Sauce is not a simple matter for some of us. There are so many versions to be explored. Bolognese, gravy, marinara, meat, etc. There is the family recipe that must be kept true. There are internet recipes and advice on every cooking website. Here we are discussing our Farm Life Family recipe. This is basically my mother's mother's (gramma) recipe with a few minor alterations such as not using tomato paste. I still do not understand tomato paste. Growing up Italian, making sauce was a ritual. It was a right of passage to be allowed to help at all. The family recipe was taught by grandma shortly after learning to walk. Your age did not matter...this was a serious job. Some of my earliest memories of childhood at grammas was standing on the highchair stirring and skimming the sauce. Grammas was a meat sauce; not a gravy. Maybe we should take a minute and run through the terms: Marinara: A quick vegetable only sauce. The term Marinara originated with fishermen that would whip up a quick vegetable sauce on the boat or shore. This term came from the people making it, not what they put in it. Zuppa Di Pesce: THe above Marinara with seafood. Bolognese: A slow simmered meat sauce with gound meats in it. Ragu: Another slow-simmered meat sauce but this time with Whole meatballs and Sausage and things instead of ground meat. Also referred to as Gravy and meat sauce depending on where you grew up. Anecdotally, I have found the term Gravy used a great deal with New Jersey Italians I have interacted with over the years. Today we are discussing the Traditional Italian-American Meat Sauce. It is rare that I will make a pot of sauce for just one meal. I make gallons at a time and pressure can everything. Our children are then able to make dinners in our absence with us knowing that there is nothing but wholesome goodness in there. Our vegetables, our meats. The fact that there is meat in the sauce is a constant. Exactly what meat is subject to change. This batch contained lamb shanks, homemade sweet and hot sausages, and the family favorite, meatballs. Last batch, I used beef shanks and Ox tail with the sausages and meatballs. This batch of meatballs was beef and rabbit meats. I start this process with the meatballs. I do apologize, but I do not have hard measurements for you. I was taught measurements such as a pinch, a handful, it looks right, and my favorite...Enough, but not too much. Very helpful right? I can tell you the quantities I used for this batch, but you have to play with the amounts of everything to match your pallet and pot. 13Lbs Beef Bottom Round: ( I just cannot buy ground meat at a store. I worked in a butcher shop as a teenager with true professionals, all of which took quality and safety as paramount objects. Still, the ground meat, as in all butcher shops, was made with the bits that were trimmed and the oxydized meats that could not stay on display. All ground to order, but still you did not know exactly what pieces were going in. If it did not look lean enough or too gray, run it through the grinder again and it would appear "red-er" with less notable fat and oxydization. Do not misunderstand, there were no safety issues like in the 1850's, but still. I will never forget how the first butcher I ever worked with would get a gleam to his eye when someone ordered a pound of 90% lean ground beef. He would always say something like, "would you like to choose a steak here in the case for us to grind or would you prefer the house grind?" With the prior being full steak price, they would almost always choose the house. He would then say to me, "You know what to do" and I would run the 80% lean through again to look leaner. He had made it clear to me at the onset of my employ that this was his one untruth, his one thing he would not be completely honest with the customer about. Though looking back on it, it really wasn't dishonesty, it was just not full disclosure. He felt that a customer had to pay for what they wanted. There was a reason the house grind was $3/Lb and our least expensive sirloin was $7/Lb. He explained how he hated wasting the meat and simply could stay in business if he ground a seven dollar steak and sold it for 3.. Ground meat was the leftovers. Now I go to the grocery store or restaurant depot and see ten pound tubes of ground meat. No country of origin, no piece list of what they ground. It just isn't my favorite. So I get whole cuts and grind them myself from known farms. (As a side note, beef calf costs more than doubled a couple years ago and we could not raise a cow this year or last. Our last cow was three years ago and we just finished eating him a few weeks ago.) Ground meats are also the most dangerous things we can buy. There is just no way of knowing exactly what is in there. The USDA monitoring has improved the safety, but it remains a crap shoot . My g ramma and her sister both would insist that they go back with the butcher when they ordered ground meats. Back in the 50's through the 80's, neighborhood butcher shops were a still a thing. You would pick a steak and have it ground at full price of course. Somewhere in the mid to late 80's, as the family stores were being pushed out by our mega markets, this stopped being an option. Now we have ground meats pre-packaged or pre-ground in the display case. The package is filled with nitrogen to stop the chance of oxidization of the meat, increasing the visible shelf life. Prior to this procedure, meat did not need an expiration date as you would see a piece of gray meat that you just did not want to buy. Ok, I will climb off of the ground meat soapbox. 6 LBS of ground Rabbit: We raise rabbits and harvest them on a regular basis. Rabbit meat is delicious, with a texture and appearance similar to ground chicken, and a mild flavor. To be quite honest, our family would prefer just rabbit meatballs but Nana will not eat them, so we meet in the middle with a mix. Eggs: (I use three duck eggs for this amount of meat) It would be four or five chicken eggs depending on their size) Breadcrumbs: about four cups. I use homemade crumbs from our bread. Onions: 2 large (I actually ran them through the grinder with the beef) If chopping by hand, you want a fine dice so they don't fall out when you are rolling them into balls. Garlic: two whole bulbs carrot: 4 medium (also run through the grinder or a fine dice) Parsley: A ton of parsley. about three handfuls finely chopped Basil: just about the same as the parsley Marjoram: a small handful grated Romano: three cups (Parmesan will do fine) There are two methods for mixing the ingredients. the first is to simply put everything in a mixing bowl and mix till combined. The proper method is to mix everything but the meat until well blended. add the meat to the mix and fold it in just till combined. This will make the most fluffy meatballs possible. If you prefer your meatball chewy-er, (like the frozen meatballs at BJ's. Costco, or Sam's Club) then use the first method and mix like you are making sausage. Next, you must decide how to cook them. I fry them. Gramma fried them in olive oil. We have a Bayou Classic fryer which is loaded with beef and lamb tallow and pork lard. You can also bake them at 375 degrees. Now I mentioned earlier that I pressure can my sauce. With that in mind, I fry them at 350-375 quickly so I get a nice hard crust but the inside is still underdone...they will finish in the sauce. If you are not canning, add your balls to the sauce about 30 minutes before it is done. You can also drop the raw meatballs into your sauce and cook them completely in the sauce. This removes the precooking step, but also removes the outer crust. Again, it is just a personal preference. I can tell you if you drop them in raw, do not stir for at least 20 minutes so they have time to firm up, otherwise you will be making Bolognese. As a note, there is only one tray pictured while I made two and a half trays with the 20Lbs of meat mix. Now onto the soffritto. (vegetable mix) I use the classic Italian mix. Onions (3) Carrots (4) Celery (1 head) Technically garlic is not part of the soffritto as it is too delicate and is not added at the initial stage. All are diced to a medium dice and added to the pot with hot olive oil. We sweat the veggies until soft and translucent. Garlic: Two whole bulbs pealed and sliced thin. Parsley: a few handfuls of chopped parsley Basil: Just a bit less than the parsley Sweet Paprika: just shy of two tablespoons Marjoram: just shy of two tablespoons Marconi Pepper: Just one whole pepper slit down the