No Pantry? No Problem.

So I created one...

BTW... as you scroll through the photos you need to know that editing them takes a ton of time. So in keeping with simplifying my life, I'm using my iPhone, making only a few minor adjustments so you can see what is in the photo (light v. dark; shadows removed), and that's about it. And that folks, is as good as it's going to get. :-)

Don't you just love my folding chairs? I know... I'm quite the trend setter! Truth is, we sold the big farmhouse table and chairs. And until I find what I want, these work just fine. I did pick up two wicker chair that I love! Not sure if I'll keep them at the table, but so far I like it.

The dining table has been in the family since the late 1800's. I grew up eating all my meals on it. This one stays.

And the light fixture? It's a rental. Some things just have to stay as they are. If we were living here long term, I'd swap it out temporarily and replace it before leaving, but probably won't do that this time around.

On the plus side... I adore all these windows!! It's like having a sunroom. Morning light pours through and this is where I drink my coffee and read my bible each morning unless I'm soaking it in on the back patio.

Anyway, back to the pantry and the reason for the post. In the last house, I had a HUGE walk in pantry... about 20' x 8'? I can't tell you how much stuff was in there, but a LOT.

Part of our goal for selling the big house was to downsize and simplify our lifestyle. It's easy to become a slave to your house and it was swallowing us up. The rental has no pantry space at all and it's likely our new home won't either (still working on the plans in case we build). So something had to give.

I sorted everything from the pantry, kitchen, and dining area that was in the big house and kept only what I LOVED or USED regularly. Some of it actually fit in our rental kitchen, but what didn't had to fit in the dining room on these new wire shelving racks (we opted for Trinity Brand EcoStorage with free Prime shipping after LOTS of research). I purchased an extra shelf for each and a wire basket that slides out for one of the racks. And ladies, I put one together by myself, so you can do it, too!

Baskets hide things that are necessities, but aren't so lovely to look at... like pot lids, paper goods, stainless steel and glass water bottles, zip lock bags, and empty egg cartons.

Hooks on the end hold pots, aprons, baskets, hats, etc.  LOVE this feature!

I would like to report that keeping food in bulk worked well... just in case we had an emergency. We just couldn't rotate it fast enough to keep it from spoiling, despite freezing extra grains, using every method possible for long term storage, etc. So I decided to reduce the amount of food storage.

Since I already was using the large Anchor Hocking jars for grains, I just decided that whatever they hold will be my limit unless I can squeeze some in the freezer. Each of the 2 gallon jars holds roughly 10 lbs. of wheat, flour, rice, oats, etc. I have more in the kitchen, but I keep a couple on the shelves.

While wire shelving isn't traditional, antique, or even rustic, it does have that industrial look that's so popular right not. When I travel to the Big City, one of my favorite places to shop is Sur La Table and once I was fortunate to shop at a Dean & Deluca! Now when I walk in my dining room, I feel like I'm right back in one of those gourmet cooking stores.

I made one additional purchase that I had research for a LONG time. I invested in a quality bread box. With all the money I made selling the big farmhouse furniture, I was able to splurge a bit without dipping into our monthly budget. This Wesco bread box is a dream! I had debated off and on about buying a vintage granite enamel ware bread box, but my OCD tendency kept kicking in when I thought of storing my bread in a box that I had no clue as to it's prior use. I love my antiques, but a new bread box for me, please. 

Here are a few other reasons I like the open wire shelving: 

• I can see all the things I love. Like in The Sound of Music when Julie Andrews sings "These are a few of my favorite things...", these are my things that are my favorites. No more hiding behind cupboard doors or in a hidden pantry. It's truly out in the open. But it means I had to put a bit more thought into the arranging. Could I get more on these shelves? Of course. But why look at all the regular pantry/can goods when I can look at my pretty things? All that other stuff now fits into a couple of kitchen cabinets or in jars on the counter. 

• Second, it's dry here in the southwest and that means dust. More than most of you can ever imagine! It gets EVERYWHERE and FAST! I've thought of Sarah, Abraham's wife many a time and reminded myself that I COULD be living in a tent in the dirt and sand all my life. It helps me stay content with my own dust! Wire shelving collects very little dust. Almost none in fact. I do have to dust the items on it, but it's MUCH easier to manage. 

• Easy access... everything is within reach and a breeze to put back. I LOVE this about my wire shelving!

• They're portable and easy to move. I can move my shelves to mop under them and I can take them with me to the next house. Piece of cake.

