Oct 2009 Personal Preps

[Watchman]

List your accomplishments here.

[Watchman]

We came home two days ago and found a large box of tomatoes, given to us by a "secret friend". Wife just finished canning them - 9 quarts. We were out of quart canning jars and I must say, God was taking care of us! We found a bunch of quart glass mayonnaise jars in the garage and they work perfectly in a water bath. Then, a friend drives up yesterday and says 'I don't want any argument from you' and proceeded to unload two cases of new Kerr quart jars and one case of pints. We had showered her with homemade bread, vegetables from the garden, and it came back to us, even though we never expected anything.

[WillyPete]

Not too much but, something.
I got a roto-tiller given to me by a friend. It needs some work but, small engines aren't that difficult. I'll be planting at least by spring then preserving not long after.
I picked up a few more items for my GHB, I don't plan to bug-out just get home from wherever I am. I obtained more water purifying tablets, another magnesium flint bar and a waterproof match box. I'm not too thrilled with the matchbox because I saw what I thought was a striker bar on the bottom of it. It won't strike a match nor will it strike a spark with a steel striker. I'll just have to place a striker in the box with the matches now. They're regular wooden kitchen matches as I have not been able to find the strike anywhere type for the last several years around here.
I picked up a couple of oil lamps and a gallon of lamp oil in quart bottles today from one of my favorite retailers, FRED'S. You can see a little bit about them here:

http://www.fredsinc.com

They have a store locator so you can find if there's one near you. This retailer is just like a general store, they have a little bit of most everything and a fair amount of prep type materials and equipment. I've gotten all of my canning jars from them as well as a canner and can get packages of pectin for jams and jellies there too. Another good thing, they ain't wal-mart!

[Toepopper]

Starting over. We have fled the state of California and moved accross the border into S.W. Oregon. I hated to give up everything I had worked for during the last 30 years but we could not tolerate all the looney toon wierdness and downright communist rules and eco regulations being generated out of Sacramento. I was dug in like a hill tick, had planted fruit trees, grapes, large garden and had developed a reliable water system and solar power system. This took years of work and now we are starting over. We have moved to a smaller parcel, 5 acres in the mountains with a well water system, big 2 story house and a large shop. This place has power but we intend to install a large solar panel array to sell power back to the power company and eliminate the power bill. The state of Oregon has a program that will purchase and install the solar panels and provide a tax break to people who participate in this program. Sounds too good to be true. This place has no fruit trees or fenced off garden area so we have our work cut out for us and planting fruit trees will be my first project. There is an attatched one car garage that we will turn into a food and water storage area and I have started building shelves to hold canned goods and food items in this garage. Prior to moving we had consumed most of our stored food supplies so as not to have to move them, so as soon as the shelves are constructed we will restock them with fresh canned goods.

[bee_pipes]

8/31
The turkey tom seems to dislike the color red. From time to time he has gotten a little aggressive. Maybe assertive would be more the word – protective of his hootch. I rarely have problems with him, but Karen seems to have trouble more often and our friend Tony always has problems. The other day I had problems and it dawned on me I was wearing a red tee-shirt underneath a work shirt. When I closed the work shirt he calmed down. Karen, wearing a reddish sort of shirt and bright pink pants had trouble with him. It dawned on me that Tony usually wears red – a red ball cap if nothing else. Only took three years to figure this out.

