Not Funny, But It Kinda Was

This is DH's mount of his elk skull and antlers from when he went elk hunting in Colorado in 2023.  

He had, for a couple of years, tried to find an existing way (as in a kit or parts he could buy) to mount this (cut) skull rather than just sawing off the upper portion of it that holds the antlers. Part of the problem was the angle at which the skull had been cut, by the place he took the head to for cleaning and removal of brain tissue and spinal matter so that he could transport the skull back home across state lines. Cut how it was, it would not fit properly on the kits or hangers sold for mounting deer skulls.

Eventually, he engineered a way to do it on his own, involving resin epoxy, a small piece of wood cut to fit inside the tiny rounded cavity on the underside of the upper part of the skull, a screw, and a scrap board.  As you can see from the photo above, it worked, and the elk skull hangs on our wall.

In the photo below, you can see better just where on the wall it was installed.  To the right is the mule deer that DH shot in Colorado in 2022.  He mounted it similarly to the elk skull, a few weeks after trying out his mounting system.

So here's where the not funny, but it kinda was part comes in.

In that photo, you can see part of our television.  In this photo (please ignore the grandkid related toy and seating clutter), you can see the heights and location of everything.

When DH put his skulls with antlers on the wall last winter, I expressed concern about the antlers sticking out and being low enough someone might walk into them and poke an eye out.  Especially the elk antlers.  DH, as men do, pooh-poohed my concern, saying it was fine and they were high enough, and besides, no adults walk that close to the wall anyway.

Well. . . Can you tell where this story is going?

Recently, DH poked himself in the forehead with the lower tines of the elk antlers.  He was concentrating on why is the station playing the football game not coming in?!?, walked over to the tv, went to reach behind it to fiddle with the wiring and whacked his head into the elk antlers rather forcefully.  Hard enough to break the skin and draw blood.

I confess, even as I was momentarily afraid he had poked his eye out, I couldn't help laughing. In an uncontrollable and gut busting manner. Because, you know, I told him so. 

But of course I couldn't say that.  I properly expressed my concern for his well being, as well as examined and cleaned his head injury. Even if I did have spurts of giggles while doing so. 

Friday Randomness

 It's been a long (but short; fast, busy) week.  

We've had some hot humid weather, several rainstorms, and a 15-ish hour power outage.  

We had Faline, Buck and Sixlet for about 7 straight hours on Saturday while DD1, Honorary Son and his parents went to a Detroit Tigers game.

Visiting Jedi, Crockett and Tubbs

Buck and Sixlet in the sprinkler

Faline and Sixlet lying out to dry in the sun

 We went out to eat several times, which is unlike us, but happened to work out that way.  Once was meeting Honorary Son and DD1 to hand off their kids after the baseball game. The other due to being too dang hot to cook on the stove or the oven and the one meat store that I can actually eat their lunchmeat (without my body protesting) being all out of said meat when I went to buy it in order to make (the planned) sub sandwiches for that night's dinner.

I rode bareback (the first time in over a decade for me on any horse) on the Little Black Mare when one of her scheduled training days ended up being a light but steady rain and I didn't want to get my saddle soaking wet.  I'm fairly certain she's never been ridden bareback before, but she adapted to it well.  It felt weird for me too, and the first five minutes I was trying to get my own bearings, but after that I'd say we both enjoyed it (minus the uptick in rain in our faces that made me cut the session short after a bit).

I rode a lot (2-3 horses) on days that the weather was cooperative and only one horse or even zero horses on days that it wasn't.  Like the day that was 70-something degrees and 90+ percent humidity at sunrise and I was heat sick practically from the moment I got out of bed.  No riding that day; I didn't want to pass out and fall off a horse.  Instead, that day, I did only necessary horse chores (feeding, turnout, cleaning stalls bringing in, feeding) and slowly with frequent breaks.  Well, plus cooking and laundry, and housekeeping (but you know, depending on who you talk to, those don't count as work 😠).  

