Month: April 2023

Shotguns are popular firearms used for hunting a wide variety of game, including birds, rabbits, squirrels, and larger animals like deer and bear. One of the key factors to consider when choosing a shotgun for hunting is the gauge, which refers to the diameter of the gun’s barrel. The most common shotgun gauges are 12-gauge, 20-gauge, and 410-gauge, but there are several others as well, including 16-gauge and 28-gauge.

I have a strong affinity for smaller-gauge shotguns, having used both 20 and 28-gauges for hunting quail, partridge, grouse, and doves throughout the years. These guns provide a fun and effective alternative to their larger counterparts.

While I also have a soft spot for the .410, I believe it is best used for clay shooting rather than hunting. I have used a 16-gauge for upland bird hunting and find it to be satisfactory, but it does have some drawbacks, which I’ll discuss later.

On the other end of the spectrum is the 10-gauge, which I consider to be a specialized weapon with limited hunting potential, similar to the .410. Finally, the 12-gauge is the most popular of all the gauges and offers the most versatility in terms of hunting capabilities, although it may not always be the ideal choice.

It’s essential for hunters to recognize that there is no perfect shotgun gauge for every situation. Each option has its own set of pros and cons that should be carefully considered before making a decision. Let’s delve deeper into each of these gauges to examine their strengths and weaknesses.

The little .410

Many shooters may not realize that the little .410 is not technically a “gauge” at all, but rather a “410 bore” – a name that accurately reflects its bore diameter of 0.410 inches. In contrast, all other shotgun gauges are measured differently.

The number associated with each gauge is determined by the number of round lead balls of that gauge’s bore diameter required to make one pound. For example, it takes 12 lead balls measuring 0.725 inches in diameter to weigh one pound, which corresponds to the 12-gauge.

Initially, .410 shotshells were only 2 inches in length, but today, 2.5- and 3-inch shells are standard. These shells contain shot charges ranging from about 1/2-ounce in the 2.5-inch shells to about 11/16-ounce in the 3-inch version.

While I enjoy shooting the .410 for clay targets, I do not consider it a viable option for bird hunting. It is not a good choice to start a young hunter on, as it may limit their ability to succeed and possibly cause them to lose interest in the activity. Instead, a much better option would be to start with a 20-gauge, using light loads that can be gradually increased as the young hunter grows in size and stamina.

The 28-Gauge (My Favorite)

When pursuing doves, grouse, quail, and partridge, I highly recommend utilizing a 28-bore shotgun due to…

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Spring always brings a degree of optimism. Don’t laugh. Really, it does. On the farm, the reason is simple. Despite all the crazy things that are happening elsewhere, spring on the farm carries thoughts of planting, rebirth and new growth. Springtime to chicken lovers across the country means that chicks are available once again. 

For the past few winter months, chilly hens have been on hiatus. Most laying breeds will continue to lay through the winter. Egg numbers are usually down, and very few, if any, hens ever go broody. Many will molt in the fall so even the hatcheries don’t bother trying to supply chicks through the winter months. The point is that those of us who have chickens are finally finding healthy chicks available once again.

In fact, springtime means keepers even have breed choices. Maybe you raise your own chicks to replenish your flock, but the suburban chicken-keepers I know can’t have roosters and simply want to keep their flock numbers small in modest-sized houses and runs. 

Almost everyone that keeps chickens must replace or add chicks to their flock from time to time, or annually. I consider myself a typical small-time keeper with 15 to 20 hens and no rooster. You may be larger or smaller or maybe just considering a few hens for the first time. Regardless, the excitement of getting new chicks is certainly fun and a time for optimism. 

However, here’s the deal with new chicks. They come with a degree of responsibility. It can even be a great learning experience for youngsters if you also keep an eye on things. Day-old chicks, whether from a feed-supply store or chicks you order on your own, are just that. They are 1 day old, and they need attention. Specifically, they need constant feed, water, warmth and cover.

So, let’s assume you have all those basics taken care of. Don’t worry! Everything is cool. Well, indeed you may be right, but it’s extremely important to check on those baby chicks often during those first few hours and days, beginning as soon as you pick them up or when they’re delivered. 

Your procedure may be different, but I purchase from a supplier that lets me look over the chicks from under his heat lamp at the feed-supply store. In that situation, I can look for all kinds of health and/or genetic anomalies. Each chick should be fluffy, dry and active. No crooked legs or toes and no bent or malformed beaks, etc. I also look for pasty butt. If you have never heard of pasty butt or have never seen it, you’re probably new to raising day-old chicks. 

