Applesauce and other random topics

Goose season is over here, but here as a fantastic picture of Colleen all bundled up for hunting in the pasture. The flyway doesn't go right across our land and I think I may search for neighbors willing to let us try their land next year. We'll see.



I was sick yesterday and spent most of the day curled up with the cats. This is Maggie, the princess of the house. She curled up beneath a cowboy hat. I had planned on starting on barn projects, but physical labor was out of the question. We need to shovel out a bunch of very old manure from the place where the pigs are going to go. We also need to fork out about five tons of moldy old hay from the center of the barn. There are owl pellets, cow pies, and who knows what all in this deep layer of hay. I think we are going to hire some local unemployed friends and acquaintances to help. Pay a reasonable wage in cash, plus a farm lunch. Bake up a ham and what all. One problem is that there is no easy access to the area below the loft where the hay is piled. We'll have to fork it on to tarps, drag it through a side door, and then on to the loader on the tractor. Hard, dirty, sweaty work. Then I need to put up some windows and doors and patch some holes in the sides of the barn. Lots to do before we get goats in spring.

We are starting to get people interested in pre-ordering half and whole hogs this year. Orders for eggs are higher than we can supply. We've had people ask about large orders of meat chickens, but we have to figure out how to do that legally. We will be ordering seeds on Wednesday. Things are coming along.


And finally, applesauce. We canned a batch of apple sauce from the tail end of our fall apples from the orchard. It turned out splendidly. We still have enough for another batch of apple sauce or apple butter. Canning is so satisfying an activity. We still have a bunch of frozen tomatoes that we couldn't get canned in the fall. We need to make them into tomato sauce.

We went puppy supply shopping last night. The puppy comes home on Saturday. We can't wait. It should be an interesting event introducing her to the cats.

Sick or not, I plan on teaching today.

Shooting

A friend and I had a great time shooting shotguns (trap) and revolvers in the pasture today. I was alarmed by my saggy pants in this picture though. My belly is too big, and I have no rear end apparently. I need to lose some weight around the middle and find another brand of jeans.

Back to the shooting. We shot trap with 20 gauge shotguns. I have a nice Charles Daly side-by-side. It's my lightweight rabbit, grouse, pheasant, partridge gun. Good for walking all day with. We also shot my .44 special Smith and Wesson revolver, a Ruger .22 single-six, and my friends Glock .45.

All of my guns have actual hunting or animal defense uses. The .44 is my hiking and hunting sidearm. Potentially useful for black bears and mountain lions. The single-six could, theoretically, be used for grouse or rabbits. I actually shot a grouse with it once on a backpacking trip, but I've don't really try to hunt with it any more. It made a great backcountry meal. A welcome break from freeze dried noodles and peas.

We both shot well in trap with the shotguns, making me eager to grouse hunt with the new puppy next fall. I shot about 7 out of 10, while my friend hit one 10 out of 10.

Well, it's off to process the rest of this falls apples. Apple sauce, apple butter, and pie filling.

Venison Diane

O.K., so I'm not a food photographer but here is a picture of our scrumptious wild game meal last night. When I cook with meats like venison or goose, we usually eat small portions. The meat is so dense you don't really feel like eating a big slab of it. We had venison diane over brown rice. Garnished with fresh parsley, home canned beets from our garden, and a big salad. The venison diane usually calls for igniting some brandy in the pan you've cooked the venison in, but I skipped that part.

2-4 venison steaks cut 3/4-1 inch thick. We used sirloin, but I've also used backstrap.
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
3/4 cup beef or venison broth
6 tbs. butter total
a few tbs. of red wine
black pepper

Melt three tablespoons of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute until golden. Add the beef broth and a little wine and reduce by half.

Prepare the venison by pressing coarsely ground pepper into both sides. Melt another three tablespoons of butter in a steel frying pan. (the wine will eat the cure off of your cast iron) Fry the venison in the butter until rare or medium rare. Remove venison and set aside in a warm oven. Deglaze the venison pan with a little more wine, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the broth and onion mixture and reduce a little more.

Put the warm venison steak, which you are hoping is a nice medium rare now, on the brown rice and drench in sauce. Garnish with fresh parsley.

I usually aim for a steak the size of a deck of playing cards on this type of recipe then supplement with a vegetable and salad. Have fun and enjoy.