9/16
Attempted a sourdough starter yesterday. There seem to be as many recipes for the starters as there are websites and books about the subject. To my understanding, it is a symbiotic relationship between yeast and lacto bacteria. Recipes can call for exotic ingredients – organic grapes or other fruit, brewer’s or other yeasts, fruit juices or other sweeteners. Some of the suggested starters also call for larger quantities of material to start with – when feeding every 12 hours, 2 cups of flour for each feeding (with discards) seems like one could run through a lot of flour in the course of a week. The thinking of the author I am following is that there are adequate supplies of nourishment for the desirable microbes. Additional materials or sweeteners would encourage undesirable microbes, which have to be starved out by competition with the desirable microbes for the starter to reach equilibrium. There does seem to be all sorts of thinking on this matter. The recipe I settled on was a simple one – just 3/8 cups of flour and ¼ cup of water. According to the fellow that wrote the site there are ample amounts of the desirable organisms present in whole wheat flour. It took 24 hours for the culture to kick in, which is not unusual, but it has now had its first feeding. It is supposed to be fed every 12 hours and can double in size between feedings. So 12 hour feedings continue but it is supposed to be ready to use after a week and ready to go into the fridge after 30 days. Keeping it in the fridge will slow down the necessity of feeding every 12 hours – it is supposed to be every month or two after that. The starter was made using store bought whole wheat flour. Not knowing where that flour has been or what processes it has been through, I had some concerns that the necessary organisms might not be present. The flour could have been nuked or something to kill off microbes and prevent spoilage. It was reassuring to find the starter had doubled and was a frothy mix this morning. The starter was placed in a small glass measuring cup with a 2-cup capacity. This is adequate for beginning this project but will have to move to larger quarters as soon as it gets established. The end goal is a quart sized mason jar in the refrigerator. Obviously, you can’t keep adding flour and water every 12 hours for a week without the starter growing to a massive size. It will eventually become necessary to discard part of the starter with each feeding. Again, the fellow promised that the starter would be ready for use in a week – the culture well established (or not) by then. The flavor is supposed to improve over the next 30-90 days, with local yeasts dominating the culture and the lacto bacteria sufficiently souring the starter to discourage/prevent other undesirable microbes from becoming established. He (the author) recommended not refrigerating before 30 days when the culture’s flavor is at a minimum acceptable level/strength. It does seem to improve with time, like a wine or cheese. Bread recipes I have seen call for 1 cup of starter for every package of yeast used in conventional recipes. That one cup of starter is the equivalent of ½ cup of water and ¾ cup of flour, so the recipe must be adjusted accordingly. The starter serves two purposes – it provides leavening for bread without depending on yeast from the grocery store and it adds flavor to the bread.

9/19
The sourdough starter has slowed down. This was a condition I was warned about. There is supposed to be a fierce battle going on within the dough where lacto bacteria and local strains of yeast are competing for food and resources. The end result is supposed to be a culture, primarily of these local yeasts and lacto bacteria. Without a microscope all I have to go by are visual clues of activity and, of course, odor. Within a short time of starting the culture it had the distinct smell of vomit. While not the most pleasant of odors, it did indicate an increase in acidity as the mixture “soured”. Visual cues were quite startling during the first and second feeding. By the second feeding the starter threatened to overflow its container. For the last 24 hours or more the mixture is staying fairly stable, so far as the level in the container is concerned. My hopes are that the large variety of microbes that were feasting on the starter, causing such dramatic rises in level, have found the culture increasingly unappetizing – even hazardous to their continued survival. This would account for the reduction in activity. Something, yeast I hope, is still generating bubbles in the mixture at a much slower rate. This is, hopefully, a symptom of a small population fighting for dominance in the culture. The odor of the culture has changed in the last 72 hours – it is beginning to smell more like wet flour again. With the sixth feeding, this morning, white flour was added to the mixture in place of whole wheat. This is an adjustment to the culture, as suggested by the method I am following, to encourage desirable microbes with food and discourage the introduction of undesirable microbes present in whole wheat. It is all a matter of cultivation.