K3 came over on a not-rainy morning (original day had been rescheduled due to weather) to ride Jedi with my helpful instruction. (aka had a riding lesson).  They are starting to mesh a bit more as she learns the similarities and differences between him and the LBM (who she rode off and on the past two summers) and he tests her a bit to determine if she's the boss or if he is (and, with my guidance, she wins those challenges). 

pre-ride, heading in for grooming and saddling

post-ride, rolling his sweaty itches away

I assembled the new 'bistro set' I had purchased on sale on-line at Mother's Day (which had been super delayed in shipping) and installed it in its intended spot on the deck.  Even gave DH a haircut out there while he sat on one of the chairs ("It's very skinny.  And upright.")  Given that all of our other outdoor seating is extra wide and tends to make you sit slightly reclined (which I find uncomfortable), yes, yes it is skinny and upright.  It's just what I wanted for that space.  That space happens to be the 8-10 feet between the sliding door in the dining room and the sliding door in the living room and needs something that doesn't sprawl too far onto the deck or too close to either door.  Skinny.  And upright.

DH got my little tiller running--it had needed a tune-up--and between the two of us we got all the tilling done between rows of vegetables in the six planted sections of the garden.  I hand weeded around the tomato plants in four of the seven rows of tomatoes (and then a storm hit).

Two of the weeded rows,

unfortunately the dang deer have bitten off about half of those plants.

I found a nice rock in the garden, which I had to take a picture of so I could text the pun to DD2, whom I knew would get it.  Geology and puns, two of my favorite things.  Which are also two of her favorite things.

A gneiss rock.

(Nice, ha ha, get it?)

DH (finally) added fill dirt, brought to level, and put the pavers back into the section of the front walkway that we'd had to trench under (and thus removed the pavers from) back in 2022 when running the new underground electric line from the main box on the front of the garage to the barn (and then to his shop).  Those pavers have been piled in the middle of that spot ever since, with weeds growing up around them and making it difficult to keep the walkway weed-free or snow-free for almost four years now.  So I was really happy that he took it upon himself to complete this task that I'd tried to tactfully remind him of once or twice a year.

 

Re-installed pavers! 

7 pavers long and 5 pavers wide.

Also thrilling (and lavish praise rendered), was that DH decided to use the weed whip to get the rest of the walkway totally weed-free and mostly edged.  Hooray!  It's been several years since the whole thing was cleaned up at once.

The peonies have been in bloom, and with the heat are wrapping up very quickly.  It's been nice to enjoy their cheerful pop of color and wonderful smell this week.

a bouquet of peonies and mock orange

Also blooming are the spiderwort

and my Louisiana Black Gamecock iris (which seems to bloom every other year for me).

On the stormy night that took out our power, DH and I sat out on the front porch after the wind had died down and the rain had left, and watched the sunset while we talked.  The Yarn Thief joined us for part of that time.

Later, after it was dark and we had gone to bed--with the front door open as well as all the windows to try to get a breeze through the stuffy, very warm (80-ish degree) house--we were woke up by what sounded like something hitting the screen door at the bottom of the stairs (bedrooms are upstairs, the flight of stairs lines up with the front door, great for getting airflow into the bedroom area on a summer night).  

DH grabbed a flashlight and looked down the stairs, to see a raccoon on the porch right at the door. 

Well, that wouldn't do, we'd been trying to catch a lingering pesky raccoon in our traps with no luck lately.  So I hopped out of bed too, to be the flashlight bearer while DH grabbed the .22 and we went out coon hunting!  

The coon had fled up a cottonwood tree between the house and a corner of the garden when it heard us coming down the stairs and out the front door.  With me standing near the trunk shining the flashlight up into the tree, and DH a few feet out from me, we were able to spot that raccoon and get a successful shot that brought it crashing down (sounded like, in the dark, as it bounced off tree branches, it was going to land on my head!) to the ground.  Luckily it was not on my head, but about 6 feet from me.  So that was an exciting evening and night!

