Eating The Food We Planted For Our Food To Eat

 For the past few years, DH has turned one corner of our field into a deer food plot.  In part of the corner is ryegrass, and in another he seeds turnips, rapeseed, and radishes.  The turnips grow really well, and the deer really appreciate them from about this time in December all through the rest of the winter.  They eat both the tops (greens) and the roots (turnip).

Late in 2020, DH pulled up a large turnip and brought it to the house to show me how big it was, and to tell me that it was one of the few that wasn't at least partially eaten by deer while still in the ground. He was excited by the success of this crop, both that it grew well with little effort--other than tilling the ground before planting--and that it drew the deer to hang out in that corner (where he has been able to harvest venison in late season each December since).

Neither he nor I grew up eating turnips, but we knew they were edible to humans as well as deer, so we decided to give it a try.  Since, after all, he'd brought that turnip up to the house and we'd handled it with bare hands and subsequently gotten human scent all over it.  If he tossed it back in the food plot it may or may not make the deer wary of the whole plot (scent) and was not as likely to get eaten by them.  It was such a beautiful turnip we didn't want to waste it.  So I looked up turnip recipes, and we gave it a try.

We were both surprised to actually really like the flavor of that turnip.  Since then, we've eaten them off and on through the fall and winters.  I even tried growing them in the garden in 2021, but they seem to grow much better out in the corner of the field just hand broadcast and left to live or die on their own than they did when I cultivated them in the designated spot for growing people food (garden).

So, now we just throw the turnip seed out in the food plot and ignore the sprouts for a few months until DH is walking past them pretty much daily on his way to and from the deer stand.  At that point, he will pull a couple now and then, and I cook them up for dinner.  They are good roasted, sliced and fried, and in my pasty recipe (substituted for or in addition to rutabaga).  You can also boil and mash them, but we've found them to be a bit 'runny' this way and prefer mashed potatoes over mashed turnips.

Turnips can also be found in the grocery store, although I think we'll just stick with eating them for 'free' pulled out of the deer plot rather than adding them to the shopping list and paying for ones grown somewhere else.

homegrown organic deer/human food

A Whole Lot of Sewing, December Update

 After I finished Buck's baby quilt, I had a whole lot of sewing mojo.  And I had fabric from a internet forum quilt I'm participating in.  So I spent a little time using up every single bit of the fabric I had been given, and ended up with five different quilt blocks.

Dutchman's Puzzle

Indian Star

Sunshine Days

Triangles and Stripes

Woven Ribbons

And then I finished a Christmas Quilt I had started in early 2021. This is a back of the couch quilt that I made for myself.  The pattern I used is  Four Square by A Quilting Life Designs.  It's pretty much just made a row less so that I could end up with a throw sized quilt rather than a bed sized one.  I had pieced the blocks in early 2021, and sewn the top with the exception of the borders.

This past Spring, I put the borders on, but then got busy with other things and set it aside.  In November, I pulled it out again, and made the backing.  Then, last week, I sandwiched, quilted and bound it.  So glad to have it finished for using this season!

unfortunately, the colors didn't come out true in photos

I used this really cute mitten print for the backing.  

I also finished a couple of counted cross stitch ornaments, made two aprons, and am working on a flannel nightgown for Faline.  All of those, however, are Christmas gifts, so I'll wait to show pictures and talk about them until after the holidays.

The NOT She Shed

 Years ago, DH and I talked about building a shed near the garden to keep the tomato cages, stakes, hoes, tiller, and other garden-related tools in.  Like most everything requiring both time and money, it got put off, and put off again, and put off some more.  Three years ago, I picked the exact spot I wanted the shed erected in, and have made sure to not plant anything perennial in it.

In the summer of 2020, partly thanks to one window of DH's home office looking out over the garden, and partly thanks to him not working 60-70+ hours a week (covid's silver lining; it broke the cycle of DH having to be on site for meetings, tests, data analysis, etc, at all days and times no matter what our personal calendar might hold), and partly because DH remembered we had a big pile of salvaged lumber still, he decided that it was time to build the garden shed.

Oh hallelujah!

It went up over a series of weekends, and was weather tight by the time winter weather hit.

First, DH graded the site with the tractor bucket and back blade.  Then he erected the floor joists (salvaged wolmanized from somebody's torn-down deck) and put on the floor sheeting (wolmanized, bought new).   For a day or two it looked like we had a dance floor in the garden, LOL. 