What It Is

Pasty butt isn’t a disease but, rather, a condition that can be fatal to the newly hatched chick if it remains unchecked. Pasty butt is also not a deformity or something that can spread from chick to chick. In the beginning stages, pasty butt is relatively easy…

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Happy International Carrot Day! That’s right—April 4 is International Carrot Day, a day dedicated to celebrating carrots, the carotene-rich root vegetable that is a quintessential part of any garden.

If you want to try your hand at growing carrots, you probably have a basic idea of how to begin. You know you’ll need a place to plant them—in your backyard, perhaps. And you know you’ll need to water them. And weeding … well, it’s not fun, but you’re willing to pull out rogue plants so your carrots can shine.

But achieving the best results growing carrots may require a little more thought and planning. To give you the best chance at harvesting a delightful carrot crop, here are three less obvious items and tools you should consider.

Read more: Grow and enjoy flavorful carrots for a dinnertime ROI!

1. Raised Garden Beds

Granted, raised garden beds aren’t a necessity for growing carrots. But they can make a big difference if your natural soil is problematic.

I tried for years to grow carrots in the clay soil on my farm, but they never grew particularly large or attractive. Everything changed when I switched to growing carrots in raised beds filled with rich, fluffy compost generated from horse manure. Carrots like loose and even sandy soil, so the compost fit the bill.

Now I harvest large, picturesque carrots from my garden.

2. Protective Fencing

For best success growing carrots, you may need to install fencing to stop animals from having a feast. The classic image of Bugs Bunny munching away on a carrot is a little deceiving since wild rabbits aren’t in the habit of uprooting carrots to eat the roots. But aboveground leafy greens are fair game for rabbits, deer and other types of wildlife.

If you’ve planted carrots in a raised garden bed, a relatively short fence of chicken wire or hardware cloth wrapped around the bed’s frame might be sufficient to keep out rabbits while still allowing easy access for weeding, watering and harvesting. But to keep out deer, you may have to enclose your garden inside an 8-foot perimeter deer fence.

Building one isn’t as hard as it sounds. In fact, we have some tips for doing so below.

Read more: Check out these 4 steps to building a simple, effective fence.

3. Flame Weeder

Carrot seeds are slow to germinate. It can take a couple of weeks or more. That leaves a lot of time between planting and germination for weeds to sprout and compete for water and nutrients.

One organic approach to dealing with weeds is to use a flame weeder, which kills weeds by briefly subjecting them to intense heat. The strategy is to kill the weeds shortly before the carrots are slated to sprout, so that the carrots emerge into a weed-free bed.

A flame weeder isn’t perfect. Grasses and perennial plants with…

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With winter ebbing and spring headed our way, some folks are probably thinking a little more frequently about getting out of the city once and for all.

Having “been there done that,” it saddens me to read comments on SurvivalBlog from people wanting to start living a simpler more self-reliant lifestyle in the country but they just can’t seem to make it happen. For some of those, I’m confident they could turn their hopes into reality if they could learn to think out of the box, rethink normalcy, toss some of their fears aside, and make some sacrifices to make it all happen. Once settled in and growing accustomed to their new lifestyle, the “sacrifices” they made will seem trivial in comparison to the lifestyle they’re now enjoying.

I hope by sharing my own story of how I was able to finally start living the dream the reader might be inspired to take a fresh look at their life and see what kinds of trade-offs they can make to achieve their goal of getting out of the city. While it’s never too early to start preparing for TEOTWAWKI, even if it never happens the joys that come from living a lifestyle in a rural area cannot compare to the way of life many are living at the present time in cities and suburbia.

My First Desires for Self-Reliance

It’s not too often that kids read life-changing books in elementary school. For me, the book My Side of the Mountain had that effect. The story of a boy running away from home in New York City to live a self-reliant lifestyle in the Catskill Mountains set me on a course which would eventually lead me to where I am today, living on my homestead and striving to live that self-reliant lifestyle I’ve dreamed about since elementary school.

After reading My Side of the Mountain, my desire to learn the skills required to live a self-reliant life began. The self-reliance/survival genre became my favorite books to read and that’s never changed. I read the Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson books my grandfather gave me in grade school, bought How to Stay Alive in the Woods in 7th grade, Alas Babylon in 8th grade, enjoyed The Last of the Mountain Men, and read every survival adventure story I could get my hands on, even the grisly ones like Alive and its unauthorized predecessor, They Lived On Human Flesh. My family subscribed to The Mother Earth News back when it was still a fairly new magazine dedicated to self-reliance, edited by a couple of hippies living off-grid somewhere.

