Self Sustained Living-Cooking with what you've got

Here's supper for today. It's a nice deer meat sauce with some pasta. Simple to whip up and everybody enjoys it. Just throw some stuff from the garden in the pot. Diced tomatoes, some tomato sauce I made with the squisher thingy, some dehydrated sweet peppers, oregano, rosemary, thyme, some diced onions and of course the meal maker- browned ground deer meat. I like to let my sauce simmer for a while to blend the flavors and cook off extra water from the tomatoes and sauce. I sometimes put chopped up dehydrated mushrooms in too but hubby doesn't much care for them. Just an example of a simple and tasty meal you can whip up easily. This meal also works pretty darn good on a wood fire.

How about the Christmas presents under the tree? 2 cats and a dog, hmmmm, can I exchange those? hahahaha Ole' Polar Bear wants to make sure those cats don't steal the tree I guess...

There's some cold weather coming in on us again with a hint of a snow flurry on Saturday. This might get interesting. Snow cover is better than ice any day.

Self Sustained Living and Eating Meat

Well, it seems I have become a target for vegan-anti-meat types. I got an email from a lady today that supports a sanctuary that "rescues" and adopts out farm animals(cows, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, turkeys). Of course, I offered to relieve their overwhelmed sanctuary of farm animals but I don't think they liked that too much. Can you imagine the bar-b-que I could have? The whole neighborhood would get a meal! What an opportunity for me to teach others more about self sustained living!

While the intention behind the nice lady's email was a waste of hers and my time, she did make a couple good points right off I thought I should mention to my suburban and city readers. It concerns the keeping of chickens and rabbits.

Chickens and rabbits are super easy to keep in small spaces and produce a large quantity of food for just a little bit of feed and care. The problem comes in when folks try to keep too many animals in one little spot. Chickens need about 3sq feet of room to stay happy and healthy and you need to check your city ordinances before buying chickens so you don't end up having to get rid of your new flock as soon as you move them in. Rabbits should be kept in minimum of a 18"x18" cage and one per cage. big rabbits like Checkered Giants need a much bigger space. You must also think about butcher time. If you can't kill that animal when it comes time, perhaps you shouldn't think about raising them for meat.

For me, it's easy to whack even a cute little bunny for the supper table, but I've been doing this for a long time. The very first one was hard to do. Especially since it had a name, I petted it and cared for it, played with it, etc. The very first Hog I butchered, i cried all the way thru it. His name was Wilbur and I loved that pig. He made some pretty darn tasty sausage too.

There's lots of abuse going on in commercial slaughterhouses and chicken hatcheries. yes, they do some horrible things for money. Factory farms are an outrage to humanity and should be eliminated with extreme predjudice. I agree with that side of the arguement. If you don't like the idea of eating meat that was treated or handled in such a manner, DON'T EAT IT. Simple as that. If you think commercially produced pork and beef is nasty, don't eat it. If you think commercially butchered chickens are treated in an inhumane manner, don't eat them. Nobody is forcing any of us to eat meat from the grocery store. I don't eat meat from any grocery store, I raise my own. They are fed all natural feeds i grow myself without chemical fertilizers, they never get antibiotics or growth hormones. So, why is the meat I raise and butcher for myself bad? It's not and the meat you raise for yourself isn't bad either.

Just think before you bring animals home to raise for meat. If you can't kill them when it comes time, don't bring them home. If you can tho, you're going to be amazed at the quality and the taste of your own home raised meat!

the hidden agenda thing

Why is it some people think they only way to spread their own agenda or messages is by posting comments that are intentionally deceptive? Today I got a comment on the Free Meat post by an anonymous commenter with a link to a website saying it was a link to free meat. Thank you anonymous from Madison, Wisconsin but I check links people post in comments. The page was a PETA anti-meat site.

