The Turkeys Are Gone

I know ... it has been almost a week since I've posted anything, but I haven't had anything to talk about.

*T* and I butchered the two turkeys Sunday evening... that was interesting, seeing as *T* has never even witnessed poultry of any kind being butchered....lol... I shouldn't have laughed at him but it was funny. I started helping my parents with butchering since I was old enough to pluck feathers, so it is amusing to me to see some one's reaction who has never done this. LOL.... like I said, I should not have laughed at him, but he took it well :-)

We sent the turkeys to be smoked and will have one for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. I tried to weigh one of the turkeys on the bathroom scale but I'm not sure how accurate that was. The scale said it weighed 28 pounds, dressed, but I'll get the true weight from the slaughter house where we sent them to get smoked. A friend of mine, *R*, works at the slaughterhouse were the birds are being smoked so he took them with him to work last night, and I haven't talked to him to see what the total weights were.

Today I am going to pick up three female rabbits. I have been wanting to get rabbits to raise for meat for quite some time. Our last attempt failed when the female we got last year died from an unknown cause. I still have the male rabbit, so I'm going to try this again.... wish me luck.

My New Favorite Thing

I have discovered a new favorite thing today. I was at Wal-Mart and spotted this reusable bag.... it cost just $1.

According to the label each bag is:

* 100% recyclable

* Made from 85% recycled materials

* Made from approximately 4 plastic soda bottles

* Can replace 50 plastic shopping bags

* Can carry the same weight as 2-3 plastic shopping bags

* Made in China (the only thing about it I don't like)

At first it didn't look like it would hold very many things, but let me tell you, I was pleasantly surprised how much actually does fit into it.
Have any of you see these... or used them? What do you think?

Let the mayhem begin....

I have not canned meat in years... not since living with my parents. So, when *T* came home the other day after being out artery hunting and told me he wanted me to can this one and we'd put the ones we get in rifle season into grinds and roasts, I was thinking "me?" why me, why not "us". I'll admit he knows nothing and I mean nothing about canning, so I knew right then who was going to be doing all of the work. And me trying to teach him is completely out of the question because we do not work well together in the kitchen. He is assuming that just because we both have bonus tags we are going to fill all of them... I hope we do but that isn't always the case.

How do I restore this old Saddle?

I would like to restore my mother's old saddle. It has been stored for several years. I would like to try to bring this saddle back to its shining glory that it used to be. The saddle had layers and layers of dust built up on it when I brought it home (as seen in photo #1) I used my vacuum with the brush attachment to get most of that off (seen in photo#2). I know Mom used neatsfoot oil on the saddle to help keep the leather soft, but that was years ago, when we were still using it to ride. Is there anything that I can get to clean the dirt out of the design work of the leather? Any suggestions would be great.