How to Farm

Information gathered from: Hannah the door greeter at Walmart
Thanks Hannah!

Okay so here's something fun to think about. Hannah used to live on a farm as a little girl back in the 50's and she was more than happy to tell me how everything worked at her farm because she loved those days so much. An interesting tidbit was that they never had to lock their doors back then. Remember this is how they did it and there are probably different ways that use less energy or cost less.

But anyways here's a list of how to do things.

Veggies/fruits: Freeze strawberries, freeze most vegetables, zuccini freeze sometimes and you can make zuccini bread, water melons are not freezable but unknown if they last. Tomatoes were grown on a tree branch in the ground with a string wrapped all the way up and around the twig and stem.
How to grow: They had a garden about the size of a football field which is about an acre. All they did was weed it(I would think a weed auger would work) and the soil in Pennsylvania is moist so they rarely watered it. And they never had to worry about bugs(maybe the bugs had enough to eat and couldn't eat it all)
Canning: For spagetti sauce they would make a canning jar of it uncooked and then put them all into an over sized pressure cooker for 30 minutes submerged in water with the surface of the water right below the cap of the jar. Then when done it would automatically be vacuum sealed and tap the button to see for sure. These could be stored on the shelf without refrigeration.
Jars of jelly: They would cook down the fruit and corn syrup and then when done they would pour melted wax over the top to seal it (wax sticks were purchased) and then put the lid on and these could be stored on the shelf without refrigeration.
Butter: They would churn their own butter which is just made of 100% cream and then you add a yellow butter making ball(She didn't know the exact name of it but it might have been bacteria). Then churn it(she said a blender would possibly work) Then separate the buttermilk off of the top and this butter is the best tasting kind ever and people will come to buy it from all around.
Pies: They have lots of blueberries up in Pennsylvania so she would make blue berry pies all the time and enjoyed that a lot. And blueberries you can freeze or make jam out of also.
Pets: She would have more fun with pets than anyone and had guinea pigs that would eat any vegetables. Not to mention her pig and many other animals.
Horses: They would bale hay for the horses while the grass was green, and they would store it in the barn for the winter, and all the horses need to survive is a trough of water and salt cubes and hay.
Cows: They would let the cows go out to pasture at night and feed themselves and would milk them at 3 in the morning and at another time of day also. She would take her horse out at night to find the cows and milk them. They also had lots of head of cattle so had all of the cow meat they could eat and it takes a lot of work to butcher it.
Pigs: They had only a few pigs that when they got fat enough they would eat them. And she kept one of the pigs as a pet which would wait for her when she got off the bus from school, but in the end her father killed the pig for food and she didn't eat pig for the longest time because she was so upset. All the pigs eat is table scraps. An interesting bit of info is that in Hawaii they used to have luau's every Sunday and have a roast pig.
Chickens: They had hundreds of chickens which would lay about 3 eggs a day each, and they would buy chicken feed from the store to make sure that the chickens would get fed because they always sold the eggs. The chicken feed was just corn and seeds. You also need one male rooster for them to produce eggs.
Ducks: Duck eggs are well known to be tastier than chicken eggs. All they did was have a pond and feed the ducks and the ducks would know that it was home and would never leave. The ducks would only lay about 3-4 eggs/week if you were lucky, but they were gathered by knowing where the eggs were by going out at night and seeing where the ducks were sleeping. They also bought a special breed of duck that produces more eggs.
Deer meat: They would go out hunting once a year with a group of 12 people or more and they would butcher the meat at home themselves, and cut down to the bone for no bones in the meat, and would get the best cuts of meat their own way, because the butchers would do a bad job of it. And they would put it all into the freezer. But she also said that smoking could be done but they never did that. Free deer meat, other than labor involved in butchering it and hunting.

This was back when life was good and the world was full of opportunity and hopefully those days aren't totally gone. I'm going to go out and try to buy some land now!