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It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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Oliver! Oh, Oliver!
Via Dr. de Vaca
Yep! 👍
HF has a superior brain , as he says, marry well. It makes for a blissful life, I agree.
Another code to live by that was purged in the free love pogrom against hetro marriage and family.
Yup……
trying to get there.. hoping there’s still time..
Yesterday afternoon my son informed me that we’d run out of bacon and sausage so I went out at 5:30 this morning and slaughtered a pig. I’m amazed the gunshot never wakes anyone up, but no one came out until after 7 so they either slept through it or figured they’d let me do the dirty work by myself. It took about three and half hours to get it dressed, skinned broken down and into a brine tank to chill. My son told me to take a break so I came in, took a nice hot shower, made a sandwich, and sat down to see what was happening in the world when I saw this.
I don’t think it’s too late for anything. Today would have been my Mother’s 82nd birthday. She passed away 12 years ago, just seven days after her 70th birthday. We took that loss hard as a family, given how little time we had to prepare for it, but it only took a week afterwards for us to make the decision to do this. We bought the farm a couple of months later, and here we are doing things we never could have imagined we’d be capable of because we one day said to ourselves, Life’s too short to put off living. Any day could be your last. We get to work with our children and talk to them every day about whatever is going on, sometimes just chatter and other times really deep conversations, so we stay involved and connected to them and we get to watch them become these wonderful examples of potential even as we wind down ourselves and I cannot tell you how much we’ve come to appreciate having walked away from the old life we left behind. It was worth everything.
I’m going to head out and make the cure for the bacon in a little bit but before I do I am going to relish these moments of pure freedom to just sit and reflect back on those choices and hope that other people all over this country are doing exactly the same kind of thing, setting out on a course that takes them where they were supposed to go rather than where they were told. Carpe diem.
And if anyone close by is reading this and wants to come up and learn how to make sausage I’ll be at it for the rest of the week, drop by and visit.
Make sausage…been there, done that. I’m no farmer but I’m no longer part of the mainstream either. A conscious decision I made many years ago (2008 to be precise) when the mulatto was elected. I saw the way things were going and decided to go back to my misspent youth/hippie days. Aging hippie is moi. I grow herbs and have a small garden, no chickens because too many predators, dexter cows and a circle of like minded friends.
Makes things much simpler. I won’t slaughter a hog, but I save scraps for the folks who do. I won’t raise chickens but again, I save stuff for those who do. I’m looking for a dexter bull….
MyG- Is that you? No wonder you can’t get off the porch to shoot. 🙂
We have black folks and Amish to make sausage. Most of my kin ate sausage every week and lived to be quite old. They never listened to the AMA and their war on animal fat/grease. Eat what you like but not to excess.
HF must not be that smart, he could have sent his wife out to handle that hog while he slept in….. just kidding.
Edit: You changed the picture, you little stinker! 🙂
Ha!
Gotta love the tie-dye….as to the other photo, I liked the outfit…not sure about barefoot here in the Tejas countryside nor what to make of the sticks she’s holding but I like those kind of clothes except with lots of pockets. I’m thinking of getting a belt with a pair of scissors that hang from a string like what the old farm wives used to carry. Too hot for jeans in summer, I don’t like shorts for some odd reason and please explain why you think the first photo explains why I can’t get off the porch?
I CAN get off the porch, but I’m no match for a trained soldier, hence the pot shots off the porch.
this is often how I run around…a true fashion plate….not
MG i don’t do twitts or the others so I don’t know if has a contact email.
Or this.
https://www.texasdexterbreeders.com/
Thanks for the info. He’s saying black horned dexters are the cheapest and I agree. I have one red cow and all the rest are black. I don’t mind the horns because they need the defense since they’re small cattle and I have some brush they run through. Anyone who buys a cow from me is getting the equivalent of a Georgia/Florida cracker cow. Look them up. Sturdy, small, easy birthing, thrive on crap forage and able to look after themselves for the most part. Perfect for homesteading since they’re good for both dairy and beef and have all the cracker cow attributes.
