Tag: homesteading

Is this the year I finally figure out sourdough?

~ Crystal Sands ~ 6 Comments

I have tried and failed with sourdough twice in recent years. I am hoping the third time will be a charm in 2025.

I have always admired the beauty of sourdough bread, and in recent years, I have come to greatly admire the self sufficiency of it. I bake with yeast a lot, and while I try to stay stocked up, the yeast shortage of 2020 lingers in my mind. The idea of having a source of infinite bread is appealing to me–and seems like magic for sure!

But, oh, how I struggle!

The first time, we named our sourdough, but it didn’t live very long at all. The second time, I told my son we had better not name it. It did live longer–several weeks, in fact–but I couldn’t even get it to the right state to cook with, and it eventually died.

As you may know, I try to make New Year’s resolutions related to my homesteading goals for the year because I am always trying to learn just a little bit more, and I made sourdough bread one of my goals for 2025. During the holidays, I bought myself two starters from King Arthur Baking, determined that I could surely make one of them live. The little jars of starter came with instructions, and after reading through the instructions, I am worried the issue I have might be temperature.

The instructions say to keep the starter at a certain temperature all the time, but the temperature in our house fluctuates a lot. It can get pretty chilly in here in the winter and pretty hot in here in the summer. Dear readers, if you know sourdough, do you think that might be why my sourdough starter can’t get going?

And, if you know sourdough, do you have any advice related to temperature? And, well, do you have any advice in general? I remember reading in Michael Pollan’s A Botany of Desire that he struggled at first with sourdough, and I feel I might be overthinking it in the same way. Please tell me it’s simple and that I can do this. I need some of that magic in my kitchen.

My other homesteading resolutions are to build a clothes line and plant apple trees in the places where we had to take down our giant pines. Our property is so changed without those big pine trees. I miss them so much, but that’s another story. We are planning to take advantage of the newly-found openness on our homestead to plant more fruit trees. Oh, and I think this is the year we may try to build a covered run for the chickens and ducks. The bird flu has us more than a little worried. But that’s another story too.

What are your homesteading resolutions for the year? Do you have any goals toward self-sufficiency for the upcoming year? I would love to hear about them.

photo credit: Jennifer Burk, Unsplash

A Farmer’s Calendar at the End of the Year

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Today, on this last day of 2024, I took down the wall calendar and put up the new one. The wall calendar always hangs in our kitchen and is the recorder of our lives as farmers and parents of a young cellist. It tells us when we planted what, when baby chicks are born, when music camps are, and so much more.

I have saved these wall calendars since we started hatching our own baby chicks in 2016 because I wanted to have records of the babies, and these calendars have grown to mean so much to me. They are like a short-hand of everything we do, what we grow, what we harvest, and how we live our lives.

The quote at the bottom of that top calendar page reads, ““The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods, she uses no more than one branch.The mole drinks off the river, it can only fill one belly.” The quote is from Chuang Tzu, and doesn’t that really just sum up the problem humans are having right now?

This year, I bought a lovely wall calendar with artwork from our national parks. I love our national parks and everything they stand for. I have only been to four national parks, but I was in awe of all of them.

I decided to gather all of the old calendars I could quickly find, just to see what all I could remember about our homesteading journey and our lives from previous, and it was like a trip down memory lane. I would love to take this to the next level and actually keep a farmer’s journal. I did that one year for the blog, but I lacked discipline this year–and most years. But while we are pretty good at remembering most of our lessons from year to year, we do forget some. The forgetting was worse this year with the long COVID. Yeah, I might need to keep a farmer’s journal in 2025.

But I digress…

When I looked at the calendars, I could see the year Pumpkin and Nugget had babies back to back. I could see all of my cat’s Sophie’s vet appointments as we dealt with her health issues. I miss her so much. I could see a note about Gus’s birthday. I miss him so much too. I could see that Ron has been starting seedlings indoors for at least six or seven years. It doesn’t seem that long. I could see when the dogs’ heart worm meds were due. I could see that the ducks’ first eggs of the year have been getting later, and the last eggs of the year dropped off very early this year. Those ducks will be seven years old this spring.