• If I ever want to go back to a traditional hutch or other furniture, these wire racks can easily be repurchased for storing items long term in the garage, Costco extras, craft supplies, you name it! These won't make it to Craigslist anytime soon.

• Modest pricing makes these affordable. Buying one a month is so much cheaper than a piece of furniture! And this stuff is industrial quality. I think every shelf holds something like 50# (don't quote me!).

So there you have it. A pantry in the dining room. In the next post, I'll try to show you where all the REAL "pantry items" are housed. 

Plan To Eat... Black Friday SALE!

Now is the time to renew your Plan To Eat subscription or take advantage of their annual half price sale and kick the tires so-to-speak. If you tried it before and haven't seen the new lights and bells that make it even better, be sure to check it out. By going to their site you can view their tour and find out more.

Did I mention they have a fantastic food blog?
Happy eating!

Blackberry Pie! Oh, My!

Blackberries are ripe and harvest has commenced... joy from the fruit of the vine and thankful to the Giver of all good things.

Recipe can be found HERE. I substituted some arrowroot for the flour to thicken it up just a wee bit.

Amy

Plan To Eat... On Sale SOON!

It's good to get updates every now and then on products I've reviewed in the past. One that I'm still raving about... PLAN TO EAT.

Yes, I'll be renewing my subscription at the end of this month in order to save B.I.G. when it goes on sale because I use it just about every. single. day. Now I can't say I always actually PLAN, but I do use it for storing my recipes if nothing else. I love how they easily input from websites and can be printed for my 3 ring binders. With photos!

I don't want to give the impression I NEVER plan... no, no, no. I just don't plan as often as I'd like. Life is just kind of messy like that. Did I ever mention that the older kids get, the less predictable life is?

For some of my past reviews of PLAN TO EAT, just do a search over on the right sidebar... all my past posts on the subject will appear before your very eyes.

Be sure to check out some of the NEW FEATURES, such as the cooking view... I LOVE it!! (Thank you PLAN TO EAT for continually making fantastic improvements!)

• Mark your calendar for Nov 29 - Dec 2.
• Access PLAN TO EAT though Homestead Revival if you would be so kind (it's about the only thing I'm still an affiliate for and I will earn a small commission).
• Renew or Purchase a subscription at 50% off - woo hoo!!
• Enjoy the benefits of organized recipes just in time for all that holiday cooking and baking.
• Pat yourself on the back for being so thrifty and smart.

You go girl!

The Pantry Fridge... A Very "Mini" Tour

On my last post I showed you a picture of my pantry refrigerator; a dorm size ice box with a mini freezer inside. I actually purchased this last year when our kitchen fridge broke down and was out of commission for over 4 weeks during the summer. We were very blessed that it happened when the produce was actually coming out of the garden and we soon realized our only need at the time was a cold space for the goat milk. (Seriously, I was considering ditching the big fridge altogether and go totally "off grid" as I was so completely frustrated trying to get it fixed at a reasonable price, but that's another story for different day).

But back to the little fridge...

I had to keep the milk cool, so I picked up the small dorm size ice box thinking I could resell it if necessary once the big fridge was repaired. Instead, I found it was just right for all the new endeavors I had embarked upon in the last year or so. Cultures, rennets, herbs, seeds... just to name a few. Things that were taking up so much space in the main refrigerator... Okay, so perhaps I don't REALLY want to chuck the electricity completely. Not yet, anyway. There just really isn't a viable alternative to refrigeration for us at this particular time.)

So if I am going to keep most of these things in my all-to-warm pantry, the dorm size ice box seems to be the ticket for keeping them both dark and cool, which is what most of the items must have in order to stay fresh. It frees up space in the kitchen where I keep the fresh food and allows me to group things together based on use. Here's a little tour of what I keep in the smaller unit...

• Seeds

All my seeds are organized in two containers that fit nicely in the back of the shelves. This helps preserve their integrity so that the majority of them sprout the next season.

• Cultures

Any kind of culture starter is kept in the bottom drawer until I'm ready to use it, whether it's for sourdough or kefir or anything in between. I can also store my starters that are "resting" in this fridge.

• Pectin

I use natural pectin and sometimes I don't use the entire packet. Either way, I always keep it in the refrigerator just to keep it from getting too hot. The Pomona's Pectin requires you to make a calcium water mix, so this can go in here, too. It's nice to keep it separate since family members may mistake it for something else if I don't write on the jar what it's for. They don't venture in this fridge much (if ever), so things are kind of protected in here.

