10 Degrees and Getting Colder

Can we just take a moment to note what a disaster this week was when it came to getting actual work done. Seriously - so awful. There. I feel better just having said it.

It wouldn't have been so frustrating except last week was the first week in a while where I felt like I gained some traction with work projects and life in general. But no sooner was I all like, "Finally, I've got my groove back" before the groove was gone. Then again, I'm starting to wonder if "my groove" is kind of like my sense of rhythm: nonexistent. 

Andy was home a good portion of the week, although the majority of his waking hours were either spent in a deer stand or scouting deer on foot. It's been all for naught so far, which feels a little strange considering how quickly last year's deer season was buttoned up. There's still another week left in the season and plenty of deer in the woods.

It's been a cold, snowy week. Running is officially hit or miss. I'm not sure I like it.
  
Despite getting next to nothing done this week, my Etsy shop took off like a rocket this past week. Sales galore, custom orders, oh my.  I thought I was ready for the holiday rush, but apparently not, especially since I was somehow sweet-talked into knitting five pairs of birdesmaid mittens for a wedding the second weekend of December. If you need me between now and the end of the month, I hope you don't mind my knitting needles tagging alone. Cripes.

Despite a little Etsy holiday stress, I'm feeling rather festive, which probably has to do with the fact that I spent yesterday afternoon perusing the local shops for gift ideas for the annual gift guide I compile. I have so many gift ideas swirling through my head at the moment and am inspired to do the vast majority of my holiday shopping locally this year. (Says the girl who says that every year and then ends up buying the majority of her presents from Amazon.)

I'm also thinking about doing all of my Christmas shopping with cash, to give local merchants a break on credit card fees and keep the pesky holiday credit card bill at bay. In other news, I'm completely debt-free at the moment. I finished off my student loans last week and vanquished my credit card bill this morning. Although I've never carried a balance on my credit card, it's rather exciting to have the total amount I owe anyone at the moment be $0.00.

I spent yesterday morning volunteering at our community Empty Bowls event, which raises funds for the local food shelf. (That's the bowl I took home, up above. If I'd photographed it in better light, you'd see what a beautiful sapphire blue it is.)  My summer schedule prevents me from getting involved with pretty much anything in the greater community, so it felt so nice to be able to give some time to a good cause, meet some new people, and reconnect with a lot of familiar faces. I contributed some treats to the bake sale component of the event and as I was cutting up my batch of Scotcharoos, it struck me that I may hem and haw about not getting any "work" done, but that those bars will probably do more good in the community than anything I would have produced at my computer. Consequently, I'm coming to believe that you can learn everything you need to know to get through life in a church basement (I'm not even talking about Sunday School here), but that's another post for another day. 

Today is Andy's birthday and I am not baking him a cake. After five years of trying to foist my family's tradition of birthday sweets on the poor man, I'm starting to realize he doesn't really give a fig if he gets a birthday cake, or pie. Perhaps a pan of cinnamon rolls are in the works, but we'll just see how this day goes, shall we. 

Read more ...

Deer Season is Nigh

I spent a good chunk of my life dreading November. It's just so very dark, glum, and lifeless. But in recent years, I've felt November sneaking into my good graces. It tends to be the last month before winter settles in when driving to town can be done with absolutely no thought or gnashing of teeth, which in and of itself elevates the month pretty considerably in my opinion. It's also a month when we have a chance to return to ourselves. There's time to read a chapter of a book over lunch, to bake bars for a community fundraiser, or just bake something because it'll make the cabin smell nice and you're finally done with the manic push of trying to put up all of the garden produce. 

November's also contains the firearms deer season in Minnesota, which during my childhood just meant we couldn't walk our dog in the woods behind our house but now brings both excitement and suspense. Just yesterday I received an email from one of my editors with the subject line, "Now you have to kill something." I had twinge of horror before I opened the email that he wanted me to shot a deer this season and write an article about the experience, but the email just contained a link to an article about the reopening of a noted tannery. Still, the fact people know I'm interested what to do with deer hides shows just how much my life and priorities have shifted in the six Novembers I've spent with Andy.   

Also, I'm not sure why I always dismissed November as "ugly." Just look at those lovely rosehips. Sure the world's freezing up and it's dark as heck by the time Andy get home, but I also get to see more of my significant other this time of year because Andy takes a bit of vacation time during deer season. 

We haven't spent as much time this autumn tromping through the woods looking for deer sign as we have in the past, so it's hard to say what the season (which starts on Saturday) will bring. Despite numerous after dark drives through the neighborhood, we've seen just spotted just one deer on these now rather infamous "deer drives." The trail cam however proves there are deer out there and with deer season starting a week later this year, there's a higher chance there will be some snow on the ground which makes tracking easier, or so I'm told.  