I saw a note about remembering to give the second treatment Rooster and Mary Jane for mites. I saw that, in 2020, baby chicks were born on my birthday! I can’t remember which chicks those are, but I am going to have to track it down because I think it might be Juliet and Bianca. Oh, how I love those girls, and oh, how sad I am that they are nearly five years old. I hate to think that I don’t have too many more years with those fantastic hens.

I saw the cello camps and music lessons and recitals. I loved seeing the year we did the farm shares and my efforts at keeping up with who was getting eggs when. Oh, and I saw records keeping track of when we bought chicken feed and how much we spent. We found a better food this year, and it has saved us so much money. I’ll have to write about that soon because, if we can dodge the bird flu, I might try again at selling eggs and seeing if we can do better.

I saw that this year the planting was so much later. Thankfully, we had a long, long summer because we needed all the time. We were so slow and tired this year. I also saw that this year was full of doctor appointments, ultrasounds, lab work. We used to barely go to the doctor. For a few years, it was just check ups and dentist appointments. I hope to get back to that point.

And, hopefully, 2025 will be a good year! I have learned so much this last year. I feel wiser. I feel like I am a better human, and that really just has to be the main goal, doesn’t it?

Friends, I hope you have a lovely New Year’s Eve and New Year tomorrow! I hope 2025 is good for you!

Here’s to kindness, love, good food, great books, beautiful music, self sufficiency, and maybe some baby chicks in the coming year. There will be challenges. There always are. But I hope we face them well and with love in our hearts.

PS If you keep a farmer’s journal, I would love to hear about it. And, if you just keep a calendar like we do, I would love to hear about that as well!

Today was the day we left the coop!

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I guess my writing last night about the chickens not wanting to leave the coop did some good because we left the coop this morning! I was so grateful. Some of them were outside off and on for several hours today, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get an egg tomorrow. None for today–but there’s hope for tomorrow.

The humans also had to leave the coop today for a little bit to get a flu shot. There is some risk for people with long COVID getting a flu shot, as well as other vaccines, but we decided that, even though we mask everywhere we go, our son’s girlfriend might accidentally bring the flu to us. And while there is some risk getting the flu shot, there would definitely be trouble for our long COVID symptoms if we got the flu–so flu shot it was. My fingers are crossed. I have made really good progress with my long COVID symptoms of late, so I am hopeful it is all going to be okay.

I didn’t like leaving the coop though, and I am glad to be back home. In my younger days, I used to get a little stir crazy if I didn’t leave the house every few days. Now, I try to see how long I can go without going anywhere. I can’t get a good streak very often because my son has many activities as a cellist, but one time, I did make it nine glorious days!

This time, I made it six days, and I feel like that was pretty good. I would love to know if I have other homebodies following this blog. What is your longest streak of not leaving the house?

Anyway, I have beautiful pictures to share of my sweet flock finally leaving the coop! I’m so proud of them. They were rewarded with treats for sure.

This is Tuesday, Ruby’s biological daughter and only friend. Tuesday is one of the smartest hens I have ever met. I adore her. And isn’t she beautiful?

This is one of our boys, Dvorak. Rooster finally came out of the coop as well, but Dvorak was one of the first ones out. I can tell he’s tired of being cooped up, probably especially since Rooster is and will always be the boss of him.

This is Yoshi. She is a pardoned meat bird from 2023. She’s very sweet, and while I can tell she doesn’t have the genetics to go for the long haul like Mary Jane who will be 8 this summer, she’s a great addition to the flock. She’s so chill and is a great layer.

This is the covered area we call “chicken camp” because it’s where they can camp out and dust bathe away from the coop. We need to add more dirt, but these chickens made do today.

We’re snacking and hiding…

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

I cannot get the chickens to come out of the coop. A handful will come out every day, but even on the nicest days, most of the chickens won’t leave the coop. It all started when we had to have our biggest trees removed from our property. It changed the landscape around here, and the chickens didn’t take it well.

I bought some organic lettuce heads and bagels to give the chickens some snacks and reduce some boredom. It worked too well.

But it’s been more than two weeks, maybe three now, and everyone just seems to be in the habit now of staying in the coop. It is cold outside most days…and there’s snow on the ground. I have also been bringing snacks to the coop, so I guess there isn’t much of a reason to leave.

I can’t really blame them. We are snacking and hiding from the world around here too.

