Wild Saskatoons and Roast Beast

Heritage Breeds. Which are Canadian? Does it matter?

I've been doing some serious research on what animals I want to acquire for my homestead/hobby farm, when the time comes.
Some will come sooner rather than later (spring 2013 I'm planning on getting my first couple sheep or goats, possibly some rabbits as well).
Some animals are more expensive than others (cattle and bison can cost $1000+. Goats, sheep, swine and donkeys are in the $150-$500+ range. Rabbits and poultry are generally $5 to $30+).

Some breeds need lots of attention, others can forage and birth on their own with great results.

What kind of animals do I want to raise?

How hands on do I want to be with my animals? How hands on CAN I be?

Do I want pasture/foraging breeds or barn/feedlot breeds? 

Do I want breeds developed for commercial industry or heritage breeds?

Will any heritage breed do or should I focus on finding Canadian heritage breeds?

Am I only keeping animals for my family (and friends) or will I be selling meat, milk, eggs, fibre, breeding stock, etc?

Lots of questions that need answers. Some are even pretty easy to answer. Others, not so much.

Talking about Sheep and Goats

Well, it's decided.
Zac, Londyn and I will be moving out of the city come September.  We're moving in with my mom.  That means we'll be living on the acreage I grew up on :)
The move is mostly to save money to buy an acreage/farm of our own (not paying rent makes a huge difference when it comes to saving for a downpayment) but also because I'm sick of the city.
Or the city makes me sick.

Whichever.

Either way, I'm ready to get out of here.


Anyways, back to living on the acreage!
Mom said I could get sheep or goats or whatever I like as long as I take care of them :)  She doesn't want to do any of the milking or cleaning up, etc but is more than willing to eat the cheese I make lol

There's 5 breeds of sheep I've been researching:

Shetlands
A terrific all-round breed that produces excellent meat, wool, and milk. A hardy breed. Fleeces come in a variety of colours.  The characteristic that really drew me in was the non "sheepy" taste to the milk they produce (as the website says). I would like to taste farm fresh milk before making up my mind on that.

Clun Forest
A hardy breed that can survive on grass and foraging. A great milk sheep and produces good fleeces until 10-12yrs of age.  Lamb easily and usually without assistance.

North Country Cheviot
A general-purpose breed. Produce a medium-wool fleece free from hair or kempy fibres. Are good milkers and easy lambers.

Icelandic
One of the purest breeds in the world. They are generally raised for milk, meat and wool - which is low in lanolin. Their wool is known internationally as Lopi yarn. Left unshorn for the winter, the breed is very cold hardy.

Royal White/Dorper/Katahdin
Royal White is a hair sheep, meaning it sheds rather than needing to be sheared. They breed throughout the year, produce lots of milk and have high lamb survivability. They also have parasite and disease resistance.  Usually breed for meat as the flavour is more mild than that of woolly-sheep.

Alberta Sheep Breeders Association

All five have characteristics that appeal to me, but what on earth would I do with 5 different breeds of sheep?!
For sure the Shetland and Icelandic are my favourites, Royal White and Clun Forest come in at a close third/forth.

I'm interested in them for home-use/hobby farming, not a commercial operation.
Maybe I could get a variety of breeds? But which ones? I want strong general purpose breeds for milk, meat and wool.

Thoughts? Maybe you've worked with a breed I don't have listed here that you would recommend. Let me know!


** Addition **
In my research for a suitable milk goat I came across a breed that, of course, isn't really available in Canada. The Guernsey Goat.
They're so pretty!
I found the breed (as it wasn't listed in my Dairy Goats book) through this Mother Earth News article Choosing a Dairy Breed. Besides the prettiness the characteristic that drew me most to them was "is able to convert grass into milk" Most goats, especially dairy, need higher protein (grains, etc) to produce larger amounts of milk.

