Castle Suburbia

Broccoli

davewhite — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:43:50 +0000

I planted broccoli yesterday. 66 seeds. I think I might be a couple of weeks early but we’ll see. I was supposed to make a schedule so I would know when to plant, but I never got around to it. Maybe there’s still time, but things are beginning to move faster around here. It will be spring before you know it.

Food for thought

davewhite — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:21:57 +0000

Go here.

Pig Part II

davewhite — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:22:18 +0000

I think I already mentioned this, but I didn’t consider myself a butchering novice when I started this pig process. I looked at quite a bit of online resources, the foxfire book, and some other resources I had, including the book I mentioned in the last post. Most of this reading was done in order to learn about the process of scalding hogs, which is what I wanted to do, because I wanted to do the whole thing as traditionally as possible. I also wanted to learn how to make the retail cuts, which I new nothing about, most of my butchering of larger animals, like deer, had amounted to cutting out the loins, some round steak, and the chunking up the rest and calling it “roast”. It was very easy to find information on the primal cuts, but seemed much more difficult to find information on the retail cuts. After consulting a few of these resources and asking questions to any oldtimers I ran across who claimed to remember butchering hogs on the farm, I came to the conclusion that without some seriously committed helpers scalding my hog was just not logistically feasible. About the same time I found this website, in which I found this set of dvds. I bought both of them and do not regret it.

I really wanted to scald the hog, but I knew I couldn’t handle that job by myself. I searched in vain to try to find the pros and cons of skinning VS scalding, but never came up with anything. I finally drew my own conclusion that the main reason to scald instead of skin was in order to eat the skin in the form of pork rind. There may be other reasons, but I couldn’t find any.

Once I had made the decision to skin, I figured I was home free. I have hunted most of my life until just recently, and I had skinned a lot of animals. Figuring a pig wouldn’t be to much trouble, it was with great confidence I started skinning. I suppose in theory skinning a hog is no different than skinning a deer, but I noticed two things right off the bat: I’ve never skinned a deer that weighed 300lbs, and I’d never skinned a deer having anything close to this much fat on it.

Making the first cut

After cutting off the front feet, I made an incision at the bottom of one of the feet and cut over to the crotch. I did the same thing on the other side and cut over to my first line; then I skinned out the feet and lower legs. I finished up by opening up a line from crotch to chin, just the depth of the skin.

opening the line

For some reason, of which I’m still not sure, I decided to skin this thing out lying on the ground. Of course, I think some how, in the back of my head, I was sure I would finish the job in about 30 minutes. I don’t know where that kind of hubris comes from.

One side down

Everything started out well, but the further I moved up the belly the harder it got to distinguish between fat and skin, so it was difficult to stay as close to the skin as i would have liked and in some instances I actually cut down far enough to get into the bacon. The skin is thin, and doesn’t feel very tough, so I din’t try to peel it off, like you would on a deer or a muskrat or something, I just kept cutting with the knife. In retrospect, I whish I had tried, which brings me to my next point. Don’t try to skin the animal out on the ground unless your back is in very good shape. After about 15 minutes, I was in pain. This was tedious work and after a while I just couldn’t concentrate on it because of the discomfort. It was at that time I lowered the gambrel and pulled the pig up onto two sawhorses spread about 8″ apart. That was a lot better, but in retrospect, I think I should have just pulled the pig on up and skinned it from a hanging position. I’m not sure why I didn’t do that, but, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Just about finished

When I finally had skinned down to the tops of the saw horses, I did pull the pig up, but first I had to cut into the beely and chest to free the entrails and organs. As I write this, I realize that would be difficult to do from a hanging position, but you could always lower the hog down to do that.

Splitting the brisket

Once the hog was hung up, things did get a lot easier.

Peeling instead of cutting

After I had removed the entrails (I spared you those pictures) I was able to just peel the skin off the back. It went very easily and left a nice, smooth, thick layer of fat on the back. I pulled the skin down as far as the neck, cut the head of, leaving the jowls, and then cut down through the spine with a meat saw. That’s not as easy as it looks. You could use a sawzall for this, but you’ll need a meatsaw anyway if you want to make retail cuts. I wrapped the pig in a sheet, and then quit for the night. I was one tired puppy. I think the whole process took me about 3 hrs. I am convinced with a little practice I could get it down to about an hour.