I like goats, nubians esp. but they are a paininnabutt and more challenging than dexters. If someone wants to raise a dairy cow they can get a young heifer and raise her up. Most folk around here raise them for beef. I’m not in the business, I have what you could call ‘survivalist’ cows. If the SHTF they can take care of themselves, unlike many other breeds.
They started life as the poor mans cow in Ireland. Once the “Bulldog” calf gene was bred out of them they started to gain popularity.
I passed the link on because you mentioned wanting a bull.
I just had a cow drop a ‘bulldog’ calf. Not a true deformed one, mind you. There are short legged dexters and long legged dexters. The short legs are a form of dwarfism and many people actually bred for those traits.
My little herd got started with two really sad looking cows and a calf that I bought from an old lady who couldn’t keep up. Her cattle were in poor shape and I got what I did because they were cheap and I’m probably one of the few people who actually rescued cows to keep them from the butcher and help her out financially. A charity herd. I bought others with the long legs and will be breeding for that.
So, I guess her animals weren’t exactly high end, choice bred but…oh well. One of the cows threw a short legged calf. I AM looking for a quality bull to improve the lot. May AI but that’s a lot of work, bull just does the job and eats grass. I may lease a bull, that seems smarter if I want to improve genetics generationally.
Leasing sounds good and nobody knows better than a bull when a cow is ready.
Her scruffy herd may be a blessing in yet undiscovered resistance.
When they replaced the landrace pigs in Jamaica
they had no resistance when a disease broke out so they were forced further into the system with
Rockefeller Petro Meds.
They replaced a lot of the native animals and disaster happened. Ditto for plants. I like mutts for that very reason. I know folk who raise specific bloodlines, lots of work. I generally acquire animals via the rescue method but I am going to breed the dexters for longer legs.
There’s a shortage of dexters these days, in Texas anyways. Folks are catching on about the breed. I just emailed a place, they have bull calves for sale, no price but good bloodlines. I’d have to wait for him to grow up. There are other listing out of state, for that I’d be better with AI. Shall see.
My first season with AI was abysmal if I believe my ranch manager, and I was sure I had the technique down.
goats are a huge pain in the ass. sheep are much better behaved.
We had most of our hens getting killed until we put the coops in a dog kennel (Tractor Supply) and put on a wire roof (Hard wire around the bottom two feet of the kennel), and stopped letting them free range. Even installed concrete blocks below ground around the perimeter of the kennel to dissuade those digging critters. We’ve never had more than four or five at a time, but that supplies endless eggs.
I have every manner of critter out here and serious issues with snakes. Snakes love eggs, I mean they REALLY love eggs. Much easier to get eggs from dear friend and let her deal with the issues. She has nine dogs, all serious about taking care of the homestead. I have three, one a serious little pot licker who does bark to alert. Too many coyotes as well, ditto hogs, coons, possums, bobcats and hawks and caracaras. I really don’t want to create a place for the predators to visit.
A .410 pistol works wonders on snakes. I got em too. I know to start hunting when egg production drops for a couple days in a row. They live in between the inside and outside walls of my barn. In bunches. A few blasts and a pole with a big nail to pull them out… As for the others, I keep a radio playing in the barn and a light on. Save for the occasional airborne attack and a possum, coon or two, we’ve not had problems in our 9 years of micro farming. Our entire east side butts up to corp of engineers land with the East Fork Trinity River a quarter mile back, so lots of critters large and small. Donkeys keep coyotes away and are very easy to care for.
Chickens are well worth the efforts to keep them! We ain’t going hungry. Highly recommend trying!
Oh, I’ve raised chickens. I have definitely danced that dance. I’m single, no spouse to back me up so I do all the work. I have a .410 single shot shotgun and a .22 pistol for snakes and mostly use a shovel. My chickens were pets (cover your ears HSF) and I didn’t butcher any, just had them for eggs and amusement.
Like I said, I have friends and no shortage of eggs. Ya’ll are going through a lot of effort for eggs, I just save scraps. I don’t have to get up at night to chase off any critters, I don’t have to stare down a bull coon or dig trenches to bury concrete blocks and run fencing underground. I don’t have to run electric wire or kill snakes that aren’t venomous. I’ll kill any venomous snake, but not non-venomous, they keep rodents at bay.
