Exhaustion and Disgust....in a good way!

Hunting season in now in full force and I have two wonderful families and hunters that bring me their extras. So in the past 2 weeks we have put 3 deer in the freezer. One family brings them already gutted and having been hung in a cooler. The other just calls when he shoots one. I got one of the second the other night at 5:45. I really have no place with light to do this kind of dirty work so I moved an old table under the yard light. Hubby was at work and oldest daughter was at a friend's house. Just me, the 5 year old and a very large dead buck on the table. All my neighbor wanted for his bullet was the horns. What a wrestling match I had with that deer. It took me much longer to skin and gut than usual and I was already tired by the time I hauled the cooler into the house to further process the meat. I am so thankful for the meat though, it was all worth it. I am worn out and exhausted. We need three more to safely get us through to next year's season. Four would be better. Last year we put four in the freezer and ran out at the end of July. It was really hard not having that meat until October. Now to the disgusting part...no guts are not disgusting, they are what they are. I have decide that this is the winter that I will learn to tan hides and make buckskin. So armed with Carla Emory's instruction I set my first hide in water to sit....for days. It depends on how many days it will take for the hair on the hide to slip. It took my first hide 5 and let me tell you a hide that has been sitting in water for 5 days will make you gag! I am really not sure I am cut out for this. After a few minutes of fleshing out and de-hairing said hide that has been soaking all you can smell everywhere is rot and decay. However, I did it...I put on my big girl boots and fleshed that hide. You can brain tan the hide afterwards, but I chose to use fels naptha soap since I don't often have the brain (remember many of my deer come headless). I also am not sure if I am ready to squish brain paste between my hands just yet. The fleshing was enough gross to hold me for awhile. So the hide was thoroughly worked in a soft soap paste with fels naptha (also helped with the smell all around me and on me). Now it will soak in that paste for a couple of days. After that it will be stretched and worked and I should have buckskin. It isn't the prettiest of hides and I must say that if I am going to do this I should take more time to get a prettier shaped hide off the animal. However, it is a hide...my very first and we will see how it turns out. I should be able to make something from it. With my luck though whatever I make will probably rot. Oh well, like everything it is a learning process and who knows I might just get good at this and be able to bring in a little extra money. Always looking for ways that the farm can earn some money. Maybe I could trade them to a leather worker as long as I get a couple pairs of gloves made from them, then they can have all the hides. Well that is a long way away at this point. Hide number two is now soaking and I hope it doesn't take as long to soak. So after processing a deer and working a hide for the past two days, I am exhausted and my body is killing me. I think I will take it kind of easy today and do domestic womanly things. Blessings from the farm, Kat

The Acorns are Falling! The Acorns are Falling!

I love it when the acorns are falling and so do the goats. The run around from oak tree to oak tree snarfing up the little nuts off the ground. If they feel that there are not enough on the ground then they are hopping around on their hind legs trying to get more off the tree. Of course, the really smart ones stand around and wait for the ones doing the hopping to knock them off the tree...then they eat them off the ground. We have mostly red oak varieties which have acorns that are high in tannins. This is a good thing for raising goats...not so much of a good thing if you want to use the acorns yourself. Tannins have shown themselves to be a natural de-wormer (Auburn university studies). So the higher the tannin level the better they are for the goats. I will gather some of the acorns dry them and store them and then periodically feed them through the winter. They can be dried in a low oven (200 degrees) for a couple of hours and then stored in something that seals well with DE. They can also be gathered, dumped in ziplock bags and stored in the freezer, then thawed out and fed through the winter. If not put in the freezer though they must be dried first as acorns have a high moisture content and will mold. Mold is deadly so we don't want that. Humans can use acorns also. White acorns have very little tannin in them and some can even be eaten without leaching the tannins. They are actually a very good nut. Red varieties take some work to get to the edible stage. The tannins must be leached out. This can be done by putting the acorns into a pot of water and bringing to a boil then changing the water and repeating the process. Do this over and over again until the water is clear. Or they can be soaked in a bucket, changing the water 3-4 times a day for 3 or so days. Then they can be dried and stored. You can grind the acorns and use them in place of corn meal. They are gluten free so a good addition to a gluten free diet. They are very high in fat though and pretty low in protein. So get out there and find out what acorns you have. The goats sure love them. Blessings, Kat