Our family was so busy with work, school, and music right up until the Solstice that I don’t know how we made it. The first couple of days after we were able to stop we almost couldn’t sit still. But I knew we all needed some serious rest–like serious rest. So we are embracing it. Our health demands it, I think.

We get up early to bring warm water and fresh food to the chickens and ducks and then go back to bed. Then, when we get up later, we sometimes just eat pie for breakfast. We hang out with the dogs, sit by the fire, play video games on our family Christmas present, and are literally just hiding and snacking. I haven’t even read the news very much, though I realize I need to check it at some point, as I have been worrying about bird flu and heard there was a case in a backyard flock in Vermont.

But I am going to be like Ruby and hide my head in the corner a little longer, though, at some point, both the chickens and I will have to face things. We have gotten two eggs in total in the last week, so I really need those stinkers to get outside and get some sunshine. I guess it will help when I am not delivering fancy snacks to the coop–and when we run out of pie in the house.

I had to drag myself out the day after Christmas to meet a farmer friend to buy some honey. We got to talking about chickens, and I was lamenting that my chickens won’t come out of the coop.

“Do you feed them in the coop?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well, then what reason do they have to come out of the coop?”

Indeed.

Make Lemonade–or Applesauce

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I just finished grading two big sets of essays, and I am now waiting on a 7 x 10 thin sheet of butter to set up in the refrigerator. I’m making croissants, and it is a process. They won’t be finished until tomorrow, but I am having tea with one of my favorite humans tomorrow and wanted to make something special to go with the tea. I have only made croissants one other time, so I am a little worried that I will mess these up.

My pie crust failure at Thanksgiving has me a little off my game, but I have a great story about that sad, collapsed pie crust that I have been meaning to share.

Because I only use organic, grass-fed butter, butter is pretty expensive to me, and a lot of butter goes in both croissants and pie crusts. I think the cost of the butter makes me feel some extra pressure for things to turn out well. I mean, you just don’t want to waste that much lovely butter. So when my pie crusts collapsed at Thanksgiving, I did not throw them away. I was determined to find some use for them.

After my crying spell and Ron’s failed attempts at somehow unrolling the collapsed pie crusts, I baked them a little longer, so they were good and done. Then, I let them cool and wrapped them up to save before starting all over again with new crusts for the pies.

The next morning, I was trying to figure out something to put in the failed pie crusts when Ron suggested I make some of my homemade applesauce. It seemed perfect.

I learned how to make homemade applesauce when my daughter, who is now 27, was in Kindergarten. I had only ever had applesauce from the store, and I didn’t like it at all. One day, my daughter came home from school asking me to make applesauce because she had homemade applesauce at school. Her teacher made some for the whole class. I had no idea where to even begin. I grew up on Hamburger Helper.

I volunteered at my daughter’s school and just adored this teacher. Her name was Mrs. Alexander. I learned how to teach writing to little kids using a method she had learned in New Zealand. I adored her teaching methods almost as much as I adored her. I was just starting to each college writing full time at the time, but she would tell me I had missed my calling. “You should be teaching writing to young children,” she would say.

And, in the great story of my life, I was able to use her same method for teaching writing 15 years later when I started homeschooling my son. He was six when I started teaching him. Maybe I got to finally live my calling.

Anyway, the next day after my daughter asked for this apparently magnificent homemade applesauce, I asked Mrs. Alexander how to make it. She gave me the recipe, said it was so simple (and it was), and I have been making homemade applesauce ever since–only I swear it’s better now because I know where to get really, really good applesauce apples from a local apple orchard.

So I made the homemade applesauce Thanksgiving morning from seven leftover apples from our fall picking. They were nearly too old, but that’s just right for applesauce, isn’t it? While the applesauce was cooking, I made some homemade whipped cream, and when the applesauce was finished, I warmed the pie crust in the microwave, cut it into triangles, filled a triangle with applesauce, and topped it with the whipped cream. It was delicious and decadent, and, with the exception of the cream, it was made entirely of things I had saved from going to waste. I swear, that fact made it taste better, but it was so wonderful anyway.

Ron loved it so much that he ate two pieces and then was so full he was sorry he ate two pieces. When I took the first bite, I nearly cried. Here, my mistake was made into something so wonderful, so beautiful, so delicious. What could be better than that?

Ron and I had been so stressed the entire month of November, worrying before and after the election. We are peppers in our souls, so we have been trying to figure out the best course of action moving ahead..