My friend Troy helping me split the spine

You’ll need more than a five gallon bucket to contain the entrails. I did not save the tongue, the head, the liver or the kidneys. I did remove the leaf lard immediately because the video’s informed my it would be very difficult to do later, and it wasn’t difficult at all with the pig still warm. Also, have a good source of running water on hand. My hose froze up about about halfway through the process and it was a pretty big deal.

My Brother in law "hamming" it up. Good help is hard to find.

Pig Part 1

davewhite — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:23:50 +0000

Back in December I butchered my own pig. Well, at least he was my pig at the time I butchered him. I would really like to raise a pig myself, but because I live in town I don’t see that as a viable option. So, I did the next best thing, I bought a pig from a farmer, brought it home, and butchered it. I have always enjoyed doing that sort of thing. I have butchered a great many small game animals and birds, and quite a few deer over the years, but the pig was a little more of a challenge than I thought it would be.

To start with, I would have preferred to get a pastured pig to butcher, but after making a few inquiries around, I quickly determined that those who were raising pigs on grass, around here anyway, were serving a different market than the one I’m in. Don’t read anything into that, it’s a conclusion, not a statement of judgment. Anyway, after deciding that grass fed organic was not in my future, I started looking for whatever else was available. I found an old farmer who said he would sell me a pig, raised on dirt at his farm, any time I wanted it. I told him why I wanted a pig and what I was trying to do, and he suggested I get a pig that was around 300lbs. We agreed and he told me to call him back in about a month when he thought he’d have one close to that. That was the weekend after Thanksgiving. Two weeks later he called up and said, “you bet get out here and get your pig, he’ll be to big soon.” So, that Friday night I loaded up my trailer and my two boy’s and we went out to get our pig. I had wanted to do all this around Thanksgiving because I wanted temps around 40 degrees. When the guy told me to wait a month I figured I might have some trouble, but even at Christmas it is usually not to cold here, not much below freezing. Wouldn’t you know, that night the temp was hovering around 20 and the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour.

I had spent the entire week cleaning out my garage, hanging gambrels, and setting up a work area. Additionally, I had a sort of plan about how I would do the butchering once I was ready. Like most plans however, this one failed upon contact with the enemy, and in struggling to meet the challenges of the evening, I learned some valuable things about butchering pigs by yourself.

The first thing I would recommend to anyone wanting to butcher a pig is to have a pen in the area you plan to shot the pig that is at least big enough for the pig to turn around in, and probaby twice that. Because I had taken the one month time schedule literally, I was not ready with a stock rack I had planned to use to pick the pig up. The farmer graciously allowed me to use a cage he had, but it was only as long and as wide as the pig, and since the pig had went in forward, he had to come out backward, a fact that would soon become problematic.Here you see my sons, Search and Destroy, with their prize.

Our pig "Lunchy". You can see there is no room to turn around in the cage

I had planned to shoot “Lunchy” in the back of my truck, which, had I the stock rack I was planning to use, is where he would have been, and then hang him over the tailgate to bleed him. Now that I had him in his cage, I had to shoot him there. I didn’t figure that would change things all that much, the cage was on my dump trailer, I would just shot him in the cage and lower the trailer to let him bleed. One problem, as long as he was in that cage and facing the wrong way, I couldn’t reach his neck to cut him. I therefore came up with the idea of shooting him, pulling him quickly from the cage, and sticking him. I shot Lunchy in the spot described in this book with a .22 rifle and he dropped like a stone. Although I live in town, I have a big lot, laid back
neighbors, and it was after dark on a very cold night, otherwise I might have had to hit him with a hammer or something. Anyway, once he was down, the fun really started.