The cabin has yet to be fully transformed into deer camp, but there's a new pair of insulated camouflage water boots by the door now. Tomorrow the deer stand will go up in some as yet to be determined location and soon the pleasantly scented soap in the shower will be temporarily replaced by "Scent Killer" soap. There's something comforting about the routine whether in two weeks there's more venison in our already packed freezer, it's not a bad time of the year. 

Read more ...

Looking Up

I wish I was better at transitions. Or maybe, really, I wish that transitions were better to me.

Unfortunately, my life as a season employee means I face at least two major transitions annually and although it really seems like the simplest transition should be going from working full-time out of the house to working from home, that's actually always the bumpiest one, where it takes me the longest to get my sea legs back under me. It can be so tricky when your schedule magically opens up and you feel like you should be able to get everything done that you'd be neglecting for the last, oh, five months, never minding the fact that there's still real actual work that needs attention. C'est la vie.

So here I am, still waiting to fall into a fairly set, but still flexible work from home schedule which allows me to make money, make/write nice things, have a clean home, and eat good, healthy food most days of the week. Today's a bit of recovery day, since I spent the weekend pounding up and down Hwy 61 and I-35 with the parents to catch the Saturday matinee of Wicked at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. It was a fabulous performance (I really do love that musical) and an excellent change of pace after a long summer season. It feels wonderful to be home again, sitting in the sun on the couch, tapping away at my iPad because I'm too lazy to get my winter "home office" set up just yet.

There are a lot of things clamoring for my attention at the moment including the mess that is my office, the dump truck load of firewood sitting in the driveway waiting to be stacked and the two last episodes of "Big Bang" theory to be watched before the disc can be sent back. It's easy to feel like I should be a multitasking extraordinaire at the moment, but instead I'm trying to take things one step at a time and try to devote my full attention to whichever task I find before me at the current moment. Since next weekend it's off to D-town again for the annual "holiday" celebration with a group of college friends, I have a feeling I'm not really going to fall into any semblance of a schedule until sometime in early November.

And speaking of Saturday's get-together, can I just state how smart we are for taking what's traditionally been a Christmastime event and doing it in early November instead. It saves us from all sorts of holiday scheduling conflicts and also (hopefully) saves us from some of the headaches of winter travel. Also, because our celebration falls over the transition out of daylight savings time, we end up with any extra hour together. Winning.

Not having a set schedule has allowed me to go for longer runs in the morning. Last Monday, I took my first run in blowing snow, as you can tell from precipitation build up on my hat. I'm not sure I'm hardcore enough to deal with sharp little snowflakes blowing into my retinas for 30+ minutes, but happily, our weather has stabilized a bit since then. I'm still hopefully I've got until late November to keep running on the road before things get too slick and nasty for running shoes. I have no idea how I'll keep running/training in the winter. The most logical winter fitness substitution is cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, I abhor cross-country skiing. Abhor it, I say!

Our little hook-up box for broadband internet was installed last week. Unfortunately, word on the street is that broadband won't be a reality up here until sometime next summer. Cue toddler inspired temper tandrum.

 

One of the brightest (and simpliest) spots in my work from home days is a return to the 3 p.m. London fog tea break time. Oh nom nom nom.

 I spent a fair amount of time last week spiffing up my Etsy shop for the holiday season. (Because, you know, that's way more important than actually working.) Things are looking pre-tee good, if I do say so myself. And yes, we had a thin coating of snow on the ground all of last week. It's gone now.

Andy forever upped the gift giving ante last Christmas when he presented me with a long desired iPad so I had to get him a decent birthday present, rather than a couple crappy cds as I am want to do. (It should be noted that when I insisted I wanted, nay, needed, an iPad for oh, the approximately 30 months between when Apple introduced the iPad and when I actually got one, I never went so far as to actually research what iPad actually was or *cough, cough* how much they cost. Apparently I am a sucker for marketing.)

Enter the trail camera. Andy's been wanting a trail camera for a couple years now to help with deer "scouting" so a couple weeks back I finally ordered him one, despite the fact that his birthday isn't until mid-November. For the last week, we've been setting up the camera all over the neighborhood, trying to catch the elusive "big buck" on camera.  Deer season starts on November 9th. 

Read more ...

This Ridiculous Life

There are times when I wonder if my life is ridiculous. And then there are times when I know my life is ridiculous.

Take last Monday for example.

Just a typical workday out of the home office. I got a couple hours of work done on a contracted project, then headed out the door to head over to the neighboring youth camp to do an interview for an article.