From reading these kinds of books, even though some were romanticized fiction, I realized early on that living a self-reliant lifestyle would probably mean giving up some conveniences in order to make my dream a reality. But they also taught me that it’s possible to live with few possessions yet still live a good life.

I eventually ended up working in one of the larger…

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My love for chickens began in 2020 when my parents decided to get backyard chickens for eggs. We started with five Rhode Island Red hens and a Barred Rock rooster, named Doodle Doo. I didn’t know much about chickens when we got them, but I fell in love with them immediately. 

I learned as much as I could about chickens by listening to podcasts and researching online. I even took a poultry class! My dad converted my playhouse into a beautiful coop and made a run under it. The chickens are my responsibility, and I have become a crazy chicken lady already—even though I’m just 10 years old.

When my flock started free-ranging, our basset hound, Flash, made himself their babysitter. He is the gentlest dog and follows them around watching their every move. The cats don’t think as lovingly about them. The chickens will steal food from the cats and pull their fur by pecking them if they hang around the cat food bowl or try to fight for the food.

First Unique Chicken

After I fell in love with our chickens, I started to research chickens and follow Instagram accounts about chickens. I decided I wanted a Silkie and went to a local poultry breeder. However, while trying to pick out my chicken, I realized that keeping a Silkie looking clean and beautiful might be a challenge.

All the adorable little Cochin bantams had caught my eye, as well.  

The breeder told me if I wanted a “lap chicken,” the Cochin bantams would be a perfect fit. I went home with a lovely, molted Cochin that I named Speckles. What made Speckles even extra special is she was the only one of 50 other bantam Cochins to survive at their farm. 

She quickly formed a strong bond with our family. The other chickens, however, bullied her so badly that her neck was bare. 

I decided the little Cochin needed to come inside the house to get away from the bullies at night when I couldn’t separate her. My mom wasn’t happy about a chicken in the house, so I trained her to sleep on the toilet! This helped my mom not be upset about her in the house, and there was no mess to pick up.

Speckles slept on the toilet a few weeks until the bullying was under control. 

Speckles was the only chicken I have had that went broody. I loved watching the process of seeing the chicks grow through the eggs. Before I knew it, it was day 21, and chicks were hatching! Unfortunately, soon after hatching, the chicks died. This was very sad and hard for me.

However, Speckles quickly went broody again, and now has a healthy baby named Blossom. Speckles is a very good and protective mother, and I am so happy to get to see Blossom grow up.

Read more: Childhood chickens offer valuable learning experiences.

One Cute…

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Note: If you missed the first piece in this series, focused on introducing the AI Risk Management Framework and breaking down the “Govern” Section, check it out here.

Formally released on January 26, 2023, the A.I. Risk Management Framework is a four-part, voluntary framework intended to guide the responsible development and use of A.I. systems. The core of the framework are recommendations divided into four overarching functions: (1) Govern, which covers overarching policy decisions and organizational culture around A.I. development; (2) Map, which covers efforts to contextualize A.I. risks and potential benefits; (3) Measure, which covers efforts to assess and quantify A.I. risks; and (4) Manage, which covers the active steps an organization should take to mitigate risks and prioritize elements of trustworthy A.I. systems. In addition to the core Framework, NIST also hosts supplemental resources like a community Playbook to help organizations navigate the Framework. Over the next few weeks, EPIC will continue to distill the A.I. Risk Management Framework’s recommendations into more actionable instructions. Particularly, the different function sections have specific “Suggested Actions,” which comprise the list below.

The Manage section urges companies to devote resources to establish a meaningful transparency and accountability structure, document key activities, and critically, stop using AI tools when evaluation shows they are not trustworthy for one reason or another. Another key set of recommendations focus on urging companies to take responsibility for third-party systems they integrate, not just tools they develop themselves. The main recommendations EPIC divided the “suggested actions” from NIST into are:

• Devote Resources to Establishing Robust TEVV (Test, Evaluation, Verification, Validation) Infrastructure Including Staffing 
• Maintain Documentation for TEVV Infrastructure, A.I. Risks, and Evaluation Procedures
• Regularly Evaluate the A.I. Systems You Use, Including Third-Party A.I. Systems
• Align Efforts with Industry Standards and Legal Requirements
• Monitor Policies and Evaluation Protocols Surrounding A.I. Systems for Effectiveness on an Ongoing Basis
• Communicating to Stakeholders Throughout your Entity and Outside of it
• Decommission Systems that Exceed Risk Tolerance

