I'm going to be writing like crazy over the next few weeks, so lunchtime series may be a bit sparse.  That means it's your chance to write in rather than just reading!

To date, Weekend Homesteader is chock full of photos of me and Mark (and Huckleberry and Lucy), and it could use some diversification.  As you pored over my monthly ebooks, did you say, "Hey, I have a better system than that in operation in my garden!"   Do you have some great photos of a kill mulch, a rain barrel, a homemade worm bin, a family canning session, or anything else in the ebook series?  Action photos with people in them (or even chickens or dogs) get bonus points.

If so, email your photos (one per email please) with the legalese at the end of this post to anna@kitenet.net.  A short writeup to explain your photos is great, but not mandatory.  If I choose to include your photo (and/or writeup) in my book, I'll credit you right there in black and white and will send you a Walden Effect t-shirt.

Please include this text in your email to cover my publisher's butt:

I'm looking forward to seeing some ingenious designs!

Sometimes these barbed connectors can be a major struggle to remove once they've been pushed in all the way.

My new trick is to use a coping saw to cut them free when brute force fails.

Do you have a favorite age?  I definitely do --- 6 to 10 weeks old.  Mature enough that I can stop worrying about heat and predators and frisky enough to find a lot of their own food.

(You know we're talking about broiler chickens here, right?)

After 10 weeks, I start stressing again.  I've yet to plan ahead well enough that I have sufficient pasture for these rapidly growing birds, so I start hunting down treats to keep their diet well-rounded.  The pullets and cockerels have to be shut out of the garden at that age because they start to scratch mulch on top of my young garlic plants, and 11 week old broilers are so long-legged that they're willing to walk the long way round to get to those garden beds.

And then there's the deep bedding.  I always seem to let the last few weeks get away from me, and the increased volume of manure mats on the surface of the leaves or straw.  Our final batch of Light Sussex have been the worst in that respect since they still want to roost in a huddle in the corner, which means they concentrate their manure in one spot and then sit in it.  Yuck.  I was beyond thrilled when Mom brought me some more leaves to alleviate the manure pileup, but next year I've got to plan ahead so I have enough high carbon bedding to top off the coop floor every other day for the last two weeks of broiler time.

Which is all a long way of saying that even though the Light Sussex have been my favorite flock of the year, I am totally ready to slit their throats and put them in the freezer.  We processed the first four Monday --- six more to go!

Every good homesteader has a hundred or so quart size jars.  Jars take up the same space whether they are full of beautiful fruits and veggies or empty.

A great way to store water is in those jars once you use your precious preserves.  Water and preserves need the same storage requirements --- dark, cool, rotated often --- so you can put those shelves to use in the off season to store drinking water for emergency power outages.

Do you have a great idea to share with Weekend Homesteaders?  Enter your photo and short writeup and win a t-shirt!

This low tech way of plucking a chicken involves pulling the bird through the plucker box a few times to get the majority of feathers.

It still requires some hand plucking, but Anna seems to feel like it cuts the time needed for this chore in half.

Maybe I can improve the design a bit for version 2.0 by making the walls adjustable?

I needed some good visuals for my tree-planting chapter of Weekend Homesteader.  Oh, how sad, I had to order a few more fruit trees!  (Don't throw me in that briar patch!)

We settled on two Asian Persimmons (Ichi-Ki-Kei-Jeiro and Saijo) that are supposed to be hardy enough to withstand our winters, along with a Starking Delicious Pear.  All are now installed in current or future chicken pasture areas.  The persimmons are diminutive enough that they could fit in our smaller pastures while the pear is (hopefully) willing to deal with somewhat waterlogged, heavy clay down in the floodplain.  The long term goal is to give the chickens some protective cover while producing late season fruit that they and we will share.

I love planting experimental trees more than (almost) anything, but I do have a tough time watching the ones that die.  Last year's hardy almonds were a failed experiment --- I thought they might have trouble fruiting because of being at the edge of their hardiness range, but what they had trouble with was being eaten alive by Japanese beetles.  I also lost one Carpathian Walnut because of planting it in the woods and forgetting about it (although I'm happy to report that its sister tree and the transplanted Chinese chestnut in the same area survived my neglect.)  But all of the rest of last year's perennials are thriving and I figure losing two trees out of eleven isn't terrible when so few of the varieties are tried and true.  (One of the almonds is clinging to life for another year.)

Let's hope 2015 is the year of the persimmon and pear!

Have you built a chicken coop or tractor so simple that a new builder could recreate your masterpiece in a few hours?  I'm looking for some photos of easy to build chicken housing to include in the January ebook and in the paperback edition of Weekend Homesteader.

