Frugal beef jerky

I took a deep dive into our chest freezer last week, inventorying as I went. It's too easy for things to get lost in the bottom depths.

Which is why I was surprised to find four five-pound bags of solid beef, left over from the last cows we butchered before we moved. Twenty pounds! The butchers had pulled these extremely lean chunks aside (at our request) for beef jerky. After the chaos of moving, we forgot all about them.

Don loves beef jerky. He immediately pulled out two of the bags, ten pounds of meat, to make into his favorite treat.

After (mostly) defrosting it, he realized the meat wasn't sliced. So he got to work cutting it thin. I hadn't planned on turning this project into a blog post, so I didn't think to get a photo of the slicing process. Suffice it to say he kept the knife very sharp. (It also helps to slice the meat when it's still slightly frozen.)

After slicing, he marinated the beef in two different sauces (one was a basic sauce made with Worcestershire and soy sauce, the other was mostly the same except he used teriyaki). He marinated each bowl of meat in the fridge for about ten hours.

We have two dehydrators, but he opted to just do one batch at a time. He started with the regular jerky.

Before putting the meat on the trays, he sopped up the extra liquid with towels. (Good thing they're washable.) On some of the slices, he sprinkled red pepper flakes for a bit of extra zing.

The meat can be touching, but is not supposed to be overlapping on the trays.

He set the dehydrator up on a table on the porch and set it at 165F for six hours.

It took, oh, about ten minutes for the yellow jackets to find it. We were swatting at the nasty beasts for the duration of time the meat was dehydrating.

When the first batch was finished...

...he transferred the meat to cookie sheets and baked it at 275F for about 10 minutes, until the meat was sizzling. This "finishes" the drying process and renders the meat safer.

This is the first batch. Now double the quantity (after the second batch was done) and that's a lotta snacks! He got about three pounds of jerky from the original ten pounds of meat.

Interestingly, Don had just purchased a bag of jerky a couple weeks ago. The bag cost about $5.

This bag contained the curiously precise amount of 2.85 oz.

This meant three pounds of this commercial beef jerky would cost about $84. We calculated the cost of making three pounds of our own (from our own beef) was about $35 (based on original butchering costs, electricity costs for running the dehydrator, and ingredients for the marinade).

But of course since we paid for the butchering many years ago, essentially the batch was free. Hard to beat that price.

By the way, a yellow jacket somehow made it into the dehydrator and got dehydrated itself. I found it when I was washing up the trays.

Look at the stinger on that critter! No wonder they hurt.

Danger lurking around every corner

Toward the back side of our barn, we have a gate.

Once we get livestock, this gate will be used to keep the cows from entering the driveway area; but at the moment, it's always open and we seldom pay attention to it.

This week, I had a project to do at that end of the barn. When I stepped outside, I noticed something interesting about this gate. Let's peer a little more closely at the upper right-hand corner, shall we?

The amount of frantic activity going on with this colony of yellow jackets was amazing. The wasps were clustering so thickly along the bit of nest sticking out of the pipe that they often dropped off and fell to the ground beneath.

Notice how they're building new cells outward from the core of the gate's hollow pipe. I'm working on the assumption it's because the rest of the hollow portions of the gate are already full of wasps. Whee!

I tell ya, danger lurks around every corner around here.

These wasps are doomed. I hate yellow jackets.

Fencing potatoes

About three weeks ago, the potatoes growing in the grow bags were looking splendid.

Crucially, however, they were situated outside the fence enclosing the adjacent strawberry beds. Deer don't usually choose potatoes to nibble on ... until they do. I knew I was taking a chance by keeping them unfenced.

Then one morning I noticed the potatoes looked like they'd been disturbed.

Sure enough, evidence of nibbling.

Well, it wasn't unexpected. One of the reasons we put the potato bags where we did is because it would be so easy to expand the fence around the strawberry beds to enclose the potatoes as well.

We were able to do this so easily because we were using horse panels purchased a couple years ago in a "screamin' good deal." These units can be assembled into whatever configuration is needed.

The panels are very, very heavy, so we used the tractor to transport them from the barn to the front of the house where the strawberry beds are located.

Before we could install the fencing, however, we had to take care of an issue.

Yes, a colony of yellow jackets had moved into the hollow of one of the panels around the strawberries. Since we needed to move these existing panels to reconfigure the enclosure, these nasty little beasts were doomed.

I seriously hate yellow jackets with a loathing born of fear from being badly stung many years ago. It took me a long time to even be able to be in the same vicinity as a colony. I certainly wasn't about to put up with them nesting in a panel around the strawberries I tended daily.

Thankfully I have a brave husband who doesn't mind taking care of such issues.

With that problem out of the way, we unwrapped the deer netting from around the enclosure, added the new horse panels in a configuration that enclosed the potatoes, and re-wrapped the netting.

I took these last two photos early this morning (before sunrise). You'll notice how the potatoes are looking less lush than in the earlier pictures above (taken around July 8). This is just a normal part of their late maturity cycle.

Now that they're protected from the deer, I'll wait until the first frost kills the plants, then harvest the potatoes. It will be interesting to see how well the grow bags worked.

Wasp control that WORKS

A few days ago I put up a post about the horrifically bad wasp year we're having. Outdoor activities had to be suspended except before dawn or after dark because of how many stinging insects were swarming the area.

