Prep of The Day Thread


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This is what I did. Once we got the time down for the first nitrogen application we did all the buckets for the same amount of time. I used mylar bags though, not just grain in a bucket.


Personally I would never store food directly in a plastic bin. Why do that when for literally a couple dollars you can Mylar with an O2 and it will last 30 years instead of 5?

For prep the eldest son (15) and I shot some Glocks and Revolvers today. He's a natural shooter.
 
Personally I would never store food directly in a plastic bin. Why do that when for literally a couple dollars you can Mylar with an O2 and it will last 30 years instead of 5?

For prep the eldest son (15) and I shot some Glocks and Revolvers today. He's a natural shooter.

I think he was a little off with the five year comment. People have stored grain directly in gasketed buckets with just O2 absorbers and still had useable product 25 years later.

Either way you do it will work, the key is TO DO IT and have it on hand. [thumbsup]
 
Thats a big canner. The manual that came with mine said 18 pints, I made up 18 but only 16 fit, lesson learned. It says 7 qts, I will be checking that first.
 
This morning, I did 11qts and 7 pints of sweet spicy relish ( 1/4 cup of red pepper flakes added to the whole batch). Provides just enough zing without being too harsh. The sweet offsets it nicely.

This evening it will be bread&butter pickles to use up some of the smaller cukes and maybe do a couple of thicker sliced sweet pickle.
 
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My local town 'Acushnet' every two weeks gives out boxes of Produce, Frozen food and dry goods to seniors. I've gone three times so far and generally get a frozen pork loin or some chicken. Frozen pasta meals, strawberries, blueberries or a vegetable. Produce box is 5lbs of apples, potatoes, and onions, some lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and melon. Dry box is rice, canned soup, pasta, crackers, granola bars etc.

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Ah you are right around the corner friend. Let me know if you ever need something.
 
Picked 10lbs of Roma green beans, a whole bushel of pickling cukes, 1cabbage, 3 zucchini, a dozen nice sized beets, 4 bell peppers and a nice bunch of kale.

Today will be canning a few qts of green beans and making another case of qts of dill spears.

The cukes are almost maddening with the output of the plants. Every single day, 1/2 to a whole bushel of beautiful cukes, and there's still hundreds of flowers on the vines. Its a shame that they cannot be preserved by freezing.
I just sent out two texts to neighbors asking if they want a bushel.
 
A local hardware store has closed and had a sale yesterday. Everything half price. We stocked up on a lot of useful things. Picked up 2 oil lanterns, some tools and batteries. Biggest score was 8 boxes of regular size canning jar lids. Most likely last summers supply for the store but I checked online and they are good for at least 5 years. I keep them in the basement so it's less likely the seal will dry out. The garden so far isn't as great as I had hoped. So if anyone local is having a canning jar lid emergency I can probably spare a couple of boxes.
 
A nitrogen purge, is putting a tube from a nitrogen tank with a regulator at about 2 psi into the bottom of the mylar bag with product in it. The nitrogen is heavy and fills up the bag displacing most of the air/oxygen within. A couple of O2 absorbers removes the rest in a couple of hours so you end up with little to no oxygen in the bag. It will actually draw the bag to a slight vacuum.

Gallons to pounds depends on the product. A 5gal bucket with mylar liner holds about 23-25 lbs of wheat. Don't worry about pounds, just go by volume.

chem nerd alert, O2 gas is heavier than N2 gas.The purge displaces the 80/20 n2/O2 gas found in nature with pure N2 which is not reactive with out the oxygen. Class dismissed.
 
Had our first tomato ripen today. So far what we planted seems to be doing ok.

Several tomato plants, a cucumber plant, pepper plants, broccoli seemed to have come back from the brink of death and our green beans. Our first time trying to grow any veggies so I was pretty stoked to see this.

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For those of us that aren't as motivated as Uzi2. No disrespect their though man you're the champ. Check this company out I have ordered a few things from them before I just placed a larger order.
I was going to order a couple more of those pre-made 172 serving buckets. But I figured I would try to stock the pantry with everything I would need to make meals
separately. With gallon-sized dehydrated beef ,chicken, and powdered eggs, oatmeal Etc. From other manufacturers. And purchase fruit and vegetables from them. I Think you get a lot more for your money that way. I haven't figured out per serving but I think you're way ahead of the game. Harmony House | Freeze Dried & Dehydrated Foods, Non-GMO
 
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For those of you that aren't as motivated as Uzi2. No disrespect their though man you're the champ. Check this company out I have ordered a few things from them before I just placed a larger order.
I was going to order a couple more of those pre-made 172 serving buckets. But I figured I would try to stock the pantry with everything I would need to make meals
separately. With gallon-sized dehydrated beef ,chicken, and powdered eggs, oatmeal Etc. From other manufacturers. And purchase fruit and vegetables from them. I Think you get a lot more for your money that way. I haven't figured out per serving but I think you're way ahead of the game. Harmony House | Freeze Dried & Dehydrated Foods, Non-GMO
I don't know why those random blank spaces ate there I tried to backspace. But they don't appear when I attempted to edit.
 