• Rennets

All those little bottles of rennet for cheesemaking... they go in here, too. I TRY to remember to write the expiration date on top so that I can keep an eye for when I need to replace it.

• Yeasts

I'm hoping to move away from conventional yeast altogether, but occasionally we are still using it. So I keep that on hand as well.

• Ginger Ale

I don't get sick too often, but I do occasionally get an upset stomach. And it's always around 2 a.m. To keep my husband from having to make a late night run to the store, I keep non-alcoholic ginger ale (a.k.a. ginger beer) on hand to settle my stomach. This particular brand (Reed's) is a natural ale that really does the trick (has an extra strong ginger flavor due to it's real ginger ingredients) and I'm not getting a lot of the bad stuff with the good. They actually make a "Nausea Relief" brew and a Kombucha, but I haven't found either locally yet.

• Herbal Remedies

This is a biggie... I have all my herbal mixes in here. Like the seeds, they need a cool, dark location and this makes it particularly quick for making up the daily doses for the animals (and humans!). As you can see in the top photo, the jars are starting to take over (I have even more since these pictures were taken!)... I hope I don't out grow this space soon!

• Probios

Probios is my "go to" item of choice for any animal with just about any medical need.... it's basically probiotics for the goats, chickens, etc. It just gives them that needed boost, so I keep it on had at all times, although I usually give herbal remedies in conjunction with it.

• Ice Packs

Having an ice pack ready to go is always helpful. You never know when you'll need one. Plus, I usually have a friend do my goat's blood draws for annual testing, so I use these for shipping blood samples.

So there you have it... the mini tour of the Pantry Fridge. If we ever get the barn built, I'm sure we'll move this out to the milking area so all the herbs are on hand for dosing where we need it, not to mention, I can chill the milk if I need to stay in the barn longer, tending to needs out there. Of course, the seeds, cultures, and starters will have to find a new home at that point, but this solution works really well for the time being.

I suspect there's a lot of dorm refrigerators out there just sitting in garages taking up space... perhaps a few of them can find a new life in the pantry?

How do you store your herbal remedies, cultures, and such? Is anyone blessed with a root cellar and if so, how does it work for these kinds of things?

Friday Inspiration: Stamped Cookies

There are a lot of different cookie ideas out there, but to keep things simple, I'm going to share only one today. One that I've never thought of, but an ingenious idea, if you ask me! The photo says it all, but you'll find more information and a recipe at Scullery Made.

Such a sweet idea, don't you think? Any firm cookie dough that doesn't spread too much would work. I may try this with my Swedish Pepparkakor Recipe.

Time to get baking!

Why You Should Shun Cheap Groceries

I'm sure by now, everyone has heard we can expect an increase in food prices before the summer is out. As if they don't seem high enough already! But what we fail to realize is that historically, food prices have always been high and it's only in the last 30 years or so that we've enjoyed the benefits of a lower grocery budget.

At the turn of the 20th century, families spent approximately 43 percent of their income on food for the table. Woah... let that sink in a minute. That's more than the average house payment. In fact, that's nearly HALF one's income! Take out another 10% for tithe and 10% for savings and you're left with only 37% of your salary. Of course, taxes were much lower then, but how many of you could pay the utilities, gasoline (much less buy a car), clothe your children, and provide the other "necessities" on that kind of money.

You may have to soon. And perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing.

With the dawn of regular farming subsidies, prices at the market started falling. Today, only about 11 - 19% is spent on food. And what did we do with all that "extra cash"? We began entertaining ourselves. (I have a LOT to say on this topic, but I'll reserve that for another day).

But what's worse is that it's come at a price. Perhaps delayed, but unavoidably obvious... our health is on the line. The health of the soil, the animals, and our bodies.

And there's more! All those government subsidies opened the door for our government to control crop production. And whoever controls the food production, controls the world. Hmmm... I don't think this is what God had in mind when He said, "Take dominion over the earth".

Really, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe in human greed. It's in the heart of all men (and women). Over time, the way we've managed food has become a vicious cycle allowing greed to flourish, not only on the part of government, but farmers, and yes, even consumers. We want cheap food and lots of it! In fact, we want any food, at any time, at a cheap price. We even want "healthy" food at bargin prices.

Can anyone say "gluttony"?

Just what do we think that word means, anyway?