I was trying to stick him as quickly as possible, so I opened the cage and tried to grab him. He was kicking so hard in his death throes however, that I simply could not get close to him; I had to wait for him to settle down, which was cutting into the prime sticking time. After he had quieted down somewhat, I reached in to try to pull him out. Did I mention that Lunchy weighed 287lbs? In my haste and the confusion of having part of my plan thwarted, I had neglected to realize that I would be unable to pull a dead 300lb hog out of a crate backwards. In a panic, I finally got around to wrapping a chain around one of his legs which allowed me to get enough leverage to begin to pull him out. At this point, lunchy’s nerves fired up again and he managed to kick one hind leg through the pen, after several seconds, my brother-in-law, who was acting photographer, managed to get the wayward limb pushed back into the crate and I pulled Lunchy on out, but now I was concerned I would not get a good bleed on him because it had been several minutes since he was shot and I figured the heart had stopped pumping.

Nonetheless, I was committed and I soldiered on. Here’s a word of advice; don’t try to stick a pig with a stamped kitchen knife, no matter how well it looks like it would work. You need a forged blade, probably 9 inches in length, to do the job properly with any sort of confidence and consistency. The stamped blade I was using went in well enough, but it bent as soon as I started trying to move it up against the breast bone. It did the job, but was very messy and I had to slice up the jowls pretty good to make sure I had gotten a good stick. Which brings me to another point I might note; if you can’t stick the pig immediately after affecting its demise, make sure you have some means of elevating its hind end when you stick it, otherwise it is very difficult to tell if you’ve done the job properly. Eventually, we got the deed done and I was able to move on to skinning. I’ll post about that later, I’m tired.

Ready to start skinning

Stuff

davewhite — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:52:10 +0000

I’ve been teaching myself to play the guitar lately. I think that music is important in forming a well balanced life, and particularly the ability to play music, not just hear it. I never learned to play anything, mostly because I have a strong aversion to anything that requires patience and discipline. I have started many times in the past to learn to play the guitar, but always quit after a few weeks as I got frustrated with the fact that I could not play like Jeff Beck or Vince Gill. Now that I have children of my own, I firmly believe that forcing them to learn to play something is an excellent way to accomplish many things as far as training them for life goes, and, in an effort to lead by example, I have once again taken up the guitar. This time however, I have prepared myself. I am committed to playing 15-20 minutes every night for one year, barring emergencies; I may practice longer than that, but never less. I have been at it since the end of November, and progress has been slow to say the least. I found myself getting frustrated again and so I began to examine my habits, and found that I was concentrating so much on being able to produce great music (tough to do when you can’t change cords in less than 10 seconds) that the whole process had ceased to be in any way pleasurable. If I am going to stick with this, I have got to refocus on my goal. My goal is not to become a brilliant musician. My goals are to provide an example for my children, learn to do something productive, and maybe, someday,to entertain myself, my family, and perhaps my friends. If I happen to become a brilliant musician as a result, great, but that’s not the goal.

I told you that so I could tell you this.

I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed lately. I think that partly it’s a mid-life crisis, but I also think I’ve gotten a little side tracked in my thinking by spending an inordinate amount of time considering the “doom and gloom” information that is prevalent right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the doom and gloom isn’t real, but that’s not the focus of this post. Because of this concentration on these issues however, I seem to have allowed myself to get caught up in the whole “eotwawki” scenario’s and consequently I am feeling a sense of extreme urgency about moving myself along on the path to being more independent. The only problem with that is that it takes time to change a lifestyle. It takes time to learn how to and then actually become good at saving your own seeds. Heck, it takes time to learn how to garden well consistently. It takes time to learn the vast array of new skills one might need to become less dependent on “the system”, and I don’t feel like I have that time. I’m in a pressure cooker because storms may be moving in and I don’t have time left to build an ark. However, it’s beginning to dawn on me that this is the guitar story all over again.