I hope this coming week is a little milder with both more catching up on tasks and a bit more time for sitting and relaxing.  And uninterrupted sleep!

A Crazy Experience

 Recently, DH was out of town on a snowmobiling trip with DS2 and friends, and I was here holding down the fort, tending the animals, keeping the fire stoked, etc.  One evening, when I was stoking the fire (which is DH's job when he's not gone on trips) after caring for the horses and chickens for the night, I heard dogs barking.  Not just any dogs, these had the distinctive voices of hunting dogs.  Looking around, across fields both north and west--towards where the roads are--I noticed several trucks idling on the shoulders.  Coyote hunter trucks.

So, the dogs I heard were definitely coyote hunting dogs, and they were, it sounded like, in the woods north of my property.  I went back to stoking the fire, one biggest-I-could-carry-and-fit-through-the-wood-boiler-door chunk of wood at a time. 

Then, from the corner of my eye, I caught movement over on the east perimeter fence line of my pastures.  Turning my head for a better look, it was two deer, does, running from north to south, spooked up by those dogs.  They ran on past, heading for the marsh to hide in.

I kept stoking the fire, carefully putting the wood in the boiler in neatly placed rows and stacks, trying to stuff as much as I could in there to make sure the fire would make it through the (very cold, around zero degree F) night.  Turning and walking to the wood pile for another piece, I was startled to see a coyote run right between me and my barn.  Okay, he was about 30ish feet away from me, but, WOW that's close!  I've never been that close to a coyote before, even when I'm up in the deer stand. 

He ran right past the front of my barn, and down the driveway, headed west towards the road. Now I could hear the dogs heading towards me from the east, on my own property, and soon they came bounding through the backyard also heading west.

I figured that was that, as the hunters' trucks had moved along the road to be in front of this little place here now.  The coyote was heading toward the road, driven by the dogs.  Surely any minute I would hear the crack of a gun and the coyote would be successfully harvested.

Finished stoking the wood boiler, I went to the backside of the garage to grab the trash bin, as it was the day we put the trash out at the end of the driveway (also DH's job) to be picked up the next morning.  Trundling through the snow pulling the bin behind me, I realized the dogs' barking had not only changed from chasing to 'treed' as it were, but that they sounded like they were in the front yard.  

Coming around the front corner of the garage, I could see one dog at the bottom of my front steps, baying, and the other dog on my front porch also baying. And a coyote on my front porch, to the side of the front door, standing in a faceoff with the dog!

Oh hello!  Never in a million years did I ever expect to see a coyote on my front porch.  With him right up against the house like that no way would anyone be able to get a shot at him.  

So what, you ask, did I do?  I let go of the trash bin, went tromping through the snow waving my arms and in my most authoritarian animal commanding voice loudly said

"Get off my porch!"

The dog at the bottom step looked at me coming it's way using my manly don't mess with me supreme commander voice and it backed away into the yard.  I climbed the steps, still standing tall and waving my arms and commanding the dog and coyote remove themselves from my porch.  Which the dog reluctantly did, giving up his prey to this crazy lazy.  

Now I'm standing about six feet away from a wild coyote.  Making sure I was not blocking his route to the steps, I looked at him and he looked at me and I said "Get off my porch!"  But he didn't listen like the dogs did.  Rather, he looked at me, looked down the steps, looked at the dogs, and chose to go curl up in the corner.

By now the coyote hunters have figured out their quarry is housebound, and two of the trucks are driving up my driveway.  I went down the steps, met one of them as the truck came to a stop, and, as he was apologizing profusely, told him the coyote was apparently not planning to get off the porch under it's own power.

Long story short, I took the trash bin the rest of the way to the road, the hunters gathered up their dogs, then, with the coyote still determined it wasn't chancing running anywhere, got a catch rope and took the coyote off my porch.

