Canning meat
I’m getting brave enough to want to learn to start canning. When you talk of browning meat before canning, are you fully cooking the meat? And if you pour boiling water over it (such as hamburger)won’t it get all soggy and come apart?
Mary Janson
Aurora, Colorado
Good for you, Mary! You’ll really love canning your own food, I promise. Once you find out how simple it really is, you will be off and running. No, I don’t fully cook the meat, I just brown it enough that the meat heats thoroughly and shrinks down so more fits into a jar. I don’t use water in my browned ground meat, but I make a broth, using the pan drippings. By packing the meat gently into the jar, you use little liquid and no, it doesn’t get mushy or come apart. — Jackie
Watering pigs
How do you water your pigs? I have rubber tubs for ours but they are always climbing in them, getting them full of mud and knocking them over. Not to mention having to clean the buckets out three times a day is creating a huge mud hole in the already muddy pen. We bought a “dog lick” and that worked great all summer but now that winter is here it freezes. Winter watering is a chore and I need to figure out a way to keep clean water in front of the pigs without making such a mess!
Mia Sodaro
Frazier Park, California
You don’t have to keep water in front of the pigs all the time. If you provide all the fresh water they will drink, plus a little left over to use before it freezes, twice a day, they will do great. We do this, as well as mixing water or milk with their dry grain. Our pigs are big, happy, and healthy; yours will be too. — Jackie
