| | Vegetarian Homesteading: Back to the Land, Gently!
Getting "back to the land" is part of the legacy of the "hippie" culture of the late '60's and early '70's. But it's also the reality of our grandparents and great-grandparents as they struggled to make a home and make a living in a new country. The same can be said for the choice to eat vegetarian. There was a burst of interest from the "peace and love" idealism of the '60's, but the roots of the trend go far back in history and far afield into other lands and cultures.
The combination of eating low on the food chain and growing your own food on your own land seems somewhat rare, at least in our area. We've met a few vegetarians, but most buy their food or just grow a small garden to supplement their diets. Two of the biggest stumbling blocks in our climate are managing to eat locally year-round and food preservation.
Animals traditionally supplied homesteaders with motive power for field work, transportation to town, a source of cash income, and with much of their diet. Meat, milk, eggs, cheese, cooking fat, and honey were seldom store-bought. Vegetables and grains were raised in season, and what you couldn't grow or process could be purchased by selling animals or animal products. But with cows now outnumbering humans in the U.S., the methane that the cows pass becomes a co-factor in human-induced climate change, especially when you consider that methane has 23 times the effect on global warming as carbon dioxide. And nitrous oxide, a breakdown product of both manure and synthetic nitrogen ferilizers, has an impact 296 times as great as carbon dioxide! Al Gore, the cattle farmer, didn't mention this in "An Inconvenient Truth". How convenient! If you would like to read an excellent WordWatch article by Sarah DeWeerdt on the subject of greenhouse gases, food transport, growing methods, and the choice of foods we eat, called "Is Local Food Better?", just Click Here.
Veggie homesteading involves not just giving up animal stuff or eating only what you yourself can grow. Our version of the concept includes:
- a vegetarian or vegan diet, for a number of reasons
- raising animals (sheep and chickens) as "pets", to live out their full lives grazing
- composting all of the animal and human "wastes" to improve our soil's organic matter
- extending our growing season with cold frames, a greenhouse, and plant covers
- choosing crops that work well with our climate, soil, and dietary needs
- using low- (or no-) energy processing and storage methods to preserve food for winter
- selecting and saving our own seed stock for next year's crops
Our diet is best described as what we call "Midwestern Macrobiotics". This includes seasonal eating of local foods, and a balance of polarized forces (as in traditional Macrobiotics), but it's based more on our actual climate, weather fluctuations, and daily activity levels. It also relies on a rather poorly disseminated principle called the "biological transmutation" of mineral elements. Instead of, for instance, taking a calcium supplement to get more calcium (direct substitution), you might take in more potassium, silicon, or magnesium. This depends upon a healthy bacterial culture in your intestines working to regulate the availability of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, among others. If you'd like to read more about it, from an English translation of Dr. Loius Kervran's original work, just Click This Link and choose your chapter.
So why did we become vegans? For myself (Bob), I was a bicycle racer, and the rat research studies I read showed that rats on a vegetarian diet had much greater stamina in "swim 'til you sink" testing. There's more detail on this below in a section called "What we eat and why". I could say that the change in my diet initially happened due to some altruistic spurt in my youth, but I'd be lying. In fact, I think that vegetarians/vegans may be more similar to subsistence hunters and homesteading animal eaters than they think. Don't laugh me off just yet.
Consider how conscious the typical urban meat-eater is regarding where their food comes from. Cows are called beef, pigs are called pork, chickens are poultry, etc., etc. Nobody sees the live animals and they certainly don't see how they are killed (oops, I mean processed, dressed out, dispatched, etc.). Just think of the typical fast-food burger commercial showing jocks or construction workers ravenously "wolfing down" huge greasy burgers. The highly paid advertisers show us that kids love meat, women love meat, heck, EVERYBODY does (as long as they aren't looking "it" in the eye)!
Compare this to the homesteader raising a few animals for eventual slaughter. Chances are good that the animal will have a name and a relationship to someone in the family. When the animal is killed it's done as quickly and "humanely" as possible, those closest to the animal will no doubt be saddened, and perhaps a word of thanks is said at the dinner table. Think of Joel Salatin's example in Michael Pollan's book, "The Carnivore's Dilemma".