The camp's about a five-minute drive away, but the camp's only two bays down on the lake and since I'm sans wheels at the moment, I was hoofing it. (Remember, anything with motors hates me. Yes, I think by now that might actually be a literal statement.) I pulled on my rubber boots, hopped onto the power line just a little ways down our road and made a beeline for the camp. If I went by road, it would take me close to 45 minutes to walk from the cabin to the camp, but by using the powerline shortcut, it's less than a twenty minute hike. I guess that thing about straight lines being the shortest distance between two points really is true. ;)

It had snowed the night before and as I walked along the powerline, I noticed all sorts of little deer tracks. A lot of the shrubs (aka, "browse" in the deer hunting world) had been chomped on by little deer mouths too. I internally rolled my eyes as I realized just how much time I'd spent deer scouting this year and how ingrained deer scouting observations had become in me. I'd left a monster deer hanging in our shop back in the cabin. Deer season was so decidedly over for our household and yet here I was, in the woods, by myself, and unable to not notice deer signs. *sigh*

I had a lovely interview with Will, the camp manager. We drank tea. We chatted about winter activities at the camp (as per my article assignment) and other things, like the awkward time that comes between college graduation and what actually feels like real adulthood, and deer hunting. Of course. Will was still hoping to get a deer and had been devoting most of his mornings to hunting, but with little luck.

After the interview wrapped up, we headed outside to get a photo for the article. We headed down the cabin path and out to the camp driveway so we could get a shot of the entrance sign.

And that's when we spotted just about the littlest buck you've ever seen.

"Are you kidding me?" Will said. "Did that thing have antlers?"

 I nodded.

"Do you mind if I go get my gun?"

"No."

He ran back to the cabin. While he was gone, the deer and I stared at each other for a good long while, then the deer walked back down the road and hopped onto the powerline I'd been walking on the hour before. Will returned, I snapped a couple quick pictures for the article and then we went off in search of the buck.

Then this happened.

I know what you're wondering: why is Will wearing a life jacket? The main part of the camp is actually located on two islands (we were on the mainland) and he needed to motor over to the islands after we wrapped up the interview. 

And yeah, and why yes, another deer was shot right in front of me, which I then assisted in tracking and which I then took the obligatory "hunter with dead animal" pictures of. Oh, and then I helped drag the deer out of the woods . . . all while wearing my pea coat and a fashionable (dare I say, jaunty) tartan scarf. Happily, this was a much (much) smaller deer than the one Andy'd shot the week before and we just had to drag the deer about 100 yards through the woods . . . all downhill!  (Oh heaven's be praised!) While I'm a little sad that this deer didn't have a chance to grow up to be a bit of a monster himself, I'm glad I helped someone else stock their winter larder.

But seriously, you guys, I think I'm going pro next year as a professional deer slinger. For a totally reasonable fee, I will accompany aspiring deer hunters in the field. I will direct them as to which way the deer has gone, take the hunters' picture with the deer and then help them drag their deer out of the woods. Because, I kid you not, this is the third deer I helped move this year. I'm a lean, mean, venison moving machine.

Once Will and I had brought the deer down to the road, I headed back into the woods to head home via the powerline. After a bit of lunch, I returned to my home office to finish up my workday. Every so often that afternoon, I caught myself smiling whenever I thought of the latest "ridiculous" adventure I'd just added to my personal archives.

You know, life can be hard and frustrating, but at least there are plenty of surprisingly ridiculous moments in it to keep us smiling and in awe of all the unexpectedness life has in store for us.  


 

Read more ...

A Post With Dead Animal Pictures

Not interested in a blog post which features dead animal pictures? Maybe don't read this post, mm-kay. Not that the pictures below are particularly horrifying or gory, but I'll understand if dead animal pictures aren't really your style. Heck, they're not exactly my style either, yet here they are, nonetheless.

This is the story of how Andy's six point buck turned into a rather hefty eight point buck yesterday afternoon. (No, not by magic.) A couple days back, Andy predicted that if Obama won the election that he would shot the biggest buck ever on Wednesday. This evoked a "Uh-huh, sure," from me, but after a pretty incredible election night which reaffirmed my faith in Minnesota, I started to wonder if he might be right.

It should be noted that both Andy and I are getting over mild colds. In fact, I did not step outside of the cabin once on Tuesday and instead spent most of the day on the couch watching Judd Apatow movies while suffering my way through the sneezing, constantly blowing your nose stage of a cold and waiting for election results to come in. After staying up to listen to Romney's concession speech, I fell into a Nyquil induced slumber and woke up with a start on Wednesday morning, anxious to hear how the two proposed amendments to the Minnesota constitution had fared.

