Looking at the History of....

[Orchid]

I thought wow...how very interesting!



http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/09/lessons-from-history-is-hay-just-for-horses.html


Lessons from History: Is Hay Just For Horses?
by KimiHarris on Green Drinks.



I was recently both amused and challenged by the perspective of a figure in history from the Russian food culture. Natalia Borisovna Nordman-Severova.

She lived from 1863- 1914 and she advocated and argued for the liberation of servants and housewives from excessive labor, and the abolition of world hunger. She certainly wasn’t going to aim for low goals! And vegetarianism was a large part of her answer to those problems.

Even more, unlike her contemporaries, Natalia took her vegetarianism much further. Although the word hadn’t been invented yet, her diet became vegan, and even progressed to a largely raw diet which contained grasses, and yes, hay.



Once married, she not only shared her goals and dreams by her lectures and writings, but also by having a weekly Wednesday open house. An open house in which some of the most famous and gifted people of her day sat at. It was here that she tried to show what a servantless and meatless meal could look like.

She had a famous round table built that had a huge lazy susan in the middle. This allowed the guests to serve themselves, eliminating the need for servants. There was also a side table where guests were supposed to cut their own bread-no servants or hostess doing this job!

When they came to the door, they were told by a sign on the wall to remove their own coats (also a traditional servant’s job). The rule was “equality and self-help”. She even got on her husband’s case once for assisting a guest with their coat. And guests were not allowed to help each other to food either. If someone made the mistake of offering food to another, they were forced to make a speech-which was sure to amuse the other diners.

Even more eccentrically, before the start of each meal, Nordman played music to set the mood (no, that’s not the eccentric part) and made everyone do a wild dance, called the “plastic dance”. If you wanted to be a guest here, you would be in for a ride!

Yet, for all of her funny (and often wrong) ideas, I really admire many of her aspirations. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I need help from others, so an independent “self-help” society in no way appeals to me. I want to help others with their coats, and I don’t mind cutting the bread. I know I get help in return. But her heart really was to help others. She even invented the first “crock pot”, which no one, unfortunately, paid much attention too. She was thrilled with it because she knew that it could help the cooks and homemakers so much.

But what about the hay? She was watching her horse chomp on hay one day when she had what she thought was a brilliant idea. Man could eat hay too, and become as healthy and strong as a horse! And all of the starving Russians would never have to go hungry again. And this way too, housewives wouldn’t have to toil needlessly in the kitchen.

Here’s her recipe for hay soup (and yes, she really did serve it to guests).

“Take a teapot depending on the number of people either a small porcelain one or a huge tin one for a while workers’ cooperative, toss in two zolotniks of hay per person, chop an onion, add some bay leaves (one leaf for every three people) and two peppercorns per person, pour on rapidly boiling water, simmer for ten minutes, and the soup is ready. ”

This idea is especially hard for us to grasp, but you should understand that many traditional recipes do use hay as a flavoring agent (though it’s not eaten). It really is supposed to add a nice taste to certain dishes. However, that “soup” recipe sounds like a bad tasting tea to me!

But not all of her ideas were bad.

” In 1911, Nordman published a cookbook in which she explicitly presents the merits of her hay diet…A cookbook for the hungry……The book methodically details a comprehensive method for changing the human diet, including an important ‘project for feeding the hungry’, in which every large apartment house or yardman’s lodge would daily provide a huge kettle of free soup for the poor. The soup would be free in both senses of the word. The indigent would not have to pay for it and neither would the providers, since the ingredients would consist of the discards from wealthy kitchen. Kindergartens and factories could establish similar soup kitchens, and thus without spending a cent, the rich could feed the needy. ” 1
​

I think that is a great idea! I love the concept of not wasting anything, and the rich of that time (and our time too) waste a lot of good food. Why not give it to the hungry?

And even her hay/grass diet isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. When reading about her advice to take a day in the country to gather a variety of green grasses and how she also gave chemical analyses of different grasses to prove that did provide nutrients, I was reminded of our Green Drinks. In a lot of way, what she was advocating was no different. Except, of course, for the fact that we pay a lot for green drinks. It’s no longer food for the poor!

“Nordman insisted that a Russian meadow with its many grasses could provide a more varied and nutritious diet than any in Italy, where produce is available only in season. In Russia, for a quick and tasty meal, one need simply go out into the summertime fields and pick fresh grasses like lady’s mantle, goutweed, angelica, mountain sorrel, yarrow, timothy grass, and canary grass, then saute them with celery parsley, dill, and onion in a little olive oil.”2
​

Needless to say, she never really got a following among her people. She was just a little to extreme. It’s too bad though, because some of her inventions, like her “crockpot”, her ideas to help the hungry by using the scraps of the household, and her desire to make life a little easier for the masses did have value.

I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. But I do admire her gumption and commitment to making this world a better place. And, like she advocated, I don’t want to waste food when so many go hungry. So for that legacy, I thank her.

1-Editors Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre, Food in Russian History and Culture, pg 114, Published 1997 by Indiana University Press

2-Editors Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre, Food in Russian History and Culture, pg 116, Published 1997 by Indiana University Press

 

[Orchid]

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O245-hay.html

hay making was probably introduced to Ireland by the Normans, but as late as 1838 it was claimed that some small farmers in Connemara did not know that it was possible to use dried grass as fodder. In the 19th century, agricultural improvers often criticized the length of time Irish farmers left the hay crop to ripen before cutting, and the length of time it stood drying in the field, arguing that this led to a loss in nutritional value. Farmers, however, pointed out that the damp climate and the lushness of the crop meant that harvesting had to be extended.