Or compare it to the subsistence hunters who, for a brief time, attempt to enter the mindset of his/her prey's predator. They pay dearly for a permit to hunt the animal and often buy expensive equipment to help them kill certainly and quickly. They consume the meat and often utilize some other parts of the body, such as the skin (hide). This is a fairly pale imitation of the Native American model of reverence, thanks, some regret, and complete use of the entire animal, but at least it's an attempt. In case you're wondering, yes I was a hunter, but many, many years ago. So if you think I'm just an anemic, starry-eyed idealist, guess again! I've been in your shoes, but can you say the same?
Finally, think of the vegetarian/vegan who has ethical qualms about unnecessary death, or just thinks about consuming less from the top of the food chain. This leaves more grains/beans available for the starving multitudes and puts them at lower risk for pesticide and heavy-metal consumption. The amount of consciousness or concern generated over what they're eating is similar to the hunter or the homesteader, but is quite dissimilar to the clueless urbanite. Let's face it, everybody kills to eat, whether it's cows or lentil sprouts. But I can look a carrot "in the eye" without feeling squeamish when I bite into it. It's funny how cows don't seem to like this as much!
And if you just think vegans are quaint, masochistic, or just plain stupid, try reading T. Colin Campbell's book "The China Study", published in 2005. As a leading nutrition researcher with top-level credentials and tons of studies in tow, when he tells you that eating ANY amount of animal protein greatly increases your risk of cancer (all types), heart disease, diabetes, and all of the autoimmune diseases, it's hard not to listen. To find out more about this book, just Click Here to get to the China Study website.
Beef and dairy products contain subtances that promote inflammation, and inflamation is a step that leads to cancer. Check out some interesting articles about prostaglandins and inflamation on Dr. Ronald Hoffmans's website www.drhoffman.com, part of which is reproduced here:
Quoting Dr. Hoffman, "Since the prostate is a rich source of prostaglandins, some of which play a part in the inflammatory process, inflammation is a special problem for this organ. The different types of prostaglandins mediate in a sort of yin-and-yang way in the body. The "bad prostaglandins" constrict blood vessels and bronchial tubes, produce inflammation, and may exacerbate symptoms of PMS in women. The "good prostaglandins" reduce inflammation, and cause blood vessels and bronchial tubes to dilate. Accordingly, an imbalance in prostaglandin metabolism could easily set the stage for chronic inflammation of the prostate. I don't think anti-inflammatory medication is a good long-term solution, since in order to reduce inflammation it inhibits all prostaglandins -- the good ones as well as the bad ones. If we could find a way to selectively inhibit the bad prostaglandins without inhibiting the good ones, we'd have a good therapy for prostatitis. ("Good" and "bad" are relative terms, of course, since inflammation and constriction of blood vessels are to some extent a useful response to a wound or an infection.)
One way to restore prostaglandin imbalance is to provide the precursors of the "good" prostaglandins, which are the essential fatty acids (EFAs), i.e., alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid. These are present in good ratios in flaxseed oil, which may therefore support the prostate in making the "good prostaglandins," the ones that reduce inflammation. The "bad prostaglandins" are derived from arachidonic acid, which is present in meat, so a diet high in meat and dairy products may contribute to prostate disease. Gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), found in primrose, black currant, and borage oil, may also help soothe the inflamed prostate."
This is hard to reconcile with the opinions voiced by Sally Fallon in "Nourishing Traditions", and the Weston A. Price Foundation. In my opinion, Price's original 1930's research into dental health has been twisted into a marketing scheme for small-scale meat and dairy producers. While the foundation and I have many things to agree upon, their "requirement" of animal fat, meat, and dairy is unsupported both by Price's work and by the scientific community, especially if you consider the full health and environmental impact of this extremism! If you'd like to see the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation website, and read some of the actual research conclusions of Drs. Price and Pottenger, just Click Here. While I also agree with some of Dr. Pottenger's work, it was based on feeding cats, which are strictly carnivorous, not on omnivorous humans who can thrive nicely on a non-animal diet!