I feel like an Ant

Well, this week has been busy busy busy. I have been working on my fall to do list and doing pretty well at accomplishing tasks. I have also been pretty busy picking up acorns for the pigs and chickens. I am not sure if I am allergic to oaks or I have caught a cold, but I am miserable. Yesterday I picked up acorns from the white oak and since they are much smaller than the red oak acorns I have been picking up it took me longer. By the time I got in the house I couldn't breathe and spent the rest of the night coughing and sneezing. I am still stopped up and sneezy this morning. But no rest for the weary the acorns still need to be picked up. I am trying to pick up as many as I can each day because I am giving the pigs about 5 lbs a day and the chickens about 1 lb. a day plus trying to put some in the freezer to make acorn meal and flour this winter. We have loads of oak trees and they each are beginning to dump their acorns. I probably look like the crazy woman to most people because I have found that the easiest and most efficient way to fill my bucket is to get down on the ground and crawl around on my hands and knees. It makes for sore knees at the end of the day, but I get them picked up more quickly than if I were stooping over. We have also almost finished our yearly raking of the yard. Between the pine trees, oak trees and pecan trees the yard is covered in leaves. I rake really well once a year and then in the spring I will rake up what I want to add in the garden. Then I simply don't worry about it. I could literally rake around here almost every single day which would wear me out and take up too much of my valuable time. We noticed the other day that we have two large pine trees near the house that are dead and need to come down. Unfortunately, we will have to hire a tree service for them since they are very close to the house. If one of them fell on the house there would simply be no more house. It will be a costly job so now there is the issue of coming up with the money to pay for it. I really hate pine trees! We already had to have two removed that were a danger to the house and it cost us a pretty penny to do so. Oh, well. I guess that is the price we pay for all the shade on the house in the summer time. I have a good start in the garden for spring, so spring garden chores should be easier than ever. Our main concentration has been doing outside chores lately. Since I have fibro/chronic fatigue tolerating extreme temperatures is difficult. So the majority of our outside hard chores are done twice a year when I can tolerate being outside longer. In the summer, I get chores that are necessary done in the morning and by 11:00 I am done. Even summer late afternoons are just too hot here to be bearable for long periods of time. In the winter I go out in the afternoon to get the main chores done. The temps are supposed to drop again at nights down into the 30s so I guess the next few days I need to really spend getting the window coverings up so that the house isn't so cold. Still haven't turned on the heat and hope to hold to that for as long as possible. We have had the wood stove going in the den though in the evenings which keeps that area nice and toasty. We all have electric blankets on our beds so that we sleep cozy. Mornings have been a little chilly though and those few nights we have already had dip into the 30s have prompted me to start the stove in the morning for a few hours. So lately, I have felt like an ant...especially when crawling around the ground picking up acorns! As the first signs of winter approach and we feel the first of the cold winds I scurry here there and everywhere battening down the hatches. It is amazing how tied to the seasons and God's creation my life has become. Blessings, Kat

Cheap Jelly

Fruit is expensive, but there are some cheaper ways to make delicious jelly and those ways are probably all around your yard. Typically we like them for their beauty or look at them as weeds, but edible flowers abound and cut out part of the jelly making cost. Yes you can make rose petal jelly, clover jelly, honeysuckle and dandelion jelly. In the fall you can harvest rose hips and make rose hip jelly which is full of vitamin C, even more than an orange. Domestic flowers like pansies are edible also and make a beautiful jelly. Make sure your flowers are edible and then pick them. The smellier they are the better the jelly. Then you boil the flower petals in about 4 to 5 cups of water. Then let it sit and cool overnight. After it sits, strain out the petals and bring the water back up to a boil adding about 4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Then add your box of pectin and bring to a rolling boil keeping it there until you get to the gel stage. Then jar up your jelly and process in a water bath for 20 minutes. Yummy and beautiful too. Can't get any cheaper than that for jelly and it really stretches your fruit jelly and jam supplies, therefore stretching the budget. Blessings, Kat

I Really Miss My Seafood!

