Trick Or Treat 2009

Hubby finally convinced me to dress up for Halloween this year. It has been years of nagging that finally made me cave. Here is the beginning of the preparation.
It takes alot of time to be this beautiful.

Wasn't sure how face paint would go over with our son, but he loved it. More importantly he left it alone and didn't smear it everywhere.

He kept looking in the mirror instead of at me which made it very hard to get the makeup on well.

This face is scarier than any costume could ever be.

Thanks mom!

creepy little girl isn't she?

The finished product

The ghoulish undead family ready to trick or treat!

We had a terrific time and got lots of compliments. People even tried to give us candy, but we declined and told them to save it for the next round of kids. The best part of living in a very small town is we know absolutely everyone, and the folks don't just give you a piece of candy, they give you treat bags or full sized candy bars. My kids rake in, now for the sugar high hang overs.

Happy Halloween to all!

All Lit Up

pumpkin carving

Today was pumpkin carving day at our house. Probably cause it's the only time we'll have to fit it in this week. We grew several pumpkins of our own, but also bought some to carve also, cause the kids like to pick them out so much. Here is my creation. Yeah you guessed it, I'm the only nut ball out there that would carve a Def Leppard pumpkin.

Hubby's pumpkin. He said it looks like me. Disturbing isn't it.

My son's scary pumpkin.

My daughter's pumpkin friend.

Here are some of the ones we grew. We just couldn't bear to cut into the big one.

BDD

BDD stands for Big Doe Down! and that's what we got last Sunday. My hubby shot her Saturday night. She had bedded down to die so my hubby went to get her, but jumped her instead. For fear she would attempt to wander too far he backed off and left her over night. Something he hates to do and makes him all but unbearable to live with until we get her home. So off we went Sunday morning to find her. I had never tracked a deer before. It was kind of fun like being a CSI. I was actually the one who found her so that made me extra happy.

The down side was something took advantage of a free meal over night. It was something small I think it was a hawk, cause they do the same thing to chickens eating the breast meat and leaving the entrails intact. A coyote or dog would have gone straight for the organ meat. Anyway we were concerned we had lost a substantial part of the meat, but after we got her gutted and cleaned up we were very lucky we didn't loose anything at all. We do not eat the rib meat anyway and that is all they touched.
We wound up dragging her about a half a mile. We went through two small woods two cornfields through a creek over a fence and up a very steep hill to get her up to the truck. You can see where the hair was pulled out, I think from dragging her across the rocks in the creek.

Kids are always excited when we get to put food from the field into the freezer.

We used to have our meat processed, but the guy went out of business so we started doing it ourselves. Sure there are other folks around that process, but this way I know how the meat is handled and can be sure I get the cuts I want and that the fat is trimmed off to my liking. So here she is hung in our garage and ready to go.

I do all the skinning. First you start by making cuts in the skin around the ankles or hocks.

Then a cut down the inside of each leg.

Then it's just pulling the skin down till you reach the front legs. Then you make a cut down the front legs and around the carpus.

Lastly the head then I'll take off the front legs.

Next is the hard part that I leave to my hubby. Sawing the deer in half. then we cut each half into four sections. First the shoulder, we cut through at the fifth rib. The shoulder becomes burger. Next the back strap, sirloin and tenderloins come off. Then the knee becomes a little burger and some steaks. Thinking about doing some sliced lunch meat type cuts with it next time. Then the rest of the rear leg becomes a mix of burger and steaks. Of course you could do roasts, but I don't cook many roasts so it's not something we do.

Here is my very messy kitchen during the process. I do the cutting and put the grind into a bowl. Hubby cleans off and fat, tendon, and silver skin and places it into the grinder to become burger. He weights it on the scale into 1lb portions and packages it in first plastic baggies then wraps it in freezer paper. I package all the steaks. We also have a bowl going for all the trimmed off fat and waste. A 2 person processing usually takes 5 to 6 hours start to finish.

This lovely doe gave us 18 packages of steak and 19 packages of burger. It usually takes at least three deer for us to make it through the year. I am happy to have the first one done. I'm also happy my family can enjoy healthy low fat low cholesterol venison year round. It is our staple meat, we buy no beef at all from the grocery store. I know my kids are not eating a bunch of growth hormones and steroids and dewormers. I am a happy girl!