Meanwhile, I got my mail out of the mailbox, and talked to another one of the hunters whose truck was still pulled off the side of the road.  He assured me, before I had a chance to say more than "well that was pretty crazy to find the coyote on my porch" that they had gotten him off, and would 'take him to the field and let him go again'.  At which point, I looked him in the eye and said "Really?  I would think you'd take him safely away from the buildings and pop him one.  I mean, that's what I do with raccoons that I catch in my live trap."

I'm pretty sure, because I'm a woman, he expected me to be all 'poor little coyote, don't hurt him'.  Nah.  The coyote population needs to be kept down.  I'm always watching for their tracks around the chicken coop, and would definitely shoot at any coyote I found sniffing around over there.  

Just make it quick, and dispatch them as humanely as possible.  

And don't chase it onto my porch!

As they were pulling down my driveway to leave, and I was walking back to the house, one of the hunters did introduce himself, and ask if DH still lived here (he and DH met years ago and have sometimes had words in regards to the coyote hunting as this guy is supposed to call/text DH and give him a heads up if they are hunting near our property where the dogs might be coming through onto this little place here).  I told him yes, DH does. We talked a few more minutes, me never letting on that DH was currently out of town, not just at work at the moment.

Because I may be brave enough to command strange dogs and coyotes off my porch, but I am not crazy enough to ever tell anyone that DH isn't home and won't be for days!

I Hunted A Lot.

The last half of November in Michigan means firearm deer season.  And that's when I go hunting, since I've never been a bow hunter and honestly am not that interested at this point in my life in becoming one (DH keeps hoping he can convince me to try a crossbow).  I have so many other things I need to be doing in October and early November than sitting in a tree stand for hours.

Late November, however, is a different story.  I still have lots of things that need my time, but I try to squeeze in deer hunting with a shotgun.  Some years I hunt much of those two weeks, and other years (like the last couple) I may only get into the woods 3 or 4 times of the possible 32 hunts available (we're talking mornings and evenings times 16 days) 

This year I got to the woods quite a bit, seeing lots of sunrises and a few sunsets; DH stayed in a couple evenings and brought horses in for me, otherwise I came in from the woods before dark so I could get horses in while there was still enough light to see by.  My vision is terrible in the dark.

Sunrise on the 16th.

Fiery looking sunrise on 11/18

a pastel sunset 11/16

walking to the pastures as the sun went down on 11/19

Crockett wanting to know why I'm late on the 23rd.

(I was "held hostage" by several deer coming in 10 minutes before I'd wanted to get out of the tree stand.)

The 'deer season' dish towel was hung on the upper oven door in late November.  Because, well, I do like to keep the towel that hangs there in theme with the seasons of the year. I'm not super into decorating, but I do have some girlish tendencies.  Full disclosure: this towel is about 10 years old, so probably no longer fashionable to any woman but me.  I guess I'm assuming any woman but me did ever think it was fashionable. Ha.

DH tagged out of bucks during bow season.  He did go buy an antlerless tag, but was in no hurry to use it during November.  So he was mostly a fair weather hunter, and mostly watching more than aiming at anything.  Which is why he was unusually interested in volunteering to bring in horses for dinner feed so that I could get a full evening hunt in. 

He was also gone for 10 days in late November to do some elk hunting in Colorado (which was a bust).  Which meant all of those evenings I had to choose to a) skip hunting or b) do an abbreviated evening hunt because *I* had to bring horses in for their dinner on time.  He's only so saintly, but he is getting better at it than he used to be, LOL.

I saw lots and lots of does and this year's fawns, but as the only one in this household still in possession of a tag that can be used on a buck, I was not going to shoot a doe in November either. There's a whole ton of antlerless hunting coming up in December and January. I did see several smallish bucks: small 6 point, a couple of 4 points, a spikehorn and a few button bucks.  Because there are so many bigger deer in our area (and because there's two 8-points in the freezer all ready), I try to never shoot any buck smaller than a six-point, so I did not do more than watch those little guys.  

