Electric canners

A reader had a question as follows: "We have to move out of our house and into an apartment for a few months (sound familiar?) Unfortunately, we'll be in an apartment during the height of canning season. I won't be able to use a regular pressure canner on their glass top stove. I've been looking at electric canners. Do you, or do any of your readers have any experience using an electric canner? I'm curious about your experiences!"

I can offer no advice since I've never even seen an electric canner. So I'm throwing this open to comments. Can anyone offer any personal experience or advice with electric canners? (Remember, this is an electric pressure canner, not a pressure cooker.)

Photos to make you go "Hmmmmm...."

Here are a couple of photos I came across that stopped me in my tracks. The first is a skeleton of a pregnant fruit bat:

In all the years I spent studying biology, I've never seen the skeleton of a pregnant bat.

Equally interesting is this photo from the surface Venus. I've never seen what that hot and mysterious planet looks like from the ground floor:

Just a couple of photos to make you go "Hmmmm......."

32 years and counting

It's our anniversary!

It just gets better and better, folks.

Love you, honey!

UPDATE: Whoa. A friend alerted me that our anniversary made the front of SurvivalBlog!

Canning chicken

A reader posted a comment as follows: "Sure hate to be off topic but I need some help from you ladies that pressure can. Have stored large amount chicken breast in freezer. The potential of electric power curtailment is worrying me so would like to pressure-can some of the chicken. All I can find on Google is dealing with instant pot thawing and cooking. Would one of you experienced ladies advise me how to pressure can in this situation. Am experienced canning raw chicken. Thank you for your advice. – City Dude"

City Dude, canning chicken breasts is easy. I have an older blog post that covers the steps (see here), so hopefully that will move you in the right direction. You're correct in that chicken breasts must be pressure-canned. In that long-ago blog post, I put the pressure at about 13 pounds for our elevation; more recent guidelines suggest 15 lbs. of pressure is a good universal recommendation. If you use pint jars, can for 75 minutes; for quart jars, 90 minutes.

For the chicken breasts in your freezer, pull them out to defrost, then boil them, cut them into chunks, and stuff them in a jar. Top with scalding water, add a bit of salt (if desired), and pressure-can.

Happy canning!

Rhapsody in Blue like you've never heard it before

If you like George Gershwin music, Don came across this link in which the conductor Leonard Slatkin is conducting the French Orchestre National de Lyon in "Rhapsody in Blue." A pianist by the name of Khatia Buniatishvili absolutely nails this famously difficult piece of music. It's jaw-droppingly good.

Enjoy!

Advice for a financial crisis

There has been a lot of chatter in the news lately about an impending financial crisis. Predictions for this economic downturn run the gamut from "mild" to "catastrophic." In response, I've seen a few articles on how best to weather such a crisis. Most of these advice pieces are "meh" (along the lines of "stop drinking so many lattés"-style of guidance). Others are downright insulting (such as this condescending piece of work on how to handle inflation if you make less than $300,000/year – which, by the way, is approximately 96% of Americans).

But once in a while I come across an article that has some meat to it, such as this one: 10 Things Not To Do When The Next Great Depression Strikes.

This piece focuses on Big Things. This list includes:

• Don't panic

• Don't quit your job

• Don't take your job for granted

• Don't buy anything on credit

• Don't become a cosigner on a loan

• Don't switch to an adjustable-rate mortgage

• Don't make investments that aren't secure

• Don't upgrade your lifestyle

• Don't keep your wealth in cash

• Don't defraud your creditors

(You can go to the article to read details for each of these bullet points.)

But even this advice, as meaty as it is, doesn't universally apply. Much of the advice assumes an upper middle-class lifestyle at best. Not everyone can afford a mortgage, adjustable rate or not. Not everyone has surplus money for "investments." Not everyone has "wealth," whether it's in cash or anything else.

So to this advice, I would add more. Consider:

• Diversify your income stream.

• Reduce your expenses.

• Try an all-cash lifestyle (where possible) to keep track of spending (some people prefer the "envelope" system – whatever works)

• Reduce debt; or at the very least, try not to incur more.

• Cultivate (or pick up) side gigs; who knows these might develop into a decent income stream.

• Go frugal frugal frugal. Shop in thrift stores, buy in bulk, cook from scratch, etc. You know the routine.

Since the economy is on most peoples' minds these days, I thought it might be useful to solicit everyone's advice and experience. What advice would you give to weather a financial crisis, either personal or national?

The green of our valley

Our spring has been very wet, and the little valley we live in is very green.

Interesting, a dominant grass right now is timothy, an excellent livestock feed. And boy howdy, is it full of pollen at the moment!

Here, Mr. Darcy is walking through the grass (the orange blur). Poof! Can you see the cloud of pollen?

Clearly this isn't good for anyone's allergies, but it's great for livestock potential. It's nice to see untended pastures full of decent grasses rather than noxious weeds such as hawk weed or star thistle.

Surprisingly few neighbors around here have livestock. A few horses, a couple of cows, and that's about it.

It's nice to know that when the time come to get our own livestock, they'll have decent forage.

Allergies notwithstanding.

Here's our strategy

A few weeks ago, a reader posed a legitimate question: "You seem to be taking quite a while to put in gardens, get the animals, etc. What is your strategy here?"

