Ep. 19 - April 1st Concerns: Canning Equipment Care, High Inputs, Low Rainfall, & Bigfoots

We can't believe it's April 1st.  It seems the year of 2026 is moving right along.  In honor of April 1st we have an exciting update relating to the Stone County Extension Office's own research being turned into a fact sheet.  "99 Problems but Bigfoot Ain't One, How to Deter Bigfoot, " Factsheet.   

More authentically Tyler talks about his concerns related to the drought and inputs going up and problems farmers will be facing. He shares some ideas about related to forages and farmers sitting down and coming up with plans about the upcoming year.  Anna shares information related to testing  dial gauge canners for food preservation and covers concerns related to pressure canning and checking your equipment for safety.

Transcript

We're back at it again. It's been a couple of weeks since we've done an episode. It's a busy time of year.

Yeah, it's already April.

I think it'll be a good episode. I'm feeling pretty loose. Yeah. It's crazy how fast it does seem the time's going. It's April.

It is wild, yeah.

But in news, I got exciting news, some secret work that I've been doing and Anna's been assisting me with people answering the phones. But we've been doing a little demonstration that I think we're just now ready to kind of publish our research here in a fact sheet.

Yeah, it takes time to put together the fact sheets.

Yeah, but it's exciting. And it'll be coming out here shortly, but I'll announce it today on the podcast. You know, if you didn't know, Stone County It seems everybody's having issues with Bigfoot sightings. I think the term we like to use is Sasquatch. I think that's more of a side.

I kind of prefer Bigfoot, but I think it, you know, that's just kind of more of a local term. So I guess Sasquatch is the more official term that they're using now.

We, you know, after doing studies, we found that there's several different subspecies of them.

Yeah, I wasn't aware in our area. I thought we just had one, but it's clear that there are different size variants.

But anyways, thought we could talk about some of the, our experiences we've had with Bigfoot and kind of go into what this fact sheet is about how to deal with, your backyard Bigfoot that's out there, getting in your trash, Possibly stealing, Scaring your pets. Eating your pets. I've heard stories.

It's, you know, sometimes they just go missing and we don't understand why. And that's definitely an option.

Well, but you were telling me a story earlier.

Yeah, my great-great-grandfather, Dr. Luther, he was a well-known doctor in the area. And of course, being that long ago, he would ride on horseback to go do his doctor's calls. And he talked about this one time feeling like something was watching him and then the horse started getting spooked and it was at night and he was on his way back home from a call helping a patient because everything then was almost done, going to people. And he just felt really uncomfortable and the horse started getting spooked. And then he realized he was being followed by a Sasquatch. And so he could just, it could kind of, and it was very close and it was just following him and the horse. And so the horse was just getting more upset and he was obviously getting very concerned. And then he said, and all of a sudden it was just gone. It was like it was never there.

That's what they say is that they're very curious type creatures. You know, they say if, you know, you're ever in the woods, feel like you're being watched. Actually, what they say is the Sasquatch, they make like this low hum. and that you it's kind of like a dog whistle I guess you can't really hear it but you sort of you sense it and it kind of the pressure in your ear changes yeah pressure in your ear and that gives you that uneasy feeling that you're being watched and that it well you are it's a Sasquatch and so.

Yeah and he was surprised by the size of it was larger than he expected for the area you know based on the terrain.

Yeah I swear we saw one I was deer hunting. It's been like five years ago. And it's like I started getting that uneasy feeling like I'm being watched and like I'm sitting on a down by, I was not hunting in a tree stand, but I'm like sitting up against a tree on the ground. And like I hear something. And I was like, oh, it's a deer. And like I turn around and there's nothing there. And so I kind of go to look around the other side of the tree and I just seen something like climb up in the tree and it jumped to another tree.

Really? I didn't know they were in trees as much until we started researching for this fact sheet.

What they say is that, if you walk around the woods, there's high chances that you've walked by one and not even known.

Well, and when Will worked next door, he talked about how his mom had seen, and they'd seen multiple in the Livingston Creek area of the county. So they're pretty common to those creaky, wooded, more private locations.

Yeah, I think we do have a pretty good, I think there's like a population maybe of just a couple of family groups.

Probably. And maybe more in the forest than we realize. It just.

So what a Bigfoot is, it's a large humanoid type creature. Kind of looks like a big gorilla is like in the large eight family, but they're known to be pretty reclusive. And here in the Ozarks, we have the Ozark National Forest. And that's where we do a lot of our research, where we see a lot of the sightings. I know a lot.

