Dear Readers of this Blog,
I have an important announcement to make:
(but don’t worry, it’s nothing serious)

It has come to my attention that there have been wars, I mean complaints and rumors of complaints that there has been very little action on this blog. Which means, I guess, that I should dispel all of the myths and conspiracy theories which I’m sure don’t abound in the blogosphere. So here’s the grand abolishment of all of the above: We Haven’t Written Anything Lately. And so there you have it. (in other words (to condense the prior paragraph) there hasn’t been any action on this blog.) (And all this merely proves that I can write all that and basically say absolutely nothing!)

I am happy :-) to report that I’m now feeling quite a bit better after being under the weather for about a week (off and on). I am sad :-( to report that now Mom and Jonathan seem to be suffering from the same blasted bug.

However, (as some of you may have guessed by now) I’m not feeling particularly serious tonight, so bear with me. (it was you who asked for a post after all) (although perhaps that could be developed into a strategy for generating comments, you know that whole prolonged absence bit…)

Here’s a piece I wrote some time ago but never really finished, and of course never posted. But perhaps it will amuse y’all for a bit so have at it. (While your readin’ that I’ll just mosey on and write a bit more–see ya in two shakes of a dog’s tail (provided you have a slow tail wagging type))

“The shades of evening come all too soon, daybreak is later, and still there seems to be no time to rest.

Tonight I stayed home from AWANA because of an incident I had with a logging chain. The whole thing started (and ended) at the W. family farm….We were trying to accomplish a simple task–take hay to the sheep in the first field which is covered in about six inches of snow and is not affording much forage at this point in time. To do this we load round bales on to flat rack hay wagons with the skid-steer and pull them out to the field with a tractor. I warmed up the ol’ Ford 7000 and hooked onto the load. The main problem with that choice of horsepower is that Ford (as we affectionately call her) don’t have enough weight to say so, and thus in the winter she is apt to sit and spin. Which is what she did. We got her started with a little push from the skid-steer and and I made it as far as the road. Where I stopped to let Daniel climb aboard. That was a mistake. Now I couldn’t get started again. (This could (should?) have made us think about getting the bigger tractor right there) So once again I got moving with a shove from the skid-steer (which now has new tires that make it possible to actually do more that just sit and spin-and that was on concrete in the middle of the summer) and this time I kept on going. The road was so icy that Ford did a lot of spinning even once she was going. (Another clue) Now to get to the pasture, you drive down the road aways (maybe a 1/4 mile) and then through a couple of railroad ties and down a lane. Or I should say UP a lane…. Now can you guess where I next ground to a spinning halt? Yup, half way up the hill. Great. Now what? Well, Daniel came up with his Dad’s old four wheel drive pick up. He pushed. The tractors wheels spun. The truck’s wheels spun. We didn’t move so much as an inch. So we went back to the “farm” and got the International 1066 (the “10”) and a couple of little chains. Now I mentioned chains seemed kinda small for the job at hand, but we were in a hurry (as usual) and Dan didn’t know where the big chains were. I said I didn’t want to be around when the chains snapped. (Now in case your thinking ahead here, what you think happened didn’t.) So we get the two tractors hooked together, and Dan pulls with the 10. The chain came unhooked. I re-hooked it. Again Daniel pulls. The hook and about four links of chain pull off of the one chain. I re-hook again. Once more the 10 moves forward. Then it happened (don’t worry yet). The chain snapped. And landed in a pile in the snow. So we take another trip back to the house where my truck is parked with three logging chains in the back. Unfortunately the chains were frozen in. Fortunately I was able to get them out. Back to the hill where Ford sits stranded. This time we have enough chain that the 10 will be on level ground to pull. So we’re laying out the chains and hooking everything up….I hook one chain to the front of Ford, but this one has a frozen link in it. It’s not good to pull on a link of chain sideways so I throw my weight into it to break it loose. It broke loose all right. The chain from the tractor that is. The hook came up and hit me just under the eye, leaving a nasty gash (well maybe it’s not that bad, but it sure don’t look too pretty either), and more of the chain hit me in the mouth. Thank the good Lord for that permanent retainer that the orthodontics people put in–that’s the only reason I can think of that I am writing tonight with all of my teeth still in my head. The one tooth is moved slightly out of position but considering the force of the blow, not bad. Apparently the cut on my cheek bone was bleeding quite freely, since the blood was dripping off of my nose and chin….So I did what anyone would do in such circumstances–grabbed a handful of snow and held it to my cheek. Works quite well really, the snow is cold, the pressure helps stop the bleeding, and the snow also absorbs quite a bit of the blood. It is also fairly prevalent. The injury sustained didn’t kill me by any means so we continued hooking up the tractors and pulled the hay into the field. I wasn’t much help pushing the bales off since I was clutching snow and ice to my face, but we got ‘er done and I drove Ford home and deposited the wagons by the hay pile and parked her in the barn. Then we went to the house to wash the extra blood off and see exactly what was what.”

