Water Those Chickens & Give Those Rabbits a Home

Unfortunately where we currently live, we cannot have chickens. Darn zoning! Someday....someday :)  But....my mother in law can and already has chickens! I stumbled upon a few different ways to make homemade waterers for chickens. These are great for a couple of reasons:

1. The water is kept up off the floor, which give your chickens more room to walk around
2. Having the water up makes the chickens reach for the water and the stretching helps egg production
3. The water is kept clean! No more sawdust, or droppings, or any other misc stuff in your chickens water, which is so much healthier for them!

You can't beat that! I saw this idea, looked up a few different ways (because there are soooo many different ways to do things) and I decided I would try it this way.

1. I bought a 5 gallon bucket from Lowe's, with the lid.

2. I took a tape measure and drew 4 lines crossing the the middle with a Sharpie marker

3. I took the tape measure and measured about 2 inches from the outside rim of the bucket and marked with a Sharpie

4. I drilled a hole in the bucket at the 2 inch mark with a 5/16 drill bit. (pretty surprised my hubby let me use his drill and get into his tool box :) )

5. Then I took these nipples I ordered off ebay, http://www.ebay.com/itm/110861344116?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 it said it could take up to 20 days because the seller is overseas, but I received then within 10 days, and I used the socket adapter for the drill, fit with a 9/16 inch socket and inserted them into place. 

          *I had to use the 9/16 inch socket for it to grab the nipple snug enough to thread through the hole. 

          *I made sure to tighten them so they were snug, you don't want water to leak out around the nipples,                                                                 

            but not too much because they will break

Now for the big test, will it hold water? Will it leak? Here we go......

IT WORKS! YAHOO SUPER EXCITING! You can see in the video below just how easy the nipples move, it will be super easy for the chickens to get their water :)

 

Also we have decided to put our daughter in 4H. She is going to show a rabbit this year, plus we are contemplating raising rabbits for meat. We are going to give it a whirl anyways :) The hubby started building a rabbit hutch out of a shipping box and pallets:

We just need nesting boxes, a door, and some chicken wire. And the best part it isn't going to cost us anything except for the cost of the chicken wire! The shipping box and pallets were free, we already had drywall screws, and we already had the 2x4s that are going to be the legs. We have decided to use a solid bottom instead of wire so the rabbits and bunnies do not get their nails caught. It wont be hard to scoop out the cages when we clean them and it is more safe for the animals. I will post more pictures when we have rabbits in them. 

Until next time, God Bless <3

Almost St. Patty's Day & That Means Cabbage

I guess I am on a vegetable kick this week. We had a corned beef brisket, getting into the spirit of St. Patty's Day and all, and well you can't have corned beef without cabbage! But we also love potatoes and carrots, and my crock-pot just isn't big enough to handle our hearty appetites, so I ended up with half a head of cabbage left over. 

I wasn't sure if you could freeze cabbage or not. And the only canned cabbage I had seen was sauerkraut  which my hubby despises, and then it occurred to me *duh* brussel sprouts are like mini cabbages and people freeze those...yes, that was really my logic :) 

So here we go:

I took my half a head of cabbage, and halved it. So if you had a full head of cabbage, you could quarter it. Don't cut out or cut through the stem portion, this holds the leaves of the cabbage together so they don't come off when blanching.

Then I placed the cabbage into boiling water, and blanched for 3 minutes:

Just like with the green beans from my last post I removed the cabbage and placed into an ice cold water bath to stop the cooking process...only this time I didn't have an ice bin to un-thaw so it is just ice cold water, works the same :)

Then, once cooled, I placed into food saver bags and vacuum sealed them.
Voila, ready to be frozen cabbage.

Woohoo. This time a year stores generally have cabbage on sale due to the St. Patrick's Day Holiday. And although I enjoy coleslaw, I prefer cabbage much more in roasts and sometimes soups. This is an awesome way to add some out of season veggies to your freezer without breaking the bank. And believe me I am all about NOT breaking the bank :)

Until next time, God Bless <3

Also if you get the chance, please check out the following blog and pray for Ryan and his family. What an amazing journey they have been on and are going through. As they are going through this bit of hardship  please join me in praying for them:

Matthew 18:20English Standard Version (ESV)

20: For where two of three are gathered in my name, there I am among them"

http://rkprudhomme.blogspot.com/

Cheap Frozen Green Beans

As I have mentioned I do everything on a budget. "Prepping" can be quite expensive as well as healthy living and eating, so when I find good deals on produce I snatch them up :)

For example my local grocery store has a rack they fill up that says "oops we purchased too much" and it is produce that is usually at the point that if you don't do something with it right away it needs to be thrown out. I LOVE THIS RACK! Yesterday I found 2.60 lbs of green beans for only $1.79, woohoo I have been wanting to freeze some veggies *snatch* 

Here is my first go at freezing green beans. First I cut off the ends of the beans and then cut them into "bite sized" pieces. Then I put them in a steamer with boiling water for about 3 minutes. you can see some of the pieces are bigger than others, I didn't make it an exact science.

