"Living Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money" Article

[Unmanagable]

It's from "Mother Earth News" and I think it's delightfully written. It's 6 pages long, so you know it HAD to be pretty darn delightful for me to finish it.

"The following is an excerpt from Possum Living: Living Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money by Dolly Freed (Tin House Books, 2010). Originally published in the late 1970s when Freed was 18 years old, Possum Living is part philosophical treatise, part down-to-earth how-to, and provides a no-nonsense approach on how to beat the system and be self-sufficient — right in suburbia. The new, updated edition includes fresh reflections, insights and life lessons from an older and wiser Dolly Freed. This excerpt is from Chapter 1, “We Quit the Rat Race,” and Chapter 4, “We Rassle With Our Consciences.”

Link to the article:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/moder...-no-money.aspx


I'm especially fond of it for several reasons:

• My first date w/ my hubby happened to be at a "Sun-Dried Possums" concert tenish years ago.
• I recently resigned from my job, so I guess I'm now a 'possum w/ a p/t gig' who's also tapping into her crafty skills.
• And just for kicks and giggles, I looked up "possum spirit animal", and damn if a whole lot of that doesn't sound like a whole lot of us!!!!

Link to possum spirit animal info:
http://spiritlodge.yuku.com/topic/939


Whassup, my fellow possum peeps??

[Abi]

Got the book. Loving it so far.

[Abi]

Okay, this is gross:

Originally Posted by Living Well...

We feel it's our duty to eat as much of the animal as possible. We collect the blood and cut out the tongue before skinning. These go into sausage.

The sooner you skin a killed animal the easier the Job. We do it on the
kitchen table. Slit the skin on the underside of the hind legs from foot to
foot. Leave the feet the feet till the end of the job to use as handles. Cut the
skin around in a circle at the hocks (ankles), and work it off to the body. On a
young doe it will just slip off--on an old buck you'll have to cut away at the
connective tissue pretty often. Work the skin down to the tail, anus, and sex
organs, and out these away. Then slip it off the body like peeling a rubber
glove off your hand. When you get to the skull, cut off the head. If you do that
before skinning, you usually get hair on the meat. We take out the brain to add
to the sausage.

Next cut off the back feet add rinse the carcass. Pinch up some of the
abdominal flesh and carefully start a slit in it. If you just go ahead and stick
the knife in, you'll likely open an intestine, which makes an unnecessary mess.
Enlarge this slit to *** and throat. Remove the heart, liver, and kidneys, with
some of the fat around them and set aside. Remove the gall bladder from the
liver, being careful to keep the gall off the meat. If some does spill, wipe it
off immediately. Discard the windpipe and add the lungs to the sausage meat.
Also add the thyroid, adrenals, excess and internal fat, spleen, and testicles
or uterus, to be ground up in the sausage. Pick up the carcass and dump the
stomach and intestines into a bucket or something. Rinse off the carcass, and
the job is done. It's really easier than it sounds. I was doing it when I was
10.

[Fuzzy12]

Originally Posted by Abi

Okay, this is gross:

Not that I think that there is anything wrong with eating meat but I'm suddenly very glad that I'm a vegetarian.

[Abi]

Blood in the sausages? What are we, vampires?

Brain, lungs, testicles, uterus in the sausage?

[TygerSan]

It's probably not a bad thing to know where your meat comes from, and I've had to do some icky things to animals at times, but, yes, this is gross. . .

Also, seriously, with the possibility of transmission of scrapie and mad-cow like illness, I wouldn't put any of the nervous-system (especially the brain) in the sausage. . . why chance it??

[TygerSan]

Brain, lungs, testicles, uterus in the sausage?

Not sure I would think about that too long and hard . . . I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's in the commercially-made sausages as well. . .well, minus the brain as indicated above.

ETA: I've never had blood sausage, but have seen it on others' plates before. . .

[Abi]

Yeh I agree Tyger

I don't know American prices, but how is it that over here, a pound of steak costs the equivalent of $5 but a pound of minced beef costs $4 and a pound of sausage costs $3.50???

[Abi]

Originally Posted by Living well...

The liver, heart, and kidneys [of a rabbit] are usually fried for
breakfast or added to a sauce for spaghetti.

