The ultimate sandwich tool

For as long as I've known him (nearly 36 years of marriage plus two years of dating), Don has been a sandwich guy. He could eat sandwiches for every meal, and when he was baching it, he often did.

Fast forward to about ten years ago, back in the days when we had our wonderful weekly neighborhood potlucks. At one such meal, he was mentioning to some friends that, even though we raise our own beef, he's never really been able to make roast-beef sandwiches from our own meat because he didn't have a meat slicer. Hand-slicing beef only goes so far since it's hard to cut it thin enough.

These friends had a commercial-grade meat slicer, and offered it to us on loan.

Don was very excited to try it out. He cooked a beef roast to perfection, read the instructions on how to slice the meat, and set up the machine.

Well, it was awful. It sliced well enough, but it was so powerful that it literally threw meat bits all over the kitchen. Days later, I was still cleaning stuff off the walls. We cleaned up the slicer, returned it to our friends with gracious thanks, and that was the end of that.

More recently, Don has been lobbying to get a meat slicer of our own, so last summer I started researching smaller (and less powerful) home models, and purchased two which I tucked away to be given as Christmas gifts. One model was electric (the Cogace foldable meat slicer), and the other was hand-powered (the Starfrit deli slicer) (note: these are both affiliate links).

Honestly, I wasn't going to get the hand-powered one until I saw a video of it in action, and instantly realized this would be a valuable addition to our homesteading toolbox. Besides, we always opt for hand-powered options of things whenever possible. At Christmas, I wrapped these and put them under the tree.

Needless to say, Don was thrilled with these gifts and couldn't wait to try them out. He started with a beef roast, as well as a ham steak from a pig we bought a few years ago.

Following some online directions, he scored the fat side of the beef...

...then sprinkled it with Montreal Steak Seasoning.

The ham was flavored with a variety of spices.

Using a meat thermometer, he roasted the beef to perfection. This is the beef:

And this is the ham:

Once out of the oven, he let the meat sit for about an hour (it continues "cooking" as well as cooling during this time), then put it in the fridge overnight, letting it marinate in its own juices. This not only cooled the meat, but stiffened it up so it would slice more easily.

He started out trying the hand-cranked slicer:

It was easy-peasey to use...

...and created beautiful cuts.

Then he tried out the electric slicer:

Again, beautiful cuts.

Here are the ham and roast beef slices (plus some odds and ends):

Don's review: Both machines work extremely well, but are NOT as fast as commercial slicers (which is why the borrowed one was slamming meat bits against the wall). The manual cutter cuts as fast as he can turn the handle, about one slice every couple of seconds. The electric slicer is slightly faster, about one slice per second. Both produce identical-quality results (namely, excellent).

The meat doesn't have to be pressed hard against the blade; just light pressure is fine. One thing is the blades are only about six inches high, so with bigger meats (say, a huge ham), the meat would have to be cut in half so the blade can get through.

Encouraged by this success, he started with a larger roast beef weighing six pounds.

He prepped and roasted it in a similar way. Ready to go into the oven...

...and baked. (An accurate meat thermometer is vital at this step.)

Slicing using both machines:

He bagged up the slices in three-ounce bags, which gives two sandwiches per bag. These he froze.

Curious how this output compared to what was being sold in the store, I photographed packages of sliced roast beef: $15/lb.

Of course, most cuts were packaged in quantities well under a pound.

This means, conceivably, the six-pound roast he started with yielded about $90 worth of sliced roast beef.

So yes, these meat slicers were a valuable addition to our homestead repertoire of tools.

Bud season

Unsurprisingly, after the freaky-warm winter we've had, everything is budding out waaay too early. The plants are weeks ahead of schedule, but they're not listening to me when I tell them this.

Wild roses:

Blackberries:

Peaches:

Blueberries:

Apples:

Plums:

Willows:

And oak:

I just hope a late cold snap won't cause these trees and bushes to regret their decision......

The price of beef

The price of beef has been on everyone's mind lately.

According to the USDA, the average price of beef jumped from $8.40 per pound in March to $10.10 by December 2025.

A number of recent articles reflect these concerns:

• Food inflation in America

• RFK Jr. Urges U.S. Ranchers to Ramp Up Beef Production

• The cost of this grocery staple is nearing record highs — and Americans can't get enough

• U.S. Beef Cow Cycle Low Set To Deepen, Keeping Steak Prices High

• Beef Prices Surge As Drought, Aging Workforce Shrink U.S. Herds

• Drought And Costs Shrink America’s Cattle Supply: Beef Prices To Stay Elevated

• U.S. beef industry in crisis: Record prices, shrinking herds and mounting pressures on ranchers

We haven't bought beef in decades since we raise our own, so I wasn't familiar with what kinds of prices people are facing. So in late February, I stopped at the beef department of our local grocery store ... and was appalled.