I don’t know if we are at “Peak oil”; I don’t know what the economy will look like next month or next year, and, when it comes right down to it, I couldn’t do much about it even if I did. What I do know is that I can keep at it. I can’t get my entire yard converted to raised vegetable beds and producing fruit trees by April, but I can probably get in a couple of raised beds or maybe an herb garden. I also know this; my goal is not to evade the effects of a global economic collapse or a return to the dark ages. I can’t, and neither can anyone else. That kind of stuff is in the hands of God, and I think he’s made it pretty clear that I’m not to spend any time worrying about things I can’t change. My goal is, however, to be more independent today than I was yesterday. My goal is to raise more of my own food, fix and make more of my own stuff, and meet more of my own needs than I have in the past. Once again I’ve been focusing so much on results that I have taken all the fun out of what I am trying to do. If in doing this I find myself better prepared than I may have for some unforseen or unavoidable catastrophe, great. If no catastrophe occurs, greater still. I think from now on I’m just gonna relax. If I live long enough, something catastrophic will happen to me. There’s no point in losing sleep over things I can’t change, at least not in a hurry.

My ’09 garden is officially under way

davewhite — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:31:21 +0000

Well, I guess it has been, I planted garlic last September. Saturday I planted onion seed though. I checked them this morning and they are just starting to sprout. I planted two types: Bianca Di Maggio and Yellow of Parma. The 1st is a sweet onion and the 2nd is supposed to be good for storing, so we’ll see. Both are long day onions, and I live in central Illinois, so I am anxious to see how they do.

This year, I’m really gonna lose weight…

davewhite — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:09:31 +0000

And keep up with posting. Bet you’ve never heard that before. I’ve ordered and even received my seeds for next years garden. I think I may have some space problems, but we’ll see. I am actually going to set down and map out my yard so that I can get a better idea of what’s going on. I’d like to plant some fruit trees in the spring, and I want to grow quite a bit of squash this year as well, so I will have to make good use of my space. I butchered a pig in December, I have butchered wild game as big as deer many times in the past, but the pig turned out to be more of a challenge than I thought it would. Still, It came out alright. I’ll post pictures soon. I need to find a way to grow a lot of potatoes. I tried last year to grow them in a garbage can, but it didn’t work out to well. I’d like to try to grow them in some old tires this year, I’ve heard rumors that works well. I’m gonna post twice a week. Really. No really. I’m gonna.

Dave

Let’s try this again.

davewhite — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:19:04 +0000

I think that I have a flawed conception of what life is or is supposed to be like. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that I am a poster boy for postmodern genxers. Some how, some way, I made it to adult human without really learning that doing anything worthwhile requires perseverance, discipline, and energy. This is the primary reason for my lack of progress in gardening this year, and, as you may have already guessed dear reader, is also the reason for the lack of activity on this blog. Blogging, like self-sufficiency requires a tremendous amount of time and thought, which for some reason took me by surprise on both counts. Apparently, I was expecting to wake up one morning, find I was living a self-sufficient lifestyle and consequently relate it to the universe without any more time and effort than it took to write this sentence. Needless to say, I stand corrected. Anyway, my hat is off to those of you who do either of these on a regular basis, much less both.

My garden did not live up to my expectations this year, as I have already alluded to, however it wasn’t a total failure either. I managed to get quite a few onions, a few beets, and we have canned about 30 pints of carrots. I also learned some lessons, the first of which is, when experimenting with a new way of growing something, do not experiment with your entire crop. The second lesson is not to get discouraged to easily. I posted about that in my last post and was promptly and rightfully told, in a nice way, by both this guy and this guy that self sufficiency is more of a mindset than an actual place to arrive at. Thank you both for your encouragement. I appreciate it.

I am currently trying to find the time to clean up and start planning for next year. One thing I have got to do quickly is to prepare an area for garlic. I ordered this and was recently informed the shipment would be delayed until the end of the month. That is good for me, as it gives me a little extra time to get ready. I would also like to build a coldframe this fall and see if I can grow lettuce and perhaps some spinach through most of the winter months. Ordinarily our winters here deep in the PRoI are not especially hard. It does seem that this year might be different, as this summer has been exceptionally wet and mild for us. I may be expecting to much from a coldframe, but hey, you don’t know if you don’t try, right? I would like to build some raised bed frames to grow in next spring as well, but that may be asking to much of both my budget and my time. We’ll see.