center. I would use more, but our girls don't yet like spicy. (this is the classic long thin Italian pepper. Red Wine: 2 cups for this much sauce. We used the family wine as a child. The making died with my great uncles and I now buy wine. This time I had a blended red from California...any dark red will do...no Chablis. The process started with the sweating of the soffritto. I then add the remaining herbs and let them sweat a few minutes. I then move the herbs to the outer rim of the pan and place the lamb shanks on the high heat to brown. Once they have been browned on both sides, take out the shanks, stir the veggies and move them back out to the side of the pot and brown the sausages. Once the rest of the meat is browned, pour in the wine. Allow it to reduce for just a minute or two. Now it is time to add the tomatoes. In a perfect world, this post would have started a day earlier with the processing of a tub of tomatoes. Blanching, and peeling, and crushing. Unfortunately for the recipe, My girls have been devouring our tomato crop before they leave the garden. It also would take several cubic feet of raw tomatoes to make 12 quarts of crushed tomatoes. For this round, I used Sclafani Crushed and Isabella diced tomatoes, two number ten cans of each. The diced pour out clean, but the crushed tomatoes leaves a bit in the can. I like to wash down the sides and pour that watery mix into the pot as well. The sauce needs some water for the slow simmer. I then add all the meats, except the balls, and keep it on medium heat, stirring often, Once the simmer starts, I move it to the lowest burner and simmer on low, covered, for three or more hours. I know it is done when the shank meat falls off the bone. When the sauce is cooked, I then scoop out all the meat. Of course sauce was gonna be dinner, so a smaller pan separated enough sauce and meat for dinner, including the meatballs. An hour before dinner, I added those meatballs to the dinner pot and simmered to fully cook them. The last ten minutes I add the other meats that are fully cooked just to heat them. Canning time: I add meatballs to fill the quart, wide-mouthed mason jars, add an inch of water, then fill them up with sauce. In the past, I added the watered down sauce to the jar first, and place the meatballs into the jars, and then top off with additional sauce if necessary. This is a much faster method. The way I did it this time caused the need to push the balls around to remove air pockets. It took an extra minute per jar. One jar I did not get all the air out and the lid blew off during the canning process covering the other jars with sauce; what a mess. Sausage links are added to other jars and filled with the same inch of water and sauce. The sauce jars without meats, I use regular mouth jars as there will be no battle with balls when its time to reheat. What about temps and times? This has been a lot of trial and error. Meat free marinara can be canned in a water bath as it is high acid. When I add meat, I see a clear need to pressure can them. The internet says quart jars get 70 minutes at 10Lbs of pressure. I have attempted 45 minutes at 15Lbs and we lose a lot of sauce to boil over at the higher pressure. One note is that not all pressure cookers have the ability to adjust pressure 3-piece canner weight. 5, 10, or 15 pounds This is the weight on my presto canner. This is an internet picture of a replacement that is available. My smaller pressure cooker has only a 15Lbs weight. I use the smaller for three wide mouth pint jars or 4 regular mouth pint jars. The large unit will hold 7 quart jars. Someday, I hope to own the giant presto canner that will hold 14 quart jars. The meat free sauce still has meat juices and fats. Marinara can be water bath canned if you can assure the acidity is high enough. I always pressure can everything and we do can quite a bit of foods. For the quarts of sauce only, I used 10Lbs of pressure for 45 minutes. I also have rarely canned anything for over forty-five minutes. Again, this is not the recommended time, but I do like to experiment. After a decade of jarring meat sauce, I find the 45 mins of actual pressure time has been sufficient. The one time that I only went 30 minutes, half the jars pressurized on the shelf with dangerous bacterial growth. One of the best things you can know is to store your canned foods WITHOUT THE RINGS. Years ago, we had made a batch of dog food, We apparently did not can it long enough. At that time, I stored with the rings on so we could double stack the cans. About a month later, we heard an explosion. Not shake the house loud, but clearly something went pop. The smell; any other EMT's out there...something like UTI mixed with GI Bleed and a week of decomp. And then the mess. Botulism and chicken bone bits all over everything. It took hours of gagging to get that cleaned up. Since then, we have had a few cans go bad. Without the rings, the can off gasses as necessary. A slight whiff of an odor the first days that slowly increases until you know to go looking. Not having the rings on in storage also makes it easier to "spot check" every month or so. I simply grab the jar by the rim of the lid and lift it up off the shelf. If the lid comes off, it goes in the trash. Just that simple. One final note...skimming. As the meats cook, their fats are released. most of those fats and oils float to the top. Depending on how fatty your meats are will decide for you if skimming is necessary. I want fat in my sauce. So much of the flavor is provided by that oil. Still too much of a good thing is often not a good thing. When it appears that there is a layer of fats/oils covering the entire pot, consider skimming by sinking your ladle just below the surface of the fat. Work slowly and gently so you do not just mix it back in. The method we used in some of the restaurants I worked in was to bring the pot into the walk-in (or in your fridge, and allow the fats to solidify. Then lift it off of the pot. In this method, you are going to remove 96% of the fats. If you are concerned with the amount of fat you are eating, consider this method, but remember that our bodies do require fats and lamb fat is one of the best sources for your body. Children absolutely need fats to properly develop.

Native Live edge Gate Three years ago, we had whipped up a few gates out of some birch trees that fell in a storm. Like most property owners, trying to maintain a farm takes tremendous time. . Birch Limb Gate Those gates lasted four years and looked great for the first two. Year three they appeared weathered and worn, but still functioned. By year four they were destroyed. We expected this. We liked the look of the limbs with the silver birch bark. We also knew that the oils in the bark would lead to rapid wood decay. It happened. I went to open the gate and realized it was no longer stable. The bottom limb was in contact with the ground causing it to rot even faster. The rest of the gat was rotted, just not as much. Suddenly our paddock gates were not a someday project, but a to-day project. We had a decision to make. I could have easily cut down a few small trees to rebuild the limb style gates. But we had done that several times over the years. I also did not want to take the time to fell, buck, and notch the limbs. We also have a saw mill with piles of "first cuts". Off to the piles I went. Finding some nice wide boards, I began laying out the new gate designs. As you see in the gate below, the bottom boards natural taper matched the slope of the ground. Knowing that Sarah loves the natural flow of the live edge boards, I made every attempt to keep them full thickness for the aesthetics. She also dislikes wasting materials, so the hinges and field fencing from the old gates were re-used in the new one. The field fencing also served as the template as it was the correct size for the fence opening. I made the gates in reverse, placing the top and bottom boards face down on the ground. The "face" by the way, was the side I liked the best; totally subjective. I placed the fencing over them, accounted for the ground slope, and then placed the vertical boards over the fencing. Everything was screwed together with tan deckmate screws from the backside. The ends and center were necessary, but the gate just looked empty so I added the two slant pieces for looks more than anything else. They do add some strength but it was not necessary. Now we have beautiful gates for our upper and lower fields. They function well and should last us for many years to come.