Other breeds I'm considering...
Nubian
Saanen/Sable

All have a milder tasting milk and are good producers. Butterfat varies between 2%-6%.
The only downfall (to me, maybe not everybody) is that Nubian's are known to be quite noisy. It's the nose :)
I'm leaning towards Sables (more colourful than their all-white relatives, Saanen) since I can't have Guernsey Goats.

Alberta Goat Breeders Association

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Here's some links for my own information. I'm planning on teaching myself spinning and weaving (and I may try knitting again). I used to crotchet, a long time ago...
Birkeland Wool Bros. Store
How To Make a Drop Spindle

Eat Alberta 2012

 Eat Alberta: Your Real Food Survival Guide

Hey boys and girls!

Remember my last post about living sustainably? Well, here's the next step... 

Sign up for Eat Alberta: The DIY Conference

This is the second Eat Alberta conference of what we hope to be many that will celebrate such local food heroes. Our Real Food Survival Guide focus this year will provide insight into tasting, preserving and preparing food while living in our Winter climate. 

As we are so passionate about the local food opportunities our city provides as well as acutely aware that food expertise (in a variety of forms) lies within each of our neighbourhoods.

Check the site often for when registration opens (should be sometime today, Monday March 12th).  Last year it sold out within 3 DAYS! 

... Organic Farming, Commerical Agriculture, Sustainable Food Systems...

What does it all mean?!

I follow lots of different folks on Twitter. Some are pro-organic no matter where it comes from. Some support local over anything, even if it's commercial agriculture (or Big Ag is what I usually call it), which usually means pesticides/herbicides/gmo/etc.

Others use a bullseye to decide what to support first (I'll get to my personal version later).

I stumbled upon a twitter conversation involving an organic farmer and a marketer/something who was/is attending a Farm Fair in Western Canada (I'm trying to be discreet. And I don't remember all the exact details and I'm not about to go searching for them).

She (the marketer) was someone who I thought supported local, organic, heritage foods. She did volunteer to help with the upcoming Slow Food National Conference Gala.

Her and the organic farmer (who's products I fully support) were in an argument about what will feed the world (that was the basis of it, as far as I could tell).

I was confused. I thought we were all on the same side.

But does eating LOCAL mean ONLY organic?

Winter Food Swap, Life Update/Rant

Isn't it pleasing when the word "rant" is in a blog post title? ;)

First, here's an EXCELLENT post on the Winter Food Swap this past weekend.  Valerie is a great writer and took some amazing photographs.
Show her some love and leave some comments :)

New Blogs

I'm always on the hunt for more charcuterie and locavore blogs. Here's some more that I happened upon...

Cured Meats

The Art of the Pig

A Hunger Artist

Michael Ruhlman

Salt Sense, Rulhman

Meat Curing Safety Issues, Ruhlman

Enjoy exploring! Start your own food adventures :)

here's some links for myself on curing techniques i want to try...

Fiocco, Sausage debauchery Blog

Fiocco, Cured Meats Blog

South African Biltong, made without the use of curing salts, just rock salt!

Any meats you're itching to try to make at home?

research

just a bit of info from a favourite of mine, Hank Shaw.

all in preparation of my upcoming sausage making adventure!

Honest Food, Cured Meats

Cheese and Charcuterie

Today I finally ordered my cheese making supplies and sausage making goodies :)

I used these two websites...

New England Cheesemaking

Butcher and Packer

Why order online? Because I hadn't the faintest idea where to purchase any of those supplies here in Edmonton. A little research on other blogs (buttonsoup and kevinkossowan) suggested that the place they were getting some of their supplies from either moved or went out of business.

I'm happy with what I picked up and excited to finally get my butt organized enough to do this!

When my packages come in I'll give a much better listing of what I purchased. Until then, wait in suspense! ;)

Now, to clean up the basement and get my cellar up... October is a busy month... but i think if we plan it right and start picking up supplies now, we should be in good form to build at the beginning of November.