My blueberries appear to have survived their neglect relatively unscathed, so I am hoping for good things next year. This was their first year and they were severely pruned by the rabbits this spring. I ended up putting chicken wire around them and that seemed to have stopped the feeding frenzy, but not until a lot of damage was done. Anyway, I think they are in pretty good shape now and I hope to get at least a few quarts of berries from them next year. I planted asparagus this year as well, 1year crowns. Some of them have come up but not all. I planted them deep in some clay soil. I had the best of intentions, but once again I ran hard into reality and had to settle for plan “B”.

Well, thats the news from Castle Suburbia, so long for now.

Semicolon count = 0

Baby Steps

davewhite — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:41:29 +0000

Wow! Blogging is harder than I thought it would be.

I’ve been trying to have a garden for a few years now. It’s always about this time that I start getting discouraged and apparently this year it’s not going to be any different. It seems that I never really make any progress. In truth, as I stated in a previous post, I think the real problem is that I have never made it a priority. It has always just been a good idea for me, never something I was whole hog committed to. In reality, I’m not sure I have the strength of commitment to live the way I envision without having it forced upon me. I would like to be able to go from totally dependent to totally independent in the next year, but I’m not sure that is really possible. I’m realizing that this is going to be a progression, a journey of sorts, that may never really be over. I need to develop that as a mindset. I am currently looking at being self-sufficient as a goal in and of itself. I think that will only lead to discouragement, disillusionment and failure. Perhaps my goal shouldn’t be to become completely independent, which is not possible anyway, but only to be less dependent today than I was yesterday. If I can teach myself to think and believe that, then it won’t matter if my tomatoes don’t do well in buckets, or my green bean crop doesn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. The important things will be that I grew something, and I learned something, and that’s progress, right?

Good drainage is hard to come by

davewhite — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:21:04 +0000

I planted 6 types of heirloom tomatoes this year. I didn’t want to put them in my garden because of the amount of room they take up; I needed the room for my killer green been crop and other vegetables. I didn’t really have a defined spot to put them in so I just planted them in 5 gallon buckets that I got from a local painter. I poked holes in the bottom of the buckets, filled them with a combination of dirt from the garden and grass clippings (saved from the lawn mowing business) and stuck the plants in them. Things went pretty well for a while. We got quite a bit of rain this spring so I didn’t have to water them very often. The tomatoes grew and looked healthy; I was pleased. After a while I quit paying much attention. Then one day my beautiful wife happened to notice one of the plants wasn’t looking to well. We discovered that water had stopped draining through the holes in the bottom of them bucket and the plant was essentially encased in mud. I laid the bucket over and made bigger holes, but that didn’t seem to help much; the plant grew progressively worse and the mud did not dry out. I knew the plant wasn’t going to live, so, thinking I had nothing to lose I took the whole thing out of the bucket, mud, rotten grass clippings and all and broke them apart. I mixed a bunch of old potting soil I had laying around in with the grass and the mud and then replanted the tomato in the mixture. I also put about 4 inches of gravel in the bottom of the bucket. My wife plucked off the wilted brown leaves put left the wilted green ones and I moved all of the buckets off the ground and placed them on some used pallets I had brought lying around. (I feel sorry for my neighbors). Long story short, I think the plant is going to make it. It looks better and even has a few blooms on it. I would note though, that having planted the tomatoes in buckets, I find that I have to water them twice a day or they start to wither. Next year I think it would be best to find a location somewhere in the yard for them, as I suspect that the sun hitting those plastic buckets heats the roots up quite a bit. I really don’t have any idea how many tomatoes I’ll get from these plants, but I am hoping to be able to can up some spaghetti sauce and some whole tomatoes later this year. The varieties I planted are:

Arkansas Traveller
Millionaire
Paul Robison
Cherokee Purple
Roma
Kentucky Beefsteak

I had intended to save the seeds from these tomatoes, but am now wondering if they will cross polinate with one another. I guess I’ll need to do some research on that.

P.S. I got three semicolons into this post. I am very pleased with myself; I hope I used them correctly.