Kuni Kuni- Berkshire crosses resting with mom and aunt Farm Life Farm has successfully cross bred a kuni kuni sow with a berkshire Boar. Last year we purchased a Berkshire Boar as breeding stock. We really do like the temperament of the kuni but were having issues with buyers as they do not make the best pork chops. I mean the flavor and texture is fantastic, however the size of a kuni chop is not of a size that most Americans want to buy. This past winter, our oldest sow had a successful birth but we were not aware she was pregnant and we did not have the coup set for birthing. The piglets were exposed to the cold and we lost all three. This was a terrible failure on our part. We then gave her some time for recouperation and tried again. This time we were prepared and had the sheep shack converted into a pig birthing suite and nursery. Ok, all we really did was add a couple block boards to a corner and a heat lamp. Two weeks ago, momma gave birth to two perfect little critters. They are both doing well and appear to be healthy and happy. We cannot wait to update this post as they grow. The things we are interested to find out: temperament We are hopeful they will be like their mom, the Kuni Kuni; calm and sweet and not looking to destroy everything. fat content Kuni's are a lard pig meaning they create a very thick and heavenly fat layer. Several inches thick. This was one of our reasons for starting with Kuni's. Sarah makes soap and we are able to render about five gallons of lard for soap making. Not including the leaf lard which we keep natural for hunters to use in their venison sausages. Will the mix provide the same amount of lard? rooting Over the past five years, we had the kuni's root down to the grub layer. They would turn over the grass and eat all the grubs just under the surface. Our Berkshire Boar roots. Like properly roots. two or three feet down he digs, completely changing the landscape and creating new "points of egress" from his pen. What will these piglets do? size the year-old Kuni's are around 150 pounds. Our berkshire is 350 pounds of pure muscle and just about a year old. How quickly will these piglets grow. How big will they get? Aggression Our chickens tend to wander into the sow pen. The Kuni sows do not care. The chickens sit on the kuni's. Over the past year, three hens and two ducks flew into the boar pen. Man that animal can move...pounced on them and devoured them while they were still squawking. We are very interested to see how much these piglets will want living chicken for a snack. About a year ago, we went to a friend's pig farm to get that Berkshire. As we stood trading stories and techniques, his dad (forty plus years of pig breeding under his belt) asked what we were breeding him to? I said a "Kuni Sow...what do you think?" His reply, "it'll probably kill her but they're your pigs." I explained that we already had a four year old Kuni sow with three litters already. His face lit up and he smiled, "oh alright. my son said you knew what you were doing. I wasn't so sure for a moment there." The cost of raising a kuni to harvest size takes a year at the least. the Berkshires are market ready in about six months, meaning half the feed costs. The berkshires grow fast and big but they are difficult to manage. Smart and powerful, the berkshire, especially with his active seed, boar spends all day testing the fence and trying to get to his girls. Nothing sinks fear into my soul like Nana exclaiming, "the pig is out again." To be quite honest, the last time he got out, we were able to get him into the sow pen. We scooped up the piglets and pushed mom out of the way while the kids chased the boar into the field. Mom and babies are now in the boar pen and the boar has a 2 acre paddock. Someday we will get him back home. Until then, 7,000 volts and plenty of forage has him content. Well that and the cattle panels we now have separating him from the girls. In the end, will this be a good plan that produces good quality meat with the least amount of energy on our part? I am not certain. Sarah is not certain. We will be patient and see what happens with our piglets. We will offer a new post on this topic in six months. I normally go manic with research. Blogs, scientific journals, white papers, and youtube videos. This time the only research I did was to ask google if they can crossbreed. Google said yes. Though that is rarely an acceptable answer to me, this time I went with it.

I still need to get better at photos and video. Many things need improving here at Farm Life Farm. A quick list of upcoming and ongoing projects. Organize all the "stuff" (much more on this later) Cover the Brooder Pen Build greenhouse Dig out the muck in the low spot of the lower Paddock Remove felled timber from hill Fell the three trees interfering w our starlink. Build the barn put up 3 cord for next winter Build enclosure for the 3 cord of fire wood The list is not in any particular order as a myriad variables affect our daily lists. For example, today was going to be an organization day. We would like to have pushed that off until the greenhouse was complete, but the matriarch has voiced a concern: She is overwhelmed and we must remove that burden from our geriatric charge...and she is not wrong, it looks like Sandford and son around here. Stuff: Over the past two years we have been scrounging for material to complete our building projects; 40 pallets to build a lunging ring for the horses and 20, 55 gallon barrels for the greenhouse heatsink, Large fiberglass tubs for the fish in the greenhouse, buckets and baskets to use for the hydroponic/aquaculture system. Roofing metal, windows and metal to make a gutter system. Have you ever left something out by the road instead of throwing it in the trash? We are some of those that stop and pick it up. Collecting the material has not been the issue, storage has. We have not organized. We have barrels and pallets and the other items scattered everywhere! A smarter team would have organized areas for everything and disseminate items as they were acquired. Now not only is Nana all sorts of bothered by the "mess" but we have lost track of what we have. I had gotten the pallet pile to forty several weeks ago, then yesterday I realized we had two more stacks of pallets in other places hidden behind other things. Barrels and windows were another overreach. I kept looking at the first stack (6) of double-hung windows found roadside as I collected more. Some went on the back trail, some up top where the greenhouse is going. We now have enough windows for the greenhouse sides: I mean we don't need any siding on the two sides of the greenhouse with enough left over for the barn. Not really a problem now that I think about it. At this point, the front yard looks good and will be beautiful again if we can get the grass to grow. Back yard is now clean and organized except for the girls "outdoor kitchen" that they did not put away. Brooder Pen: Brooder Coop We have the large laying hen pen that shares a fence with the meat bird pen. There was a 6ft x 4ft spot where the two pens meet. We put a front wall on and a little coop in. Last year we had thirteen poult turkeys. As we discussed in the predation post, the ravens had a meal. So, now we have ten chicks that just hatched and four 45 day old chicks in the primary brooder hutch. They are ready for fresh air and sunlight, but they must be protected. We had done nets in the past but that gets destroyed each fall/winter. Soccer net is difficult to get in place and a misery to take down when it is all tangled and ripped. Sarah Decided that a wood roof would put an end to our cover concerns. With the mill, we have piles of first cut boards. We kept the live edges and placed them with gaps big enough for sun and rain to get through but close enough to keep out the predators. Scraps of chicken wire were put up to fully enclose it. Chicken wire is nearly invisible on our brooder pen

Dissection Day At the Simsbury Ambulance EMT class Heart and Lungs are hard to get. If you wish to procure them from a Slaughter house, you must fill out copious paperwork with the USDA IF you can find a "meatman" that says yes. In my early Teaching career, every single slaughterhouse, meat market, and butcher shop said no...They wanted no part of giving or selling organs for medical specimens. Because of this "ban on consumption". collecting samples is impossible for an EMS Instructor, high school A&P teacher, or a college professor. I teach at a university and the faculty heads have not been interested in pursuing the process due to the assumed difficulty. Meanwhile, at Farm Life Farm, we can harvest our own. For the past five years or so, I have been harvesting heart/lung/great vessels from our sheep and pigs to bring to EMT classes for inspection and dissection. Pigs are my choice as they are just about a 1:1 size ratio to humans based on body weight. Sheep are slightly smaller but mammals just the same. This is now a highlight of my classes and has developed into a great training session. We begin with a viewing and palpation. We let the students feel the tissue and get a good look at it; stick their fingers into the Aorta and follow it back to the valve in the Left Ventricle. We go over the anatomy and emphasize the lung lobes and the four chambers of the heart. About half the time I am able to keep the larynx in tact. I can then show our EMT students how we intubate and where the tube actually seals at the vocal cords. If not, we simply place the endotracheal tube into the trachea. We then ventilate with the BVM and practice ventilations. I have found no better way to prove how little volume it takes to begin visible inflation. This moment provides clear insight into why we work so hard not to over-inflate the lungs. When they push a full 1,000mL of air into the free-to-expand lungs, the heart that is already surrounded by the lungs. disappears, completely enveloped in pressurized lung tissue. Normal lung function deteriorates rapidly when we stab the lungs simulating the pneumothorax. Practicing BVM ventilations offers a real experience for the additional difficulties the pneumo brings to the party. The next step is to dissect the lungs. We cut sections apart and look at the bronchi and bronchioles and blood vessels. It is impressive how intimate they become with the tissue. Even those that are squeamish or disgusted at the onset become determined to understand what every little tube is and color difference mean. These are moments that remain in an instructor's soul. Moments when you clearly got through to them and have an entire class engaged are magical. Experienced Responders Explore the heart and lungs The heart is next. We start with the pipes in and out and the four chambers. Repeating the route of travel our blood takes through the two systems. a syringe of warm water injected into the vena can be pumped out with some manual compressions. I then cut it in half and allow the students to inspect the heart  valves and chambers. I use this to re-enforce the concept of two separate pressure systems between the lungs and the body. We dissect the coronary arteries and look for signs of atherosclerosis. (My animals are pasture raised and eat all natural diets. There is no plaque, unfortunately. I should isolate a pig and feed it an American diet with snacks and McDonalds and soda. Though Peta would probably sue us. We finish up the event with time for the participants to do any final investigations while I meander to field additional questions. Oh, I almost forgot. Have you ever tried to guesstimate how much blood is in the puddle next to your patient? Probably not if your office is not a van with a bed and flashing lights. In this training, we inevitably have a puddle of blood sitting on the table at different stages of coagulation. We can play the price is right and then pour/scrape it into a graduated cylinder and see how much it really is. This is such a great event. I wish I had the ability to make this sort of thing standard practice. The educational experience cannot be compared to a video or pictures or even silicone replicas. There is nothing like the real thing. A moment with me on a soap box: Every EMT class should have a dissection day. What is such a common foodstuff in the rest of the world remains both criminal and taboo in our country. And I mean both as separate but equal impediments. In the very near future I will be sharing a souffritto recipe that has been in my family for many generations. While I do understand the concern of gastric aspiration pre-mortem, and the rare instance of heavy metals toxicity, I also understand that like virtually all of what our government has told us since 1903 has been scripted propaganda and cultural control. Fluoride was proven beneficial with one short term study in one small town. This ban was similar with no call from the public. The fact should be that a teacher certificate or an EMS Instructor certificate is all that a slaughterhouse needs to hand them over. The complete, unequivocal ban goes so far above the possible health risk that I cannot logically understand. Sadly this will remain a very unique opportunity afforded only to those students of the operators of Farm Life Farm.