You can’t help but ponder the world around us when you pursue an activity like this. Where our vision capable of detecting these organisms around us, we might be shocked to see how they are present on every surface. Our culture has become somewhat germ phobic with the proliferation of antibacterial cleaning agents. We were never meant to exist within a sterile vacuum; we have evolved to survive being immersed in the life around us. The natural harmony is in balance. I have a compost pile that contains animal and vegetable matter. No doubt some of the cultures that rise and fall in that bin are dangerous to my well being – pathogens. But it is the natural process of colonization by microbes in the compost bin that generates heat and bonds nitrogen and carbon. Much like the march of human societies and civilizations, rising and falling through history, these microbial cultures rise and fall within the heap. Initial colonists, present on the matter deposited in the bin, grow at a dramatic rate until they exhaust resources and generate an environment inhospitable to their species. Succeeding species, able to survive on the wastes and environment the preceding species generated, likewise experience an explosion in population. The real cleanser is the thermophilic species of bacteria – they generate an environment that includes high temperatures, too high for many of the pathogens to survive. After the thermophiles exhaust their environment, a general colonization begins again. Not only are microbes becoming reestablished, larger organisms move in to feed on the compost – fungus (mushrooms and such) and earthworms are the most easily observed. No doubt a healthy population of protozoa also. Many of these are pathogens. The compost is not sterile, but the natural balance it strikes is the method by which these pathogens are kept in check. E. coli, a strain of bacteria that has caused numerous deaths and public health crisis, is abundant in the world that surrounds us. It is perhaps the most common organism in our environment. This is a real testimony to the species; it thrives in our environment. It is not contact with e. coli that poses a threat to our health, it is dominance of that strain – lack of balanced population – that poses the threat. When a human body is saturated with a large population of e. coli it becomes a threat to the equilibrium of the host. We are no doubt surrounded by small pox, plague and other pathogens whose names cause the blood to run cold. But so long as they are kept in check by competing species of microbes they pose little threat.
“Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution” by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, is an extremely readable work that presents a theory about the jump from inorganic substances to life. “The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation” by Matt Ridley presents a theory of cooperation, rather than competition, that dovetails nicely with those put forth in Microcosmos. One doesn’t have to subscribe to their theory wholesale to gain a useful image of the world around us. It is an abstraction, much like the image we are given to work with when considering atoms, that is useful in predicting behavior of the environment around us. I still understand that there are creatures surrounding me that would jump at the opportunity to s my body and destroy my health as a means of advancing their own survival and proliferation, but somehow the world does not seem as hostile when viewing the larger picture. If anything it makes one more appreciative of the tremendous forces at work in the world around us, albeit on a microscopic scale, and the life that has evolved around us.
10/12/09
September has been an odd month. There wasn’t really anything worth sending for September, as you can see from the preceding text. First off, the amount of rain fall has been phenomenal. We have seen unprecedented amounts of rain during what is normally considered the beginning of the dry season. Some plants in the garden, such as the tomatoes, have never really hit their stride during this wet year. The plants have looked sickly all year and the tomatoes they produced were poor in quality. Bell peppers, normally a poor producer for us, have done better than ever. The hot peppers always seem to do well and seem to have not minded the difference in rainfall. These plants seem to be hardier than their bell shaped cousins. We are still waiting to see how the peanuts, potatoes and carrots turn out.

Today we will be making our first attempt at sourdough bread. The starter is on version 3. I don’t know what went wrong with the first two attempts, but they both either died or began hosting an undesirable culture. The current starter is active and does not carry a disagreeable smell, but does not have a particularly enticing smell. The instructions claim that the starter will reach its peak of flavor after 30-90 days; this started is past the minimum week of age recommended before using. It has been successfully switched over to white flour, from the whole-wheat flour with which it was started. We shall see how this first attempt tuns out.

Today was to be butchering day for a litter of rabbits that are past due. Weather and other obligations have made it difficult to attend to this chore. Weather predictions called for this day to be rain free, but those predictions have changed – perhaps it may be rain free for Nashville, the city broadcasting the news and weather we watch, but our part of Tennessee is under eminent threat of rain. This batch of rabbits will be 16 weeks old when they actually go into the freezer. They may be a little larger and heavier than the standard rabbit, but will be fine. The 12-13 week age we prefer is not a matter of toughness, but a matter of efficiency. At that age the efficiency with which they convert feed to meat begins to drop off.

The dogs seem to have eaten a guinea. I looked around the pen and found a spot where a guinea appears to have been plucked, but cannot find a carcass. I checked the dog hootch, no carcass. I looked around the yard for freshly filled holes – no luck. They have either consumed the carcass – bones and all, or have managed to hide the carcass so well that I am unable to find it. Other than this casualty, we have not lost a bird. The three young turkeys, and the guineas that were brooded with them, have been released with the rest of the flock (menagerie?) and seem to be getting along well. They have two more months on this earth. So far the white and blue guineas are hanging in their. They seem more susceptible to predators, particularly the white ones, than their plainer siblings.

10/13/09
The sourdough batter took most of the day to rise in the bucket. It was too late in the evening to even think about punching it down and putting it in loaf pans for the final rise. The web site I’m following said it would be a slower rise. The starter (2 cups) replaced the two packets of yeast normally used in our bread recipe. All other ingredients were pretty much the same, with the exception of a reduction in water to compensate for the water content of the starter. We butchered 7 rabbits today, postponing working on the bread until after the cleanup from the butchering was done. While punching down the dough from the first rise I noticed it was somewhat wet, which could be due to my miscalculating ingredients. No biggie, I added flour while kneading until the dough was more convenient to handle. Karen bought me a pastry blade last year and that is quite handy for moving wet dough around. The batch yielded three loaves of two pounds each – this is heavier than normal and may be due to the extra flour kneaded in. The loaves were shaped and punched into loaf pans for the final rise at 1:20 PM. It could be my imagination, but the loaf pans seem to have a significantly larger amount of dough than a normal batch.