Devote Resources to Establishing Robust TEVV (Test, Evaluation, Verification, Validation) Infrastructure, Including Staffing 

• [1.2] Assign risk management resources relative to established risk tolerance. AI systems with lower risk tolerances receive greater oversight, mitigation, and management resources.
• [1.3] Identify risk response plans and resources and organizational teams for carrying out response functions.
• [2.1] Verify risk management teams are resourced to carry out functions, including (1) establishing processes for considering methods that are not automated, semi-automated, or other procedural alternatives for AI functions; (2) enhancing A.I. system transparency mechanisms for A.I. teams; (3) enabling exploration of A.I. system limitations by A.I. teams; and (4) identifying, assessing, and cataloging past failed designs and negative impacts or outcomes to avoid known failure modes.
• [2.1] Identify resource allocation approaches for managing risks in systems (1) deemed high risk, (2) that self-update (adaptive, online, reinforcement self-supervised learning or similar), (3) trained without access to ground truth (unsupervised, semi-supervised, learning or similar), (4) with high uncertainty or where risk management is insufficient.
• [2.4] Apply protocols, resources, and metrics for decisions to supersede, bypass or deactivate AI systems or AI system components. 
• [3.1] Monitor third-party AI systems…

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The following Pasta Va Zul recipe is from reader Nurse Michele. She writes:

“This is a simple pasta dish that has been around for centuries. I learned it from my Naples-born grandmother. She never wrote it down, or measured any ingredients. And, for years, neither did I. But at the request of friends some years ago, I paid attention as I made a pot of it and wrote the amounts and specific steps as I went, so that I could pass it along. And, Ecola! (Italian equivalent to Voila!)… a tasty, filling, nutritious and affordable recipe.”

Ingredients

• 2 (15 oz) cans Cannellini beans (white kidney beans)
• 1 lb Ditalini Pasta (preferred, in a pinch, elbow macaroni will do)
• 5 (15 oz) Cans tomato sauce
• 1/3 C olive oil
• ¼ C very thinly sliced onion (vidalia is particularly good, if on hand)
• 1 tsp dried basil
• ½ tsp black pepper
• ½ to 1/3 tsp salt (plus more for the water to boil)
• 1 tsp sugar

Directions

Cook 1 lb pasta in well-salted water. Under-cook the pasta, as it will continue to cook in the sauce later. Rinse pasta in cold water (to stop cooking), drain and set aside.

Put oil in bottom of a large (6 qt) sauce pot. Heat on medium and add onion. Saute onion slices until soft and translucent but do not let them brown. Add salt, pepper and basil and saute a minute or so more. Add tomato sauce all at once (it will splatter!). Stir. Bring to a very slow simmer. Add sugar. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in drained, rinsed beans. Continue to simmer over low heat for an additional 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in pasta. Remove from heat and cover. Let stand at least 30 minutes to let flavors blend, but it’s fine to make ahead and let it sit for a few hours. The sauce will thicken as it waits. Its final consistency will resemble stew. It is served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon.

SERVING

“Delicious topped with grated cheese. Makes a lovely complete meal served alongside crusty bread and a green salad.

This recipe yields about 12 cups. Which works out to about 6 hearty 2 cup portions or 8 moderate 1 ½ cup servings, depending on appetite and what it accompanies.”

—

Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this weekly recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven and slow cooker recipes, and any that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

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[]EPIC, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the Consumer Federation of America submitted comments to the California Privacy Protection Agency to recommend strong regulations implementing key provisions of the California Consumer Privacy Act. The comments include proposals on cybersecurity audits, risk assessments, and automated decision-making systems and urge the agency to protect Californians by drawing on strong existing frameworks and ensuring that consumers’ rights to opt out and receive information are easy to exercise.

[]“As the agency formulates regulations concerning cybersecurity audits, risk assessments, and automated decision-making, we renew our call to ‘protect consumers’ rights’ and ‘strengthen[] consumer privacy’ at every opportunity, consistent with the expressed will of California voters,” the organizations wrote.

[]EPIC provided extensive input on CCPA regulations in November 2021, May 2022, August 2022, and November 2022, arguing for consumer-friendly interpretations of the CCPA to guard against exploitative commercial data practices. EPIC also published a detailed analysis of the California Privacy Rights Act—a ballot measure that made substantial improvements to the CCPA—before voters approved it in 2020.

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