Had our first tomato ripen today. So far what we planted seems to be doing ok.

Several tomato plants, a cucumber plant, pepper plants, broccoli seemed to have come back from the brink of death and our green beans. Our first time trying to grow any veggies so I was pretty stoked to see this.

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Nice! Mine have been ripening for about a week and a half now. Nothing like a good vine ripe garden tomato.....the one thing that you cannot get in a grocery store.

I've got a colander full of them sitting on the counter now, along with a bunch of nice Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.

I picked a few large green ones yesterday and made fried green tomatoes.....one of my favorites.

I have another 3 gallon batch of relish in the fridge to be cooked and jarred tomorrow morning.
 
Green tomatoes? [puke]

My "prep" for tomorrow is to try to sell some stuff from Craigslist (bike, hubcaps, sleigh bed, another bike, ...) and free up some room. Also might call electrician to see about doing a generator hookup. Should probably run the generator and see how it works. Bought it from an NES guy, but haven't really used it yet. Any suggestions on that?

Need to weed the garden, and mow my dry lawn.

P.S. TONS of peaches!!!!
 
Green tomatoes? [puke]

My "prep" for tomorrow is to try to sell some stuff from Craigslist (bike, hubcaps, sleigh bed, another bike, ...) and free up some room. Also might call electrician to see about doing a generator hookup. Should probably run the generator and see how it works. Bought it from an NES guy, but haven't really used it yet. Any suggestions on that?

Need to weed the garden, and mow my dry lawn.

P.S. TONS of peaches!!!!

Fried green tomatoes man, delicious!

Slice them 1/4 inch thick, dip in egg wash then in Italian spiced bread crumbs, coat them well. Then into a frying pan with about 1/4 inch hot oil. Fry until slightly browned and tender. Serve with ranch dressing. I could eat them all day.
If you've never tried them, you're missing out.

What type of generator gas, propane diesel? Size? I highly recommend using non ethanol gasoline if its a gas job. Keep a spare fuel filter, oil filter or three ( if it has one) and enough oil to do complete changes.
 
Green tomatoes? [puke]

My "prep" for tomorrow is to try to sell some stuff from Craigslist (bike, hubcaps, sleigh bed, another bike, ...) and free up some room. Also might call electrician to see about doing a generator hookup. Should probably run the generator and see how it works. Bought it from an NES guy, but haven't really used it yet. Any suggestions on that?

Need to weed the garden, and mow my dry lawn.

P.S. TONS of peaches!!!!
What size sleigh bed, I might be interested?
 
Just finished canning 14 pints and 2 qts and one partial pint of hot sweet spicy relish. Ran out of pint canning jars so had to do a couple of quarts.
The partial becomes our taste test fridge jar to judge the whole batch.
 
Today the county cut down a 70 foot oak tree with a 40 inch trunk and lots of 10-12 inch diameter leaders and branches. They limbed it, blocked it up and chipped up all the brush then delivered all to me right around the corner. It saved them a forty mile round trip drive to their yard and I got a winter's worth of red oak fire wood and several more small dump truck loads of wood chips to add to my existing compost piles.

Picked a dozen perfectly vine ripened tomatoes. Cuke vines still producing but going by pretty quickly. I'd say a couple of more days of picking and that will be it for the season. Tomorrow, another big batch of sweet spicy relish.
 
Up early this morning and spent an hour and a half with my homemade picaroon pulling10-12x 36 inch oak logs out of the pile dumped the other day and stacking them for cutting and splitting. Thankfully, the kid doing the cutting did a nice job and kept the ends square and even lengths. One cut and ready to split.

Tomorrow I have to take the metal detector up and scan the trunk as there was barbed wire fence attached to the tree for probably a hundred years. I'll mark the spots and cut above and below the lines and probably just discard that bottom five feet of the trunk and use it as part of the backstop on my shooting range. It's not worth wrecking chains, I've got plenty of good wood from the loads.
Going to be in the 90's again for a few days....all outside work ceases for me about 10am.
 
Just turned off the heat on 2 1/2 gallons of meat sauce made with 4lbs ground beef, 2lbs ground sweet Italian sausage, vadala onions with tomatoes, fresh basil and bell peppers right from the garden. Will cool, portion into smaller containers and freeze.
 
Just turned off the heat on 2 1/2 gallons of meat sauce made with 4lbs ground beef, 2lbs ground sweet Italian sausage, vadala onions with tomatoes, fresh basil and bell peppers right from the garden. Will cool, portion into smaller containers and freeze.

Just curious why you don't can the sauce as opposed to freezing. Sounds awesome btw.
 
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