We're not alone -- everyone we know is experiencing similar issues. Recently Don was in a hardware store, and he noticed they had shelves and shelves of wasp traps for people desperate to control them.

Wasps in this volume aren't just annoying, they're dangerous -- particularly for people who have reactions to stings. Everyone felt they were being held hostage indoors. Nearly every day, we would set a trap and it would fill almost to the brim. Every. Single. Day.

Then a commenter named "MissV" (and possibly a second commenter, Anon5:29) posted a sure-fire method of killing wasps using fibronil, the active ingredient in Frontline (and knock-off brands) tick repellent for dogs. We just happened to have some (since Mr. Darcy was getting ticks up the whazoo this summer), so we decided to give this a go. This is what is being passed around on Google:

Fipronil is a broad-spectrum insecticide that disrupts the insect’s central nervous system. Fipronil is the main ingredient in Frontline and other flea and tick killer used on dogs. Recall that Frontline is placed on the dogs back at the withers and keeps the dog free of these pests. It is not harmful to pets or humans in the dosage of casual contact. It will kill other yellow jackets that come into contact with it as it dies in the nest.

Several of the flea and tick killers available at your pet store or at Big R (Petco, etc.) contain Fipronil. But be careful to get the product that contains only Fipronil as its active ingredient. When Fipronil is coupled with other ingredients, the wasps will ignore it.

Mix 6 to 10 drops into a golf ball sized gob of raw hamburger (if you macerate it in a blender it works better). Place this gob of poisoned meat into a small plastic cup. Add 1/2 of a cotton ball on which you squirt half the contents of a tube of RESCUE Yellowjacket Attractant found at most hardware stores. Place the poison bait cup in the shade 2 to 4 feet off the ground and 10 to 15 yards away from doors, patios, grills – people trafficked areas. 80% of the Yellowjacket nests within 100 yards will be dead within 24 hours. 95% will be gone in 48 hours. Renew the bait every day (Yellowjackets don’t like dried or rotting meat). After 4 days 100% of the Yellowjacket nests within 400 sq. yds. will be dead. Repeat baiting after 4 weeks for a few days. It should end your problem.

As a monitor on the success of the project this person kept one of the Rescue Yellowjacket Traps in the yard and dumped it every night to check on the quantity of wasps in the area each day. The count dropped from several hundred/day to 2-4 wasps/day in 2 days and in the forth day, there were none.

1. Use only Fipronil – no other active ingredient. It’s found in flea and tick killers.

2. Mix 0.1% with hamburger. 6 to 10 drops per golf ball sized gob. Macerated burger is better.

3. Add Rescue Attractant

4. Renew bait daily.

5. Continue use for 4 days.

6. Repeat after a month for a few days.

---

We decided to give this a try and set two traps. We started with two golf-ball sized balls of ground beef...

...and four small paper cups.

In two of the cups, we punched holes in the bottoms.

Then we got two cotton balls.

We already had on hand Rescue wasp attractant and Frontline Plus tick repellent.

We put the cotton balls in the bottoms of the paper cups that did NOT have holes punched in them...

...and added wasp attractant to the cotton.

Then we loosely fitted the paper cups with the perforated bottoms over the other cups.

Next we took the ground beef and mashed it up a bit more in a food chopper.

To this meat, Don added 16 drops of the fipronil tick repellent. Each meatball needs about eight drops of poison (I gather too much isn't good) and since we had two meatball's worth of ground beef, he added 16 drops.

Then I donned latex gloves (just in case) and mashed the meat and poison over and over and over.

Then we re-formed the meat into two meatballs and put them in the upper cups (the ones with the perforated bottoms). We put these in jars, capped them, and put them in the fridge overnight. You never want to put wasp attractant out during daylight hours -- the stuff works instantly -- so we stuck it in the fridge overnight so the meat wouldn't go bad.

Early the next morning (well before sunrise), I removed the lids and put the jars in two locations, where doggies couldn't go. Both locations were in the shade so the meat wouldn't dry out too fast. One I put in the orchard, and the other I duct-taped to a small tree trunk along our driveway. In neither location were congregating wasps likely to bother anyone.

At first nothing happened. I think the chilled wasp attractant wasn't doing its job until it had a chance to unchill. But within a couple of hours -- my goodness -- the bait was swarming with wasps.

All day long the wasps carried snippets of poisoned meat back to their nests.

By the next morning, the volume of meat was reduced by more than half, and there were some dead wasps in the jar.

I checked on some nearby nests and noticed the insects looked very lethargic. They weren't moving much, and certainly weren't flying around.

As the day progressed, the lack of wasps was extremely noticeable. There were a few, yes; but we estimate the quantity was down by 95 percent or more. To test this, Don baited a trap in the morning and set it out. by afternoon, it had caught maybe five wasps. Remember, previously this trap would be full to the brim.

The difference outside is staggering. We can walk around without a problem. The tension is gone -- I didn't realize how tense we were until the threat was removed.

We still have some wasps, so we're going to repeat this procedure a second time, and possibly a third if needed.

This works, folks! If you're plagued by wasps, I urge you to try this to control them.

And the nicest part of all? It doesn't bother honeybees, which don't eat meat and aren't attracted to wasp attractant.