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[Robert Walton <waltonrp AT gmail.com>]

I took my stitches out today from the goat incident. The doctor I had
at the ER was really cool. I say him and his wife at the Mart
yesterday. They were going to cook the goat shoulder last night and
seemed real excited to have some healthy meat. He looked at my cut and
said that it looked ready for the stitches to come out. Told him it
felt like that to me and I was going to do it myself. He said he
agreed. It's a waste of time and money to have a Dr do it. I like this
doctors attitude!

I found that the strawberry jam I made last year has gone bad. I
didn't seal the jars, just put wax on the top. Some of them, it looked
like the wax had separated a bit from the edge of the jar. Others did
not. I bought low sugar pectin by mistake for that jam. Maybe that was
it. It's not really bad, just funky looking.

Anyway, I've been adding jam to the hog bucket this week. They sure like that.

I had some blackberries tucked away in the freezer and used them to
make more jam. I reused some canning lids to seal this batch. They
sealed just fine. Monday I got the goat meat off the bone, cut into
chunks, cut the fat off and canned it. Used new lids for that. It
looks good, I raw packed it. Next time, I'll add just a little water
to the jar, as the liquid is low. It was a smallish wether, got 7 jars
of meat, plus the shoulder for Doc, the ribs and some back meat to
eat. I left a good amount of meat on the bones, cut them up and have 4
bags of meaty soup bones.

Rob - Va