Of- Yeah, and the hair samples.

We'll put, you know, the cross barbed wire fences. We put those up, and when they cross, we'll send it off. And Yeah, that's when we kind of started figuring out that's what it was.

Yeah.

We thought it was like deer because it.

But the hair color was an odd color.

Yeah, it was like what you'd imagine like grizzly bear color.

Yeah, and I'm sure they have. I think they have the different.

Furryish.

Well, and they have kind of the variance. Yeah, they have the different phases. Like, you know, a brown bear will have even more of a cinnamon phase or more of a darker, like more of a black. And just kind of all in between, they can have those different hairs.

But anyway, so what this fact she's talking about, so we had a producer here locally. He had, he's saying that he's hearing something. He said not, stuff would be, he'd hear noises and one of his goats and chickens got took and.

It kind of turned into a regular.

We thought it was like a bear. So we, anyways, turns out it was a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch. We caught it on game camera. You could just barely see its eyes. like out, but I could tell that's what it was for sure. I showed you.

Yeah, but how would you describe the eye color, you know, in that photo?

Well, it's like, it just had kind of a big black eyes, you know, his look is, you know, they have round type pupils like we do, but like their iris like fills up like their whole eye. They don't have a lot of white in their eyes. Yeah. But that's what it had to be. And so anyways, this Sasquatch or whatever kept catching his chickens. And so we tried with deterrence. We didn't want to try to catch it. Because what do you do then? I think it's actually illegal to shoot them here in Arkansas. according to the game and fish.

Yeah, and they've not fully acknowledged the breeding population yet, but it is definitely present, or we think it's present in our area.

But yes, I swear I've seen some younglings.

Yeah, and it's, yeah, I think it's younglings. And it's never, like you said, safe to shoot something not knowing what it is.

Yeah, not knowing what it is.

Especially with, you know, you're running into shooting something, you're not allowed. You know, it's an.

We're not fully sure what they are, just kind of how they act in their habitat. But that's kind of what we put together with this fact sheet is how to keep them out. So we started with, like how you would herd like deer. I've heard you like leave your sweaty clothes out at night. I heard a story one time of an agent that said, they were going on a farm visit, in the evening after work, and said, it's like, call me before, because he'd get out there and he'd strip naked and hang his clothes up to like deter deer. And so something like that, putting up, something that shines, you've seen them hang up like CDs and stuff that kind of shimmer.

What about those red laser lights I've heard sometimes might mimic? I've heard that for deer. Is that a valid option?

Like a laser.

It's almost like a laser, just a red light shining.

So what we did try with that, like we shined the red light out there trying to deter them, and it seems like they follow it kind of like a cat.

Oh, okay. So that's interesting.

It kind of aggravates them more or less.

Okay, so that's probably not the right deterrent.

Then they think you're playing with them and they think it's fun.

Yeah, that's kind of confusing. You might bring them in more and confuse them that way.

Yeah, and also a good practice is not leaving out like, you want to get something to cover your garbage bins or not, keep your trash inside till garbage day, those type of practices.

Yeah, the easy open lids.

Wouldn't be much a deterrent. they pretty much got hands like us and can open stuff and they're pretty smart critters.

So maybe even the bare containers might not be enough for them. a good practice would be waiting till trash pickup morning to put it out.

Yeah, and then they can pretty much step over electric fence. But what we found to keep them out is to do a double fence. Like they don't have very good.

Depth perception.

I don't think or something or they.

Think that it's makes them feel uncomfortable.

Makes them feel uncomfortable. But you do like a double fence to where you put up an electric fence and then like a few feet away, put up another one where it's too far for them to jump. But, you know, and then they'll see that and be like, I can't make it. And so that'll keep them out of like your garden because they are omnivores. They consume vegetables and they'll eat meat.

So, your garden would be a good place.

Just say if you have any more questions about it, be sure to reach out.

Yeah, like if you're trying to identify the signs of 1, you're able to walk through those steps of knowing if that's what you have on someone's property and do site visits if needed.

Yeah, they can be a nuisance once they figure out how to get in the chicken coop and in the garden. But Otherwise, they leave you alone pretty much, so it's just kind of deterring.

Yeah.

There's no known cases of them harming anybody, but...

Well, that's good. They just get into your stuff.

Yeah, they're curious, get into your stuff.

But long ago, I got a fact sheet now.

Yeah. I've been working on it for several years. It's been part one of my projects. And I've been doing going out and.

Doing some demos and research and. good deal.

