The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: fatbaldguy on July 13, 2014, 03:31:26 PM
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I'm sitting here after coming in from the garden to enjoy the A/C set at 78. I'm eating a couple a burgers.
The meat comes from a bum steer that I bought shares on March of 2012. Onions from the garden. Pickles I made from cuke's I grew. Green Beans I grew, seasoned with salt pork I bought from a farming friend who always raises 2 or 3 hogs, and I pay in the spring for a mixed 1/4 to a 1/3 of one of 'em.
Are there many folks out there that do this anymore? I know several that do, and a couple of the younger guys at work are asking me questions about how to do gardens and such.
I've got plans to start raising meat rabbits too.
I'm learning to pressure can meat. Meals to go.
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I had done that when I owned a ranch. Only I had bison, not beef.
Ex-GF's dougn-based products were nothing to write home about, so i can I've had homemade buns and bread, but that's nothing to shout about. But that ain't the reason she's gone. ;)
I would love to go back to that, but right now, the good Lord has other plans for me.
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Not me. Sounds like a good thing, but I'm not around that kind of lifestyle and there's only a little that comes from gardens. No home-grown meat, that's for sure. Just trying to survive in this "civilized" world.
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I'm younger than most on here, sub 30 for a little longer, and my wife and I are trying to wrangle as much home grown as possible. We're blessed with beef from her folks, hunted venison, some veggies from our container garden, some veggies from others' gardens, and, occasionally eggs. We're hoping to shoot a pig or two soon, get a better garden going by next year, and learn to pressure can meat and other stuff very soon. We may not be completely self sufficient, but it is nice and more tasty to eat stuff you know where came from. I hope to get the hang of growing and preserving food soon.
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My Dad and I used to do that when I was younger, raised pigs, veggies, picked and canned blueberries and blackberries, picked cranberries.
The canned blueberries were great, as for the blackberries , think brandy with seeds instead of alcohol.
Dad used the cranberries for sauce and canned cranberry relish that was good.
Raised sour dough as well for bread and biscuits .
Can't do any of that in a second floor apartment though. :(
Now I just cultivate the people who can do it . ;D
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For those with limited yard space for a garden, here are some links to a very efficient container gardening system...combines container gardening with vertical gardening to maximize the output of the available square footage of yard.
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2014/06/02/magic-gardening-how-to-grow-50-nutrient-dense-veggies-in-virtually-no-space/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufEQ6ZljJBE
http://www.gardentowerproject.com/
http://arizonabarrels.com/55_gallon_closed_top_blue_plastic_barrels_drums.html
http://www.bayteccontainers.com/rechigdenpol.html#gsc.tab=0
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Thanks for the links! We're hoping to have a raised bed or standard in ground garden next year, but we can possibly use this ideas too.
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Nothing tastes better than what you've raised and harvested from your own garden.
Wife and I have green beans, red potatoes, tomatoes, various peppers, lots of herbs. We don't have a lot of space for growing, but we get a lot out of it.
I buy cabbage locally and turn it into sauerkraut. Local cukes get made into kosher style pickles.
Haz and I (and Deepwater, too) regularly go pig hunting and usually have some boar in the one of our freezers.
We're a little too close to others to actually raise animals, but I am still thinking about getting a young lamb to have ready for Christmas dinner.
All this takes me back to my youth where we had farm fresh everything. I miss it. It all seemed to taste so much better than stuff does now.
Thanks for instigating a pleasant trip down memory lane.
Just another old fart,
Crusader Rabbit
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The veggies yes, every thing else no. I use to go in with a group buying steers. Moved, looking for a new group. I would love to buy 5-10 arces jjust out side of town, but ita just not in the cards.
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I bought Melanie one of those super duper Kitchen Aid mixers and dough makers. You know, the kind that are all powder coated metal, and weigh a ton. Complete with a planetary gear system, and a power takeoff on the front like a tractor....Does that count? ;D
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When I had a yard that made a garden possible, I did a garden using a technique called French Intensive Gardening. Similar to a raised bed garden, but it is not raised but dug deeper (well, it is raised, but only to the extent that the loosened soil sits higher than the compact adjacent soil) . Not a difficult procedure but takes some work. The results are very good. Plants can be much closer together because the roots grow down instead of out. Basically it is a two foot deep by 5 foot wide by as long as you wish trench of loose dirt. That trench will hold water and thus nutrients much longer than a traditional tilled garden. The plant spacing is close enough that the ground between the plants is shaded and there is very little weed growth. Further, companion planting is used so that plants that benefit each other are planted together.