Now y’all have a good time readin’ that did ya? Almost written in a kinda entertaining style if I do say so myself. (Which I guess I just kinda did)

Well for Christmas this year, What’s that? Oh, you want to know how the whole story turns out? Now this is where all them big time authors would leave you hanging till the next post…which in my case might be some time right along about the middle of May…2010 ;-)

But I guess I’m in a kinda ramblin’ mood tonight so why not finish up the story ‘eh?

Here goes: I went in the house washed off the blood, got a professional (sort of (no offense)) opinion from Mr. W. (“it don’t need stitches”), got a wet cloth to hold against it (in a continuing effort (and becoming more successful) to stem the tide of blood), got into the truck and drove home. Mom patched ‘er up really good with one of them there surgical sutures replacements, the steri-strip, butterfly bandage type thingys. So in the long run (now that it’s healed) I’ve got a little scar under my left eye (to match the one over my right eye on my forehead that I got from banging my head on a bed headboard when I was little (all you little kids out there take note: jumping on the bed is potentially dangerous. And I’d do it anyway (provided your folks don’t mind)). Nothing to fuss over really.

Now on to more interesting things.

Grama came up on Christmas Eve, so we’ve been doing lots of game playing (in between feeling really poorly and just laying around watching the old TV shows we got for Christmas on DVD (like Hogan’s Heroes and Gomer Pyle) At least with all the laying around and doing nothing I’ve got pretty well rested up. And I managed to avoid, Um that is to say, I very unfortunately missed out on the two extended family Christmas parties. (I’m such a Scrooge :-)) Oh well, at least now I’m ready to get back to work. All the laying around has half killed me, especially all of the feeling well enough to do a little but not well enough to do much (if ya catch my drift). And I reckon I’d better jump back into doing something before I get too used to doing nothing (it might be catching, kinda like this blasted bug) (not exactly sure who I’d catch it from, but ya’ll know how it goes.)

And now I can’t think of anything especially exciting (telling the end to that there boring story done made me forget them all) so I’ll sign off. (With nary a promise nor hint of another post anytime soon.) (so there!) (But the next one I just might try to make a little bit serious….You never know ;-)…..)

Matthew

Well I can finally believe that it’s November (now that the month is better than half over…) the trees have been completely striped of their leaves by the cruel wind and rain, snow has fallen, regular deer season has started, and the days are getting shorter.

I’m working at a deer processor’s again this year, which is always interesting (managed to slice my thumb pretty good, so I have it all taped up which is making it difficult to type! But so far I’ve been able to avoid cutting my knuckles off with the bone saw like I did last year which is nice). In the last three days five of us (me boning, two guys cutting and two packaging) have done 72 deer. The guy that owns the place (Mr. S.) hired another cutter this year to help him keep ahead of me, so the days have been a lot shorter this year than last. Today was an especially short day since we only had 17 deer to do. Business is a bit slower this year. And we’re faster, which makes business seem really slow. Maybe someday I’ll try to do something like what Mr. Kimball did with his “How to Butcher A Chicken” blog except for deer. (although it probably won’t be quite as thorough, or as professionally written. But maybe it would help someone)

Mr. W. has had surgery on his foot, and is back home recovering. We aren’t cutting deer tomorrow, so I reckon I’ll mosey on out there and see what’s up. Mr. W. is going to have a really hard time just sitting around with his foot up. Although chances are that it will be harder for his family than for him.

