the bowl helps, too. We put it on the windowsill where the light attracts the flies.

Chigger prevention

I’ve been using Avon Skin So Soft lotion before I go out in the yard. (Well, if you’ve been to my house, you know it’s more bush than yard.) I rub the lotion around my ankles, waist, arms, and neck every time I head out. I use the original lotion pictured here.

I got one chigger bite yesterday after wandering out under-lotioned. It made me realize that I’ve gone for weeks without any chiggers! And I’ve been outside a lot – tending the garden and hanging out with the fish and frogs in our new pond. I’m usually covered in them if I spend anytime sitting around outside in the summer.

Avon now sells Skin So Soft in all sorts of bug sprays, but who wants to put bug spray on every time you go out? It smells bad and goes everywhere. I bought some of that stuff last year, and I never liked using it. I’m much more consistent about putting on some not-too-smelly lotion.

One time I tried a different Skin So Soft fragrance I liked a little better, and it didn’t work so well. So I’m sticking with the original lotion from here on out.

Update: I’ve been bitten a few times recently, and I’ve noticed I don’t react nearly as badly. It’s more like a mosquito bite than the past insanity of itching. Maybe getting a bunch of chiggers primes the immune system to react more violently, and not getting any for a while chills it out. Either way, I’m a much happier camper this summer.

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The CSA program is on vacation this week, so my neighbor and I are trying out the Powder Springs Farmers’ Market tomorrow. It’s in downtown Powder Springs every Thursday from  4 to 8 pm through September. Can’t wait to see what they have.

Click here for a list of other Atlanta area farmers’ markets where you can get your local food fix this week.

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Ah, summer! Fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, and oodles and oodles of crawly things.

I’m relatively tolerant of bugs. Most bugs I try to escort outside. Ants I have learned to kill on sight in the house – not because I want to but because I’ve learned the hard way what happens if you don’t kill the scouts immediately. I kind of like big ants when they’re not in the house. They’re big enough to be interesting individually, and the colony organization is amazing. Little ants I don’t like at all because we have a history. One day years ago, I found a trail of them leading to the pantry where they had swarmed a bag of chips. You could hear them chomping on the chips. I had nightmares about that for days.

Chiggers may be the worst. I can’t go outside in our (admittedly overgrown and woodsy) yard without getting bit by chiggers. Skin So Soft lotion prevents them from biting sometimes, and Liquid Bandage makes them stop itching sometimes. But what a nuisance! The mosquitoes have been bad this year, too, with all the rain. At least, these mosquito bites only itch for a few minutes.

Ticks

And the ticks are out in force this year! I’ve only seen a couple of ticks over the past several years here, but we’ve already found four of what I think were male deer ticks on us – thankfully still walking around!

I killed these ticks by dumping them in an old pill bottle, adding some acetone, shaking it up, and leaving them there. Rubbing alcohol is what people usually recommend, but I didn’t have any of that at the time.  I saw a vet doing this with a jar that was slop full of dead ticks. It seems safer and easier than trying to destroy them physically. If the tick bit you, it’s also a good way to keep the tick around for identification purposes if you get some symptoms later. Here’s more info on what to do if you find a tick already firmly attached. Above all, I recommend not doing Internet searches about ticks. It’s given me a bad case of the willies!

So remember to check for ticks after being outside in tall grass or woodsy areas even if you’ve never had a problem before.

Fruit flies

But what I really want to write about today is fruit flies.

In the past summers, we’ve had serious problems with fruit flies in the house. They don’t carry disease, but they’re very annoying. We assume they come in with food through the kitchen, but they wind up all over the house. They seem to like computer screens.

Last year, we finally found a solution that really works. Fill a bowl near where the flies are with a tablespoon of natural apple cider vinegar (the kind with the mother), a tablespoon of sugar, a couple drops of dish soap, and a cup of water. The flies cannot resist the smell, and they drown in the bowl. Yellow bowls seemed to work best and dark bowls the worst.

I think the necessary ingredients to attract the flies are sweet (= fruit) and fermenting (= decaying) liquids. So you could also try fruit juice and some kind of alcoholic beverage. Just don’t forget the detergent! This year, we’re going to try trub, a yeasty byproduct of brewing beer, instead of the relatively expensive apple cider vinegar

We got rid of a bad infestation in a week or so using this bowl method. We had a bowl in the kitchen, a bowl in the bathroom, and a bowl at both  of our desks. After we cleared out most of flies, we just left a bowl in the kitchen for the rest of the summer. It caught the newcomers quickly so they never spread to other parts of the house. Hooray!

This year, we haven’t had any problems yet, but if (when?) they arrive, we’ll know what to do!

And, tomorrow, I promise to return to more appetizing blog fare.

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Here are some things I’ve learned about goats while visiting Jacque and Nancy Garry at Red Hott Tomatoes in Bowdon, GA.

1. Goats make great stuff.

At Red Hott Tomatoes, I got to meet some goats and sample some of their wares. I had goat milk, goat cheese, and goat kefir. I’d had goat milk before and hadn’t liked it too much. So when Nancy handed me a big glass, I was prepared to sip and smile. Wow, was I surprised! It was really good! The goat milk I had on the farm wasn’t pasteurized, and Nancy and Jacque said that makes a big difference. Having met the goats and their milkers, I had no qualms about downing unpasteurized milk, but anything I had from the store would have been. Sadly, raw milk can’t be sold for human consumption in Georgia.