After making some victory waffles, I decided I should probably get some fresh air, so I decided to go for a hike with Andy. We tromped around in the woods near the cabin for about an hour and a half, casually looking for deer. We were nearly back to the truck and I was starting to feel a little eleven o'clockish, so I was less than thrilled when Andy announced a "short little detour" down a swampy section of powerline.

We'd walked maybe 30 seconds down the powerline when I saw rather large buck ambling around about 100 yards from Andy.

"Andy," I hissed. "That has a huge rack."

Andy had to slosh about a bit to find a place where he could rest his rifle and I stood stock still in the swamp for about five minutes until Andy could shoot.

Here's a tip for you. If you have a head cold, dragging a 200+ pound deer several hundred yards through a swamp, may not be the best activity for you. I'd always heard Andy complain about dragging out deer, but knowing that dragging out a deer is hard and actually experiencing dragging a deer out of the woods are two very different things. By the time the picture below was taken, I was pretty sure I was dying.

Happily, when we got to the truck (an hour and a half later . . . .ooooo, so very hungry and thirsty by then), a guy from the local electric co-op stopped and helped us get the deer into the back of the pick-up. Still, my fine motor skills were pretty fried for the rest of the day. I was dropping all sorts of things in the kitchen yesterday night! 

Suddenly we have a much bigger butchering job on our hands. Luckily the new meat grinder shipped out today and I was able to pick up some pork shoulder locally because we have a lot (a lot!) of sausage making ahead of us. It's safe to say that deer season is officially over at Of Woods and Words and that we will not be going hungry this winter. (We are sharing all this venison.)

My friend Sarah and I were laughing yesterday night about how much my life has changed in the last four years or so. If you'd told me that one day I'd be helping hunt deer and be concerned about Boone and Crockett scores, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, and you know, here really isn't a bad place to be. 
 

Read more ...

Hunting and Trapping in the 21st Century

Minnesota's firearms deer season opened on Saturday morning. The deer season at Of Woods and Words came to an unceremonious end on Sunday morning.

Andy was home with a six -oint buck in the back of his truck before noon on Sunday. Bada bing, bada boom. 

In the past, the deer season's been a bit more climatic. In other years, Andy hasn't shot a deer until the second weekend of the season, so there's been more time for tension and anticipation to build as we ponder  the questions: will he even see a deer this season? Will he get one? This year, the answers to those questions came in very quick succession.

Apparently those endless hours of scouting, sighting in rifles and figuring out just where to set up the deer stand paid off. It feels like each season Andy approaches the deer season with more seriousness; this year he actually took off the entire first week of the season from work so he could devote his all energies to hunting. Of course, luck has a fair amount to do with any hunter's success, but the fact there seem to be deer running all over the place this autumn certainly was a factor in the speedy close to this year's deer season.

I'm happy to know that we'll have a full freezer of venison this winter. Over the last couple winters, I've gotten accustomed to have a stockpile of this lean protein to stretch out the food budget. Of course, if you figure in the expense of Andy's new rifle, scope and various other deer hunting accessories purchased over the last month, this venison has a pretty expensive cost per pound! But since I do the vast majority of the grocery shopping, I'll just consider a freezer full of venison a major windfall. ;)

Anyone who eats meat really should consider that their meal came from an animal that at one time was living and breathing just like them. But in this world of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, it's easy to distance ourselves from what we're actually eating. One thing I've grown to appreciate about hunting is that it allows us to become very well-acquainted with our food. You don't take dinner for granted after you've spent countless hours butchering a deer, let me tell you. I'm glad that Andy's hunting hobby not only keeps him happy, but also keeps us eating local, nutritional meat most of the year.

Hunting's been a bit of a hot button issue in Minnesota this year since the Department of Natural Resources introduced the first ever Minnesota wolf hunting. The wolf firearm season runs in concert with this year's firearms deer season and there will also be wolf trapping season later on. I'm not apathetic to wolf hunting in Minnesota, but I do feel fairly neutral on the issue.

While I certainly think the Minnesota wolf population can sustain a hunt, I worry that a wolf hunt panders to the scare tactics we were taught from Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. I'm sure a wolf coat is mighty warm and would make a fantastically cozy fur ruff, but it seems so wasteful to end another life just for fur. To me, hunting only make sense if we're truly using it for subsistence and I have a hard time fitting wolf hunting into any idea of subsistence in the 21st century. 

