I just finished a delicious Chianina burger sent to me by Hardscrabble Farmer. I’m used to the fatty beef that I buy at Giant. This burger was lean and tasty. It must be because it was grass fed, with no chemical enhancement. I wonder if Hardscrabble named him before turning him into burgers and steaks?
Hardscrabble Farmer didn’t want me to make a big deal about his farm and website, but I’m going to ignore him. He runs an energy self sufficient 70 acre farm in New Hampshire called Hopewell Farms.
His website is http://www.newburyfarmer.com/farm-products/
He grows, raises and sells vegetables, livestock, trout, talapia, and maple syrup. He even has a homesteading blog where I read about his barn burning down, him badly breaking his arm, and having a ram drown in their pond. That was all in 2012. I hope things have gone better since then. It is clear that farming is tough, but I’m sure it’s satisfying and gratifying to see what you can produce with your own hands.
Tomorrow, my son is going to make pancakes so we can try out the bottle of maple syrup Marc sent us too.
Support your local farmers. When the SHTF, they will be your best friends.
More power to you, Hardscrabble.. Back in 1979-83 I homesteaded land in Northern Idaho – built the home, cleared the land, grew intensive French gardens and went back to college to get a degree 20 years after I should have had one. My sweetie grew the veggies and I shot the meat. Total fixed expenses $50 a month back then.
I wouldn’t trade the experience and knowledge gained for a million bucks.. I wish I was young enough to do it again. My sweetie and I still have the intensive garden but it’s shrunk to 150 square feet but furnishes us with huge organic veggie production (I use au natural mushroom compost to make our broccoli heads dense and 8″ across plus kohlrabi to die for, lettuce, all manner of root veggies and an herb garden to boot (and that’s just Winter crops!).
Good for you and I wish I was close enough to you to be a regular customer!
MA
Muck,
Did you attend the University of Idaho? Both my wife and I graduated from there.
Check out this place, http://www.snowvillecreamery.com/
The owner and founder is a friend of mine and we worked together on and off for 20 years before said “fuck it” and bet the farm, literally, on his own dairy processing operation. In more than one way he was my teacher and mentor, although he did get pissed at me more than once when I decided I had a better way to do something than he did.
He just turned his first profit last year.
Hardscrabble Farmer – I too wish I lived in your neighborhood. Your farm sounds a bit like Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms except with energy independence. Wondering what method you use to filter your talapia water and if you’ve ever considered aquaponics.
+1000
Beef cattle that don’t have gobs of growth hormones shot into them and are fed on grass and hay DO taste better.
Next door neighbor gave us several HUMUNGOUS steaks from a cow he slaughtered… BEST STEAKS EVER. I even knew the cow, though that didn’t stop me from eating well that night…
Also, eggs don’t just come from chickens. Duck eggs are good, too. And I think eggs that come from small farms taste better than the Big Ag produced eggs.. the yolks are a deeper yellow and they have a richer taste…
And, if anyone cares, wild turkey tastes WAY better than store-bought Butterball turkeys… yeah, sure you have to spit the pellets out once in awhile, but DAYUM they taste way better than anything store-bought.
Sorry to hear about Hardscrabble’s troubles…. here’s to hoping his 2014 is better. They say trouble comes in 3’s…. well, I don’t believe that shit for a minute. It’s more like 27’s…
Point: We didn’t have anything bad happen for months… I mean nothing at all. Then, right around Christmas, BAM!!! – all of Hell broke loose… all sorts of bad shit was going down.
Near as I can figure, all our good luck set up an imbalance in the Universe and the bad luck we experienced was just the boomerang effect of the Universe evening itself out…
Since moving to Indiana we have made a very conscious effort to support local farmers, and get ourselves off GMO foods. I tell you, the meats, sausages, and milk I get are the most delicious I’ve ever had.
And here’s how to FIND your local farmer or rancher: http://www.localharvest.org/
For
Produce: http://www.localharvest.org
Meat: http://www.eatwild.com
Raw dairy:
And you might have a local website that covers your area. Weston A. Price Foundation and Slow Food have chapters that can often help. Once you find a vendor, ask about others because many are poor marketers and hard to find.
No more expensive than fast food–IF you cook from scratch at home. No fancy spices or recipes required, the ingredients usually are good enough on their own.
