Those are some good ideas MileHighGirl. In particular, putting the bait under the cage makes a lot of sense, as the animal will need to work to get at it, increasing the chances of tripping the trap. It's also important to secure the trap (a rock on each side), as I've seen the trap moved to get at bait which fell through. Fred, my area is a bit too urban for guns. Besides, I'm a bad enough shot I would probably hurt my trees, house or neighbors more than the target. When I was a kid, around 8 years old, I was growing corn (rather poorly) in my parent's garden. A neighborhood kid (who I was not friendly with) helped himself and I chased him down, almost getting him with a rock. I missed him, but got his father's car windshield...Hmm...Maybe that's not a great story to drive home the point "look what can happen when you don't hit what you aim at." I finally managed to catch the ground hog. Wrapping the cage in the small tarp seems to have made the difference. Though I also used a larger chunk of apple core to make it tougher for small animals to carry away (per Cindy's suggestion), which probably helped. I may not need the cantaloupe I just bought- I got home with it to find the groundhog caught. **Knocks on wood that there aren't any more ground hogs around**

I've made apple pectin for the first time last August. From what I had read, you want unripe apples to get the best pectin. So that is what I used - unripe apples from my old apple tree. When I get my bushels of apples in the fall, and am making tons of apple sauce, I save the peelings and cores and I make apple syrup. I follow the directions for peach honey, except I use apples, and I boil it to syrup consistency instead of honey consistency. Here is a link that might be useful: Directions for Peach Honey

Here's the recipe I use and my daughter too. Made in the crock pot. How to make apple butter - easily! Prepared this way, the jars have a shelf life of 18 months to 2 years, and require no special attention. A side benefit is that your house will smell wonderful while it is cooking - much better than potpourri! You can also skip the last canning steps, and just store it in your refrigerator (2 or 3 months) or freezer (indefinitely). Directions for Making Apple Butter Yields about 9 - 10 pints Ingredients and Equipment 9 quarts of Applesauce, fresh or canned (See step 1) 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon of allspice 4 cups sugar or Splenda, or an equivalent amount of sweetness to taste, from honey, Stevie or frozen concentrated apple or white grape juice. Jar grabber (to pick up the hot jars) Lid lifter (has a magnet to pick the lids out of the boiling water where you sanitize them. ($2 at Target, other big box stores, and often grocery stores; and available online - see this page) Jar funnel ($2 at Target, other big box stores, and often grocery stores; and available online - see this page) 1 Crock pot (slow cooker) 6 quart size (if your crock pot is smaller, just reduce the ingredients proportionately) Large spoons and ladles 1 Canner Ball jars quart jars including the lids and rings) Apple Butter Recipe and Directions Step 1 - Make unsweetened applesauce! That's right, apple butter starts with applesauce! You can use store bought applesauce, but the apple butter won't taste nearly as good. It's better with your own applesauce (either previously canned or fresh made). So if you haven't made some applesauce yet start here with how to make applesauce. Otherwise continue to step 2. Step 2 - Fill the crock pot Fill the crock pot to within an inch of full with applesauce, mine takes about 5.5 quarts. You will add the remaining applesauce later, in step 5. Now, you CAN do this using a regular large pot on very low heat on the stove, but the crock pot works much better, because its heat is very low. I've never had a batch burn in the crock pot. Step 3 -Add the spices Add: 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon of allspice 2 cups sugar (the other 2 cups are used in step 4) In place of sugar, you can use an equivalent amount of Splenda (sucrose) OR 1 twelve ounce can of frozen concentrated fruit juice (preferably a neutral juice, like white grape or apple). You could use honey or Stevena, also. The sweetener is present ONLY for your taste, not as a preservative, so you can use anything that is heat-stable, in quantities that suit your own tastes. You can skip the sweeteners entirely, too; but it loses a lot of the richness of flavor, in my opinion. 95% of folks seem to like using a total of 4 cups of sugar. Some folks prefer 3 cups of honey instead, and diabetics obviously like Splenda or Stevena. Step 4 - Cook down the Apple butter Set the crock pot on low or medium heat. Cover it loosely or use a large pot splatter-guard. It will spatter as it boils slowly, so I also cover nearby surfaces with towels. You don't want to seal it tightly because you want the steam to escape so it can reduce in volume and thicken. A visitor suggests, take a couple of butter knives, and lay them across the top of the crock pot. They are parallel and located about 2/3 of the way out from the center. Then put the lid on these supports, leaving it "covering" the pot and keeping the splatters under control, but, leaving a good gap for steam to escape. I just made a batch and tried this approach, but I used a pair of wooden chopsticks or bamboo kebab skewers - they worked great! Leave it to cook for 6 - 18 hours. How long depends on the size and power of your crock pot, and how thick you like it, If you want to stir it occasionally, that's fine but not necessary. I start mine around 8 pm on high for 1 hour, then on medium until I am ready for bed around midnight, then leave it on low overnight. But do be careful: if your crock pot does not heat evenly, and has hot spots; you can get localized burning. So once in a while, use a rubber or silicon spatula to scrape the sides and look for any burned apple butter. If it does burn: pour the apple butter out of the crock pot into a bowl. The burned apple butter will cling to the crock pot. Clean the crock pot, discard the burned bits and pour the unburned apple butter back in! Step 5 - Add the remaining applesauce It will reduce in volume by about half overnight. As it cooks down (the next morning), add the remaining applesauce (about 2 or 3 quarts) and 2 more cups of sugar. Then let it cook a couple of hours more to mix the flavors. Step 6 - Wash the jars and lids Now's a good time to get the jars ready, so you won't be rushed later. The dishwasher is fine for the jars; especially if it has a "sanitize" cycle, the water bath processing will sanitize them as well as the contents! If you don't have a dishwasher with a sanitize cycle, you can wash the containers in hot, soapy water and rinse, then sanitize the jars by boiling them 10 minutes, and keep the jars in hot water until they are used. Leave the jars in the dishwasher on "heated dry" until you are ready to use them. Keeping them hot will prevent the jars from breaking when you fill them with the hot apple butter. Put the lids into a pan of hot, but not quite boiling water (that's what the manufacturer's recommend) for 5 minutes, and use the magnetic "lid lifter wand" to pull them out. Step 7 - Blend the apple butter (optional) You want a smooth, creamy texture, right? The easiest way is to use a hand-held drink blender. It does a great job of making it smooth. You can also put it into a regular blender, but if you are going to do that, you might want to blend the apple sauce before you put it in the crock pot (it will be much thicker afterwards and won't move in a regular blender). Another visitor says running it through a food mill with a fine screen or through a sieve works, too. Tips: Too thick? if the apple butter cooks down too much or is too thick for your liking, just add a little bit of apple juice and blend it in. Not thick enough? Just let it cook some more, with the lid off so the steam can escape! Step 8 - Fill and seal the jars home canning jars, lids and rings If the crock pot isn't keeping the apple butter boiling hot, you will need to briefly return the butter to the stove to get it hotter. It varies from crock pot to crock pot. I find that if I set my crock pot on high for the 15 minutes before I fill the jars and stir frequently, it gets it boiling. Fill the jars to within 1-inch of the top, wipe any spilled apple butter of the top, seat the lid and tighten the ring around them. Step 9 Process the jars Process means put them in the canner and keep them covered with at least 1 inch of water and boiling. if you are at sea level (up to 1,000 ft) boil pint jars for 5 minutes and quart jars for 10 min. If you are at an altitude of 1,000 feet or more, see the chart below. Even though these times are right from the USDA, I usually tend to err on the side of safety and let mine go for 15 minutes; there's no harm in going longer. Recommended process time for Apple Butter in a boiling-water canner. Jar Size Process Time at Altitudes of 0- 1,000 ft 1,001 - 6,000 ft Above 6,000 ft Half-pints or Pints 5 min 10 15 Quarts 10 15 20 Step 10 - Done Lift the jars out of the water and let them cool without touching or bumping them in a draft-free place (usually takes overnight) You can then remove the rings if you like, but if you leave them on, at least loosen them quite a bit, so they don't rust in place due to trapped moisture. Once the jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed verifying that the lid has been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently, with your finger. If it pops up and down (often making a popping sound), it is not sealed. If you put the jar in the refrigerator right away, you can still use it. Some people replace the lid and reprocess the jar, then that's a bit iffy. If you heat the contents back up, re-jar them (with a new lid) and the full time in the canner, it's usually ok. Linda

