Guide to Drying and Curing Meat at Home in Detail

Tonight... we had hamburgers from goat meat with tomatos we grew. Wife canned some pickles today, used some of the dill in sourcream to make a sauce... we had squash fritters... batter made with eggs from here.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Salt Curing Meat at Home | Food Security Skill Everyone Needs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HNJ_FK9132I

Augered 10 holes for 10 new posts for expanding my solar arrays today. Not much else going on..... oh yeah, was disconnecting hte auger and connecting the reverse tine tiller and my 80 year old mother just had to put her hand on the three point hitch as I was raising it. She didn't loose a finger , but I'm going to NOT drive the tractor when she's around. This is her 3rd near miss in 3 weeks. Damned if I understand what she's doing. I really don't want to hurt anyone... but you climb under a bushhog deck when someone is driving the tractor.... or your stick you hand in as the hydraulics are raising... or you run after the drag harrow to jump on it while the tractor is moving..... sheesh. She's pretty spry for being near 80 though.

It’s only dumb if it don’t work.

We had blossom rot on our tomatoes because of low calcium in soil. This stuff saved them. I mixed up a few ounces with a gallon of water and applied three times to root of each bush. One gallon spread over several bushes seems to have solved it.

I was expecting a lot more rain out of this tropical system that came through NC, so I put out seed in the small pasture area we just started leasing this year. I've tilled it and worked horse manure compost into the front half of it before planting. I put perennial clover and fescue in as well as some annual cover crop in the way of milo and sorghum. The milo and sorghum were both older seeds, so I dont know how well they will come up. With only about 2 tenths of an inch of rain from the storm, we're still so dry that it may not germinate.

Blossom end rot fast fix.
Foliar Spray: Mix 1–2 tablespoons of calcium nitrate per gallon of water.

Eggshells are fine but are slow acting if it is already present.

To maximize calcium availability for preventing blossom end rot, eggshells should be prepared to increase surface area or dissolved into a water-soluble form. 
Dry Powder Method: Rinse shells, then bake at 200°F (93°C) for 30 minutes to sterilize and dry them. Grind into a fine dust using a blender or food processor.  Apply 1/2 tablespoon to the root ball at planting time or sprinkle around the base of plants. 
Vinegar Solution (Fast-Acting): Combine 1 cup of finely crushed eggshells with 1 cup of white vinegar.  Let the mixture sit for 24 hours until the fizzing stops and shells dissolve.  Dilute with 1 gallon of water and apply 1 quart per plant at the start of the season, or mix 1 tablespoon of the powder with 1 tablespoon of vinegar and dilute in 1 gallon of water for monthly application.

turning a 150 ac into a super efficient geothermal unit s 41uf02

How to save money on your power bill... 1)go on ebay and buy a used utility meter.
2)install a 2nd meter base in your house and run *something* on it.
3)next time the power is out, swap the meters

Or get solar.

My power bill came in today.... to quote Louis Rossman, Hi and welcome to how you're getting fucked today".

My power company used to hold my power "on account". If I had a short produciton month, I borrowed back from my over production account. At the end of the year, they squared up with me at wholesale rate, usually 5.5c/kwh.

How it works today....
They say you will always have a $30 bill. If your total charges don't add up to $30, they will round up to $30.
This past month we had a "super critical day" where they tripled the price of power. They noted that I delivered power to them during the critical super day.... but they put that power into one lump sum that totaled 483.95kwh delivered to them "overall". For this, they paid me 4.01c/kwh. They did not pay me triple the going rate for hte power I delivered to them during their critical time. They did not pay me double for the ON PEAK power I delivered to them. They paid me less than the wholesale rate for ALL the power I delivered to them.

So.... they credited my bill $19 for 483kwh... but since their average rate is 13c, but they resell it to my neighbors for $62. AND they zero out my overage each month, so I have no carryover into the winter.

In the past 30 days we used 653kwh in all the cars and I over produced 483kwh. Since I export power to hte grid during the day and import it back in at night... but even importing it at super off peak at night, they charge me 9c but pay me 4.01c each day..... So despite me exporting more than I use, htey are still charging me 5c / kwh to buy back my own power to charge cars at night.

At this rate, I have to export 750kwh a month to break even.

It's really getting close to time to shut off the grid here.

I finally got around to installing antenna on a fiberglass box and flashing some meshtastic hardware with meshcore software. I played with meshtastic a few months ago and found that individual users are flooding the network with their egos but I can't reach them when I try to message them.

What I'm seeing as I read the details is that meshcore addresses this with a hammer. Beacon advertisements are limited to one per hour locally and min of every 4 hours "hopping" outward. This enforces keeping the network clear of superfluous traffic and available for messaging.

I'm an old hand from back in the day in APRS and despite the developer trying to say it was for messaging it simply became a GPS tracking app with so many users propagating out 7 hops.

I see specific choices made in Meshcore to keep it as a messaging app.

I set my litle meshcore box on top of the golf cart last night to keep the dogs from messing with it. It is literally 6ft off the ground. Today I'll climb my radio tower and put it up 80ft 24meters. The next node to me has not shown on my map yet but it is 30 miles at 400ft. I'll have to do a line of sight analysis , but I think my tower is over most of the trees around here and 400ft on the other end is certainly over the trees.

We'll see how this goes in the coming weeks.... but for hte purpose of off grid comms, meshcore seems to favor a static network of known routes. The users can move around but the network should be static.

Same hardware works for meshtastic and meshcore. they just run on two different frequencies in the 900mhz band (868 in EU).

and here is the line of sight from my house to the 400' tower in the next city over.... clear path.