Whew! What a couple of weeks it has been!

Mondays are typically Make-stuff days (breads, jellies & jams, meals to be frozen, etc.).  It is also a laundry & housekeeping day.

I've been tutoring a friend in computer literacy in weekly 3-ish hour Tuesday sessions. It's going well and she now has an understanding of how to organize files on a computer. To facilitate the class, my husband has set up a PC tower next to the coffee table and a HUGE behemoth of a monitor that must weigh a million pounds that we must lift to put on and eventually off the table for the instruction.

Wednesdays I've been attending a 4 hour Master Gardener class about 45 minutes away. It's great fun and I've been able to meet new people and network a bit on a social AND professional level. After only 3 classes, I can now understand why many of last year's gardening failures happened. ONly 9 more classes left and I hope to be in much better shape for this year's projects.

I've started volunteering at an agriculture museum about an hour away in order to earn the 50 hours required to be certified as a Master Gardener. I go back tomorrow and hope to have a friend join me in the coming weeks. It's informative and practical in that the education we are getting in class is actually being applied in a hand-on approach. It's hot and it's not the easiest work, but the guide is nice and it's a beautiful site with lots of history. That's 4 hours on Thursday mornings.

Friday is typically a catch-up at home day. We weed, mow, sow seeds, make things for the house, etc. Since we've ordered 40 birds (25 chickens and 15 guineas), we'll be  building a brooder, chicken house, and, perhaps, a barn to house future cattle & other livestock. Then we shower & head to a friend's place to unwind, play cards and have lively discussions.

Saturday, we continue catching up and try to organize other projects on the farm.

Then there's Sunday... the "day of rest"... when we get up at 4am for the hog hunt. If we catch something, we go to a neighbor's place to butcher the beasts. If we do NOT catch something, we shower and go to church. Then back to weeding, mowing, clearing paths through the brush and building needed things for the farm.

Then we do it all over again...

You'd think we'd be dropping weight like crazy doing all this...

...apparently that's a slow process, too! LOL!

The Mower Works!!!! It Works! It does! It does!

Pardon my excitement, but....

IT WORKS!!! YAY!

After all the hullabaloo, Hubby got the mower deck to work. He spent a HUGE part of yesterday afternoon mowing down LOTS of thorny brush leading to the pond.

Hubby's having a GREAT time now that he gets to mow the thorny brush!

You can barely see him behind the overgrown thicket.

The beginning path of cleared ground.

Look how low the pond water has gotten.

Nice...

Even the kitties like the shorter greenery.

Looks like it's manicured.

Can you tell where he stopped for the day??

Making Hot Pepper Jelly

When I got back home this afternoon, I picked a bunch of Hot Peppers from the garden and decided to try my hand at making Hot Pepper Jelly.

Today's harvest from my garden!

 I used the recipe for Easy Jalapeno Jelly out of a book called: 

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 delicious and creative recipes for today

 Things I learned while in my 1st ever attempt to make Hot Pepper Jelly:

It takes A LOT of peppers to equal 12 oz after you remove seeds and veins!

When handling hot peppers, it is best to use rubber gloves in order to prevent the Capsaicin in the peppers from burning your skin.

 THIS INCLUDES CLEANUP, not just while you are cutting, seeding & de-veining the peppers.

When the instructions call for a "deep, stainless steel saucepan", what they mean is a "HUGE pasta pot".

 Apparently, upon boiling, the raging lava more than doubles in volume...

 ...and is likely to pour out of the saucepan all over your stove top with little to no warning.

Food coloring is NOT required for hot pepper jelly, despite what the recipe calls for. Mine turned out a brilliant, fiery red/orange- perhaps a homage to the hot stuff within!

• Unlike boiling water, when jelly splashes on you while boiling, it does not just drip off. Instead, it sticks to your skin like napalm and begins eating through the 1st couple layers of skin.
  
  No matter how independent you believe yourself to be, this is NOT a 2 handed task. It really helped to have Hubby there to help out.
• 
  If you begin this task with any sinus congestion, it will be gone before the task is complete.

As I'm typing this, the can lids are popping one-by-one as they cool. This lets me know that there is a good seal on them. YAY! I did it correctly! Now comes the hardest part: waiting for them to cool and set before I can taste it!

Deer: Majestic or Menace

The day after we mowed the lawn, we had some unexpected guests enjoying the delectable new shoots of grass that had grown over night.

Remember now that these "Majestic" Creatures are the same varmints that ate all my lettuce last winter

The damned deer ate my red & head lettuce!

Buttercrunch and Romaine Lettuces after planting...

Overnight, the deer ate most of it!

They've eaten my lettuces, my tomatoes, my hot peppers... everything that wasn't covered or caged.
Now I ask you, are they rats with a larger profile and greater appetite or still "aww, look at the deer!"

In my opinion, I can't wait for hunting season so I can dine on some venison!

Our Solution to the Feral Hog Problem (Skip the pics if you have a weak stomach)

Feral Hogs are a HUGE pest to farmers and residents in the Southeast, including our property.

This ground was growing up in wild grasses.

Hogs have decimated this area and claimed it as their sleeping grounds.

This is just one family group of hogs. There are many in the area.

Not only have the hogs trampled this grassy area, they have destroyed the corn crop that the farmer who rents our land had planted this spring. As a result, we sought a solution. Our answer to this riddle was to form a hunting group. Every Sunday, Hubby and some guys from the area get together at daybreak to hunt the feral hogs. These boys bring their hunting dogs, rifles & shotguns and week after week, reduce the number of feral hogs in the area by at least 2-4 at a time.

Since I can not condone wasting the meat of these creatures, I have stepped in to help clean and butcher the beasts. The pictures below are not for the weak stomached out there, but portray our adventures in learning to live off the land!

These are 3 of the 4 confirmed down. All sows.

1st step in cleaning the hogs was to remove the skin.

Hubby's 1st kill! That's one eating machine that will not be wrecking our field or goring our neighbors or pets.

Another day's harvest

This boar is almost a year old. As it ages, these tusks can get several inches long and can penetrate skin down to the bone, or even sever the bone completely.

Skinned carcasses

These are supposed to be a delicacy. We weren't brave enough to try. I'll let you guess what they are.

Seasonings for sausages

Ground wild pork

A freezer full of pork

Breakfast Sausage all wrapped up

Sicilian Sausage: meat & ingredients ready to mix.

Other Sausage seasonings

Mixing a 5 lb. batch

Mixing one of 2 batches of feral hog sausage

The packaging table... this was NOT a 1 person job.

My mom and husband were integral in seasoning, mixing, partitioning and then packaging the sausage.

Last 1/2 lb pack of sausage

Great when combined with homemade biscuits...

Gravy...

and eggs!

Pile one on top of the other...

Cover with gravy & viola! A breakfast fit for a king!

Not a bad solution for a feral hog problem. The hog population has waned, but not for long. Soon the sows will birth a new generation of crop destroyers and menaces. Not to worry. We'll soon be short on pork.