Start

After 3 minutes

I then submerged them in ice water to stop the cooking. There is a lot of ice water here, you don't need this much I just noticed the ice bin in my freezer needed defrosted so I dumped it all in the sink to help cool the beans. 

Once they were cooled down I used my handy dandy FoodSaver Freeze 'n Steam bags, and put 2 - 2 1/2 cups of beans per package.

Here is want I ended up with:

By the way I love these FoodSaver bags. They came with our food saver, and have all sorts of different veggies and cook times on them. They even have cooking time for chicken breast (I may have to try that). The bags and FoodSavers can be found here. I highly recommend buying one. Your food stays good for so much longer. And I only have a family of three, but since it is cheaper to buy in bulk, we save mucho bucks by being able to separate and portion out our meat, cheese, veggies, etc. You can find them here (we have the FoodSaver Master Chef Kit) http://www.foodsaver.com/index.aspx

Until next time God Bless <3 

Delicious Chicken Broth

I never even thought of canning my own broths. I was pretty excited when the idea hit me and I called my mother in law and she confirmed that I can do that, and that she cans her own all of the time. *YAY* This will be such a money saver for us! Generic brand chicken broth is around 79 cents a can around here, and it isn't anything to jump over the moon about.

So I had some chicken theighs I cooked up to shred for tamales. I always season the broth as I boil the chicken anyways, it makes the chicken more flavorful. I usually add a little bit of salt and a lot a bit of garlic, onion powder, parsley and pepper. It makes some delicious chicken noodle soup, but I don't always want to make it, so now I have an alternative. 

After my chicken was completely cooked I separated it from the stock pot to clean the bones and skin out and let the broth cool. When I was done with my chicken a bunch of the fat had setted to the top of the pot. I skimmed some (not all, it provides flavor, but fat does reduce the shelf life) from the top and then reheated the broth to a good boil. 

Then I canned it just like I do my tomatoes. By putting the lids in simmering hot water, filling the jars with the hot broth, then cleaning the rim of the jar and placing the lid on securely and lastly tightening the ring. Easy peasey! And voila we have homemade chicken broth, canned, and able to be stored away for future use! What a happy camper I am.

By the way that is an old spaghetti sauce jar. They have enough wax left over on the lids, that you can re-use them to can. This is another tid-bit from my mother in law, and she said that  grandma canned all of her stuff back in the day in used jars. Awesome, I am excited that I can re-purpose jars that before would be tossed  out.

Until next time, God Bless <3

Easy Venison Jerky

So part of off the grid living is learning how to preserve meat. I figured I would start easy and make use of some of the venison my husband provided for us this year. (this summer I would like to try dehydrating out doors)

I have made venison jerky in the past, but have mainly used liquid marinades and used whole muscle meat. So this time I decided I would try burger, and a dry mix. When I was younger my grandmother and I would make jerky and we bought this mix, Hi Mountain Jerky Cure and Seasoning:

It can season up to 15 pounds of meat. I tried it once on whole muscle meat and it was delicious. Plus it is only around 7 dollars and available at Wal-Mart.

The kit comes with a shaker, cure mix, seasoning mix, and an instruction book. The book...I guess it is more of a pamphlet, tells you how much of each mixture to put in the shaker depending on if you are using whole muscle or ground meat and how many pounds. I found this quite useful, as normally I don't follow a recipe for anything, but rather throw things together and taste as I go. But I wanted to get this right so the meat stays preserved for as long as possible.

I have had this ol' thing laying around for a long time. I even tried to sell it in a yard sale once, but it didn't sell, needless to say I am glad about that now :) It is a Nesco Beef Jerky Factory Plus.

It comes with the ratchet style jerky gun, a thin jerky attachment and two sized snack stick attachments  It also came with instructions, 10 seasoning packets (beef pepperoni, cajun, original and peppered mixes) and measuring spoons.
What I really liked about this gun is how easy it was to use. The ratchet style actually helped moderate how thick the strips were. This was very nice because my daughter was even able to help because the flow was so easy to regulate.