This person is correct. We're taking longer than we anticipated to get our new homestead up and running. What few people knew, dear readers, is Don has been having behind-the-scenes health issues.

Nine years ago, an unknown condition caused him to suffer acute kidney failure and he was hospitalized for three days. The issue, we learned, was an enlarged prostate that was literally choking off the urethra. Sorry to get graphic here, but such is life.

He had laser surgery which corrected the issue, for the time being. The urologist warned him the treatment would only be good for up to ten years. So here we are, nine years later, dealing with much the same thing.

For the last year, he's been having persistent blood in his urine, always a worrying sign. Sometimes it was due to a urinary tract infection, in which case he would take some antibiotics, drink loads of water, and not do anything for a while. Other times we knew it was prostate issues, that – again – lots of water and taking it easy would temporarily work.

This enforced "taking it easy" was intensely frustrating to him because there were so many projects he wanted to tackle! Garden, chicken coop, fencing, cattle infrastructure ... the list is endless, but he was forced to "take it easy."

Coupled with the crippling summer of heat last year, a lot less got done on the homestead than we wanted. It was shaping up to be a similarly slow year of projects until finally he was referred to a new urologist. (Unfortunately the urologist is several hours' drive away. Such is the reality of remote rural life when we need a medical specialist.)

Anyway, bottom line, Don underwent more surgery a couple weeks ago. The urologist used a new technique to address the overgrown prostate issue (the urological equivalent of a hot butter knife, or something like that), and took off a good-sized chunk of that troublesome organ, which was then sent in for biopsy. Don has been slowly recuperating from the procedure, dealing with more frustrating but enforced "taking it easy."

Today, just a few minutes ago, he had a follow-up tele-conference with the urologist who affirmed – praise God! – there is absolutely no indications of any cancer whatsoever. The biopsied tissue came back negative.

Now that Don has gotten a clean bill of health, he can ease out of the "taking it easy" routine and start tackling some of the projects he's been itching to get to. He still has to go slow, but "taking it easy" can be put aside.

And this, dear readers, is a long-winded answer to the "strategy" question posted above. Our strategy was to restore Don to good health. In that regard, our prayers have been answered.

Some civic duties

A couple weeks ago, Don and I volunteered to do some cleanup on a nearby rural stretch of road.

The road cleanup was actually supposed to happen the Saturday before, but got rained out. Don and I volunteered to do our stretch the following Monday. We armed ourselves with trash bags and a couple of those extended-arm grabber thingies, and took off.

Don had actually worked this same stretch the year before (as part of the civic organization he's part of), and he said it was much cleaner this year than it had been the year before.

Believe it or not, it was my first road clean-up, and I enjoyed it. There was something immensely satisfying in tidying up the landscape. Maybe it tapped into my Inner Housewife or something.

Naturally we saw a few interesting things. Several sets of bones (this one from a fawn):

Lots of feathered pieces from turkeys getting hit by cars.

Going along the road at walking speed certainly allowed us to see things we may not have otherwise noticed, such as this cow on a nearby hillside:

Or this goat who, as we watched, slipped through his fence and stood glaring at us.

Or these nattily attired Great Blue Heron statues by someone's driveway.

Every creek was full.

A couple of cars slowed down and thanked us as they drove by, which I thought was nice.

Don took one side of the road, and I took the other.

We more or less stayed even with each other until I came to a scene of a fender bender, with lots of debris to clean up. That took a while.

But Don won the contest for "Most Interesting Finds." First exhibit, a bleached-out Monopoly money bill:

Second exhibit, a syringe.

Fortunately it looked like an agricultural (livestock) syringe. Also fortunately, it had a cap, so it wouldn't poke out of the garbage bag.

After a bit, we hit the one-mile marker, which was the end of our route.

We hiked back to the vehicle and brought the trash bags to the nearest dumpster. On the way we passed these elk, casually hanging around someone's pasture.

On the dirt road to and from the cleanup stretch, we also passed this boulder that had become dislodged from the steep hillside.

Interestingly, Don had passed on this road two days before and it was clear, so the rockfall had just happened in the last 48 hours.

We'll participate in future road cleanups, but pushing boulders like this are a bit beyond the abilities of our extended-arm grabber thingies.

Ouch. Just ... ouch

Took this photo on Wednesday.

Homeschooling difficulties: Let me hear your experiences

Dear readers, I'd love some feedback. I'm writing an article for Backwoods Home Magazine on the subject of homeschooling difficulties. Originally I pitched just two notions (both parents working, and single parents), but then my editor came back with many more ideas. She suggested, "Both parents working, homesteading schedules, single parent, self-doubt, homeschooling kids with long age gaps, sibling conflicts, organizing curriculum, lack of motivation (on the kid part or parent part), etc. I’m sure there are a lot more."

So fill me in on what kinds of challenges you (or someone you know) has experienced while homeschooling – and, more important, how you/they overcame these difficulties.

Thank you!

"Picture Of My Mother In Law Walking The Cows"

I saw this photo today with the caption "Picture Of My Mother In Law Walking The Cows."

Why do I find this photo powerfully evocative?

No idea who took the pic or who the mother-in-law is, but it's a way cool photo.