Soffritto Napoletano over homemade pappardelle What is Soffritto? Traditional, that is what it is. As a proud member of a first-world nation and the middle class (though just barely), I don't need to eat the scraps. I also don't need to know where my food comes from: But I do both, passionately. We raise our own animals. We slaughter, butcher, package, and cook our own meat. My last post was about our medical students dissecting Hearts and lungs. For that reason, I do not eat many of them, especially the pigs as they are a 1:1 ratio to human organs. As a child, my great grandmother from Napoli would make a Thick crust "white pizza" with Olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and anchovies. She also made the Soffritto. They did not encourage us children to learn Italian...they actually worked against it. I believe this was a mix of wanting to be able to talk about "adult things" without us being nosy. They also believed that we were Americans and should only speak English. Still, through her mix of languages, I could understand that the making of the Soffritto was a point of agitation for her. She would swear and wave her arms around and lament what freedom is. My father would only ever say, "Its the lungs. She is pissed about the lungs." Maybe I was five when I first took interest in her anger. She was old and Italian and always seemed so angry. I would try to press for more explanation to no avail. Well, a lifetime later I totally get it. Before we began raising our own animals, I searched high and low, legal and illegal for lungs. Both for the classroom and the kitchen. Maybe if my name was Smith, a butcher would have let it happen, but no. Nobody would allow lungs to leave their shop in anything other than a vat of caustic fluid. Though really, the slaughterhouse took care of lung disposal...into the dog and cat food industry. Yes, your dog and cat can eat lungs. If you take a moment and look into culinary habits across the world, you will find a rich and often necessary tradition of eating organ meat. Why? The average American will ask that...why would you want to? Just the thought makes most feel queasy. The answer lies in survival. The poor wanted to eat and wanted to live. Lets take feudal Italy for example. Italy was a collection of independent city-states, kingdoms, and duchies prior to the Risorgimento (unification) in 1861. Following the Risorgimento, though now a nation, the land remained as duchies with the lord of that area controlling everything. Peasants worked for the land lord and were indentured...basically slaves. Allow me to digress: My mother's Great Grandfather was a member of an upper class, actually a Marconi. Well he had been out foraging and gathering firewood. Capos (enforcers) from a local lord approached and claimed that he was poaching. They proceeded to stab him 12 times. He lay in his pool of blood through the night and crawled home the following morning. He was a large man and their pocket knives did not manage to get to any vital spots. He healed and the neighboring lord attempted to make amends. Retribution was the way of the day and he would not accept anything short of an eye for an eye. Understanding that there would be blood, the three assailants fled to America. That was not the answer for those men. Great Grandad had a brother already in America. His name was Guglielmo Marconi who was manufacturing and selling his wireless radios out of New Jersey. His brother used this as a base for his search. The Search for those three men was 66% successful. The first was in White Plains, NY. The second was located within weeks of the first but in Waterbury, CT. He then was informed the third went to Chicago. Great-Great Grandad had no desire to travel any further having decided he liked the Waterbury area. He also saw a need for stone mason's in that area and sent for his family. He sent word to that third man that the other two were dead and he had found him and might come and finish him. The family lore remains that he enjoyed having let this man live and how miserable looking over his shoulder must have been. And that is how I ended up here. I also do not remember why I told this story! Oh yeah. So they took property rights seriously in the Italian Duchies. Though my ancestors were not the peasantry, the abuse of people and freedoms extended between classes. The peasants would farm, hunt, and slaughter for the lords. They would then be allowed to eat the scraps. Over the centuries, poor peoples all around the world worked out how to take the undesirables and create delectables. As such the entrails and sweetbreads became cuisine. Lung tissue was one of those things. The rich land owner did not want them so if the poor workers could find a way to make them yummy then life would be better. There is a bit more to it than that. Many humans have been stranded on tropical islands or in the vast stretches of wilderness throughout the world. Research of those destitute finds that they initially did what you would expect...they ate the flesh; protein rich and delicious. But as the weeks continued, those humans would find a growing hunger for different parts of the animal that they previously would not dream of eating. What is happening to these starving wretches? They were becoming deficient in micro-nutrients. Vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, specific amino acids, glucosamines, and chondroitin's. An animal's muscle mass does not contain many of these nutrients. It is the organs that hold them. Liver, Pancreas, Lungs, Kidneys, etc. hold the gold. Now lets return to feudalism. Those lords tended to have signs of deficiencies due to poor nutrition more than the peasants. They had the best cuts with the lowest nutrition ratios. The wealthy would have more fruits and vegetables throughout the year, but many did not wish to eat fruit and suffered for it. Now we move to more recent centuries. The classes evened out their freedoms but the eating styles did not drift away for many if not most cultures. The eating of offal and sweetbreads transitioned from necessity to desire. Dishes have been perfected and handed down through generations. My ancestors in Italy can continue to make their Soffritto uninhibited. Those emigrants, not so much. Back to my great grandma. She had to barter for pig or lamb lungs to make her dish. We could not talk about it, what it was, where it came from. My mother was staunchly against this sort of "yucky" food. She could smell it on me and knew what it was. I would be shunned and berated for eating something so dangerous and disgusting. Luckily for me, I had a strong constitution and an innate desire to eat weird things. Pancreas is a limit. I can eat it in sausage, but not alone. I also have never been able to just do as I am told. I must have a logical reason. I must be able to show that the way we have always done it is the best possible way. If it is not, then we must change it. Mom said lung meat was dangerous. I wanted to know why. She could not tell me. Over the years I have found many different reasons. The first of which is heavy metal toxicity. This makes sense at first. I do know that heavy metals collect in body tissue. If an animal is breathing air filled with a heavy metal then that metal will get trapped in the lung tissue and stay there for a very long time. The issue with this is that heavy metals are in fact heavy. Heavy things don't really float in the air. It is only in very specific and rare circumstances that mercury will aerosolize. The metals will "infect" other tissues as well so this alone cannot be the reason. Prior to starting this article, I looked at the actual statute and studies behind it. The statute is, 9 CFR § 310.16 - Disposition of lungs. Every year the USDA puts out a recommended regulations list for the following year. I cannot find any reference to who creates this list or how the items are added. However it happened, in 1969, the report had a recommendation to investigate the safety of lung meats. The USDA sent out a small group of investigators to three giant Midwestern slaughterhouses. I will paraphrase...I initially started copying and pasting but it became arduous and confusing. The gist is this. They went to three commercial slaughterhouses and randomly picked a total of 600 Beef lungs for testing. In 1970, 27.5 million cows were slaughtered for consumption nationwide. Anyway, 600 lungs were isolated. I can only assume one of the following: The decision to ban Lung meat had already been made and this study was just for show. My other assumption is that they had a finite budget and timeline and good intentioned government bureaucrats did what they could. The 600 lungs were not sampled and tested individually. Instead they took 1 oz worth of random samples from a lung and mix it with 1 oz from four other lungs making a sample of 5oz which they sent to the labratory for testing. Their tests showed "measurable amounts of airborne particulates and stomach juices." Not deadly amounts...not dangerous amounts, just measurable amounts. In the 1970's we were able to measure CDEC in parts per million while you would need parts per thousand to make someone sick. There was no reference to quantities of stomach juices referenced. Again, as someone who believes most of our government's decisions over the past 150 years have been nefarious in nature, I cannot believe that this one study of 600 beef lungs scared real scientists enough to cause a ban. I believe this ban was planned and the study was used to justify it. I have more research to do but am currently torn between an attack on the ethnic classes that frequently ate this sort of thing...our American Empire has been quietly subduing cultural differences since we claimed cuba and the Philippines. Removing one of the foods that these ethnocentric people frequented was one small way to further homogenize the masses. The other hypothesis is the dog food industry. The early seventies was a tumultuous time. With great strides being made by the "New World Order' types. Nixon was destroyed and replaced with one of their Manchurian candidates. The gold standard disappeared and manufacturing began to leave our shores. Dog food companies needed cheaper ingredients and organ meat was a good option. Tell the slaughterhouses they could no longer sell parts to the masses decreased their value to $0 overnight. Actually a net loss. Remember they were selling lung meat for money now they had to pay money to destroy the lungs and dispose of them. Dog food companies to the rescue. Read the statute and see all the different ways they state that the lungs can be used for nothing but dog food. They would take them for free. This might have saved the dog/animal food industry in America, but again this is currently only a hypothesis until I can provide references. Have I mentioned that there is very little historical record of eating cow lungs. Pig and Lamb lungs are on the menu. I did not look very hard but all reference I can see to lung meat is lamb and pig yet our USDA did not bother to test these animals prior to banning them. It is also uncanny how little discussion there was. Or should I say was NOT. There were no hearings. There was no public notification. Just a quiet addition of a new regulation...no vote, no congress, no president. Just a couple of bureaucrats and one small study. For those who might be interested in the recipe, look no further: I don't do so well with measurements but will provide the process. Porcine Heart Half to all of a Porcine Liver ( depending on your love of liver) A Kidney or two Lungs For the Sauce 1 large onion a couple sticks of celery 1 large carrot A ton of garlic 4 or 5 10 oz cans of crushed tomatoes or 50oz of fresh crushed tomatoes Large Handful of Parley Small handful of Marjoram Process: Dice the meats: I like to do a fine dice, Like 1/8 in cubes. Do your best based on your knife skills set aside in the fridge. Saute your Soffritto (italian Miriproix) celery, carrot, onion, and garlic Add the cans of tomatoes add the minced meat and stir to incorporate. Set stove to low and let it go. 3- 5 hours once it begins to simmer. Note: This can be pressure canned. I would never advise anyone to actually can meats because canning is dangerous and you probably would never figure out how to do it without killing everyone you know with botulinum toxin. If you were to try regardless of the severe risk to your life, you could pressurize to 15 pounds and let pints cook for 35 minutes. Quart jars 45 minutes. Remember that this is based on ladling the simmering sauce directly into your sterilized jars. If you cool the Soffritto Napoletano, add 10 minutes to both. I do this and had just opened a pint the other day that I canned a year and a half ago. It was delicious on some home made pasta.

We haven't created a post recently for good reason. In November 2024, I fell blowing leaves and tore his rotator cuff. It is only now that I can manage to type. The voice typing just doesn't work for me. I cannot flow, so I hit pause. Rest assured the farm stands strong and our children have pulled together to do my share of the chores. I don't know I can thank them enough. Unfortunately, they were not able to cover the capital projects list. We have quite a list of building projects ready and waiting. Here are the next projects that we will be discussing in depth over the course of this year. We even bought a drone to capture our activities. Greenhouse: We have a 10'x12' Walipini Greenhouse designed and all the Lumber milled and piled. We have barrels for the back wall (heat sink) and gutters for rain catchment. It is going to be epic. Fish farm: A 10'x10' shed behind the greenhouse will hold stock tanks. The fish water will fertilize and water the greenhouse. Rainwater will replenish the tanks and water the outdoor garden in the summer. It is going to be epic. Windmill: We have a 1600 watt Missouri Wind and Solar Falcon 5 blade. It measures 55" Diameter. We intend to build a 15 foot tower for the Turbine. Barn: We have a two-story gambrel roof planned. We are estimating 300 hours of milling to get the lumber list complete. It will be walk out on both floors if we can build into the hill. We will see what the town has to say. You know wherever you live in America, no matter how long your land has been in your family, it is not actually ours. We are merely renting it from the town. Through the permitting process, your town takes complete control over what you can do with your own land. Property line setbacks...30 feet for me. I am sorry to digress however we built our country on the sanctity of property ownership. It is infuriating the level of municipal control our past two generations have allowed. Redo the roof on the horse barn. It is just a two stall shed row. We have the first few slabs after the but cut set aside for this project. We will cut off the live edges to square them and burn the topside. Will be turning Japanese; I really think so. A big spring coming up...the greenhouse was supposed to be the winter project. It has moved to the spring.