So hope y'all check it out.

So the beginning of April, it should, will be out.

Yeah, April 1st, I think. Okay, sounds good. It is exciting. I've got the fact sheet coming out April 1st, and they said I could design the artwork. How to deter Bigfoot, and this is drawn from memory.

Is that, that's exactly what they look like.

Yeah. They got a little bear patch right there and you can see that's their belly button.

That's a belly button.

Yeah. What's it look like? They do try to, if they get caught, they will try to use scare tactics to deter you or to scare you away from them. A lot of good information. But we can just put that down there. on a serious note.

Are we serious?

Yeah. Now it's time to get serious. Okay, We're serious. So we've been out a couple of weeks. Yeah, so we haven't been able to Record, been busy. We had our farmstead seminar.

Oh, that was a busy week. But it was a great seminar.

I think it turned out well. I think we had good feedback. Everything worked out. I was nervous. I was like, well, I'll just tell you. So we had our Ag Association meeting and I've worked on my 2 presentations that I was going to give, but then I was going to really finish them up. at the conference. And so I was going to bring my laptop with me. Well, guess what? When I was leaving, I went into the bathroom here and sat on my laptop and then just walked out the door and realized it once we got down there to Sheridan that I'd left it. Actually, I guess I realized when I was at Shirley meeting Danny.

For two or three days you were without it.

I didn't have it. So yeah, two days. So I didn't get to work on it, those presentations and finish them up till like Thursday night, the night before.

It's just hard when it's really busy to, well, that didn't help you forgetting it. But it's hard to have all the time you want to be as prepared as you want to be.

Yeah, but it ended up pretty good.

I thought so. I was really, I was pleased. We had a newer crowd, a lot of familiar faces and some new faces. And we had good feedback on everything. Thrilled.

So it's a busy time of year, obviously. You know, we're again, it's a little bit before April 1st. This **** will come out April 1st. So what's going on in the world? Fertilizer prices? are high input so fuel prices are high and I've seen something earlier and it it's probably going to stay that way throughout the remainder of the summer so we've there as farmers we got some decisions to make and you know how we're going to manage that we're also looking at a dry year we've come out of the winter what I've seen a deal it said we're like 19 to 20 something inches behind our annual rainfall Ponds are dry. Getting waters, if it doesn't start raining, there's a chance this weekend. It'll look like a decent amount.

Look like we get 2 inches over a few days.

We're still behind, but that will help green up some grass. If you've put out fertilizer and waiting for the time, timing on getting it out before this rain, because that'll kind of help work it into the soil. One thing they tell us about with urea, which is pretty much one, like the only nitrogen source that they have here, I think at the co-op is urea. Ammonium nitrate is another common one, and ammonium sulfate, but Ammonium nitrate is 1 they're worried about with insurance and not a lot of them want to pay the insurance to be able to store ammonium nitrate because it's so volatile. But urea is 46% nitrogen. It's also volatile in the sense that it turns to a gas and say we put out urea and we don't get any rain activation.

It'll evaporate.

Some of it will turn to a gas and we don't get, all that we've put out there expecting. So timing before rain's good. They say, one of our soil scientists I was listening to a couple of years ago that were saying they do think that it in pasture situations, which we would have here, it can trap it a little bit better. But in like row crops, they add like additives to make it less volatile. because they're more open ground, they're not complete coverage, they're in their rows, and so it's just sitting out there on top of the ground, whereas it, we're spreading it out throughout a grass canopy. I think there's some research that says it kind of captures that urea a little bit better in pasture situations, but still, it's good to have a good rain on it after you put it out. And I've talked to several guys that are looking to put out fertilizer this week. for Bermuda grass. We're still a little bit early. Our temp, it's been hot some days. Some, I was talking to Danny and they said they went out and scouted a pasture and some of the Bermuda grass was already starting to green up a little bit. But probably not going to fully green up till we get like the what our old forage specialist would say, 60 degree temperatures at night for at least a week and that's when your Bermuda grass takes off.

The only, we had planted a lot and this is in our yard last year and it's not greened up, but where I had a bunch of mulch It's peaked through the mulch already. Yeah, it's probably, it's always where you don't want it.

Yeah, the soil temperature again.

But those fresh chips and heat, that heat on them, I bet that.

Yeah, probably kind of up the temp. Got it, you know, green up and start making the runners.

It hadn't ran yet, but it greened up.

Greened up, yeah. Good luck.

Is now an okay time to plant Bermuda grass seed in a lawn type setting? And it's kind of random, but it's a current thing happening.