Better late than never? I think so... :)

Now, to find a dairy farmer that can sell milk... pasturized is fine with me, i know they probably can't legally sell raw milk. (Trade, maybe :) )

when preserving...

this is a very important site...

check it!

National Center for Home Food Preservation

Rosehip Jelly

Here's a link to make Rose Hip Jelly.

Now, my parents acreage always has lots of rose hips so this will be something excellent to try :)

Button Soup, Rose Hip Jelly

Seeds for Next Spring!

Kevin Kossowan directed me to this marvelous place that operates out of Salt Spring Islands in BC.

A seed catalogue that has SO much to offer I couldn't possibly list them all here.

You gotta check'em out!

SaltSpring Seeds

Nose-to-Tail cooking? Not on FoodNetwork...

Chef Unleashed

Chris Cosentino, a nose-to-tail chef from San Francisco, recently tried to bring something new and exciting to FoodNetwork.

It didn't stick (go figure). Which is sad because that would've been something I would watch. At the moment, my love of FoodNetwork doesn't exist and I'm looking to cancel it. The programming just isn't what I want to learn about.

Anyways. Watch the video! I found it through Kevin Kossowan's blog. Go read that too :)

Cheesemaking and Lamb

I've been following Kevin Kossowan's blog for a short while now... He always has great articles and wonderful tales of his adventures! I've now put him as one of the HomePage Tabs on my browser so I don't forget to check it :)


His latest posting is about Tangle Ridge Ranch, a lamb ranch. It's definitely worth the read, and I'm seriously considering purchasing from them. I'll have to discuss it with my hubby first, of course. But he likes lamb, so that shouldn't be a problem :) And I'm sure I could get at least one of my sisters/aunts/etc in on it as well...

"Hello? Yes, I'd like to order 4 whole lamb please..."

:) Yes, they only sell whole lamb. Which is the way to go in my opinion. How will you ever know what you like if you only purchase/cook/eat "prime"/"choice" cuts??? That's one way to really miss out...


And now for CHEESE! :D
If I'm gonna make cheese this summer I better get on it... My basement is almost organized enough that I should have a good cool spot to keep it. Otherwise, it'll be stored in my mother's or my baba's cold room. Which I guess would be ok, but not ideal.


Again, thanks to Kevin's Blog, I'll be looking into Glengarry Cheesemaking. Their site so far is very straight forward, easy for a novice (like me!) to understand and be able to order the right ingredients and equipment with only the beginnings of research under my belt.


So, go check the sites and be adventurous with your cooking!! :D


- DJK

New Resources

When I first went looking for Eating Local/Eating Organic/Living Local/Living Sustainably/100mile Edmonton/etc I could hardly find anything. I knew it was out there, somewhere!, on the inter-web, but nothing time after time again showed up. For Edmonton. Canada's most northern major city.

It's much easier to find things for Canada, specifically Vancouver area and Toronto area. Of course it's easier to eat local in southern BC and southern Ontario! Their growing season is WAY longer compared to Edmonton! They get more heat and moisture, close to large bodies of water giving more variety for 100mile foods, and since they're larger than Edmonton, their environmental communities are larger and stronger than what is found here in Edmonton.

There is also something to be said for the Conservative Albertans... BC and Ontario are still largely Liberal in their views. Albertan's are seen as rednecks, behind on the times. And some are. And sometimes it's hard to get past those people when you're trying to create a better life for yourself, your family and your community.
But those people exist everywhere. Sure Alberta probably has more than the national average, but it hasn't stopped the green movement. Maybe, just a little, slowed it down compared to the rest of the country.

That being said, here's some links for Canada-wide resources.

Organic Alberta. Yes, it says Alberta, but most of the resources are for Canada. The few that are strictly Albertan are mostly about GMO canola...

Earthsave Canada. Mostly Vancouver and Southern Ontario...

Travel Alberta. Listing of farmer's markets, amongst other great Alberta attractions.