An article with a Cactus recipe was brought to our attention….
It sounds delicious, and is written by one of Australia’s most well-known and respected chefs, Steven Manfredi.
I wrote him and asked if I may include it on our blog, he graciously permitted us to reprint it…
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Prickly Pear Souffles by Steve Manfredi
It may be difficult for some to think of Captain Arthur Phillip as Australia’s first ecological vandal but he brought in one of the most invasive plants ever to come into this country. He collected some cochineal-infested prickly pear in Brazil and sailed the cacti to these shores with the First Fleet.
The cochineal insects feed on prickly pear and, when processed, these insects produce the crimson-coloured dye carmine. Amongst other things, this colour was used for the red coats of British soldiers at the time.
In 1886 the first (Commonwealth) Prickly-pear Destruction Act was passed though the cactus was already a problem 20 years earlier. It wasn’t until 1996 that the (NSW) Prickly Pear Act 1987 was repealed and management for the “noxious weed” transferred to local governments.
While it’s still a problem in certain areas of Australia, people from parts of the Mediterranean and the Americas adore its fruit. It looks like a small barrel about 6-8 centimetres long but care should be taken in handling the fruit because the fine hairs will lodge in the skin.
Peeling is easy. Handle the fruit with a gloved hand. Cut off each of the ends using a sharp knife. Make a slit skin-deep down the length of the fruit and peel the skin away from the pulp. Prickly pear fruit can range from red to deep yellow and is sweet and juicy.
Make the sugar syrup first by boiling 100ml water with 100g caster sugar. Once it boils, cool. Whatever is left can be refrigerated indefinitely. Place 8 prickly pears in a food processor and puree. Place in a sieve, over a bowl and separate juice from seeds, discarding the latter. Place yolks in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Whisk continuously over a simmering pot of water for about 5 minutes until fluffy and thick like zabaglione or custard. Put aside to cool. Beat egg whites to soft peaks. Add remaining tablespoon of sugar and keep whisking until stiff peaks form. Gently fold half the prickly pear juice with the whisked egg whites, whipped cream and cooled yolk/sugar mixture until evenly incorporated. Ladle into 6 moulds and place in the freezer for at least 4 hours. Mix the sugar syrup with the remaining prickly pear juice. To serve, unmould the soufflés by dipping the bases quickly in hot water. Spoon a little sauce on and serve with wedges of the remaining prickly pear. Serves 6.
PRICKLY PEAR WITH MASCARPONE CREAM AND ROAST PISTACHIO
Puree the peeled prickly pears in a food processor. Sieve over a bowl and separate juice from seeds, discarding the latter. Place the puree in a saucepan with 50g of caster sugar and bring to the boil, stirring. Once boiling, turn down to a bubbling simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Let it cool and refrigerate. Meanwhile beat the egg whites in a bowl, slowly adding the rest of the caster sugar until firm peaks form. To this add the mascarpone and fold in until the resulting mixture is light and fluffy. To serve, ladle some prickly pear puree into bowls, add a large dollop of mascarpone cream and scatter some chopped, roasted pistachios on top. Finish by dusting with ground cinnamon. Serves 8.
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I encountered two items I’ve not heard of before… one is the ‘Caster Sugar’ which is the same as what we call ‘Powdered Sugar’ in the US. The other item is ‘mascarpone’ which comes from his region of Italy (Lombardy) and is probably best known as the essential ingredient, along with coffee and savoiardi biscuits, in the popular dessert tiramisu. It should be fairly easy to buy from Italian providores or even supermarkets. See here:
Wow, this is one of the best food combinations I’ve ever made….
A most unusual omelet
I started by grating an onion and browning it well in a skillet with vegetable oil
I let it get really deep and brown, just starting to caramelize
Then I added a couple of potatoes I had grated while the onions browned….
Then I let it all cook for a while, stirring on occasion while I continued to grate the foods we had picked recently from the garden…
You can see the browned onions on the bottom of the pan… I’d never grated onions before… I didn’t know I’d end up mainly with onion juice and paste. But it did brown nicely.
We had picked some persimmons, sweet Hungarian peppers and cactus a couple of days beforehand. I grated all these things and added them to the mix that was stewing gently…. I like dishes where you can add pretty-much whatever you’ve got coming out of the garden. Adding a wide variety of different foods to your meals is a good way to get a wide range of vitamins and minerals… every food has its own little special packages of goodness to give you that is a bit different from what the other veggies have.