So I would like for best outcome, I'd wait till like May-ish, June-ish. Because again, the soil temperature thing, I'd wait till we get night temperatures at least 60 degrees. Because for a week, just because better chances. I'm not saying, like I get asked, what if I do it this time? I'm not saying it won't work. I'm just saying this is the best recommended practice.

So if anything, it may not even come up.

Well, if you think about how it happens in nature, you know, the seeds, they get formed last year, drop there, and then essentially would re-sprout. So you put it out, essentially they'll sit there until they germinate, hopefully. But We want everything optimum to make sure we have the best success. So, I know that y'all were spreading out that top soil. You got the dirt and going to seed into that. So, yeah, I'd wait till like maybe closer to May, just because the soil temperature is a little bit warmer. We can put it out when it does germinate and sprout. Yeah, so I'd wait till at least May. And then your time frame on that is probably May to June. I wouldn't try it in July because, well, in a yard situation, you know, you could water it.

We did last year, but it had to be watered, I mean, on a timer for a very, it was very methodical in order for it to be successful.

Yeah.

But we had kind of had, you know, wetter July.

It didn't like this last year, like rain. It was raining and it rained until July. And then it like shut off until September. And they delayed people's take it. That's just been happening a lot. On that, like I talked to a lady the other day and like they had done a soil sample and it was, everything was optimum. They just needed some nitrogen for whatever yield they wanted to get. And I was telling her, I was like, I coated it for 3 and four ton. And I was like, you put it out, 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre, get you 3 ton. Or you could bump that up to 60 pound of nitrogen per acre and get 4 ton. And I was like, it's looking like it's going to be a dry year.

So now may be your time.

You know, take all the opportunity we can. It is going to rain some this spring. So if we can increase our fertilizer costs now, I know it jumped up, but it's looking like it's going to stay up, if not go higher throughout the summer. But if we can put on, for Bermuda grass, early May, again, not temperatures 60 degrees, May, June, and preferably if we're cutting for hay, we want to apply fertilizer for each cutting. Again, it's going to be real high, so we kind of have to be deliberate about our thinking if we, you know, farmers want to.

It's hard to know you can't predict the weather. We don't know if it'll be a drought or not.

But, and that's kind of the point. Have a plan. What are we going to do if we, you know, maybe if we increase fertilizer now and get it out this week before this rain that's hopefully coming this weekend, that's going to increase our growth and our yield somewhat. a big thing with cutting hay. Now, do you want a lot of yield or do you want better quality? Because we can get, you can let it go and get a little bit more mature and yeah, you may increase your yield overall, but then the quality's the more mature grasses and forages get, the less that quality drops. And I, like I try to tell people, think about, what are we going to feed this? What's our plan? What are we going to feed this to? What stage of production is this animal going to be in? Is it I'm feeding to calves that are growing? Am I feeding it to, my mama cows that are, do they have the calf on them or are they, just, they're dry right now? That's when they're, the intake is lowest is when they don't have a calf on them and they're dry. Maybe they're pregnant and they're, growing a calf inside them, but their overall nutrition requirement is relatively low. Once they have that calf and they start lactating, they got to produce milk for that calf and maintain their body condition score. So they're going to need a lot more energy, a lot more nutrients. And so, you know, maybe if possible, it's easier said than done because Like we said, what if it's raining like crazy and our grass, we can't cut it and a week goes by and it's too mature. But if everything worked out right, cutting your hay when it's at that boot stage or doe stage is like right when the seed head starts to form, like it starts poking out, that's really the timing we want for having the best quality where it's at its, you know, maximum yield we can get and maximum nutritional quality. And what I mean by that is, it may be a little bit more nutritious before it gets to that boot stage, because as it starts forming that seed head, that's when it starts rapidly dropping nutrients. But we still want enough growth there that we have a good enough yield.

And say that someone has not ever tested their hay, what's an option there? How much is that to typically do, run a hay test?

If you do a, and it's good to know, and we'll probably do like a, try to do that hay show again where we, I'm gonna try to get us, our farmers a discount where we can, you know, $10 a sample, but Essentially, what we do is we, I've got several probes and I run a probe into that bale, whether it's a round bale or square.

And you've got one with a drill that makes it easier.

