On the way home from pre-sanctified liturgy this morning, I stopped and picked up a yearling doe from the side of the road. It had been hit by a car, breaking a hind leg, and pretty well mushing the hindquarters, but I was still able to extract enough good meat from it to add 8.5 lbs of ground venison to the freezer, and enough marginal venison to feed the dogs for a couple days. By the way, when I first wrote about buying a vacuum sealer, I did not realize what the most useful function would be.
Sealing roasts, steaks, and ground meat for freezing is certainly useful, but what we use far more is the attachment that lets you vacuum seal a mason jar using the regular canning lids. This has been extremely useful in making our Costco membership actually save us money. We buy sugar in 50 lb bags, baking soda in 10 lb bags, and many other dry goods such as coffee in bulk. We then transfer the contents of these bulk containers to half-gallon, quart, or pint size mason jars, and seal them with the FoodSaver attachment. This keeps the contents fresh for long-term storage in the larder, and we bring up only a couple jars of each item to stock the pantry. Some items, such as sugar, we only buy once a year (in this case, after the canning season, which is when we go through the most).
The day Lent started (Monday), my chickens went from providing a single egg a day to five eggs a day, so I expect to soon be up to 9 eggs a day which will allow the wife to make a little cash and offset the grocery budget a little. The duck has been laying almost as prolifically a a chicken, laying about 5 eggs a week, so we may sell a dozen duck eggs here or there during Lent as well.
It’s raining right now, and if it keeps raining and stays this warm, the snow and ice should be gone in less than a week. So far, none of the water has found its way into my basement, for which I am quite thankful.