I just kept turning it for a bit… the idea is to let it all cook slowly together.. into a big stew in essence…..
I had second thoughts about adding the persimmons… but it was too late, they were already in there…
We did some cactus picking and boxing yesterday… as we were leaving the hillside orchard where we grow most of our cactus, we picked some peppers and persimmons to bring to the house as well as a few cactus leaves.
Fresh foods are good… everything has its season… persimmons are best kept on the tree through frosts… then they have to get really gross and mushy… then they are the sweetest… but you’re not likely to find them sold that-a-way… they won’t last in transit while mushy.
The peppers are at the end of their season… but with luck the plants might live through the winter and yield again next year.
Even if, like me you are not a vegan, you should really read vegan recipes and try to reduce your consumption of animal products to a minimum for health reasons, if not out of understanding of the barbaric conditions many food animals have to live their short little lives under. Modern farming is not the farming methods of my grandparents wherein the animals are kept in open outdoors conditions, eating fresh green grasses and forbes…. they are instead stuffed into large barns by the thousands, heel to toe in cramped conditions…. every time you decide NOT to eat a piece of such an animal, it reduces the demand jsut a bit. Year by year, perhaps the demand for such animals will reduce, and we’ll be left with only the old-style farmyard with animals given a large amount of space and room… before we kill them.
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A while back, Andrew of the foodie blog Very Good Taste, posted an article called the Omnivore’s Hundred. The “Omnivore’s 100″is a list of Andrew’s interpretation of the 100 foods every omnivore needs to try. The list gathered a loyal following as bloggers and foodies everywhere began following Andrew’s instructions to re-post the list and join in the challenge. He instructs everyone to cross out things they’d never eat and bold the foods they have already conquered. Fun right? Well as much as I loved the idea, as I began to read the food list I knew I couldn’t participate. Venison, snake, goat’s milk and haggis.Definitely NOT vegan-friendly.
Vegan Hundred.I love the idea of challenging foodies to try as many new, classicly delicious and unusual foods as they can. So I give to you: the vegan’s 100. One-hundred foods that every vegan (or any curious foodie) must try at least once. Check out the list and details on how you can participate in this foodie adventure… The Challenge: Just as the omnivore list does, I challenge you to re-post this list and participate in the challenge! Cross out or italicize all the foods you would never eat, bold foods you have tried and update your list as you participate in trying all the foods on my Vegan’s 100 list. Then if you’d like, post a link to your list in my comments section so others can see how you are doing. I tried to stay true to the original omnivore 100 by leaving on a few of the vegan food items on Andrew’s list. However, since most of the foods were not vegan, there was a lot of space to fill! My criteria for food items were that they had to be either a unique whole food(like a lychee) or a notably stand-out-delicious way to prepare a common food (like scrambled tofu).
The Vegan’s Hundred
Here’s what I want you to do:
1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions. 2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten. 3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating. 4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results.
I hope you will join this vegan foodie tasting adventure.
Post the link to your list in the comments-if you have any questions, leave them in the comments as well!
…lets show the omnivores that the question “what do vegans eat?” definitely has over 100 amazing answers…!
The HHL Vegan Hundred:
1. Molasses
2. Cactus/Nopales (we grow this, it’s all we sell)
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish ………(used to grow some, great for our own horseradish)
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits
7. Arepa …………(I’ll have to look this one up, never heard of it)
8. Vegan Cole Slaw
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic………. (Again, we grow this in our garden and I like to roast in foil w olive oil)
12. Umeboshi ………(again, something I’ve never heard of)
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera ..(well, we grow this and use it for burns, I’ve drank it prepared, but never processed it myself)
15. H and H Bagel NYC …… too far to go for a bagel, but not gonna cross it out, cause if I’m in NY, I’d try it
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash……… yep….. Mmm good!
17. White truffle ……..(I’d try it, but not if I have to pay for it)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Does strawberry wine count?