It makes it a little easier on certain grasses, like on like Johnson grass, that drill, it's, you know, it makes it easier because it's hard to hip thrust that thing in. I've got one that you got to like use your hip and push it in. And that one's on Johnson grass are really thick, it's hard to push in, so that drill does really help. But I'm going to do that to like several. My hand motions getting you. I don't want to just do like a couple of bales. I want to get a good rope. It's kind of like soil sampling. The more samples I can get, the more, you know, representation that.

It's going to be by hay overall. So would you want it by field? Or like how would you, how would you look at your hay and how would you decide how to do in one sample?

Yeah, you could break it down by field or, let's say I've got this field here and this field here, and they're both like 5 acre fields. you could combine, like in our hay, in our soil sample, it's like a box shouldn't represent more than a, you know, 20 acres to be the most accurate. people go way over that because we see a bunch of, 60 and 40 acre field soil samples. if we wanted to be more accurate, we want to break that down. But in hay, what they say is like by lot, so maybe first cutting, if we took, you got all your hay in the barn and then, or before it went in the barn and we sampled, 25 to 30 bales and mixed all that together, that'd be a pretty good representation of that.

If your fields were relatively the same grass wise.

It's however you want to do it where you know, I want to test what's in that barn. Preferably, you want, you know, don't want last year's hay and this year's hay. to make up the simple there, because there's going to be a lot of variability.

The second test last year, say now and get a little bit of information.

Yeah, and so what we can use that for, it's a $20 test. The routine test is 20 that tells you the TDN, which is your energy, tells you crude protein, fiber. I think ours gives like a relative feed value. And then for if you wanted to add on for 15 more dollars, we have you could do like all the nutrients, like the micronutrients, like how much calcium, sulfur, et cetera.

Which depending on what you're feeding and what you're doing, we.

Could do that for you to give you more information to allow you to make better decisions, because we can, you know, we can plug in that information did, spend $35 and get information about the, how much energy this provides, the protein, all the nutrients and put that into a little program I got and I can develop a ration and pretty accurately figure out how much I can get game per day or if I wanted to maintain an animal, its body condition score over a period of time, I can use that formula and figure out a ration or figure out how much hay to feed to maintain or if I want them to grow. So it's just use it as like a tool to gather some information. But every farmer should do that if you're wanting to raise cattle, just because there's not ever people want to know like, what's the average? what's the average hay? Well, you may not have average hay. Average hay would be like a 9% protein and a 54 TDN. I see a lot of sixes, sixes protein and like a 40, mid 40s TDN. I see a lot of that come through. And so that's not very good quality hay. So If we know that, then we can know what to supplement. Okay, I'm going to have to increase my energy to have this cow maintain her body condition score. Right now, cattle are high. Inputs are high, but we want that animal to perform well so we can continue to make money. And if we can maintain their body condition score around that 6 to 7, they're going to breed back easier. They're going to calve easier. It's, you know, get deliberate about our decision-making, especially in years like this.

Yeah. when you have a lot facing you.

And it looks like it's going to, I don't know, drought year and high input year. And so I don't know if I knew what would happen.

You wouldn't be here right now.

Yeah, maybe not.

If you're watching, I hope you notice our new artwork we have. We have a new 4-H clover that Archer Kennan made for us and super excited and thankful that he made that for us. So happy to display it.

It is pretty cool.

If you make us things and give us things in 4-H, we'll put it up. And actually this picture was a wedding present from a local artist. She painted for me. So I thought I'd bring it up here because we kind of prefer Black Angus in our house. I do love some Herefords, but I prefer polled Herefords. So I thought I'd bring it up here and have a little moo cows.

Polled. What's that mean? Trivia.

Horns removed or without.

Yeah, without horns is what polled is. And they breed it into them.

We were playing a game the other night and part of it's to name different things. And someone said, breeds of cattle. And I was like, I was a little obnoxious. I was like, you don't know what you've done.

Yeah.

We're made for this. Yeah.

And then I couldn't think of 1.

No, I think you did. No, we thought of good. I think we're trying to think of all the weird ones to impress our friends. Or maybe that's what I was doing. They don't seem too impressed.

Thanks, Archer, for the artwork. Yes, thank you. Yep. And so Anna's got a device here.

I do. What do you think it's for?

Well, I know what it's for. So if I was making something up, I would say it looks like some sort of rocket launcher thing.

Yeah, it kind of does, doesn't it? So this is a pressure canner dial tester and I just got my gauge back. So I'm supposed to send off my dial gauge for my tester just as you would yearly test your dial gauge on your pressure canner?

Why would you want a yearly test?

