It's Hunting Season

Technically, it is squirrel, grouse, dove, crow, and turkey season. You can hunt deer with a bow now, but have to wait until mid-November if you want to use anything but a bow or muzzleloader.

Groundhogs are fair game year round. The building inspector said they are good to eat.

Hank tells me the best way to cook deer meat is in the crock pot.

The pond that sits in the 14 acres is a perfect draw for deer. I frequently spot them through the trees in the mornings. I have scanned the treeline that separates the pastures, and there are several trunks begging for a tree stand.

It seems like it would be as easy as taking candy from a baby, and I keep daydreaming about it. I would set my alarm for a pre-dawn hour, brew some coffee and don my newly acquired insulated bibs. (On clearance for $20 at the Co-op. Couldn't pass them up.) Just before the sun would rise, I would climb up into the stand and sit patiently, sipping coffee as my breath stirs the steam warming my nose. Then, just after the sun peeks over the edge of the earth, two or three deer would walk hesitantly out of the woods toward the pond for a drink. I am realistic enough not to imagine anything more than a 6 point.

I imagine taking aim, shooting... and then the daydream goes awry. Having never actually shot a crossbow (how hard could it be, though) or a deer, I miss the mark and the arrow lands high, and off he runs into the woods, maimed.

Anyway, first things first, though. I need a deer stand. And something to shoot with.

No, I'm not excited about these bibs, I swear.

...

All year, Finley had been telling me she wanted to go hunting with our neighbor, Terry. Last week, she saw his Gator out by his back pasture, and she was desperate to know if he was hunting. She pestered me enough that I finally sent his wife a text, and sure enough he was. Her eyes were glued to the window, and at dusk, when the Gator pulled away, I had to send another text asking if he had bagged anything. He had seen five, but didn't shoot any.

A few days later, Terry pulled up in his gator and told Finley she could go hunting with him that afternoon if it was okay with us. "I have a camouflage dress I can wear!" she said, bursting with excitement. He explained that wouldn't be necessary, but to dress warm, then headed back to set up a blind on the ground as he didn't want her falling out of any trees. So a couple hours later, armed with books and a bottle of water, I sent her off on her first hunting trip.

An hour and a half or two later, out they came: no deer, but satisfied with a deer and squirrel sitings, and a fistful of turkey feathers, just as I expected.

Anxiously Anticipating a New Nephew

It's been a long while coming, but my brother and his wife are in Uganda about to meet a little boy they are hoping to bring home with them soon. You can read about it here.

Tractor Joy

I don't know if it was just that I fell for the marketing hype, or the influence of certain relatives, but I used to fancy myself a John Deere man. I mean woman. Then something changed.

 

It might have been the faded red of our little International that started to interfere with my opinion, or the fact that the first 'real' (read 'over 40 horsepower') tractor that I was allowed to drive was our neighbors' red Massey-Ferguson, but when I started thinking about having a 'real' tractor for the farm, it was getting harder to envision anything but red.

 

Anyway, for a while now, my mom had been kicking around the idea of buying a tractor for family use. Off and on we would go look at tractors or scan online ads for something. Mom's cousin came earlier in the summer and took her tractor shopping, but nothing seemed quite right. And then I saw one on craigslist: a Massey-Ferguson 253 with a front-end loader and canopy.

 

We consulted our neighbor, and he didn't seem so sure, so I put it out of my mind for a while, but when it was still there a few weeks later, I asked mom what she thought. She told me to have Chris call. He didn't get an answer, and no one ever called him back, but I couldn't let it go. He tried again a week later, and finally we got a chance to go see it. We took our neighbor along, and with his stamp of approval, my mom bought it and named it "The Nicholas Dandy" after her grandfather.

 

If you know me well, you can image that I was (and still am) pretty excited. For a few nights, it was hard for me to sleep, daydreaming about all the wonderful things we could do with Dandy. But Mom got first dibs and spent a couple of day bush-hogging the family's 14 acres.

Next, we used Dandy to put some dirt around the foundation of the new house.

This week, Dandy rested in the stable, allowing some hens to lay some eggs in his bucket the day they got locked out of the coop. And tomorrow, he and I will finally get to spend some time together cutting the front pasture.