19. Freshly ground wasabi (I’ve made paste from the powder, but not fresh, would love it though, I know)
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream (not store bought) (umm, no)
21. Heirloom tomatoes (heck, Calif has more cool produce than anywhere!)
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider (my uncle used to make the best, I remember you Onkle Martin)
23. Organic California Mango (in season Sept-Oct only) (yeah, hard to beat)
24. Quinoa (sister’s family spent some time in Peru and got addicted.. in a good way)
25. Papaya Smoothie (no, but sounds good to me)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet (habanero) pepper (just a bite!…hot! (Yeah, guys here grow the hottest they can to be more Macho)
27. Goji Berry Tea (no, but I’d give it a try)
28. Fennel (It’s a common herb, I’m sure I’ve eaten it in Europe….)
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie (Yeah, my sis is vegetarian, her daughter vegan, they temp me with vegan goodies)
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread (gee, I just heard today of vegan butery spreads….I’m so in the Stone Age)
31. Starfruit (yes, it is good, but the price is too high… too rare)
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread (used to have our own Sour Dough starter in the fridge!)
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices (yes, at the town of Avila in Spain)
34. Sauerkraut (Doh, we used to ferment our own)
35. Acai Smoothie (no, I’ve only seen Acai in photographs)
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms (No, never heard of them, but I saw ‘Blue-Footed Boobies on TV (they’re birds, really!))
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc (again, I flew over NYC once, but never touched down)
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo (no, but each with other stuff, will try it one day)
39. Falafel (yep, we even have a local chain called ‘King Falafel’)
40. Spelt Crust Pizza (no, is spelt like smelt?)
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms (No, we have oyster mushrooms grow on trees here in winter.. but I don’t eat mushrooms I find)
42. Jicama Slaw ( jicama is pretty good…never ate it as slaw before though)
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings (I know what pumpkins, Ginger and Dumplims are…. put those 4 words together, I’m clueless)
44. Hemp Milk (um, with my looks, if I bought that DEA would be raiding us fast!)
45. Rose Champagne (I’m not a champagne fan, but I’d raise a glass if given to me)
46. Fuyu (the persimmon?… if so, yes, I’ve had it, but prefer my soft persimmons more)
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup (Never had it, but I love avocados, and coconuts are OK also)
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich (I’ve only had tofu a few times that I know of…. but I LOVE pesto, so I’d try it and like it I am sure)
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice…with Extra Ginger (never had it, won’t make it, but if I’m at your house and you offer it, I’d probably like it… would cure a fever I bet too)
50. Grilled Seitan (seems I’ve heard of Seitan…. but have no idea what it is)
51. Prickly pear (again, cactus, that we grow… eat it often)
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk (never had it, but seen it prepared on YouTube, so I’m game… I love almonds, a can a week
53. Concord Grapes off the vine (yep, have helped pick grapes before)
54. Ramps (only used them for drining onto freeways (ausfahrt, einfahrt in German))
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut (no, it’s all old and milky by the time it gets here)
56. Organic Arugula (LOL, we grew this in hte garden and tried to sell at Farmers Market, no one knew what it was! We’re Provincial here)
57. Vidalia Onion (Yep, they are good)
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics (No, but would try it if offered…. I’m kinda frugal with food money)
59. Honeycrisp Apple (particular variety, don’t think I’ve tried it)
60. Poi (never been to Hawaii)
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores (had Smores, but conventional)
62. Grape seed Oil (yep, we use a dash of it on occasion… but so very pricey)
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach (been there, grown that
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus (no, but one day perhaps)
65. Chestnut Snack Packs (I’m so lost)
66. Fresh Guava (yep, some folks here have good guava bushes in their landscape, pretty and edible)
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC (again, I have no idea what this is!)
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache (salad greens, we have grown mache blends for market, again, doesn’t sell well here)
71. Golden Beets (we’ve grown them, they have a more tender taste, and don’t stain as much)
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles (crunchy, dill…. love em)
73. Liquid Smoke (we used this in the restaurant in High School, haven’t used it for 30 years)
74. Meyer Lemon (we have a meyer lemon tree on our farm)
75. Veggie Paella (I Love Paella, a Spanich classic… I prefer the seafood one at Gibralter)
76. Vegan Lasagna (raw optional) (I like Lasagna, meat is not necessary for it to be tasty)
77. Kombucha (I’ve heard of this fungus thing that ppl grow under their beds, never tried it though)
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong (lost again)
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread Does the breads from that LA bakery Ecclesiastes count?