Well you want to make sure that you don't have any mess ups basically in the dial so that it's misrepresenting what the true pressure is within your pressure canner. And there are pressure canners, of course, without dial gauges. So I can't test them for accuracy, like a weighted gauge, but I can test the dial gauge pressure canner lens. And so I'm happy to have that back. And now's the time to bring it in. And so what I do is I'll place this piece over right there where you see the rubber at and then I will make sure that this pressure matches the master by pushing down on that paddle and it builds pressure in both of them. And it's a nice little device and it's important for that because a loss in I think a 2% being off 2 psi is a 30% about decrease in sterilization values. That's very large. So anytime that you have an inaccurate dial, and I know that can vary, can vary, but anytime you have an inaccurate dial, then you're running the risk of not properly canning your food items. So I recommend to bring that in every year to me. And I'm happy to test those lids, even if I'm not here, just drop it off.

Yeah, and it's super expensive though, right?

Yeah, it's free.

Yeah.

Free testing.

Free testing. So you definitely want to check that out. What if something's wrong? Like it doesn't match.

We can adjust, like I can work with you to adjust your pressure that you would actually can at up to 2 PSI. And then after that, you're going to need to replace your dial. And it's not too, it's pretty simple to get a new dial for your pressure canner if you have the dial gauge. You'll just have to kind of check it out. Some of the older brands, of course, be more difficult to make sure, but typically the dials are pretty uniform. So But we want to check that. And when you bring it in, I also check other parts, other parts of your canner looking for pitting, warping, checking your seals. And then what's the one thing you always heard growing up about pressure canners?

I don't know. Do they blow up? I've heard that.

That's what I figured you would say. So one thing I like about the new dog gauge pressure canners and a lot of the new canners is they have an overpressure valve. So it's a nice little rubber blow off. It's supposed to blow off before your lid would. So you can kind of see, I know you may not see that well, but how that's made. And so that's one thing that, you know, some are using their granny's old canner and I understand that, but I do feel a lot better having this little rubber, rubber little tab that can, that can blow off in case of, you know, some situation with your dial.

How much is it? would probably be because something's defective that you would have a blow up like that.

Most of the time that I've heard is when people walk away and aren't monitoring and it just gets too hot and the pressure builds too high. So that's really the thing is that when you are pressure canning, that you're with it the whole time. Yeah, I've not, in modern times, you don't hear of it very often. I know of one person 30 years ago who blew theirs up, but I don't know the whole circumstance behind it. But typically it's people forgetting it.

Yeah.

But I feel really safe with mine as long as I stay there and keep an eye on it.

Yeah, so say it did someone not as experienced and say pressure starts, what do you do?

The pressure builds too high.

Or something's happening.

You're going to have to turn off your burner. And that That can happen. It depends on your burners. They all have different, we've got electric or gas. And one issue I've seen is people using too hot of a gas burner. So whether that be a stove in your house or we don't want to ever use the turkey burners outside for your pressure cooker. And even on some stoves that I've canned at, either here at the office or at another extension office, we've had to turn off the burners. because the pressure was getting too high.

Well, I've heard, like you mentioned electric, I always heard you shouldn't can or pressure can with electric stove.

I had no issue pressure canning with my electric stove. You would have to be careful when you are building up that pressure. You're not going to want to have it maybe not as hot because once you've got it so hot, so hot, you may have a hard time getting it back down and you don't want to be lifting and moving that canner. and disturbing the contents and then dealing with that super hot, heavy thing. So I would say that if you are using electric, which I had no trouble with, I would just build up my pressure at a slower rate instead of just have it full high.

Full high.

After you've exhausted it. So you have to make sure you exhaust it for 10 minutes.

What's that?

So when you've got all your items in the canner, you've put the lid on and you're supposed to turn it to high. And then you're waiting until you get a strong cone of steam. So at first it'll just kind of spit and sputter, a little water, a little steam, and then eventually it'll get a strong cone of steam. And a lot of times I have to take a dark potholder or something to hold behind it to see it. And then once we have that good cone of steam, we're going to be timing it for 10 minutes. And what that does is it gets rid of all the oxygen out of my pressure canner and we're creating that pure steam environment, which is necessary to properly build up pressure and to sterilize our food. And so once we've done that, and for this canner, this is my counterweight. So once I've exhausted and done that for 10 minutes, then I'm going to put my counterweight and then my pressure gainer is going to start to build up pressure. And so once we get to our pressure, then that's when we start timing it.

Whatever the book says.

