“The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else's responsibility until I'm ready to eat it.”
-Joel Salatin
Sorry, but I'm going to be quoting Joel a lot, get used to it. He's right though, At least I haven't read anything he's said that's wrong yet.
Part of wanting to be self sufficient here where we live is learning how to handle what we produce. That means, not just how to cultivate, how to thresh, or how to cook and enjoy what we're grown. That for us largely means how to preserve. We have long cold winters, though that may be changing. This to me is really tied into what has been said above by Mr. Salatin. I can go to the grocery store and buy a jar of pickles, or some jam,
That's not how it should be. We need to be more connected to our food. We need to understand where it comes from, how it's been grown, processed, stored, and shipped if that was needed. Supermarkets are amazingly convenient, and they open up doors to exploring food wonderfully. There aren't many places you can buy daikon, holy basil, star anise, mangoes and so on. We need to start moving away from using supermarkets. That's not a suggestion, that is a necessity. If we care any bit about our health, the health of our children, their children and our planet, which are all undoubtedly tied we have to stop using supermarkets. There's a lot of other things we need to stop too, but I won't break your heart right now. It's an easy shift to make, this whole lifestyle is easy to change to. It's only a matter of priorities. What makes this lifestyle different than the majority of our societies is that this puts priority on health, and respect. Where as our society priorities ease of economic gain above all else. It's easy to see how that's not right. We've decided to slow life down, enjoy the small things, and do things for ourselves. That means likely I won't retire a millionaire, I likely won't be able to retire. I know that, from the small taste of how satisfying this is I won't want to. All of this has enabled us to be closer to what we do, closer to what we consume, and closer to what we leave behind. I understand where our food comes from, I am aware of the amount of energy I use and what kind it is, I know how much I leave behind. Anyways before all that I mentioned preserving food. That's an important skill, one before I didn't know anything about and am just starting to learn about now. Last night I gave pickling a go. I'm pickling eggs, by far my favorite item to pickle. I always thought pickling was a long drawn out annoying process. I learned last night that it's not. It was really simple actually. I boiled the eggs, simple. Then came the brine, this was what I knew nothing about. It was like some witches potion to me. I looked it up... in a book.... then with google. Easy water, vinegar, salt, sugar boil, done. To be specific I used white wine vinegar and regular white 50/50 mix, mixed that 50/50 with water, added salt, sugar, chili flakes, garlic, pepper corns, coriander seed, fresh dill, anise seed, and bay leaves, and simmered for ten minutes. We'll find out how they taste in a little while, they're pickling now. 
Here's my recipe.
Hard boiled eggs 20
Brine;
White wine vinegar 250 ml
White vinegar 250 ml
Water 500 ml
Salt 1 tsp
Sugar 1 tbsp
Chili flakes 3 tbsp
Pepper corns 1 tsp
Anise seed 1/2 tsp
Coriander seed 1 tsp
Garlic 6 cloves
Fresh dill Small bunch
Bay leaf 2
As for the rest of my weekend, I spent a lot of my time fooling with my banjo. I have since I got a banjo wanted one fret less. So I thought, hey I didn't pay any money for this thing, what have I got to lose. I began rippin up fret wire. Not as hard as I was expecting. After maybe an hour I had all the frets off, sanded down the rough edges that were a result of pulling up the frets, and put on new strings. Here came my first problem. Now I had lost all my volume, I could get notes out but I could get no volume or clarity out of them. At first I didn't know what happened, why wasn't I making music anymore. I panicked a little, thought I wrecked my baby. Then I though, you know, my skin's pretty soft, and this wooden neck is pretty soft. What kind of base do these strings have to resonate a not off of anyways? And that is what my problem was. Before as many of you may know when you push down on the string it lowers it too the fret board and brings it to rest on the nearest inside fret from your finger. From there when you strum is where it vibrates to create the sound, though this isn't where a note resonates from, without a solid point here you will have no volume. So now that I knew what my problem was I had to do some research as to how to fix this problem, Into the books I went. I discovered that people used to play banjo with nylon strings. I already new that, and the reason is simple.
When the banjo made it's way across the Atlantic on slave ships it came across with gut strings, made from you guessed it, guts. When European minstrels got a hold of it some of them changed those out for classical guitar strings. Most of these early banjos were fret less. I've seen people play fret less banjos with steel strings and read about it before. I still do not really understand that. I decided to try out the nylon thing instead of worrying about it too much. I had trouble getting them wound on in a way where the knots were low profile but would handle the tension, it worked in the end though. Being that they can't handle as much tension as steel though I had to tune much lower than with steel strings, and they also had a much more plunky muted sound. That isn't a bad thing, it had a really cool sound with them. After playing it a bit sans frets I decided that for being a one banjo owner it was not versatile enough anymore. The tone was too low to play with most other instruments and it wouldn't have a voice anymore. It would be great for strictly solo stuff but I like to be able to play with other people, or be heard above traffic. After all the work I decided to install new frets. I know you might think wow that was a big ol' waste of time. I don't really think so, I know now how it feels to play one, I know how it sounds, and most importantly I know my banjo better. I've now got all the new frets on and it's playing like it's old self.
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