|
Those beef ribs look loving great. What kind of wood do you like with beef?
|
#
?
May 25, 2011 02:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:42 |
|
|
Hey, thank you  Typically I use hickory, followed by mesquite for an hour or so. Too much mesquite is bad for the meat, I find. But since I had pork ribs in there too, I just used cherry this time. Apple and cherry, sometimes maple for pork. Hickory and mesquite for beef. Alder, cherry, apple, and maple for fish. Generally, anyway.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2011 03:08
|
|
|
Oh hey, Country Wisdom & Know-How, great book.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2011 03:53
|
|
|
Slung, you are a downright evil person. Your house in the country is one of the reasons as to why I cant decide where i want to buy a house. It's wonderful to see so many of your projects moving forward :-D
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2011 10:49
|
|
|
Here's me posting in your thread hoping you will post some June updates!
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2011 19:44
|
|
|
Parachute posted:Here's me posting in your thread hoping you will post some June updates! drat you! Here I thought there would be a post with pictures 
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2011 19:51
|
|
|
Good news, costco had chinook salmon again. Bought three fillets, gonna smoke em tomorrow or Sunday. Images to follow!
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2011 04:55
|
|
|
Please do post pics. I've been thinking about the last setup you had and would like to rob some of your ideas. No lies, I'm gonna steal your thunder with the smoker plans.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2011 04:59
|
|
It's burgin' time! 
|
Well, ok. Three fillets. Chinook salmon. Awwww yeaaaah. I froze them for a couple days, last time when I froze them before I cured them it worked a little better. Cell damage allowed the brine to penetrate farther I suppose.  Taking a risk here, not using a brine, just going straight for the kosher salt / brown sugar cure. So I'm not sure if the freezing will help or not.  JUICES BEING EXTRACTED (few hours later)  Going to let this sit in the fridge overnight, rinse em off tomorrow, let them sit a little longer and then probably smoke them using the same setup as last year.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2011 05:39
|
|
|
Holy poo poo. So many weeds. In the meantime, the salmon is developing a pellicle membrane in the fridge.  Here's where I got at the end of the day yesterday. gently caress, so tired. I was kinda hung over after drinking all night Friday night.   Sunday morning, here's the fish. gently caress yes, that looks perfect.  Amazingly, my fruit trees are doing amazingly well.  This one even has little apples on it! Holy gently caress!  The rhubarb plant I stole from a dead man is doing incredibly well.  The potatoes that survived are also doing ok.  SMOKE AWAY MY LITTLE FRIEND.  While cultivating and hoeing the garden, a little storm blew through. It only lasted 20 minutes or so, just enough to cool things off nicely. Apparently it blew the roof off of a 90 year old theater in Strathmore (just southeast of me).  Salmon all smoked up. Oh man this smells so good.  I need more cooling racks. At least I can keep the two tail sections as undried. The other one was amazing as a snack after working outside all day.    oh my god you guys seriously Garden's all cultivated up. Should have done it a month ago. Oh well, hopefully I can keep on top of it now. To be fair, I broke my hoe last year, and I just got around to welding it yesterday.  Then I made brownies, a friend at work moved into a new place, thought I'd make a housewarming present for her. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 02:29
|
|
|
What do you usually get for a growing season up there? Hell of a place you have there, Slung Blade.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 02:51
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:The rhubarb plant I stole from a dead man is doing incredibly well. I think that's the first and last time I'll ever hear that sentence. I've never had salmon jerky before, but it definitely looks good. What size population does your town/surrounding area have?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 03:12
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:The rhubarb plant I stole from a dead man... There's something almost post apocalyptic about this phrase. I like to think you found him sprawled out on your land reaching towards a well, other hand clutched around a sprig of rhubarb  That fish looks so freaking tasty too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 11:43
|
|
|
