So, what’s it all about?
Sharing skills. That’s what we do. Once a month, someone teaches the group something new. The first meeting was at my house. I’ve got angora rabbits so we met by the rabbit hutches and I taught everyone how to care for the rabbits, how to sheer their fur, how to spin it into wool. We have sheep, too, so I like to take the soft fuzzy angora and blend it with the wool and make these great hats for the foggy weather. We also have one woman who knows how to make cheese, so we gathered in my kitchen one afternoon and she taught us all to make ricotta. It’s all very organic, Another member said, I’ll know how to catch wild swarms of bees. She had a whole presentation with handouts, online videos, a bibliography, and everything. I was, like, wow, all I did was talk about rabbits!
What’s up next?
Suddenly everyone wants goats! I’ve already got too much on my plate. But some members started a goat circle. They’ll mentor and milk and help care for each other’s goats. And I just ordered 15 chicks — we’re going to raise heritage turkeys. I told everyone, though, you’ve got to commit to slaughtering your own bird. It’s a lot of work. I’ll teach everyone how to do it, but when the time comes, you take your bird to your own corner. Then we’ll all come together on the tarp and pluck and eviscerate and clean, and take out the guts and intestines and legs and neck and all that slaughtering entails.
35 comments:
Suddenly everyone wants goats! I’ve already got too much on my plate. But some members started a goat circle. They’ll mentor and milk and help care for each other’s goats.
That's good news because lots of goats were gotten recently and many of them will be scaped.
They don't sound very lady-like.
I demand a recount.
I can see the appeal, I just can't imagine having the time. Plus it's a social activity for them which makes it even more fun.
My theory is that anything survival related is enjoyable on the level of biological imperative.
Thus... sex. And eating good food. But also building... *nesting*. Hunting. Growing things. Breeding animals. Going *fast*. Even a nice relaxing lay down in a sunny hammock. Learning new things. Winning a contest.
It's like these ladies have found a way to be "preppers" without being labeled weird fringe nut-cases.
Deborah, apparently I'm shameless.
I've been researching goats. Gotta get rid of four or five acres of poison ivy and brush and volunteer redbud trees.
Looking at that photo of those women, it occurred to me that I would be willing to inseminate nearly all of them, seriatim, given the right set of circumstances, and yet the odds of that ever actually happening are precisely zero, and so I ask you, where is the justice?
Actually, now that I've taken a closer look, it's more like I'd be willing to discharge my charity into, maybe, three and a half of them.
Alcohol would be required, in any event.
There was a song by The Stray Cats, IIRC. "Looking Better Every Beer." All I know is the song title. I'm pretty sure I've never heard the song.
It's an old joke.
"I've never gone to bed with an ugly woman although I've woken up with plenty of them."
I heard it attributed to Frank Sinatra but the joke probably predates him by several millennia.
"I feel sorry for people who aren't drunks. They wake up every morning knowing that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
A guy once told me about the kind of woman he called "The Indicator."
You go into a club with a bunch of cronies and you all agree on a woman who is unattractive.
"When she starts looking good, it's time to go."
I thought that was kind of piggish.
As I remarked before, sometimes I can get readily in touch with my inner bluenose.
Of course, in the guy's defense, it's not as if The Indicator knows she's being ridiculed, so maybe she's not.
I was always afraid to talk to women in a pickup setting.
A buddy, trying to help, said, "A woman knows whether she's interested in you or not before you even open your mouth so you might as well relax and be yourself."
That should have helped, but it didn't.
A guy I worked with once said, "If it weren't for booze, I'd have never gotten laid."
I thoroughly suspected that the only woman he ever slept with was his wife. And probably only twice, producing a child each time.
Make of that what you will.
How can anyone possibly round up swarms of wild bees? I understand about using smoke to tranquilize them when they're in the hive, but when they're already swarming....anyone have a clue how it's done?
I'm all for it. Killing your own food is reality. Plastic wrapped meat in the store removed the reality that an animal had to die in order to feed you.
Do you know that we slaughter 700,000 cattle a week in the US?
Here's how pessimistic I am. I imagine prepping, having a nice garden, chickens, rabbits, vast quantities of food, but when the shit hits the fan one of my neighbors comes and kills me off. Or hordes from the city swarm into the countryside :)
Christy, I'm shameless also :) I've been wondering what goat tastes like. They are so adorable.
Eric, it's good advice for both sexes. People size each other up immediately, so relax and be yourself. Except you Eric. Get hold of yourself, man!
Ricpic, I would find a hive and wait till winter when they're hibernating and move them.
My cousin and I have discussed bee-keeping (neither of us have bees), and he said it's important to get primo queens. He has a friend in another state that sells them.
April, I imagine it's a skill quickly learned if necessary :)
It's well past too late for that, I'm sorry to say.
I revisited that photo.
New tally: Three probablies; two maybies and three definite noes.
I'm not apologizing for those execrable spellings.
OMG. I WANT to belong to their club. I wonder if we couldn't start something like that here.
Goats are a big deal here. They are raised for meat (Boer Goats) and there are people who use them as mobile vegetation removal teams. They don't like the water very much so you see teams of goats with an occasional llama on the berms between the wild rice fields happily munching away all the weeds. They are AWESOME at their task. We couldn't have them on our property though because they will eat everything....everything.
One friend raises them for the milk and makes goat cheese. Goats are hilarious and never fail to make me laugh. They are so clownish.
I can share canning, jam making, weaving, quilting, sewing, cooking all sorts of things...PLUS field dressing and skinning a deer, ditto for geese and ducks, reloading shotgun shells too. Somehow I don't think our elegant refugee ladies from the city are up for the last few items.
@ deborah. I'm shameless as well. Goat tastes good if it is young. If not young then in a stew with lots of spices. People from the city have to go through a pretty long gauntlet to get to where we are and I do plan to shoot anyone that I don't know personally....and maybe even some of those that I do know, too.
For Eric
Billy's got his beer goggles on
:-)
Thanks, DBQ. I've also heard that goat milk is superior to cow's milk for some reason I cannot recall. Of course I love goat cheese.
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