When you live on a farm in the country surrounded by 1000's of acres of natural preserve and private land, predators will be a concern. Whether you are farming or not, predators can be a problem. You may also find yourself working your property during hunting season with a buck 30 yards out as your tractor crests the hill. Maybe you have a bear problem and know they are not scared by yelling. In these as well as myriad other situations, having your rifle close by is helpful if not imperative. We can buy a rifle mount on the internet for $60-$200. That will be easy. Directions for installation and everything, but what fun is that? O.k., I admit there are some really nice mounts out there for your tractor, quad, or side by side. I just happen to be a poor farmer and that $100 cannot be spent on something like this right now. Having your rifle swinging around from the shoulder strap just is not safe. So, I found the mount that looked like it would work the best on my tractor and made one out of scraps I had on the property. Looks Terrible, I know. I also know it works great. What is this? It is a "range anti-tip bracket" What is that? If you ever slide your kitchen stove out from the wall to clean, you should see this bracket along the floor. There is a stud mounted to the bottom of your range that slides into this bracket when you push the range back into the wall. It stops you from tipping the range forward which could cause hot stuff to splash or slide toward you. I had an extra kicking it in the bracket bucket. The U-shaped space for the range stud is plenty wide for every rifle I have that might find its way onto the tractor. I normally carry a stainless steel Mini-14 with a wire frame/synthetic stock. This is the rifle I made the flashlight holder for. With the flashlight holder mounted, this side of the bracket is too wide to fit between the barrel and the flashlight, so I had to grind the left side of the bracket to fit. I highlighted the metal I had to remove in orange. Anyone without a home made flashlight holder would not need to do this. I was concerned about the metal scratching my rifles, so I wrapped the metal with gorilla tape and then a layer of hot glue to give it a nice soft rest for the rifle. It looks messy but works well. I was also slightly concerned that over time the tape would peel off. I made certain to spread hot glue over all the tape seems. That tape isn't going anywhere. After looking at several options for attaching the bracket to the tractor, I decided to use the lock nut on the ROPS bar. The finger nut in the center of the picture to our right. This thumb screw just stops the ROPS from rattling so adding a bracket to it has worked well. At first I was going to form a mounting bracket that curled tight around the ROPS so the rifle mount would not rotate. After the first few rifles I fitted, I found that a few degrees of swivel allows for more rifles to fit better. I had to flatten the bracket and re-bend it to allow about 10 degrees of swing. I drilled out the rifle cradle to accept four bolts to mount it to the ROPS bracket. This mounting bracket is a piece of 5/16 steel that was on an old monkey bars. I used locking washers and flat washers given the high vibration of the tractor. Having the rifle mount fall off while traveling through the woods is not my idea of a fun day. Next we needed a stock brace. The holders I saw on the interwebs had a rubber cradle that bolts to the floor. This seemed like an important piece to keep the rifle from bouncing around or having the but slide forward. Given I don't have big chunks of rubber kicking around, but I do have a saw mill, I found a two-inch thick chunk of hickory and cut it down to match the shape of my biggest stock-butt and routed out a stock-shaped oval and drilled a recessed hole through the center. The cradle was still attached to the board I cut it out of. I used a jigsaw to cut the outer shape and a plunge router to hollow out the center. The recessed hole for the mounting bolt was drilled out after confirming the proper bolt placement.   I put it in place and drilled the hole in the tractor floor. Then I hammered in a 1.5in long carriage bolt and secured the cradle to the floor of the tractor with a lock washer and nut. This project did take a couple of hours to complete. I have been rocking this gun rack for a few months now with great effect. My rifles stay put and makes a great jacket rack as well. I try not to have my rifle visible when I am on the public road...like most farms, we must use our street to get to different sections. Though it is completely legal and morally acceptable to have a rifle visible to passersby, I prefer to cover my rifle more to protect the gun than to protect the liberal creampuffs that frequent our farm. This project was worthwhile and has worked great!

In 1902, the first gasoline powered farm machines rolled onto farms. Farmers of the time quickly realized how much manual labor could be accomplished by one or two people and a tractor. In 1917 Ford brought the Fordson Tractor to the market. As farm markets began to crash, Ford began a price war with the few competitors of the time. Through this action, ford made the tractor affordable to the average family. Some could even buy a Ford Fruit Wagon and a tractor together at the same dealership and use credit to take the pair home. Henry Ford actually demanded that his car dealerships sell the Fordson. Though many of those dealers were not pleased, this setup eliminated the overhead cost of a seperate dealership, ultimately keeping the price below all competitors. Now we can take this post in a few directions. We can discuss how the purchase on credit by farmers was the beginning of the debt based economy we now find ourselves suffocating under. Another rabbit hole would be how the tractor affected the farming industry eventually leading to the great dust bowl and then to Corporate Agribusinesses. We can roll into how corporations like Monsanto devoured family farms. But no, that is not our purpose here. Here we will accept the tractor as a necessity for all but the most niche of micro farms. In my research I have come across one micro farm in Quebec Canada that uses a two-wheel tractor of sorts and that is it. Still most of us just cannot do without our tractors. We are on them everyday. We bathe, and feed, and care for our tractors as we do our family. Tractors tend to not have enough lighting. There are few places to hold gear and accessories. Anyone farming in the country also has predation issues that must be addressed on a daily basis. There are accessory manufacturers that produce brackets and holders for all sorts of things. Most of them are ridiculously expensive and often easily reproduced with items from your scrap pile or some inexpensive parts from the hardware store. In this post, we will discuss the LED lighting I attached to our tractor. Tractor headlights are in the nose of every tractor. They tend to be as bright as our cars and work fine driving forward. There is one tractor implement that interrupts our headlights and that is the front end loader. The average operator will travel with their bucket elevated two to four feet. With the loader bucket hanging there, all that is illuminated is the back of your bucket. Few of us are going to remove our front end loader to use our headlights. The best option then is auxiliary lighting mounted somewhere other than the nose of the tractor. After several trials, the ROPS bar (roll bar) is the best option I have found. I must make the safety announcement that all users manuals state that you should not drill into the ROPS bar or attach anything to it. It also states that the seat belt must be used every time you sit on the tractor. The best option therefore is to buy light clamps for $25.00 each, or make your own. fashioning your own will probably cost you about $5.00 per light bracket and 20 minutes to an hour for fabrication of each. I chose a different option that goes against the user manual but works very well and is extremely efficient. The ROPS in made by taking two c-channel pieces and welding them together. The weld seam is on the inside and provides a guide line for drilling all your holes. Forward facing lights are forward of that seam and rear facing just distal to the weld. I mapped out the lights for placement and punched the spot for each bracket bolt. The holes were each drilled out starting with a pilot drill bit, then enlarged with increasing drill bit size until we reached the hole size for the tap. I had a tap that matched the bolts included with the lights and tapped each hole for the bolt. I went with Nilight and they do not sponsor this page in any way, however they are good lights at a good price. The kit came with a 20 inch bar (126 watts) and four four-inch lights (18 watts ea). I had two 6 inch LED's (36 watts ea) and a few old four inch LEDs in the spare parts pile so they all went on. Power requirements. A watt is volts x Amps. It is imperative that you figure out the power requirements for any electrical project. Luckily this is fairly easy. The average LED uses 3 watts of power. The total watts for the 8 lights that I have installed is 288 watts. We know the voltage is 12. We need to know the amperage load. It is the amps that matter to our switches and wires. I like to think of the voltage as the lanes on the highway. The amps are the cars. So we need to figure out how wide that road needs to be to carry the amount of cars travelling on that road. 288 watts/12volts= 24 amps. 14 gauge 12volt wire can carry about 20 amps...up to 30 with 90 degree insulation. I like to overengineer to eliminate the chance for problems so I went with 12 gauge wire (also from my scrap pile). Now the Mahindra 2638 is equipped with wiring for a single rear facing utility light. This 16 gauge wire is not sufficient for my purposes, so simply tying in there failed with a blown fuse and a melted wire. For this reason, tying directly into the factory headlamp switch will burn out your tractor headlight system. Still, I wanted to flip the factory headlamp switch and have night turn to day. This was accomplished with a bosch style 5-pin relay. If you do not know about relays, don't feel inept. They are