What exactly is "approved" sources? I don't imagine the government approves any sources other than themselves, so who is doing the approving? Is there some kind of list somewhere you are referring to? Or do you mean only use recipes listed on the NCHFP website? The Ball Corporation (Jarden in Canada) publications on home canning have been held as THE approved source for over 100 years. The are often referred to as the canning bible and are well known for their ongoing research and updated publications on safety issues. This was long before the USDA or FDA came into existence. Also for decades Rodale Publishing was also regarded as totally safe in their canning publications. Unfortunately they quit maintaining the currency of their canning publications when NCHFP was created but with a few exceptions most of their publications are still valid. In addition there are the USDA and FDA publications, all the publications from NCHFP, all the publications from the many land-grant university extension services, and many publication from well-known food scientists such as Linda Ziedrich, Ellie Topp, Margaret Howard, etc. People who have the educational credentials and research background to know what they are talking about as opposed to the many bloggers and authors that merely subscribe to the "it hasn't killed anyone yet" school of science. There are a number of discussions here about what constitutes approved sources, which books are approved and which should be avoided, and reviews of various canning blogs pro and con. There used to be a number of MFP's (Master Food Preservers) that participated here on a regular basis and we made a concerted effort to review new publications and websites as they came up. Unfortunately Deanna and I are the only ones we have heard from since the move to Houzz but all that past info from the others is still available here and classes are available to anyone who wishes to takes them through their local county extension service. If you don't want to invest the time in getting the MFP credentials then take some basic classes or even the basic online course offered by NCHFP is a place to start. Honestly I find a lot of this kind of arbitrary. I'm sure it does seem that way when one is new to the process or has none of the underlying science training. But they aren't arbitrary. There are valid reasons, based in research and testing for all these guidelines. So everyone is left choices: (1) to either get the training so that they do understand it all and know where changes can and cannot be made (2) or accept them at face value and do them in order to have the assurances of safety they provide (3) or to challenge, question, ignore, and criticize them and just do their own thing when it comes to canning as long as they willingly accept the associated risks that come with that approach. The internet has plenty of blogs and forums that have adopted #3 approach and preach against the accepted guidelines. In some cases it is because they don't know any better, in some cases it is because they don't care, and in some cases it is because they claim to hate the government and reject all that it stands for or represents. This particular forum has long had the reputation of being safety oriented, or rejecting the make-it-up-as-you-go-along canning methods, and a place where those new to home canning can get safe advice. Are the guidelines perfect? Of course not. But they are the best and safest options we have available. Dave