Living with a furry devil

It is turning cold around here fast and early this year. Since my poor old cat hates life in general she has stayed in the barn for the past 8 years so no one bothers her. However she just turned 14 a few months ago and she is looking like an older cat now with decreased body mass and all that goes with it. I'm sure she probably has some renal disease, but treatment of this would only piss her off and make us both miserable, and I'm sure she'd give me some wounds in the process. So we have chosen to take a cowards way out and just not know. Anyway I figured the cold temperatures would make it hard for her to stay warm. So I brought her in the house three days ago. She has stopped hissing at me every time I walk into her room which I guess is improvement. However she still has a huge amount of hatred for my kids who luckily are now old enough to know to give her plenty of space. You would think she could be a bit more appreciative. It's going to be a long winter. Doesn't she look happy in the photo?

Free Ranging

After the hawks ate 4 of my chickens earlier in the year we moved them to a covered dog kennel where I kept my two turkeys, Bob and Tom. They where crowded since the shelter was inside the kennel with them. So I decided to tear down the old chicken fence, move the coop around and build a portable type covered fence. This way I could still enjoy watching my birds strut around out my kitchen window. It would be easy to move since birds can pick an area clean of plant life in as little as one day, and it would still be covered to keep out the hawks and to keep the turkeys from flying off. Best of all I could expand it easily. Above is the new design. I like it and it was working well until this morning. As I stumbled down to the coop to feed in the dark this morning at 6:20 am. I noticed one of my turkeys loose. With further investigation with the flash light I found the other turkey loose. I also found the huge hole where they had pulled the poultry netting loose. Here I am trying to herd them back in the pen by myself in the dark. To say the least it did not go well. I had to get ready for work so I left them to free range till I could get home around 1pm and devise a plan. God love his soul my husband went out after I had left and the sun had come up. He took our 8 year old daughter, who by the way has become an expert bird herder, to help him. Between the two of them they got the turkeys in and repaired the fence. They called me at work to give me the good news. Now wondering if my coop plans are going to hold up long term or if it's back to the drawing board. Only time will tell.

No More Doctors Please

Picked my son up from school early today to take him to the doctor. I had taken him to urgent care 2 weeks ago with a nasty ear infection that had him in blood curdling screams. They put him on ear drops and amoxicillian, which gave him diarrhea of course. Today was his recheck to make sure the infection was gone. They could not get me in with his doctor so I took an appointment with one of the other doctors. When I signed him in the medical assistant at the front desk told me they didn't have him scheduled today. I had called the day before to ask if he could get a flu shot at the same time, the girl said yes if we have it in stock still, we are running low. Upon futher investigation the assistant told me she found him scheduled on another day that the doctor was booked and they could reschedule me. I told her that I had taken him out of school and today was my off day. After two trips to the back she finally got another doctor to work me in. The doctor was in the room less than 10 minutes. A quick look in his throat and ears, a palpation of his belly and a listen to his heart and lungs and he was pronounced healthy again. Really was it that hard to fit us in for a quick look? They made it seem like a huge effort. I get so disgusted with our medical system. It makes me want to become the queen of home remidies, just wish there was a way to get antibiotics when you needed them with out all the doctor hassel. Don't get me wrong I'm all for western medicine, but it just seems like so much work to get someone to listen to you. Thanks for letting me rant. By the way he wound up not getting a flu shot since they said we aren't giving them I don't know who told you you could get one here.

Early Christmas Presents!

Well the word is Def Leppard won't be touring for at least 2 more years. I was a little skeptical at first since they seem to be quite popular recently, but since they just extended their tour to include 20 more dates I figured it was probably true, which of course made me very sad. Bonus though two of the shows they added are with in 2 hours from me so Hubby and I decided for Christmas we would get each other tickets to the two shows. So now I get to see them two more times. I'm so excited!!! Hoping our seats are as good as they were in Cincinnati since we had to go with pit tickets again. I'm so spoiled I just can't bear the though of not being up front to see them. I am hoping Lorelie Shellist, Steve Clark's fiancee, can make it out to one of the shows to do a promotion for her new book. I read it recently and it is wonderful. It's about her life as a model and her relationship with Steve. Hoping to get to meet her. I've chatted a little with her on face book, and she's super sweet! I just can't say how excited I am. Those tour dates can't get here fast enough! Merry Christmas!

geek squad, HELP!!!!

When we renewed our spy ware it upgraded to spy ware with antivirus. We already had an antivirus program running, but didn't think too much about having two running. well they were busy working against each other and a nasty virus named total security took over my computer, making it very very sick. It spent over a week in the geek squad hospital and they had to erase everything and use the recovery disks to bring my poor computer back to the living. We have since switched all our antivirus and spy ware to another source. I am very happy to have my computer back up and running, I didn't know how much I'd miss it.