I wanted to learn how to make noodles like my Grandmother used to make for her prized Chicken Noodle Soup recipe, so my mom decided to share the recipe and process with me. While we were creating these noodles, I thought about all of the farmers who had a hand in getting the ingredients to our table.
The recipe started out with these guys. Eggs are produced in many states across the US, but the top three egg producing states are Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 2009, US Farmers produced 246 eggs for each person living in the US. That's a lot of omelets!
We mixed the eggs with some flour. Flour is made from wheat which is a crop grown very readily in the state of Kansas. Over 240,000 family farms in the US grow wheat. About 2/3 of that wheat crop is grown on farms in the Mid West, the belt that stretches from Montana down to Texas. Of the wheat grown in the US, over 70% of it is used for human food products. Every year each American consumes around 136 pounds of wheat in different food products.
We mixed the eggs and flour together. I kneaded it until it was smooth and stretchy for the noodle roller. The noodle roller made the dough very very thin for cutting.
Here's a shot of my mom running the dough through the pasta roller to get it very thin.
And here we are cutting the noodles into the shape we wanted to do for our Chicken Noodle soup recipe.
We had to let the noodles dry on the rack before we were ready to store them or cook them. Mom told me that her mom had laid them out on tea towels on their beds to dry all day. We used the clothes drying rack to consolidate the space. They didn't need to dry very long at all.
Here is the final product! Our noodles were very delicous in the soup that we made. These noodles could be used in a lot of dishes, but they are very thin so you have to be careful how much you handle them once they are cooked. In the US, people consume 9 kg of pasta every year, which seems like a lot to me. Until you look at the 28 kg of pasta every year a person consumes in Italy.
If you'd like the recipe for the Chicken Noodle Soup or the noodles my mom and I made, just share a comment and I'd be happy to share this family recipe with you. Enjoy!
Best,
Tera
All facts and figures from this post were taken from the USDA website.
Australian wool is generally regarded as some of the highest quality wool in the world, and the best of it comes from the Merino breed. Merino sheep have been bred for hundreds of years to produce extremely fine wool and have been selected to have wrinkly skin as this allows more surface area for wool to grow. A mature Merino ewe can produce over 15 pounds of wool per year, a pretty impressive feat considering wool doesn't weigh very much and they are usually only shorn once per year.
The main point I wanted to drive home was the fact that although many other professions in agriculture have changed drastically in the past 100 years, sheep shearing is still largely the same. Although machine shears are used today, shearing is still a very physical, tiring job for shearers who are expected to shear on average 150 per day. As they are paid by the sheep, it is in their best interest to get them done as quickly as possible, but this is a job that is alot harder than it looks. 
Last week, I tried my hand at shearing a few Merino ewes. After getting a brief lesson on how to position the ewe and hold her so that I didn't hurt her and could still shear effectively, I had a go at it. While most shearers take 3-4 minutes per sheep, I was still going at 20 minutes and sweating like crazy! I had similar results on the second sheep I attempted, after which I looked at shearing completely differently. I swore that I would never take for granted the hard work that goes into shearing a ewe and I think it is important to recognize the hard-working sheep shearers out there in the world who are alot tougher than I am! 
