All Together Farming – We can all benefit from fresh, local, and nutritious produce

Pumpkin Puree for pies, bread and muffins

February 14, 2015 by All Together Farming Leave a Comment

note : 1 sugar pumpkin will yield about 2 cups of puree.

Cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the insides, getting the pumpkin as clean as possible. I use a tablespoon to scrape or try an ice cream scoop. Save the seeds to plant or to roast!
Put pumpkin halves cut side down in a baking dish and bake at 375 degrees for about 1 hour or until tender.
Scoop out pumpkin flesh (think giant avocado), let cool.
Puree using a food mill, food processor or handheld blender.
Pumpkin puree is now ready to use in your recipes or to freeze!

Green Corn Etiquette

September 29, 2014 by All Together Farming Leave a Comment

The best way to eat green corn so as not to annoy the other members of the family is to lock yourself up in a room alone with the corn and then let the corn fly where it may. It is a good plan to sit in the bath tub.

It is a good plan to wear a diving suit, without the helmet when engaged in the pleasant acrobatic stunt of eating green corn. The butter can then drop at its own sweet will.

Old-fashioned ear muffs come in handy. They prevent the corn from getting in the ears. To prevent it from getting down the neck, wear one of those tight rubber collars, such as the barber puts on you when he gives you an egg shampoo.

An expert corn eater is able to get away with about 50 per cent of the corn while the other 80 per cent is scattered about the room. An amateur can get about 10 per cent, of the corn on the first trial, but practice makes perfect.

(reprinted from an early 1900s farming magazine)

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Consistency Of Care For Your Farm Or Homestead

September 7, 2014 by All Together Farming Leave a Comment

The tendency today seems to be to neglect everything except that which we are using at the moment. Look about you and see if this is not correct. See the agricultural tools that are rotting between harvests; observe how the harness is treated in winter; examine the colony houses and the brooders after the chicks have been sold or gone into winter quarters; look inside the incubators and see if they have been cleaned out after the last hatch was taken off. In all these cases, and in hundreds of others, you will find that the owner has forgotten to take proper care of his belongings simply because he was not using them at that particular time. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are annually lost because of this neglect – indeed it is this same neglect that keeps many other men in business.

Personal property thus neglected deteriorates very rapidly and soon becomes useless so that it is necessary to replace the loss by new purchases – a step that many times means the difference between success and failure. If such be the fact with inanimate objects, think what injury must be inflicted upon live creatures by neglect. This reminds us of the story of the “green” young man who took up farming and was asked by a neighbor how everything was going.

He replied that all was well except that the hired man had not shown up to milk the cows for three days!

Think what those cows suffered!

Think what it means to leave an animal or bird without water! Put yourself in the place of the creature and imagine how you would feel under like circumstances. Yet there are men who care little and think little of birds or animals unless they need them or have immediate use for them.

One very often sees sadly neglected horses, cows and poultry which have at one time been most useful to their owners but are now left to shift for themselves simply because they are not necessary to the owner at the moment. Most people if they have hens will feed them at least once a day and will occasionally see that they have some water but that is usually the extent of the labor that is expended on the ordinary poultry flock during the summer. If there is any real care taken with the poultry it is all centered on the chicks – the older fowls can look out for themselves.

Nothing particular is expected of them – they have done their bit – and the chicks are so much more important in the eyes of the owner.

Sad isn’t it?

Fencing the Farm

July 10, 2014 by All Together Farming

Every year there is more and more fencing of one sort and another done – some well done, much poorly done.

Fences are erected around the outside of the farm in order to protect the fields and crops and animals from marauding animals. Stray domestic animals damage crops and roving entire animals are a menace to the breeder’s prospects. By fencing against coyotes and dogs, sheep raising may be safely engaged in. Many weeds that tumble about ahead of the wind and scatter their seeds as they go are stopped by a well built outside fence. Inside fences are neccessary in order to inclose pastures for different classes of stock and to make roadways and lanes from buildings to fields. Properly constructed fences add to the appearance of the farm and the farmstead. They enable the farm owner to diversify in crops and live stock and thus make possible the maintenance of fertility, the keeping down of weeds, the raising of bigger and better crops, all in order that farming may be conducted as a better paying business.

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The farmer will decide for himself as to what fencing is required. It may be that he will wish to surround a quarter or half section for reasons which he himself knows best – weeds, coyotes, cattle etc. – or it may be that a forty or eighty acre pasture is required for horses or cattle convenient to the farmstead. Perhaps it is the farmstead itself that he wishes to protect. Before commencing such an important piece of work, he should make a plan of his farm and lay out the boundary and cross fences that should be built on it during the next 10 to 20 years. If this is carefully done the first fence can be built and others added with little additional expense and fences will not have to be torn down because of ill-conceived plans.

Important Considerations

When plans are completed the kind of fence will have to be decided upon. It will very likely be either barbed or woven wire. If only cattle or horses are to be limited by the fence and if one is not prepared to make an outlsy sufficient to cover cost of woven wire then three or four strands of barbed wire may be used. This can later be made effective for pigs and sheep by placing beneath it a seven strand, 25 inch, woven wire fabric. If one has in mind a fence that will turn horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, coyotes and dogs, then an eleven strand, 55 inch fence with close horizontal bars at the bottom will fill the requirements well.

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