L. Tims

What I've learned is that if you put red meats like beef, mutton or venison on a rack in a cool, dry room with good air circulation they actually get better instead of going bad. If you leave them long enough they just form a harmless mold rind like a cheese. And you can buy beef they do this with but at a large markup. (I mean, I'd heard of dry aged beef long ago and might've even had some at some point, but never really thought about what it meant.)

So, what's the best way to create a place like this without a huge electricity bill? I saw one guy on youtube who had a root cellar lined with huge blocks of salt and just a fan. That's the best solution for me I've seen so far. Just how much would those blocks of salt cost?

I have a general notion that people in the past had something like this called a "larder" which is now just used to mean any meat storage, usually freezers. But I don't quite understand what these larders were or how they worked. It's one of those old timey things it's hard to find information on, where it seems they just wafted from common sense to forgotten by all but a few.

I also suspect meat somehow improves nutritionally from this process, I've always had difficulty digesting grocery store meat and find it just generally unpalatable. Part of that might be the diet and lifestyle of the animal but I feel like there's this key part of traditional meat processing being left out.

Oh yeah, ham. Good ham is still cured something like this I think? But I'm not planning on ever raising pigs so I'll leave any ham related questions out.

So basically

-Just water bath can it but be sure to cook it after opening, label it so no one eats it straight

-Get an old pressure canner without a gasket at a garage sale, use a metal plate

-Pickle it then water bath can it- but it's not as easy as just adding vinegar

Thanks everyone

Maybe I got my bacteria mixed up but I'm pretty sure the principle is right

Hey guys, long time no post. No reason really, I just haven't seen anything I thought I needed to add to, or had any questions that weren't answerable via search engine. Until now. I've found no information about this on the entire internet.

My understanding is that there is a bad bug or two, e. coli I think is the big name one, that won't be killed by boiling at 212° F, but is easily killed by and won't survive in acid, and that's why you can water bath can fruit but not meat, fruit has acid.

As I sat sipping my apple cider vinegar electrolyte drink one day it occurred to me, vinegar is acid, cover meat with vinegar in a jar and it should be safe to water bath can, right?

Please no "just get a pressure canner" comments, they cost a couple hundred monies last time I checked, and water bath canning is way more practical if you're using wood as fuel, idk how hard it would be to maintain the heat well enough to use a pressure canner over a wood stove. You can water bath can with a fire and a metal bucket.

To me it looks like the red leaf is some blueberry pigment leaking into the leaves. I had this happen when I grew glass gem corn one year, I think it results from inadequate fruit set and the pigment needing somewhere else to go.

Don't worry, if grass does start to come through you can just snip it off with some scissors and mulch with it and it will die from lack of photosynthesis eventually.

I've been there, done that with the cardboard thing and I can tell you that roots will definitely NOT grow through it the first year. For annuals this was completely detrimental. For blueberries I'm not sure, if you provided enough fertility on top of it they might do OK the first year and then be able to grow through it the second. Then again it might completely stunt their growth, cause them to fail to pereniallize and set you back to square one the second year.

I would strongly consider removing it. I've had good luck making raised beds just by letting the grass grow a couple feet tall, cutting it as low as possible with a sickle, laying it flat on the ground and building the raised bed on top of that. As long as the raised bed is about a foot high or more and you plant into it immediately, no grass should get through, no cardboard needed.

I like your stone raised beds by the way! Very rustic.

Literally fluorescent? That's amazing, I would propogate it as a source of alternative lighting.

Haha okay probably not. I would just leave it alone and let it finish breaking down the tree stump. You are lucky it was there so you didn't have to use chemical stump remover or try to yank it out with a truck and some rope.

(Having looked it up, there are bioluminescent mushrooms but they all glow an eery green not a nice warm orange, so mushroom candles are probably not in the immediate future.)

I don't know if this helps but not all native Americans grew/grow it in clumps, the Tarahumara grow theirs in fields and plant beans around the perimeter. Not sure what benefit that has but it does seem like it'd give a good bean to corn ratio.