Then the first wall went up, and our dance floor looked like a stage.  DD1, DD2 and I joked that we would host Shakespeare in the Garden performances.  Not being a huge fan of Shakespeare, or plays, DH got the other three walls made pretty quickly.  No Shakespeare in the Garden here.

 

Is it a stage with backdrop?

Using rough sawn pine from trees that he, our boys, his brother, and a couple friends cut down about 15 years prior at the family cabin property up north, DH framed the four walls, sheeting each wall (sheeting bought new) before he and I stood them one by one.  The north facing wall sports a large, non-opening, window that we'd picked up free somewhere over a decade ago and have been storing for 'just the right project'.  On the west side, he put in double sliding doors, as I requested when designing the shed.  When fully open, there is enough room to get a 5' wide whatever-you-want in and out of the shed.  Handy for the large and not extremely steerable dump cart I have, as well as the longer stakes and bean poles.

On another weekend, DH made roof trusses out of more of the rough sawn pine from up north, and we sheeted the roof with some OSB that we'd been given at least five years prior by someone just trying to clean up their overgrown and underused stash of building materials.  The shingles, which providentially (because they were another free 'here, take it, it's been sitting around forever') match the color of the shingles of our house, were put on in two afternoons, DH laying the starter course and me adding on from one side while he worked on the other.  It felt really good to be working on roofing together, as odd as that may sound.

As winter hit, he built my 'workbench', basically a counter at the exact height of my bent elbows when I'm standing up.  Perfect for working at, it's surface is at a height where I don't have to bend down even slightly and get a sore back (as I do in the kitchen and bathrooms if I want to work on something on those counters.  The curse of a being tallish woman, LOL).  He ripped some of those rough sawn 2x4s into 1-by and screwed them onto a frame he built.  The following spring I sealed it with a clear poly sealant, so that the wood will never turn gray (gray might be trendy, but I just prefer the new wood look over the aged wood look).

I found some free upper cabinets someone was getting rid of from a kitchen remodel and brought them home for use in the shed.

DH also built me two hose hangers for storing my hundreds of feet of garden hoses in the off season.  In the Fall of 2021, he finally added a shelf above the hose hangers for me to store the sprinklers and other hose attachments on when not in use.

At the same time as building that shelf, he built three shelves on the opposite wall.  Until we can get the greenhouse side of the shed built (plan is to add it to the south side of the shed, incorporating glass panels formerly from some sliding doorwalls that we were given literally decades ago and have been saving for that purpose), I plan to store my seed trays and supplies on a couple of those shelves.  I will probably also use one of the shelves to hold the extra plastic pots I saved for when I need to dig up and relocate (or give away) some perennials.

Stocked and ready for use.

This Fall (2022), we ran a water line out to the shed, and installed an outdoor frost free hydrant near the northwest corner of the shed.  I can't wait until next growing season when I won't need 125' of hose just to get water to the garden!  I'll actually be able to put a splitter on the hydrant and run two hoses, each with their own sprinkler, simultaneously when I want to water the garden!  I might not even need 400' of hose anymore in order to reach each and every corner of the garden.

At the same time as we had a trench dug for running the waterline from the well at the house out to the new hydrant in the garden, DH also installed an underground electric line.  That line is stubbed into the garden shed, but has yet to be poked through the basement wall and carried across the basement to the electric panel.  A winter project that he'll hopefully get to in the next couple of months (after deer hunting season is over), and by Spring I'll have lights and an outlet or two in my shed!

Why is this post titled The NOT She Shed?

Because when we first started building the shed, and DH told his friends, his mother, his sisters, that we'd been busy building my garden shed, they all said "Oh, so you got Kris a She Shed".  To which I vehemently replied "it's NOT a She Shed.  It's a proper, functional, farm outbuilding."  Not a trendy foo-foo backyard girlie hideaway.  Did you see any couches in the photos? Any gauzy anything artfully draped?  Any cutesy decor?

NO! You saw function, function, function.  This is not a place for lounging, and entertaining and drinking wine with girlfriends.

UGH.  I don't do girlie. And I don't do trendy. (And I don't lounge and drink wine with girlfriends.) 

I do functional.

I actually threatened to beat the ass of the next person who called it a She Shed. 

