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Living poor means using the resources available to you. With 4H my wife will be traveling to Ottawa for a few days and my youngest lad will be heading to Nova Scotia this summer on an exchange trip with a clu from over there. This same 4H club is a way for the family to have a network to find stuff and Donny found this on the last farm tour.


He is a true farm dog as he wants not to come inside.

Looks like he (or she) knows what's going on. Nice looking dog!

Farm dogs have the best lives. Plenty of room to run!

Living poor means eating junk food that others don't get. Like today we decided we wanted a turkey for tomorrow so we now have a 40lb bird to cook and eat. 4 people should dispose of this nicely. I really shouldn't feel sorry for myself I suppose.


The poor kid is 6'4" and eats more than three grown men.

Living poor means looking after your own problems and making a few extra bucks while doing so just makes it sweeter.

The 15 year old has figured out how to get nice things like this hand made quilt[built by a 73 year old neighbor] for cheap. The lad was in at a our local hall to a womens event where he bought a five dollar ticket to support the lady's endeavors. They picked his name from the hat and he got.


When open it is


The really cool thing is the lady said she would build him a blue one if he wanted but he declined saying, "{L} I might find a girl someday".

or have a baby girl....nice

Being poor allows one to do stupid stuff that actually saves money and at the same time get basically free, great food. Well we used pork to make up a few batch's of sausage last eve. Made 25 lbs of fresh breakfast sausage and 20 lbs of honey garlic rolls plus 10 pounds of straight garlic rolls[these last 2 have the cure in them and will be smoked and cooked so we can just eat them as we want]. Also used moose meat on the coiled sausage and for 10 lbs of the breakfast fare. Went with a 50/50 mixture this time around. Cool part of doing this nonsense ourselves is we can experiment lots.

Lad grinding near frozen meat.


15lbs of pure pork goodness.


Lass loading casing on the horn.


Lad mixing spices and such in ice water.[Cold is good]


Both lads mixing the near frozen meat with the spices. Sure was fun listening to them [female canine] about cold hands.


Making links of fresh sausage with a stuffer that works fairly well. Young fellas found out they was only thinking they were the boss.


Rolls of garlic sausage in the smoker. Always amazes me how the curing agents change the color of the meat.

Today I got a call from a fellow 16 miles away who asked if I needed a calf as he had heard I buy some. Drove over and he had a 3 week old Simmental steer calf from a cow that had a Csection and the dang cow had walked to close to a barbed wire fence which ripped the stitch's open. Cow got to unhealthy to feed her calf and the fellow was sick of bottling him as he also has 6 sets of twins so didn't need this one to put on any who lose theirs. $400 was his asking price and I quickly forked that over for.


So now the lad has his next year 4H project calf[prepping for the future].


The really great thing about this deal was I noticed driving to his yard that he had an old 5 wheel side delivery rake and when I asked if he was ever going to sell it would he please call me. He said,"Do you want a square baler too?". Well it turns out the baler is a model newer than the one I use and I got them both for a grand. I like a good day.

We raised 4H steers as well, pitw, I consider this one of the best threads on the internet. LOVE it!!!

Thank you.

pitw wrote:Living poor means looking after your own problems and making a few extra bucks while doing so just makes it sweeter.

It is hard to tell from the photo. Was that a skunk in the cage?

looks like two rabbits making babies to me.

Compared to whitetail and beef what does moose taste like

93 Octane wrote:Compared to whitetail and beef what does moose taste like

The meat is much leaner than beef. It is the best meat from any ungulates to our way of liking meat as none of the tallowy texture of a deer. When the wife is having family in for a meal she prefers moose as the meat of choice as they all like it. We try to shoot young cows that have not calved or a calf which give the best quality of meat[in my opinion]. If I was given the choice of a Good quality cut from either moose or beef I'd have to toss a coin to decide which one I'd pick at the time. For sausage I'll pick moose with pork trimmings every time.

Gonna be tough for any animal to beat the quality of meat we will get from this calf.


No growth hormones, organically fed and a brother to the calf he won the district 4H carcass calf division with last year. I can already smell him cooking over an open fire.

Venison is definitely an acquired taste unless you have guidance from someone that knows how to cook it , , very strong if grilled or baked without the proper pre-planning....elk on the other hand is downright great with only salt / pepper on the grill

Elk can be totally awesome and would have won my top meat except that it has never been consistently good across the whole range of animals. Moose is near always good but older critters can be tougher than wang leather.

Staying on moose, rented a bike in Seattle and cruised to the Idaho border and back over course of couple days as wasnt in a particular hurry , on way back just outside Pullman, WA spotted a moose in a field about 100 yards from road and pulled over to watch it in total awe...you really can't grasp how big and graceful they are until viewed somewhat up close...after 10 minutes he started walking towards me and I got out of there as they can cover a lot of ground quickly . . . will never forget that

One can look at pic's of them beasts all day but as you say it's up close and personal when they get huge.





Elk as well are much bigger in person.

Thank you pitw for starting this thread and continuing to post in it. It has been a pleasure to read. Very interesting stuff. Have a good one!

Chief wrote:Thank you pitw for starting this thread and continuing to post in it. It has been a pleasure to read. Very interesting stuff. Have a good one!

reading this thread a few times a month feels like reading the Foxfire books a grew up with as a kid, and I loved sooo much.

frugi wrote:

Chief wrote:Thank you pitw for starting this thread and continuing to post in it. It has been a pleasure to read. Very interesting stuff. Have a good one!

reading this thread a few times a month feels like reading the Foxfire books a grew up with as a kid, and I loved sooo much.

That is totally interesting to me as I had never heard of the foxfire books until I went to KY in '09 for a coyote hunt. One of the fellows there brought me one of the books cause I reminded him of them and he thought I may like it. I read it cover to cover a few times and have since found 3 others for my collection.

Yep have had the foxfire books since the first release. What a great study in the ways of the pioneers.

Picked up Several Foxfire books a book sale prices good reads