The swing towards livestock farming which occurred in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century (see farming) led to a great expansion of the acreage set aside for hay, and by 1900 it was the largest crop produced. During the twentieth century, the production of grass seed became an important part of farming.


Jonathan Bell

 

[Orchid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay

Early farmers noticed that growing fields produced more fodder in the spring than the animals could consume, and that cutting the grass in the summer, allowing it to dry and storing it for the winter provided their domesticated animals with better quality nutrition than simply allowing them to dig through snow in the winter to find dried grass. Therefore, some fields were "shut up" for hay.

Up to the end of the 19th century, grass and legumes were not often grown together because crops were rotated.[citation needed] By the 20th century, however, good forage management techniques demonstrated that highly productive pastures were a mix of grasses and legumes, so compromises were made when it was time to mow. Later still, some farmers grew crops, like straight alfalfa (lucerne), for special-purpose hay such as that fed to dairy cattle.

Much hay was originally cut by scythe by teams of workers, dried in the field and gathered loose on wagons. Later, haying would be done by horse-drawn implements such as mowers. With the invention of agricultural machinery such as the tractor and the baler, most hay production became mechanized by the 1930s.


After hay was cut and had dried, the hay was raked or rowed up by raking it into a linear heap by hand or with a horse-drawn implement. Turning hay, when needed, originally was done by hand with a fork or rake. Once the dried hay was rowed up, pitch forks were used to pile it loose, originally onto a horse-drawn cart or wagon, later onto a truck or tractor-drawn trailer, for which a sweep could be used instead of pitch forks.

Loose hay was taken to an area designated for storage—usually a slightly raised area for drainage — and built into a hay stack. The stack was made waterproof as it was built (a task of considerable skill) and the hay would compress under its own weight and cure by the release of heat from the residual moisture in the hay and from the compression forces. The stack was fenced from the rest of the paddock in a rick yard, and often thatched or sheeted to keep it dry. When needed slices of hay would be cut using a hay-knife and fed out to animals each day.

On some farms the loose hay was stored in a shed or barn, normally in such a way that it would compress down and cure. Hay could be stored in a specially designed barn with little internal structure to allow more room for the hay. Alternatively an upper storey of a cow-shed or stable was used, with hatches in the floor to allow hay to be thrown down into hay-racks below.

Depending on region, the term "hay rick" could refer to the machine for cutting hay, the hay stack or the wagon used to collect the hay.

 

[Hazel-Mom]

I didn't know about that lady in Russia, but some time ago when looking for nutritional analysis of hay, I came accross this article. It was written by a German man, during World War I. He actually looked into methods for making the nutrients in that hay available for human consumption. I guess they were pretty desperate during the war.

He achieved his goal by grinding the hay into a very fine powder, to break down the cell walls and make the nutrition available. Very interesting read, but I don't think people will ever do this, except maybe during a war or severe drought, when little else is available.

http://www.zum.de/psm/1wk/heu_e.php

" Every plant contains all substances which men and animals require as food; it is only the incapability or difficulty to exploit the existing substances which has many plant substances be deemed unsuited for animal nourishment, if we disregard poisonous or bitter substances."...

..."Extractive substances contain sugar and plant acids. As you see, the hay brands mentioned contain by far more nutrients per weight unit than potatos, carrots, vegetables, even as milk or skin milk, all of which for the most part consist of water. When it comes to the nutritional value the cellulose can be completely ignored, despite the fact that, for men and domestic animals alike, by fermentation during the digestion process a part of the cellulose's caloric value is tapped for the animal's energy household. The potato's figures are the following: raw protein 2,1 %, raw fat 0,1 %, extractive substances rich in nitrogen 21 %, cellulose or raw fibres 0,7 %. These figures document the poverty in nutritional value of the potato compared to even the poorest of the hay brands listed above. As both potatos and hay are bought by weight, we have to pay too much for the water contained in the potatos, compared to the nutrients contained in the hay, assumed that we are capable of making the nutrients contained in the hay as accessible to our digestive system as those contained in the potato. The only reason for the difficulty which prevents the extraction of the nutrients is their deposition inside hard cell walls, which can not be broken down by digestive fluids, and which in part even are enforced by silicates. If these are shredded, there is no reason at all, why the nutrients could be less utilized than those of the best of our foods."...

..."Making these nutrients of the hay accessible by tearing the cell walls is a technically difficult problem, but it can be overcome. All experiences made by the grinding of dry vegetables, by the author, could be applied to the grinding of hay. The author, years ago, has shown, that vegetables in dry condition can be grinded to flour that small, that even the digestive systems of babies and the sick can use them with an effectivity not expected before."...

..."Regarding the digestability there was no noticable difference between chopped straw and straw flour. Only the dust-fine powderization of the straw parts rich in content, after the strongly silicated parts have been sorted out, enables us to consider hay and straw as a source of nutrition for man.
Even the finest grinding of plant parts, making accessible all their nutrients, alone does not qualify these flours for human or animal consumption. Parasitical fungi have to be made harmless by baking or cooking."...

..."For men a bread half made from ordinary flour, half from hay or straw flour, is edible. Soups prepared of such a mixture have, next to their high nutritional value, good flavour."...