The Front Porch Swing

[wyoDreamer]

Friends of my dad use an electric chainsaw to part up their deer. They run vegetable oil as the chain oil and zip the deer into quarters. They have an old ice freezer as their cooler, think of the freezers sitting outside the gas stations with the 10 lb bags of ice stacked in them - not the ones with the glass in the door. By skinning and quartering the deer they can get up to 8 deer in there. They also use their Willies jeep and a tennis ball to skin the deer.

First time I saw them in action I was stunned.

 

[lazy gardener]

If you buy a large frozen turkey at the grocery store, you can have the butcher at the store halve or quarter it for you.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

Here in San Diego you can grow just about anything ...  The San diego Zoo for instance has the largest collection of endangered plant species in the world.  Way beyond the animals it showcases.

The desert can grow anything with water.  My friend Denise can create garden in Gravel....  LOL.  I have seen gardens in the desert One fellow raises yellow Onions on a patch of land that looks to be about five acres.  When he is done He harvests them and drys them under shade cloth in pallets that let the air thorugh.   

Once the ground is broken though you have to commit yourself to water conservation supplementation and battling the onslought of wild critters that want IN on the project.  My neighbors little garden is about twelve by twelve.  set in his yard.  His yard has a six foot tall chainlink fence to keep the coyotes out.  Dogs in side keep the rest out.  His garden looks like a chicken yard.  Its a raised bed, fenced all around with the small chicken wire, then the bottom of the bed has hardware cloth for the critters that dig up from the bottom.  They used to grow a little corn and cucumbers and squash but mostly they grew tomatoes.

The stuff I know about Gardening is from listening to my dad.  His dad used to grow Corn and beans together for two crops.  The beans climbed the corn and when tilled back in fertilized the soil.

deb

They were talking about that on the gardening thread about a month ago. First Nations farmers called it the Three Sisters because corn, beans and squash went so well together, successively in the season, and fruitfully in the soil.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

Friends of my dad use an electric chainsaw to part up their deer.  They run vegetable oil as the chain oil and zip the deer into quarters.   They have an old ice freezer as their cooler, think of the freezers sitting outside the gas stations with the 10 lb bags of ice stacked in them - not the ones with the glass in the door. By skinning and quartering the deer they can get up to 8 deer in there.  They also use their Willies jeep and a tennis ball to skin the deer.  
First time I saw them in action I was stunned.

Okay I'm kinda scared of the answer but I just have to know. "A Willies jeep and a tennis ball to skin the deer"?????? How does that work?

No pictures please!!!!

 

[Beekissed]

Okay I'm kinda scared of the answer but I just have to know. "A Willies jeep and a tennis ball to skin the deer"?????? How does that work?

No pictures please!!!!

You hang the deer by the neck, cape it down a little so you can fit a hammer head or a tennis ball under the cape, tie a rope to that knob and pull the skin off with the Jeep....slick as a whistle! I have pics if you want to see it......

 

[heartsizedfarm]

You hang the deer by the neck, cape it down a little so you can fit a hammer head or a tennis ball under the cape, tie a rope to that knob and pull the skin off with the Jeep....slick as a whistle!  I have pics if you want to see it...... 

Thanks I'll pass on the pictures, but I'm impressed by the ingenuity all right!

 

[Beekissed]

Thanks I'll pass on the pictures, but I'm impressed by the ingenuity all right!

We've been doing it that way since the 70s, though it used to be called the golf ball method....but rednecks usually don't have golf balls...nor tennis balls. We always just used a ball peen hammer.

We've used a sawsall on butchering a young heifer before as the bones are much thicker than a deer's bones. The next deer we get I'm going to cut the spine and ribs in sections and boil all the meat and marrow out to make some broth to can up. We used to waste a lot of meat on the carcass and such because we harvested so many deer per year but now the deer are scarce and our hunters are all working too much to hunt much. If we get deer we will use every bit of it we can and put it in a jar.

 

[LindaB220]

What I'm saying is ... I need to check the legality of donating it to "strangers" at all ... parted OR whole. But I will.

One word "BARTER". Ask what you got? I have large turkeys. (See no money passing hands)

 

[heartsizedfarm]

Just caught the whole chicken gang sassing out the herb garden. Plants are too thick for them to do damage, but I know what they were after, because I saw him only half an hour ago: "Herb" the garter snake that lives in the herb garden. All the chickens were intently peering into the mint so I bet that's where he was. Yikes, poor Herb. Anyway, after the images of deer skinning I'd had enough gag worthy stuff for the day! I got bread and lured the little gang of dinosaurs down the hill, where they will hopefully forget Herb and he can get on with eating mice or bugs or whatever useful thing he does there.

Though I can't handle the pics, like I said, I respect the ingenuity and the determination to fully eat and use what you hunt. Of course.

 

[Beekissed]

Just caught the whole chicken gang sassing out the herb garden. Plants are too thick for them to do damage, but I know what they were after, because I saw him only half an hour ago: "Herb" the garter snake that lives in the herb garden. All the chickens were intently peering into the mint so I bet that's where he was. Yikes, poor Herb. Anyway, after the images of deer skinning I'd had enough gag worthy stuff for the day! I got bread and lured the little gang of dinosaurs down the hill, where they will hopefully forget Herb and he can get on with eating mice or bugs or whatever useful thing he does there.

Though I can't handle the pics, like I said, I respect the ingenuity and the determination to fully eat and use what you hunt. Of course.

That must be horrible to have a gag reflex like that! I bet going through the meat aisle in the store is murder! So you don't eat meat at all?