[Abi]

Originally Posted by Ibid

RABBIT SAUSAGE
* Collect the blood when you slaughter the rabbit.
* Save the tongue, meat scraps, lungs (minus windpipe), brain, spleen, thyroid,
adrenals, excess fat, internal fat; and testicles or uterus.
* Mix in herbs. Thyme, fresh, tender sage leaves, and shallots or onions give
the sausage a Lebanon bologna sort of flavor. Fennel, tarragon, and chives give
it a warm, subtle taste.
* Run through a fine meat grinder.
* Mix in the blood.
* Run some raw wheat through the grinder.
* Mix the wheat with the blood mixture until you have it Stiff enough to form
patties. (Sometimes we simply use flour for the filler, but then it's not as
good.)
* Cook the patties in a double boiler about 10 minutes. They are dark, almost
black, when done.
Occasionally we save a section of large intestine, wash it well, stuff the
mixture into it, tie up the ends, cook it 15 minutes in slowly simmering water,
then hang up to dry. Sometimes we dry it over a smoky hickory fire. It's
absolutely delicious, but it's a lot of trouble for the amount you get.

[Emphasis mine]

[Abi]

Sorry guys but reading this book is like watching the aftermath of a horrid car crash,but not being able to look away.

Originally Posted by Ibid

When we lived in Florida, Daddy used to ride to work with a
real crab gourmet. Whenever he saw a dead dog along the road he'd stop the car,
run over and kick the carcass till the crabs would scurry out and grab them up
to take them home for dinner. Daddy was always being docked for lateness because
of this guy's predilection for crab meat.

[salleh]

Putting food aside for the moment ......MOther Earth News is an old favorite of mine .....been reading it almost since it started ...(yah I'm ooooold ) .....

....But when I was very young .....not even 20 yet, I decided that I wanted to learn how to make everything that is in the house....just in case a bomb dropped and I found myself in a whole different world .....without stores.....


....I gave that idea up after a a few years...but it did turn my mind to making stuff .....and over the years I have learned how to make and fix a whole lotta things .....and I think that is one of the reasons that I have enjoyed life .....there is no greater feeling of satisfaction than using your own 2 hands to make something and have it turn out well.....


creating beauty, of any kind fills your soul......I never learned to type ... that's why my posts are so full of typos,( the missing letters are a combination of brain firing off too fast for my head to keep up ....and slightly sticky keyboard keys ....) ......but I did this not learning ...on purpose .....I never wanted to have to resort to any kind of office work........I knew without even thinking that I would be the worlds most unhappy person in an office envirement.......


...and being an artist/creative person ...usually means that money is in short supply ....so you get even more creative in ways to get by in life without spending a fortune .....and that I have also gotten good at ....I just wish that like the Authors mother, I had figured out a way to make money at it ......the best I have ever done is to make almost a living ....


....My motto has seemed to have been ......I can make anything but a living ......


the upshot of my whole life is that I have always been out of the mainstream .....last to get any gadget, if I ever get it .....the computer is about it in modern gadgetry for me ......and I am fiercely addicted to it and all the info and frienships I have found in the ether ......dont' know how I got along without it .....( afctually I used books....I have owned about every how-to book every published, and even with my pared down existance ...I have 2 7 foot bookshelves filled top to bottom to overflowing with hoe-to books......


.....MOther Earth living ???.....been at it for decades!

[ginniebean]

Originally Posted by TygerSan

It's probably not a bad thing to know where your meat comes from, and I've had to do some icky things to animals at times, but, yes, this is gross. . .

Also, seriously, with the possibility of transmission of scrapie and mad-cow like illness, I wouldn't put any of the nervous-system (especially the brain) in the sausage. . . why chance it??

These diseases came about by slaughter houses selling the carcasses and remains like the brain to feed producers. The feed producers ground up the meat and bones of sheep, chicken, pork and beef then mixed them with grain and sold it to be fed to the next generation of animals.(a practice that should be illegal but no one is asking me) Feeding sheep who have scrapies to cows causes mad cow disease.

A wild animal is not likely to have been fed this disgusting concoction. So, when you see on certain cartons of eggs "vegetarian feed" You are paying extra for having someone feed them what they are supposed to be feeding them to begin with.

Originally Posted by Abi

Sorry guys but reading this book is like watching the aftermath of a horrid car crash,but not being able to look away.

Sorry abi, when the huge solar flare comes and acts like an EMP bomb.. you're going to starve to death. Sissy!

[Unmanagable]

Just took some deer meat out of the crock pot to make some BBQ with.

Luckily, another friend took care of getting it from the woods to the table for us. lol

Ya'll grab some cold ones and come on over.

[Spacemaster]

I live in northern Minnesota, so the skinning and butchering of deer doesn't bother me much. I haven't directly participated, but I've been witness to a butchering operation in a garage, while I was pregnant. Brains and sex organs were not included I must say. The smell is hideous.