For this and other reasons I don't criticize others for what they choose to eat, as long as
- they are at least minimally conscious of what it is they are actually eating,
- they experiment to find what works best for their genetic backround, not just their cravings/addictions,
- they consider the health and environmental consequences of others following the same dietary plan, and
- they don't get either appologetic to me, or angry at me, when I don't consume what they do!
Elitist? Don't get me started!
While conversing recently with a friend about being a vegetarian, she mentioned an aquaintence who told her she was being ELITIST by trying to only eat only ORGANICALLY GROWN foods. As she saw it she was trying to support ecological growers, reducing her consumption of poisons, eating more nutritious and nutrient-dense, fresher, more local food, and doing some good for the planet. As he saw it she was setting herself apart from others by choosing not to eat what they ate, paying too much for her food and showing off her means by doing so, and stacking Organic on top of Vegetarian to boot!
All I could think of was how this conversation would have looked to my grandparents. Growing their own food on the farm and trading or selling the excess for incidental items or foods they couldn't grow was the norm, as was Organic Farming! The ELITIST would have been a child who grew up to despise things grown in the dirt and manure, preferring processed, refined, modified, hybridized, synthetic-fertilizer-grown, modern foods instead. Their hope would be for a rebellious child, such as Larisa or me (Bob), to grow up questioning the status quo that grew out of cheap oil, abundant petro-chemical fertilizers and biocides, factory "farming" (CAFO's, animal concentration camps), genetic modification, cheap foreign slave-labor imports, and the resulting loss of soil, quality of life, small-scale local farms, and parity-priced foods. And yes, the cost at the till is higher if you want truly nutritious food grown in a decentralized, sustainable way, paying a living wage to the growers. And since we all pay the taxes that support "commodity-food" growers by funding their subsidies, buyers of Organic foods actually pay WAY more than those who buy non-Organic!
The elitist is a product of the post World War II rush to synthetic modernity, not the other way around. Cheap food prices don't monetize the true social and ecological costs of this government subsidized, "welfare" system of agri-business. Eating what your body is "designed", or evolved for is not elitist, it's just smart. And for us, if it's not fresh it's dead, and we try not to eat dead stuff. You can be a modern elitist if you like, importing the cheaper "foreign crude", but I just like a little more control over my personal fuel supply.
Predators and Prey
After reading the recently published book, "Gardeners of Eden" by Dan Dagget, where he makes a strong case for grass-fed meat consumption based on the ecology of the American West, I felt like he missed the point in his own argument. He was pointing out that both grazing animals and fire (and other types of soil disturbance) improve western soils in terms of organic matter, water retention, water inflow, and species complexity. He says that grazing animals are safer than fire now that human habitation is more common, and that grazing animals, pressured by predators to move frequently, put grasses through a pulsed cycle of growth that improves the environment. The point he seems to have missed is that humans have replaced the predators which normally pressure the grazing animals; we've killed 'em off and replaced them with us! Instead of polarizing the discussion into "leave it alone completely" (desertification and species loss), "burn it" (unsafe for human dwellings), or "managed grazing" (all good!), why not add back the predators we've nearly destroyed? Why do the ranchers and cowboys all complain to the government when a few cows get killed by wolves? Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? Why is it always about human profit before ecology? If you're writing about environmental solutions, maybe ranching is just the carnivorous human's choice, not necessarily what's best! Things look different when you haven't eaten meat for over 30 years.
Our Homestead Economy
If you're a regular purchaser of lottery tickets you're probably after MegaBucks. But at our little homestead we've achieved financial success by seeking "NegaBucks". Like Amory Lovins' NegaWatts, NegaBucks is a term referring to conservation. In this case it's money you didn't need to earn because you found a way to not spend it. The result is fewer hours spent doing what you don't want to do for somebody else, and more hours spent following your own agenda. Working toward your own ends is like using electrical power directly from a solar panel. It's more efficient because you've eliminated the "middleman" (in electrical use that's the power company or your battery storage). You lose the job, all of the transportation costs to get to it, the time spent commuting and working away from home, and the chunk taken in taxes by the Feds and the State.
