Root Cellar and Butchering

The root cellar is finally starting to look like we are prepared for winter. In the pic, some heads of cabbage hung for fresh eating all winter long and below them about 20 heads of celery. The celery is dug up and set, roots and all, in a container and watered occasionally.We have several barrels of potatoes packed in dry leaves and a cooler full of carrots.We don't have any apples this year but thankfully we have a lot of dried apples from last year.
   Monday was butchering day. We slaughtered one of the potbelly/kune cross sows. She has not raised a single piglet so it was time. I have the bacons out of the cure,rinsed, and drying now. As soon as they are dry they are going in the smoke house. The hams will be ready to smoke Saturday or Sunday.
  We also butchered four of our older doe rabbits. These we boned out to use with the pork trimmings for sausage. Since there is very little fat in the meat of rabbits ,the very fatty meat trimmed on the pork was a perfect mix.

The bowl on the left is the pork, right the rabbit. These were mature does and yield 13 pounds of meat from the four. I added enough pork to make a 35 pound batch. This is a fresh breakfast type sausage. It came out very nice, spicy, with black pepper,sage,ginger,thyme,nutmeg,salt, and the cure of course.I order mine on the internet. It is usually called Prague powder no.1. This is of course, a nitrate, which some people don't like. For myself, I would rather risk whatever health hazard there may be in the nitrate instead of facing the known fatality of botulism.

That is why nitrates are put into processed foods like this, especially if they are to be smoked. A smoke house eliminates oxygen and is the perfect temp. for botulism to grow. Nitrates prevent this.
  I stuffed the sausage into these meat bags with a canning funnel. Not the fastest job but it works.I get a lot of satisfaction from curing my own hams and bacon as well as sausage making. It saves a lot of money and most importantly we know what we are eating.

We are very careful and down right picky about our butchering practices. We want the animal calm right up to the moment of death and we want that to be as painless as possible. We try to keep the meat absolutely clean and if some dirt does get onto the carcass we immediately trim that off. While cutting up meat we trim out and discard any thing that doesn't look  wholesome. I wish we could somehow preserve this with out a freezer but if you want fresh year round that is the price.

Here's your cuteness for the day . This is one of Ann's kitties  and Lily helping her sort some Alpaca fiber. The cat is in love with the stuff. Lily is just try to hog the attention!

I like the color variation on these Staghorn Sumac leaves.

 Homesteading, just like most other things, is repetition. Plant, Till, Harvest, Preserve, Plant, Till, Harvest, Preserve. This makes it hard to come up with new things to blog about after a few years! All of which is my excuse for posting so seldom lately. I love learning new stuff or more exactly, learning old ways. A couple of building projects have kept me too busy to do much else lately but we will be butchering some pot belly pigs soon and I'll try to do something on that. Mean while, this will be my 188th post. Many of them are how- to sort of post and ALL of my post are based on stuff I did not just passing on someone else's experience. Have a look around, I'll be back later.

SPRING HARVEST SEASON

Winter buds of  Populus balsamifera

 Most people don't think of spring as harvest time but there are plenty of useful things to gather at this time of the year. The winter buds of Balsam Poplar are one of them. These buds contain a aromatic resin that is easy to extract and is a useful addition to salves. Also known as Balm of Gilead, it has several folk remedy uses. A little research on the internet will provide lots of info but they all miss what I like best about it. I has a very fresh woodsy scent. By the way, field guides all say it has sticky winter buds. I have found they are not sticky, until you crush them releasing the resin.

Here is another useful thing that I like to gather in spring. Sphagnum moss. Dry Sphagnum can hold up to 20 times it's weight in water. This makes it a great addition to potting mixes where it will help retain moisture. I also use it as mulch, especially around acid loving plants like blueberries. In early spring none of the other plants have started growing yet so it is easy to gather lots of it. I wring it out like a sponge as I stuff it in a bag so it is lighter to carry. I lay it out on screens in the greenhouse for a few days to dry.

