A Chat with the Program Director of SVF

As I was pondering how to write my recent post about food animal biobanking, my fantastic friends Araina and Kate urged me to call SVF Foundation1. And in 15 minutes I learned a lot.

The “SVF” in SVF Foundation stands for Swiss Village Farm, and the foundation is specifically rooted in farming. That root, it turns out, is the quick explanation for the difference in SVF’s biodiversity focus and a zoo’s biodiversity focus (and thus my feelings of disappointment I mention in the previous post, as I am rooted in the zoo side of things).

SVF Foundation was founded about 13 years ago as a non-profit tasked with conserving the biodiversity of agriculturally important ruminates–so, cows, sheep, and goats. They are almost exclusively privately funded, though they do have some fun merch for sale.Continue reading →

A little bit on gardening and self-sufficiency

Bill and I just renewed the lease on our apartment, so we’ll be staying in this house about another year. It’s already the longest I, personally, have stayed put in my adult life. By the time we leave, which we intend to do next year, it will feel as if we’ve lived in this home forever. In fact, it’ll have been a little less than three years.

The first year we lived here, we moved in the middle of the summer. Heck, we mentioned it briefly here on this little blog. Of course, August is entirely too late in the year to plant anything, so for our first summer here, we grew nothing.

Last year, I posted about our first little garden early in the year, and then basically nothing for the rest of the year.… Continue reading →

Bacon has ends?

Oh, man. I’m a terrible food blogger. Terrible. I had this vague recollection that I’d made an “ingredients” category here on MetaCookbook, with the intent of getting into discussions about, well, ingredients. I didn’t recall how many posts I’d put in the category, or the topics. I’m terrible.

Why? Well, because there’s a whopping ONE post in that category right now. And? It’s on bacon ends. Which is what this post is about. However, that post doesn’t have photos, and this one does, so it’s better. Also, having that post means I can say a little bit less about the cost and such, and talk a little bit more about how I made them this time, and my continuing impressions.

Also, it’ll remind me to have some opinions on some other ingredient or two, sometime.… Continue reading →

Meadow Haven Farm Visit – Hogs

Finally! The end of the road! The hogs!

I explained why we ended up at the farm “in the chicken post”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/253-Meadow-Haven-Farm-Visit.html and had plenty to say about cows “in the cow post”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/256-Meadow-Haven-Farm-Visit-Cows.html and I tend to “talk” a lot, so I’m betting you all are expecting a lot of words now, aren’t you?

I actually don’t have many. My only pre-Meadow Haven experience with hogs was at Girl Scout camp a bazillion years ago (I think I was 9, but I’m not sure) and I don’t remember much. We had to take turns feeding them, at a frequency of about once a week. Since I was only there a week, I only fed ’em once. I don’t remember the hogs in the slightest, just that I was disgusted by having to carry this heavy bucket of slop out to them!… Continue reading →

Meadow Haven Farm Visit – Cows

“In the previous post”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/253-Meadow-Haven-Farm-Visit.html I posted about why I was visiting “the farm”:http://www.meadowhavenfarm.com/index.html (to pick up a butchered hog) & the chickens on the farm. This was going to be a post about the hogs & the cows, but it turns out I took a lot of cow photos.

Cows! The cows were pretty neat, especially given their relative lack of aggression. Cows in the New Mexico bosque are total jerks, in case you didn’t know. I mentioned this (maybe in slightly politer terms) to Jeremy. He told me the trick to cows is to be confident and make sure they believe it.

I’m just going to say, that’s pretty hard to do when you have no experience with cows and you suddenly find yourself the star of a Looney Tunes short.… Continue reading →