At this point in time, we've convinced ourselves as a nation that government subsidies and scientifically modified, chemically laced foods are the only way to farm and feed people. Perhaps YOU may be enlightened, but the majority of the population still believes this.

For example... I pulled over on the side of the road to buy some "local" honey from a man on the corner and I asked him a bit about his product. I only needed to pose two questions to know I was NOT getting what I had hoped... "Where do you keep your hives?" (turns out it was "a friend" over 135 miles away) and "Does your friend use chemicals to treat them for mites and disease?", at which point he started to tell me that you really can't raise bees without treating them, blah, blah, blah...

If he was using natural methods, I'm sure he would have been quick to offer this up, but instead, he started in on a long, round about way of trying to convince me that there really wasn't such a thing as naturally raised honey. Now, I'm a beekeeper myself, and I know very well I can't control where my bees fly. But I can control what methods I use in the hive itself.

Look... I think most of you already know this stuff. Even if you've only had a nagging feeling, tugging at you in the back of your mind... you've known for a while something isn't right with all that food in the supermarket.

Why am I addressing this, yet again? 

• Because I need a constant reminder why I'm going to pay more to a local farmer for in-season, non-GMO, grass fed, pesticide-free, non-subsidized, real, whole food.

• Because I need constant encouragement to grow my own, especially when it's hot outside or a crop fails. And I need to keep at it until I produce food my family can eat and eventually, provide 80 - 90% of what we need.

• Because I need to adjust my budget so I set aside a larger percentage of income for our food. And accept the fact that the "golden age" of food is over. Something else on the budget will have to go (or be cut back).

• Because our current food system is fragile and the warning system is going off - loudly! Too many of us assume that a famine only occurs as a result of drought. Oh, we have that alright, but what about a famine as a result of the fact that our food has very little nutrition anymore? Or that it fails to reproduce? Or that it will kill bees and butterflies when they try to extract it's nectar?

• Because I'm voting with my dollars and my fork. And I want to encourage you to do so as well. There is power in numbers and where greed has a hold of a system, money talks.

• Because I do not want to be slave to the system. Freedom always comes at a price. Even food freedom. And we have our head in the sand if we don't acknowledge the importance of this fact. A while back I read Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and I must say, I got a real education about life and food in general. It's really amazing to a 21st century American that entire wars could have been fought over a product on the bottom shelf of the grocery store that sells for just a few dollars and is so common that we use it to make play dough and any number of other things just for the fun of it. We (I) really are clueless...

• Because food can become an idol. While shunning "cheap" groceries and spending more on it may seem idolatrous at first glance, the opposite is more likely to be true. By recognizing that the system is fragile, that quality food is of great value, and that it requires extra time and effort to obtain nutritious groceries, we begin to realize that it's not something we should take for granted.

The harder we work for our food, the more we appreciate it as a gift from a loving God who provides daily for our needs. Few things help us to see this as much as trying to actually grow our own food. Perhaps that's why God designed Adam and Eve to toil in the garden, fighting weeds. The punishment was actually a gift; an antidote for their souls when they took their food for granted and ate whatever they desired. Ever since, man has labored in the dirt and often met God in the process, realizing that it all comes from Him. Unfortunately, our modern food system makes it difficult for us to make this connection.

What can you do?

• Do not buy the cheapest groceries you can find. Please. PLEASE! Invest in your food. That does not mean you should pay the most expensive prices out there, either. But you should be willing to pay a fair price without grumbling or complaining to the small farmer. They're not making a killing on you, but rather they're trying NOT to depend on the government. The sooner you adopt a mindset that food costs good money, the sooner you'll be on your way to real food freedom.

There are lots of different avenues to securing good food (and most of us will do this in combination)...

• CSAs (farm subscriptions)
• Farmer's Markets
• Roadside stands
• Bartering (neighbor to neighbor)
• Food swaps (group events)
• Food co-ops (such as Azure Standard)
• Direct from the farm
• Community gardens
• Grow your own

• Make a plan to gradually increase your food budget. Which means you're going to need to cut back somewhere else (unless you have a money tree in your backyard?). This also means you'll need to make sacrifices. We really need a reality check on NEEDS v. WANTS and what that should look like. I fear we're all much better at talking the walk and not so good at walking the talk.

• Cut back in consumption of expensive items such as fruits, meats, and dairy products, and increase your vegetable intake. (If I'm not mistaken, that's what the doctor REALLY would like to see you eat.) The good news? You'll appreciate the more expensive items when you do eat them.