madlilnerd posted:There's something almost post apocalyptic about this phrase. I like to think you found him sprawled out on your land reaching towards a well, other hand clutched around a sprig of rhubarb  Actually he was a neighbour of my grandparents. He had three rhubarb plants in his garden, and he was going to give them all to grandma when he moved out, as they live a neighbourhood where the houses are always bought to be torn down and infilled. Poor guy passed away before he got the chance to dig them out and pass them on. So I did it once they tore the fence down. Snuck down the alley on a rainy afternoon with a shovel and a couple of big garbage bags. Man that doesn't sound so manly. Uh, I mean I clubbed him to death and took his farm. Costello Jello posted:I think that's the first and last time I'll ever hear that sentence. I've never had salmon jerky before, but it definitely looks good. My community has about 20 houses, but we're almost exclusively a bedroom community for Calgary, which has a population of about 1 million. I heart bacon posted:What do you usually get for a growing season up there? Approximately 20 minutes between July and August. (June - October if the weather cooperates) ((it never cooperates))
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 16:43
|
|
|
That salmon  I tried prepackaged jerky salmon once, and it tasted like someone dumped a ton of salt on a half-rotted fish.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 17:00
|
|
|
Wandering Knitter posted:That salmon To be honest, I'm not sure if I like this stuff better moist or dehydrated. The tail section I ate yesterday after working all day was loving amazing, and I bet it would be great with bagels and a little cream cheese. But the dehydrated stuff is awfully good too. I guess the dehydrated stuff will last longer, but is shelf life really a problem here? I'll be lucky if this lasts a week.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 17:21
|
|
|
I want to put a 130 foot tall insulated tower which is a 1/4 wavelength on the 160 meter ham radio band in your back yard. Actually, I want to put up four of these towers and make a phased array. We could use your tractor to plow up a couple feet of earth to lay the ground radials too! I'm sure we could get the guys in the electronics thread to wind us up a good austin transfromer to power the air-craft warning lights. AbsentMindedWelder fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 4, 2011 |
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2011 18:03
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:The tail section I ate yesterday after working all day was loving amazing, and I bet it would be great with bagels and a little cream cheese. Add a little red onion and some capers and that is just about the best breakfast ever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2011 00:38
|
|
|
Slung Blade, I'm going to re-read this whole thread, because my wife and I are planning to start our own little life out in the woods somewhere. We may end up getting a house with a shitload of land and splitting the cost with friends who are hardcore vegans and big on organic farming. Granted, this is most likely going to be somewhere in northern New Jersey, but it's closer to Pennsylvania and there is in fact lots of greenery out here. Sadly I won't have an electric tractor (ELECTRACTOR) to help us with the gardening 
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2011 23:24
|
|
|
His socked feet were dusty and warm from being in his old comfortable boots all day, now they were free to rest on the bottom railing of the porch. The sunlight gently ran across his t-shirt, the heat and light causing the fabric to release the pleasant odor of recently burnt welding rod.  The breeze danced through the long grass, the reeds sang like the ocean, surrounded by dark earth, rich with nutrients and recent moisture from the summer rains. The air was pleasant and warm, the breeze light and refreshing. Even the mosquitoes were leaving him alone while he sat on his porch and contemplated the grain growing the field across the way.  A silent thank you to the dragonflies darting around the place like his own personal fleet of attack helicopters, keeping the skies clear of the blood sucking pests. A day well spent, muscles relaxed and tired as is only possible after working with his hands, skin slightly salty. Much more satisfying than sitting at a computer and typing away as he did during the rest of the week, in his "real life". But the day was nearly over, As he sipped his beer, the sun sank towards the horizon, and he wondered how this perfect day could have been any better. Well for starters those loving crows could have not pulled four of his apples off the young tree before they were ripe DizzyBum posted:Slung Blade, I'm going to re-read this whole thread, because my wife and I are planning to start our own little life out in the woods somewhere. We may end up getting a house with a shitload of land and splitting the cost with friends who are hardcore vegans and big on organic farming. That's loving awesome and I wish you all the best. If you're going to get a good sized plot of land, make sure you have some kind of tractor though, you'll need it. Trust me. If you have any questions that you think I can answer, please let me know.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2011 04:31
|
|
|
My wife and I are also about to start building our home. My parents donated 3 acres out of a 30 acre farm for us to build on. This weekend my brother and I are going to be building a shed/ out building for storage. I've been getting more and more excited from reading your thread. Our home is going to be about a quarter mile away from the road. It is going to be quiet and dark at night.
