Got any pics?
I'd like to see it.

Sounds great!

I volunteer to taste the final product JUST TO SEE IF IT IS OK FOR YOU TO EAT EH

I would be interested in details of how you do your smoking. We plan to build a smoke house as well. I am saving up apple, hickory wood ect.. for when we can get to it.

Smoked ham and bean or pea soup with lots of onions, pig knuckles and sour krout, choke cherry wine from our Romanian friends, sounds like we have lots in common.

Hobo, If he feeds you some of that choke cherry wine you wouldn't know if you were eating a tree or a ham. Our friends had my hubby eat a few of the soaked cherries along with his glass of wine. He was totally useless after that and they laughed their butts off.

Hobo-I usually start with tasting and washing it down with wine then i just washed.At the end my wife puts me to bed.
OddDuck-Yes You always use hard wood (maple, cherry, apple ats.) for smoking.First You salt the meat for time (depends on thickness of meat) turning it every day .Than You smoke it some time if its big peace for even two weeks.That is cold smoking very little heat.My wife has all the details I just
do it.
The smoke house is just metal fire box (could be metal barrel)on the bottom top wooden box connected with 2 chimney pipes .One pipe is just chimney from fire box the other is to the smoker and has a damper to control amount of smoke and heat to the smoker. Henry

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HAH FOOLED YA ALL I DO'NT DRINK
Cheap date

A friend of mine up Kenora way bought a smoker years ago. Him and his buddies would get together and experiment with different recipes and sausage, different brines and all that stuff, they even progressed to making jerky. You know, just a few friends doing their thing on a Saturday with a beer in the garage.

They ended up getting so "into it" that they started up a really successful business marketing and selling their products. They both left their jobs eventually and even had to hire to keep up with the demand. Good thing for them and for some other folks up Kenora way.

You just never know where things will lead you. Apart from the evident ability to feed yourself it can also be a great opportunity for trade product.

Good for you man, sounds like an adventure.

Be safe:
Rick

a friend and i made a smoker out of a 4x8 sheet of chip boad plywood some 2x2 and a old colman camping two burner stove and a old door lach we just made a box found some old rack out of a fridge put the colman stove in the bottom extended the propain feed line thur a hole made in the side of the box so that the propain tank was out side of the box..we made sure the fire coding on the plywood was on the inside of the box other then that it worked amazing!!! also we grabbed a old cookie sheet and set it on top of the burner of the stove and that where we put the wood chips..

it only took about two hours to make and two to three hours to smoke all the fish we loaded in it and we filled two large squaire margine contaners full of fish!!! that a lot of fish..!!!

Has anyone tested to see how long well stored beef jerkey can last?

a friend and i made a smoker out of a 4x8 sheet of chip boad plywood some 2x2 and a old colman camping two burner stove and a old door lach we just made a box found some old rack out of a fridge put the colman stove in the bottom extended the propain feed line thur a hole made in the side of the box so that the propain tank was out side of the box..we made sure the fire coding on the plywood was on the inside of the box other then that it worked amazing!!! also we grabbed a old cookie sheet and set it on top of the burner of the stove and that where we put the wood chips..

it only took about two hours to make and two to three hours to smoke all the fish we loaded in it and we filled two large squaire margine contaners full of fish!!! that a lot of fish..!!!

The problem I have, is that I can easily build one for my own use, and will, but with a farm and needing to sell as well, the government has different ideas. I dislike having a commercial enterprise do my smoking, sausage ect.. because they make it all the same, the easy way with lots filler and not needed preservatives and no imagination when it comes to flavour. The only criteria is the fastest way possible. It just makes me want to spit sometimes.

I always process my personal food myself.

Has anyone tested to see how long well stored beef jerkey can last?

Does the piece sitting on the kitchen window sill covered in dust count? Its been there almost a year and is hard as a rock. No signs of spoilage.
I think clean and no moisture is about all that is needed with good jerkey. Therefore plastic storage is not the best if no chemical preservatives have been used. I hope to smoke my jerkey a bit in the future after it comes out of the dehydrator.

I did try vacuum packing jerkey but it wasn't dry enough and I didn't have any desicants at the time. That was a bust. I am thinking of vacuum packing in jars, but they are expensive and it would take too many to hold a lot of jerkey. The stuff in the fridge was eaten before it had a chance to be tested and jerkey in the fridge takes on too much moisture. Good for keeping it a bit soft and pliable for snacking without wrecking the dental work.

Has anyone tested to see how long well stored beef jerkey can last?

I keep my homemade jerky in the freezer since I have lots of room there since I try to keep the minimum food that would spoil in a power outage situation. It would keep for a long time this way, but I've never been able to test this as the dehydrated ham doesn't last a month due to sticky fingers/hungry mouths - lol. Oh well, could have the opposite problem where nobody in my family liked it! Need to keep my eyes peeled for good ham on sale.

PrepperGreen,

You just made my smack my forehead. For some reason, I never thought of dehydrating ham. I have 2 32 lb smoked hams in the freezer. I was going to can some, eat some fresh, but ham jerkey sounds pretty good. My only worry is that there may be too much fat for dehydrating as they came from a rather large, large black sow.

What you buy in a store SO called "smoked" and actually smoked in a smoke house are two different thinks .I remember as a kid in Europe 40/50 lbs ham would be smoked in a smoke house for 3 wks and would then hanging in storage for a year no refrigeration no problem. Henry