A reference in a books said that a good use for the offal (unwanted organs) is chicken feed. The recommendation was to boil them to kill any parasites the animals might have. The chickens seem to be grossly uninformed about how much they are supposed to like eating this meat, they picked at them a little, ate some of it, but left most of it largely untouched. The dogs, on the other hand, treated these snacks like a guilty pleasure. I hope our training has convinced them that they will get in trouble for eating any part of the livestock.

10/14/09
Yesterday was quite busy. The rabbits and bread took most of the early part of the day (because of my sleeping in) and the afternoon was spent making a feed run to town. Yesterday and this morning the bread loaves were quite disappointing. They have barely risen to the top of the loaf pans. Large bubbles appear on the surface, only to disappear by the next time the pans are checked. The starter is not nearly active enough. If this is the extent of the starter’s activity, dough needs to be made in the evening, allowed to rise over night, and placed in loaf pans early in the morning. We’ll see how this turns out, but after 22 hours the loafs are unimpressive.

Seven rabbits were processed this morning, yielding about 19 lbs of meat. There seems to be more of a demand for rabbits cut up, rather than as whole roasters. I am getting better at butchering, but still leave much to be desired. The back hip extends well into the tenderloin and seems to be a solid piece. This time around I used a cleaver to cut the bone at the end of the tenderloin, but this can result in small bone splinters. I don’t like that in my meat and would not expect anyone else to like it. The tenderloins were checked for bone splinters and any found were removed. This technique is unsatisfactory and I’ll keep looking for a better means of dressing the parts. A quick look on the web resulted in a number of diagrams of skeletons. It appears the joint/bone on which the rear legs attach is a lengthy segment of the spine and the first joint ahead of that bone is well into the tenderloin. It may be easiest to fillet the tenderloin and remove it completely from the spine. The work was performed in the kitchen and while the processing went pretty smoothly, the routine needs to be improved on. Pieces were placed in a colander, in the sink, as they were freed from the carcass, and given a final rinse before bagging. Hand washing is most inefficient but required frequently between handling raw meat, equipment and materials. Other than this inconvenience, the chore went well and was completed in a reasonable amount of time. All surfaces were washed down and wiped with bleach. The most involved part of the cleaning is the vacuum sealer, but it does a fine job of packaging the meat. One improvement would be a bag holder that would allow filling the bag without touching the outside of the bag.

The dreary, rainy weather continues and it looks like we will have it until this weekend. The situation is somewhat frustrating as there are quite a few chores that need to be attended to. High grass in back needs to be cut, but it will most likely be days before it dries out sufficiently. We were driving through the county a few days ago and I noticed that one fellow had the last hay mowing in and baled. I wonder where he found enough dry weather to complete that job?

The dogs got a chicken late in the day. One of the Cornish hens fell into the pen. A bunch of them were on the roof of the dog house and one must have lost its footing and slid in. I’m sure the dogs could not believe their luck to have a chicken drop from the sky. I hope the other chickens saw what happened and have gained a new respect for the dog pen. The dogs were as guilty as could be, refusing to make eye contact and hiding where possible. I have a feeling the young male and two older ones had nothing to do with the chicken’s demise, it was the work of the young female. They spent the rest of the night looking contrite and groveling where opportunity permitted. For all their embarrassment, they would do it again in a heartbeat.

10/15/09
Back at the sourdough today. I found a recipe that makes a single loaf of whole wheat. The batter was put down for the first rise at 9:30. The author calls for 1½ hours rise time. Experience with our kitchen shows that it takes a little longer. Two rises and a third rise in the loaf pan. The dead loaves will be getting added to the compost bin today. It is wet outside, but the rain has stopped and this would seem like a good day to empty and wash compost collection buckets.

