Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Bruce]

I don't mean to wish my life away ,but I sure am looking forward to November when it's nice out again ,

My beans and cukes just barely came up!!!!!

Size depends on the breed of the squirrel....grays are the smaller of the common breeds.

Around here the grays are the big ones, reds smaller by about 1/3. In general the reds are at higher elevations and the grays lower.

Mike, sure sorry you lost a hen, hope the perpetrator gets what it deserves soon.

 

[Mike CHS]

Mike, sure sorry you lost a hen, hope the perpetrator gets what it deserves soon.

If it was the possum, that is taken care of but the traps are baited again. We had not been locking them up at night since we had not been having issues but we are now.

We have Crimson Sweet Watermelons trying to take over the yard but they should start to be ready to eat in a couple of weeks. I have a few of my tomato plants starting to wear out so I started a half dozen new plants from suckers of the healthy plants. I planted too many bell pepper plants considering I still have about 20 pounds of chopped peppers in the freezer. I guess it's time to break out the dehydrator and brew up some pepper powder.

 

[greybeard]

Southern squirrel are wee little things....the cold areas of the country have the nice fat big ones with meat...I never ate one so can't comment on taste, but the thought ....

They're "ok'. Most of the time, I've had them in some sort of a stew like dish. Squirrel and dumplings seem to be the favorite around here.
I have not shot, killed, cleaned, and cooked one myself in several decades tho there are many hundreds of them around here. I could shoot 3-4 a day off one of the bird feeders.

 

[Baymule]

You better have one of those freezers empty when you take a steer to slaughter. It will fill up fast! The only beef we buy is rib eye and T-bone steak when it goes on sale. With the lamb, pork and chicken we raise, there is not much need for beef. If we had the room and pasture, I would have a steer, I like cows, just not enough pasture for one.

I went to Walmart and bought plastic storage tubs, after measuring the height, width and depth of the shelves in the freezers. I organized the frozen vegetables and meats in the tubs. All those unstackable packages that threw themselves at me when I opened the doors stayed in place, in the tubs. I can't stack peas, corn, okra, greens, etc. No matter what I do, they just slide around. It went from a mess where I couldn't find anything, to neat organized tubs that I could pull out and get what I wanted. Why didn't I think of that years ago?

Before

After

 

[Mike CHS]

We use the plastic containers also but it works out that the boxes our butcher uses to pack the finished product fits perfectly in our largest upright freezer and three of them fit perfectly on the shelves. That lets us label the type of product in the boxes. We asked the butcher to let us know when he has someone wanting to split a beef since we can't use a whole one. We still have quite a bit of the one we processed last spring left.

 

[Baymule]

we still have a whole lot of Wilbur the 820 pound boar left. I'm thinking about thawing out a bunch of that meat, making stuffed sausage and smoking it. We love smoked sausage and would eat it up a lot faster. But I need to get over processing all those durned chickens first. LOL I ran the pressure canner all day yesterday, making dog food with all the chicken backs, necks, wing tips and other pieces that weren't important to me. Over all, I got 34 quarts of dog food and 5 quarts of rich broth for the dogs. We processed 38 chickens, sold 20, gave a couple away and put 15 in our freezer. I need to go outside and play for awhile before I tackle processing any more meat. LOL LOL

 

[Mike CHS]

We brought the 16 younger lambs in to worm those that have a high egg count and to give all of them except Taffy and Princess, their 2nd CDT shot. We firmed up our cull list (sort of). We had three on the list that are Ringo's grand daughters (line bred) but I talked her out of two of them because they are female versions of him and they are going to be some big girls. The two wethers we are keeping for us are also Ringo's grand sons and they have his personality also and are among the tamest of all of this years lambs. I'm really looking forward to how his lambs in Texas turn out.

 

[Baymule]

We are looking forward to it too! Can't wait to see how his babies turn out.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Have you found a good supplier for the seeds? I can't find one?

Miss @Arnaki,



I don't know if you posted on the wrong thread or not, but even if you did -- WELCOME! Please take a bit of time to introduce yourself. You will find the folks here to be mighty friendly and helpful. So stop in and say hello.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Mike CHS]

She is welcome to post here all she wants but she does have an Intro thread going.

https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/thanks-for-having-me.39796/