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Why the Austrian Flour Mill?

9/28/2014

51 Comments

 
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Hi there... Amy the baker here.

Customers often ask, "Why the Austrian flour mill?" A great question with great answers! We love to tell the story of today's modern technology... and tracking numbers. My dear husband was able to track our flour mill from Austria, to Germany, across the English Channel, across the Atlantic Ocean to the East Coast... and finally to Virginia. We were even able to see a photo of the transporting ship! Each day we checked online to see the movement of the mill. It was almost as if we were waiting and watching for a long lost family member. You can imagine the thrill when the crate was finally in our store, and the mill was unpacked. But why all this fuss?

Well, there are a few reasons. We had learned that commercial American made mills milled the flour at such high rates of speed, American bakers had to wait to use the flour until it cooled down... even waiting until at least the next day! Red flags flew up in our minds when we learned this. We knew that the longer flour stays around to oxidize, the more nutrients are lost. Hot flour cannot be used in dough because it will kill the yeast. The initial high heat to the flour also burns up nutrients during the milling process. This model just did not fit our paradigm of correct milling for our all natural whole grain breads.

So... again my I'net savvy husband went searching... and he found it! An Austrian, stone ground mill that was made to mill cool flour. (Really cool, 'eh?!) The stones inside have a slow revolution rate per minute, unlike American made mills. The flour comes out cool to the touch. This guarantees optimum flour quality.
Dear hubby mills the flour and within minutes that flour is into my dough! THAT's why I love the fact that we were able to bring in this beautiful Austrian mill.

Come see it! You may even purchase some COOL flour for your own homemade baked goods. :-)


We mill COOL FLOUR!!!

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The Tale of Two Streams

1/7/2014

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I saw the most amazing sight today. My son, James, and I were just finishing up moving the cows and the goats and we decided to venture onto the neighbors property where James likes to fish. The property has shoreline on Caynor Lake, part of the water supply for Culpeper. To reach the lake we drove the four wheeler along the edge of a row crop field, now barren and lifeless, where GMO soybeans had been earlier last season. While James strode off to check for signs of deer and water creatures I enjoyed the calm from the wind and the bright sunshine found in the low spot where we had parked. James called back to me when he reached the stream, "The water's pretty muddy."

His words stuck in my head as I thought about what makes a stream muddy. Runoff from uncovered soil can do that. I looked around me at the soy field. Moss was trying somewhat unsuccessfully to cover the bare soil. But that was all there was. Basically no cover. I traced in my mind further upstream where on another conventional farm cattle continuously graze the same pasture, creating another uncovered, or barely covered piece. Which of the two contributed more to the runoff I wondered.

Looking around I realized there was a second stream nearby, the one caressing through my farm. Would that one have the same debris and sediment, lost topsoil? I walked over to where the two streams meet and stood in the cradle of the "Y". The contrast could not have been more stark. The stream coming from my left was crystal clear while the one coming from the right was filthy.

This is exciting! Our holistic goal says in part that we "produce high quality nutritious and delicious food...while simultaneously improving the soil and water quality." We were doing that!

Let me share with you how we improve water quality. Our tools are cows, goats, and time. We graze the animals across the stream--taboo in conventional agriculture circles. The hoof action on the stream bank does wonderful things to CREATE vegetation there IF the tool of time is properly managed. Animal impact must be intense, but followed by long rest periods. For us any animal exposure is limited to no more than three days at a time and is always followed by resting that stream bank for two months. Even during the three day exposure to that little section of stream the animals don't lounge there. They come to get a drink but return to the pasture to continue feasting on our grasses and forbes.

That is the approach I was taught at the Judy-Innes Grazing School, and it is working. Because our ground is covered (due to the mob grazing techniques) all the way to the waters edge we trap sediment on our farm. We also filter the water, purifying it. How cool is that?
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Let the games begin!

3/7/2012

770 Comments

 
Ordered chicks the other day and was promised a 3/21 hatch. They only hatch on Wednesdays for the Cornish Rock breed and that was the earliest they had availability. I thought, "Well this gives me time to get everything ready before they arrive and the weather can be so nasty this time of year anyway." I was going to enjoy a couple more weeks without the added chores.

But today the hatchery called and said they had some that became available from today's hatch and did I want them. I did a quick evaluation in my mind--two more weeks of less chores in less than ideal weather for chicks, or scramble to get ready for them and hope it pays off by having plenty of chicken this early in the season. I hate to disappoint people by not having enough so I swallowed hard and gave them a "Yes." The season has now begun.

My internal struggle reminded me of a proverb. "In all labor there is profit, But mere talk leads only to poverty." Time to get to work (not that I've been loafing!). May God bless the effort.
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Dancing with the Goats

9/15/2011

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This morning I moved the cows and goats to a paddock that was partially overshadowed with trees. Immediately the cows when under the low hanging branches and ate what leaves they could reach. There must be some mineral they are after. Then it was the goats' turn to browse. The one who is almost a grandma (in about a week) has great balance and stood on her hind two legs and nibbled the leaves. She even uses her front legs to pull down branches to get a bite. It's funny to watch. She looks as though she is ballroom dancing as she maintains her balance on two legs and moves around for the best position to eat the tree leaves.