Both my husband and my daughter have traveled to various third world countries where they were guests in the home of some local family. In both cases, they were served chicken. This was a feast to these villagers, an offering of their very best. Something that they had on rare occasions, not 3-4 times a week (like most Americans). At first, this baffled me a bit... why was it such a rare treat?

I totally get that now. I'm raising White Rock chickens (not Cornish Cross) and its going to take about 5 months to raise a modest bird for the freezer. That's a lot more feed, which translates into one expensive meal. Even with free ranging as much as I can, it would be outrageously priced if it were to end up in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Honestly, I've quit tracking my feed costs for the most part, knowing that I need to free range these guys every chance I can, even sending the kids out to "chicken sit" every now and then so the wild animals don't get the birds. (I'm sure someone would like to notify child protective services on that one!)

When we sit down to eat that meal, I guarantee you... it will be appreciated! I'll be thanking the Lord that the bobcat didn't get it before us, that I had grain to feed it when the grass was lean, that it scratched in the dirt and ate my bugs, that we saw it from chick to table and know how it lived, and that we had the physical strength from God to labor over it all those months.

It will not be cheap and it will not be taken for granted.

Is Now The Time To Try GNOWFGLINS eCourses?

Summer is moving along and lots of produce will be coming out of the garden soon (and for many, it's already begun)! Have you considered a GNOWFGLINS class such as Wardeh's Lacto-Fermentation eCourse! Imagine how yummy those cucumbers would be pickled and fermented!

If you have a ton of cukes coming off the vine and your goal is to eat "local", then you're going to need some ways to move that food through the kitchen and onto the plate without it all seeming the same. Check out these 6 delishes cucumber recipes from various eCourses and books at GNOWFGLINS that you could be learning.

Why a GNOWFGLINS eCourse?

Personally, I found that cultured, lacto-fermented, and sourdough foods were so vastly different than how I learned to prepare foods, that just reading a book was too sketchy for me. I needed to SEE it in action. I wanted someone who would SHOW me it was done. I wanted to see what the starter would look like at various stages, how the cheese should look, or when the kefir grains were ready.

Yep, Wardeh gave me all kinds of help through videos, forums, and printed material with photos. I could ask questions, talk to others taking the same class (or those who had already taken it) and by doing so, really understand the why and how of it all.

And the time factor... I could work it into my own schedule, not the teacher's. If I needed to slow down, I could. There were a couple of sessions, I camped out on until I mastered the technique, and then I moved on. And I'll confess, there were a couple of sessions, where I must have watched the teaching video 10 X! Not that Wardeh wasn't clear, but it was so foreign to me, I needed to absorb it ALL. I would have never figured that lesson out without her help!

Can I just say it's changing the way we eat! And I'm still learning. As an affiliate, I earn money every time someone signs up through a link on my blog. Most of the time, I use that money to take another course!

If you considered a class in the past but haven't taken that first step of actually signing up, you might like to know that Wardeh's made a few changes. While GNOWFGLINS is Wardeh's family business, it's also her ministry. Her heart is not just to sell class space, but to reform cooking in homes across America, so she's always very generous in her offerings. So here's a list of things she's recently changed or added:

• eCourse, general membership with many features. Starting at $8/mo! Details about the various plans here: https://rl102.infusionsoft.com/go/ecourse/a16/ 
• Fundamentals eCourse, our 1st class, available on ANY membership plan 
• Sourdough eCourse, our 2nd class, available on ANY membership plan 
• Cultured Dairy and Basic Cheese eCourse, 3rd class, available on ANY membership plan 
• Lacto-Fermentation eCourse, 4th class, also available on ANY membership plan 
• Fundamentals II eCourse, 5th class, also available on ANY membership plan 
• NEW in July! Real Food Kids: In the Kitchen, our 6th class, also available on ANY plan 
• Weekly Menu Plans, included with the premium membership but also available ala carte 
• Fundamentals eBook, available ala carte 
• Sourdough A to Z eBook, available ala carte 
• Cultured Dairy and Basic Cheese eBook, available ala carte 
• Thank you videos, available ala carte, as well as given monthly to standard and premium members

By offering these extra classes, you can get an idea of what you would learn in various courses. And for those who don't want a class, you can purchase the entire eBook in one download. So basically, you can almost customize your selection to fit how you want to learn and when. Really, I don't know where else you'll find this kind of quality teaching for the price.


I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface... there's so much to see at GNOWFGLINS. I hope you'll click one of my links and see for yourself.

