Jamie Jackson

God Bless you and your family, especially during this very difficult time. You are in my Prayers.

Welcome back K. Hope all's well with you.

As I am with my wife in the hospital, I can't give a lengthy response. But we have an All American pressure canner (not a pressure cooker) and I have canned a wide variety of meats. Beef, venison, poultry, fish and even bacon. Get a Ball Blue book on canning and read before deciding. Easy to do, just strictly adhere to the guidelines.

Prayers sent for you both my brother! God's Grace will shine down on you. Of that I have no doubt! Daily prayers will be intensified! Reach out to me if I can be of any service my friend.

Welcome aboard! And welcome to TN!

Powder Valley has H110 and 2400 as I type this. Availability seems to be occurring more frequently.

That's outstanding Greg! Congrats on a great garden. I agree @ReeferMac, but that's the good part about being able to can or freeze whatever we have an abundance of in a given year. We were hit with squash borer and powdery mildew this year, but still managed to put up about 20 quarts of green beans, 30 quarts pickles and a ton of zucchini. Eating fresh tomatoes every day...awesome! We're trying a late crop of crook neck squash and our butternut squash is coming up well. Okra is just beginning to set pods and a 3rd planting of green beans is coming up well. The best part is eating something from the garden every day. We still have tomatoes and sauce in the freezer from last year. We're trying to grow rutabaga for the first time and have turnips coming up. Time will tell.

We were kicking around the idea of using some zucchini a few dishes with marinara sauce. My wife bakes zucchini with Parmesan cheese and Mozzarella cheese and it delicious! My favorite zucchini bread has lots of chocolate chips btw

Having some concerns about my cukes The plants look good and have lots of blooms...but I have never had cukes produce so slowly. I water them regularly, the bed has been well fertilized (on the "organic" side of nutrients ala Steve Solomon). I canned another 7 quarts of Kosher Dill pickles from them yesterday, but I am used to a more robust production. As I needed an 8th quart (my brine mixture yields 8-9 quarts worth of brine) I decided to try making a quart of Kosher dill zucchini. We have used our recipe on quite a number of green vegetables like okra, green tomatoes, green beans etc with great success. The zucchini plants are still huge and still producing 2-3 zucchini a day and there's only so much zucchini bread a man can eat! Have any of you guys ever pickled zucchini before? The first run of green beans have finished. I was able to put around 20 quarts in the freezer... and we've been eating them with new potatoes (volunteer) as well. I've replanted one of the beds with another crop of green beans and they are coming up well. Butter nut squash are coming up well too. Oh...the tomatoes are low production and slow to ripen compared to previous years. And while I'm complaining, canning on a glass top stove sucks. LOL Some years are simply better, and easier, than others.

Thank you. As this is my first time trying to grow potatoes in a raised bed, it took all of my self control to not go dig some up, just to check, after reading your post! LOL I'm just hoping for a few potatoes to cook with my green beans. Time will tell. I'm sure yours will yield well for you and you'll get that positive ROI! I picked 2 gallon bags of green beans yesterday and will blanch those today to get them in the freezer. I pulled up the remainder of the Swiss chard as the zucchini plants are taking over that 4x8 bed. I'll probably plant some butternut squash as in that bed when the zucchini is finished. Ah, the challenges of limited gardening space. We also got our first 2 vine ripened tomatoes yesterday... slowly getting there. I did can our first kosher dill pickles yesterday. 6 quarts of goodness!

Looking Great Kev! We've been really blessed with our garden so far. We've been picking green beans for about 2 weeks and I blanch and freeze 2-3 pints of them every other day. We had so much lettuce we had to start giving Walmart bags of it to the neighbors, as there's only so much lettuce a man can eat LOL. We've eaten 4 cuttings of Swiss Chard and I gave away a Walmart bag of it yesterday and a Walmart bag full last week. I had to pull the last of the lettuce (and the chard later today) as the Zucchini plant are getting huge. We've been cutting Zucchini for about 2 weeks as well, already made 2 loves of Zucchini bread and had oven baked parmesean zucchini a couple of times. Gave several nice sized zucchini to the same friend I gave the chard to yesterday. We're almost overrun with pearl onions... I had no idea how large they get. Been eating them, cooking with them, and giving them away as well. Our 6 tomato plants all have green tomatoes on them and only one ripened so far. The cukes went crazy after that last rain and I plan to can some Kosher dill pickles later today. Yellow crook neck squash plants and okra are coming up well. Oh, the potatoes are blooming so hopefully we'll be digging a few soon. Yukon Gold = tasty. I need to get some more current pics, the attached are from the 2nd and 10th iirc ... been busy painting the house and finishing the decks. Pseudo-retirement is a darn busy time

Prayers sent for you and Molly Larry. God Bless you guys.

Love my 686! Purchased new around 1986. I recently chronoed some loads for it. 158 gr Hi Tek coated SWC bullets from Hoosier Bullets & Training AA#5 8.0 grs average velocity 960 fps AA#2 5.9 grs average velocity 1020 fps I don't have the chrono data handy, but I've used 6.0 grs Unique for 158 gr LSWC as my original .357 handload when I first purchased that revolver. I too like H110 and 2400 for Mag loads... but I'm running a bit low on those particular powders and 158 gr bullets at around 1000 fps won't beat you or your revolver up. Congrats on a great revolver!