“Make lemons into lemonade,” I said. And Ron knew exactly all that I meant with that.

“”Or applesauce,” he said.

***

I wanted to share with you Mrs. Alexander’s recipe for homemade applesauce in case you are looking for a way to get some simple, lovely comfort food into your rotation. Mrs. Alexander passed away when my daughter was in second grade. My daughter and I were so sad, but every time I make this applesauce for her, my daughter and I remember how much we loved Mrs. Alexander. Food is good for that kind of thing isn’t it?

Ingredients

6 large or 8 medium apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup water (this may need to be adjusted depending upon the juiciness of your apples)

Instructions

Peel apples and cut into chunks. I like to vary the size a little, so I get a mix of soft chunks with the traditional smooth applesauce when cooked. Put all ingredients into a saucepan and cook until you have applesauce. I can’t tell you how long it takes because it all depends on the apples you are working with. But taste as you go. When it’s proper, your heart will be happy when you taste it.

It’s best served warm.

A Season of Harvest in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

December 2 is definitely the latest we have ever harvested anything, but last night, Ron pulled the last of the carrots from the ground. They were so delicious. We learned to always let your carrots stay in the ground until after the first few frosts. The frost does good things to the sugars in the carrots, and the taste is so sweet.

It seems like forever ago that we started this whole process, and I was so tired this summer and fall from the long COVID that I didn’t post as many pictures as I normally do. With that in mind, I decided to go through all of my photos from the summer and fall and show you what we do around here–and how we eat. There are so many more things to share, but I think this gives you a pretty good idea.

Harvest starts in May, and this year, well, it went until December. Both last night and tonight, we had carrots with dinner. They were magnificent.

It always starts with the rhubarb. I make rhubarb cakes, muffins, and jelly. I didn’t even get to share a single jar of this jelly. I made five jars, and Ron had eaten it all within two weeks. I have to make more next year, but rhubarb jelly is a bit more labor intensive–at least if you want pink. Our rhubarb is not super pink, so I have had to learn some strategies for picking and processing to get more of the pink color.
The first greens! And that’s Saint Saens in the background. That sweet girl will be seven this spring. She really loves the greens. I did share some after this photo.
The green beans did pretty well this year, and we froze a record number of quarts. I have not yet been brave enough to try to can them, but I must try next summer. Also, our neighbor gave us several old harvest baskets years ago, and we use those things all the time. I would love to get a few more.
One of my favorite meals every summer is the organic ramen. When the cabbage and onions are ready (usually we have carrots at this time too, but they were late), I boil duck eggs and warm up some organic ramen. It’s a quick, easy dinner–and it’s pretty!
These were the first raspberries of the season!
Ron planted purple cauliflower this year. I mean, just look at that!
We always have a couple of months between running out of potatoes from last year and the new potatoes of the current year coming to harvest. Every year, when we eat the potatoes, those first meals are so precious to me. I don’t buy potatoes. I just wait until the next crop is ready. It really makes you appreciate good potatoes.
When the blueberries are ripe, I am so excited to put them in oatmeal in the mornings. We all love oatmeal with blueberries around here. This year, the birds ate almost all of our blueberries, so Ron and I spent two days picking at a local farm that has really good prices for beautiful berries. We stocked up and still have gallons of frozen blueberries that we will eat all winter. This summer, on one hot and miserable day of picking (the heat makes long COVID symptoms worse), I said to Ron, “We are the ants, aren’t we?” He agreed that we are, indeed, the ants.
I just had to share this sunflower because neither Ron nor myself planted it. A bird or a squirrel planted it in a flower pot on our deck, and I treasured it. So did this awesome bumble bee.
We had melons this year! They were fantastic! When Ron first tried to grow melons about 10 years ago, it wasn’t hot enough. The Maine summers are plenty hot now.
It was a banner year for tomatoes, and we put up a record number of jars of pizza and spaghetti sauce. This is some of the pizza sauce. Each one of these jars contains enough sauce for two pizzas. We use the tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic from the garden to make this sauce. It is slow food that is just so good.
We eat pizzas all fall using vegetables from the garden. This one has onions, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden, and, of course, we make the sauce from the garden too.
Ron chose a hybrid corn this year, so I couldn’t seed save; it was so good it was worth it though. It was a really good year for the corn.
I love apple season. We do not grow our own apples, but we found a local apple orchard with very good prices for pick-your-own, and drops are crazy cheap–and still so good. We load up on apples every fall. We always freeze many gallons of apples, but this year, I started putting up applesauce in jars. I put up eight large jars. They are already gone. My teen son stays up late and, apparently, ate a lot of applesauce this year. I would wake up every other morning or so and find another jar had been opened. Truly, there is nothing like homemade applesauce, right?
Right around apple time is also grape time. We have our own grape vines, and Ron built a beautiful arbor for them this fall. However, we have no grapes yet. Thankfully, I have the kindest neighbor who always shares her grapes with me, and I always make grape jelly. Homemade grape jelly is nothing like the store grape jelly. It’s so tart and so yummy!
Ron plants a fall round of greens each year, so we can have greens when the tomatoes are ripe. This beautiful salad as greens, beets, carrots, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden–and walnuts and dried cranberries from the grocery store.
Our pear trees had a good year. I canned 15 large jars of pears from our trees. We planted two more pear trees this spring, but only one really started to take off. Aren’t pears so beautiful?
I love cranberry beans. A few years ago, we had a bumper crop and haven’t grown any in several years. But Ron planted some this year in his Three Sisters garden, and they are so beautiful. I was glad they were back this year.
We always plant three varieties of carrots–Yellowstone, Scarlet Nantes, and Oxhearts. These are the Oxhearts, and they are great for rocky soils like we have here in Maine.

