Yes, the best birds are relentless carnivores, with the humble chickadee
eating the most bugs of any bird, ounce for ounce (or gram, if you must).
---McG
----- Original Message -----
From: "Diana Liu" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
Thanks everyone for sharing the knowledge with me. At first, I was a little
worried. Aren't we clotting poor little birds' arteries? :-) However, thanks
to all of you that explained to me why it is necessary. We probably don't
have to worry about the little birds' arteries anyway. They have plenty of
exercises flying around. I also like the all the recipes, and tips about
making soaps and candles. Really cool.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
- Winston Churchill
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
--- On Fri, 12/26/08, Libby J. Goldstein <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Libby J. Goldstein <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
To: "Mike McGrath" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Friday, December 26, 2008, 6:26 PM
It may have turned into white bread with mayo.
Libby
On Dec 26, 2008, at 9:22 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
Gee. I was kind of hoping we'd follow the 'bagel wit a
schmeer'
trail....
----- Original Message ----- From: "Diann Dirks"
<[email protected]>
To: "DAN-TAMMY BOWDEN" <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 9:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
I have successfully made a lot of suet for my birds for two years.
I get free beef fat from the local butcher with meat scraps
attached. I use the pure tallow for soap making but after the big
chunks cook down a bit, I put it into my high powered blender and
break it down into a think porridge type of consistency. Then I
run it all through a sieve and whatever is still solid in the
sieve, I add peanut butter and bird seed, whatever I have on hand,
mix it up, and lay it into a cake pan and freeze it. When it is
about half frozen, I take it out and cut it into suet feeder sized
blocks, then freeze it the rest of the way. Once frozen, I break
the chunks up and freeze them again and put them in zip lock
baggies. One cake pan yields about 6 or 8 blocks depending on size
of pan. The tallow left over I boil again with salt water a couple
of times and get pure white soap quality tallow which works great
for soap making (or candle making if you add parafin).
Hope this helps.
(as a tip, if it's cold outside, I put the tallow/water in a pan
and leave it out over night. The tallow is a nice block on top and
the impurities have sunk to the bottom of the pan in a jelly like
stuff which is easy to scrape off and throw away as it is full of
toxins.)
The birds love this. I have also thought to grind up soup making
bits from chicken or turkey carcases and add it for protein. There
is enough fat left in the tallow leavings to solidifiy the
mixture. I can't keep it in stock as the birds will go through 2
blocks every 3 days or so.
Hope this helps. Di
----- Original Message ----- From: "DAN-TAMMY BOWDEN"
<[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
Dorene,
I think I would experiment with mixing the bird fats, four-legged
fats, flour, and birdseed. The two types of fat should mix well
when hot, then when mixed into flour & seeds it would make a
cake
that should hold together well. And flour is relatively
inexpensive, although I don't know the price of birdseed.
Dan
CREATION SPEAKS
Inviting man to the heart of God through the biblical mandate to
care for creation
www.creationspeaks.org
----- Original Message ----- From: Alliums
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 10:29 AM
Subject: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
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
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ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://
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ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://
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