Dry roots of Coptis groenlandica

While I am out in the bogs gathering Sphagnum I often come across another very  useful herbal medicine plant. This is Gold Thread which very accurately describes the part I am interested in, the roots. The tiny ,very bright gold or yellow roots contain berberine, which is anti-inflammatory and antibacterial. It's other common name, Canker Root, indicates it's traditional use which is to treat canker sores and cold sores.  My experience indicates a strong tea applied topically is quite effective.

My garden gives up a few things in spring too. These Jerusalem Artichokes wintered over just fine in the ground. Also known as Sunchokes, it's a good idea to harvest as soon as the ground thaws since they will start sprouting once the soil warms up. I am going to increase my planting of these this year. They are a great low input crop to use as animal feed. My rabbits and hogs are ga-ga about the tubers and cattle and horses love the stalks and leaves. I also enjoy them occasionally and there are lots of recipes for them.

Well, I can't talk about spring harvest without talking about maple syrup. This has been a good year so far and the trees are still producing sap. I've made around 20 gallons of syrup so far this year. Since we make syrup every year and keep a lot of it for our own use, we have quite a bit stored from last year. I used some to make wine last year and might do that again this year.  Because of our surplus I am making sugar from most of this years crop. I have only sugared out about gallon and a half so far. I ended up with 10 1/2 pounds from that batch.

 I have about 12 gallons to sugar out today. That should yield somewhere around 95 pounds when done. This is darker syrup than my first batch so it will have a lot stronger flavor.

 It will be time for me to get all my seeds started next and lots of prep work to get the garden ready. Time for me to get to work.

Kick Spindle and Yarn Bowl

It has been a long winter and there are a couple more months to go here. The internet has provided some amusement and a few ideas to keep me out of trouble. This contraption was one I recently finished. It is called a kick spindle and is used to spin yarn much like that is done with a drop spindle. This is suppose to be a little faster than the drop spindle allowing for a much longer draw before the yarn has to be wound on. Needless to say my darling wife, Ann, will be the one learning to use it. As usual this was built with what I had as much as possible. This is proof that my shop is NOT a junk pile but a treasure room!

Here are the basic parts, a base  with some way to hold the shaft, the shaft with some type of flywheel, and the spindle. My base is a piece of maple burl I have saved for years for the right project. This was it. It's attractive and heavy which adds stability. I drilled this at a angle to receive the lower shaft bearing. A rubber band is glued unto the bottom edge to maintain clearance for the bearings inner race. That's the green line in the drill hole.I had a bronze bushing that I used for the upper bearing and the brass up right plate is drilled to accept that. That bushing is held in place by two rubber washers intended for a garden water hose. The small brass 'T' shaped piece is a bracket to hold the lower bearing in place.

The shaft is a piece of heavy walled brass tubing which happened to be the correct diameter to fit the bearings I had. The flywheel, a die cast 5 inch pulley, did not quite fit. I cut some thin plastic shims to center it  before locking it in place with the set screw. I gave it a coat of black paint except for the very edge. The area from the flywheel to the lower bearing is wrapped with two layers of leather lacing epoxy in place. The spindle is sized it slide snug into the main shaft. I have it drilled to take a pin but haven't needed it. This tubing is about 1/2 inch inside diameter. Again, this is what I had so that is what I used. The only items I bought for this were a set of four little rubber feet to help keep it from sliding around and a piece of 1/2 inch doweling to make the spindle.

I tapered the spindle down to about 5/16 inch and inserted a small brass cup hook. The large brass plated washed at the bottom is held in place with epoxy and backed with another smaller washer. This is both more and less elaborate than others I looked at on the web. Goggle images will show several dozen variations. Many have much simpler bearings or just a simple pin they spin on. I had them so I used them but I don't think they are that important as long as the shaft can turn freely it will work.

Here is another, simpler, project, a yarn bowl. Keeps the ball of yarn from leaving the area when the yarn is pulled. I bought this simple wooden bowl at a thrift store. I used a dremel tool with a wiz bit to cut the spiral. Sand, sand ,sand, and then some decorative painting. A coping saw or a heavy rasp could be used to cut the spiral too.