I Took the Pulse Pledge!

I'm replacing my normal Thankful Thursday post with information about a new venture I'm starting out this week. I decided to take the Pulse Pledge! I'm not talking about the pulse of my blood coursing through my veins-- I'm talking about the small legumes known as pulses in the food/agriculture industries. By taking the Pulse Pledge, I'm planning to incorporate pulses into at least one meal per week for the next ten weeks.

What is a Pulse?
As you can see in the graphic below, pulses are things like dry peas, beans, and lentils... Have you ever heard them referred to as "pulses" before? I hadn't until I moved to the farm. I think the term is used more in agriculture, but part of the goal of the Pulse Pledge is to get everyone more acquainted with what exactly pulses are, and to incorporate more of them into their diets.

Image source: www.pulsepledge.com

I decided to take the Pulse Pledge because, besides being a nutritious food option, we grow pulses on our farm. Jeff and I have raised yellow peas the past few years and plan to do so again this year. I am excited to learn more about pulses through this challenge, and looking forward to expanding my recipe repertoire for these little legumes.

Here's another great graphic showing examples of pulses:

Image source: www.pulsepledge.com

So, to be specific, the peas that we have raised on our farm are "whole yellow." Typically, these peas are ground into flour to be used as a component in another type of dish and not consumed as they are. Sometimes they're used in making different types of snack foods, especially in Asia. The most commonly grown pulse in our area is actually "whole green" peas, and some people also grow chickpeas and lentils as crops.

So far, in the first week of the Pulse Pledge, I'm off to a good start! I've actually had three specific dishes where I've worked pulses into the menu. On Sunday I took a jar of three-bean salad (blackeyed peas, green beans, and green peas in a light dressing) I had canned over the summer and added some extra herbs, chickpeas, and sliced cherry tomatoes to up the pulse oomph even more. It was really tasty, and so handy to have the salad already pretty much made. Just open a can and go!

The next day, I made sort of a skillet hash with diced rotisserie chicken, bell peppers, onions, corn, and black beans. I seasoned it with garlic and about 1/2 cup of salsa. We ate this as sort of a burrito- inside tortilla shells.

Chicken skillet hash with veggies and black beans.
Clearly, I'm not a food photographer...

Tonight (Thursday) I'm hitting up black beans again as a side dish for beef fajitas. I'm combining black beans with stewed tomatoes and chilis, and mixing it with rice for a riff on black beans and rice. As beef ranchers, we LOVE beef in our house! Combining my Pulse Pledge with a favorite beef dish is surely a winner! (Note that this post was written on 2/4 but posted about a week later)

Overall, I'm overachieving in the first week of the Pulse Pledge. Having canned beans on hand makes it really easy to eat more pulses. I'd like to get better at using dry beans and legumes, so hopefully I'll be getting into that more in the coming weeks.

Do you have any favorite recipes involving pulses? Are you taking the Pulse Pledge?

Thankful Thursday ~ School's Out For The Summer!

School's out for the summer! Our last day of school was actually a few weeks ago, on May 21. I spent that first weekend at State Track and in Bozeman and then all of last week was spent catching up on housework and me-time. Yes, I'm posting my Thankful Thursday post on Friday (sometimes that happens. I don't have all my shit together all the time, but who does? That's why you like this blog, right? Because I'm real? I'll tell myself that anyway... ;) ) and today I'm thankful that school's out for the summer! 

So what does school being out mean for me? In actuality, I still have to work over the summer. I'm not a teacher and I'm not employed by the school, I just work in the school environment most of the time. My co-worker and I are actually running a summer program for the kids in our program. So, we meet with them two days a week and continue therapeutic services, interventions, and a whole lot of positive skill-building throughout the summer. It's a little like summer camp or day camp for the kids. We do crafts, activities, and have deep and meaningful discussions and sharing circles. It's pretty fun, actually. Even though we're the ones as adults who are supposed to be serving them, and we are, often times it's the kids who teach me something. I get just as much "therapy" from them as I hope they get from me. That's definitely something to be thankful for.

In our first week of summer program, the kids painted flower pots in "a way that represents their personality," then they got to plant flowers in their pots and we had a discussion about what it means to take care of something, and empathy.
This is my flower pot, which I painted to match my patio furniture. :)

I'm also spending a lot more time with Jeff, which is awesome. Last week I helped him with several cow chores, including feeding range cake, some fencing, and setting up back-rubbers out in the pasture. I've also helped him with some farm and crop-specific stuff, too. It feels great to be involved and know that I'm helping out with our operation in a tangible way.

Cows eating cake. Love these ladies! 

Here's my arm, holding some barbed wire as we stretch it across the creek. I'm a RancHER. :)

Scouting out the pea crop. What do you think, Harvey? 