The core of NegaBucks is record keeping. As a long-time bookkeeper, this is Larisa's game. Thanks to her well-designed Excel spread sheets and Quicken, we always know where we're at and what can happen next. When you see all of the details of what you're spending you're less likely to just toss money around. We don't typically spend small quantities. We plan ahead, assess what we really need, focus on what the spent money will do for us, and we don't skimp on quality. We use only one credit card, at 0% interest and no fees, keep a running tab of our spending on it, and make sure that we can pay off the entire total each month. Paying interest is fine for those investing in their own business, otherwise it's for losers, money losers! It's far better to earn interest on money you've saved because time is money. Money saved is like extra free time to do what you want. As you get more of it you get clearer on how to best use it. It can be a slow process, but small, careful decisions and some rather minor sacrifices to the god of instant gratification can all eventually add up to huge savings.
Some changes we've made
One recent change in our lifestyle involved a horse-riding accident. Larisa was thrown from a neighbor's horse back in 2000. The next year we put "memory foam" pillows and a bed topper on our existing bed to improve Larisa's sleep comfort. Within the year we noticed more sinus problems, headaches, and clogged-up feelings in our ears. We also noticed changes in our cat's behavior (she often slept on the foam pillows). After Larisa typed "negative health effects memory foam" into a search engine, she found loads of scathing testimonials that matched our symptoms. So after ditching all of the memory foam, other synthetic foams, and any other sources of formaldehyde, such as plywood furniture, we were much improved. But it was too late for our cat. She had developed a slow-growing, inoperable tumor behind her esophagus that eventually made it impossible for her to swallow. Obviously we should have known better than to blindly accept an unproven technological solution to such a minor problem. We now have an $800 mattress made from a 4-inch core of natural latex foam, covered in wool and organic cotton. It's just as comfortable as the memory foam but without the cancer initiators!
A more recent change in our diets began with reading the book "Dangerous Grains". The book makes a compelling case about undiagnosed gluten sensitivity, leading us to try a multi-month experiment. We both cut wheat and other gluten sources from our diets in mid-December of 2005. After a couple of months, besides the decreased sinus congestion, we both noticed positive changes in our eyesite. Larisa had to get glasses with a lower correction and Bob couldn't figure out why his fairly new prescription seemed wrong. By switching back to 4-year-old glasses the problem was solved (except for the scratched up lenses and bent frames!).
What we eat and why
Larisa and I both became vegetarians in our early 20's. In Larisa's case, she came to it directly after exposure to some vegetarian meals and a fair bit of disgust with her then-current dietary "choices". She threw out nearly everything and started shopping at natural food stores, food co-ops, and farmer's markets. Eventually she became the bookkeeper and general manager of a natural foods co-op in LaCrosse, Wisconsin and the owner of a natural foods store north of LaCrosse. She progressed to growing her own veggies, often in tubs of soil where gardening space was unavailable, discouraged, or forbidden.
I (Bob) took a different route. Starting college meant that I had to fend for myself for the first time, figuring out what to eat, how to cook it, and how to afford it. Due to its expense, meat was the first to go. "Diet for a Small Planet" was quite helpful in figuring out protein replacement. And the local health food store had lots of soy and gluten-based fake meats to try. But the many books offered in that store led me into Macrobiotics, an Eastern philosophy of life and eating that balanced the Western philosophy degree I was pursuing. I also became a bicycle racer, and the studies I read in "Prevention" magazine at the time showed that endurance sports were best fueled with a meat-free diet. With ample imports from my parent's garden and the local natural foods co-op, I got enough fruits and vegetables until I landed a rental situation with some backyard space to plant a garden.
Larisa and I both grew up with big gardens, so the motivation to obtain really fresh produce kicked into high gear. Fresh seasonal produce is also the basis of Macrobiotics. But since it started in Japan and we live in oft-frigid Minnesota, we use various forms of food "stabilization" to get a year-round diet we call "Midwestern Macrobiotics". While our little greenhouse supplies a constant source of living, enzyme-rich foods that a raw-foodist would prefer, we also solar-dry, steam-can, steam-juice, and root-cellar many out-of-season fruits, roots and vegetables.
What about getting enough of..........
As vegans, we get lots of questions about how we manage to get enough Calcium, Protein, Iron, B-12, Essential Fatty Acids (EFA's), and Vitamin D. Obviously we're still alive and thriving, so that's the short answer. For more detail....