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean (yes, added it to other stuff a few times)
85. Watercress (I just adore watercress sandwishes)
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers (yep, some here and there)
89. Corn Chowder (corn-anything, and chowder-anything are on my lists)
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate (no, but nything dark chocolate is on my list)
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi (we’ve had the fuzzy green ones plenty, never saw a yeller one)
92. White Flesh Grapefruit (eh, the yellow ones are sour, and I have to add suger to eat them, where’s the health in that?)
93. harissa (sounds like the name of a girl I met in Morocco once….)
94. Coconut Oil (It’s on my list of butter replacements I will try)
95. Jackfruit (I’ve heard of this…. but don’t form a mental image)
96. Homemade Risotto (I’ve heard of Risotto, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had it… )
97. Spirulina (Again, I’ve heard of Spirulina, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had it… )
98. Seedless ‘Pixie’ Tangerine (Never heard of the variety… but I do like tangerines, one of the largest citrus nurseries is in our town)
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought (No, we don’t really eat out much.. too far to drive, too pricy, and I don’t know how to act in among fine dining places)
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas (I’ve never been to England, but I kind of like the music. They say the women are insane there, and they sure know how to use it…. they don’t abuse it, never gonna lose it, I can’t refuse it)
*Want more info? Foodista links and HHL links are shown in a double list below*
COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
HEAR WHAT I HAVE TO SAY
JUST LIKE CHILDREN SLEEPING
WE COULD DREAM THIS NIGHT AWAY
BUT THERE’S A FULL MOON RISING
LET’S GO DANCING IN THE LIGHT
WE KNOW WHERE THE MUSIC’S PLAYING
LET’S GO OUT AND FEEL THE NIGHT
BECAUSE I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU
I WANT TO SEE YOU DANCE AGAIN
BECAUSE I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU
ON THIS HARVEST MOON
By Neil Young
Sep 29, 2004
The full moon comes over the hills as I drive home early in the AM. A full night behind, the warmth of home ahead of me, the realization that life is full of twists and turns just like the road I drive.
The full moon often makes me think of the many places I’ve watched that great orb rise and settle down.
Some of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen has been the moon lowering itself into the Western sea. That great Pacific Ocean that lies not too far from home. Great glossy sea, smooth with the oils from the kelp, shining the reflection of the moon back into the dark sky. The moon can drown out the stars with its reflecting brilliance.
There are times that the moon takes up the reflection of the sun from the earth. These are the times that we see the dark moon, but it has that curiously light aspect to it. Not the full moon shining like we usually associate with the lunar light. This is actually the reflection of the sun off the Earth lighting up the moon in a shallow imitation of it’s full-moon brilliance. This is a parlor trick of God as He plays with His great polished mirrors that He so long ago set spinning in the vastness of space when He took His first days foray into creation. This back-shining is called ‘Gegenschein’, which is German for something like ‘reflected back’.
As I drive along looking at the moon, seeing the silver light shine upon the fields and hills around me, I can’t help but remember the words that my Grandmother once told me of her life on the farm in Hungary before the Nazis came. They had a large farm, and were well-to-do by the standards of the time and area. They had fields, orchards, and livestock. They did all their farming with animals and human power and all in the family worked long and hard to enable them to have a full larder before the winter snows would drown the fields in a carpet of white.
When the harvest of wheat was ripening the work would be long and hard. Yet the mid-days were still hot. My grandmother told me they would wake at about two AM, and the old women would have already prepared coffee and baked rolls with lots of sugar for energy. The workers and family would all eat and then climb into the wagons for the ride to the fields where they would work harvesting the wheat by the light of the harvest moon.
At about six AM the old women would send the young children out to the fields with cooked bacon, rolls with butter and jelly, potatoes and eggs and more coffee. All work would cease for breakfast. And then they would resume work after eating and refortifying themselves.
The at about ten AM the children would return with a small lunch of rolls, jelly and butter, and other assorted treats. Then they would get back to work again.
A full lunch would be sent to them at about noon, this would be a large and massive lunch consisting of chicken or pork, vegetables including always potatoes and some Cole crop such as kohlrabi or cabbage. They would also have a fair amount of homemade brandy. This large meal would make them all sleepy, and they would then go to sleep in the shade of the trees or under the wagon. This would spare them from the heat of the day.
After a four hour break and nap they would resume working again. At about five or so a small supper would be sent out to keep them from hunger. This would be the same kinds of things they had for lunch, but in smaller quantities. Then at about eight or so they would have some more food, something with sugar for energy. they would work until about ten at night, when they would return to the house to stumble bone-tired into their beds to sleep for four hours until they woke again at two AM.
