Posted: 9/5/2010 2:51:55 PM EDT
So, two (homegrown) chickens in the smoker today - following two gallons of jalapenos and poblanos  . Just took 'em off after reaching internal temp of 170F, take inside to loosely tent with tin foil to finish off via carry-over cooking, and.... NO TIN FOIL. None it the drawer, none in the preps. 
Oh, the irony 
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hahahaha!
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Foil is one of those things that I don't think I can have too much of in a survival situation. Thanks for reminding me. I think I should put it in the same class as toilet paper. ^THIS^ Aluminum foil* goes is in the same category as TP, duct tape and paracord. Can't have enough of it. *Disclaimer: Do not waste it by making hats.
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That picture is a HUGE FAIL! Where's the knife at? No knives at the place sittings yet there is a Kimber .45 and a spare magazine?
Oh man.. the horror... the horror.... or are you planning on carving up those delicious looking birds WITH the .45 and spare magazine?
Just messing, that does look delicious - the g/f is on me about getting a smoker. |
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Natural lite? Ranked below PBR, Shlitz and Strohs. As stated above, you need to start recycling your tinfoil hats. Meh, ranking schmanking. I actually prefer NL over Bud, Coors, many of the the 'big name' beers. I like good beer too - coupla' years in Germany taught me what REAL beer is (not comparing that to NL, mind you!). But NL suits me fine for a "utility" brew
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That picture is a HUGE FAIL! Where's the knife at? No knives at the place sittings yet there is a Kimber .45 and a spare magazine? Oh man.. the horror... the horror.... or are you planning on carving up those delicious looking birds WITH the .45 and spare magazine?
Just messing, that does look delicious - the g/f is on me about getting a smoker. Technically I wasn't going for a full-blown dinner pic... just a happy ending to the "no tinfoil" tragedy. I just threw the gun in there 'cause, after all, this IS Arfcom... |
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I too would grab a Nattie' lite over most domestics (bud, curs, miller, key stone, etc..), but September is the start of the Octoberfest season...closest we can get to real German beer that is brewed stateside, so for the next few months, bring on the Munich style lagers!
oh, BTW, congrats on a home grown feast! |
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You can grow and process Natty Light within 200 yards of your house?!?!? Will you please sell me some of those seeds? oops ya got me 
I have been known to crank out a batch or two of Mr. Beer, though! (which is probably likewise unpopular with the masses, but again didn't strike me as being all that bad - given enough aging). |
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On the other hand.... The whole meal (smoked chicken, roasted fingerling potatoes, green beans, watermelon and cantaloupe), was grown and processed within 200 feet of the house .
And the chicken came out just fine, tinfoil be damned! http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af227/mid_mo/supper.jpg I'll give you a 9/10. Only cause you cook a fine meal like that and serve it on paper plates. BTW, what breed of chicken was that? It looks delicious!!! Toad |
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On the other hand.... The whole meal (smoked chicken, roasted fingerling potatoes, green beans, watermelon and cantaloupe), was grown and processed within 200 feet of the house .
And the chicken came out just fine, tinfoil be damned! http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af227/mid_mo/supper.jpg I'll give you a 9/10. Only cause you cook a fine meal like that and serve it on paper plates. BTW, what breed of chicken was that? It looks delicious!!! Toad The chickens are Cornish Cross (Cornish X), standard meat breed. We raise a batch of 50 or so of them a year for the freezer. These two are somewhere in this pic: 
We also have a "laying" flock of multipurpose and heirloom breeds, for eggs and diversity. The paper plates are the norm around here  . All the ribbing about the brand of beer aside, it's not unusual for us to eat a meal that's completely, or at least mostly, produced here. That's what we're striving for...the serious survival-related message buried in this mostly tongue-in-cheek thread is that long-term survival ultimately depends more on being able to grow, harvest and process your own food than it does on storing buckets of wheat and rice. Long-term food storage is important too, of course... you can grow the world's most impressive garden, and it doesn't help you a bit during the next winter if you haven't properly preserved and stored what you produced.