Here Jaydin is helping me out by prepping the jerky we made on the dehydrator. Out of about 3 pounds of meat we got 5 full trays and 2 cookie sheets for the oven:

My dehydrator is nothing special. It is an old Mr. Coffee, and doesn't even have a temperature regulator. But I have dehydrated mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, celery, bananas, strawberries and now jerky without a problem.

And we have the finished product from the dehydrator:

It was on the dehydrator for about 8 1/2 hours. I only had to blot the "fat" twice. I think you may have to blot it more if it were beef, but venison is very lean and didn't have much fat to cook out.

The finished product from the oven:

The jerky in the oven was on the lowest temperature my oven would go, and only took 3 hours. The texture is much coarser  and the flavor isn't as bold. But they are both delicious and I will be using ground meat, High Mountain mix and my Nesco Jerky Factory Plus kit again

Until next time God Bless <3

Easy & Fun for the Kiddos

So I grew up and all my mother canned were tomatoes (which is great too, I really enjoy canning tomatoes). My great aunt seemed to can everything from peaches to green beans, but I was too young to see her do any of it...so when I started on this journey I started from scratch per-say.

Luckily for me, the hubby is a farm boy and my mother in law is a very knowledgeable woman! :) Also, apparently my Granny knows a lot more about canning and being self sufficient that I knew.
Since I had very little knowledge of well anything when it came to "prepping", I wanted to make sure my daughter was involved, and grew up with the knowledge of how to prepare foods that, while easier to buy in a store, can be made at home.

So, Jaydin had her cousin Isabella spend the night. We made a couple special drinks for the girls that I found on Pinterest:. Then I wanted them to get involved with learning something new...so I started with butter. It was easy enough...

But here are the drinks we made first



1) Harry Potter Butterbeer:
http://www.designdazzle.com/2011/07/summer-camp-harry-potter-activities-wizard-for-a-day/

2) Shirley Temple, lined with pop rocks (we used Sprite, not Ginger Ale)
http://www.parenting.com/gallery/mocktails-recipes?pnid=619887

Then I used the left over heavy cream from the Butterbeer...I divided it into 2 pint size jars and asked the girls to make me some butter. Of course they looked at me like I was crazy, and even after I explained that if they shake it for a while the cream in the jar would turn into butter, looked at me with a great deal of skepticism. They did shake and shake those jars though and got very excited when it started to thicken and they could hear a ball starting to form. This was just before they were done:

And this was the completed result:

Butter to the left and buttermilk to the right. The girls were so excited! They tasted the buttermilk and loved it, and then we spread the freshly made butter on some saltine crackers and they scarfed them down.

I remembered making it this way when once a year in May we were allowed to skip school and go to the fairgrounds to the "Folk Festival." Aside from making butter there would be homemade flowers, fly fishing lures, and people showing you how to make or do lots of things (like grind up corn) that have sort of been forgotten. Now that I am older I see how great it was that I was able to skip school and learn something...and I am glad I did, because it benefited my daughter too :)

Not Quite a "Dooms Day Prepper"

Well for starters, my name is April. I live in MIchigan, where we are currently covered in snow! We got pounded on this last week! I have a wonderful husband (David) and a beautiful daughter (Jaydin). I'm here because in light of the economy, the government, the rise in the cost of food, and just wanting to be self reliant I have decided to experiment with "off the grid" living.

Some of you are probably like "woah this girl is one of those" and click off the page, but let me say I am NOT an extremest. It pretty much boils down to the fact that I want to make sure I can take care of me and mine if something does happen that would force us to rely on living that is different that what I am living today.

Not to mention I believe God wants us to be prepared:

Proverbs 27:12

“A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.” 

So please join me as I try, and probably fail, at learning to be self reliant & research "off the grid" living. 

Also keep in mind, money is an issue for me, therefore I will be "prepping" in spurts and do what I can when I can. I started stocking up on a few items about 2 weeks ago. These are a few of the things I bought along with my first batches of dehydrated food.

I purchased 1- 16oz bag of dried pinto beans, 1-16 oz bag of dried split peas, 2 containers of aspirin  2 containers of triple antibiotic ointment, and 2 containers of salt with iodine. I then dehydrated about a half package of each, celery and carrots (in the small jars to the left). I also dehydrated mushrooms (fresh white button) and sliced potatoes. 

I feel pretty satisfied with this as I had completed this within 2 days of deciding to embark on this journey. Also because it only cost me about 10 dollars. FYI the Aspirin and triple antibiotic ointment are in the 88 cent section near the pharmacy in Walmart, and everything else I either had, or bought on sale. 

I found an awesome site that gives pretty informative articles on off the grid living and a list of supplies to find at the grocery store as survival food. The list can be found here:

http://offgridsurvival.com/survivalfood/