If I didn’t have friends (I also get duck, turkey and goose eggs) I’d go back to chickens but why put myself through the effort? As I age I think smarter and lazier.
I hear ya. My security measures were years ago and now just cleaning poop trays. Besides, it is the extent of our animal husbandry. ;0
You never want to see how two things are made – sausage and laws.
– old saying
That’s another of those bon mots that were almost certainly composed by someone who did neither.
I love making sausage, cubing and then grinding the meat and fat, mixing in the herbs and spices, cranking them into the casings, making the links and then packaging them up.
And eating them. Really like that part.
Well, I am curious about somethings. I’ve slaughtered a few in my time and probably will again, but I dread one particular item that I will leave towards the end of my questions.
1.
When they/it are/is hanging head down, normally I cut the throat. I allow a full bleeding out. Then comes the long cut but not past the peritoneal lining, yet. There are large pails at the ready. The sternum is next and typically, I use a sharp axe/hatchet and a large hammer to cleave with. Some seem to favor a “saws-all”, but it seems unnecessarily messy and a difficult item to clean. I allow all contents to fall into the large pails, then select the liver and other “innerds” to be kept.
What do you use for the sternum?
2.
The terminus of the gut…the rectum, the ass, is difficult to remove. It is surrounded with muscles from Hades. The cuts must be deep and careful. It stinks too. Do you have a better solution?
3.
After processing, that is. they are ground up (I don’t smoke or cure hocks anymore), all spiced added and mixed, weighed and packaged… I have this persistent smell that I cannot to rid myself of. No, it is no psychological, but for some weeks/months I just cannot stand to smell pork. I don’t have this problem with beef, chicken or goat. Has this ever affected you or do you know of anybody else with “that persistent smell” problem?
I think it’s the poop, it’s just nasty.
I do two things I haven’t seen anyone else do but we were amateurs and had to figure a lot out on out own.
First, don’t feed a pig for 2 days before you slaughter. Let them fast, plenty of fresh water so their guts are a lot cleaner and there’s nothing left in the bung end. Second, once it’s bled out I hang them and powerwash them from the hooves to the tips of the ears before I make a single cut. I don’t care how clean a pig is, before you butcher them you want it spotless. I eviscerate with the head down, cut around the bung and the tail as a single unit so you have something to hang on to and slowly cut away at the muscle holding it in place from back to front. Once the bung is free I zip tie it tight just in case. Like you I prefer the cleaver method to split the sternum and the pelvic girdle so the entire entrails can be removed from tongue to tail in one piece. Cut out the liver/heart and kidneys, hang on to the caul fat for capicola, strip the tenderloins and the leaf lard, and drop the what’s left into an offal bucket and take it way out to the edge of the property as a tribute to the coyotes.
I don’t smell pig much past the evisceration stage and as soon as we skin it-we don’t scald and scrape unless we’re going to do prosciutto or a pig roast, too much work- we put it in a brine tank for 24 hours to chill it before we break down the primal cuts. Maybe that neutralizes the smell, but like I said I don’t notice it once it’s a carcass. It smells very clean, actually.
Thank you. I will try that method next time.
HSF… one thing that you can’t remove from clothing is the smell from pig pen mud .
HF- Do Yankees eat chitterlings and cracklins? (Chitlins’ if you are from the south)
I’m not down with chitterlings, but we do take the backfat and deep fry it in small strips, sort of like pork rinds. Pretty good but you probably aren’t going to eat many.
HF- I don’t eat chitlins but I love me some cracklin cornbread. Chitlins are the large intestines and smell to high heavens when cooked. Blacks cook them outside and love to eat them.
Hint – Cracklin cornbread is not sweet .
Promise you won’t ROFL (LOL is A Ok) at my initial reaction? Not the sausage making so much, but the real work getting to that point. ;0
I’ll admit, most people wouldn’t be up for it. My heartrate goes through the roof when I do the slaughter part, probably because of the risk involved, but once that’s done, it’s not a lot different than cleaning fish.