Protein is an easy one; so much so that only the most uninformed ask this one. And if you believe Dr. Campbell's well-researched reasoning, ("The China Study") it may do more harm than good, even at levels considered barely adequate in Western diets.
Calcium is also pretty easy. Where do you suppose a half-ton cow gets enough calcium to build strong bones and supply high-calcium milk? Dr. Louis Kervran, in a 1960's book called, "Biological Transmutations", laid the groundwork for a scientific explanation of mineral balances that's echoed in Macrobiotics. Where western nutritionists depend on the "replacement theory", where what you excrete must be obtained, Kervran's work is based on the activity of a healthy bacterial population in the intestines. For calcium, we do what the cows do; eat greens. The magnesium at the core of the chlorophyll molecule gets transmuted into calcium by bacteria. It can also be transmuted from high silica plants (grains) and from potassium (fruits), so a shortage is rare as long as you aren't taking bacteria-killing antibiotics. When greenery is scarce we supplement our diet with calcium citrate and magnesium citrate powders, purchased in one-pound bags, and sprinkled on our morning oatmeal.
Iron seems to be another no-brainer. Larisa routinely tests very high in blood iron when she has a physical exam. She has iron-rich raisins for breakfast with her oatmeal, but the main source is probably the grain itself. High manganese grains transmute into iron. Supposedly, eating well-chewed grains in the morning gives you a high iron level by afternoon, though we've never experimented with timing on this.
Vitamins D and B-12 are the supposed "Achilles Heels" of a vegan diet. Vitamin D is so easy, just get some unfiltered sun on your skin. And the human body needs so little B-12, it's stored so well, and healthy intestinal bacteria continually produce it. Still, even though we get outdoors quite a bit and consume nutritional yeast and rice miso (fermented soybean paste), we often take a food-based one-a-day vitamin in the winter.
Iodine and other Trace Minerals are easy to obtain if you live near the sea. We don't. So we apply granular kelp to our garden at a rate of about 400 pounds/acre, once every 3 or 4 years. And when we aren't consuming as many vegatables from the garden, we supplement our diet by sprinkling a bit of powdered kelp on our meals. One source I've checked (Frontier Herbs) states that their kelp contains 490 milligrams of iodine per 100 grams. That's a lot of iodine, not to mention all of the other micronutrients on board!
EFA's/Omega-3's have been controversial in much of what we've read. Since flax seed, along with some greens such as borage and purslane, is high in ALA/LNA (alpha-linolenic acic), I've always presumed that we're getting enough Omega 3 from non-fish sources. Others, such as Nordic Naturals, a company selling fish oil, say that it must come from fish oil. So where do the fish get it? Since many plants are high in Omega 3, I'm guessing that we get it the same way cows get calcium. Prove me wrong and I'll eat fish, but after 30 years without it I don't think that's likely! To see an excellent article by Udo Erasmus, PhD. on this subject, just Click Here.
To be more specific, ALA/LNA is converted to EPA and DHA (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid), all of which are diet-essential Omega-3 fatty acids. These enzyme conversions are inhibited by high levels of linoleic acid (Omega-6, also essential) found in safflower (77%), sunflower (65%), corn (53%), soy (51%), cotton (45%), and peanut (26%) oils, among others. They are also inhibited if you consume so-called "trans-fats" (hydrogen-saturated, or "partially-hydrogenated" oils) or too much saturated fat (mainly from animal products). The enzymes can also be greatly inhibited by the consumption of fluoridated water or the use of antibiotics. Also, certain co-factors are required, including vitamins B3, B6, C, and the minerals zinc and magnesium. The bottom line: If you're already going vegan, eat well, don't over-do the veggie oil or use fancy "spreads", drink pure water, and don't forget to add enough ALA-containing stuff to your diet!
The Grains We Eat and Grow
In the early 1900's, farmers in the U.S. who grew grains and needed them threshed for human consumption worked together to help each other get it done. A group of neighboring farmers either worked with an independent, traveling, steam-powered thresher operator, or they formed a collective grain milling co-op. But with the decrease in farms across the U.S. this is no longer as feasible without large costs for transport. Big corporate farms can pass on milling and transport costs to consumers. But small farms spread over a large area can't easily invest a huge sum on the specialized equipment necessary to prepare a subsistence-sized crop.
