Sadder news!

We are out of wood! The furnace has been turned on for three days now. There is one small pile held in reserve against a storm/power failure. Enough to go maybe three days. The cat is ready to disown me. He's beeen sleeping under the stove for the last three months. Time to start cutting for next year. Pray for an early spring! Woods

Sad news.

Hangmans Cottage is for sale! For several tears I have followed the blog of a Brittish homesteader. After several years of health issues he's selling his homestead. I'm posting a link to his site so others can get some inspiration. I know he's inspired me greatly. www.go-self-sufficient.com/index.html This is his post that got me started following him. www.go-self-sufficient.com/outlaw.htm Enjoy Woods

A just in time barter.

Brought home a face cord of seasoned apple wood today. Just in time as we are about 1/3 of the way through our last cord of soft maple. Figuring this should last us well into feb. if not till march. Hasn't been as cold lately so we aren't firing the stove so hard. I am going to have to file up the chainsaw, but, the cost was perfect. Two and a half hours of my time. Most of it riding in the truck. It turns out a coworker cleans basements on the side in exchange for whatever he can scrounge out of what he hauls. He's been driving around for a week with over a ton of scrap metal on his truck. Most of it an old steam heating boiler. His normal helper has been sick and it was too heavy for his wife to help. He got a chunk of cash and I got about $75.00 worth of firewood. I also got leads on three dead walnuts that need cutting up for next year. He also promised to send any tree calls he gets my way as he doesn't do trees anymore since he got rid of his wood stove. Gotta do what ya gotta do! Would rather spend $5.00-$10.00 for chainsaw gas and oil than hundreds to the gas company every year! Money not spent equals money that doesn't have to be earned at a job. Which means more time to hunt and fish, which also equals less earned money needed! Woods

Another opening day!

Today was the first day of muzzleloader season here in western NY. I spent the morning in a friends 10 acre woodlot. Timeline went kinda like this. 5:45 am, Roll out give Pelenaka a squeeze and a kiss, load the car. 6:15 am, stop at Tim Hortons for coffee, then spend 15 minutes waiting for the woman in front of me to decide what she wants. 7:01 am, pull into friends driveway half an hour later than I planned. 7:08 am pop caps to clear the nipple and load up. start the quarter mile walk back to the woods. Discover knee deep snow on the lane and ankle deep mud in the corn next to it. Not too bad walking if I stay right on the edge of the lane. 7:20 am, step into edge of the woods, wade a shallow puddle and discover the waterproofing on my right boot need to be redone. Within five minuted discover left boot isn't any better. Decide to stalk the woods up to high ground and hope my woolies keep me going. 7:35-8:00 am, Wander woods following tracks of a single turkey. Big tracks, figure it's a big bachelor tom. 8:00 am, find myself tangled in brambles. Was so intent on turkey sign, I ignored everything else around me. 8:15 am, find a trail being used by a small deer. I'm not a trophy hunter, small deer are better eating. Not saying I wouldn't put a trophy eight pointer in the freezer and his head on the wall. Saying I would rather drag a 100lb forkhorn through the mud back to the car than something huge. 8:25 park my butt on a blowdown maple 30 yards off little deers trail. Sitting up off the ground, big rootball to lean back against, which also breaks up my outline. 8:35 am, light drizzle falling. Take time to be thankful I brought a caplock carbine and not the flinter. Hunch over guns lock trying to keep everything dry. Approx 8:40 am. take brief nap. Not by choice, hunters will understand, it's peaceful, nobody's bothering you, it happens. 9:05 am, Nearby movement wakes me. Not a deer. Consider small batch of squirrel stew for lunch. Realize that at all of about 4 yards, there won't be a whole lot left by a .50 caliber round ball propelled by 80 grains of ffg. Might only have squirrel tail stew. decide to wait for something bigger, or at least farther away. 9:30 am, You know what? My feet didn't feel cold until my ass got cold from sitting on a wet log. 10:00 am, decide to sit tight another half hour. Feet are already wet and cold. 10:30am, West end of this woods has a big swale that cuts into it. Lots of water in there. It's also on the way back to the car. When I entered these woods it was still kind of dark to be bumbling around in there. Turns out also lots of deer in there! All probably figured out I was there and left. They did leave lots of fresh sign behind. Decide to stand still for half an hour overlooking the busiest trail and see if any return. 11:00 am. Feet so cold it's painful. Decide to swing trough the woods and leave in the north east corner. Drier that way. Pass gutpile from doe that's in the freezer. There is a fox in the woods, and he's been treating it as his personal grocery. May come back after deer season with .32 squirrel gun and see if we can get a nice fox pelt. 11:20 am. Turn on car, crank up heat. Dig diet pepsi out of back seat. Wish it were hot coffee. Oh well! A hot woodstove is 20 minutes away. Can get coffee at home. Tomorrow I will return. Earlier, I will enter from the back side of the woods, the dry side that is. I will take a stand watching over that swale. Oh by the way. I will also be wearing my brand new pair of rubber knee high boots from tractor supply. Also, they will have 2 layers of wool socks inside them. The woods are an awesome place to be. But wet cold feet suck no matter where you are! Woods

Venison for dinner!