I am a meat eater! I will continue to be a meat eater too! There's an old joke that goes.... Native American translation for vegetarian is "bad hunter". Now, I'm not knocking folks that choose to be vegetarians but I'm not, nor will I ever choose to only eat veges. I like chicken, pork, beef, DEER, sheep, bison, elk and a few various wierd meats as well. I am a hunter and I like it. While I do not condone the inhumane treatment animals may endure either on the way to the slaughterhouse or during their stay there, I will not stop eating meat. What I have chosen to do about it is raise my own critters for consumption.

I treat my critters well and they probably eat better than I do. Every critter I have even butchered had a name, was loved, was well tended and, was butchered in the most humane way I possibly could. I am also content in the knowledge that I am consuming chemical, steroid and antibiotic free meats.

So, don't let the opinios of others dissuade you from raising your own critters for the dinner table or going out and killing yourself a deer. There's nothing wrong with eating meat, I do it every day and I'm still alive........

Thoughts on Self Sustained Living

The weather is going back and forth here, making my poor back ache. I'm not feeling real spunky today so I've been just hibernating and thinking.

LOL, can you see the smoke coming from my ears? It is and the thoughts and ideas are rolling... I am the complete opposite of normal folks that are consumer based. Folks that buy everything they need, all the basic necessities of life-food, water, light, heat, etc. I have built my life around the idea that I can produce all those things for myself. That whole concept is made easier by living on a farm. But, living other places can be just as good as living on a farm too. Granted, you can't raise a steer in your backyard, but you can still keep rabbits and a few chickens. You can still grow a good portion of what you eat. That qualifies you as a homesteader no matter where you live. Homesteading used to be a term that was reserved for our more adventurous ancestors. Those people that braved the wilds of the west and created a life way outside the confines of the cities in the east. Some made it and some didn't. Now, we have the luxury of hindsight and modern appliances to help us homestead. The very definition of homesteading now is one that works to produce at least some of their needs, especially food. So, planting a garden, even if it's all in containers makes us homesteaders. Absolutely everyone can become a little more self sustained by just taking the time to grow a little food. Neat, huh?

The government says that 37.2 million people are receiving food stamps. Did you know that the food stamp program covers the purchase of garden seeds? Anyone receiving food stamps can buy seeds with them. It's a program to combat hunger so that makes sense. So, why don't more people grow their own food?

I'm a big fan of tomatoes. I use a ton of tomatoes when I cook. Tomatoes are full of nutrients and anti oxidants and there's hundreds of delicious recipes you can whip up with them. From tasty Italian style dishes to beef stew. Just one 5 gallon bucket with 3 tomato plants in it can provide a good amount of tomatoes to feed you. That same 5 gallon bucket can easily hold pepper plants, cucumber plants and a wide variety of other tasty veges. I've even grown cantaloupes, watermelon and pumpkins out of 5 gallon buckets.

Think outside the box and don't let a city setting hold you back from being a homesteader. Work with the space you have and grow a little food for yourself. Save a little money and eat healthier, you'll be glad you did!

Dodging the Bullet

Whew, the severe winter weather that was full of ice and snow went north of us. We did have some nasty winds and it's pretty darn cold now but I'll take sunny and cold over 2' of snow anyday!

So, what are we doing around the farm today? Oh, the usual stuff- feeding the animals, chopping a little firewood and baking bread. Plus my all time favorite winter passtime of garden dreaming. Yes, I know it's just December but it's never the wrong time to be thinking about and making plans to start those precious seedlings for a new garden.

The garden is the very heart of this self sustained lifestyle. Without the garden, all I would be is a consumer. Buy it, use it up and buy some more. Breaking that cycle wasn't easy since it's what we all grew up believing was normal. I choose to feed myself and accept the responsibility and all the work that goes with it. So, I must constantly think about last years garden and how i can improve my yields. What worked good and what didn't work so good. Like my potato crop for instance. I also constantly work on how I can beat Mother Nature. What? Yep, I am always trying to get around her, every chance I can get! I want my plants to hit the garden and produce as quickly as I can make them. The sooner I can get tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc, the more I will have for the table. How do I do that? I start my seeds early, way before the last frost in the kitchen window garden. It takes up a bunch of space and usually by planting time, my kitchen is literally taken over by plants. I have a small table full plus a variety of shelves and the "indoor garden" always ends up sprawling over to the dinner table and my counters. It's lots of work tending and watering all those plants but if I didn't do that, I'd not have ripe tomatoes before July around here.