The First Snow of the Season

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Last night, we had our first snow of the season. I didn’t think I was ready for it because it has been so warm. I always feel like I need a little lead in to that first snow, but the snow came whether or not I was ready. Today, I started the part of the year where I really earn my breakfast.

I shoveled out the chickens while Ron did the driveway.. It was during this process that Ron discovered the heavy, wet snow had brought down a tree–on the fence in the chicken yard–that he just finished rebuilding last weekend! Oh, that man was grumpy. I didn’t even try to comfort him because I felt there was no way to offer comfort for something like that. He was going to have an epic day of work repairing the fence. I just told him I was so, so sorry for him and kept shoveling. Indeed, he had a really rough day. Poor man!

I shoveled out the ducks too, who were far more thankful than the chickens. A few chickens came out, but mostly looked at me from the coop wondering why in the world I had let it snow and ruin their day. I shoveled thoroughly some little paths and areas for them, but it would be several hours before the chickens accepted the reality of the situation and decided to come outside.

I told them it would probably melt soon anyway.

On the bright side of the morning, the snow was beautiful to me. When the white first comes, I always treasure it. And, truly, a Great Pyrenees is happiest when it snows. I got this picture of our little (big) Bairre today. Isn’t he beautiful?

Two eggs per day–sometimes one

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Right around Thanksgiving is always the worst time for egg laying in our flock. Since we do not add light to the coop, our girls rest this time of year, and it’s always a little disheartening when I go collect the eggs. I have been getting two per day most days this week, but this morning, it was just one.

In our efforts to reduce our flock size naturally over time, we did not have any new baby chicks this summer, which means no one is just starting to lay eggs this fall. It’s been awhile since we have not had any new layers, so I have a feeling that this year is going to be extra tough in the egg department.

There is a good chance I am going to have to buy some eggs this week, and I am interested in seeing how much they cost. I will only buy free-range, humanely-raised eggs, so they are already quite expensive. But I was just reading yesterday that egg prices were up 30% in October due to issues with bird flu nationwide and increased demand. I don’t know why demand would be higher, unless all the chicken keepers all over the country, collectively, are having to buy eggs right now like I am about to do.

I’ll have to keep you posted on how much they cost. Vital Farms are my favorite eggs that taste most like our eggs. I hope they aren’t sold out. I have been having a very, very hard time finding organic, grass-fed milk at our grocery stores. I can still find organic, but because of my son’s liver issues due to long COVID, he can only drink grass-fed milk. There is. a dairy here in Maine that I can buy milk from sometimes, but they are often just sold out. This milk shortage makes me a bit nervous.

Anyway, hopefully, I can find the eggs I want tomorrow. Maybe next year we’ll have at least a few baby chicks in the summer, so I don’t have to buy eggs next Thanksgiving. I really want to get some heritage breed chicks. In the meantime, I have dread for the day I go out to the coop and there is not a single egg for me. I think it’s coming.

