Wooly Bear

Being from a family from the Punxy PA, area....I have heard plenty of weather predicting folk lore. Phil may be famous, but I have also learned that the wooly bear caterpillar is even more accurate with it's weather predicting skills; and there is a bit of scientific research behind this folk lore. Today, I got a picture of this little guy crawling across the patio. According to him, we'll have a mild winter.

Unfortunately last year the little fuzzy worms were totally wrong. I saw tons of them with a tiny belt of brown around their waist. We had a mild winter. I think the lore is backwards when it comes to Texas weather....and I think we're in for a bad winter.

Just in case, here's a close-up of the little guy....

I hope and pray he is right. I really do not like the cold.

Cousin Opal

I got an email from Moon's breeder this morning, his niece Opal is in that Theragesic commercial about goat's tears! Donut and DoSiDoe are cuter, but cuz Opal and friends got the job. Here's a link...

Incubation Pause

Our chixperiment is progressing better than I expected, with our live chick count at 23.

We are very pleased with our results so far, the chicks are healthy and growing. This is Angus, the rooster....along with the 3 CornishX hens that have produced all the chicks.

I have been adding eggs to the incubator every 5 days or so....until this week. I was planning to collect the eggs one evening when to my surprise, there were none. I knew there had been at least 7 in the nest that morning...so my first guess was that we had a snake in the henhouse. Levi pulled up one of the floorboards to the adjacent hay storage area and sure enough.....

A very large Texas Rat Snake with a belly full of eggs!! After getting a few pictures of him, we took him down to the river and let him go. Rat Snakes are very nice to have around to keep mice and rats in check, but once they develop a fondness for eggs they don't stop. We don't kill non-venomous snakes, but relocate them.This guy is well fattened and should make it through the winter just fine while he settles into his new home a-w-a-y from our home!

Preservation ponderings

We have put a dent in our food storage for the winter, but there is still a long way to go.

The canned sausages had a great turnout, so I am doing 10 more pounds of them today. The ones I did earlier in the week kept jumping pressure and processed at 15 lbs rather than the 10 that they needed. As a result there was no liquid left in the jars. They all sealed well, and are perfectly fine to eat, but they will need to be used first.

The flavor is great, and these will come in handy to make sandwiches or a quick snack during the winter months. The sliced ones are great for adding to soups too......and now they require no freezer space.

We are not only trying to save freezer space, but pantry space as well. Our shelves only hold so much and then it is time to find alternative storage methods. This is why we dry a lot of foods. The canister on top holds the 3# of Baby Bella mushrooms I dried this week. Compare the space used by that container to the 4# of Button mushrooms in the jars.

Of course, I am not drying all the foods. We LOVE mushrooms, and with this great sale on them this week I can preserve enough of them to last the year at a fraction of the cost. Four pounds of mushrooms made 6 pints at a cost of $2 per jar.Yesterday I also found some green onions on sale, so I bought some to dry. I sliced them into 1/4" pieces and dried them for a few hours....I did this mainly because I am always coming across recipes that call for green onions, and rarely have them in my fridge. Now at least I'll have some when I need them.

Grocery Store Finds

Although we do try to produce a lot of what we eat, I am always looking for bargains and sales at the grocery store. Today I found this brand of smoked sausage for $1.09/12oz package. I can't hardly make it for that, so I bought 5 of them to try out, and they are in the canner now.

We are trying to get away from the use of the freezer when ever possible. For one thing, the freezers cost money to run. Also, with our frequent power outtages, the food in the freezer is easily jeopardized. So I cut the sausages into pint sized links, plus I am doing one jar of slices. All but 1 are being processed in water, the other is in a half water-half BBQ sauce mixture. Tomorrow we will crack open the jars and see if we like how they can. If we do, we'll buy and can more. If not, then it was a $5 experiment and I'm sure the sausage can be used somehow.

Also on sale were these great button mushrooms! I bought 2# of them to can, and plan to go back for more. I plan to can these whole.

The last thing we found was a manager's special on some baby bella mushrooms that were pre-sliced. I bought 3 pounds of these and have them in the dehydrator now.

Drying times

This week I have been drying foods. I made a big batch of venison jerky, dried 6# of carrots, a stalk of celery, and 5# of roasted red bell peppers.We are going through the freezers to be sure that we have used all of the '08 meat. I've got a batch of venison in the canner now, and will try to get it all either dried or canned this week to make room for our '09 food. Rotating your food stores is important to keep things fresh and prevent waste.

Our CornishX experiment is coming along nicely! Our first hatch of 7 birds are now 22 days old. They have all survived and had none of the typical leg or heart problems that the cornish crosses usually have.

Our second batch of chicks started hatching this week. We have 8 more brand new CornishX and 3 RIR, bringing our Chixperiment total to 15!