Growing up in the southern US and living here all my life, gulf seafood is a way of life. My Daddy would make the 4 hour journey to Apalachicola once a year to meet the oyster boats at the dock. There he would pick up several burlap sacks full of oysters straight from the gulf. He would bring those home and we would have an oyster fest. Raw oysters, oyster stew, fried oysters, oysters rockefeller......well you get the picture. Oh, they were so good back then. I really miss those oysters. I remember though that daddy would never get oysters after a storm. When Katrina disturbed so many of the beds and stirred up the gulf I laid off Apalachicola oysters for years. Just when I am thinking that it is ok to start enjoying those oysters again, BP ruins my idea. I don't care what the USDA says, I am not comfortable eating oil filled seafood. And I certainly would not chance eating oysters. I really miss my seafood. Living so close (a few hours drive) of the coast it has always been so nice to get fresh seafood that came off the boats that morning. We have a fishmonger near us who does just that. Meets the boats in the wee hours of the morning and by midmorning that days catch is in his shop. I don't like grocery store fish. It has usually been frozen and shipped miles and miles, then thawed out to place in their case to look "fresh". I remember visiting my sister in California (yep she lived there at one time) and we went to buy clams. They were so fresh and the fishmonger there made sure to show us how fresh they were by tapping on the clams shell and it would close up. If they stayed open they were dead and no good. Here, I don't know why they bother to ship in clams since they are dead as doornails. I often wonder if people here actually buy them. Now she lives on the coast of Maine and she often goes clamming for fun. I haven't had a chance to visit yet, but I hope too one summer(winter is out of the question!). With the mess that has been made in the gulf I wonder if I will ever eat fresh seafood again or if I will have to settle for seafood from somewhere else. Don't get me wrong we have plenty of freshwater fish, but I love grouper and oysters and shrimp and snook and others. We don't eat a whole lot of the larger fattier fish because of the mercury levels, but grouper is a great occasional treat. Oh well, maybe good ol' sis will take pity on me and send me some of those fabulously delicious Maine lobster! Wouldn't that be great, but I don't think I will hold my breath. Anyone else going through seafood withdrawal? Blessings from the farm, Kat

Blackberries are ripening!

It is blackberry season. One of my favorite seasons of the year. I think of all the berries out there I love blackberries the most. We always wait to bushhog the large pasture until after the blackberries are finished producing. The are wild and unculitvated and grow rapidly. They are just beginning to ripen and yesterday we picked enough to get a good amount of jam made today. The trick is in getting the ripe berries before all of the wild birds do. Of course, there is plenty for all of us. I just like to be able to leave the ones that we cannot reach for them and we can have the rest. Kinda like the fig trees. Most people keep their fig trees short so that they can reach all of the fruit. We let our get as big as they want and then the birds can have the fruit in the top of the tree that we can't reach. I just love blackberry season. With more ripening everyday we might have a cobbler tonight or tomorrow for desert, oh what a treat!

Wild Strawberries

Yep, like other berries there is a wild strawberry plant. These berries are just as if not more nutritious than those commercially produced. It does take quite a bit of harvesting to get enough for a meal, but they are delicious. These plants can usually be found in shady areas on forest floors. They usually grow in patches. You can do anything with this strawberry that you would do with a commercially grown strawberry, they are just a little smaller. Happy hunting.

Spanish Moss

We have a lot of Spanish Moss in our area and often have to clean it out of our trees because it gets so heavy that it will break branches, especially in our very old oaks. Well you know me always looking for a way to use what I have instead of getting something else. So I started doing some research and I found out a lot of interesting things about Spanish moss. For one it was used in the old days as livestock feed especially in the winter. Apparently it does have some nutrition as well as fiber in it. Also, it can be used as bedding for livestock due to its incredible ability to absorb moisture. Then there is spanish moss tea for the garden. Simply soak spanish moss is water for a couple of weeks and then pour the tea on your garden, awesome organic fertilizer. Then the most awesome thing is that most of the saddle blankets for the Confederacy were made from....you guessed it, Spanish moss. Apparently inside all that gray there is a long black fiber kinda like a horsehair. These fibers can be woven into blankets. Wow, who'd a thunk it?! So many great things from this one plant growing in my trees. For now we will be using it to bed the livestock and see how that goes. If the horses colic, I will be sure to let you folks know.

When you can't Get Coffee-Find some Chicory

Chicory is a very useful weed. I think it is best known for the flavor of its root. The leaves are also edible though as long as the plant has not stemmed yet. After that point they are pretty bitter. The root is the best part of the plant. To prepare to make chicory "coffee" you first need to peel the root. After it is peeled then dry it and roast it at a low temperature (about 200 degrees) to a deep coffee brown color. Then grind it up and prepare just as you would regular coffee. It has a bit of a different flavor, but is about as close as you can get without actually having coffee. Some people prefer it to coffee and some like to mix it with coffee. You might want to start out mixing it with coffee to get used to the taste. I personally love the taste of chicory.