Taking other animals' lives will always be a complicated business; one that we need to consider carefully and not do lightly. While I'm not morally opposed to hunting or trapping, I was pretty sad about the disappearance of my two beaver friends, who had been busily building a dam and lodge in a low spot that I passed every day on my way to work.

I'm pretty sure a local trapper got both beavers a couple weeks ago. The beavers hadn't exactly chosen a great place to winter and the water was so shallow in this spot, they likely would have had a very chilly winter. Perhaps the trapper ended up saving the beavers from a miserable winter and he certainly saved a lot of the young trees in the area, which the beavers had been harvesting like mad. But I'll miss watching those beavers busily working away in their little corner of the earth. They seemed like such friendly little beasts and there's something nice about passing some other critters who were hard at work while I was heading off to my own job. I know there are more than enough beavers in this corner of the world - it's just that I was particularly fond of these particular beavers. 

I'm not really sure where I'm going for this post. Maybe I'm just trying to point out that hunting and trapping brings out all sorts of feelings in me. I'm thrilled that hunting allows us to eat locally and I'm glad that hunting seasons help keep animal populations in check. I'm sad to think that some people may hunt an animal (*cough* wolves *cough*) because they fear and/or hate it. And it's hard when animals you grew fond of disappear because of hunting or trapping.

Perhaps all these conflicting thoughts and feelings boil down to this: hunting and trapping are okay by me, but please remember to take only what you truly need from this earth.

Read more ...

The Truth About Deer Season

Life is full of surprises. If, just a few years back, you'd told me that deer season would be a pivotal moment in my life each autumn, I would have laughed you out of town.

But life with Andy means life with deer season and I think I've transitioned into my role as deer season widow rather seamlessly. I've learned to like venison. I've learned to make a mean sausage.

But I'm still learning. The take away lesson from Deer Season 2012 to date is that deer season doesn't really start on the date determined by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. (Which, for the record, the firearms deer season begins on November 3 this year and goes until sunset on November 18.) No, deer season actually starts on some arbitrary date in early October.

And that makes some of the cabin inhabitants very happy indeed. 

 

A couple weeks back, Andy proposed a spontaneous overnight trip down to "the big city" to "get away for a little while." Our night "out on the town" ended with us sitting in our hotel room, eating potato chips and ice cream purchased from a gas station because we were both too exhausted to actually go out. By early the next morning it was apparent that Andy's true motivation for the trip wasn't really fun and games. Nope, the trip was strictly business. He wanted to pick up a new rifle and scope in time for deer season. (See above).

  

I really had no idea what happens when your significant other buys a new deer rifle. 

Here's what happens:

Suddenly your significant other starts picking you up from work all the time. But instead of heading home, you end up in a gravel pit or a shooting range so he can sight in his rifle - aka shoot the gun a gazillion times, while making minor adjustments to his scope to make sure the rifle shoots accurately. Your job? Using your keen eyesight and the spotting scope (at left in picture above) to tell him where he hit the target after each shot. This continues until it's nearly dark and the smiles of the picture below are distant memories.

Once the rifle is sighted in, you'll breathe a sigh of relief. . . only to realize that it's time to start scouting for deer season. This means your significant other still picks you up at work, but this time you get to crash through the dense forest until twilight, following skinny little deer paths, watching for buck signs such as scrapes and rubs, all while you're still wearing your work shoes.

Each evening, about 9 p.m., your significant other will announce that it's time for a "deer drive." These exploits usually take .5 - 1 hours and involve driving slowly down the road, watching for wildlife along the shoulders. You'll see foxes, bunnies, even a raccoon, and plenty of deer, and every time you see a buck during one of these drives, your significant other will be so excited that he'll chatter incessantly until you've both stayed up way too late. 

Oh, does it sound like I'm complaining? 

While I'd be lying if I said deer hunting didn't try my patience at times, I'm not so selfish that I don't see the value of Andy wanting to share one of his favorite times of the year with me. There may be times when my eyes glaze over when he goes on (and on) about rifle and scope characteristics. There are most definitely times when I wish I had more appropriate footwear on. But the truth about deer season is that I don't mind that much. There's a gentle lulling quality to our deer drives together and I'm happy to support Andy in his excitement and ambition this time of year.

Life is full of lessons and surprises.And I'm still busy relearning October and November as the partner of a deer hunter.
 

Read more ...

Meat. Lots of Meat

Greetings from the Of Woods and Words butcher shop.

Ever since Andy got his buck a week ago Saturday, we've been busy processing venison. I'll spare you the gory details, but there has been much chopping, grinding, freezer wrapping, labeling and dishwashing going on in these parts. The cabin has about 4 square feet of useable counter space, so it's been a juggling act, to say the least. We have some very happy jays and a rather smug looking red fox who are happily gobbling up the scraps we leaves outside.