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2011 05:02
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:I've been burying my kitchen waste in semi-random places near the wellhead since I moved in. Time to consolidate it in a proper compost bin. These brackets are great, screw some 1x6s to them and make whatever size you want. Where did you get these? I found them online for anywhere from $70 to $90 but couldn't find a retailer that carries them..
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 07:29
|
|
|
Laminator posted:Where did you get these? I found them online for anywhere from $70 to $90 but couldn't find a retailer that carries them.. Slung Blade posted:
Totally worth the price. I don't know if they'll ship to you or not, especially if you're in the US.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 18:40
|
|
|
You are doing exactly what I plan to be doing in about five or six years. I am so incredibly jealous. I'm also super fired up to go home and DO SOMETHING right now, because I want to be just like you when I grow up. I'm curious-- you bake a lot of bread for one dude living by yourself. I made one small loaf once and between three people couldn't get the whole thing eaten before it went stale. How do you store your bread, or do you just eat it fast/invite people over to eat it?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 19:12
|
|
|
Hmm, I don't know how I missed this last night but there's a company in the US that makes them, and they're cheaper (for 18 ga stainless) http://www.kkindustries.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=70 thanks
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 19:17
|
|
|
Since you talk about smithing and your username is Slung Blade, can you show us any bladed weapons you've made? What is the outlook on further development in your area? You've showed photos of your neighbors, do you know how many more lots will be occupied?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 20:31
|
|
|
Pucklynn posted:I'm curious-- you bake a lot of bread for one dude living by yourself. I made one small loaf once and between three people couldn't get the whole thing eaten before it went stale. How do you store your bread, or do you just eat it fast/invite people over to eat it? If it takes 3 people to do in a small loaf, your spreads are terrible. Make some honey butter for starters. I made garlic butter last night by boiling garlic cloves in butter and salt, mashing it all, and mixering it into more butter.  Remember, hardened arteries are nature's mosquito armor.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 20:38
|
|
|
Yeah, real butter and a decent spread or two in the cupboard and you'll stop snacking on anything else so long as there's bread in the house. I make my own apple butter and jams in the fall, and we roll through 3-5 loaves a week between three of us.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:05
|
|
|
Splizwarf posted:If it takes 3 people to do in a small loaf, your spreads are terrible. Make some honey butter for starters. I made garlic butter last night by boiling garlic cloves in butter and salt, mashing it all, and mixering it into more butter. There's my problem. I have "tasty food guilt" wherein I feel like delicious things are bad for me and eat them sparingly. Clearly I need to fix this! I do have an amazing honey spread that I like to use, but I'll be very sad when I eat it all.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 03:02
|
|
|
Your guilt is unwarranted, and you would do well to educate yourself in the lore of food. Plenty of tasty things are great for you, and a lot of tasty things that are only okay for you are just fine in moderation. Slung Blade's smoked salmon is an example of great for you. I'm at work so I can't pass you some properly researched links, but I'll try to think of some good resources for you. "On Food And Cooking" by Harold McGee is a Splizwarf fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jul 29, 2011 |
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 13:02
|
|
|
