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crazychicknladyH entered her chicken soup in County Fair this year. She made it during her cooking/food preservation meetings. She started with a live chicken and ended up with canned soup. The leader demonstrated to H and another girl how she kills a chicken. Then the girls defeathered and gutted it, and prepared it for freezing. Then the next meeting - just H this time since the other girl couldn't make it - H dehydrated carrots and onions and celery (as part of a learning exercise, not necessary to do for the sake of the canning), made chicken stock, and then made several jars of canned soup.
The lady running the cooking meetings has lived as self sufficiently as possible off her own land for at least the last 20 or 30 years, maybe longer. She does buy some vegetables, usually from local sources to supplement what she can't grow herself. She'll also buy as babies, to raise for food, various types of animals, such as rabbits and chickens, and an occasional pig. She has walls full of food she has canned - some she enters at fairs, most is just her way of preserving food to eat now and in the future. She incubates her own goose eggs, and I think she usually sells off the babies to a local feed store at a really low cost to help his bottom line. She has a cow and makes her own butter and sour cream and cheese. She has cultivated deep ties to her community. She helps feed families she knows are struggling - she was thinking of raising an extra pig this year to help folks out if the pork prices do indeed skyrocket. She has volunteer help from the local Morman boys who clean up her yard for her. And, of course, she volunteers for our 4-H group.
H got to have lots of one-on-one learning opportunities with this very knowledgeable woman this year. Most of the other kids who signed up for food preservation lost interest, so it was mostly just H. The last three meetings they made noodles. We made sure to include a baggy of some of the nicest looking ones to go with H's soup entry this year, since that's the way H and this lady enjoyed some of the extra soup that didn't make it into the jars.
The lady running the cooking meetings has lived as self sufficiently as possible off her own land for at least the last 20 or 30 years, maybe longer. She does buy some vegetables, usually from local sources to supplement what she can't grow herself. She'll also buy as babies, to raise for food, various types of animals, such as rabbits and chickens, and an occasional pig. She has walls full of food she has canned - some she enters at fairs, most is just her way of preserving food to eat now and in the future. She incubates her own goose eggs, and I think she usually sells off the babies to a local feed store at a really low cost to help his bottom line. She has a cow and makes her own butter and sour cream and cheese. She has cultivated deep ties to her community. She helps feed families she knows are struggling - she was thinking of raising an extra pig this year to help folks out if the pork prices do indeed skyrocket. She has volunteer help from the local Morman boys who clean up her yard for her. And, of course, she volunteers for our 4-H group.
H got to have lots of one-on-one learning opportunities with this very knowledgeable woman this year. Most of the other kids who signed up for food preservation lost interest, so it was mostly just H. The last three meetings they made noodles. We made sure to include a baggy of some of the nicest looking ones to go with H's soup entry this year, since that's the way H and this lady enjoyed some of the extra soup that didn't make it into the jars.