I think about my grandmother and the hardships she endured in her life. The sadness of having her husband snatched away to die in a foreign land when she was just a young woman. Widowed at twenty-four, and then driven from her farm and the land of her ancestors by the communist government with a young daughter in tow to go penniless to another land where she was regarded with suspicion because of her accent and different clothing and eating habits.
She was indeed a marvelous woman, and a strong and wise one. She had a tenacity that was amazing, an intuitive knack of being able to find the simple in the complex, to break all down into the simple meanings that a peasant would understand and be able to convey to a child.
Now as I watch this moon on it’s ascent as I drive this California freeway at a time when all good and honest people should be safely tucked away into their own beds, I reflect that this is the time when she and her kin would be rising from the goose down folds of their beds and rising to the scent of fresh coffee on a cool Hungarian morning, and I am just now heading home to retire for the night.
How is it that life has taken us all from one generation to the next in a flight from the peaceful bucolic peasant life with it’s hugely manual labor to the frenetic pace of a cyber-ponzi scheme that rushes from one moment to another at all hours of the day? She told me often that I should slow down, and take some time to enjoy my garden, not just work in it. She was trying to tell me to take the time to smell the roses.
She is now passed on into another world for some eighteen months now, and she walks with the Lord in a land of eternal sunshine in the peaceful fields of her youth, alive with the sounds of the birds in the trees shining with green leaves. The children of a lost time run with her, free from the trauma of war-weary men who break into the house and rip up the bed sheets to make bandages for their fallen comrades and cause unspeakable damage to the innocents around them out of avarice and despair.
She is free now from all of mankind’s ills and demons. but she left me and other people she touched with so much. So much she told us and taught us. And so much that she did not say. I can still think of her way of saying “uhuh” when she did not agree with something I was going to do. This was her subtle way of telling me that she did not agree with the outcome that I thought would ensue, but she left it to me to do as I wished and experience the outcome so I would more fully learn the lesson. Now as a result of so many decades of hearing her advice, I can imagine what she would say to almost any situation that might arise in my life. If I get that little niggling doubt in my mind I can hear her “uhuh” coming through to me warning me of a dangerous and foolhardy undertaking (I’ve had my share of those).
So, I drive along, a smile of whist fullness on my lips, a longing to be able to hear her speak again. But I speak to her everyday, and ask God often for His help in her new life. And I know that He loves her much more than I ever could, so He holds her close to His heart always.
There is a saying I heard once, “when you pray do not say “The Lord is in my heart”, say “I am in the heart of the Lord”". And she is in His heart.
So, I turn from the freeway, heading to the California hills that are now my home. Two generations from the plains of Hungary, and one life from the next.
The harvest moon rising in my eyes.
Gott Sei Danke.
The following little prayer in German was at a site from
Bruder Titus, that I liked enough to want to include.
Because it would have meant a lot to my grandmother,
it means a lot to me.
Gott sei mit dir
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du wohnst und lebst
und schenke dir seine Gnade.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du arbeitest
und schenke dir seine Kraft.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du hoffst und betest
und schenke dir Erfüllung.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du den Frieden suchst
und schenke dir Gelingen.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du feierst
und schenke dir Freude.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du liebst,
und schenke dir seinen Segen.
Amen.
God is with you
God is with you, there where you live and love
and gives you His grace.
God is with you, there where you work
and gifts you with His strength.
God is with you, there where you hope and pray
and gives you fulfilment.
God is with you, there where you look for peace
and gives you success.
God is with you, there where you celebrate
and gives you joy.
God is with you, there where you love,
and gives you His benedictions.
Amen.