Morel Mushroom Hunting

The Morel Mushroom is a springtime ritual in many areas of the country. This great mushroom grows freely in the wild, is large, and has the taste and texture of meat. One of my ambitions is to go morel hunting. My only problem is my fear of identifying the wrong mushroom and winding up in the morgue as a consequence. The good thing about morels is that they are very distinctive, there are organized hunts with experienced hunters that you could tag along with. I am sure when I gather my courage that I will tag along with experienced shroomers for my first several times. Morels grow in most areas of the country with the exception of the dry arid southwest and the southern coastal regions. Springtime is usually the best time to find them as it is warm and damp, perfect mushroom weather. Apparently for those chickens like me, morels can also be grown in your backyard. There are several suppliers that will give details about setting up and also provide spores or mushrooms to start your morel growing off. I do think it would be fun to just harvest them from nature, but I do strongly advice that you know what you are looking for. There is a mushroom called a false morel that is one bad dude. It is very similar to a morel, but it will hurt you. The main difference is that the cap of the false morel is usually a dark reddish black and rather lump and ugly. The cap of the true morel is a nice cone shape and very uniform. It is either grey when immature or a slight yellow when mature. The false morel has a solid stem. If you slice into it then you will not see a hollow space. The true morel when sliced in half lengthwise has a hollow stem all the way through to the tip top of the cap. So think about this spring taking a journey through the woods this spring with some experienced shroomers and letting nature provide your supper. I highly recommend visiting The Great Morel website to learn all about where to find the morel, hunts that may go on in your area, how to harvest them, grow them and how to use them once you have them. It is a great website and if you are serious about shrooming it is definitely the place to go to learn.

You learn something new everyday!

Well, never let it be said that you can't learn new things. In my search for wild foods this is one I had not even considered in the slightest. I love escargot (snails), but I have always considered those slimy critters in my garden to be a nuisance. This article called Backyard Escargot at the Green-Change blog is an awesome read. Not quite sure if I have the courage to try this, but I am definitely filing it away for future reference. Good blog, good article, and the experiment is impressive.

Did you know about Acorns?

Acorns are one of the healthiest nuts around. I discovered them about a year or so ago after reading an article in Backwoods Home Magazine. I knew the deer ate them and loved them. Never thought I could eat them. Apparently, they are great for helping to control blood sugar levels. And have a wide variety of uses. Some oaks produce acorns with a lot of tannin which makes them bitter. We have a lot of white oaks and water oaks here at Whisper Wind, which tend to have less tannin. Processing acorns is not that difficult and can be done in any kitchen. So start checking the yard and identifying your oaks. Then check out this article at Backwoods Home Magazine for recipes, uses, and processing procedure. God's bounty is great, if you just know how and where to partake of the feast!

That incredible weed-the Dandelion

The Dandelion is an incredible weed. In suburbs and cities across the country, people spend thousands of dollars each year trying to rid themselves of this terrible pest to gorgeously manicured lawns. However, I am in the country and gorgeously manicured lawns don't exist here. I am happy to have my dandelions. In fact with the drought we have suffered the past several years what small patch of grass I did have has been reduced to a large postage stamp of a lawn. If it weren't for the dandelions, then I might have to sweep my front yard like my grandmother did as a child. However, the dandelion has at least kept it green. I have many dandelions as they are prolific breeders and I have discovered that they are great for something else, fresh salad greens. Yes the small dandelion leaves are quite tasty and healthy in a winter salad. They also provide some much needed living nutrition during those months when nothing else will grow. Dandelions don't mind a little cold and you might even find some still green and healthy under those first snows of the season. I don't really know though, I don't have to worry about snow. Dandelions here grow year round and year round provide my family with fresh salad. They are rich in vitamins and provided you don't use chemicals anywhere on your property are perfectly safe to eat. You can even cook dandelions like you do collards or turnip greens. I have never done this, but I know some old timers who have. As a salad the leaves have a very mild flavor, kind of like Bibb lettuce or mache lettuce. They are a little thicker than most lettuces, kind of like a spinach leaf. You don't want to eat the root of the dandelion. This is how I harvest them. I take a small spade and dig up the dandelion, then bring them in the kitchen and cut off the small leaves. Leave the big ones as they tend to be bitter. I then put the unwanted parts (roots, stem, and big leaves) in my kitchen scrap bucket for the compost heap. I then wash the harvested leaves and prepare my salad. Simply as that. Eating what God provides is a wonderful additon to your winter produce. So take a new look at the Dandelion and enjoy a fresh salad for supper tonight.

*Please make sure that you have not used any type of chemical in your yard or near your yard. If you live in town with neighbors then refrain from eating your dandelions as you never know what your neighbor might have sprayed that traveled to your yard. Chemically treated dandelions no matter how well washed are poisonous, so please be careful. I use no chemicals anywhere on my property. I also have no neighbors near who do, so I am very sure that my dandelions are safe.