Hi, Folks!
No one else is talking, so I'm taking up space! :-) We decided to try Mike's advice on fruit tree bug control and are putting suet feeders in our fruit trees to get them used to patrolling the trees and hopefully, in the Spring, eating those bugs. So far, the chickadees seem to really be enjoying it - I'm seeing more chickadees than I've ever seen at the community garden. However, when I'm paying top prices for grass-fed, free-range local meat at the farmer's market, it seems a waste to go out there and buy suet blocks for the birds. So, how do people render their own suet? Right now, I'm skimming off the fat and then putting it in a pie pan in the oven whenever I'm cooking something to boil off the water (too cheap with energy to boil the fat on it's own on the stovetop! ;-)) This seems to be working with four-legged meat products (lamb, beef, pork), but no so well with poultry (chicken, turkey, etc). I can't get the poultry fat to render down such that it's not a thick liquid at room temperature. Now, if I lived in a more reliably cold region, I'd just shove it into the suet feeder and let the cold weather keep it solid. But here in Southeastern PA, where it's 20 degrees one day and 50 the next, I'm afraid that I'll have chicken fat leaking out of the feeder and dripping onto the branches/ground which will probably attract rats, rather than chickadees. Any advice appreciated! Dorene Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden and Labyrinth A mission of St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA 19460 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20081226/c52c10d7/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