The Law in its majestic equality,
forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets,
and to steal bread
~Anatole France~
Since 1993 we’ve been an organically certified small farm in California. I had a job with a contractor which paid our household expenses and kept us solvent even when the farm sales were less than our farm expenses. But two years ago when the factory in town closed down, and most of us were laid off, I decided to go into the cactus growing more full time. We grow a unique vegetable which we’ve shipped throughout the country. Initially we shipped the cactus leaves as nursery stock, then governmental regulations tightened and we became more aware of the laws and regulations of shipping nursery stock into other states. So we switched to shipping the younger leaves for people to eat themselves as produce. Our goal has been to ship to Health Food Stores, and restaurants as well as individuals who might be interested in the leaves we grow. Through the years our customer list grew slowly but steadily at a steady 30% rate. As the years progressed the governmental regulations seemed to grow more onerous… and the last year we’ve lost many of our older customers due to the recession. Other businesses have quit, some people seem to have stopped their regular orders. Yet, due to aggressive marketing, our sales this year are the highest we’ve ever had due to many new customers. Yet this was done at the expense of any profit we might have had. And again the government has come down on us harder. Now we have been notified that we must complete a fifteen hour ‘continuing education’ credits in water pollution and conservation. I’m all for education, but these government-mandated classes for all farms in the state are not provided for free… we must pay for them ourselves. The worse part is that they are given in the major population centers of Ventura or Monterrey to which we must take ourselves, and pay for our own lodging for the three days of the course.
It is this extra bit that has me stymied. We don’t really make any money doing this cactus business. All of our money goes to shipping, governmental fees of several thousand dollars yearly in order to maintain our licenses, permits, and associated fees and overhead expenses. Knowing that this trip will lead us into negative financial territory makes me reluctant to want to go. Knowing that due to these regulations, we must take a sample of our water and have it analyzed monthly at unknown costs…. I am seriously aggravated at the state of our laws and the level of compliance required even for tiny little micro-farms.
We have some months in which to take the classes, and maybe I’ll find some classes nearby, but this more personal posting than usual is to let the people know that governmental regulations are a double-edged sword. While they give the USA good traceability in produce, and what is perhaps the safest produce in the world, it also makes for stronger economy-of-scale issues that stymie the small grower… right at a time that we are needing MORE small farms, not less. If we were a huge corporate farm, with many employees, still we would need just one person to go to the classes, but when it’s a one-man operation, the standards are the same. The costs are the same, but they are a larger share of the profit in a small operation like ours.
My usual outlook is of hope and positive thoughts. Rarely am I dragged into this level of aggravation. I am sure I will sign up for the classes in Monterrey, they seem very informative and interesting. But people need to know that excessive governmental regulations strangle small business, they hamper the process of business formulation. We need to seriously look at what we want for this country, a place where people can transact business legally and efficiently with little governmental interference. If the government requires classes such as this, it should place them within the reach of the people, if it requires monthly water sampling, it should have a method to make such sampling efficient and inexpensive, (the paperwork mentions some samples might cost $8,000 yearly).
Excessive governmental regulations hamper small business more than the large. If due only to ‘economy of scale’.
When my dad grew up on an Ozark farm in the thirties and forties, they raised corn and wheat, raised hogs which they sold every fall and winter, and had a hundred or so chickens from which they sold eggs daily. They had five or six milk cows which they milked by hand, using the milk for food and their dogs, and one milk-can daily which they left on the roadside for the milk company to pick up. They also went to neighboring farms to supply skilled farm labor. Nowadays they would have to have many more permits, and each operation would require specialized equipment and permits and licensing. As all these regulations pile onto business, you must streamline your operations, drop aspects that have no profit and require permits, then you start to specialize. Yet a small family farm should not be a specialist farm, it should have a wide variety of foods and animals to create the ‘loop system’ for bio-diversity. Yet through the years we have had to drop livestock from our farm, first initially because we did not have proper butchering facilities, so we stopped the breeding of animals, until we had no more. We stopped using manures for fertilizer years ago because the government is worried about contamination of the soils with bacteria from manures. We stopped bringing in mulches for weed control and soil building because we could not vouch for the exact trees the wood chips came from. We are now a closed system with no outside inputs, and only material going out at a rate of a ton a month. Yet even this production is priced so low, and the shipping and governmental costs are so high, that we make no profit. One day, it might just get through my head that I’m better off just enjoying the property ourselves, and stop working so hard to make a business out of it. Yet, I know I can’t, we have such great customers….
While mulling these thoughts over in my head, I decided I needed to go for a walk. So with my camera in hand, I went down the road and took photos of the things I love about living here. And it is when in the wilderness, when I am furthest from people and the government, that I am closest to God and nature. These photos are my world, they are my daily activities and sights…. it is what is most in my heart.