Although we try to grow most of our own food, grains are troublesome. We need to grow what fits into our dietary choices, and what thrives and ripens in our climate without excessive predation by birds, rodents, etc. And it has to be something we can process with minimal, inexpensive technology. We've settled for the moment on buying our organic rice, rolled oats, millet, and buckwheat in bulk from our local natural foods "buying club". But we grow our own sweet corn, grain sorghum, and grain amaranth.
The sweet corn variety we use for fresh eating (Tru Gold) also works well ripened on the plant, air-dried, and shelled. We usually either grind it into flour or "parch" it in hot oil to make salted "corn nuts". The grain sorghum we grow (Dwarf Grain) is quite attractive to birds when it nears ripeness. We cut all of the seed heads when we notice the birds doing a lot of feeding, leaving an extra foot or so of stalk on the heads. It finishes ripening on racks inside the greenhouse. We then thresh it in a small, electric-powered hammerhill and use screens and a fan to remove any chaff. Grain amaranth also grows very well here, putting out huge seed heads. We harvest the heads when seed can easily be knocked off the heads, using the same process we use for sorghum. And we grind both of them into flours to mix with other grains, complementing the proteins that may be lacking in one alone, and mixing them into various combinations that work best for cookies, breads, pancakes, etc.
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Some photos from home
 Two of our Shetland sheep, Hazel and Lena, freshly shorn. We shear them once/year in late Spring and by that time, as the weather warms, they are quite happy to be rid of their 6-8 inch coats of wool. They just stand still as we use Fiskars scissors on them. The wool is washed, rinsed, air dried, combed or carded (depending on its later use), spun into yarn, and either crocheted or woven into some garment.
 Here they are with a bit more wool on them, in the late summer.
 This recycled plastic composting bin is one of four that we use to compost all of our kitchen scraps (at least the ones that are not suitable as treats for the sheep!) and all of the solids from our 2-bucket, sealed, down-drafting "toilet" (built from an Igloo brand beverage cooler). The cover is shown propped up on top. The manure and urine-soaked bedding produced by our sheep is composted separately in a huge compost heap. And we empty the second bucket from our indoor bucket-toilet, the urine, onto the sheep compost to add nitrogen and speed decomposition.
 This is probably one of the smallest lawn mowers ever made. It's a 15-inch, 12-volt mower with a metal deck, made by Toro. It charges directly from a 12-volt solar panel on the roof of our shed, running through a 12-volt charge controller to prevent overcharge. We mow nearly no lawn, but this little gem is great for mowing garden paths that have been seeded to grow something other than mud clods on your gardening shoes!
 This is one of the biggest energy saving appliances I can think of. This simple rotatable clothesline dries our rainwater-washed laundry quite quickly without resorting to a hugely energy-sucking, electric or gas-powered clothes dryer. Solar energy provides the power for the energy-saving and water-saving, recycled, Staber brand (made in Ohio) washer we've been using for the past 10 years. Providing enough renewable energy to power a dryer would be a whole different situation. This even dries our clothing in the winter. The clothes quickly freeze, but after a couple of days of sunshine, the frozen water "sublimates" into vapor, leaving just a trace to finish drying on a rack in the house.
 This shows about 3 weeks worth of firewood for our home during the worst of the winter. Burning "solid sunshine" from thinned or fallen trees supplies half of our home's winter heat. The other half is supplied directly by sunshine coming in our south-facing windows.
 This is part of a stack of bee boxes that make up a Warre-style hive. It's a type of hive that allows honeybees to create their own comb, of whatever cell size they prefer, and of whatever shape they wish, all to foster healthier pollinators in the area. Our aim is not necessarily to harvest, consume, or sell honey, so we plan to harvest any excess honey in the late Spring, when the bees have finished biding their time over the Winter in their cozy quarters and are already bringing in new pollen and nectar to increase their ranks. If you'd like to see more construction details, just Click Here to get a free PDF file download. And if you'd like to learn more about natural beekeeping, Larisa recommends the biobees forum, found by Clicking Here.
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