Sounds like a big fuss, doesn't it? It would be if I didn't have that whole line of southern exposure windows. Is it worth it? I think it is. Eating only from what you grow isn't a small accomplishment. It takes 20 tomato plants producing full time to cover just the sauce, paste and diced tomatoes we consume in the course of a year. If my first red tomato doesn't come until July, that just gives me 3 1/2 to 4 months to produce enough to last the 9 months until the next round of tomato plants start producing.

Self sutained living isn't any different than the way everyone lives, we just don't go out and buy what we need, we create it for ourselves. Yes, it takes more time and effort to do it for ourselves and sometimes it's no so much fun but in the end, it's worth it. If it weren't for my dedication to doing it for myself, I would most likely be among the thousands across the country in mortgage default right now. Growing my own food has allowed us to stretch what little money we have much, much longer than what it would for people that are consumer based. All the animals here are fed from what we can produce. In turn, that gives us free chicken, free eggs, free rabbit, free sheep, free pork, free beef, plus free produce! When all you have is $100 to make it the whole month, that sure does mean a bunch! Especially when fuel is $2.80 a gallon...

Survival Seed Package Giveaway Winner

It's 7pm and the winner is.............

Peggy from Peggy's Mountain Blessings. Congrats Peggy, email me at mmpaints@yahoo.com with where you want the seed pack mailed to.

Tuesday Musings

It's been raining since late last night and the farm was muddy to start with. The little frozen ice balls that fell overnight And into Monday morning did us in. I spent just a little time grinding feed for the chickens and tending the rabbits. It's getting cold out there! The black doe has 9 kits left, I found one dead in the box, looks like it just got pushed out to a corner and the cold got it. Then there was the one that did not let go of the nipple and was out of the box. That one also died from the cold. 9 are still in the hairs, doing well and growing.

The rest of the last 2 days have been spent in the kitchen, processing a deer that was given to me and making up meals with it. It's nice to have food that is ready prepared when your busy. Sometimes I spend 4 hours preparing meals in this house, not counting the bread I refuse to live without. Nice to be able to have a home cooked meal without the Mom in the kitcken all day time.

Check out the quilt pattern I'm going to whip up! I'm not going to use those colors, a bit too yellow for me ;) I will make mine more earth tones but create it using the same log cabin design. I haven't touched the sewing machine since last winter and it needs some serious cleaning but should be whipping out quilt blocks in no time. Bet you guys didn't know I can sew eh? hehehehe yep, i sure can!

Okay, the Survival Seed Package giveaway entry list is as follows-

Katidids

Scifichick

Rhino

Rebecka

Lamb

Peggy

Happy Hermit

Gen-Il Homesteader

herbalPagan

NeeCee

ChrisW

ChrisAllen

PatriotSteve

Debsdobe

DonnaB

Yart

Did id MY way

Mamma bear in the mitten

Stacey SWPA

If you want into the survival seed pack giveaway, please leave a comment to get in. I will be drawing the winner tomorrow night at 7pm.

A little Egg and 2 Apologies

Wow, this has turned into a serious mess. First, we had the nice presentation from a young lady trying to do her job. Then came the mistake written in black and white, hard to argue that. Then came the explanation but the damage was already done. Now, here's the end result- a wonderful seed package sitting on my desk full of HEIRLOOM SEEDS. So, now I must give my own apology to Hometown Seeds for being such a distrusting sort and trying to take the high road and do the right thing.

Scott, please accept my apologies and I hope this misunderstanding never happens to you and your company again.

The Hometown Survival Seed package IS all heirloom seeds and I'd be proud to be the giver of such a seed pack.

I will be drawing the winner of the seed giveaway on Wednesday night and at that time the winner will have the choice of Scotts seed pack from Hometown seeds which comes with a very nice planting booklet(it's a big pack too) or the one from my garden seed stash.