I'm thankful for more time during the summer for outdoor recreation and fitness pursuits! And again, thankful to be able to do more of that with Jeff, and Harvey of course, too. Last Sunday we went for another pasture bike ride. We think we covered between 8 and 9 miles. Photos from our previous pasture ride can be found HERE. The weather was warmer this time, so we made sure to find plenty of water stops for the dogs...

Harvey and Abby are enjoying some wading and a drink in the creek that runs through the pasture.
Jeff and I opted to remain on the bridge.

Of course, I'm getting in more running than I did during the end of the school year. I'm thankful that I have a little more flexibility to fit in some runs, and more time to fit in longer runs. Governor's Cup is just over a week away!

Here, Iggy is accompanying me. We officially adopted Iggy earlier this summer.
He's old, but he still likes to go for runs at his own pace.

And I've also been helping Carol, Tom, and Jeff with finishing up with planting our garden. We've got our raised beds full and the seeds are sprouting and yesterday we transplanted our tomatoes and peppers. We're all set, just need to keep up with watering and weeding and we'll be enjoying bountiful harvests, soon! We have already been eating the spinach from the garden and I think there are radish sprouts ready, too. I'm thankful in advance for the yummy veggies we'll have all summer long! Can't wait! 

Also, thankful for honeybee pollinators! Look at the size of those bumbles! 

Big bumblebees on chive blossoms! Seriously. We did NOT have bumblebees this large in Iowa! 

So many things to be excited about and thankful for when it comes to summer time! What are some of your favorite summer activities? What are you thankful for this week?

Harvey is thankful for pickup rides. I'm always thankful for Harvey!

Another Piece of the Puzzle

What happens to the crops from our fields after they go to the elevator? Here's an inside look at another section of the food-supply chain.

Last night, Jeff, Tom and I attended an open house at a newly opened pulse grain processing facility near Chester. The plant was formerly an aging grain elevator, poised for decline in business after the opening of two huge, brand new elevators in the area within the past year or so.  This factor combined with increasing bushels of pulse crops grown in the area made the elevator a good fit for the upgrade.

The elevator will now accept solely pulse crops-- yellow and green peas, chickpeas, and lentils, for example.  Green peas and lentils, specifically, will be processed within the facility. On the tour, I was able to snap quite a few photos and create this sort of photo tour.

It's hard to get an idea of the size of the plant from only these interior shots. It was dark outside already when we arrived, so I didn't bother taking any photos of the exterior.

Basically what happens is, farmers cut their crop in late summer and haul it to the elevator. At the elevator, it is processed and packaged before being shipped out to buyers around the world.  The night of the open house, they were processing lentils.  The first step was for sensors to identify off-color lentils and flush them out.  Tiny puffs of air separated individual lentil kernels from the whole.  We were told the off color kernels (and other "unusable" kernals, basically any kernels that didn't fit the quality standards) were separated out and are primarily used in gluten-free pet food.

Next, the lentils went through a series of large machines that cleaned out chaff and small rocks:

Jeff sticks his hand into the (not-running) machine, to give an idea of scale.

The machine in action. Lentils pour in onto this large tray with holes in it.
The holes are sized such that unwanted pieces fall through and the lentils stay on top.

After the cleaning process, the lentils are filled into 55lb bags and machine-stitched closed.

Finished bags of grain.
These are two of the company's premier products: Emerald Empire Lentils and "Natures Choice" green peas.

A robotic arm stacks bags of lentils onto pallets.

Pallets are eventually loaded onto boxcars and away they go!

 I found it interesting to see how product we raise in this area is handled after we drop it off at the elevator.  Several other reasons I am excited about the facility include:

• Encouragement of crop diversity beyond wheat
• The facility creates a few more jobs for the area
• The building was "recycled" for a new purpose, rather than left abandoned.

They served lentil chili for dinner, which was really yummy!

Some samples of pulse grains this facility could take.
A few varieties of lentils, yellow peas, and green peas.

Pulse crops are destined primarily for human consumption.  Yellow peas (which Jeff and I grew for the first time this past season) and chickpeas are primarily ground into flour. India is the major buyer for these. Green peas and lentils are often unaltered after leaving a facility like the one in Chester. One company in the Philippines uses green peas to make a snack food.  

Philippino snack food, anyone?  

A sample of green peas used to impress buyers all around the world.

The marketing pitch from company representative was a little over the top and hard to swallow at times. I kept hearing the words to the old song "Sixteen Tons" as he spoke about contracts... "I owe my soul to the company store..." and seeing visions of Monopoly properties and price control... But if you can attend the presentation and read between the lines, you're OK in the end. Overall, it was a really interesting night.  The processing was really interesting and the global nature of the food supply was, too.  We will likely not contract with this elevator ahead of time, but, happily, we will still be able to bring our peas here if we need to or want to. In all, another piece of the food supply chain puzzle was filled in for me, and I can seldom pass up an opportunity to learn.