Being self-reliant is incredibly difficult. Trying to live that way as much as possible now has given me a great appreciation for our ancestors who lived this way out of necessity! |
| That is outstanding. How long does it take you to process your chickens from running around to in the freezer? That would make a great how to thread by the way, a chicks to fried chicken kinda thing, with a break down of time and total cost vs total lbs of processed and stored meat. My hat is off to you. |
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That is outstanding. How long does it take you to process your chickens from running around to in the freezer? That would make a great how to thread by the way, a chicks to fried chicken kinda thing, with a break down of time and total cost vs total lbs of processed and stored meat. My hat is off to you. There is already an outstanding chicken thread right here in the forum: Chickens 101 but I'll interject a couple more cents-worth. IMHO, chickens are one of the most valuable survival/preparedness "items" you can add to your collection. They are an almost self-sustaining supply of high-quality, low-fat meat, eggs, soup stock, and garden fertilizer. They're easy to raise, help keep down the bug population in check, and in a survival situation would be valuable trading material. More and more towns and even small cities are making exceptions to livestock rules to allow people to raise two or three laying hens (roosters are less well accepted), so a lot of people who might think they can't raise chickens may find that they actually can... and should. A confession: the two birds pictured in the OP weren't technically processed within 200 feet of the house; I'd forgotten that for this particular batch we took them to a Mennonite neighbor who processes live poultry for several folks in the surrounding area. But I don't feel bad about the seeming deceit - this was actually the first batch we've had processed like this, and we can and do do it ourselves so I don't think I was violating the "spirit" of the post . I believe part of survival/preparedness is using your time efficiently, and if I can pay somebody $1 a bird ($50 in this case) to save me two days of work, I'm all for it!
When we do process them ourselves, it usually takes my wife and I two days to do 50. The first day is spent dispatching, plucking, cleaning and cooling them, and cleaning up the mess. That's good days work - my old-ish bones are feeling it pretty good by sundown. They cool down overnight in refrigerators or ice water, depending on how much room we've got in the fridges at the time. The next day we cut some of them up (usually leave 10-15 whole), vacuum-pack and start freezing them. We also start a huge stockpot (a 104-qt. jobby that I got from Army surplus, on an outdoor propane "banjo" cooker) using all the bones, necks, and other bits and pieces that don't get packaged up or thrown to the cats and dogs. One of the things I'd caution a beginner to watch out for if trying to do this many birds at once (and it can be done - the very first batch I ever did was 50) is to make sure you've got a way to keep everything cool when you need to. 50 chickens takes up a lot of refrigerator and freezer space, and you can't just plop 'em all in there at once and expect them to freeze quickly enough. You have to have enough airflow and overall cooling capacity so that you're not raising the temp of the coolers by too much at any one time... we generally put in as many as we feel comfortable with to start freezing, and keep the rest on ice. Once the fridge/freezer has had a couple of hours to catch up, we'll rearrange a bit and stick in a few more - etc. etc. We've got three refrigerators and three freezers of various capacities, all together. We estimated this time that we had between $4 and $5 in feed in each bird, because we really try to fatten these guys up quickly. They do free-range for some of their food, but this particular breed just isn't all that great at it - they want lots of food, and want it fast! Our layers and the heirloom breeds are another story... they'll actively wander around all day, and can easily find 90% of their own food in the spring, summer and fall. We buy the Cornish X chicks from a hatchery, so we've got another $1.25 in each of them there too. The layers and heirlooms we raise from our own eggs, and have an incubator setup so we can control what's hatching when. If TSHTF, or some other catastrophe befalls us, we probably won't be raising mail-order Cornish X meat chickens. But all of the ones we have are edible; they just don't put on weight quite as fast (or as much total) as those do. Some of the ones we have are actually not too many steps removed from jungle fowl, and would do just fine turned out to completely free range in the wild... the Longhorn cattle of the chicken world. If you can't tell, I'm a fan. The funny part is, I'm not all that fond of chicken - I'm a ribeye guy at heart  . But I've got a great deal of respect for them as a survival tool, and they're easy enough for just about anybody to raise.
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To atone for the slight inaccuracy in exactly where that particular batch of chickens was butchered, I offer bread...
We grew the wheat: 
milled it this morning: 
and this afternoon, bread - with jelly from wild blackberries growing behind the shed: 
This is sho' nuff good eatin'.
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Nice dinner. I would place the 1911 on the right side of the plate with the handle pointing out. That way if zombies attack during dinner it is easier to grab. +1, I have to give a deduction for poor placement. The way you have the .45 placed it is not in a good position for either a left hand or right hand grab.
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