It depends on your elevation. And then I check everything to So Easy to Preserve or the National Center of Home Food Preservation because I've canned a lot of different things and my mind can get confused. So I just look it up every time to make sure that I have the correct processing times and headspaces.

How do you feel about canning butter?

I'm anti canning butter.

I wish I could get her to really rant. I think that would be good. She kind of she's.

I don't think everybody likes my rants.

Well, I like them. They're funny.

Well, yeah, I can get kind of on a tear, but I don't want to run off my people. I'm trying to educate. But if you do can fat, which you're not supposed to, it like it does something to it. And as far as dairy goes, it won't allow things to really suspend because it's changed it. From when I was looking up, I really like to know more details sometimes of other than just don't do it. I want to know why. And fat, fat can like boil. Fat can boil and it just kind of destroys the integrity of it in a bit.

Yeah.

So whenever you're kidding meat, you really have to trim it and get off the grease and things like that. So butter is just a whole lot of fat.

Would bacteria grow in that?

I think this is really a quality situation.

Yeah, just to drop the.

You could be dealing with some rancidity, but really quality. I had someone ask about canning bacon and it's like the kind of the nature of butter or bacon for that matter is that it is a shelf stable product when you're making it yourself.

I think that's what you kind of rang about. That's fun. It's like, why would you? Why do you want to? It's already preserved or like bacon.

Yeah, that was the whole point of making the bacon.

Is to preserve it.

And the thought is that you're the one making the bacon, you know, or you're the one making the butter. But that's the beauty of a lot of things is there's ways to preserve it where it is stable, like the curing and And cheese, if you're wanting to preserve dairy, make cheese.

Yeah.

Who doesn't love some cheese?

I like cheese.

But that's why we make cheese, to preserve our dairy. So I would focus more on learning those type skills versus, you know, canning butter that you bought at Walmart. There's my dig. I hope you're happy. Yeah. But when you do bring your canner in and I do test it, I've got this nice sheet from the University of Arkansas where I go through a full canner inspection. So I'm checking your handles and I have to tighten my handles pretty regularly. I don't know what it is about them loosening up. And I go through the condition of your canner. And so I've had warped canners, pitted canners.

What's pitted?

Pitted is so the metal is starting to just go away. And I don't fully understand why. one important thing when you're storing your canners, you're keeping it dry and keep it in a cool environment. Like I would keep it in a cool, dry environment, maybe where you are keeping your canned goods at. And one issue I've had is you don't store it with the lid on it. And I've had several where they can't get the lid off or back on it. And because you're storing it with the lid on and I think...

So don't store it with the lid on.

Don't store it with the lid on and don't put it in a we want it in a stable temperature environment. And I know that sounds wild because this is a canner that gets hot and has 240 degrees inside of it, which is why we pressure because we need that 240 to kill botulism. But when you're having those temperature extremes of like if you're leaving it out in a shed or you have the lid on it, I've had multiple canners that you can't get the lid back on. So I recommend cool dry place, line it with Paper towels, that's what the USDA recommends. And I would think that if you do that, you'll be good. And don't use a lot of chemicals to clean it and soap and water, classic, a little vinegar for some of the deposits. But we don't want that. And then make sure that all of your rubber, you are oiling that. You're a little fidgety.

Like so what kind of oil?

Preferably salt-free oil, so like a high temp oil also, so you're kind of in the veggie canola oil environment. You only want to lightly grease, so we don't want it to get gummy, so very light. And then if, say, you have one of the all-American types where they're like a metal to metal, anywhere we have that, we also want to lightly oil that as well before use. But, you know, wash it up good before you use it. Bring your lid in, get it tested, and I'll inspect your canner if you want to bring the whole thing. and make sure you're good to go for the season because it's upon us. I'm excited. It's spring now.

The whole point, we want to grow big gardens and the excess is what we preserve, right?

Yeah.

I don't know much about cannon. We've done the classes together.

You've absorbed very little.

I have. I need to, even when like when we've done it with like the 4-H or so I'm just kind of I'm never really paying attention. I'm just like, oh, don't burn yourself.

You're worried about that?

No.

I'm kind of, I've put us into some situations with the kids. I'm like, I want you to learn everything.

Yeah.

And I think back to how my husband's grandfather butchered a pig himself at six. So I'm like, we can boil something. We'll be fine. We can use enough. We'll be fine.

We can make a fried pie.

We might not do that again. I mean, they're troopers, I tell you.

I think they all liked it.

Oh, yeah. I hate that you missed cinnamon rolls. They were champs at the cinnamon rolls. I was thrilled. It worked out great.

