Budget Eating and The February Thaw

Budget Eating
People often tell me that it’s too expensive to eat local and organic food.  So I’ve been testing what is too expensive.  Last night’s supper:

• 1 chicken leg and thigh                        $2.25
• 1/4lb radish slaw                                 $ . 50
• 1 cup roasted veg mix                          $1.00

Grand total for a meal with a healthy protein – $3.75 – less than a kid’s meal at any of the fast food joints.  And if I’d been thinking, I’d have deboned the thigh, accumulating chicken bones for stock later.  A nice 2 cup side spinach salad would have added about $1, still totaling less than $5, cheaper than a latte at your favorite coffee shop.

Winter Thaw

When Farmer Paul was growing up on the family’s dairy farm, his Dad would always be ready for the January thaw.  The one or two days during the cold month when temperatures would hit between 35 and 40 degrees. Those were the days when everyone worked outside to get frozen driveways, barnyards and gutters cleaned out.  The scraping, chopping and loading happened with the warm weather while the hauling to fields with the tractors occurred once the ground was again frozen solid.

Yesterday, Farmer Paul had his winter thaw experience.  Instead of cleaning barnyards, he was out frost seeding pastures with clover.  The concept is that by getting the seed on the ground when it’s frozen, it will lay their waiting for the wet warm spring when it will germinate, bury it’s root into the field and start growing.  Never before have we been able to frost seed this early, usually it’s later in March.  It was perfect day to get the chicken pastures seeded.  Next week, we start seeding the tomatoes for the hoophouses.  In the meantime, the spinach continues to be sweet with the below freezing nights.