It's gonna happen LOL My wife just recently picked a dual chambered rock tumbler at Harbor Freight for her "projects". As soon as I pick up some pins and she's not looking... But just in case, do you have a spare couch at your place @chances R?

I've been using the Zilla Lizard bedding media (ground walnut) along with 4-6 used dryer sheets same @gregintenn and @DeepSouthsuggested for a couple of months now. I'm impressed. I toss out the old dryers sheets and add freshly used ones each run. I usually run about 400-500 pieces of brass per cycle ,so once every other week, Run time is generally 3-4 hours. The used dryer sheets keep the Lizard bedding much cleaner and the brass is downright clean, shiny, and much brighter than the products I previously used (Frankford Arsenal or RCBS walnut). There's also definitely less dust in my reloading area. Just wanted to say thanks!

Looking Great @ReeferMac! Grow that Okra brother. Kosher dill pickled Okra is a delicacy where I come from...the Deep South! Horse manure is an excellent soil additive. Well done Sir. I envy you of the space you have. We're muddling through with our suburban raised beds. My 2 little 12 year old fig trees are setting fruit. Now if I can only beat the birds to them as they ripen. It's about a 50/50 kinda thing. Guess we have no choice but to share LOL. We started eating salad greens and onions last week. Sure will be glad when we have some fresh tomatoes though.

Frustrating, isn't it? I think some of the older "how to" threads may have fallen off during some of the transfers and upgrades. Then again, I may not know how the "search function" works... I've searched for various handloading and powder coating topics that I'm sure I've read on here since I joined in '09, but alas no luck. Hopefully someone with better cyberskills than I have can help you. But I agree with your earlier post in that a person can handload shot shells, and mine have always had a much tighter pattern than store-bought. I've done it in .44 spl (for an old Charter Arms Bulldog pug) and those peppy little devils shot nicely.

Squirrel gravy and biscuits ain't half bad actually.

The da#n fluffy tailed rats are digging in my raised beds and have even dug up some of my green beans. That's pretty darn cool @Randall53 . I might just have to dig my pump BB/Pellet gun out and get a little long-gun practice in. BTW I reached Old Fart status some time ago LOL

Amen brother, Amen

Congrats to you all! Awesome! I know you guys are proud of him.

Good points all. I agree, especially with @Grayfox54. Ubiquitous guns, but produced in low volumes for the past few decades as there was the financial incentive to produce a greater volume. Those of us that actually shoot .38 spl and .357 to any degree tend to cast and reload those rounds. I shoot my .38's weekly, but I shoot 9mm 10:1 or greater. I handload all of my target ammo. While I am fine on components for the foreseeable future, I dread what the replacement costs will be down the road for powder and primers. We, as a shooting community, are under fire from the left more vehemently than I can recall for the past 40 years. With our current political situation the possibility of more difficult and expensive access in the future is very real. Things change, I know. But I still dread what it'll cost to replace what I'm shooting and the stores I now have. It'll be some time before that's a concern for me, but the eventuality is there. Couple that with a fixed income and, well it sucks... I did pick up everything I need to start casting over the past couple of Black Friday sales. As soon as I finish the long list of remodeling tasks my Missus has for me I'll start the casting. For now I'll remain focused in my practice sessions and maybe include more .22 LR as was already mentioned. I'm certainly working more dry fire than I was...so that's one positive to come out of this mess.

I feel for ya @gregintenn! "Youth is wasted on the young"... <sigh> As I've posted before, we use raised beds here in suburbia. We added a bit more this year and we now have the equivalent of six 4x8 ft and one 4x4 ft beds plus a 2x8 ft bed. We've already planted Sugar Snaps in one bed and they're growing well. We have Swiss Shard, salad greens, and Zucchini coming up in another. Our onion sets are doing well, as are our Yukon Gold potatoes. My okra seeds have broken ground in the 2x8 bed... probably too early, but I have plenty of seeds. We had planted some bush type green beans in two of the 4x8 beds, obviously too early as we had 2 days of frost to freezing temps Thursday before last...needless to say I had to replant the green beans. We plan on putting out a few tomato plants and some cukes this week. We are limiting ourselves to only 3 tomato plants this year as we still have 10+ quarts of tomatoes vac sealed in the freezer and I've already used about 30 quarts making marinara sauce this past year. I just want some fresh eating tomatoes. We really hope to have a good crop of cukes this year as we have a kick-ass recipe for Kosher Dill pickles and already a jar of grape leaves on standby (for crispness). Some pickled okra would be great too! I'm hoping we're past the cold snaps. I reckon we'll see.

First of all welcome @Gomer2000. Good question for these challenging times. I, personally, haven't purchased any ammo for a few years and my reloading components were purchased several years back. Ammo at current market value and sometimes a bit below is sold periodically in our classified sections. Best of luck to you as things have certainly changed in the past 10 years. fwiw I only shoot my handloads (reloads).

Sad isn't it? It looks like everything related to handloading and shooting is either not available, has a long waiting list, or ridiculously priced...or any combination thereof... I'm still using 35 year old dies for .38/.357 and I fortunately started handloading .32 S&W a couple of years ago. Thankfully these things last if you take a bit of care with them.