Posted on 04/03/2012 11:13:52 AM PDT by blam
Ur was a sea side town when Abraham lived there. Today, it is 100 miles inland. Silting.
Didn't help their irrigation techniques brought solvent salts to the surface.
We need a sea-level rise to bring life back to the former great fertile crescent. And fewer goats, and more trees.
/johnny
” Salt? A few thousand pounds. I own a plow truck - the stuff is everywhere. “
Is it ‘food grade’ salt? (and not Halite or some other salt-like ice-melting variant??)
Is ‘food grade’ salt necessary for the brining->smoking process??
I have ready availability of salt blocks (for livestock) - would this be acceptable (if I can figure a way to grind it up) for brining->smoking and/or salting->drying meat and fish??
Would there be some variation of these techinques for vegetables??
(I’ve just recently become interested in this tried-and-true method for food preservation, and I’m beginning to realize how woefully inadequate is my knowledge on the subject... ;))
I would like to year your defense of amassing money for years and years because of a belief that some day you'll be too old to work when the Lord asks you how you used their resources and time and talent for Him.
Good thoughts/advice. Thanks folks. I’ll bring this up at our next meeting.
>> It’s not necessary to run it continuously <<
If we have any type of extended event, we will only run our generator to draw water from the well. By my calculations, we could make our propane last up to six months.
It will still be noisy when running though.
We are going to get a hand pump for our well. My worry is that the well is too deep for a hand pump. From what I’ve seen, hand pumps are only good to depths of 60 feet.
It was probably 15 years ago that we has a neighborhood meeting after a huge flood. I was running the meeting and had off handedly mentioned I'd filled every container I could find with water. Even old timers asked how I knew to do that. Really?!? It's not rocket science to look at the sky and watch the evening news weather reports. All services out here are iffy so every time there's a big storm, I'm filling water bottles just in case. On Tuesday, the electricity went out for no reason and the first thing I thought of was no water for the garden.
Some is plain old rock salt, some halite, some other stuff.
None of it is “food grade.”
Some water softener salt is considered “food grade” - I don’t know which. But, if you sort that out, you can buy salt in #50 bags for a few bucks.
Halite is salt. Livestock salt blocks (not mineral blocks) are safe enough for human consumption. I'll eat them, even if I couldn't use them in a restaurant.
/johnny
Big no-no in the FDA manual, but I personally think it's better than the other nitrates for curing.
As a free man, I've decided that the benefit outweighs the potential downside. I don't need government telling me what I should consume within my own home.
/johnny
I guess that in all of your Bible “reading” you skipped over Jesus’ parable of the 10 Virgins, their lamps and the wedding feast.
LOL - I didn’t know you can buy saltpeter in bulk anymore.
Besides, not much is required for meat preservation.
That's the point to stockpiling stuff, so you can have it when you need it, regardless of why it's not available.
/johnny
.” I actually used potassium nitrate (saltpeter) in the cure brine. “
From the reading I’ve been doing on the subject this afternoon, it seems that saltpeter is an essential ingredient for curing pork, especially hams and bacon...
J, you seem pretty knowledgable on the subject — is there any reasonable method to extend shelf life of cured meat (dried, salted, smoked) beyond the 90-100 days that the articles I read seem to agree on??
I keep dried sausages and meats for up to a year, regularly. The longer you keep them, the dryer they need to be. Keeping them cool also helps. I have a 54F special fridge for making/aging sausage/cheese/beer.
The other thing is local molds. If it gets fuzzy, cheese or meat, it can be wiped down with vinegar.
The bottom line is that you are trying to keep bad bacteria from growing. Bacteria need water, most of the nasties need oxygen, though some are anerobic, acidity and temperature also affect them. And finally, so does time.
The trick is to bind up the food so the nasties can't get to it and reproduce.
/johnny
” The other thing is local molds. If it gets fuzzy, cheese or meat, it can be wiped down with vinegar. “
My late father - son of German Wisconsin farmers - taught us that cheese and sausage weren’t fully ready until they had a good layer of mold...
Not sure how that applies to modern store-bought products, though... ;)
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