Win a special gift–just follow my blog!

~ Crystal Sands ~ 7 Comments

In honor of my new regular blogging and the revival of the online journal, I wanted to write a few “follow-my-blog” contests during the holiday season!

The first one is simple. Follow my blog and enter for a chance to win this beautiful handmade mug, made especially for Farmer-ish. It holds 16 ounces, is beautiful blue, and features our Farmer-ish name.

To enter to win this cozy mug, all you have to do is follow this blog and leave a comment on the post. If you are a new follower, you will be entered once for following and once for leaving a comment. If you already follow, you can still enter once by leaving a comment below. You can also get two entries by inviting one person to follow and telling me about it!

In your comments, be sure to also tell me about topics you would like to see me cover in the blog!

We will run this contest until Saturday, November 30, at 10:00 AM. Normally, I limit these contests to the U.S. because of shipping costs, but I am making an exception on this one. Followers all over the world can enter, and shipping will be covered.

On the morning of November 30, which is Small Business Saturday, I am also going to be unveiling a new Farmer-ish store, right here on this site! No more going through Etsy! I still love Etsy, but it’s so exciting to have our own space for shop!

Anyway, leave a comment and enter to win! And stay tuned for more Farmer-ish giveaways coming up throughout the holiday season!

Food System

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Warning: This post includes a brief discussion of processing chickens for food.

This morning, we began processing our last batch of meat chickens for the year. We normally do one batch for our family and one batch for our dogs, but we did three batches this year because our Pyrenees, Bairre, has decided he really only likes to eat chicken for dinner. We can either buy meat from the food system where we know the animals are abused or humanely raise and process the chickens ourselves for our dogs to eat. We choose the latter.

And, when I say “we” process these chickens, I mean mostly Ron. I am just the assistant. Ron humanely culls, cleans most of the feathers, and then cleans the insides. It is my job to then get the chicken looking like one from the grocery store, so, when cooked with vegetables from our garden, our family just sees a beautiful chicken dinner as the end result.

I get the final feathers and hairs, clean the chicken super thoroughly, and process the internal organs for the dogs. We try to avoid waste. After all, a life was given for that food. Waste seems sacrilegious.

Even with my assistant job, I get so worn. I am up and down our stairs a lot, as we keep the chickens in the basement, and I spent a lot of hours leaned over our deep sink. It feels worth it though when I think about the alternative. The “humanely raised” is really important to me, but food safety is becoming more and more an issue.

Recently, it feels more and more important that we choose to live this way.. I have known for a long time that our American food system is in some trouble, but the recent listeria and E. coli outbreaks remind me of how important it is to build our own food system–at least as much as we can. The FDA and the USDA both regulate our food systems here in the United States, but they apparently do not communicate well and are also quite backed up and overworked. On top of these issues, apparently, some states, specifically I read about Texas, have simply quit complying with some required testing from the USDA. This was related to the bird flu, but who knows what else states or companies will decide to not comply with. It’s already quit a bit. Self regulation is not a great plan, at least if experience has taught us anything.

We also have a lot of inexperience and arrogance heading into our government, and in my other life working as an academic administrator who worked with federal agencies to secure grants, inexperience and arrogance are not a great combination when it comes to dealing with the giant bureaucracy that is government.

Yeah, I have some worries. I think we had better start working hard to get our food from a more local system.

I know it’s not possible for everyone who reads this to start raising meat chickens, but it seems important to start trying to remove ourselves from a broken food system in whatever ways we can. Maybe we get chickens for eggs and compost their poop to fertilize our organic vegetable garden. Maybe we connect with local farmers and join a CSA. Maybe we support any local markets that keep their supply chains local. I don’t know how common those are in other states, but we have a lot of them here in Maine. Maybe we work harder to create low-ingredient homes, cutting down on or eliminating processed foods (more on that later).

Pay attention. Wash your food well. Organic carrots were a recent culprit for E. coli. Cook your meats thoroughly. Make sure they reach the proper temps.

I wish I had more answers, but I do think we are on our own more than I feel comfortable with. I’ll always share what I learn to help us get through it all, and I hope you will as well.

photo credit: Anna Jakutajc-Wojtalik, Unsplash