very simple and there are videos on youtube explaining how they work and how to use them. For our purposes, all we needed was a four pin but, you guessed it, I had a stack of 5-pin relays "in stock". Real quick, the fifth pin (87A) is on when the switch is off. This is necessary for our high beam/low beam switching. When you turn on your headlamps power is going to 87. when you flip the high beam lever, the relay moves power to 87A which is connected to the high beams. In this project, we only need on and off. Without the relay, we would have 24 amps running through the factory light switch. Keep in mind the tractor headlights are also running through a relay so that the switch itself only pulls an amp at most with its 18-22 gauge wire. Hook up your 24 amp light system and you have a blown fuse at best and a burned tractor at worst. Put the power through the relay and the relay to your switch and life is good. I must admit that this left-side light does not survive. I do not know why, but whenever I drive through brush I hug the left side and this left side light has been ripped off of my current and past tractors. The threaded hole has survived unscathed but the mounting bracket from the light was destroyed each time. The lower light mounted to the front face of the ROPS is on a 2 inch wide L-bracket that held the monkey bars onto an old swing set. I have it bolted to the ROPS with a flat washer under and above the bracket so it will rotated. The light is mounted to the bracket with a bolt and washers that allows it to pivot about 1oo degrees. I had to round off the lights-side of the bracket with a grinder to allow for the 100 degrees of swing. This light with the green bracket is on the front face of the ROPS so it is fairly well protected from the brush and given it can be rotated to face the side, I have not seen a need to replace the side mounted light. There is another light with the same home-made bracket on the rear just above the 3-point hitch. Have you ever tried to put the backhoe on your tractor at 10 pm on a cold fall night, alone, with only your phone for a flashlight? I suppose this was a unique situation, however it left me with a conscious decision to never suffer this plight again. That night was the death of my mother-in-laws cherished ankle biter. You would have thought she was Jewish with the fervor in which she pleaded that we bury little Tucker that night. I had only one option...figure it out. The 20 minutes it took to attach the digger was pure misery. I really did not like that dog, still it hurt to watch him pass and even more to see Nana so sad. It was expected but that did not make it any easier. That whole time I was thinking about the best option for lighting there. Now I have a light that can be angled fairly effectively to see the hydraulic connections or the 3-point connections. It can also be angled up for more rear lighting when the backhoe is off. In this close-up, you can see the messy wiring job I did clearly. What you cannot clearly see is the hole I drilled in the ROPS to send the wire through. I could have just zip-tied the wire to the lateral ROPS but I did not want to effect the folding of the ROPS. I must admit that the lights being there and my general fear of rolling, encourages me to always keep the ROPS upright. our farm is on a ridgeline so steep angles is part of our normal, still every time I get over 6 degrees lateral, I am scared. There are times when you need to lower the ROPS to get under a low limb or into a shop with a low door. Running the wire through the ROPS in the down position ensures there is enough slack in there to put the ROPS down and then back up without any issues with the wiring. Also, I feel a nagging need to point out my wiring is messy. Most bloggers make sure that there projects are presented in a beautiful way. I do not really have time for beauty. I do know what I am doing with electrical and have the ability to match the presentation of most professionals out there. Still I just don't care how it looks. I do care that it works well and does not burn up anymore time than necessary. I did have buss bars and waterproof cases that could have been attached. If I had been installing these lights on a "customer's" tractor, I would have spent another hour to enclose all the wires, and add breakaway points in the wires. but I was not making money on this project and I am not trying to impress anyone. There is also a practical reason for this wiring. If a limb gets caught in the wires, it will just pull out of the connector and I can fix it in the field. In closing, I would like to restate that drilling into your ROPS is not recommended by safety standards or any manufacturers. I would also like to say again that this makes for a simple and effective project. Adding effective lighting to your tractor will increase its utility. Assuming we ever get snow again, this lighting makes clearing it away late at night or in the wee hours of the morning much easier.

Late after work, I found myself replacing the battery in our 2008 Toyota Sequoia. There was a problem... The above picture shows the completed battery hold down and one of the old side arms that were too short. So what happened? Many years ago I had replaced the original battery with an Optima Red Top. Why? Well, at the time I could afford it and you do get what you pay for. The Optima batteries were developed for off road vehicles that are likely to roll over. The standard lead-acid battery has lead plates and sulfuric acid, which is a liquid. When the battery is inverted, the acid spills out causing the battery to fail and whatever the acid lands on to be destroyed. Optimas on the other hand, have thin lead thread wound around a center post instead of plates and a gel acid instead of liquid. The optima battery offers greater power output and deaper drain ability. This means it will give power when it is mostly discharged below 12 volts and it can be mounted on its side or upside down. They work more like a deep cycle battery. Six years later, we are not in the same financial comfort we once knew. So my darling beloved went to get a battery while I was working. I had advised her that we do not need an optima again and she brought home the original equipment. The OEM battery is much taller than the optima. It would appear that I had replaced the original battery hold down with a shorter hold down to match the optima. Why am I doing this on a Saturday night in the dark? All the married men can guess...my wife wanted the sequoia for a road trip first thing Sunday Morning. I could not let my woman down, so I got creative. Like all good farmers and homesteaders, we have a scrap metal pile. Every time I consider bringing it to the scrap yard, I find another use for something in the pile. This time it was an old oven rack. The wire for the frame was just a bit larger than the arms on the original and they were long enough. I cut off the side frame rods from this rack. The bend in the rod at the top left holds the rack in the oven. I used these for the beginning of the bent ends that hook into the vehicle body. With the help of my vise and a mallet, I bent the tips into the hooks for the vehicle body. I then smoothed the hooks on the grinding wheel and then beveled the other ends to make starting the threading die easier. Scroll down for next step The rod was 7mm. Luck would have it, the bevel allowed me to use a 1/4-20 die to cut threads in the rod. I also had plenty of 1/4-20 nuts and matching washers I had never twisted a die so many times. This was downright painful as it took time. Cutting threads is not something that can go fast. You need slow steady pressure. It took about five minutes per arm to thread five inches of the rod. If you look at the bottom of the vise, you can see how I used the hook to keep the rod from spinning while I was threading. I actually clamped the first one too tight and it bent. It was easy to straighten and I was more careful on the second. The very first picture shows the cross bar from the old hold down in place with the new side arms. An hour later, the truck was ready to go. A happy wife makes for a happy life!

Stop buying canned chicken broth. Stock is one of the easiest things to make. throw bones in a pot with Celery, onion, garlic, and carrots. Salt and pepper, then simmer until the collagen flows from the bones. There is broth and stock. Lets define the two. Stock is an extraction of bones. Stock includes all the fats and waters. It is strained to get the bits out and then stored. Broth is made by separating the water based fluids from the fat. I am certain there is some elaborate process that big manufacturers use to separate the fats from the waters. At home, let the stock begin to cool on the stove top. This will give the fats a chance to begin separating. then move it to the fridge while still warm and leave it overnight. the next day scrape off the fat cap and you have broth. We do not make broth as I feel the fats are good. Our family is active and healthy. Our bodies need fat and our fats are mostly good as our animals are all grazing all year long. Animals that get more fodder than grain have a much greater ratio of Omega-3 to Omega 6. I also leave the fats in the stock due to flavor. Fat is flavor and recipes made with my bone stock come out richer and tastier. So how do we do it? Save your bones is the first step. My family has it engrained not to throw away bones. We do eat a lot of bone-in meat. We also only eat the meat we harvest ourselves, so we never are at a loss for bones. One of our freezers has a bin for bones. That bin holds about the same amount as my stock pot, so when the bin is full, we make stock. This is a process. If you only have one freezer, it probably wont work for you as bones will take up precious space. Though, you can also make smaller batches more often. You can also ask the butcher in the store for stock bones. Most will give them free or for very little money. We also use a lot of stock so generally we have a depleted supply about the same time we have a full bone bin. The bones are all dumped in the pot frozen. All the animals together both raw and cooked. Ex: a gallon ziplock of raw rabbit bones from the last slaughter, chicken