The large oak once was a nut that stood its ground
Spanish Moss on Black Oak
Cutbank on the canyon road
Cutbank on the canyon road
The green lush creek bottom
The green lush creek bottom
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Old cattle Loading Chute
Miocene Deposits, this was all once underwater
Oak Woodlands
Poison Oak vines wind up the Oak Trees
Spanish Moss on the Oak Tree
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
Right around the bend from home, my daily view
‘One Tin Soldier’
`Lambert-Potter’
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
“With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it…
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Our cactus plants have great fruit that ripens in late summer, and will continue to yield through January
Right now we have a special sending out approximately five pounds of fruit in little plastic ‘clamshell’ containers
We place those into the 15×15x5 inch boxes and fill in around them with Grade C cactus
Grade C is the best grade for home and restaurant and health food uses
Grade C is in general a thicker leaf, this will give you more food per leaf and less time involved in preparation
Here’s some photos of the leaves and the fruit.
In the lots of photos above we can see clamshell containers loaded with the cactus fruits.
These ones are mainly loaded with ‘robusta’ fruits.
We have five varieties that fruit, and the seasons overlap on these.
So the varieties will change as the months progress.
Most shipments will carry two colors/types of cactus fruit, so you get a little variety.
My favorite is NOT the robusta… but many people like it because it is so very deep red in color,
and they like the fact that it may carry more nutrients.
Right now we are shipping two of the representative fruits….
We are picking an Opuntia ficus-indica that we call Lynnwood
The purple one is the Opuntia robusta, deep red juice is in that fruit
We clean the fruits to a degree, but there may still be a stray glochid here and there,
we recommend you wear dishwashing gloves to handle them
These fruits are very spiny while on the plant.
We do a fair amount of wiping to clean them for you.
Two photos show the Lynnwood fruit opened up, and the rind pulled back.
This gives you a nice little ball of cactus fruit.
One photo shows the fruit sliced open… notice the little seeds,
don’t try to bite them, they are hard little things.
They are also too small and numerous to spit out…
so either juice the fruit (it is very sweet), or just swallow the little seeds.
Some folks have digestion issues with little hard seeds, so be aware if that fits you.
Observe how deep and dark red are the Opuntia robusta fruit
These are not a personal favorite of mine, but we know that many people like dark-colored juices.
Fruits and vegetables of deep red color are often said to have a very high nutritional content
I’m no nutritionist, and I don’t know. But they don’t taste as good to me as the other varieties we sell.
We’ve had people buy them for the deep red color to the juice,
it can be used to impart a pinkish hue to other foods… if you like that
The juice is almost blood-red, it’s kind of scary on the knife.
These robusta fruits have to be sliced in two, then the insides scooped out with a spoon.
They don’t separate from the rind easily the way the other fruits do.
Some of the photos show two clamshells loaded with fruit, and packed into the shipping box.
Then we pack around and over them with Grade C nopal cactus
We pack it up until we get to almost fifteen pounds.
We sell it as twelve pounds. You pay shipping on twelve pounds.
We’re selling these lots of fruit and leaves for just $40 plus the shipping costs.
We will be shipping these by UPS Ground.
Our Cactus fruits are just now starting to ripen. The scrub jays (a type of bird) like to tear the rind off and eat the sweet pulp inside. The yellow jacket wasps will then congregate and take the sweetness themselves. So we trap the yellow jackets, and try to shoo the jays away.
The jays are pretty birds, we occasionally find a fallen feather…. very striking and blue.
But the jays are a raucous nuisance… they steal the food from the cats…. the cats would like to catch them, but jays are very smart and know to watch for the cats.
Jays love peanuts also… I know people who leave peanuts out for their jays, they enjoy watching them take the peanuts and hide them in the ground. I suppose they probably disseminate the seeds of a great any plants in that way. When I see an oak seedling at the top of a hill… I know it was brought to the top by some creature, as the wind would not blow it there.
There are places you can see acorns stored in the bark of the oak trees. The jays will poke a hole into the bark, and then shove the acorn in to keep it out of the reach of other creatures, and also raise it safely from the ground so it will not rot or sprout. High off the ground, snug in the bark of the oak, the acorns will sit until the jay wants it again. Watching how animals store food in this way, it makes me think that ancient humans observed such behavior, and took it further, construcing methods to store foods for the off-season. This would give them more variety in their diet through the year.
Cactus Apple
These particular cactus fruits are from the species Opuntia robusta.
The neighbor lady invited Vickie over for a bit, they baked an apple pie together and made Chile Rellenos, and then Vickie brought me a big platter of each. They looked so good, I had to take a picture to remember them always.
