Saturday, March 16, 2013

what i have been reading


 Your readers may want to know how to "boil" eggs and shell them without their tearing all to pieces. First, really fresh eggs are not for boiling--just will not shell well. But I have learned a way. That is, don't boil them, rather steam them!I use a colander inside a pot with an inch or two of water in the pot. First though, puncture a pin hole in the end of the egg. Place the eggs in the colander, turn heat on. When the first sign of steam appears from the pot, set the timer to 10 minutes. Remove the eggs and place in cold tap water. They will PEEL easily. 
I switched my bait in the live traps to marshmallows .I have caught 6 raccoons in 7 nights .
Before I used cat food and only would catch one every other week .I have not lost any
Chickens yet and would like to keep it that way .                                                                                                        I called the local store and they said chicks are coming next week!!! Of course they couldn't tell my anything more than that... I can't wait to see them!!!!! Going silkie hunting :D

Has anyone ever seen Polish show up at theirs? Now that would be nice!
needed bean receipt...1 lb beans 
1 16oz can tomato sauce
1 16 oz can whole stewed tomatoes
1 lb salt pork, skinned and chopped into cubes
Garlic, green chilis, onions, to taste

Boil beans until soft in about a gallon of water

Add everything else

Boil for another hour or two

Gets better every day until finished. :-)

(You can substitute other meat for the salt pork, but the salt pork is cheap and has a good flavor. Smoked ham hocks or the mentioned ham bone work well too, or leftover roast.)
  I. hate. spiders.

the previous warm weekend seemed to wake up a couple monsters..er..spiders. that's spring for you. spiders and I just don't get along, and we never will. little, medium, large.........they all freak the bejeebers out of me. this morning while vacuuming, I see a giant alien slowly walk across the floor. I was going to scream, as per usual, but nobody here so why waste a good scream, right? then I say to myself...hey...I have a weapon. the vacuum. my plan was to swoosh him up (yes, I'm sure it was a guy) and then dump the contents outside in fire pit. a good plan, so I felt so brave. I attack. well, here's a little something I hate even more than spiders......spider guts across my floor. perhaps this plan needed the vacuum set a little higher. I toss paper towel over the deceased and I won't tell you how long it took before I could clean up. big ewww.

that's my morning so far. how's everyone today?
Tell me what to do

I sold this lady an angora billy, of around 12 weeks old a couple weeks ago. She emailed yesterday to tell me it had died. She said the vet was out that night and could not determine a cause of death. (I don't buy it)

I feel terrible. The goat was for a 4H kid, whose previous one died of old age. She did not ask for her money back, but I suspect she's waiting for me to offer. I have his twin sister here and she's fine. I have no goat to replace him with.

I suspect the vet castrated and de-horned the thing as soon as they got it home and it likely died from complications from that. Of course, if that is the case, the vet would never admit to it.

The other thing I suspect is feed related death. I have not yet responded to her email so I have no information concerning the situation.
give her sisters Fleta phone Number ,,BR5429  she will let her have black jack cheep
My situation: living with parents due to layoff. On unemployment. In Michigan.

How do you all stay sane / hopeful, with the state of our Government and where we seem to be headed?

Ammo very expensive or none to be bought.
Can't prep - no extra cash whatsoever
No job where i can move out and re-start my life (minimum wage won't do it)
Our 2nd Amendment rights in jeopardy
The economy, which, if it falls, I won't find a job AT ALL!
Our food supply
Our medicine supply

I feel like chicken-little....and I feel like i want to curl up and burrow my head under the covers....
I try to put it in perspective. True, I grew up and spent my working life in a time that I was prepared for jobs that were available and employment was higher.

However, I remember the stories my grandmother told of her father (who had been a businessman) moving west after the Civil war and their family living mostly on a disability pension of $12 a month. My grandparents had to leave their original home, eventually homesteading 640 acres of land in MT with my grandmother staying at home with two young children while my grandfather worked for a ranch 40 miles away, one weekend off a month, for $30 a month. They went to town (60 miles away over dirt roads) with a team and wagon, twice a year, for staples such as flour, sugar and coffee. One year they had to put down most of their cattle because of a disease brought in from southern cattle. Another year brought Mormon crickets and they had to put tin barriers and dig water-filled ditches around the garden to save enough garden to feed themselves for the coming winter but had to sell off most of their stock because there was no winter hay.

My father survived the Depression as a young man, when there were no jobs, by living in a cabin in western Montana with 2 or 3 other young men, where they panned enough gold from the creeks to buy staples and cartridges so they could poach deer. My parents were doing well after they married, with my father a well paid miner (for the time) and my mother a teacher. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent 18 months in a hospital, my mother with a 6 month old baby that was also diagnosed with tuberculosis.

We all survived. My grandparents and my parents all lived full and productive lives and I see no reason not to expect to do the same. I'm sure that people in those times, through the Civil War, through the Depression, through the Dust Bowl ... all thought times were impossible and might never get better.

One of the things my mother told me many times when I was discouraged was to simply try not to focus on the trouble but to simply take that first step forward and then continue to go forward one step at a time. She said you might not end up where you thought you would when you started, but you will never get anywhere at all if you don't take that first forward step.

 How soon after a chicken lays do you need to get the egg to incubate, I have a new incubator and I've never used one before I'm going to try my hand at it. thanks for your news letterThey are best set within two weeks of being laid (in nature a broody hen adds to her nest over several days until she has a clutch). They should be collected daily as usual and stored (not in a fridge) until ready to be put into the incubator. Also, it is a good idea to have the incubator running for at least 24 hours before you put anything in it to check it is stable.
 
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1 comment:

Galla Creek said...

Pat, will try the steaming of the eggs. I have trouble keeping them the week or so before I boil them so I will try that.

I have the book about M. Obama's ancestry. I don't think the author did a good job of writing it. I thought it would be interesting than it is. But at least it is something to read. Fleta printed a book for me and I am reading it. I have trouble reading a long article on the computer. I have to print stuff out to get much out of it.

Larry planted two rows of corn. Broke up another place for watermelon. Martins are coming in steadily.