Suicide Watch posted:Since you talk about smithing and your username is Slung Blade, can you show us any bladed weapons you've made? I mostly chronicle that stuff in the blacksmithing/metal thread, but here you go.    Simple letter openers are pretty much all I've done so far. I have a ton of leaf spring stock that I'll make something out of someday. Regarding development, there is one lot out of the stock that my property came from left. Someone bought it a year ago, decided they didn't want it, tried to re-sell it with a different realtor, the sign blew down in the winter and no one put it back up for 5 months, and now they're trying to re-sell it with the original realtor again. The folks across the street with the horses own the strip of land that runs along the road right to the corner, and I think they want to subdivide in the next few years. There's also a 10 (maybe 20) acre strip that runs from the highway to my street in town, I think they want to subdivide too. The parcel next to the community hall is also for sale (has been for at least 3 years) but it's usually half underwater, so I doubt it will sell anytime soon. My descriptions are kind of vague, so I'll draw up a little map to explain myself better if you guys are interested. From what I understand, the hamlet is undergoing a bit of a growth spurt. It used to be bigger back when the railroad ran through. We had our own store and post office for example, maybe a gas station too. That all went away when they tore up the rails (and provided me an awesome source of knife stock). They left a lot of gravel from the ballast though, so there's a big strip of loose rock running down the middle of my backyard. Now that Calgary is so big and expensive, we've turned into a bit of a bedroom community. There are a few businesses here, there's Sundowner manufacturing, they make campers and portable paramedic cabs for oilfield trucks and do RV repairs. There's at least two mechanics, one's a diesel specialist who just built an enormous shop here in town. My neighbour in the green house to the north runs a sewer installation and maintenance company with his excavator and is an awesome guy. I would like to make a living from ironwork someday, but I'm not good enough in terms of skill / productivity yet. Maybe when I'm slightly more financially secure. Regarding the bread: I bake two loaves at a time, but I wrap one in tinfoil and freeze it. The other I slice, and I keep it also in tinfoil but on the counter out of the sun. A loaf will last me anywhere from a week to two weeks. It very rarely goes bad on me, I think I've only lost 3-4 pieces total to mold, and that's usually just the toe of the loaf. It's pretty dry here, and I keep the tinfoil open just a bit at the top (partially because I'm too loving lazy to totally close it in, or rip off just a touch too little foil) but it doesn't go stale. Or maybe I just don't notice because I almost always toast it on the stove. I love using a camping toaster in my house instead of an electric one on the counter. Freaks out my guests.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 19:27
|
|
|
Not sure if I've posted about this thing yet. I bought a lovely little lawn mower to make it easier to look after the stupid grass. It's light (I can lift it no problem) and really good on gas. I can mow 4-5 times on a single tank, and I think the tank is about a gallon or something. Maybe 5 litres. This thing has been sitting in my parent's garage for 10 years, I think they used it last maybe 7 years ago. It's great for gardening, and prepping beds for trees and plants, but it is absolutely awful at breaking new ground because the tines rotate in the same direction as the tires. Fortunately, my tractor is great at breaking ground, but the implements I have don't go quite far enough to make a good seed bed, the clods are too big, and the disk harrow doesn't go deep enough to chop them up. The two will complement each other nicely.  (My folks and I used a lovely counter-rotating sears tiller to break ground back in the day.) I changed the oil in it (last done 2001!) and checked out all the maintenance bits. To fill the gear oil in the transmission, you have to undo this bolt in the little cone shaped mounting and take the handles off. Seemed kinda odd to me. The hole was a little too small for my smallest funnel, so I had to use some paper and improvise.  While I had the gear oil out, I changed all the oil in the big tractor and gave it a bit of a wash. The oil that was in it looked pretty good, but there was a fair bit of air bubbles in it. I'm thinking it's just because the gear teeth churn it up pretty good, and I hope it's not an indication that I'm doing something wrong.  I was changing all this oil so I could tear out and re-do that line of trees on the northwest side of the house. All the nanking cherry bushes on that line didn't revive in the spring, so I'm going to replace them with Honeyberry bushes which are supposed to do magnificently here. Broke it up with the tractor and the c-tine cultivator, and then I ran over it with the tiller. Mixed in some leftover peatmoss and planting soil from the trees, and tilled it again. Nice and smooth.  I also mowed the lawn, trimmed, and pulled two trees out with the tractor for my neighbour. One was dead and pulled easy, the other was 12 feet tall and still alive, and quite well rooted. Had to cut that one a little bit before I could yank it out with the tractor. Still got pitch on my elbow. Regardless, it was another Good Day. Slung Blade fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jul 31, 2011 |