I watched the show for a while and when she was finished I went over to that area to snip out some old barbed wire from an old fence left by some owner in the past. As I bent over I felt a pair of hooves on my back. I turned my head without moving my torso to see who it was and what they were doing. There was the son of the grandma standing on his hind legs doing what the first goat had done! Now his balance is not a good and so he had to wait for something to steady himself. When I bent over he saw his opportunity to get the coveted tree leaves. I had to laugh. I was dancing with the goats.

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Building Soil

6/25/2011

534 Comments

 
To me one of the most exciting aspects of farming is doing it sustainably. To be sustainable you must manage wholes. Holistic management yields results where every aspect of the system benefits—the consumer, the farmer, the waterways, the atmosphere, the farm animals, and the wildlife. Leaving the environment and the wildlife better off than when we started, yet at the same time making a decent living, doing what I love—what could be better than that!

What factors contribute to sustainability? To be sustainable there must be a minimum dependence on off-farm inputs such as oil. Using less oil means staying off those high dollar farm machines as much as possible and finding new ways (or old forgotten ways) to accomplish the same thing. For example, a farmer with livestock needs to have forage for winter feeding. Most people use lots of fossil fuel and make hay for this purpose. Thinking sustainably, a farmer would graze his/hers animals in such a way that there is a stockpile of grass for winter.

Another key to sustainability is the complete avoidance of commercial fertilizers and chemicals that harm the soil. Using these outside inputs is addictive, and expensive. When you put down commercial fertilizer there is an immediate rush of a few key nutrients and the plants usually respond and look great. At the same time, however, you have killed off the microbes in the soil which are the real source of fertility. Consequently, you must apply fertilizer next year and more of it. The chemical companies love it. Sustainable farming, on the other hand, seeks to feed the soil microbes to make them more active. These in turn feed the plants. The more carbon we sequester from the atmosphere by capturing it in the soil, the more we are feeding the soil microbes and the greater the fertility. Higher fertility means more nutritious food for humans as well as animals, domestic or wild.

One way to add more carbon to the soil is using the farm animals themselves. Domestic herds can benefit the soil the same way the great herds of buffalo that once roamed the Midwest benefited the plains. For the buffalo the herds often contained thousands, even hundreds of thousands of animals. They were mobbed up for protection, and constantly moving to fresh pasture. The result was the land experienced short duration high animal impact, followed by long rest periods. The animals were on one piece of ground for only a few hours. They ate what they needed and trampled the rest. Then they moved on and didn’t return for many months. While on a particular parcel the hoofs of the buffalo pressed vegetation into the soil, adding carbon. Additionally, they produced 50 pounds of fertilizer per animal per day. The net effect was to deposit lots of carbon material in or on the soil, giving the microbes and worms something to work on. Over time this produced deep topsoil four or more feet thick. With the proper management a farmer can mimic the mob effect and keep the herd moving to build carbon in the soil.

I recently returned from a grazing school where we learned these techniques. Upon returning home I immediately made a management change for our small herd of two calves and five goats. The change produced more plant litter on the ground. More litter means more carbon in the soil, but also means more cover for earthworms and other critters, as well as a mulching effect to conserve moisture.

The day after starting this practice I saw something very exciting—dung beetles. I had never seen them before so I wasn’t sure what they were at first. What I noticed was a small pile of dirt next to a cow pie. It looked like an ant hill, but the grains of dirt were too course for ants. I carefully poked through the pile and discovered a ¾ inch diameter tunnel underneath and several little black beetles scurrying around. Then I knew these had to be dung beetles based on what I had heard at the grazing school. These little guys are wonderful soil builders. They setup their home next to a cow pie and then carry the manure down into tunnels. This is great for the soil since the organic matter is taken to depths it would not go otherwise. I was so excited I told the family and a friend that dropped by. I was building soil with animals.

Soil conservation is obviously important—look at all the government programs designed to keep soil in place. Not only was I keeping soil I was making more. The increased carbon and litter is going to feed more earthworms which in turn produce castings, making more soil. At the grazing school I had seen rich healthy soils on places that had been barren and brittle only a few years before. I had begun the same process on our farm just by making a management change to the way I grazed my livestock. It didn’t cost me a cent. That is pretty exciting when you can benefit the whole system with no outside inputs.

534 Comments

Getting Started as a Producer of Authentic Food

6/3/2011

102 Comments

 
Here are Moving Meadows Farm we have a passion for real food. As a family we've been eating homemade wholesome food for years. We love eating that way--the taste is great and its a part of a healthy lifestyle that has served us well. As we have shared our food and our passion with others over the years we became convinced that more and more people are looking for an alternative to supermarket fare. We dreamed of creating a traditional diversified family farm--the kind that was common decades ago--that would supply beef, goat, chicken, eggs, vegetables and bread for ourselves and our customers.

Since bread baking was already a daily routine we decided to start our farming venture by supplying homemade whole grain bread. The six of us eat about two loaves of Amy's whole wheat bread a day. Amy added a cinnamon raisin bread and developed cinnamon buns from her basic whole wheat bread dough and we started at market with that.

Currently we are installing a perimeter fence and have purchased temporary polybraid wire to begin grazing beef and goat. The plan is to move the animals to a fresh paddock twice daily.

Baby chicks are on order too. and they will move daily as well once they are big enough to come out of the brooder.

The constant movement of livestock to fresh pasture is why we name the farm Moving Meadows Farm.

Here is this blog we will give you updates about what is happening here. We want you to be connected to the farm and experience its joys like we experience them. Check back often.

Wally
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    Author

    Wally Hudson owns and operates Moving Meadows Farm along with his wife, Amy.

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