Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

I think not.

One word: PROFILE

Okay, one more word: CONDITIONING

Okay, last word: SHEEP

I got the photo from Prison Planet - there is a decent write up / article there as well.

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; - Isaiah 61:1
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If you have any comments I’d love to hear them.
If they really interest me, I may even post them.
You can reach me at Joe

You can also join us to discuss this and other issues at Viking Preparedness Forums

Prepared Americans for a Strong America

Muttonfest

I am tied in with a community where we are all doing our best to get ready for what is coming down the pike. We have skillsets that we bring to the table as individuals but it is when we gather together and share our combined knowledge, experience and capabilities that we truly begin to shine.

We have been trying for the past few months to involve each other in our mundane and not so mundane tasks. We are putting aside ego and reaching out for help in chores and unfamiliar tasks. This is not easy to do for most people – let alone for people who are trying to become more “self-sufficient”. As an aside – I have taken to calling it God-sufficient because we really do rely on what He provides – whether we realize it or not.

Members of this community do not have it all figured out – not by a long shot. We have an attitude of “Just Do It” and we jump into things without first analyzing them to death and figuring out all the angles. One example is sheep.



As you may have read in Sheep Shearing Sisters one family had sheep but really didn’t know a whole lot about them. They were figuring it out as they went. By involving community, we all got to learn something. This family decided it was time to kill, clean and butcher the critters and they didn’t know how to do it. Now, they are extremely intelligent folk (intellectuals, actually) but they are new to the ways of preparing meat. This did not stop them. They moved to the country and started working hard on a self-sufficient (some day) homestead and had to give up a lot to do so. They are not afraid. WE should not be afraid of stepping out just because we “don’t know how”.

My wife and I have butchered a lot of deer over the years and we were asked to help. A new member of our crew has actually butchered sheep in the past and stepped up to lead this effort. This gave him a way (as a “newbie”) to make a very real contribution to the community. It is important to let everyone contribute. It is important to find or create opportunities for people to participate. So we set a date (yesterday), sounded the assembly horn and met up at the farm to make meat. We invited folks who were not yet part of our little group because community in many ways is about including not excluding folks. Men, women, children and babies all showed up. It was good to observe people fall into community patterns of watching out for each other’s children, breaking into sub-groups to accomplish certain tasks and so on. The day was filled with rhythms of earlier times.



Catching the sheep was our first challenge. These were not very tame and I really don’t know how the women got them into the shearing shed before. We finally corralled them, the owner shot them with a .22 in the X formed by imaginary lines between ears and opposite eyes, and we dragged them up into a pickup for transport to the hanging tree.

When I shoot deer, I field dress (gut) them in the field and then when I get home, I hang them by the back legs. We hung the sheep by their necks, skinned them and then gutted them into a large bucket made out of an old 55 gallon plastic barrel. The woman who owned the sheep kept the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs (lung soup!). I’d have to be real hungry… She also saved the fat to render into lard or tallow or something.

We saved the hides for tanning later and then proceeded to cut up the critters. We butchered the first one “the professional way” in that we used a saw and made cutlets, chops, leg o’ lamb and so on. We did the second one the way my wife and I do deer basically removing major muscles using only knives.



While one group was butchering outside, another group was inside dealing with the individual cuts – wrapping some for freezing, canning some, grinding some. All the while children were involved to one extent or another although they did poop out rather early and retire to the television to watch some children’s videos. The older boys got a fire going to smoke some the meat.

There was a big pot of chili going and others brought soup, rice, desert and so on so we did take breaks to eat and relax a bit before getting right back to it. All in all it was a long tough day but it was a lot of FUN and it felt real. It felt so much more real than “Black Friday” is going to feel to the masses. That’s my assessment anyway.

Hey, I’ll see ya out there.

These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat, The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois. And every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall eat. – Deuteronomy 14:4 -6
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If you have any comments I’d love to hear them.
If they really interest me, I may even post them.
You can reach me at Joe

You can also join us to discuss this and other issues at Viking Preparedness Forums

Prepared Americans for a Strong America

Woods Walkin'

Yesterday we were experiencing Pacific Northwest weather in that it was cold and rainy. Temperatures were in the forties with wet snow predicted. I had a couple of hours free which is a very rare thing for me these days. What to do?