Thank goodness Andy didn't try to get a second deer with his license this season. While I'd felt we'd gotten a decent amount of meat from last year's doe -- about 20-25 pounds of venison, including sausage-- this buck easily has provided us with twice as much. Between the garden produce we put away in early autumn and the recent venison additions, our chest freezer is nearly brimming at the top and we haven't even finished "SausageFest 2011" yet.  

Speaking of SausageFest 2011, on Saturday evening, Andy and I finished up a batch of Italian sausage. And when I say batch, I mean 21+ pounds of Italian sausage.  Pretty much any bit of useable venison that's not tenderloins, roasts, or round steak, gets ground up for sausage. The ground venison is then mixed 50:50 with ground pork. Because venison is an extremely lean meat, the pork is necessary to "bind" the sausage together. The fact that we ended up with about 20 pounds of ground venison this year means we'll ended up making approximately 40 pounds of sausage. Holy schmoly!

Last year we made a batch (about 8 pounds each) of Italian and breakfast sausage. The Italian sausage was by far the favorite, which is why Andy decided we need to make so very much of it this year. We don't bother putting the sausage in casings, just freeze it in bulk for use in lasanga, spaghetti, and pizza throughout the winter. But 21 lasangas is an awful lot of lasanga. I have a feeling we'll be giving some the sausage away.

And yet, we still have 10 pounds of ground venison that needs to be converted into sausage. I'm thinking a batch of chorizo, maybe a small batch of breakfast sausage, and some jerky. Also does anyone have a good recipe for wild rice venison sausage. Google has totally failed me in my search for a wild rice sausage recipe, yet I know wild rice venison sausage is a standby in many Minnesota households, so if you have a recipe, please do share!  

All this venison must be seeping into my subconscious. Just last night, I dreamed I saw a ginormous buck, only to realize I needn't bother telling Andy because deer season was already over. (The season ended on Sunday night.) I don't even want to explore the meaning behind this one!

You're welcome to dinner any time. Just be forewarned: chances are, we'll be having lasanga.

Read more ...

A Truthful, Toothful, Tuesday Post

I'm going to take a cue from a friend who frequently adopts the list format for her blog posts to save time. When you make lists, you don't have to worry about completing your thoughts or making a point. And since I'm back at the cabin, at least for the time being and am woefully behind on all sorts of stuff, here's what's been going on lately . . . in list form.

1) You guys! Did you know that Thanksgiving is a mere 9 days away? What the what? How did this happen?! I'm going to have to bake pumpkin pies next week already.

2) It's Andy's birthday today!

To celebrate, I made him a bourbon molasses pecan pie from the latest Better Homes and Gardens. As soon as I took the pie out of the oven, I realized I'd forgotten the vanilla.

It's official: I can not make birthday treats without forgetting some crucial ingredient. However, I feel Andy's pecan pie will fair better without vanilla than Dad's pumpkin pie did without sugar. . . maybe. 

3) It's also deadline day. (Note the lack of exclamation points on that statement.)

The big article I was worrying about a couple weeks is due today, but I actually sent it a week ago: I just had to get a cd of accompanying photos for the article in the mail today. I feel pretty calm about the whole thing. 

However, today's also deadline day for the publication I write for monthly. I have more flexibility with this deadline and luckily all of those articles are under control. I still have about an article and a half to write before I call it a day though.  

4) Our internet is finally back!!

I'd love to tell you how helpful the internet provider was in the whole ordeal, but the truth is, after multiple calls to tech support and customer support, the person who actually fixed it doesn't even work for the company. It was a frustrating two weeks, to say the least, but like Ma Ingalls used to say: "All's well that ends well."

5) I have teeth again!

See:

Last Monday, the dentist reglued my veneer on. On Wednesday I decided to eat a frozen cookie. Needless to say, the reglued veneer did not stay cemented in place for very long. So it was back to the dentist's yesterday where they put a permanent coating on my tooth. Grand total of the tooth ordeal = $200.  However, they suckered me into scheduling a cleaning, so they haven't quite finished milking my bank accounts yet and Christmas is still a no-go around these parts since I'll be subsidizing the dental office employees' Christmas celebrations rather than my own this year. 

5) In answer to the deer questions from the last post, the deer is absolutely not hanging anywhere in the cabin. Did I say cabin? I didn't, didn't I. Shed. I meant shed. The deer's out in the shed. I will admit I forgot it was in there on Saturday when I head out to the shed to grab some gardening supplies and I was very startled to find that I wasn't alone out there!