You can't beat bacon and garlic

Quick food? Comfort food? Healthy food? For a quick meal last night I improvised with three of my favorite ingredients. Bacon, garlic, and wild game. The bacon was from a whole hog we bought locally, the garlic was "Chesnok Red" from our garden, and the goose was shot in the pasture behind our house. It was simple and quick. I cut the goose into strips, wrapped it around whole peeled garlic cloves, wrapped that in bacon, and stuck a toothpick through it. Baked in a 350 degree oven until the bacon was done, but the goose was medium rare. I don't know how to tell you to estimate the cooking time, only that you don't want to over-cook wild game. Better to err on the side of too little time as long as the bacon is done.

It was wonderful to pop one of these treats into your mouth. You only needed to eat a couple as the goose meat is so dense it fills you up quickly. Roasted garlic is always a treat, and anything is better wrapped in bacon.

The meal was topped off by a large salad. Balancing our the weight of the bacon and goose.

Baby Goats!

We we to a goat breeder's farm today to look at baby goats. This is a yearling we might get. She would be "in milk" when we got her. It would be less complex for us to get a milking doe after she gave birth than to get one that was pregnant and deliver kids ourselves. It seems like our ideas for the barn will work just fine. We're still worried about all the moldy old hay that's piled up in the center, but we can either figure out a way to empty it or simply block it off from the goats. Getting the old hay out will be a major undertaking and may even require cutting a new door into the side of the barn.


These are some of the young goat kids. They are so amazingly cute. I was amazed at how they could be in the chilly barn with the door open at such a young age. We got to see a kid and momma that was only an hour old. The circle of life. Birth and growth in Spring.

Colleen got to hold one of the baby goats. Aren't they both adorable together? We are going to get a couple of Saanan dairy goats this Spring. It will be a major life change for us. Well I guess all of this farming will be a major life change. I've been traveling and playing my whole life. It is getting very different to be tied down to a home and to animals in one place.
"Tied down" is really the wrong phrase though. Grounded, more like. Lightness and weight. Lightness seems like freedom, but weight gives meaning. The more I put down roots and dig deep to one place and a life there, the more significant my life becomes.

We are hashing out the final details and hope to have made a decision about the goat venture in a day or two. We are truly blessed with the opportunity to do this.

Palouse Goose

After spending an embarrassing number of mornings in a blind in the back of our pasture, I finally shot a goose. In years past they have flown regularly over this part of the Palouse, but I had always hunted on or former landlady's farm. We are about five miles from there. I don't know that the different location made all the difference though. I think that the cold front a few weeks ago, the one that froze our pipes, pushed a lot of the geese further South for the winter.

There were good numbers of geese this morning though and after striking out on a couple of flocks called a group into my decoys. It was perfect. It was everything I love about waterfowl hunting. They came into my calling as nice as nice. They bowed up and floated in as slow as slow. I got a perfect shot at about 20 feet and dropped the goose on the spot. A quick, humane, ethical kill.

Later, when we cleaned the goose, we marveled at the heavy layer of fat on it. We breasted and skinned this one as the wounds were to significant to make a pretty roast out of it. I do the breasts, and Colleen does the legs. She's just better at disjointing them. It's her wildlife biology background I think. She directs all the cutting when we butcher deer too. I gut and field dress, she is head butcher.

Unfortunately goose season ends in a week. We'll both go in the morning and then I'll go as many times as I can before the season closes. I think at least one of these goose breasts is destined for a pot pie. Can't wait.

Vocatio - "a summons"

The original meaning of vocation in 1426 was "a call from God to follow a spiritual way of life." The word comes from the Latin vocatio meaning a call or summons.

I'm back to teaching this week and loving it. I love working with young people and their families to help them grow and succeed. That said, teaching is very exhausting emotionally for me.

I teach special education in an alternative setting. I work for a publicly funded charter school that provides services for families who are essentially "homeschooling." Working together with families and children to come up with the best way to meet their special learning needs is fantastic.

It meets my needs too. I don't handle the stress of the full time public school world very well. I work part time as an "independent contractor" with the charter school and therefore arrange my hours with the families I serve. If I want to plan lessons at 2 am, then that's what I do. The other day I planned my lessons on a notebook in the goose blind.

So, my students are wonderful. I work with each student one-on-one and they are each so different and unique. I have a student who, just out of the blue, decided to do a powerpoint biography of John Muir, one of my heroes. This student does "service learning" with the National Forest Service. I met with another younger student this week for the first time. We got some work done, then just chatted and drew and got to know each other a little better.

I get to use the skills and the patience that God has given me to best serve these families. The students and families, in turn, teach me. I grow and learn each day. I start each day with a prayer that I may be of service to these kids. I pray that I may bring a little knowledge and light and love into their lives.

I am truly blessed to have a job that I love so much. It is truly a "calling" in the Latinate sense of the word.