Here's a challenge I think you'll find hard to resist...

By taking an eCourse, you would spend as little as $8 a month but no more than $30 a month for all the bells and whistles. And there's plenty of choices in between. By taking the class, you could make an extra meal at home each month (probably from cooking something in the course) and skip one meal out. Financially, I bet you'd still come out ahead! Crunch the numbers and see if this might not be the case (depending on the size of your family).

Depending on what kitchen tools and course you take, there might be some things you purchase for the course, such as starter cultures, etc. But if you're wanting to make a lifestyle change, you're going to buy these things at some point anyway. I found that I didn't need to buy everything all at once. Knowing what lesson it would be used in, I could wait until just prior to that session to make that purchase. This helped spread the cost out and fit my budget better.

For most questions you have, you'll probably find the answer HERE, but I'd be glad to try and answer any you may still have. If you've taken a course, please chime in with your experience! And thank you in advance for using any one of my affiliate links... I greatly appreciate it!

All photos in this post are courtesy of GNOWFGLINS.

Buying Meat in Bulk

Since the release of movies like Food, Inc. The Future of Food, and King Corn, demand for grass fed beef is out the roof. Being that I live in California, I can certainly find grass fed beef in most supermarkets, but they're not selling it at rock bottom prices. It's pricy.

So you can imagine I jumped on the opportunity a couple of years ago to buy local grass fed beef that was free ranged for $4.25 per pound out the door (hung, cut, wrapped, and delivered to a drop off location), straight from the rancher. I'm a very happy gal today.

As a family of 5, we buy half a cow for the year and we eat beef once a week, and occasionally twice a week. This year our meat weighed out at 252# and will give us approximately 80 meals. So to give you an idea of what we got, here's a breakdown with some numbers I crunched so you can see how this plays out...

Our Custom Cuts

56 1# packages of ground beef
7 packages of stew meat
5 packages of soup bones
5 chuck roasts
1 rump roast
2 cross rib roast
4 packages of short ribs
1 tri-tip (a CA cut of meat never heard of in the south!)
8 sirloin tips
7 packages of cube steaks
2 fillet
7 top sirloins
16 rib steaks
14 T bones

Each package is enough for our family for a meal except the ground beef (we usually use two at once, depending on the recipe). But let's just say we use 2 packages every time we eat it. That gives us enough to have ground beef every other week and something else on the opposite weeks. For example...

8 weeks during the year we can have roast!
5 times we can have ribs or tri tip
7 times we can make something with cube steaks
12 weeks I can make a soup or stew with stew meat or meat bones (oh, and the butcher threw in the knuckle bones for free - good for bone broth!)

BUT...
23 times we can have wonderful tasting STEAK! (My favorite, of course!)

Beef is about the most expensive meat we eat. Our other meats include wild caught fish, Sweetwater Farm raised chickens, venison and other game my husband or someone hunts, along with specialty sausages I buy from another ranching family that raises grass fed beef. Once in a great while I'll buy another sausage (we seem to like sausage, but I'm very selective!).

For some, the price may seem a bit high for ground beef, but in the store, the grass fed beef is much more per pound. And the steaks? I couldn't touch them for less than $7.99 per pound (non-grass fed, not on sale). Yes, I could find much cheaper meat, going to places like Costco, looking for mark downs, etc. (and once in a while, if I need something in particular, I'll purchase something). But this beef is good for us because of how it was raised and what it ate. The cow was allowed to express it's "cow-ness". Can you put a price on that?

So what's the downside? The initial out lay of cash. We put down a very modest deposit to reserve our half of the cow. The balance was due at pick up. Some may find that coming up with the cash for the first purchase is a bit daunting, but if you can scrape the money together, you'll save money in the long run!

Once you purchase your first cow share, start saving for the next one. If I put $90 aside a month, I'll have plenty of cash ready for the next round and the bite out of the budget will be nothing.

While this may not be for everyone, it might be a good solution for many. And it would certainly be a great way to vote with your dollars - or your fork as Michael Pollan says. It made me feel really good to talk directly with the butcher and have a conversation with him. And even better to shake hands with the rancher who raised the beef and thank the family personally. When I drove away, I felt like I had not only secured some meat for the year, I had built relationships and blessed others by supporting their family and their vision. They aren't just working 9-5 and picking up a paycheck... they're hoping to bless families.

Oh, and did I mention, I had the best, most tender roast I've ever tasted?