6) So many chores to take care of before winter's here in earnest. Last bit of firewood to split and stack; a ton of venison to butcher, process, and freezer; the dock and boat still need to come out; and all on top of the normal money making business of every day.

Read more ...

Rambling, Man . . .

We've been a little scattered around Of Woods and Words lately.

I chalk this general discombobulation to two little words: deer season. Since the season opener eve last Friday, we've been hopping around between various locales: the cabin, Andy's mom place, and my parents'. In the last week, I've spent more nights in town than I have at the cabin. As much as I often claim to have an "urge for going," something about vacillating between home and your parents' place isn't quite as glamorous as heading to MSP and catching the next flight to say, Barcelona. Besides, being transient comes with a few pitfalls:

Full Disclosure: This is actually my childhood bedroom in Jan. 2005 while packing for a semester abroad

Since we live in an area still recovering from a recent wildfire, the deer population around the cabin isn't especially remarkable. As the undergrowth regenerates, there's been an obvious increase in the deer population, but Andy thought he'd have better luck if he hunted closer to town, where there are deer, literally, all over the place. Between dental appointments, freelance assignments, and various other commitments for me, it's just been easier for us to spend free time in town, especially since we're right on the cusp of "questionable driving conditions" season.

Andy'd had enough of town by this Friday morning ("Too many people" . .  . "What are these neighbor people you speak of?" Please, do remember that town has a population of less than 2000) so he took off for the cabin and I planned to stay with my parents until Monday.

But when I got back from an article interview yesterday morning, Dad mention that Andy'd called looking for my camera. Apparently, Andy'd gotten a large buck near the cabin. Guess that whole hypothesis about there being better hunting grounds closer to town was kind of flawed.

Not knowing if Andy needed some help, I hopped in the car and headed back up to the cabin. There was indeed a large buck hanging in the cabin when I arrived. I wasn't really needed to assist with anything, but Andy sure was happy to have me around to regale with stories of the hunt. To all my vegetarian readers, you'll be happy know that I arrived too late to take the mandatory "Andy with dead deer" photo.  I kind of think dead deer pictures are tacky anyway .. .

The deer was a 17.5" antler spread and a Boone and Crockett club number, at least the way we measured it,  of 112.5. We may have missed a couple of the spread measurements for the Boone and Crockett. (FYI, the record holding Boone and Crockett measurement for whitetail deer is 213.5/8"!!)

I have to admit I'm much more pleased about Andy's success now than I was last year. (Yes, he did shot the deer on the exact same date as last year. We figure he might as well wait until 7:45 on the morning November 12 to go deer hunting each year.) I've already been busily scouring cookbooks and the internet for new venison recipes. It's a good thing I got some practice with venison cooking last year, because Andy figures we'll probably get somewhere between 40-50 pounds of useable meat from this deer. That's about double the amount of meat we got from last year's doe and yep, that rounds out to a cost of  60 cents a pound when you figure in the cost of the license . . . heck yeah!

That's the news from Of Woods and Words. For now I'm off to town (and beyond!)  to catch up with some old friends. Tomorrow's filled with town appointments and errands and maybe, just maybe, on Tuesday we'll put an end to all this rambling.

Man.

Read more ...

The McRib (a post not for the faint of heart)

Here at the cabin, we live a good 2.5 hour drive to the nearest McDonald's. We're not so far removed from fast food culture that I haven't heard about a little sandwich called the McRib. Apparently this barbecue pork sandwich is fashioned to look like a faux rack of ribs (on a bun) and people go crazy for it during its brief, semi-annual stints on McDonald's menu.

At the cabin we have a slightly more intimate relationship with the food eat. When Andy shot a deer last month, we dutifully butchered the deer and stuffed the new chest freezer full of steaks and ground meat. Throughout the process, we put the meat and suet scraps out for the birds. When we'd gotten every bit of meat we would use, we were left with a carcass. More specifically, a rib cage.

What to do, what to do?

Andy had an idea.

Now we have a "McRib" sandwich screwed to the pine outside the kitchen window.

For the record, the birds love it. At any given moment throughout the day, you can find woodpeckers, jays, chickadees, and nuthatches taking a nibble of suet. Squirrels will chomp down on the bone to get their daily calcium quota. And I think we've had a nighttime pine marten visitor stopping by for a midnight snack as well.

I realize we might be a opening a can of worms and that this all kind of sounds like an entry for one of those "You Know You're a Red-Neck" daily calendar. You know, January 4: "You know you're a red-neck when you nail a deer carcass to the tree 'for the birds.'"

