TKG Sunday: Does sustainable living create more work for women?

A walkabout. A gorgeous pumpkin soup recipe. Catch up on the sustainably managed farm. Does white wonder-bread kill fertility?

Sep 15, 2024

And - no - a sustainable lifestyle is easier for all if we pull together.

The Pre-Amble

I came across a piece of writing the other day that (and I paraphrase) claimed living sustainably creates more work for women. What tosh! Men cook. Men clean. Women work. My mother and grandmother worked hard to make sure women can have choices in their homes. My father bottled all the peaches and tomato sauce in our family, while my mum made failed jam (we poured it on our toast) and read magazines. It's simply NOT sustainable for one person in a household to do all the cleaning, cooking, and meal prepping. Plus, it’s just not true. We have moved on from the fifties, people! If we work as a team all these little jobs get done in 1/4 of the time. And this stuff is not gender specific. Not much is really. I suspect the person who wrote that living an eco-friendly lifestyle was too much work for women, was someone who constantly moaned about having to do EVERYTHING in the house—and probably thought no one else could do it as well as they could. So they HAD to do everything. The misery.

I don’t mean to be mean (though I often am) but if the people I share this house with drop their stuff on the floor, I step over it, and that includes their dirty washing and dishes and cleaning up after making the tomato sauce. Um. Nope. Talk about it. Share the toil. Succeed.

I had a friend once who deeply wanted to get married and he said that he wanted a woman with money who could manage his house. Screw that, I said I want a man who can cook! Needless to say we were not a match!

People only do as much of the domestic work as they choose to. Don’t be bullied into doing more than your share.

I made a Poll for you. After you have finished wandering through today’s newsletter come back and vote.

What’s your favourite part of the TKG Sunday Newsletter? There is something for everyone here so what section do you skip down to?

The Walk-About

My personal favourite. I know the vegetable garden just looks like a field at this time of year but everything is harvested and I rotate. Resting the patches often.

Next years garden plan is amazing. Hope you enjoyed your walk-about. Is that your favourite?

The Round-Up (with Pictures)

The Cows

The five home cows have been sent to the vegetable garden to clean up. They are my clean up crew!

This is one of my favourite plans. In this field I grew a large plot of sweetcorn and a large plot of pumpkins. The cows chose to begin in the dried up old sweetcorn. Of course!

Plus they do a little fertilising and a little watering as they graze.

Later in the late summer I will lock the cows back out of the West vegetable garden and till compost into each of the beds, plant the garlic, apply a cover crop and let them sit until spring.

PS I never have enough compost!

The Charlottes

The black walnuts have begun to fall. Pigs LOVE walnuts.

Black walnuts are a fast growing tree that supplies great fed for pigs. I planted twelve about ten years ago. You always know when a plonker has been eating a walnut because his nose goes a deep walnutty orange.

Walnuts are high in healthy fats, (lots of fats are healthy - don’t be a fat snob - especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the overall health and development of people and hogs. They also provide protein, fiber, and important vitamins like Vitamin E, which contribute to better skin, coat, and immune system health.

Black walnuts (Juglans nigra) are native to Illinois. And though they don’t play well with others they are a great tree to grow. I am going to throw some of the walnuts into a bag and cool them in the fridge for three months then grow them in pots for the fields.

All the pigs and hogs enjoy cracking open the hard shells of walnuts. They can chew on the nut for hours, even taking it along with them on their travels like a chew toy.

We recently discovered that there are four mature walnut trees in a local golf course along with many pears. Plenty to scavenge.

The PopPops,

Only one. Every day. Escapes. Sigh.

Check out the Wak-About video for pictures of them in the field.

They are living on found food. Scraps from the kitchen and forage on their field and hay. This is a great breed for the small holder on a little sustainably managed farm.

PS. I consult for small holdings and small buildings - discussing sustainable ways to prevent waste. email me at celima.g.7@gmail.com for more info. OR Upgrade and send me a:

The Turkeys

Oh. The Turkeys.

Again they cost nothing to feed but merciful heavens! They follow me everywhere - like cows. They are excellent for keeping grasshoppers and ticks out of the fields. And everywhere. Investigating everything.

The Layers

I can’t remember if I told you that we get left over bread from a local supermarket.