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2011 04:16
|
|
|
Another friday off today. Slept in, went outside at 3pm with the intention of just mowing and trimming, but I ended up doing some plant maintenance. So my saskatoons didn't do so well, I think only this one bush survived.  The nanking cherry bushes have done really well though, mostly. They're kinda stunted, but they usually take a while to get going. Hopefully they grew some serious roots this year.  The main problem is keeping grass and weeds away from the poor little plants. When I first made the beds, they were only as wide as the tractor's cultivator with the two outer tines removed. Now that I've modified the tractor's hitch, I can run with three of the six tines removed, all on the same side, without it tilting like crazy on me.  So I did alongside the beds with that and it worked pretty well.  Hit it with the tiller to break it up and smooth it out.  Should be better now. I'll have to rake the grass out later and hoe out the grass between the bushes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2011 05:46
|
|
|
One thing that helps with weed control is using DDGS (Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles). It does very well for broadleaf control and feeding the grass. If you have crabgrass like us, you'll still need something for that, though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2011 06:35
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:I mostly chronicle that stuff in the blacksmithing/metal thread, but here you go.  It's bootyful and I want it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2011 08:58
|
|
|
I <3 Bacon: Where would I get that? Breweries? Is that all it is, spent grain from distilleries? Captain Stinkybutt posted:
Thanks, I make them to sell them, so if you'd like one, please PM me and we can work something out
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2011 03:54
|
|
|
I vouch for SlungBlade brand letter openers. Would buy again A++++
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2011 04:58
|
|
|
Slung Blade posted:I <3 Bacon: Where would I get that? Breweries? Is that all it is, spent grain from distilleries? That's exactly what it is. Any feed supply should have it. If there are any cattle feed lots in the area, I'm sure there's a supplier. Or even a local elevator. It also comes out of ethanol plants, so it's essentially the corn with the sugar extracted from it. There's a study out there on the effectiveness of DDGS used on lawns, I just can't find it right now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2011 01:45
|
|
|
I heart bacon posted:That's exactly what it is. Any feed supply should have it. If there are any cattle feed lots in the area, I'm sure there's a supplier. Or even a local elevator. It also comes out of ethanol plants, so it's essentially the corn with the sugar extracted from it. There's a study out there on the effectiveness of DDGS used on lawns, I just can't find it right now. Cool, good to know, thank you So I had my folks over yesterday, we were planting some bushes. These are honeyberries. Siberian super plants according to the literature. we planted ten of these little buggers on the NW side of the house, none of the old bushes I planted there lived. The soil is worked up a lot better this time, and I added some peat moss and bagged soil to the line, hopefully it'll be a bit better.  Then we planted a bunch more nanking cherry bushes. This line used to hold saskatoons, but only that big one in the middle made it. The nankings I planted last year all survived, save one or two.  Hopefully with a wider bed, I'll be able to keep grass and weeds away from them better, with a little mulching. While the old folks were here, they were giving me poo poo about the joists under my deck, have been for a while now. Fair enough I guess, that really doesn't look very good.   So I decided to throw some paint on there today during the insane and unseasonably hot weather. This is leftover from my builder. I don't have one of them fancy can openers, but I have the only tool a painter needs. A motherfucking hatchet. (oh and a brush)   I'm not much of a house painter, but that looks at least a little better.  Bonus onion shot. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2011 00:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:42 |
|
|
Looks a lot nicer! I always open paint cans with a big flathead screwdriver. I'm not even sure how I'd get the blade of a hatchet under the lip, unless it was really curved or I guess maybe the corner of the blade could get in there if it's narrow enough...
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2011 08:39
|
|
