My make-it-from-scratch philosophy

I blog a lot about things I make from scratch and I realized that I have an underlying philosophy that I’ve never spelled out. So here goes.

When I was young, I was fortunate to spend many of my weekends on a farm my parents owned with a friend of theirs about two hours from the suburbs where I grew up. This property, which I think was about 80 acres, was a true working farm with steers raised for beef, a couple of old circus ponies, an outhouse, some great old rickety barns, a farm pond, a giant vegetable garden, and acres of woods.

It was an outdoorsy sort of existence, being down on the farm. We camped out in our little RV, hunted for morel mushrooms, turtles, or snakes by day and toads by night. My parents were avid hunters and loved fishing for bass, bluegills, and catfish on the farm pond.

I spent a lot of time during those formative weekends trying to gentle those ornery old circus ponies (one of whom would buck if you pressed him to trot or canter, and the other of whom loved to try to bite your toes as you rode), shadowing my parents as they went about the work of mending fences, bush-hogging the fields, hunting, and fishing, and imagining myself as a Native American or pioneer, having to fend for myself living off the land.

So I tried to cure rabbit fur I collected after my father’s hunting expeditions. My brother & I dissected the fish after they were cleaned (did you know that fish eyeballs contain a perfectly spherical and rather sturdy translucent lens that is amazingly fun to play with when you’re 8?) and tried our hand at filleting fish with our Swiss Army knives. We whittled marshmallow toasting sticks, built fires, shucked corn, and did a lot of things that I’m pretty sure city kids don’t typically do growing up.

Twenty-five years later, and I’ve just now made the connection between that dirty little tom boy who liked to pretend to live off the land and my penchant for making things from scratch today. Contrary to some of my friends’ jokes, I do not sit around all day making stuff. I have two young children who get rather bored when I spend hours in the kitchen, or the garden, or with my knitting needles, or…

I love mastering new skill, but I’ve learned that some of the things I make from scratch (for example, making butter, making mozzarella, making ricotta) are once-in-a-while activities, not everyday occurrences. So although I am proud to say that I know how to make quite a few dairy products from our lovely raw milk, yogurt is the only thing I no longer buy at the grocery store. Why? Because it’s always cheaper to make your own yogurt, it always tastes better than store bought, and it’s both quick and easy. The butter tastes great, but takes a long time to make and has too much water for baking or cooking. The cheese if finicky and doesn’t yield enough to meet our pizza needs. Ditto the ricotta.

Moving out of the kitchen and into the garden, I have a grown-it-yourself philosophy as well. This year a friend & I bit off way more than we could chew tried farming on a truly large scale with a 50′x50′ plot at the local community garden. Given unlimited time, a bit more favorable weather, and some predators to take care of the deer, I think we could have grown enough veggies to feed all nine of us for the second half of the summer and most of the winter. As it is, my root cellar, freezer, and canning jars are well stocked with food for the cold months.

I know another plot on that scale is not in my future simply because of the huge amount of work that it took for the total yield. However, I learned a lot about what it is worthwhile to grow myself (tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and herbs because I can never have enough of those. Plus garlic, onions, potatoes, and pumpkins/winter squash because I can grow better varieties myself than I can find even at the Farmer’s Market.), and what I should just buy at the Farmer’s Market (corn because it’s so danged cheap and takes up too much space in the home garden. Cole crops–or should I say “deer candy”–well, because the deer ate all of ours before we could harvest any! Cauliflower because ours was NASTY bitter and it takes up a lot of space for the amount that I require).

Recently, I’ve started to expand my make-it-from-scratch philosophy to non-food items. I’ve taken up knitting recently, and this year I made the kids’ Halloween costumes for the very first time. I make the kids’ play dough, am always experimenting with making natural dyes for things like Easter eggs and play silks, and will probably make some of their Christmas gifts this year.

It was Christmas, in fact, that inspired me to write this post. The commercial Christmas machinery is already in full production mode by now, the day after Halloween. And although there’s something to be said for our track record of spending our way out of a recession, I think most people are feeling like being a little more frugal again this Christmas as news about the lagging job recovery spreads.

In our household, I lost my job at the end of September, and although it looks like I’ll be picking up some short-term work here in the next week or so, between the short-term nature of my contract and the likelihood that Matt’s job will end in January, we’re not going to be splurging this Christmas. So although I probably won’t ever be able to make all of my kids’ clothes from scratch, I’m happily knitting their hats, scarves, and mittens this winter, and will likely be knitting gifts for other folks on our Christmas list. Home-made food and drink long ago replaced store-bought holiday gifts for our friends.

I may be a long way from true urban homesteading. I may never build my own straw-bale house, install my own composting toilet, and truly live a 100% sustainable lifestyle–although I’m certain I’ll keep trying to learn the skills it would take to do just that. I will probably hit up Amazon.com for some of my holiday shopping, and everything on my holiday table will not be home-made. But now that I’ve made the connection between the imagined homesteading of my youth and my actual forays into homesteading as an adult, I feel pretty confident that my readers are in for a few more make it from scratch tips in the coming months.