Ball-tip steak, choice grade, $9.99/lb., $13.24 for the package:

Beef top sirloin, $11.99/lb., $9.83 for the package:

Rump roast, $5.99/lb., $20.73 for the package:

It is for these reasons, among many others, that we're aiming to have one animal a year in our beef pipeline.

Unlike our last homestead where we often had 15+ animals, here we don't have the room to raise more than a handful of cows at a time, preferably fewer. We have limited grazing, so we must accept the fact that we're feeding (or supplementing) our animals the majority of the year.

We butchered two animals recently: Filet in August, and her daughter Mignon in February.

Filet was an older and tougher animal (10 years old at the time of butchering), so we literally had the butchers turn her entirely into ground beef, with the exception of as many cube steaks as he could produce. This is the receipt for Filet's processing costs:

Mignon was two years old, prime butchering age, and we had the butcher give us the full range of cuts. This is the receipt for Mignon's processing costs:

As you can see, the butcher charged us about $1/lb for processing (a bit less for all cuts except cube steaks, which cost a bit more). Total costs for both butcherings came to $1255.45. Also, we paid the dispatcher (the fellow who comes to our place to dispatch the animal) $160 for each dispatch, a total of $320 for both animals. This brings the total butchering costs for two animals up to $1575.45.

Since I'm currently working on our taxes, I had the opportunity to tally up how much we spent on hay last year. It came to a total of $2500. Divided by five animals (Filet, Mignon, Romeo, Maggie, Stormy), that averages out to $500 of hay apiece. (Clearly this isn't an exact science since some animals are older and eat more, some are younger and eat less, but whatever.)

So add $1000 in hay costs for both Filet and Mignon. Now let's double that for the two years we've had Filet and Mignon, for a total of $2000 in hay costs. This brings the cost of raising the animals to $2575.45.

Let's go back even further and include the purchase price of Filet and Mignon, which was $1500 for the two of them. That brings the overall costs to $5075.45. [NOTE: I made a math error and incorrectly tallied this as $4075.45 earlier; these figures have now been corrected. Sorry about that!]

Between both animals, we got a total of 1319 lbs. of beef in various cuts. This gives us a total cost of $3.85 per pound of beef, for everything from lowly ground beef to premium steaks. Less than four bucks a pound.

When we picked up Mignon in February, we had 11 crates of meat.

This filled our spare freezer almost to the brim. (This is why we have back-up power sources for freezers.)

As we were packing this meat away, I took a couple of T-bones and prepared them for us for lunch. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, definitely "prime" grade. With the blessing of this much abundance, we can be generous with friends.

Romeo and Stormy are the next animals in our beef pipeline. We'll put Romeo in the freezer next year, and Stormy the year after that. The cost of raising them is even lower because we didn't have any initial purchasing costs, and both their breedings were free. That could conceivably bring the per-pound cost for them down quite a bit. Meanwhile Maggie will be producing more calves. Her upcoming calf will be a heifer, but thereafter we'll select for steers, which we'll raise for beef.

The blessings of a homestead.

The alchemy of good tea

Many years ago, when I flew with Older Daughter to Ohio to drop her off at nanny school, I had my first opportunity to visit Lehman's Amish Store in Kidron. It's a place I'd wanted to see for years and years and years.

Needless to say, it exceeded all my expectations and I came away deeply impressed.

On that occasion, I made a few small purchases, including a special blend of tea called Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend for Older Daughter.

Well, she loved it. She regularly ordered it online ever after (not from Lehman's, but from a different source). The last time she ordered multiple boxes was sometime in November of 2019. By the time she used up what she had and decided to order more, she learned that particular blend had been discontinued.

Bummer.

She was talking about this tea recently, and how much she enjoyed it. Don is always up for a research challenge, so he decided to sleuth out the ingredients of this particular blend. He found it consisted of English breakfast black tea, chai, orange peel, and red clover flowers.

So ... Older Daughter ordered these baseline ingredients and started experimenting. And eureka, she figured out the blend.

Here's the homemade version of the Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend tea:

• 1 teaspoon English Breakfast tea

• 1/4 teaspoon chai

• 1/4 teaspoon ("heaping" quarter-teaspoon) of orange peel

• 2 red clover heads

She puts this blend in a tea strainer for a hearty cup of tea. She also adds about half a tablespoon of powdered milk (or a splash of fresh milk) to complete the cup of comfort.