Giant fish, but still…
Cleaning fish? You clean many three hundred pound fish? I can clean fish, no problem but a full grown hog? Damn. I’ve been around slaughter, lots of work and the smell is a tad intense. I’m not up for it unless it’s a starvation situation and a very, very small pig:)
I can get on eviscerated in about fifteen minutes- not exactly slaughterhouse time, but still pretty quick. That’s the only time it smells much at all and if you get it all out cleanly, not even then so much. The process is still the same, just a lot more volume. I think about those guys who longline off the coast up here and bring in 800lb tuna. I can’t imagine having to clean that on a slippery, constantly moving deck. That’s work.
So do you skin or singe? Do you render the lard? What do you do with the offal? Hows about making blood sausag
e? Do you smoke or just brine? Inquiring minds want to know…I’d be a vegan except I like meat on occasion, especially cow. A conundrum. We used to make our own bratwurst from a family recipe from my Aunt. She had a meat packing plant in Germany before, during and after the war. Ever hear of Nuremburger bratwurst? That was our specialty.
Have you ever thought of making soap from the lard? When my grandparents butchered, Granny had a large black cast iron kettle and she’d make soap outside, pour it into wooden boxes lined with wet burlap sacks and cut it into blocks once it was cured. Yellow lye soap. She also swilled the hogs with dirty dish water…
Yes we render the lard, leaf lard (from around the kidneys) for baking and the rest for soap- we even make our own lye from ashes- and deep frying. I don’t do blood sausage because we’re a homestead not a slaughterhouse and I like to put them down where they are comfortable, outdoors. I toss them a little snack, when their head is down I take my shot and once I stick them I leave them to bleed out right in place. There’s no collecting the blood.
The best things we do are the bacon, Canadian bacon- we have a little smokehouse we built-prosciuttos and capocollos, guanciale, soppresattas, and an almost perfect Taylor style pork roll (except the size, I can’t get it that wide).
We use our own sage and maple sugar to make our breakfast sausage and I’m told it’s pretty good. I like the hot Italian and sweet Italian sausage styles best like the kind you could get down the shore in Jersey.
I got the bellies curing already so I quit early because it kind of kicked my ass today (decent pig, about 250lbs), but tomorrow I’ll start boning the quarters for grind and by Wednesday we’ll be making sausage.
Typical farmer ‘come around for a beer’ turns into 5 hours of farmwork haha. Jokes aside always value your philosophy and takes on life. a 30 something can learn a lot listening to someone like you
I’d get a bigger hat or some sunscreen for that exposed huge brain of yours. LOL.
Can someone repost first article image,cannot have them comeup a lot of the time,thanx.
Was talking in shop today to co-worker and topic of jabs came up in conversation.
He tells me that he got the jab because he wants to go to a Megadeath concert in Montreal in October.
Wished him well with the hope that he enjoys the concert.
He sold his soul for a ticket to see Megadeath? Ironic…….
How old was this guy?
He’s about 40…
The funny thing is thru the whole conversation all I could think of was if this could be the next verse in that Alanis song… it would be perfect after all, saving the best for last it would least be ironic!
Actually, nothing that Alanis mentions in that song is actually “ironic.” How ironic is that?
“a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.”
A few of them qualify.
SCRAPPLE at 3 am smells like FREEDOM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-AL TRU
HSF…about 30 or so years ago me and some buddies decided to make deer sausage. We got a grinder from a friend, I had a sausage press that I purchased ( old one in great shape), we got seasoning, sausage casings and off we went.
We ground up about 200 pounds of deer meat, seasoned it and stuffed it. We were proud of ourselves.
About a week later I cooked some of it in the oven . It was like eating sawdust. What the heck.
Called a neighbor about it. He said what was the ratio of fat to deer meat that you used ? Fat…we didn’t use any fat .
That he said is your problem ….no fat .
I tried every which way to cook it to try and get a little moisture in it…nothing worked . We tossed the sausage and started over…with a lot of pork fat .
I save a ton of fat for my sons friends who hunt the property. They trade us some venison and they mix in the fat to make their sausages. Good trade.
The fat ratio is everything in sausage Buck. I don’t like too lean meat as it is always dry as toast.
BL…no fat makes it sawdust .
Ha ha ha absolutely
That brain size and position could represent the most functional part of a brain under chronic stress. This is a 1000 word pic.