What To Do With the Boiling Water After Processing Pickled Beets

Here at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we find ways to re-use almost everything. We can't have anything going to waste.  Once we finished making and processing the pickled beets that we talked about in Friday's Post, we had an entire stock pot of boiling water left over.  I could just pour it down the drain or let it cool and use it to water some plants.

Or I could use the entire pot of boiling water on a huge fire ant mount that is right outside our back door!

That's exactly what I did.  I very carefully carried the pot of boiling water outside and then stomped on the mound with my feet to get them all stirred up.  Once the fire ant mound was "boiling" with activity, I poured the entire pot of boiling water on top of them.

The mound instantly melted down, exposing the ants' tunnels and boiled ant carcasses along with boiled ant eggs.  You can see them if you look closely in the photo below.

I checked out the fire ant mound a little later and it appears that the undertaker ants had carried all their dead brethren to the surface for burial.  There were LOTS of dead ants on the surface of what used to be their mound.  Pardon me if I shed no tears...

We have lots of ant mounds in the yard and in the pasture.  Boiling water is a good way to "nuke" an ant pile in your yard.  Tomorrow I'll show you a technique to use in the garden to make the fire ants leave.