Another Canning Marathon

My youngest son delivered a quarter beef to me on Wednesday.  For several years he has been getting beef from a farmer who lives just a couple of miles from his house.  The farmer doesn't sell directly to the public, but to a select group of customers.  David still had beef in his freezer so I was able to take that order.  

There was a total of 165 lbs. of meat.  I sorted the meat out, setting some of it out to thaw and stacked the rest in the freezer.  David had done the math and with processing and packaging at a local butcher, it came out to less cost per pound than a pound of hamburger at our local big box grocery.  And I really like the idea of supporting a local farmer.

So Thursday I spent the day canning meat.  I ended up with 33 pints of hamburger, 3 pints of stew meat and 12 pints of beef roast.  

The stew meat and roasts were packed into jars raw.  The hamburger was browned and then packed into jars.  I didn't use any liquid in any of them.  They were all canned for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure for my elevation.

So with the meat in the freezer and the meat in jars, I have enough to last my oldest son and I for a long time.  

Now is not the time to ease up on prepping.  No matter how the election turns out in the end, I think we are in for a rough time.  As a dear friend often says, "Stack it to the rafters.  We're gonna need every crumb."  

My Quiet Life - Not Today

Every now and then I have mentioned my quiet life.  Today was not one of those quiet days.

My son Duane lives in the apartment next door.  On the other side of his apartment is another, occupied by a younger married couple.  I have not met them, but Duane tells me the wife is a pleasant person who works to support them both.  The husband apparently has some serious mental issues.  Duane has seen him outside in the parking lot back of our building, running around swinging a machete.

This afternoon Duane came into my apartment to tell me about what was happening.  He said the guy next door to him had been crashing about in his apartment.  Then Duane saw him in the parking lot, wielding a baseball bat, taking swings at parked vehicles.  Someone called the police.

I listened to the scanner for a while to see what was happening.  At one point the guy had a gas can and  lighter and was threatening to set the can on fire.  The police were trying to talk him out of the apartment.  Eventually he did start a fire in the apartment and that was when the talk ended and he was taken out, hopefully to a hospital for some help.

The fire department was on stand-by and quickly put the fire out.  But there was a lot of smoke and the building was evacuated.  A firemen helped me down the stairs.  A business owner a couple of doors down the street offered to let Duane and me stay in his office.  It was cold.  It was raining.  We were grateful.

When the smoke had cleared, two firemen helped me back up the stairs to my apartment.  My phone began ringing almost as soon as I was back home.  The kids were checking up on their brother and mother.  One of them had driven here but couldn't get close as the streets surrounding my building had been closed off.

I am none the worse for wear, with the exception of a bit of embarrassment at walking down the street wearing my floor length robe and big, fuzzy socks over my leg wraps.   If I had known I was going out for the evening, I would have dressed for the occasion.  :)

God bless all those, and there were a lot of them, who came to take care of a very bad situation.  And if you are so inclined, please offer a prayer for the fellow who caused all of this.  It must be terrifying to be living with the demons of the mind that would make someone do the things he did.

And now, if you please, I will go back to my quiet life.  

It Ain't Over Yet

I have to admit to a little bit of panic when I read about the voting results this morning.  But then I realized that just because the Media proclaims a winner, that doesn't make it so.  The Media does not certify election results. 

There are reports of a considerable amount of shenanigans going on in the counting of ballots.  President Trump's attorneys are headed to the courts to address these issues.

Nobody knows if the outcome of the election will change.  That remains to be seen.  But until the election is certified for one candidate or the other, all we can do is wait.  

And have some faith that occasionally, wrong is punished and right wins.

Are We Ready?

Several people I know have made last minute shopping trips just in case the post election violence threatened by the left leaning crazies comes to pass.  My last grocery order filled in most of the gaps in my food storage.  My order for this week includes fresh fruit and vegetables and items that I would like to have but can live without should the delivery become impossible.  I have also decided to wait on ordering a couple of items online, for the same reason.  If the promised chaos happens, who knows what might happen to my order.

And isn't it sad that we are not only held hostage by a pandemic that isn't, but also by those who wish to rip apart a perfectly good nation.  Never in my lifetime have I seen such complete insanity and such efforts to try to keep 'we the people' under the thumbs of those who think they know better than we do on how we need to live our lives.  A pox on them all.