What can I say; call me a tomboy, and I'm cool with it.  Call me Amish, yeah, I can handle that (it's somewhat of a compliment).  Call me anything that sounds like you're lumping me in with the typical American woman, well, that's an insult.  If I've learned anything in my life, it's that I'm definitely not typical.

Knitting Update, December

I'm a little thrown off by the first Wednesday in December being the 7th.  My brain really wanted to post a knitting update last Wednesday, but then it realized that day wasn't December yet, and that I had a whole additional week to get some knitting (and reading) in before making a post.

So I knit and read some more, then made the final edit of this post.

Since November's update, I:

Finished blocking and adding buttons to Faline's birthday sweater.

 

Finished Buck's stocking (but forgot to take a final photo).

Knit 2 dish cloths for me, one of which I made the pattern up from my own little brain! 

my very first me-written dishcloth pattern

 All I did was, with size 7 needles, cast on 39stitches.  K rows 1-6, then do K5, stockinette 29, K5 for 6 rows, followed by K5, reverse stockinette 29, K5 for 6 rows, and alternate between rows of stockinette and reverse stockinette 4 times (so you have 4 sets stockinette and 4 sets reverse stockinette), finish with 6 rows of knit, and then bindoff knitwise.  Super simple.

Knit myself a Saint Anthony cable hat using a skein of bulky yarn from my stash.  I did make a few modifications, the main one being that I frogged it after the first inch and a half because it was going to be too big/loose for my head (I have a small head, like less than 22").  I recast on using a size 9 needle and that worked for the snugness I wanted, but did end up a little shorter than I prefer.  If I were to knit it again I'd either add another repeat of the cable chart, or I'd reduce the cast on stitches by 10 and work in the size of needles originally called for.

Knit a couple dish cloths for DD1 (because she commented on the new dishcloth I'd made myself, so I figured she might enjoy some nice new dish cloths too). 

I also read a little, but not a whole lot.

In Her Boots by KJ Dell'Antonia. This was a pretty quick and entertaining easy read.  

Nothing Bundt Trouble by Ellie Alexander.  My last Bakeshop mystery for the year, I'll wait until 2023 before I read the next in the series (another series I'm trying not to plow through, so that hopefully I never run out of titles to read by this author).  I always enjoy seeing what the latest murder mystery spin is for Jules Capshaw.

Hunting

 Regular firearm deer season has come to an end at this little place here (but there's still archery, muzzleloading, and late antlerless seasons between now and January, so lots of chances yet for harvesting venison).  It started rather cold and snowy.

When I left the house,  it was cold, and cloudy, but not snowing, and the ground was bare.  Practically the moment I climbed up into the tree stand and sat down, the sky opening and snow fell.  Blowing basically right into my face.

After the first hour, I looked like this:

Near the end of the third hour, I looked like this:

I didn't stay to see what the accumulation would be after more than three hours.  I went in the house, pulled the ice chunks out of my ponytail, and had a big mug of hot chocolate.

The afternoon wasn't quite as snowy, at least not falling from the sky.  There was a nice couple of inches on the ground which made it a whole lot easier to see the deer from a distance.  But, a distance was as close as they got for me.  Other than a silly little button buck that I saw nearly every time I sat during the next two weeks.  And he's off limits until he gets another year or two on him.

Which means that it was a bust for me.  I may or may not go out during the December seasons; really depends on my schedule and the weather.  I missed quite a few hunting opportunities due to working mornings, unexpectedly having DS1's kids 3 afternoons/evenings, a warm spell that brought pouring rain, a wind storm with 45mph gusts (not great for sitting in a tree. . .), and pulling a muscle in my back which made sitting still impossible.  *sigh* Maybe next year.

DH, however, got lucky on the very last evening of November.  He was able to harvest a nice 8-point buck.  

He also had the opportunity to go out to Colorado with a friend of his in late October/early November, where they stayed on the ranch of a friend of the friend's dad and did some elk and mule deer hunting.  The elk didn't show themselves, but the mule deer did, and DH was able to get this beautiful 10 point.

Can't wait to do a side-by-side taste test comparison of Michigan white tail and Colorado mule deer.

Thanksgiving. . .

 This Thanksgiving, I found myself unexpectedly being thankful that we have more than one toilet in our house. Because. . .

