First Deer of the Season

Jamie finally got his first deer of the season during muzzle loader.

 

Jamie & his deer

 

Jamie had taken some time off of work for hunting. He had gone out every morning and evening for 4 days straight.  Finally he got this beautiful buck on the 5th morning.

 

There is an interesting story that goes along with this deer.  We had seen him numerous times on the trail camera pictures and had named him Scar.  He had a very long scar on the side of his body, probably from fighting with another buck.  Archery is the first type of hunting you can do when deer season opens.  Jamie actually shot this very deer with his bow.  The deer had run away and was never found.  Jamie was feeling awful thinking he had wounded a deer and it was just going to lie down somewhere and die.  Thankfully a few weeks later we saw him again on the trail camera doing just fine.  Scar ended up showing up at the right time for Jamie to shoot him during muzzle loader.

 

Jamie's deer -9 point

 

Jamie with Scar

 

This deer came just at the right time.  We had finished our last package of venison in the freezer just a few weeks ago.

 

Jamie got the deer skinned out and it hung for a few days for the meat to age.  Then he went to work cutting it up.

 

We ended up with 12 packages of deer steaks.  Each package will feed us for one meal.

 

Venison Steaks

 

With the rest of the deer meat, Hailey and Jamie ground it into burger.

 

 Hailey grinding venison meat

 

We ended up with 13 1lb packages of ground venison.

 

Ground Venison burger

 

 Jamie liked this deer so much he decided to mount it.  Jamie decided he wanted to try to do an European mount himself.  He researched how to do it quite a bit and got it done.  It came out great.

 

European Mount that Jamie did himself.

 

It's nice to have some venison in the freezer now but I'm still hoping that Jamie will get a few more deer this season for our family.

 

 

 

 



The End of the Garden 2012

Well the garden is done for the year.  Hailey and I went out last weekend and picked the rest of what was left.  Not much out there except Hailey's cabbage and some jalapeno and green bell peppers.

 

Jalapeno & Green Bell Peppers

 

Hailey's cabbage

 

What was really exciting was Hailey's cabbage.

 

Hailey with her cabbage

 

Hailey got her cabbage as a little bitty plant from school in 3rd grade.  They were giving out cabbage plants to the 3rd graders to promote taking care of something.  She did super with her plant.  She took very good care of it making sure she watered it everyday.  For awhile we thought it was going to die.  Some type of bug kept eating holes in it.  It stayed alive and after a couple of months it was finally big and strong enough to move out into the garden.  Hailey still continued to check on it to make sure it was growing.

 

Our first hard frost was coming so Hailey and I went out into the garden and finally picked it.  She was super excited at how big it got.  She was really proud and said that she thinks she should grow cabbage again for our garden next year.

 

She took off the outside leaves and fed them to the goats for a treat. We have the cabbage in the fridge and Hailey wants to eat it with cornbeef.

 

I am already thinking about next years garden. For the past two years we have bought tomato and pepper plants.  I'm hoping to have enough time to start those plants from seeds for our garden next year.  We also should have enough compost for the whole garden come spring.  Hopefully we won't have such a drought next year and the garden will do better.



First Year Hunting

Jamie has been hunting for years now.  With the kids getting older they are becoming more interested in hunting also.

 

Last season, Hailey sat out with Jamie while he was hunting.  This year she wanted to actually hunt.  Drew thought he would like to also.  So we decided to invest in a gun that both the kids and I could handle and shoot.

 

We bought a 243 Rifle with a scope.  This gun is super light weight.  It is only 1 shot so very easy to load.  I was excited to actually have a gun that I could take out of the gun safe and know how to handle, load and unload and actually shoot without it hurting my shoulder.

 

The kids and I started practicing shooting right away when we got the gun back in August.

 

This is us all shooting for the first time.

 

Me shooting

Drew shooting the target, the little white mark downhill

Hailey shooting, even is a dress, that's my girl :)

 

The kids and I practiced shooting a few other times on the weekends up until hunting season started.  Want to know something?  Hailey is the best shot out of all of us.

 

The weekend of October 27th was youth weekend here.  Which means that only youths can hunt on the weekend.  Hailey was the first to go out Saturday morning.  She did a great job getting up and ready with Jamie.  They did see some deer but not close enough to shoot.

 

Hailey ready for hunting

 

Drew went out with Jamie Saturday afternoon.  They didn't see anything but then Drew went out with Jamie on Sunday morning.  They did end up seeing a deer, but it appeared so quickly then walked off that Drew didn't have enough time to shoot.

 

Drew ready for hunting

 

Both kids had a great time.  I know that Jamie loves spending time with the kids and teaching them about hunting which is one of his passions.

 

Rifle season should be starting soon and there will also be one more youth weekend before hunting season is over.  The kids are excited about going out hunting again.

 

I'm patiently waiting for rifle season to start also so I can go hunting for my first time too.

 

 



Toasty Warm

With the colder season well on its way, we decided to check with our local fireplace store for some replacement parts for our wood stove.

 

Jamie & I went to the fireplace store and wow did we get an education on our wood stove.  The woman was extremely informative on our stove and gave us lots of information.  We decided to go home and check certain parts to make sure they were working properly before we bought any replacement parts.

 

Well, lets just say our old wood stove was shot.  The main component needed to be replaced and would have cost over $1000 to fix. 

 

Old wood stove

Old wood stove in parts

 

The old wood stove was super heavy and Jamie had to take it apart to get it out of the house.  He decided to take the parts and old stove down the street to the scrap yard.  The scrap yard took the old stove and in return we got a check for $34.  Not much but still something.

 

Now we needed to go back to the store and buy a new wood stove.  We choose a much simpler design.  It is also is much easier to operate since it only has one lever for air flow.  We also got a blower which is very handy. We use the blower in the morning to warm up the kitchen and dining room quick for the kids while they eat breakfast.

 

Jamie & I picked up the stove on our trailer and our friend Jeff was nice enough to come over and help Jamie get it in place, since this stove was really heavy too.  Since Jamie is handy we were able to connect the piping to the stove ourselves.

 

This is our new stove.

 

New wood stove

 

We had to do a series of fires to condition the stove, which went fine.  The stove is now being used daily as the temperatures have dropped.  As we did with our old stove we plan to heat the whole house with the stove every season.

 

All summer long we worked on harvesting wood and have what we hope will be enough for this years winter.  We are very pleased with the new wood stove.  It is defiantly more efficient as we use less wood than we were before.  We have been keeping track and we use about 7-10 pieces per day to keep the house warm.  In Jamie's and the kids opinion hot since the house is usually around 80 degrees.  Of course the dogs and I like it.

 

I'm glad that we were able to get a new stove, since the other one was so unsafe.