Tennessee Gun

Tag: harvest

  • The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making

    The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making

    Book Review: The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making
    Buy at Amazon

    One self-reliant project that I enjoy, but haven’t got around to videotaping is home sausage making. I believe that the ability to cure and store meat is a vital skill to anyone interested in producing a majority of their own food (vegans and veggies excepted).

    I can deal with a lot of things, but a life without bacon and sausage are just not worth dealing with (IMHO).  All preppers need to know how to How to Harvest Your Livestock and Wild Game

    Luckily I found this little gem. The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making is a well illustrated book on dispatching, skinning, and then butchering both common livestock, but also common game animals.

    Not only does this book describe how to cut up a larger animal into usable (and well defined) cuts of meat, it also describes how to prep it for storage by curing and smoking it.

    This book has been a very useful to me, its detailed enough to show me what to do, and modern enough to have great illustrations.

    How to Harvest Your Livestock and Wild Game has been a great help to me as I learned to make sausage, bacon, and other cured meats.

  • Homegrown Whole Grains

    Homegrown Whole Grains

    Book Review: Homegrown Whole Grains
    Buy at Amazon

    A backyard field of grains? Yes, absolutely! Homegrown Whole Grains are rapidly replacing grass in the yards of dedicated locavores across the country. For adventurous homeowners who want to get in on the movement, Homegrown Whole Grains is the place to begin.

    Growing whole grains is simpler and more rewarding than most people imagine. With as little as 1000 square feet of land, backyard farmers can grow enough wheat to harvest 50 pounds in a single afternoon – and those 50 pounds can be baked into 50 loaves of fresh bread.

    In addition to providing information on wheat and corn, Homegrown Whole Grains includes complete growing, harvesting, and threshing instructions for barley, millet, oats, rice, rye, spelt, and quinoa, and lighter coverage of several specialty grains. Readers will also find helpful tips on processing whole grains, from what to look for in a home mill to how to dry corn and remove the hulls from barley and rice.

    Chapters for each grain include inventive recipes for cereals, desserts, casseroles, salads, soups and stews, and, of course, home-baked breads, the crowning achievement of the home grain grower. Sara Pitzer shares dozens of ideas for using whole grains – from cooking sturdy wheat berries in a slow cooker to malting barley for homebrewed beer. Whether milled into nutritional flours or used in any of their unmilled states, wheat, barley, quinoa, and the other grain crops are healthful additions to every diet.