Woods Walkin’. I put on some old cammo clothing and a boonie hat to keep the rain off my glasses and then I remembered my Rain Boonie! This is a great bit of kit a friend of mine invented that I had not yet really had an opportunity to try out. It’s basically a light weight camouflage (Multi-cam), waterproof cover for a boonie hat. You can read all about it and get one very inexpensively from Survival Solutions

Next I grabbed a shotgun I have shot a lot but with which I have not hunted very much. It’s an old Harrington and Richardson 12 gauge single shot that my girlfriend (THEN, now she’s my wife) bought me for a present when I graduated from college. It has a full choke. I remember thinking that thing kicked an awful lot when I first shot it. Of course, back then I didn’t weigh as much and didn’t know nearly as much about firearms as I do now and really, had very little experience with them at that time. I also primarily shot 00 Buck through it because "that was cool".

Over the years it became the Kitchen Gun and we killed a few snakes and a possum with it. Eventually, I got a wild hair and decided to paint it cammo. It fell from its perch once and the plastic trigger guard was broken. Then one day it broke pretty good. The fore grip is attached to the barrel with a screw that goes into a threaded tube permanently attached to the barrel. That tube busted off. Without it, the fore grip will not stay attached. Without the fore grip, the shotgun will come apart (in fact, to disassemble it, one removes the screw, removes the fore grip and then removes the barrel from the action.

I did a hasty repair job with 100 mph tape and it seemed okay. I really wasn’t sure if it would work but decided to take it and a pocket full of high velocity 5 shot shells along on my Woods Walkin’ in case I saw any critters for the stew pot. I really like this gun for its lightness and just overall handiness but when I am seriously hunting I try to stack the odds as much in my favor as possible and usually use a pump gun which allows for faster follow up shots. Well, that's the theory anyway - the reality is I rarely take/need a second shot.

It was a wonderful afternoon. As I entered the woods the rain was intercepted by the upper story tree branches and so wasn’t pelting me nearly as hard as it did on the walk across the pastures. Since everything was wet it was possible to move very quietly. I figured I would spend the time working on my ninja stalking skills, scout a little for deer (season opens for modern rifle in a couple weeks), and think the big thoughts. About 5 minutes into my journey I saw a big ol’ squirrel. BAM! The gun held up fine.

I waited a bit to see if he had any friends and then slowly made my way up to where he fell. Yep, he was big. I hung him up on a tree branch to keep him out of the reach of coyotes and continued on my walk. I figured I’d pick him up on the way back. I didn’t get 50 feet before I busted a rabbit from cover. BAM!

Now, when I shoot, I immediately reload. This time however, my action would not break open. Seems my 100 mph tape fix was only temporary. Well, my hunt was ended so I retraced my steps and went home to clean the brace of critters.

I ended up cooking them both down until I could remove the bones. Into the broth I added onion, garlic, parsley, hot peppers, Worchestshire sauce, salt and black pepper and the special ingredient…….mustard greens. That’s them in the background of the photo above. By the time the meat had simmered enough to get soft and easily give up the bones (longer for the squirrel than the rabbit) the broth had much reduced – as I intended. I put it all in the fridge and tonight I plan on rolling out a dough and making a pot pie for supper.

So, that was my afternoon - I got out and about despite the weather, tried some new gear (it worked very well – as advertised); tested a field expedient repair (it worked – twice); worked on some stalking skills; scouted for deer (found a rub and a scrape about 30 yards into the woods); brought home meat for the family; and had some quality “alone time”. Not bad.

I’ll see ya out there.

And I heard a voice saying unto me, Arise, Peter; slay and eat. – Acts 11:7
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If you have any comments I’d love to hear them.
If they really interest me, I may even post them.
You can reach me at Joe

You can also join us to discuss this and other issues at Viking Preparedness Forums

Prepared Americans for a Strong America