If anyone is interested, I found a wiki link to the topic...and needed to correct it :D, but here is the link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intensive_gardening#Bed_preparation
More references:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/biodynamic-gardening-zmaz80jfzraw.aspx#axzz37jcHOm99
http://www.alan-chadwick.org/html%20pages/techniques/garden_plants/veg_photos.html
Well, Google french intensive gardening if you are interested in more info.
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having lived most of my life in hurricane country, preparation and situational awareness has always been a priority.... learning new skills a corollary... wanting to improve my handgun skill got me started in competitive shooting, which led to hand loading, building my own pistols, and eventually 3 gun... retirement allowed me the time to fool around with solar desalination and solar oven projects... vacuum packing long term supplies in Bell/Mason jars... dehydrating, smoking fish, and pressure canning... sprouting beans for a mini vegetable bar...making bannock...cooking with skewers....
my livestock is in the Gulf of Mexico about 3 miles away... a cast net and snatch hook (not currently legal) are easily mastered... but do take some practice
bottom line...how do you know your skill level if you don't try it...and for this column, that would include shooting your first USPSA match...
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Nothing tastes better than what you've raised and harvested from your own garden.
Crusader Rabbit
A rabbit likes a garden . . . Imagine that. I do everything I can to keep rabbits (especially the crusader types) OUT of my garden.
A little bragging here, but I've got a rather sizeable garden. I've got 25 tomatoes, 30 potatoes, 100' worth of green beans, beets, carrots, onions, peppers, and Brussels sprouts. Last year, I canned 40+ quarts of tomatoes (salsa and spaghetti sauce), 40+ quarts of beans, 15 or so quarts of beets and carrots, and three 5-gallon buckets of taters. I made my first picking of beans the other day and I got close to two 5 gallon buckets full.
I like to make meals where everything on the plate (minus the spices and butter) is stuff that I harvested myself. I didn't get a deer this year, so it's been lots of fish and goose.
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A rabbit likes a garden . . . Imagine that. I do everything I can to keep rabbits (especially the crusader types) OUT of my garden.
A little bragging here, but I've got a rather sizeable garden. I've got 25 tomatoes, 30 potatoes, 100' worth of green beans, beets, carrots, onions, peppers, and Brussels sprouts. Last year, I canned 40+ quarts of tomatoes (salsa and spaghetti sauce), 40+ quarts of beans, 15 or so quarts of beets and carrots, and three 5-gallon buckets of taters. I made my first picking of beans the other day and I got close to two 5 gallon buckets full.
I like to make meals where everything on the plate (minus the spices and butter) is stuff that I harvested myself. I didn't get a deer this year, so it's been lots of fish and goose.
You need to do something different with your garden.
Like maybe leave the fence open once in a while ? ;D
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We are trying to get our property as self sustaining as possible. The fact that we now live 10 miles out of town drastically reduces the amount that we go to the store, and eat out. We have finally established some good gardens and all the bushes and trees are fruiting well this year. I am expecting that in another month or so we will begin major harvesting. Around the end of September we will butcher a little over half of the chickens that we have raised this year. That will leave us with 8-10 layers and a couple of roosters for winter.
When we started this venture we did a lot of research into gardens, and livestock. I knew that they were screwing with our food, but the things that we learned really shocked me. This has reinforced our "do it self" mentality. It's really nice to know exactly where your food has come from, and how it was raised.
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You need to do something different with your garden.
Like maybe leave the fence open once in a while ? ;D
If I didn't live in the suburbs, I wouldn't even have to get out of bed during deer season. They walk through our front yard every morning and eat our plants. I could sleep with my Enfield next to the bed and then just sit up and shoot one through the window when the dog starts barking.
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If I didn't live in the suburbs, I wouldn't even have to get out of bed during deer season. They walk through our front yard every morning and eat our plants. I could sleep with my Enfield next to the bed and then just sit up and shoot one through the window when the dog starts barking.
Ask MB if you can borrow his crossbow. I've heard it doesn't count if you don't wake up the neighbors. ;)
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If I didn't live in the suburbs, I wouldn't even have to get out of bed during deer season. They walk through our front yard every morning and eat our plants. I could sleep with my Enfield next to the bed and then just sit up and shoot one through the window when the dog starts barking.
I took one in my backyard two years ago. Longbow from the bedroom window. I live in a country setting suburb. None of the neighbors reported it. I boned and packaged the meat myself, put the carcass in the compost pile.