Making Turkey Stock

Once you remove all the meat from your Thanksgiving turkey, put the bones on to simmer right away to make stock to use in soups and sauces for the rest of the holidays and after. It may help keep you and your family from getting the winter colds and flu that always come around.

Homemade stock offers three nutritional benefits that are in readily digestible form:

1. Minerals calcium, magnesium, silicon, sulphur and phosporous and critical trace minerals.

2. Gelatin which is good for many tissues of the body -- cartilage, bones, joints, skin, digestive tract, and muscles including the heart. Gelatin also boosts immunity. The majority of our immune system is located in our gut, and gelatin soothes and heals the intestinal mucosa.

3. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphates, good for joint maintenance.

Making turkey stock is very easy. Put the carcass in a large pot (1-2 gallons) and cover with water. Add 1/4 cup of vinegar (this will help to release minerals from the bones and cartilage). Bring to a boil over medium to high heat. Reduce to medium to low heat and simmer for 24 hours. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface while simmering. After 24 hours strain out the bones. You'll have a gallon or two of yummy stock.

Easy, healthful, and tasty.

A Little Less Ambitious

As self-sufficiency expert John Seymour wrote, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.”

Many (or even most) writing about self-sufficiency make the assumption that all of us who want to be self-sufficient want to do so primarily because of environmental concerns, global environmental concerns, like sustainability of food production, reduction of pollution, and so forth.

Our thinking is a little less ambitious. We do want the best possible environment in and around our home to allow each member of our family to thrive, both physically and spiritually. We have found in the process of improving our immediate environment by avoiding unnecessary chemicals--cleansers, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, preservatives, and sedatives--that traditional ways (natural, homemade) are most often less expensive than purchasing the commercial, chemical products.

In other words, we’re not becoming more self-sufficient to save the planet, we are becoming more self-sufficient to save ourselves. We trust ourselves to take care of us, not the government--local, state, federal, or global. We have found that being self-sufficient, while in the short run is more costly in terms of time and labor (and sometimes money) than relying on others, in the long run is less so. Growing our own food veggies and fruits for the cost of some seeds and a little water is cheaper and cleaner than buying our food at the grocery store. That’s a short term savings. In the long term, we expect to save much more in terms of health and well-being in the future. Those are long term savings.

"Sustainable" for us means that very little, if any, input is required to keep a system going after the initial investment. For example, saving seeds from open pollinated vegetable varieties means that we don't have to purchase seeds or plants each year. Or, keeping a rooster will provide chicks for us whenever we need replacement layers, or meat birds.

The investment we make now in terms of time and money has an incalculable return on investment in the near and distant future, both for ourselves and future generations. For those that feel the planet is in need of saving: the solution is not in buying carbon credits, or driving an electric car, or eating lots of tofu. Just do what you can for your immediate environment. If everyone did the same, the global environment would improve substantially. Start by growing something that you like to eat--tomatoes? peppers? salad greens? Add a couple of chickens to your yard and they will eat your table scraps and bugs in your yard, and give you eggs to eat and manure to put on your garden. Less packaging goes to the landfill, less diesel for food transport is burned, and you will be producing a good bit of your own food.

Dreams and Goals

It has been our dream to have an efficient, "sustainable" means of food production. For us, it started with the garden and has expanded steadily over the past few years.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals.

On our mini-farm we have the animals we need to provide manure--chickens, ducks, geese, fish, and goats--so there is no shortage in this department. We have at least three or four compost bins and piles going at any given time, as well as some worm bins to turn the manure, garden trimmings, and kitchen wastes into usable compost. We plan to add a bin for black soldier fly larvae next year to help deal more quickly with the kitchen waste and to provide grubs for the chickens and fish.

The snag for us in becoming self-sufficient or completely sustainable is that we are having to bring in feed for the chickens and goats. While our poultry are as free-range as we can make them, there just isn't enough "range" to completely provide for them just yet. We need to find the balance between available forage and number of birds.

The ducks and geese forage for themselves with the occasional treats of leftover fruit and greens from the table, and an occasional sprinkle of grain.  Our chickens have free access to a couple of compost piles, so they get whatever leftovers from the kitchen they want along with all the grass, weeds, seeds, and bugs the can find, but they still need extra feed to maintain egg production. The goats are given grasses and hay from bales we purchase in addition to the garden and tree trimmings and other home-grown forage we provide. We grow sunflowers specifically for the purpose of feeding the seeds to the birds (and goats) and the rest of the plant to the goats. We  also have grown mangels specifically for goat feed.  Swiss Chard is a hit with just about everybody on the farm, except some of the people. Kale, too.

To be able to eat fish from our farm once a week throughout the year, we have to purchase fish food. The black soldier fly grubs will help here. We have also been experimenting with other available foods. Tilapia have been reported to eat raw scrambled eggs. We have not had success in getting ours to eat this, but will keep trying. We do grow duckweed to feed our tilapia, but not nearly enough. More pond to grow it in would be nice, but not practical at this point.

Now to the humans on the farm. We can grow for ourselves all of our fruit and vegetable needs. We have eggs, milk, meat and fish in enough quantity to meet our needs most of the time.  We can and do make our own yogurt, ice cream, and cheeses. But if we want beef, pork, or grains we have to buy them. Do we need them? No, at least not all of the time.  So it is entirely possible for us to eat well with only animal feed coming into our farm. This is one of our goals. We'll start with a week or two and go from there.

At this point, we don't make many trips to the grocery store. We buy our staple goods in bulk.With these we make our own bread, soaps, and soft drinks. We can make our own pasta, toothpaste, shampoo, cleaners, and deodorants. Does all this save money? It sure doesn't save time, and time is money, right? Well let's see.

We spend about $300 per month on animal feed, and about twice that much on staple goods (organic if possible). We have a family of eight. That works out to less than $1.50 per person per meal. Our food is real food, no additives or sedatives. No chemicals you can't pronounce. No GMO. Our homemade cleaning and personal care products are the same way. We spend less than two hours per person per day working the farm and the kitchen.

We have a way to go, but we're getting there. Some say that the journey is more enjoyable than the destination. We're having a lot of fun getting to where we want to be. If we can do it, so can you. Start small as we did, working your way up. Start now.