Wednesday, February 6, 2008 – Ah, stevia . . .
Part of the excitement of being newby farmers is realizing that we won’t have to buy groceries anymore. (Well, except for toilet paper, etc.) We’ve been trying to find a replacement for sugar, since we can’t grow sugar cane here. Honey is one excellent option, but it’s a few years away for us. Then we read about stevia, which is a plant – I think it looks like mint – and one leaf of that plant is equivalent to two teaspoons of sugar, when steeped in a cup of tea. Aside from the perk of being able to grow it ourselves, it also has zero calories, zero carbs, zero everything-else-evil, AND won’t ultimately give us cancer like aspertame. A diabetic coworker cautioned me that stevia has “a taste,” so I bought a wee box of packaged stevia at Country Grocer so we could try it out. I’m drinking a cup of tea now, with milk and one packet of stevia.
Findings include: definitely tastes more powdery than crystal-like; excellent level of sweetness; I could get used to this.
I’m not sure if it’d be any good in pies, but I’ll try it out eventually. There’s a whole conspiracy theory behind stevia. Since it’s natural and evil-free, it’s the obvious sugar-replacement of choice, and in Japan (I think) it really is the #1 product. The USA, however, has restricted or outlawed stevia from commercial sale, and I even read in one farm magazine that the gov’t is trying to outlaw growing stevia. Whatever. It suits our purposes nicely, and will provide an interesting product for us to sell. At Country Grocer, as a processed product, it cost me $12 for 100 packets. A box of 180g of loose powder costs $15. While we won’t have the resources to process stevia to its full strength (30 times sweeter than sugar), we can certainly sell the leaves.
Perhaps this would be a good time for my disclaimer: while I am an honest person, I also have a very “creative” perception of the world, and tend to misremember facts in order to make an argument or improve a story (like father, like daughter). This is generally a harmless habit, but please do your own research before basing a thesis on this blog.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 – I hate baby birds
I’ve had a very anti-animal day today (except for the bunnies, of course, love them very, very much). At 2am or some other ungodly hour I woke up to TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET directly overhead. At one point I thought it was just my nose whistling. But no, it continued for a very very long time, and my theory is that there is a nest of baby birds in our roof. (We haven’t put the soffits up yet, so it’s open season for any animal that wants to live in our ceiling insulation.) Stupid baby birds. Stupid us, for not putting the soffit up before nesting season.
In other news, our house is full of seeds. We’ve received our orders from Stokes (minimal, since they treat their seeds), Dominion, Salt Spring Seeds, Green Space Design, and West Coast Seeds (the majority of our budget, at over $700 worth).
For those of you wondering what we’re growing this year, the answer is: EVERYTHING. No exageration. We have seeds for: lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, beets, radishes (I don’t even like radishes), stevia (see above), peanuts, loofah (yes, loofah), wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, squash, pumpkins, artichokes, potatoes, onions, chives, parsley, cilantro, mint, hot peppers, regular peppers, tomatoes, AND SO ON.
It might be excessive. However, we fully intend our farm and garden market to be a raging success, so we must be prepared.
Also: great idea of the week . . . I want to name our garden market The Garden of Eatin’. Ha ha.