While DH was a fair weather hunter when he was home, I sat in both super windy weather and sleety/ice pellet weather, not just the calm sunny days.  We did have a lot more calm sunny days than usual, and I think I went out for a total of 12 hunts.  Which is about three times as many as I did the year before.  If I hadn't been the only one home and having to deal with the internet situation and meeting technicians when they came to (not) fix things, I would have made it to the tree stand about five more times.  Oh well.

I did not get many deer photos, mostly of this button buck that wanted to be my buddy (or, rather, was clueless I existed in that great big tree) on a Sunday morning.  He hung around for well over an hour, first searching in the oak leaves for acorns to eat, then going and bedding down about 15 yards from me for a snooze.

naptime

Every year I pack a book to read during slow times in the woods.  This year I read Silas Marner.  Partly chosen because of it's slim, easy to carry size.  Partly because its a classic I had yet to read.  And partly because the colors of the cover blend in with the camouflage I wore, LOL. As a review of the book itself, I found it a little slow in the beginning, but all that made sense as necessary info about a quarter of the way in, and I was quite interested in seeing how the story turned out after that.  It's been a few years since I've read anything that is considered classic literature, and this was a nice docile break from modern fiction.  Zero swear words!  All conversations, even hostile ones, were worded so politely.  Why can't we speak that way these days??

Anyway, November wrapped up without filling my deer tag.  However, in my area of the state this year I can again go out with my shotgun during what would normally be muzzleloading season.  So I am planning on seeing if I can get a buck then.  If not, there will be late antlerless hunting until about the middle of January, so there's still the possibility of getting a doe before deer season comes to an end.
 

Oh, one last thought in relation to November's deer hunting.  This year I observed something that made me think squirrels must be made of rubber.  Or, like cats, they have nine lives.  One morning, I was watching a couple of does coming in toward my tree when out of the corner of my eye I saw what I thought was a short chunky limb fall out of a tree near one of the deer. Only, when it hit the ground it broke apart and was actually two squirrels, not a piece of wood at all!  They hit the (well padded with fallen leaves) ground, let go of each other, and scampered away as if falling 10+ feet to earth was no big deal and didn't hurt a bit. Hmm. Rubber squirrels. . . 

More Bow Hunting Success

 Warning!  Hunting related photos ahead.  Stop reading now if you are squeamish or don't want to see a dead deer.

For the first time ever, DH has harvested two bucks during bow season! And they were taken exactly two weeks apart.  Both on Wednesday evenings. (Confession: I'm a long time Survivor watcher and while I willingly tracked and helped get these deer in from the woods, field dressed, and hung in the shop, I wasn't super thrilled to miss two episodes of Survivor!)

This second buck is also an 8-point.  Unlike the first buck, he did not leave an easily followed blood trail.  For a tense fifteen minutes, both DH and I wondered if this one was actually fatally wounded and if so, would we be able to find him?  But then, suddenly, the blood spots started appearing in the leaves on the ground (more than 20 yards from the spot he'd been standing when DH shot him with the crossbow), and the trail went from a drop here and there to several spatters to a very thick unable to miss trail.  

Phew!  Stress levels instantly lowered!

This buck was quite a bit deeper into the woods than the one two weeks prior, so rather than DH and I using our own muscle power to drag him to the woods road where we could load him into the tractor bucket for transport, we made use of the 4-wheeler.  

DH carefully maneuvered between trees to get to the deer, and we tied a rope around its antlers and then to the ball in the hitch behind the 4-wheeler. After that it was careful driving, dragging the buck behind, between standing trees and over smallish logs on the ground (me walking behind and lifting the deer's head when necessary to not get him snagged up on a downed tree). 

This second buck seemed larger than the first one, but you know, sometimes your memory is off, so we weren't sure if it was actually all the much bigger until we got it dressed and to the shop where we hung it from the game scale.

He most definitely was bigger!  In fact, he's the biggest whitetail DH has ever gotten!  This one weighed in at over 159 pounds (the first one was 140 lbs) and has a rack that is 3.5" wider than the other 8-point's rack.  

We definitely won't be hurting for lean red meat in our diet this winter!

Fresh Venison!