The only thing about the fried pies was like, they were like LeBron James with the flower. It was everywhere.

Oh, yeah. And also, when we did cinnamon rolls, my child, which, you know, it's usually our kids that do the things, and Whitney walked through Flower and they said it was like, if you're trying to ever in a certain holiday make footprints, they said it was like perfect little feet all the way to the bathroom, through our carpet here at the office. So that was my gal, but you got to make a mess and have fun and learn. Learn by doing, they say. Should have had her vacuum it. She might have learned a little more that way.

We forgot to have that set off there, but it's fine. It's fine. Well, I'm setting it down now because we're about done, but we do have, we both, we had an experience this weekend trying a new food.

So I don't know if you heard in an earlier episode that I made a purchase for Christmas for my husband and it was surstroming. So that's the fermented fish from over in some European country.

Yeah, what we'd say Sweden, Norway.

Sweden, Norway. I think it came from Sweden. The surstroming.

I mean, like it was, I think it was said like you'd have to be starving. And I guess if that's the only way that you had food in the wintertime was to Ferment that fish.

I think James said you had to be hungry.

Hungry, yeah.

Well, you're supposed to open it underwater, we hear. And so Brandon put it underwater, but not enough underwater, because when it finally, I mean, the can's bulging. And I kept it in the extra fridge in a tin just in case it blew up, because You had, when thankfully it opened it immediately, because it said it immediately needed to go under refrigeration because of the fermentation building up within it. And when he, I bought a can opener, because I was not about to let my good can opener, and he's like, it'll be fine, it won't smell. I threw that can opener away. It went, and it shot towards one of our buddies. She barely got, I don't know if she made it out of the way or not. I didn't smell her, so she probably did.

Yeah, it smelled like a mixture of, I've been saying like cat poop and then garbage and then juices.

Juices like of things that stink.

Yeah, like rotten. It smelled.

It stank.

But it tasted really salty. Yeah, it wasn't that bad.

Once we got over the the general shock of the initial stank of it, which it was bad. And we had a little gagging going on before, but nothing like the videos. It was not, people are wimps, I guess, but the look of it, was like, they just cut the head off the thing. So Brandon did the honors, or you and him were the first guys?

I was videoing.

And he thankfully got some meat out of it because when I picked it up and looked at the entire salami fish and that smell like, it was a texture thing as they say.

Yeah.

But it wasn't as bad as I expected.

The taste, like I could handle the taste if it was anything else and smelled any way different. I could probably, I'd be like, someone just over salted this. and not think anything about it.

Said you're supposed to rinse it before you eat it, but we didn't do that.

Yeah.

Well, and I thought, I tried it and I was proud of Whitney and some of our other friends for trying it. Some wore weenies and didn't try it, but whatever. And I was like, some possum tonight's going to come in the yard and be like, that's some gourmet. Gourmet. Gourmet. No, the cats didn't eat it. The rack and some possums didn't eat it. The dogs didn't eat it. And then I got worried about one of my dogs like rolling in it. So I buried the rest of it. under a rock. And Brandon was on the skid steer in a whole nother part of the yard downwind. And he was smelling it. He thought it was just wafting off the can. But it was so worth it, though, to get to experience that.

There was some gagging going on the video. We'd have to do some editing.

Yeah. Yeah, it took a few by surprise. Yeah. man.

That was fun. That was fun.

I wasn't really thrilled about doing it before a crawfish boiled in.

Well, I wanted to do it before, not after.

Well, I didn't want to do it after, but I was worried it'd tight the eating it, but no, it didn't bug us at all.

I just left it out there and shut the door. As long as you weren't smelling it. But I like could smell it around like the whole next day. I'd get a whiff. And I was like, what?

Did you really?

Yeah. Like I was like, what?

Was it in your beard?

I don't know.

You know, sometimes I think it's like gets in your head.

Yeah.

Like I've had that lately where I keep thinking I'm smelling a certain thing. It's just, it's in my head. But, anyway. I was pleased, he was pleased. It was fun. It was a great Christmas present. Won't do it again, but glad I did it once.

And we can say we've tried it.

Yeah, we can. And that we did better than the people on social media. Except that one guy. There was one guy who was just eating it.

Yeah. I don't know. I might edit it and put it out there, but probably not.

Here's a video of people gagging. I don't know. It's good. You probably should. Yeah.

All right. Anything else? You done like they do quorum court go around to everybody. You got anything? You got anything?

No, I'm good.

I'm good. Motion we adjourn.