(Note: Paula, we missed every bit of the huge snow storm that hit more southern parts of Minnesota.We're not too sad about it. We have plenty of snow for the time being. It is a bit nippy though: temps below zero F)

Read more ...

Time For Ridiculous Adventures

It's not secret that motivation flagged a bit at the start of the month. When faced with the dichotomy of transcribing interviews (for which I get paid) or blogging (for which I do not), I opted for blogging. I lounged on the couch, pretending to write a synopsis of the novel. I thought about querying some freelance gigs.

Last week, things were different. (Amazing what a looming credit card bill can do to you get plunked down at the computer churning out work, isn't it?) The butt stayed in the chair and work was completed, some of it before deadline, even. Luckily, the Friday before last, Andy and I had one last day of glorious and slightly ridiculous adventures, the memories of get me through these dark times of actual hard work.

It started off innocently enough as we set out to set up the deer stand. But we got distracted by the large white pine that had fallen down a couple weeks back and had yet to be removed  Andy decided he needed a new splitting block so he sawed off an 18 inch tall chunk from the fallen tree. Getting the hunk of tree trunk into the back of the truck was a mind over matter affair: the tree was at least two feet across at its widest point. It was probably about 300 years old when it fell, about its base had been rotting away for some time before the wind finally got it.

The chainsaw looks teeny compared with the size of the log!

Moving on . . . We bumped down the road and set up the deer stand. The stand was up in a matter of minutes, but there was still a fair amount of crashing around in the woods as we established a back route to the stand that didn't involve tromping down the deer trail that the stand overlooks.

We ran home to grab some lunch, where we both noticed that the Jack O' Lantern was no longer looking its best. In fact, the inside was completely black and icky  So Andy proposed we take the pumpkin with us to the shooting range.

Andy transforms a pumpkin into a target

Least this seem a frivolous waste of time and pumpkin, it was the day before deer opener --so Andy was sighting in his rifle --and the pumpkin came home with us and is now on the top of our compost heap.

After picking up and stocking a truck load of firewood, the day of ridiculous adventures ended with a campfire on the beach near the cabin. It was a perfect autumn day. 

Read more ...

It Happened . . . .

This morning both Andy and I woke up ready to go. This is a pretty rare occurrence. While Andy I frequently evoke comparisons to the waking dead until about 2 in the afternoon. This harkens back to the whole early bird, night owl dilemma. Frankly, when I’m chipper at 6:30 in the morning, Andy knows it’s no normal day.  

 As Andy headed out the door, I wished him luck and yelled after him, “You better get a deer. We can’t afford to buy any meat from the grocery store.” While I don’t get a lot of things about hunting (and have issues with bear and moose seasons), I do get the whole “stocking the larder” concept that ties in with deer season.  And our larder could use some stocking. One cannot live through a winter on blueberries alone.

When Andy came home two hours earlier than I’d expected, I figured something had happened.

“Did you get a deer?” I asked.

In response Andy waggled his fingers at me. There was a little bit of blood on his fingertips. It seemed one of two things could have happened: either he’d gotten a deer or he needed a drive down to the emergency room.

“You got a deer?” I said, hopefully. I hoped this was the option we were going with mainly because it was 8:30 in the morning and I hadn’t managed to get dressed yet. (I might add that I had gotten an hour of work done.) And I really needed to shower.

Indeed he had.

I felt glad for him. And I felt worried.

I did not grow up in a hunting family. My grampa hunts. My uncle hunts. My family eats Sloppy Toes (sloppy joes made with crumbled tofu). I really like tofu. I have no clue if I like venison.  

Until this very day, I’ve been removed from the deep-rooted deer hunting traditions that so many of my peers share. One of my all-time favorite examples of deer hunting tradition comes from my friend Betsy. Betsy’s extended family always goes hunting up at their cabin in northern Wisconsin. The women stay at the cabin in the day while the men are out hunting and the first night of deer season they always served ham and cheese casserole.  That is, until the year Betsy’s mom made dinner the first night of deer season and served . . . . . tator tot casserole!!!  An uproar broke out. “But we always have ham and cheese casserole,” they said. You just don’t mess with the traditions that surround deer hunting. Except, I've never had any traditions to mess with.

Last year we gathered everything we needed in the advent of a deer. A meat grinder to attach to the stand mixer. A sausage stuffer. A jerky gun and a dehydrator. But there wasn’t a deer last year and I got to prolong becoming a true woodland housewife for another season.

Now, well, here’s hoping I like venison. I better. Andy’s out hunting again right now. There’ll be no going hungry this winter.

Watch this space for tasty venison recipes . . . coming soon!

Read more ...