 Warning!  If you are vegetarian, or anti-hunting or squeamish in regards to blood and/or death, you probably want to skip this post.  If none of those apply to you, then by all means, read on!

DH has gotten a very nice 8-point buck with his crossbow.  After shooting at two nice ones last year, and getting neither into the freezer (one we tracked into the corn field on a very scant blood trail, but then lost it about twelve rows in--it was found a few days later by the combine harvesting corn about 50 more yards in from where we'd finally given up searching after several hours of trying to pick up the trail again), both DH and I were very afraid that this buck was going to be another heart breaking hunting experience.

But, thankfully, the 'curse' has been broken and he easily tracked and recovered--in the dark, no less-- (with my help, we're a team in most everything) this big buck.  This picture, taken at the point in the woods that it was laying when we reached the end of the blood trail, doesn't do it justice.

This one, taken the next afternoon while hanging, is a little better.

Field dressed, it weighed in at 140 pounds, which is not bad at all for a Michigan whitetail. 

DH let it hang and dry age a few days before quartering it and bringing it in the house to debone and finish processing. Currently, with exception of the burger meat which we have yet to run through the grinder (tomorrow after work), it is all cut, wrapped and in the freezer.  

Well, in the interest of full disclosure,  several pounds have also gone into our stomachs, as we had tenderloin and onions for breakfast yesterday, heart and onions for breakfast today, and venison steak with roasted garlic and sweet potatoes for dinner tonight.  Gotta love boosting my iron levels with tasty lean red meat!

A Whole Bunch of Random

 Back in November, during firearm deer hunting season here in Michigan, I didn't get out into the tree stand much.  But when I did, the first time, I found that the squirrels had pretty much destroyed the seat cushion for the tree stand I use (that DH had put up in October).

That hunt was fairly uncomfortable, sitting on a cushion that was one narrow strip (the cushiony part) and several large spots with no filling between my gluteus maximus and the metal frame of the tree stand.

By the third time I went out to hunt, DH had dug up a new 'cushion' (a not very squishy foam board--very likely ancient and petrified) to temporarily replace the one the squirrels excavated for nest insulation material.  I used farmer ingenuity and secured it to the tree stand with baling twine.  Because, baling twine.  LOL.  If you know, you know.

In early December, DH was out of town the week of my birthday.  DD2 was also away, so I was home alone.  Rather than just kind of not have a birthday, like I've done in recent years when DH is away on my natal date, this year I decided to celebrate myself.

So I bought myself a (cheap) bouquet of flowers from the grocery store, ordered a yummy "salad" (lettuce, chicken, rice, roasted corn, black beans, guacamole)  from the local Mexican restaurant to be ready for pickup when I was done bringing horses in for their evening feed, and made myself a small cake (chocolate with peanut butter frosting).  I even put two candles in it, leftover from when K3 and Toad were very young and often were here on short notice for an indefinite amount of time (number 5 and number 3, my current age).  I of course lit them so I could make a wish and blow them out.  It's not a real birthday party without blowing out the candles.

Silly?  Maybe.  But it was better than pretending it wasn't actually my birthday just because no one else was around to celebrate with me. 

I forgot to set aside a bit of frosting to add food coloring to and use for decorating the cake, so instead of writing Happy Birthday on it, I used colored sprinkles to carefully spell out HAPPY.  The whole message being too big to write in sprinkles on an 8" x 8" cake.  Actually, I think maybe HAPPY will be my mantra for this year of my life.  There's been a whole lot of years of late that I was frustrated, overwhelmed, hurt (by and for others), and pretty much unhappy.  I'm rather tired of all that.  Happy is my desired goal from here on out.

We had a couple decent snows in December.  After one late in the month, I found myself walking in the woods (helping DH track a doe he'd shot during the late antlerless season) and took a picture of the trees in the snow.  I/We really need to get out there more and just walk around for the sake of wandering, not because we're working on finding a deer, or cutting/hauling firewood or tapping trees and collecting sap for syrup.  