The nice thing about making up a blend like this from its component ingredients is how much cheaper it is. She used some pint canning jars to assemble the ingredients in easy form, and stored the rest of the bulk ingredients in the pantry.

Ah, the alchemy of good tea.

Planting broccoli

For three days this week, we've experienced unnaturally warm March weather, with temperatures in the mid to high 70sF.

This was nothing short of a siren call to get things done in the garden, especially since we had a block of rain and cooler temperatures moving in.

One of the advantages of having the garden fully fenced against deer (at last!) is we can plant with abandon and not worry about things getting picked off all the time.

So I spent a couple of days weeding, topping the beds with compost, raking up last year's leaves, etc. Then it came over me like a thunderclap that it's the ideal time to plant my hands-down all-time favorite vegetable, broccoli.

We really don't have room in the house to do much by way of vegetable starts, so I decided to take a chance and direct-sow them into the garden beds.

But not without a little prep. First, using some of the compost Don brought up a few weeks ago...

...I put a fresh layer on each bed.

Then I dug it in and raked it smooth.

Time to break out the seeds.

Years ago, I got these silly and inexpensive seed spoons that can pluck out tiny seeds of various sizes. I tell ya, these have proven to be worth their weight in gold.

I prepped three beds for broccoli, with plans to plant six seeds per bed in a zigzag formation. To decide on the right pattern and spacing, I stuck a few small sticks in the beds.

Planting eighteen seeds took just a few minutes.

(For those claiming that 18 broccoli plants are too many, you don't understand just how much I love broccoli. I might even plant a couple more beds as well.)

I pulled in some fresh straw for mulch.

Here are all three beds, planted and mulched.

Ah, but I'm not finished. Notice the pile of long white poles on the ground?

Last June, you might recall, I put up a blog post entitled "The Argument for Buying Ahead." Take a moment and go back to read it. Go on, I'll wait.

Now that you're back, I'll explain. Those poles are seven-foot fiberglass poles purchased back when we had money to be used for cloching garden beds. We bought enough to cloche every single bed if necessary.

Unfortunately, these poles turned out not to be the best choice. Bending them is juuuuust a bit more than the fiberglass fibers can handle, and quite often (but not always) they break. If we could do it over again, I would recommend half-inch pex tubing as a nonbreakable cloching alternative. However, since we have so many fiberglass poles, I'll continue to use them and just replace broken ones as needed.

Anyway, my plan was to cloche the broccoli beds even before the plants sprouted. Each bed takes four poles: One at either end, and two in the middle. I start by lining them up on one side of each bed.

Then it's a simple matter to bend the poles and tuck them into the other side of the bed. Since these poles are fiberglass, gloves are critical so I don't get tiny glass shards in my hands.

But what to cloche the beds with? Ah, that was another purchase we made during our "purchasing ahead days" – garden netting. I purchased a bulk amount of seven-foot-wide netting, enough to cloche every single garden bed if necessary.

This was the first time I've had the opportunity to use it. The first thing I did was measure how much each bed required.

Eight-foot beds, two-foot-high cloche hoops, and enough netting to drape generously down each end came out to fourteen feet of netting for each bed.

So I laid out the measuring tape on the porch to fourteen feet in length.

Then I measured out the netting and cut it to length, repeating this step for the three beds.

This draped beautifully over the poles and thoroughly cloched each bed.

I staked the netting down with U-stakes, yet another one of our "buy ahead" purchases a few years ago. We bought a box of 5,000 of these babies and use them all the time.

The stakes puncture through the netting easily. This also might mean it will tear holes in the netting after a while, so I'll have to be vigilant for this possibility.

This is what the broccoli beds looked like when I was finished, all cloched and staked.

Why did I cloche the broccoli at all? It's because broccoli (as well as other cruciferous crops) are highly susceptible to flea beetles and aphids, both of which can decimate plants within days. I speak from experience. It's painful to watch my favorite veggie get eaten down before I have a chance to harvest a single bit of it.

These are flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that can turn a healthy plant into a lacy skeleton of its former self in a matter of days.

A few years ago, I was watching a gardening video by an Australian gardener who said that 90 percent of gardening pests in raised beds could be controlled or eliminated with the judicious use of net cloches. That was enough for me (in those heady days of having surplus income) to order poles and netting. This is my first opportunity to use the netting.

Last year, I planted two beds with broccoli. The flea beetles got them all. This year I planted the broccoli in different beds in hopes that my favorite vegetable will escape a similar fate.

Time will tell.