My first bottle of BuckJam

Driving the girls to school this morning we saw deer crossing the road three times. I realized that it won't be long before rifle season starts so I need to get ready. After dropping the girls off at school I went to the store to stare at the wall of deer bait, I guess would be the term. Even after living here for a few years I never realized how much stuff they have to try to attract deer. Everything from the fifty pound bags of corn you see everywhere to freshly squeezed juice of some kind of gland from a doe, which actually warns not to put it on yourself or you will rudely assaulted by a randy buck.

I decided to start with a bottle containing a gallon or so of BuckJam, some kind of syrupy mix of sugar and salt. You clear a spot in the dirt and simply pour the thick goo on the ground. Apparently deer are not opposed to eating a salty dirt snack. Well see.

On my way back to house I stopped about half way down from the road to the house where the corner of a forty acre plot meets our a section of our place. The forty acres is land locked and has no access except through our place or one of our neighbors so it is on of the few that has not been logged. I think half the critters in twenty mile area are hiding out there. My wife's cousins is bow hunting alone one edge, the dillweeds who have a hunting camp down the road are hunting along the far edge and I am going to set up a shooting lane down another edge. I'm not really sure what a good range is for my 30-06, but I picked a spot about sixty yards from the corner figuring that I can move my blind a little bit either way. Raking off the leaves and sticks about six or seven feet from what I think is a path that the deer have been following through the brush I made I pour out my bottle of goo. Now have to wait and see I will go back in a day or two and look for tracks. Of course not being a good gnarly mountain man tracker I can't tell the difference between a hog track and a deer track, but I figure a track is track either way I will have something to shot at.

The October Easter Egg Hunt

We haven't had any eggs for a three, maybe four days now. The chickens ussually lay there eggs in the corner of the chicken coop, but for a few days we haven't had anything. Once and a while they pick a spot and make a nest to lay in. Sometimes it is in the middle of the yard, last time is was under the Ford Explorer we don't drive much anymore.

Normally it is pretty easy to find, but I can't seem to figure out where they laying this time. So now I have to head outside and dig through the bushes and the overgrown fence line to see if I can find anything. wish me luck.

Meanwhile I will keep the chickens cooped up for a few days till they get used to laying inside again.

Buried in the barn

Not far from any country house there seems to be some type of old barn, shed, garage, root cellar or whatever might be needed in that part of the country. In our case it is an old garage not far from the house that was filled with junk. I have been slowly trying to get rid of all the trash for years.

I think the reason we didn't rent a dumpster and pitch the whole lot at once is that there is good stuff buried along with the mounds of junk. All of T-post I built my garden fence with came out of the garage. Today, while I was pulling out a few thing to take to the trash collection I came across these two old Dr. Pepper bottles. Since moving here we have gathered a large collection of bottles from all over the property. Three years ago I was exploring around and I came across about twenty five bottles in an old pig pen! Around half are medicine bottles and the others were snuff bottles why they were in the old pig pen I will never know.

the big chill is coming

Rain had been coming down for a few hours when night fall began. The two combined made for the first cool, even slightly chilly evening. For a while I considered starting a fire, but realized I'd be sweating soon after, besides we don't have much firewood left. Soon we will have to buy another cord. My parents found this hillarious. Yes, we live surronded by woods and we buy fire wood. Partly, this is because firewood is one of those things you have to plan ahead of time. I should have started looking for trees to cut up in the spring so it can be split and left to dry for at least one summer. Even one summer may not be long enough. Really I should be cutting, splitting and stacking now for next winter or the winter after. The other reason is that the wood around us is mostly pine. Pine has lots of pitch and when burned this can build up in your chimeny and eventually catch on fire. Of course if you were dependent on wood for heat you would just have to be diligent about cleaning your flu.
The house we live in was built before power lines came out here way before the time of central heat and air. Personally, I don't think I could hack it. It's just to damn hot in the summer and cutting enough fire wood with a buck saw and an ax would be a nightmare. What I need to do is use what is use at least what is around us. Our pear tree had a big limb fall off a couple years ago after the huricane. This should have been cut up and stacked, but I left it until it was half rotted and had to cut it and dump it into the woods to finish rotting.
Not much I could do tonight as far as cutting, so I dug around in my tool boxes for a while until I found my chain saw file. I sat on the back porch and listened to rain while I sharped the teeth on my chain and cleaned off the pitch with acetone. The same day you get a chain saw you should get a file to keep the teeth sharp. It doesn't take long for them to dull and start bogging down. I would at least give teeth quick once over every morning I was going to be cutting.
On a sad side note the man who we have bought firewood from the last two years was murdered last spring during a robbery at his firewood operation. Even in a place that sometimes seems like Mayberry, the real world rears its ugly head.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Well, The rain gave way to a few hours of sunlight a day and my most of my seeds have sprouted. The beans, carrots and brussell sprouts seem to be coming up in there rows, but i guess the peas got moved around during the rains. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and I will get some peas.

The bad news is this little pile of dirt. I am afraid it is wood ants. Normally, we get mounds from the nasty little biting fire ants that pop of every where. This is much worse. These are almost impossible to get rid of and they eat all the plants around the mounds. This could be very bad.

This is my attempt to tie up what is left of our tomatoes. Most people around here seem to have already given up on tomatoes, but I am hanging in till the very end.

Raining at last, of course

We have been waiting for rain for months. Everything here is dry and crunchy, but now finally, the rain has started to fall. This is what I would have expected because the rain started the day after I started my fall planting. I am not sure what will work so I just started with some of what the feed store had in right now. I planted carrots, peas, more beans, lettuce, spinach and brussel sprouts which I am hoping will taste better if I grow them myself. I started up the tiller and took out the dead corn to make room for the carrots and brussel sprouts, the peas went under the fence that we trellised our pickling cucumbers on. Really the soil probably needs more compost, but were doing this on the cheap so I mixed a bag of compost with the remnants of our worm growing colony that Luci had in the old turtle sand box that the girls had out grown. Into this I chucked a little shake and feed fertilizer and a little bit of chicken stuff. If we are going to be serious gardeners we will have to start our own compost pile.


The ground is still warm so if the sun comes out in a few days hopefully most of it will sprout.
The squash and zucchini are really just now starting to produce a significant amount and I am hoping they will keep going until we start to get some of our new planting.

I didn't see this coming

I am not sure which of the following statements I would have believed less, back in my younger days as a California slacker-generation D&D-playing headbanger:

A) I would someday have a hunting license (bought my very first one yesterday).
B) I would be excited about a trip to the feed store (they got fall gardening seeds in).
C) My brother would be a gold miner at the same time I was doing the above (yes, somewhere in California my brother has become a gold miner).

I can't imagine I ever thought I would be asked the question "sir, do you want a duck stamp with that license?" . And although the answer is no, I may try to hunt turkey this year. I do know alot about Wild Turkey.

Hijackers and traders

So I have beeen having a hard time getting anything written lately because a browser hijacker has taken over internet explorer on our computer. I got the goofy thing looking for garden blog directories of all things. If you can't safely look for that what can you look for these days. Everytime I open a link from internet explorer it directs me to a bogus search engine called Toseeka. If I could find the guy who designed the damn thing I would choke the crap out of him. Now it is gonna cost me a hundred bucks to have to some tech from Norton support to tell me how to get rid of it.

Thats my bad news.

The good news is we had a visit from one of our few neighbors out here. After a quick visit they left with some squash, cucumbers and relish. All of which we have been eating a ton of this summer. The next day we found a bag of eggplant, bell peppers, and jalapeno's hanging from our mail box. Good stuff.