Dough punched down at noon from first rise.
Dough placed in loaf pan at 1:30, placed in warm oven.
Baked at 4:30 (25 mins)

The recipe was for a 100% whole wheat loaf. I have gotten good loaves using our old recipe but have gone from 100% whole wheat to 50/50. The white flour has a better rise and 100% whole wheat dough is heavy, producing smaller loaves. I like a good dome over the loaf pans, making a large slice for sandwiches, French toast, etc. When 100% whole wheat rises too far over the sides of the loaf pan it tends to spread out and hang over the pan edges. While we can get decent whole wheat loaves, they are not as consistently good as the white bread and 50/50 loaves.

Today was chilly and overcast. I’ll take it – anything as a break from the rain. In addition to the bread I got the compost collection buckets cleaned, the rabbit shed emptied and the garlic bed mowed. Two bins of rabbit manure were dumped in the garlic bed and there the piles will sit until the ground dries enough to till. We have until the end of November in this climate, but it would be nice to get it planted before October is done. So far we have about 100 lbs of manure and another 50 more waiting to be dumped. The rabbits produce about 50 lbs a week. The compost buckets and rabbit shed are the two most disagreeable chores and it is nice to have them out of the way.

10/22
The monthly letter has been sadly neglected. Rain in the earlier part of the month and last month kept activity to a minimum. Attending to family business at the beginning of October kept us occupied and generally unable to write any updates. As of late I have found myself doing some writing and, quite pleased with the results, have been spending a lot of time with that; often to the extent of neglecting other tasks and chores around the house and yard.

We were very nearly out of bread, so that seemed like something that needed attention. The last loaf of whole wheat with the sourdough starter turned out quite well. Today I made a standard three loaf batch the normal way, and made a two loaf batch of the sourdough. For the sourdough I used the recipe followed for the whole wheat, but substituted white flour for the whole wheat flour and doubled the quantities. The last loaf of the standard bread has come out of the oven and the sourdough is still on its first rise. We shall see how that comes out.

Today we dug up the potato bed. For some reason the regular, red potatoes did not do well. We used grocery store potatoes with eyes growing out into slips. We had an abundance of potato vines on these plants, but they did not produce any spuds. Sweet potatoes did much better. We had grown sweet potato slips by putting toothpicks in sweet potatoes and placing them in a glass of water. As the eyes grew into slips we broke the slips off and planted them. We hauled a good number of sweet potatoes out today – more than should have been expected from the number of slips planted and the attention the bed has received. Last spring we prepared the bed by tilling as deeply as we could, a number of times, and removing the loose dirt after each tilling. The loose dirt was pled on either side of the potato bed for use as back fill. As the plants grow, the idea is to backfill and burry all but the top of the plant, encouraging it to grow additional roots. Well, you know what they say about the paving on the road to hell… The potato bed received very little attention, but in spite of it the sweet potatoes really came through.