Since the first of the year, I've started working on a new baby quilt.  Grandbaby #7 (who shall be dubbed with the name of Lucky here on the blog) is due on Valentine's Day.  This is the first child for DS2 and Surprise, and they are keeping the gender a secret until Lucky arrives.  Surprise suggested 'genderless' colors such as light blue, green, yellow, gray, for this quilt.  

As usual, I've taken that concept and am running with my own adaptation.  I'm not a pastel lover for baby quilts, especially as I make my grandkids quilts that will cover them until they are about 8 or 10 years old, not just as newborns.  I don't want a theme they will outgrow quickly.  And, since DS2 and Surprise originally met at Disney World 10 years ago, I just had to go with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pluto fabric too.

The weather has been rather cold lately, as it should be for January (but wasn't in Jan. 2024), and the Yarn Thief has been preferring to stay in the house rather than go outside to hunt birds and mice.  She's getting a bit of cabin fever, though, and while I was changing the sheets on my bed she crawled underneath the fitted sheet where she made a lump I couldn't smooth out.  This is a favorite game of hers that usually involves me getting one or more claws in my fingers as I'm trying to make the bed.

There have been other things happening around this little place here in recent months, and I'm hoping to turn a few of them into their own posts rather than including them here.  But I can't resist adding a couple pictures of  a Christmas present my kids got me.  I'm willing to bet I'm the only Mom who actually put these on her Wish List:

Caution cones!  Coming to a pseudo riding arena near me (okay, my temporary riding arena behind the barn) once the frigid weather breaks long enough for me to get back into the saddle.  I'm so excited to be able to set them up in multiple configurations to use as training aids.

Homegrown Food, 2023

 This summer, I started listing everything we ate that came from this little place here.  From earliest in the year, till now, this is the comprehensive list of all the edibles that have been produced (planted, raised, or grown wild) in 2023:

Maple syrup

Eggs

Asparagus (feral, as I had replanted my asparagus bed Fall 2022 and didn't harvest any this year so the crowns could be well fed).

Strawberries (although chickens and wild critters got most of them GRRR)

Lettuce

Chives

Peas

Mulberries (oh my, the crop just seemed to go for months!)

Cherries

Raspberries (a handful)

Black raspberries (the wild ones)

Garlic

Dill

Cilantro

Basil

Oregano

Lemon balm

Spearmint

Peppermint

Cucumbers (not many, abysmal year for squash types)

Chickens (raised two batches of broilers this summer)

Green beans (both bush and pole)

Sweet corn (good year, even managed to can and freeze some)

Potatoes

Blackberries (wild)

Green peppers (not great yield)

Jalapeno peppers (enormous ones; should have made poppers)

Paprika peppers (a mild kind and a spicy kind which I dried and ground into powder)

Tomatoes

Broccoli

Onions

Eggplant

Apples (a bumper crop)

Pears

Grapes (the grapes!  Grapes beyond my wildest dreams!)

Beets

Butternut squash

Venison (not grown by me, but produced by God)

Turnips (from the deer feed plot, LOL)

Deer Harvest 2023

Warning: if you're PETA, or if you're squeamish, you might want to skip the third, fifth and sixth pictures in this post.

Given that we have a lot of project stuff we've been trying to accomplish before winter sets in, and that DH was able to get an elk on his trip out west in October, neither he nor I have hunted as hard this deer season as we have in years past. 

For him, that meant not going out in bow season (Oct 1-Nov 14) hardly at all.  For me, that has meant if I'm not feeling up to the hike to the woods and up the ladder to the tree stand, or if the weather is rainy, (or like the several days in the second week of firearm season snowy, windy, and suddenly subfreezing) I haven't gone out. So, although deer season is not done yet, I'm going to post about it now.  December gets really crazy with all the Christmas stuff added in.

The morning of November 15th (opening day of firearm season) was beautiful, if a tad warm.  I didn't even wear my insulated bibs (and I chill easily), that's how warm it was.  The sunrise from the tree stand was reddish, and I thought of the old saying about 'red in the morning, sailors take warning' and wondered if it applied to deer hunters too.