bones from southern fried chicken, raw duck bones from the last duck slaughter (we debone and grind a lot of our ducks.) and pork bones from a smoked shoulder. On top of these bones goes two or three onions quartered with the skins still on, a half dozen carrots cut up into big chunks, a half dozen celery stalks cut the same, and two or three cloves of garlic smashed with the skins still on. Season with a handful of sea salt (more or less to your needs but make sure you add at least a little.) Fill it up with clean spring water about 3 inches from the top, and put the heat on low. Walk away. It will take a couple hours for the bones to thaw and everything to get up to temperature. Don't rush this. Let it take all day. We are then going to simmer the pot all day give or take. We are looking for the meat to fall off the bones and for it to appear that the contents of the bones has released from the bones. Anywhere from three to 8 hours depending on the size of the pot and size of the flame. This is not a situation where you can use high heat and get it all done faster. Remember you are not trying to roast anything, we are trying to extract. It takes time for the collagen to liquify, not just heat. Once it is done, we have to store it. We pressure can ours when we have enough jars. We also use giant pickle jars we get at the Restaurant Depot and store them in the fridge. The fridge can hold our stock safe for three months. Preserved stock has lasted for three years. It is generally recommended that you only preserve for a year at most. Still, we missed a jar and found it three years later. It was good as new. I must admit that we would store it longer, but we use it fast. Now we have a 30qt stock pot filled to the brim with boiling liquid. You can see the golden fats swirling around the bubbles. We now have to get all the chunks out of the liquid and this 212 degree fluid into canning jars. Process your canning equipment as you always do. Want to hear a secret? I haven't boiled a jar, lid, or ring in 20 years. I also reuse my lids two or three times before I throw them out. We have a 90% seal rate with used lids. This has saved us hundreds of dollars over the last two decades. The few lids that don't seal go in the fridge and we use them first...easy peasy. The straining is the most tedious part of the process. At the beginning, I use a 4 cup measure to scoop out of the stockpot. I place a colander over another stockpot and pour the measuring cup into the colander. You now have to make a decision. what to do with the bones and vegies? The easiest option is to pull the garbage can over and pitch the colander contents into it. We try to use everything to its fullest at Farm Life Farm. Most batches of stock, we use the leftovers for dog food. We toss the biggest bones to our farm dogs whole. All the little bones and veggie bits go into a bucket and we drop a sledgehammer into it repeatedly until everything is broken into bits. We mix this into their kibble. Other batches, we bring out and mix into our compost pile. Other times, we place some tinfoil on the gas grill, lay all the bones out and turn it on low and cook them until dry and brittle and smash them into bone meal for our garden. In the past, we brought the leftovers deep into the woods for the animals to eat. We would always find the spot barren the next day. More physical work but no financial cost. Also, you are ensuring that your fertilizer is all natural with no chemicals...that is priceless in our current world of food that is poisoned. Now that we have a full livestock farm, feeding the apex predators is not the best plan, but going a mile into the forest before we dump it does not seem to have a negative impact on our farm. Some old timers have pointed out that they never suffered predation on the night that they dumped offal in the woods. I remain apprehensive with raw offal as I fear it gives the predators a taste for our animals. Composting the bones and bits is always a good plan. Just ensure that you get the bones deep into the compost pile. You don't want your dogs, coyotes, fox, or anything else getting to it. If your compost pile provides an easy meal, those predators will stay close. Recap: We have made the stock and got it all strained through a standard colander. We then give a quick rinse to the original stockpot and add a fine mesh strainer. We pour the strained stock through the fine mesh strainer and then we transfer it into the canning jars. We used to do a third filter with cheesecloth but that is tedious and takes forever. We just don't mind anything small enough to fit through the mesh strainer. We tend to continue using that measuring cup to pour the hot liquid into the canning jars. Leave one inch of headspace and put them into the pressure canner. 20 pounds of pressure. Twenty minutes for pint jars and thirty for quart. I have not made rice with plain water in years. We use our stock. Want to make lipton cup a soup, a pint of bone broth and a handful of noodles and a sprinkle of dried parsley. Boil the noodle in the stock and done. My daughters 12 and 8, prefer this now to the box soup. Help yourself to increasing nutrition decreasing waste.

There are few food sources that require less experience than raising rabbits for food. The average cost of a bunny is $30. You obviously need two; one male and one female. Woke genders have not yet made it into the world of the quadruped, so we need one of each. Two or three wire cages. You can find used cages all over facebook and Craigslist. Prices I saw just now were from $10 for a simple wire cage to $100 for a hutch. Now a water dispenser and a food dispenser. A fifty pound bag of grain is under $30 and will feed them for several months. It is currently November and we have spent a total of $90 on rabbit grain this year. That works out to about $8.00 per month for an average of five rabbits eating grain throughout the year.. All in you are looking at $200 to start raising them and about $6.00 per month to feed them.. Assuming you purchased mature breeding stock, you can have your first litter withing 45 days of bringing them home. 12 weeks to Slaughter weight and you are harvesting your meat after less than four months of saying, "self, You should raise rabbits." One rabbit is a meal for our family of 5. To buy a butchered rabbit, you will pay about $35.00. Ground beef is running about $7.00/pound and pork chops are $5.00/pound. Your rabbit meat will run you about $1.30/pound not counting your time. Looking at the money alone, this is a great way to add quality food to your kitchen without paying "all natural" "farm raised" "organic" food prices. Another reason to raise rabbits is the nutritional value of their meat. Rabbit meat contains high levels of Essential Amino Acids. It is also extremely easy to digest and absorb. Rabbit is processed by the body similar to lamb...our stomach can absorb the nutrients directly. This is a good thing, especially since Americans currently ingest more bad fat than almost all other nations. Rabbits are low fat animals. This poses a concern for those planning on rabbits as a prepper plan. We cannot eat rabbit without another fat source. Remember our bodies need fat and cholesterol. Eating nothing but rabbit meat will lead to a protein poisoning if it is not supplemented with fats and carbohydrates. Add boiled cattail roots to your rabbit diet and you will be good. It is also possible to increase their fat reserve by providing them with unlimited grain and hay. Yes hay. I have read myriad posts on to feed hay or not to feed hay. It appears that many rabbit keepers don't believe that you are smart enough to know if your hay is moldy. All the don'ts seem to have this as their main theme. They are correct. If your rabbit eats a bunch of moldy hay, they will probably get real sick and die. You can also run into problems if you feed them late summer/fall second cutting with a high sugar content. Too much sugar will make your rabbit sick as well. First cutting hay properly stored will delight and fatten your rabbits nicely. We are lucky in having a hay supply at no cost. If you would have to buy hay bales at $5-$10 per bale, it will still be cost effective as one bale will last a month or more. The other fodder we provide is maple bows. Rabbits love maple. Fresh leaves in the summer and limbs during the winter. They can digest the wood without issue and it is a treat that they clearly enjoy. Most summer days with a large pile of leaves and sticks, your rabbits will not eat much grain. We also rake up the weed wacker trimmings all summer and feed that to our rabbits. How do we eat rabbit meat? All kinds of ways. I grew up in a very Italian family, in a very Italian neighborhood. Rabbit was a staple and most of my friend's parents kept a few in their backyards. They were either roasted, braised, or stewed. As I grew up, rabbit became difficult to attain ready to cook. If you could find it, it was $15/pound or more. I enjoy a roasted rabbit, whole. My family does not enjoy it nearly as much, but they will eat it. Stew and pot pie is much more to their liking and extremely easy to make. Cut up the animal in six pieces and place them in the pan, brown and cook as any other stew. For pot pie, poach or roast the rabbit, pull the meat from the bones and make just like chicken pot pie. You can use rabbit in any recipe that calls for chicken. We separate the legs and southern fry them. But my family's favorite is to use the meat ground just like ground beef. We make tacos and meatballs and meatloaf. Today, most of our rabbits are deboned and ground. We freeze it in 1 1/2Lbs packages and use it just like ground beef. I happen to be real good at deboning meat. If you are not, save the carcass and make a stew out of it. We also save the bones for bone stock. At Farm Life Farm, we raise rabbits, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and ducks. We save all the bones and freeze them. I will make another post on our bone stock. In conclusion, consider raising rabbits for meat. They are delicious, cost effective, and nutritious. For those that are feeling nervous about slaughter and butcher, Farm Life Farm is here to teach you how it is done! gestation about 30 days Litter size 1-12