But goat cheese can! The goat cheese was terrific and not only because I had it on Nancy’s homemade biscuits. It’s wonderfully tasty and useful stuff. It’s got a mild but intensely fresh flavor! After using it in a few recipes, I think you could pair it with any vegetable or herb. The creamy, fresh taste enhances other flavors without overwhelming them. It’s great on roasted beets, on steamed peapods, in salads with toasted pecans, or just in hunks wrapped in sorrel leaves. Mmmm…. It’s like whipped cream for vegetables!

I donate to Heifer International which provides families with goats for milk to drink and sell (and other livestock, too). And they send around wonderful catalogs with happy pictures of the families. Before drinking Nancy’s goat milk, I felt a little bad for these smiling kids with milk moustaches. I’d think “If only they could have real, good-tasting milk from a cow.” Now that I know what their goat’s milk really tastes like, I smile along with them.

2. Goats have character

The lady goats were sociable creatures browsing and hanging out together with Rosie, their guard dog. Like the rest of the animals at the farm, they seemed faintly curious about me but didn’t seem to mind my presence.

Except for Pixie. Pixie is the largest of the farm’s dairy goats. We probably weigh in about the same. So I saw a big goat, and she saw another female threatening her place in line next to Jacque. She never charged, butted, or bit me, but the threat of all three was in the air. She put herself in my way again and again maintaining eye contact the whole time. If she’d been a dog, I would have ignored her displays of dominance until they turned overtly aggressive. Was this overtly aggressive for a dairy goat? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to back down and look like a wuss in front of Jacque (or Pixie), but I surely didn’t want to mix it up either. Thankfully, Jacque was there to keep all this chick drama in check. He’d grab Pixie’s collar or swat her to distract her or keep her in line.

Pixie's on the right.

I appreciate divas of all species, so, to be clear, I have no problem with Pixie, and I’m sure we would have come to an understanding in time.

Divas aside, the buck pen held the most charisma. This bachelor pad is across the farm from the dairy goats and is home to three billy goats, a young bull (or maybe a steer), and a burro named Eeyore. Check out this adorable pair.

And then there’s the billy goat who posed for me like a dog at Westminster.

And then it was Eeyore’s turn.

3. Goats have good friends

Rosie is a dog with a job who was born knowing her business: keeping her herd safe. That’s a full time job with coyotes and roaming gangs of domestic dogs in search of thrills. Jacque says the local dogs are the worst threat because they’re badly behaved in groups and not scared of people smells. But Rosie’s a big girl, and I can imagine a couple of dogs out on a lark would think twice before going a round with her. She has different barks for different critters, and Jacque says he never sleeps as well as when Rosie barks through the night.

Nancy had the best Rosie story, though. For the past few days, Rosie had not been letting the goats deep into the woods to browse. Nancy even saw them one morning where “Rosie had them lined up for a staff meeting telling them not to go into the woods.” Later, Nancy and Jacque heard from a neighbor that a bobcat had taken up residence in the area. See what I mean about this dog? Rosie sensed a new threat, decided she couldn’t ward it off on her own, and took preventative steps to keep the herd away from danger. Can we vote Anatolian shepherds into public office?

In the buck pen, Eeyore is the guard. He’s a rescue burro from Colorado, and I didn’t get his whole story, but it’s clear he’s wary of people. Eeyore loves his goat buddies, though.

He once killed a fox that got into the pen, and Jacque said he could take on a dog.

4. Baby goats are cute.

The baby goats were fun, too. They’re not quite babies any more, more like, well, little kids. They followed Jacque around their pen falling over themselves to find out what he was up to. (He was putting up fencing around the apple and pear trees so the growing goats wouldn’t eat the bark).

And then they had a quick chat with Nancy.

These goats are bottle fed three times a day and have been from birth. Sadly, unlike me and the happy kids from Heifer, the baby goats get pasteurized milk.

Jacque’s a pro and can feed two kids at once.

I was content with my one.

So that’s just some of what I learned about goats. Thanks to Nancy and Jacque for letting me butt in on the farm, and I’ll write more about other animals later!

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The new CSA website is up – www.farmersfreshcsa.com. It has a lot of new information about how the CSA’s going to work this year.

The $100 membership fee is required to subscribe. It comes with these benefits.

But you can buy produce from the online store without being a member. This could be a good option for someone who wants to stick his or her toe in first.

Then there’s more flexibility in what you can add on, too. I’m considering adding muffins in the hopes of getting more Ezekiel muffins.

The standard length is 4 weeks instead of 12. You can set your account to be billed automatically. And you can suspend a delivery with 4 days notice and get credited a future week. That’ll be great for vacations and such.

For reference, last year I had a standard bag with premium additions from October through December. So that’s what you’re looking at in most of my posts. A standard bag is roughly equivalent to a Family Pack, and the premium additions are like the Gourmet + ½ dozen eggs in terms of the 2009 price structure. (Farmers, please tell me if I have this wrong.)

Here is a picture of a standard bag (~= Family Pack) from last July.

Ah, summer! Green beans, spaghetti squash, the best blueberries ever, onions, tomatoes, lambsquarters, butternut squash, and basil.

What do you all think of the new pricing structure? What packages are you considering?

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