Monday and Tuesday of this week I was helping Tony at his place. He rented a ditch witch to run water lines to his houses. The ditch witch is a large, walk behind machine with a 20 hp Honda v-twin engine – a very LARGE small engine. This engine propels the driving wheels, an auger that moves dir, and a digging arm that looks like a giant chainsaw. It does a wonderful job of digging a trench. Trenches can be as deep as three feet deep but are no wider than six inches. The auger moves dirt chewed out of the trench by the digger and deposits it on the left side of the trench. Tony, thinking along the same lines I would, decided it was best to do the most difficult of the three trenches first. This trench was to cross a creek with 6 foot bank on one side and continue up a wooded hill to the house on the other side of the creek. We got the high side of the creek done first, cutting right up through the edge if the elevated bank. We then ran the machine around to a shallow crossing place, crossed the creek with it and returned to a location opposite of our cut in the bank. Crossing into the creek again, we resumed where we had left off and proceeded through the creek to the other side. The creek had large rocks, ranging from fist size to skull sized or larger. Some would get caught in the chain blade and jam the machine. Others would cause the auger to seize. We progressed in this manner – jamming the machine, clearing the jam, restarting the machine, and were moving up the bank on the other side. The soil was quite wet and soft in this area and the drive wheels had a tendency to dig in, creating ruts that were impossible for the machine to crawl out of. We tried all manner of things and eventually wound up tipping the machine over. Now, this thing weighs 1,000 lbs if it weighs an ounce and we just could not get it stood back up on its wheels by ourselves. We eventually got the tractor and some straps to pull it over and back upright, but it was difficult because the wet soil allowed the tractor to spin wheels and dig ruts also. We restarted the machine and tried to get it to drive out of the area and wound up tipping it over in the other direction. By then we had pretty well chewed up the ground around it and had to use extra straps to get the tractor on solid ground, where it could spin wheels and dig new ruts. Man, we wrestled with that thing for hours to get it back upright. When we finally succeeded we called it a day. Tuesday morning we were unable to start the engine of the ditch witch. Spending a few hours laying on its side did not do the engine any good. We made sure the gas and oil were at proper levels, but could not get it to start. Now we were really in a fix. The machine had absolutely no clutch for the drive wheels, they were permanently engaged and could not be made to spin freely. Moving the machine was a matter of dragging it with the tractor (which spun wheels and dug new ruts). As the machine was dragged the wheels dug into the soft dirt and piled hills up in front of them. We finally managed to get it up off the creek bank and onto a small logging road that ran on that side of the creek. The tractor could barely make it across the creek at the crossing. The trailer that was used to transport the ditch witch was a heavy-duty one made of steel that had very little clearance. Tony and I went to my house and got the trailer he keeps here. We managed to get tractor and trailer across the creek and positioned both in front of the ditch witch. I blocked the wheels of the trailer and tipped it into a ramp position in front of the ditch witch, dug out the wheels of the ditch witch and placed small scraps of 2x6 in front of the wheels to act as ramps, and tied a strap between the tractor and the machine. It took some doing – the dirt on the logging road was soft and the tractor’s wheels would spin, digging ruts… but we finally got that devil on the trailer. We hitched the trailer to the tractor and headed for the creek crossing. I wouldn’t have given a nickel for our chances of getting that thing across the creek in less than a day, after spending 7:30 to noon getting the blasted thing up on the trailer, but we managed. Tony got stuck with tractor and trailer in the creek. We tied a strap between the truck and the tractor and tugged. By golly, that thing came right up out of the creek onto solid ground. We broke for lunch at that point. After lunch we backed the transport trailer under the one we pulled the machine across the creek with, blocked the wheels and used the tractor to drag the machine from our trailer to the transport trailer. It took an hour or two, but we got that thing on its trailer, dogged down and hitched to the truck. Tony and Kay headed back to the rental place to return the machine and I went home. Man, I gotta tell you, I am stiff and sore in places that have not seen use in some time.

10/23
Eureka! The sour dough white bread turned out well. They took forever to rise adequately, and I would have preferred that they rise more than they did, but it took all night to reach the size they were when I finally started baking. The loaves were fairly well formed but still left a little to be desired. This morning Karen and I sampled one of the loaves, preparing them as buttered toast. The slice I ate had a decidedly sour taste, not at all unpleasant, but not immediately discernable on the first bite. By the time I took the second bite, the first being well chewed and swallowed; I started to taste the flavor Karen was describing. There is much room for improvement on rise time, loaf shape and general process for making the bread, but the results are quite satisfactory at this stage.

10/26
Today we picked carrots. I think Karen is right, they were a little overdue. We pulled some of the oddest looking carrots out of the ground you have ever seen. Two, three even four points to the orange roots. I don’t think these are some sort of mutants, they are just the carrots we don’t see at the grocery store. Most of these deformed roots would have gone on to juice makers and other processors. When you see a piece of carrot in a frozen pot pie or Campbell’s soup, you have no way of telling what it might have looked like when it was pulled from the ground. Karen cut off a piece of one and it was sweet as any carrot I have ever had. We grew Danver’s Half Longs and Chatenay’s. I am impressed with how well they did. There are some clunkers in the batch, but the rabbits snap them down, tops and all, just as quickly as I can put them in their cages. I had to hold off a little, or the rabbits will get loose bowels from all the fresh food.

10/27
Karen got out of bed this morning and jumped right into canning. She put up pints of carrots. By the time I got up she was pulling the carrots out and I was just in time to help with peeling sweet potatoes. We managed to use up all the smaller ones with enough left over for supper tonight. The larger baking sized sweet potatoes are left for future use. Needless to say the rabbits are having a heyday with all the carrots. There were lots of green, leafy tops and tips cut off as waste, they were most grateful for the fresh food. The skin shaving were given to the chickens, who were at first indifferent to the scraps, but managed to graze them down over the course of this dark, rainy day.

Regards,
Pat

[michelle]

I am really big into the dehydrator and have done about 100 lbs of mixed vegetables,and will do more this comming week.I've done a trial on the ground beef, I'll be testing i in sauce tthis week. I'll let everyone know how it taste.