It is the wonderbread variety. Cheap. Bendy. Super soft with added conditioners. White death bread that I would not eat even on a bet. I was feeding buckets of it to the layers ( as well as the fattening Charlottes and the white chicks, I even use it for moving cows - the cows will run down their own mother to get a slice of bread). Anyway, back to the layers. After a few days of buckets of bread, in high summer with lots of light and greens, the chickens should have been in peak production, but they abruptly stopped laying altogether.

The only change was the stale bread (seldom organic, I have to say, but free and no longer dumped in the dumpster, so it definitely ticks the sustainable box). So, I stopped giving the chickens any supermarket bread, and after a week, they were laying again.

Now. What does that teach us about store bought bread?

Only feed it to animals who have a short life expectancy. Right?

Tima Bad

I left the gate to Tima’s corridor paddock open just for a few seconds while I drove the mower through and BOOM she was out and in the barn pulling down a bag of special hog feed!

Boo moved her back out of the barn and I gave her a few apples for returning to her side of the fence. She is so fast. And did not hesitate to yank her 50 pound target treat straight down to the barn floor.

Jude and FreeBee,

I moved the cows out of the vegetable garden and Jude and FreeBee into the vegetable garden, to amuse themselves and stay out of my way, while I drove the tractor full of winter straw into their field for their bedroom. Then I drove the mower in with my fencing tools. Then I brought Our John and R in to fix the back wall of the hen house (Jude had been doing some renovations). Then I shut the gate so we could work without two nosy 400 pound (plus) rescue hogs.

“Is that your hammer? Can I have it? What happens if I chew this? Can you move your foot? When did you say lunch was?”

It took an hour to clean up their big section. Fill the root cellar with dry hay. Mow the weeds. Fix the fences and do maintenance on the hen house. Then I let them back in and they said thank you very much but wheres that lunch.

The Big Pigs are now set up for another quarter. Maybe they will not stay the whole winter in this field but they can stay in there for a few months yet.

PS I only begin mowing fields after all the ground nesting birds are done raising chicks. They have enough predators.

WaiWai

Is great. Keeping out of trouble.

The White Chicks

The white chicks are now in their ugly tween stage.

Although they eat piles of pumpkin and zuchinni (but scorn pears for some reason) their bodies grow faster than their feathers.

At this stage in their 10 week development we work hard to slow their growth.

The Duck Flock

I am not sure what kind of meeting this is.

How would you caption this?

The Fields

The rustle has begun as the corn dries. Any small or sad looking ears I just break off and hiff in with the pigs. It’s all organic. R and I scavenge a lot to feed the animals.

What we have been Scavenging this week: Corn from the Fields. Pears and apples from neighbourly trees and the golf course. Walnuts. Bread from the supermarket. Buckets of vegetables from the kitchens of a few friendly restaurants.

Is the Animal Round Up your favourite? Vote in the poll!

Travel:

I am off to California to work for a week so, unless I am really clever, next weekend I might not be publishing a newsletter. At least not a farm newsletter.

Maybe a hello! But no animals. No walkabout. Lots of travel ahead again.

A recipe. PUMPKIN SOUP.

Cut the washed and unpeeled pumpkin into roughly the same sized pieces. Scoop out the seeds. (If you want to roast the seeds, clean them, boil for 10 minutes, cool, then pop into a barely oiled hot pan in the oven or on a low burner - some pumpkin seeds are better for roasting that others - just saying. I add mine to my muesli).
Toss the pumpkin pieces in oil and saly then lay into a big roasting dish with onions and garlic.
Roast until soft and caramelized. Cool. Cut off the skin and dump everything else into a big pot. (Feed the skin to your chickens or add it to the stock pot).
Cover the pumpkin pieces with your delicious home made chicken or vegetable stock.
Simmer for fifteen minutes to finish cooking the pumpkin and soften the roasted onion and garlic. Using an immersion blender, blend until soupy. I like my pumpkin soup very thick. If you like it thinner add a little more stock.
Bring slowly back up to heat while stirring.
Stir in the secret ingredient: a breath of freshly grated nutmeg.
Allow your soup to sit, off the burner ,for a few minutes to exchange flavours.

Serve hot with a swirl of fresh cream. A trail of lemon zest and a sprinkle of chives.

(I would have added a picture of the finished soup but we are still at the roasting stage and all the rest is already in the freezer). (Life is never perfect!).

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