I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do exactly with my layers for the winter too. And if it should happen to warm up enough I need to finish up my garden cart. (if I’m home)

Well Supper is ready so I guess I’ll go eat.

Till later,

Matthew

The weather has warmed up again–it’s been getting up into the 60’s some days–I was reading in Countryside and Small Stock Journal and they called this time of year the second spring. The more we look around we agree.

I can hardly believe that it is already November….What happened to October? I do vaguely remember the tree turning, there are still some leaves on some trees, but I guess it is looking like November sorta. This also means that there are only 11 (can that be right?!?) days left ’till deer season! (Well actually, to be precise firearm season–this year we had an early doe season (Sept. 18-22) bow season (Oct. 1 – Nov. 14) and then we’ve got regular firearm (Nov. 15 – 30) late bow season (Dec. 1 – Jan. 1 ) (but when it’s that cold, and hence you’ve got that much coat on, who can actually pull a bow back?) overlapping that we have muzzleloading (a type of gun) (Dec. 5 – 21) and finally, late doe season (Dec. 22 – Jan 1)) So all in all we have plenty of opportunity to shoot (ok…hunt) a few deer around here. For some reason this year I haven’t got very excited about hunting. I still enjoy it, it’s just there’s so much work to be done. That’s why I haven’t gone out with my bow at all this year. That and I already have one in the freezer from early doe season, so I’m not too worried about getting enough for meat. My hunting motivation has kinda done a 180 degree turn. The first couple of years I hunted strictly for enjoyment and fun, this year I’m pretty much just hunting for the meat. My first years, even the thought of seeing a big buck set my heart to beating wildly. This year during early doe I had several good size bucks within range, but they didn’t excite me much more that doing the dishes would. For one thing I knew that they were off limits for that season, so even if they were in range I couldn’t shoot, so why bother getting excited? Two smaller buck did get into a “fight” a little ways behind me and that was pretty neat to see even if they were just sparing. But anyway venison makes good eating. Around here they’re pretty much all corn/soy bean fed so they don’t taste much different than beef. In fact some people call them quick beef! (due to the fact that they often run quite quickly–unlike a feed lot beef) The meat (for the most part) is very lean, in fact at the deer processor’s where I worked last fall, they recommended adding 20% pork fat just to get some grease in with it. Otherwise you have to add some kind of fat or oil (we often use olive) to get the meat started frying.

My last batch of broilers met the freezers of my customers the last part of September and the egg production is really slacking off. I also helped/taught another family of agrarians butcher some chickens for the first time. It’s always pretty neat to meet other people working towards the same goal, whether it be in person or on the internet. One afternoon, a while back, our family had a wood splitting party–we were able to split and stack roughly 13 cords of wood I’d cut last year with Mr. Joe. We have use of a wood splitter so we can move along at a pretty good clip. There’s still quite a pile of logs to split yet, so hopefully we will end up with enough to keep up through the winter–I figure that we need about 25 cords to last us. Although if the winter is as long and hard as some people say it’s gonna be (and I hope it is) we may need more like 30 cords. I reckon we’ll find out.

We’ve had several hard frosts, but now it is getting back up into the 60’s. My “fall” garden planting is still going strong (I think, haven’t actually checked it for a day or two), but the tomatoes are toast. We had them covered but the frost still got them. So much for tomatoes at Thanksgiving–I’ll have to try again next year.

The colors were especially beautiful this year, and I even got some pictures. These are at the W. family’s farm.

I took these from the top of their grain bin– some sheep and a few green fields:



They had their woods logged this summer/fall–if you look carefully, you’ll see some big equipment in the right side of the photo back by the woods:Here’s a close up:
And this is their small stack of round bales:

Well, I’d better run along–TTFN! (as Tigger always said)

Matthew