It's a Slippery Slope

When my brother announced that he was moving to Nashville, I am sure my nose wrinkled in disgust. All I knew was that Nashville and country music were inseparable, and I did not like country music. I was an opinionated teenager who liked alternative music. I did not realize at the time that you could live in Nashville and keep a life separate from country music, but you can, and I did.

A few years after my brother's move to the Music City, I discovered the banjo. Grant Lee Buffalo was an alternative band, and a song called "The Last Days of Tecumseh" featured the odd and beautiful sound of the banjo. I was hooked. It might be possible to live in Nashville and keep a life separate from country music, but I don't think it is possible to live in Nashville, love the banjo, and keep from falling for bluegrass. And so I opened my heart wider to receive the wonder of bluegrass, and told myself that at least this wasn't country.

Perhaps you can see where this is going. The banjo and a love for music were gateway drugs, and they led me to try things I never thought I would.

One problem was that the CD player in the van broke just a month after moving to the farm. Another problem is that as you travel south of Nashville toward our place, the alternative station acquires static just as you get to our exit off the interstate. It is like a weird sign that says, "You are leaving civilization as you know it and entering the country." The country. There is only so much NPR the kids can take, and Finley started requesting "country music, please" in the van. I had inadvertently exposed Finley to country music one day and she liked it, and as I did not want to expose them to the angst and vulgarity of hard rock, I acquiesced. And so I began to discover that it is not so easy to live in the country and keep a life separate from country music. They are inseparable.

And so I have become someone I do not recognize. A mom who plays the kids' current favorite song in the mornings to cheer them up and is trying not to cry when Rascal Flatts' "My Wish" comes on the radio. And when we pile in the van, and Chris turns the key, only to hear country music blaring from the speakers, all I can do is shrug. We live in the country, after all.


a note in my defense: Joe's kindergarten teacher sent them home with a DVD at the end of the year - a slide show of pictures of the kids with "My Wish" playing in the background. Just try to watch it and not tear up. I dare you.

Duct Tape Day

I got a little excited when I heard about Duct Tape Day at the kids' school. But just a little.

 

The night before last, Finley told me some of her ideas, which included a hair bow and neck tie. Not to be the type to step in on a kid's ambition, I asked her if she wanted my help. She did. And then I went crazy. After making the hair bow, I made the neck tie, then had the idea of wrapping an old pair of my socks in duct tape (while on my feet) to create shoes. That wrapped up the evening, and yesterday, I may or may not have spent the entire day on the rest of the kids' outfits. I was a little bummed that Joe's hat turned out a little small, but I've learned my lesson for next time.

 

Not aparent in the photos is the fact the vests actually button. If you can't tell, I'm a little proud of my work, but more importantly, it was just fun to put everything on hold for a day and create.

It's Spirit Week in Chapel Hill

And today is blue and white day.

FYI, this hair paint causes silicone hair bands to disintegrate, so I ended up tying Fin's hair with blue string.

 Of course, Zivah refuses to be left out of the hair paint fun, so she got red ponytails and polka dots.

Tomorrow is duct-tape day, so come back tomorrow for more fun!

This is all that's left of Big Papi:

I opted for canning instead of freezing, since they say older chickens aren't too good roasted and I didn't really have the right baggage to freeze them. It was a lot of work, but I learned a few things, so I'm telling myself it was worth it.

Our First Butchering

Well, we did it.

 

Big Papi was the first to go. Below is a picture of Big Papi, beheaded, scalded, and encountering the plucker. He looked much less formidable with his feathers off, although he was not nearly as scrawny as some of the other birds we did in. The plucker did an okay job, though it started slipping toward the end.

 Chris did most of the killing and plucking, while my mom and I took care of the rest. I was glad no one was there to watch, as my chicken-butchering skills are lacking. It didn't help that our knives weren't very sharp. I guess the little sharpeners you buy at the store don't do the best job.

In the next day or two, I'm going to stew and can the meat. For next time, I plan on having raised some actual meat birds, the barrel plucker built, and a set of really good knives.