In the meantime, life goes on here in my little corner of the world.  Having put off cleaning out my chest freezer for about as long as I could, that is happening now.  I found several freezer bags full of homemade vegetable soup that I thawed and canned, giving me 7 quarts to add to the shelves.  The closer I get to the bottom, the more I am finding stuff that has lived there far too long.  Several bags of squash had to be tossed as well as a badly freezer burned pizza.  Being only a couple of inches over 5 feet tall, reaching the bottom of the freezer is a challenge, but thankfully there is one long, tall son living next door who says he will drag out the rest of what is left in the bottom.  

While waiting to see what our future holds, I have been having a bit of fun.  A friend sent me some packets of micro greens seeds and I planted one of them in a shoebox size container of potting soil.  Looks to be about a gazillion tiny plants growing and when they are big enough I will snip them off and use them in a salad.

I also dehydrated six bunches of celery last week, so I saved the root ends and set them in another shoebox size plastic container, adding about an inch and a half of water.  I now have celery growing from all six roots, the largest stalks being about 4 inches tall.  I think I will just leave them alone, adding water when needed, and see just how tall they will grow.

It obviously takes very little to amuse me.  :)

I pray the promised riots do not happen, but I am not counting on it.  Many are taking the threat seriously.  It is reported that Texas has the National Guard on standby in the largest cities.  I have seen reports of other states doing the same.  All across the country store owners are busy boarding up their windows.  Some governors and mayors have recommended that stores stay closed on election day.  If that many folks are taking the threat seriously, we will do the same.  

Thankfully, we are stocked well enough to hunker down for a long time, if necessary.  I pray that things stay calm and peaceful, but judging by what this year has already given us, I am not counting on it.

Stay as safe as possible, my friends.  Most of us have been prepping for whatever crisis happens.  It is my personal belief that we are on the threshold right now.  I really hope I am wrong.

No Drama Here

This is my quiet time this year.  Everywhere I look around me, there is drama.  Some of it has to do with the upcoming elections.  Some of it has to do with the virus.  Our bonehead of a governor seems determined to keep all of us fearful at least until the election.  To listen to his reports, you would think the streets were littered with bodies.

Here in my little apartment, I prefer to stay as drama free as possible.  I still check the news so I can keep track what the enemy is up to, but my life goes on no matter what the current insanity is.

I was happily surprised to receive my grocery order this past Thursday in full with no substitutions.  That hasn't been the case for the past couple of months.  Since then I have dehydrated 6 lbs. of frozen corn and 6 bunches of celery.  The dry goods I ordered - sugar, flour, pancake mix, etc. - have been transferred to Ziploc bags and stashed away.  I have never had a problem with bugs or rodents here, but knowing that both like cardboard and paper packaging, I find that putting the food into Ziplocs and then into buckets or tubs insures it stays that way.

The canning is on 'hold' until the middle of November when my beef is ready and when, with any kind of luck, Youngest Son will have some venison for me and his brother.  Whenever he has a successful hunt, he shares with us.  We enjoy some venison fresh and I can the rest.

As many of you who come here often know, I have Home Healthcare Nurses who come in three times a week to treat my legs.  They are doing a bang-up job, for I have gone from having several open, draining wounds to having none at all for a long time now.  Anyway, my favorite nurse, Caroline, brought me a gift last week.  Her sister had a garage sale where she sold lots of fabric.  Knowing that I sew, Caroline brought me what was left from the sale and wouldn't let me pay a dime for any of it.  There are three pieces of nice, plaid flannel and two pieces of pretty cotton print, each being three yards in length.  I am not sure what to use the cotton print for yet, but I think the flannel will make some nice, cozy pajama pants, or as the more sophisticated than I call them - loungewear.  Bless her heart for thinking of me with such a nice and useful gift!

Sometimes I am not completely pleased with being housebound, but this week I am grateful that I don't need to stick my nose outside.  We are having record breaking cold for this time of year in my part of Minnesota, accompanied by about 7 inches of snow earlier in the week.  The local news reported over 700 vehicles involved in fender benders or sliding off the roads into the ditches. 

Times like these make me especially glad to be a prepper.  I sipped a cup of coffee and watched the snow come down, knowing I already have everything I need right here to weather the storm.

Keep on prepping! 

    

Bits and Pieces...

