Got Melamine?

You have no doubt heard about the melamine in the Chinese milk by now.
It has been in pet food they have sent us and baby bottles and now even the milk.
If you have not heard here is a link:
Nearly 53,000 China babies sickened by milk powder

Where does your food come from?
Do you know the farmer who grew it, or the rancher who raised it or how about the butcher who cut it up? If you don't, you really don't know what you are putting in your body. It could be as bad or worse than the Melamine.

In order to be prepared we need to have some control over our food supply. What can you grow?
Even someone in an apartment can grow a window box of lettuce and spinach. At least try to hit the farmers market in season. Buying locally may sound like a liberal talking point but it is a good idea.

Being on the homestead I am striving for some control of what we eat. Just today the farmer who rents one of our fields combined his soybeans. I took Ivy our three year old daughter for a walk across the field and she picked a hand full of missed beans. I could fill a five gallon bucket in a hour or so without a problem just from the beans the combine missed. Yes these are roundup ready GMO soybeans but they are still unprocessed and nothing has been added to them.

We will do the same thing when the corn is picked. The farmer has about 15 acres planted on our land and there is always plenty lying around when he is done. We are getting some more chickens soon. We sold our 50 this summer and I sure miss the roosters crowing. The feed bills were just killing us and people stopped buying eggs. We had hundreds of eggs with no way to get rid of them. We gave away a bunch at church every Sunday.

I think a grass based approach will be the best for us someday. Grass grows for free and goats sheep and cows are made to eat it. I read an article somewhere (sorry can't remember or I would cite it) about making and selling butter. The gist of it was the butter fat is taking nothing form your soil and it is pure sunshine. I think it was called selling sunshine from your farm or some such name.

Our shortcoming right now is fence. When I was a kid the whole countryside was fenced and cross fenced. I now have one on my north boundary but it is far from animal tight. I was just talking with someone a couple weeks ago and he said the price of fence as gone out of sight. Everything takes money but is your health and safety worth it?

Randy