Sunday we put meat on the table without firing a shot! Late sunday afternoon we left the club and stopped at a friends on the way home. He offered us a chance at hunting his private woods. Ealier in the day he had shot a big doe, and was done for the day. Earlier in the day his cousin had shot at another small doe. She ran off and he couldn't find her. As we left the woods we found her. I had a doe tag for that zone so we tagged her and put what we could in the freezer. 3/4 of her was still good so we've got about 15lbs of sausage, 3 big roasts, and the backstraps in the freezer. Having the tenderloins for dinner tonight with wild rice and yams. We also have her hide and the hide from my friends doe. As soon as they are tanned they will become a possibles bag to replace my old one. With what's left I will try and get Pelenaka to sew into a pair of mittens for the sidekick. If there is enough left after that we will make some moccasins. From past experience though I know that even though a hide looks big, once you start cutting it's alot smaller than you think. Woods

Where I belong, in the woods

Today was opening day of firearm deer season here in western NY. My first opener since 1987. Wow didn't realize it had been over 20 years until I typed it. Oh, I've hunted deer. But, due to job and time constraints it just hasn't happened except here and there. This year I just happened to have a weeks vacation coming and the ability to take time off at just the right time. Today wasn't a great day in the woods. But, there is no such thing as a bad day in the woods. It was also my stepdaughters first deer opener. It could have been a real letdown for her. She's a trooper though and made the best of it. Being her first time out I made araingments to hunt one of my gun clubs. I figured it would be a more controlled situation and safer for her. However I didn't know just how many people hunted the clubs lands. I knew they had enough people for some serious drives. I've been on deer drives and don't in particular care for them. I picked us a spot down in the gorge of Oatka creek. I knew the drive would be above us on top and we wouldn't be in the line of fire. I'll tell you this when the shooting up there started I knew what being a dad felt like. Right off the bat I moved DD to the down range side of a big beech tree. While we weren't in the direct line of fire I sure do know what the wrong end of a shooting gallery sounds like. Now the place we were hunting is under management and is antlerless only. If I shot the first doe she was done hunting, due to her status as a junior hunter. So, she was told the first deer was hers and I'd be her backup shot. BTW, we were both shooting traditional sidelock muzzleloaders with cloth patched round balls. Well that drive did send us a doe, a big one. She came down the hill saw us move and froze. Then she did that jump and turn 180 degrees thing that only a deer can do. There she is ears and nose twitching trying to figure out what we were. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. DD didn't shoot. Well that doe did that crouch she was going to jump, as she started to rise I let fly with a .50 cal ball and missed. Then I heard the "what the?" from my daughters tree. It seems she was just getting her sights settled when I shot. I broke my word that the first shot was hers. That pains me to no end. I could only think her gun misfired, not that due to a different angle she couldn't tell whether the deer had antlers or not. She forgave me though. trouble is forgiving myself. As it turns out it was just as well. As we left we stopped at the clubs rifle range to empty the guns. Well hers didn't go off. Several months ago I picked up an old kentucky replica from the 70's. Poorly built from a kit it had ignition problems. With quite a bit of tinkering I thought I had the gun shooting well enough to hunt with. The plan was to hunt with it, then after hunting season rebuild it into something nice. Turns out I got it working good when it was warm and dry. Put it in the misty damp air at 40 degrees and all it's old problems return. Tomorrow the sidekick will be carrying a single shot 20 gauge with slugs. I will be carrying my kentuckian replica that shoots cloverleafs all day long at 50 yards. Tonight we eat spagetti and meatballs from the store. Maybe to morrow we eat liver and onions from the woods. Lets hope at least.

Not blogging much lately.

As my loyal followers have probably noticed I haven't been around much. It's been a busy summer. Our church started a community garden and I signed up for a plot. Then rather than let weeds take over the unclaimed plot next door, I took a second plot. Before that our computer picked up a virus I couldn't get off of it. So we bought a laptop and cell phones. Then dumped the phone company. Right now we're stuck with a library wireless connection. It's free, but, the libraries summer hours and my work hours don't leave me alot of opportunities to get online. I tried a wireless broadband card from Cricket as it would be the cheapest route without having to have a contract. Well it stank to say the least. Monday, I'm returning it. It made my virus ridden desk top on DSL seem quick. I'd guess the wireless card was somewhere around half as fast as a dial up connection. On top of that we couldn't get the wireless router to work as long as it was on the computer. The whole idea was portable, and the wireless for when we were out of thier service area. Maybe around the time the snow flies I can get Pelenaka to lighten up on her hatred of the cable company. If I can maybe there will be road runner in my future. Until then I'll have to sneak around the libraries hours. Woods