 The pressure canner is put away until our quarter beef arrives mid-November.  Although my supply of canning lids has increased this week due to a good friend who surprised me and blessed me with a box containing enough lids for over 150 more jars of canned food, I am still putting off doing any more canning until I see how many lids and jars I need for the beef.  Oldest son has contributed half the price and yesterday we talked about what to can and what to keep in the freezer.  He says canning any kind of steak would be a sin and I tend to agree, but we both decided that we will set aside a few pounds of hamburger and a couple of roasts and can the rest of those.  My chest freezer isn't all that big so canning is the best way to have much of the meat preserved. 

In the meantime, the dehydrators are getting a workout.  I had dried cut green beans in the past, but decided to try dehydrating French cut green beans.  I had six 1 lb. bags of them, frozen, and they turned out fine.  I tried rehydrating a few in warm water and they actually rehydrated better than the cut green beans.  Even so, I expect I will use these, crumbled, in soups for flavor.

My memory, being a bit frazzled around the edges these days, had failed me when I discovered about 10 lbs. of onions in a milk crate stashed in a corner.  Lucky for me, none had gone bad, so I peeled and quartered them and ran them through my food processor.  The idea was not to puree them but to turn them into onion flakes.  They are in the dehydrator and when dried, I will be making onion soup mix using the following recipe:

ONION SOUP MIX RECIPE

3/4 cup dehydrated minced onion

4 teaspoons onion powder

1/3 cup beef bouillon powder

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes

2 tablespoons sugar

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container. Stir each time before using. To make a bowl of onion soup, mix 2 tablespoons in a cup of boiling water. Simmer on low heat for 10-15 minutes. For onion dip, mix 1 tablespoon (or to taste) in one cup sour cream. Let sit for a couple of hours in the refrigerator to allow onions to rehydrate.  Use this mix any way you would use the commercial onion soup mix.

In case you hadn't noticed, although I'm pretty sure those of you who stop by here have, the world around us has lost its collective mind.  There are those well paid thugs who like to burn and loot and harass and destroy that are threatening widespread thuggery should their boy lose the election.  There are food shortages as well as shortages of other products on the horizon.  Some of those shortages are already being felt in the stores.  And we have mayors, governors and candidates threatening to shut us all down again due to a virus with an over 98% recovery rate.  Because of the fear-mongering main stream media, we have people too afraid to live their lives normally.

I still keep up with the news because it is always good to know what the enemy is up to, but have found that in order to maintain a positive attitude, it has become necessary to limit my time absorbing the news of the day. 

Instead, most of my time is spent on 'stacking it to the rafters' when it comes to preparing.  And spending time doing what I love - sewing, crocheting, working on scrapbooks and genealogy, reading mystery books, etc.  If I weren't housebound, I expect I would be going for a walk in the park or down along the river, enjoying the beauty of Fall. 

Fear has turned us into a nation of sacredy cats.  We don't get together with friends or family.  We don't hug.  We mostly hide and wait for some government entity to tell us what to do.  That is just wrong.  It is not normal.  Humans need to be with other humans.  Living in fear shrivels the soul.  

We need to just live.

The Passing of a Friend

We weren't bosom buddies in High School, but we socialized in the same circles.  The 'country kids' sort of stuck together, mostly because the city kids didn't understand that when hay needed baling or barns needed mucking out or row crops needed combining, that's where you would find the country kids - not at the beach on a Saturday afternoon.  My Dad didn't farm, but there was still a big, old farmhouse to clean and weeds to be pulled in the garden and lessons on bread baking to learn  Farmers or not, the country kids worked.

Glenn and I knew each other well enough to to talk when we met.  It isn't easy to know people well in a graduating class of nearly 400.  We lost touch after graduation.  I went on to marry and produce children at a rather alarming rate.  He, too, married, had sons and joined the Navy.

We connected again about 10 years ago through Facebook.  Glenn had come out of Vietnam and joined the local police force where he protected and served until his retirement.  

We talked on the phone a couple of times, but mostly we emailed.  He would send me links and information about what was happening in our insane world.  I always accused him of being connected to the 'Good Old Boy Cop Network,' and I think he might have been.  He knew about what was happening close to me before I did, and he lived 100 miles away.

I heard of his death this morning.  It came as a surprise.  Last week he was canning salsa.  Earlier this week he taught a conceal carry class.

Glenn was one of the good guys.  He was an unapologetic patriot, volunteering for Nam when others of that time were trying to figure out the best route to Canada to avoid being drafted.  He believed in law and order and spent a good share of his life in that profession.  He cherished friends and family.  And he knew for certain that when his time here was done, he would meet Jesus.

Godspeed, my friend.  Well done.