The deer were active.  I saw many in groups of two or three, and occasionally a lone deer also.  But they were either does, which I wasn't going to shoot on opening day (especially as we are low on freezer space since DH brought an elk home from his Colorado trip), or they were fawns or small bucks.  I began naming the bucks as I saw them: Skewers (tall, spindly spikes reminiscent of shish kebab skewers), Tiny Basket (six points, but the whole headgear was shorter than his ears and wasn't any wider than his ears), Fork-Half (antler on the left only, and forked, which distinguished him from the buck DH has seen that also only has an antler on the left but has four points on that one antler).

Small deer eating windfall apples at the entrance to the woods

DH was also seeing does and smallish bucks.  Until, slightly behind him over his right shoulder and coming through the trees, he saw a much wider rack.  I heard a shot ring out to the south of me, where DH was sitting, and I got excited, thinking he'd gotten something.  Then a second shot rang out, and my exact thought was "either that's not him or he's shooting trees", as rarely does DH take a second shot unless the first one missed.

As I found out a few minutes later, via text, he'd shot a tree.  Literally.  His scope was not adjusted quite right for that distance.

But he'd also shot a deer and there was a clear blood trail.  So looked like we'd be bringing a deer in from the woods later that morning.

painting the woods red

We waited almost two hours before I got down from my tree stand and walked carefully to the other side of the woods where DH was sitting.  I didn't kick anything up on my way there, so we hoped that meant that his buck was dead and piled up somewhere.

From his stand, DH directed me to the spot where he thought the buck had been standing when he'd shot it.  Then he got down, and we started following the very clear blood trail. But after only about 10 minutes, up ahead of us a buck leapt up and went crashing off.  Dang!  It wasn't dead yet.  And we didn't want it to run across property lines, so we backed out the way we'd come, away from the direction the buck went, and went into the house for some brunch.

DH tracking

It so happened that opening day was a half day from school for the grandkids, and I'd told DS1 I would pick his kids up from school so he wouldn't have to take off early from work.  When I went to get K3, Toad and Rascal, DH went back out to the woods to locate his buck.

By the time the grandkids and I arrived at this little place here, DH had located the buck and was getting ready to go bring it in from the woods with the 4-wheeler and wood hauler trailer.  The grandkids and I quickly threw orange hats on our heads and jumped on the trailer to help.

They were quite interested in touching and examining the deer, although Rascal was a little sad that it was dead "Because I like deer".  (I wonder if being around the deceased deer touched something in him about the death of his mother this Spring. . . ) 

While they may not have had classes at school that afternoon,  they got quite a life science class at this little place here instead.  Started with Field Dressing 101 where they watched intently and asked questions while DH dressed the deer.  That rolled into an Anatomy Class as I explained each step of the process and DH pointed out organs as he removed them.

After the deer was dressed we put it back on the trailer and hauled it up to DH's shop, where he rinsed the gut cavity with the hose, and then hung the deer from a gambrel.  More deer anatomy lesson as he explained to the grandkids how there were tendons in the back legs that you could hang the deer from and what they did on a live animal (and how people have tendons in our legs too).  Once the deer was hung, K3 was excited to find the entrance and exit wounds, although she wasn't brave enough to put her finger in them.

A few days later we had them overnight, and we served venison from that buck.  They looked a little skeptical at first, but then dug in heartily (except Rascal who doesn't eat hardly anything except pizza and chicken nuggets; neither of which this Grandma is willing to buy premade just for him.  I was/still am a picky eater and learned to either eat or go hungry and am of the mindset that he can learn the same thing.)

Hunting is pretty much over for me now that there's horses at this little place here that need to be fed at certain times of the day (I'm not that fond of late season hunting anyway since it overlaps all the Christmas prep craziness).  Dh has gone out a few times a week, but he's not in a hurry to harvest another deer unless a really impressive one happens to walk his way.