Posted on 11/01/2013 12:11:04 PM PDT by greeneyes
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I checked my garden on Thursday and found some little caterpillars had eaten the leaves of two broccoli plants. One plant had about a dozen and the other had six. I may get to pick the first ripe oranges this weekend.
/johnny
As few as were on the leaves, I just smashed them. I have used Sevin dust before when there were a lot of them in the garden. Just a light dusting on the leaves before the heads appear.
My father always had two pigs in a pen at the end of our property. There was a big board across the top of the pen and I would get on that board, sit down, and watch the pigs. When cold weather got there, he and one or two other men would kill the pigs and hang them up and dress them. I was never allowed to watch them kill the pigs or dress them.
He had a smoke house where the meat was kept. My mother made sausage and my job was to push the meat into the hand sausage grinder.
We had bacon every day for breakfast and pork products all the time. I'm glad you got that pig. Will you do sausage, will you slice it for bacon? I guess the question is, how will you process it?
I don't make bacon as such, because the bellies on the feral pigs just doesn't run to bacon like the commercial hogs do.
After I cure and smoke a chunk of the meat, I slice it and use it for sandwiches, sliced pork, and breakfast meat.
I could make sausage, but that's generally something I do as required. I've got the grinder attachment for my KitchenAid. It's just as easy to thin slice some pork and fry it up for breakfast.
/johnny
That's what I do with tobacco horn-worms. Since I don't have acres of tobacco, I go out 3 times a day and examine the plants and smash the little buggers.
I actually get fairly loud doing it, taking joy in their destruction. ;)
/johnny
Picked the last of my zinnias this week. Mums and pansies having a blast with this changeable weather.
I assume you dispatched the caterpillars ASAP? I wish Missouri climate was a little more suitable for growing citrus. I love oranges and grapefruits. They are my favorite next to watermelon.
I’d say you’ll be set for quite a while. How are you planning on preserving it?
/johnny
This is the season for changeable weather all right. Keeps us all on our toes.
I was wondering if you would use the skin, bones, and fat in any way.
Do you by any chance make your own soap?
I have made my own soap, and probably will again but the fat on these ferals is VERY strong, so I won't be using that.
Last time I made soap, I used wood ash to make the lye. It was interesting, and I can check that off the list as 'done that'.
/johnny
Well at least it’s not a Whitis Tailtinitis...
I haven’t done it yet. Have collected a few recipes. While I do love the old fashioned lye soap, and pick some up every time I run across it at the farmer’s market, I’m not putting it at the top of my list of things to try.LOL
I'm big on actually trying the cool things I read or see. Today, the exercise was to stack 2 shot glasses that were 1 1/3 full. I did it. ;)
/johnny
/johnny
LOL.
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