The one and only bathroom (technically, a half-bath) on the main floor of the house, the one company most definitely uses, became unusable around 9 p.m. on Wednesday night when DH decided that would be a good time to attempt to clear a suspected small clog in the plumbing by plungering the main floor toilet. And plungering. And plungering as hard and fast as he could.

Result: 

• toilet leaking around the seal at the floor.  
• Very wet bathroom.  
• Very wet basement directly under the drain for that bathroom.
• Lots and lots of wet towels

Secondary result: 

• unhappy wife (who had spent nearly an hour earlier that day deep cleaning said bathroom and readying it for having 12 additional potty trained people in our home for Thanksgiving Day).  
• Unusable bathroom for Thanksgiving festivities.

Tertiary result:

• wife had to squeeze company-standards-cleaning the upstairs bath (the one our kids used while living at home) AND the master bath (and tidying the master bedroom since that's how you access the master bath) into her Thanksgiving itinerary (with, you know, roasting a turkey, prepping veggie dishes, recleaning the kitchen after food prep, making sure there's enough seating for all the guests, etc).
• all guests had a good laugh when they heard why they had to climb a flight of stairs just to go pee because their Dad/Papa had plungered the toilet to death.

Multiple toilets are a good thing.  I'm thankful we own three.

Horse Update, November

 When school (and therefore babysitting Faline twice a week) started back up in August, I vowed to myself that I was NOT going to let that get in the way of riding/working Camaro at least three times a week.  It's been a struggle, but I've successfully kept that commitment to myself and him.  And, while our rate of progress has slowed from what it was over the summer, I do see that we are making advances.

The leg yield at walk is very nice off the right leg.  Not as smooth off the left leg, but at least now I can say he is, most of the time, actually crossing his legs and not just drifting sideways through his shoulder.

The canter!  Departs are so vastly improved from a year ago. Almost never rushed anymore, typically popped into with balance and calmness as soon as I ask him.  And downward transitions have improved too, more of a big balanced trot than a falling onto his face and catching himself by throwing his head up/dropping his back and scrambling at trot.

Trot is where I see the see-saw of moving from one stage to the next.  As he improves elsewhere, his trot falls apart: gets tense, gets unbalanced, he wants to drop his back, he wants to get distractable and spooky.  And then, a month later, the nice working trot returns.  And then I try to fine tune another area, and we again take a step back in trot.  As long as I remind myself the regression into shitty trot is a sign that we're improving overall--aiming for a newly raised bar as it were-- it's not too frustrating.  But sometimes I forget to remind myself that.

Something else he and I have been doing for the last couple of months is have a designated "walk day" each week where walk is the only gait we work in.  The main objective in that was to try to overcome some muscling imbalance he naturally has in his shoulders (because of a slight club foot) by doing lots of serpentines, spiral in-spiral out, and other suppling movements.  Also to strengthen his back by doing some pole work and lots of walk-halt-walk and walk-halt-back-walk transitions.

Boy, does Camaro like walk day!  He's not that great at poles (although the poles I have available are too easily moved out of position with the slightest nudge from a hoof so doing a series of just two poles more than about 5 times is impossible without dismounting and realigning the poles to their proper spacing) but he goes over them eagerly without trying to duck out on either side.  By the time we've warmed up, done 2-3 sets of poles, and a couple walk-halt transitions, he really starts to swing through the back and I can easily feel each hind foot every single stride as he rounds his back more and steps further under himself with his hind legs.  By the end of a half-hour walk day session, he's swinging along happily with a slobbery bit and just the most self-satisfied expression.

I'd like the see if I can get DH to help me build 2-3 cavaletti so that I can work Camaro over those instead of loose ground poles.  We would still use them with the attached poles touching the ground (rather than raising them so he has to step higher), but he won't be able to knock heavy cavaletti out of alignment like he does the lighter weight ground poles any time he drags a toe just a hair.

While I'm on 'family leave' from babysitting while DD2 uses her maternity leave time, I'm hoping to ride or otherwise work Camaro 4-5 times a week.  That goal will hopefully allow us to get another burst of progress in before the mid-winter cold hits and makes it difficult to ride regularly.  I'm toying with the idea of a dedicated trot day in addition to our walk day, but instead of poles at trot I think I would do some cardio/endurance building-type trot sessions interspersed with some spiral in-spiral out at trot.  See if that helps lessen the shitty trot occurrences while making gains in other gaits.