I am new to this site and enjoyed reading everyone's experience. Quite a nice batch of information. I collect bones and make a batch of stock in the oven overnight at 210 degrees F. Sometimes I throw the bones in the gardens or grind them to use as a base for dog treats. When my beloved hogs return from the butcher, I pressure cook their heads, remove all soft edible parts to can for the dogs and cats, and throw the bones to the chickens to peck off the stuff that I could not remove. The chickens will strip them clean and also eat some of the bone, great for egg shell integrity. After pressure cooking the bones are pretty soft, so I can just throw them in the garden once the chickens have their fill. I will also put feathers in my garden after processing a batch of broilers, turkeys and/or ducks. These break down amazingly quickly. I save all my egg shells for the garden. Some shells I compost, some I throw directly in the garden and others I save for transplanting my tomatoes....I understand that the calcium can help in preventing blossom end rot. All that said, the thing that offers the most obvious, dramatic, and instant benefit to my plants in bunny poop, which is composted prior to leaving the bunny and can be applied straight away to the garden..

Thanks for your reply, Josh. I'll add it to my next batch of soil when I sterilize it. I'm using the oven method - in foil turkey pans w/ lids...didn't smell at all (thanks for the tip, ken!!!!). I bought Promix BX to start them in. Seemed to be the only decent thing in my area and it is nice and fine and fluffy. Funny how you think you are "sterilized" and then realize you're touching the soil w/ your hand after you scratched your nose or something and you can almost see the fungus growing. LOL I figure it is what it is and I'll just have to deal w/ problems if they arise! I'll tell you what, cleaning the seeds is the worst part of this whole fiasco! There seems to be no easy way. Do you have to get the "wing" part off of the seed or can you plant it w/ it on? Does it matter?

Yes Ann, I cut the ham before cooking. That way it always tastes fresh for each useage. We love ham also. I don't post on WFD because it's only on the weekends that I cook for both of us. During the week, when it's just me, I POOF from my stockpile of freezer entrees, sides, veggies, & desserts. It's a pick 'n choose, mix 'n match sort of thing. Stuff is already cooked...just nuke & eat. :) Tonight I'm POOFING Mac 'n Cheese w/Ham (today's threads gave me a craving!) & a baby spinach side salad. Dessert will be peach crisp made with fruit I put up this summer. DH told me at noon he's planning on grabbing a ready-to-cook stuffed chicken breast (I make them up for the freezer a dozen at a time) for his dinner & have roasted butternut squash with onions, cranberries, & walnuts (also prepared here & taken by him to NY frozen). He's having a slice of brownie-pecan pie for dessert. He loads up his ice chest every Sunday night & takes enough meals for the week. Anyway, we cook weird around here so I never have 'cooked all at the same time' type of meals to post on WFD. This morning, I made up enough Sloppy Joe filling for about 10 sandwiches. DH loves Sloppy Joes during Monday Night Football. He grills my homemade rolls (again...frozen individually), nukes the filling, grabs a beer, & he's set for the game. lol /tricia

Quick report. Meal was a big hit. But, after the day we'd had, so was bed. Ride started at Welches OR and ended at Government Camp OR, which is about 15 miles east along Hwy 26 if you are sensible, but instead we went in the other direction, north into the National Forest on logging roads, and proceeded to ride all the way around Mount Hood, a sort of clockwise circuit, and reach Government Camp from the opposite side. The 42 miles of twisting roads through the forest were gorgeous, with remarkable views, thankfully much shade, generally decent road surface, and we saw two cars in 8 hours. I enjoyed seeing Mount Hood from the back side, a view that not that many people see. But there was also no potable water, no cellphone coverage, several miles of gravel road, and what seemed like endless climbing. There were short steep descents but you couldn't really bomb down them, because the road did have the occasional monster hole or collapsed area, which might be hidden in a patch of deep shadow. And it was 102F up there, according to someone's fancy bike computer. I ran out of water about fifteen miles from the first civilization in Parkdale, got dehydrated, and despite drinking a ton of water and Gatorade at the little grocery store there, my thighs and calves started cramping up on the next stretch, which was a 10 mile climb to reach Hwy 35. I was in my very lowest gear, trying to turn the pedals with as little force as possible, feeling the muscles get tight. Sometimes I had charley horses that I had to pedal through. A couple times I had to get off the bike and sit down until my muscles stopped seizing up. We got to Hwy 35 with another 20 miles of climbing ahead. This is a pretty desolate two lane highway, with no cellphone coverage for most of the way and, on Saturday around 6 pm, maybe one car every 5 or 10 minutes. Several miles down the highway, one of our group had her rear tire blow out. Not the tube, but the tire casing itself. It had been sliced open on a gravel stretch, back in the forest. Our patch held for 50 miles but now the tire had a pencil sized hole worn in the casing, Mary Jean's bike was unrideable, and the sun was getting low. The other three rode ahead to find a cellphone signal and call AAA to retrieve her, and also call her husband to see if he was close enough to come get her. Rick had ferried our clothes and food to the condo that morning, then returned to Portland, due to return late that night. I stayed with Mary Jean, for entirely selfish motives - I figured that the AAA driver who picked her up would surely give me a ride too. With nothing to do, we tried patching the tire casing again, rode half a mile, blew out the re-patch, and started walking, wondering how many hours the others would have to ride to find cell coverage and how busy AAA was on a Saturday night and when the sun would set. It was getting dusk now. A pickup truck approached and slowed, the driver peered at us, and drove on. Several minutes later the truck returned from the other direction, and he was one of the local AAA drivers, off duty, looking for us on his way home. We arrived at the cabin right when our companions rode up. They had ridden to an area with a single cellphone "bar" about forty minutes after leaving us, spent another 15 minutes trying to explain the situation to AAA over a garbled connection, and the closest AAA truck on duty was busy in Sandy, over an hour away. We'd have been out there after dark. Our driver told us that the area where we had been walking was a sort of local Bermuda Triangle, populated with bear and cougar, where people disappeared mysteriously. Most recently, a father and his adult son, hiking, had never been seen again. The thing is, all the locals agree, a cougar wouldn't take on two adult men. So, as you can see, the dinner that night didn't have to be good to be good, if you see what I mean. But it was good too. No-one was awake enough for the swimming pool or hot tub. The next morning I left the others - they were staying in the condo all weekend - and rode the 15 miles down Hwy 26 to my car in Welches. That was a great descent, curvy two lane highway, all downhill, good pavement. Get in a low tuck and you can hit 60 mph on a road like that, in spots you can actually keep up with cars. I didn't, because I was carrying a bag of clothes over my shoulder. I was dehydrated for a day afterwards and my legs still feel heavy. I have a list of precautions to take if I ever ride in the backcountry again. And I made some new friends. So it was a nice day after all.