For that maple syrup, I’d make up some raw yogurt. Get some raw milk and follow internet directions for yogurt made without heating. It will be pretty liquidy, so you drain out the whey it the ‘fridge for a day or so ’til it reaches the consistency of cream cheese. Scoop it like ice cream and drizzle the maple syrup over that. No chef in any fancy restaurant will be able to beat it.
ever had organic, straight from the free roaming pig, bacon?
holy shit it is the best bacon you will ever have
so much more flavor than anything you can purchase in a store
split a pig with an amish person if you can find a way to do it
It’s all about knowing the VALUE of things over the PRICE. The Dude only buys beef and pork from a small farmer about 3 miles down the road. He uses paddock shift grazing for his cows (like Joel Salatin and Alan Savory) and they eat only grass and hay. No grains. Ruminants aren’t supposed to eat grains.
The pigs are run through pasture and fenced-in woodlots. You haven’t tasted pork until you’ve had this kind of pork. That stuff they sell in the supermarket sure ain’t pork.
Does this cost more than the supermarket? Yes. Does it provide more value than the supermarket? HELL YES! The people the Dude comes across (his in-laws are exhibit #1) who say that this kind of food is too expensive typically spend $150 a month or more for cable TV. The Dude’s also become friends with the farmer, and he gets access to free cedar posts, fishing in the farm pond, getting ash firewood by helping him clear new pasture, etc. It’s a win-win for both of us.
The Dude only has about 1.3 acres so pigs and cows are out of the question. But the perennial forest garden is coming along, the vegetable garden produces a fair amount of produce through the summer and we’re building fertility as we go through composting and mulch. People actually shred their yard leaves each fall and put them in bags by the curb just for the Dude to pick up in his beater pickup and put in a pile in the yard to rot down for a year or two, then throw the leaf mold on the garden beds. This year top-bar bee hives are being added to the mix. Hopefully some egg-laying hens the following year. Meat birds, rabbits, and ducks (after the pond is built) are on the distant horizon.
This year is also seeing 20 black locust seedlings go in to enhance fertility (they’re leguminous) and provide poles and coppice firewood in about 7 years. One or 2 stone nut pines and some hickory nuts planted in the ground too. This doesn’t count the additional fruit trees, vines, bushes, nut hedges, etc. that are going in the perennial forest garden. The Dude will get a better return on this investment than anything found out there in paper, that’s for sure.
This shit’s more addictive than any drug out there. After the Dude got the bug, all he’s wanted to do every year is more, more, more. The biggest challenge is to fit things in around working full time and spending time with the little ones.
@Dude: +10,000.
I am only really happy any more when I’m working around our place with Mr. HZK and the kids, there are many days when I wish I could just close the gate and never emerge, sigh.
I am just finishing up the homemade bacon I did last summer, found a local guy to buy the pork bellies for $3/pound and cured it/smoked it myself. Gawd is it GOOD. That chemical laden crap from the grocery store for $10/pound cannot compare.
In fact, I am going to put pencil to paper and see if I worked 25% of the time, like locum tenums, to pay for property taxes, fuel and things I can’t grow/make, if I could do the homesteading for the other 75% of the time.
I sure would not need the cleaners, the housekeeper, the beemer, the handyman, the yard guy, the bus service for my son, the carwash people, etc,etc all the other people I need to keep me at work and Mr. HZK focused on his farm duties.
This is looking better all the time.
Yep, hardscrabble’s the real deal. Marc, thanks for sharing your story with us. If I ever get away from my own farm, would love to come see what you’re doing up there. Looks fascinating. Beautiful farm.
The Dude Abides – How many people posting here have any idea what coppice is?
http://talesfromfoxwood.blogspot.com/2014/01/coppice.html
Locust and hickory have the highest heat value of the common woods. I prefer locust as it leaves little ash and is easier to split. It is also rot resistant which is why it is used for fence posts.
I buy stuff from the Mennonites. They have a butcher shop on the farm. This was common in SE PA until the government regulated them out of business.
Stuckey – My family name was derived from German bridge builder. It was later Anglisised by my grandfather during the reign of W Wilson. What is my family name?
I can confirm what Billy says. When we moved to New Zealand it was a shock when we tasted cheese, beef, pork, chicken, cream, eggs, vegies, etc etc that actually tasted like they are supposed to taste! And that is at the regular grocery store. NZ has a thriving farmers market and organic scene as well.
120 miles from my house. I may have to make a field trip this summer. I have to get back to my farming roots. From when I was a kid until my late teens we always had a garden, goats, turkeys, pigs etc. I worked my brothers blueberry farm until 18. Had a garden at my present house for a few years, but I have gotten lazy. Time to get motivated.
Bob.
Hardscrabble, very nice place you have there! It takes lots and lots of hard work just to maintain an operation like that, hat tip, well done. An individual can travel through life without living the rural lifestyle but I just can’t figure out why anyone would want to. There’s nothing on this earth like the satisfaction a man feels when walking across his place.