As an added incentive (beyond seeing your name in print), if I choose to use your photo, I'll send you a free 3 pack DIY chicken waterer kit with drill bit.  Then you can make a spare bucket waterer for your broody hen or to make sure your flock has plenty to drink during that holiday trip.  (If you'd rather, I'll send you a Walden Effect t-shirt instead.)

My book is all about easy and fun projects that a homesteader wannabe can slip into a weekend off, so the simpler your coop or tractor design is, the better.  On the other hand, I'm sure that some of my readers would love to spread their building wings, so don't hold back if you've built a chicken Taj Mahal.

If you have time, feel free to include a brief description of how and why you built your chicken tractor or coop.  Then email your photos (one per email please) with the legalese below to anna@kitenet.net:

I'm looking forward to seeing some beautiful coops and tractors!  (And thanks for bearing with my begging for pictures.)

Nine of our Meyers lemons graduated today.

Seven of them plan on going directly into the muffin business after a brief party.

The remaining two feel a little unsure about becoming a muffin and are considering a few pie options.

There are three main choices for aisles between permanent garden beds --- tilling up the soil, planting grass (or another low groundcover), or mulching.  Tilling got deleted from my decision-making nearly immediately because of the potential for erosion and mud.  And since we didn't have a vehicle that could haul large quantities of mulch to the farm at the beginning of our operation, grass chose itself for our aisles.

This year, I started wondering if mulch would be a better option.  Mulched aisles have certain advantages over grassy aisles including:

• Mulching would save a lot of time on weeding.  Now that we're getting our beds mulched, I spend most of my weeding time ripping out clover and grasses that try to sneak up the bed sides from the aisles and invade the growing zone.
  
• The time spent mulching can be a winter project, when we're not so pressed for spare moments.
• Mulch would build the organic matter of the soil faster than grass does, which might give the vegetables more root room.  (On the other hand, I don't know if vegetable roots would want to grow into the compacted soil of permanent aisles.)
• Vining plants like sweet potatoes and cucurbits would be easier to handle since they could be allowed to roam across the aisles without being moved for mowing.

On the other hand, grassy aisles have advantages too, like:

• We can keep our aisles in shape even if the floodplain is sodden and impassable.
• Mowing and weeding along the aisles is a bit-at-a-time project, so it doesn't feel as overwhelming as picking up eight plus truckloads of mulch.
• Our "grassy" aisles are actually a diverse blend of grasses, clover, dandelions, plantain, and other weeds, and our bees enjoy the blooms.
• I suspect grassy aisles have a more moderate summer temperature than dark mulches.  Perhaps also nicer to sit on when I'm weeding?

So far, each permanent aisle technique is neck and neck, so let's look at some data on how much mulched and grassy aisles cost us in time and money.  I decided to consider the mule garden (since it's easiest to measure), which is about a third of our vegetable growing area.  In the table below, I compare our current management system with the alternative of buying enough composted leaf mulch to keep the 1,440 square feet of aisles plant-free.

We've been flooded in since Tuesday night.

You can fight the mud on a day like this...but I prefer to work on smaller projects.

Winterizing another chicken water bucket and protecting the new pear tree turned out to be a nice alternative to sloshing around the waterline ditch.

Last year, my cover crop experiments helped me determine the best species for our garden, so this year I'm just fine-tuning the process.  One factor I wanted to figure out was the optimal planting time for my winter cover crops.

I filled up garden beds with oats and oilseed radishes whenever they became available between July 20 and September 15.  The photo to the left shows two beds of oats, the one in front planted August 31 and the one in back planted August 10.  This may not always be the case, but with this year's extended autumn weather, August 10 was just too early to plant oats if I don't want them to go to seed, while August 31 allowed for a lot of vegetative growth without promoting flowering.

On the other hand, planting just two weeks later, on September 15, seemed to be a bit too late for optimal oat growth.  The oats came up, but didn't get a chance to grow big enough to completely cover the soil and do their job of erosion and weed prevention.  September 9 is the latest planting that I felt grew sufficiently.

Oilseed radishes had a simpler planting request --- the earlier the better.  Beds planted August 2 grew hefty radishes like the one shown in the foreground while beds planted a month later (in the background on the right) look a bit puny.

It sounds like I should plant my cover crops in waves next year --- buckwheat from the last frost until the beginning of August, oilseed radishes until the middle of August, then oats from late August through early September.  Your region will probably have a slightly different planting schedule, but chances are the same trend will apply.

Have you ever wondered about those "fruit cocktail trees" you see for sale in glossy magazines?  Brian Cooper tried out a dwarf tree with five different varieties grafted on --- Elberta Peach, Belle of Georgia Peach, Santa Rosa Plum, Redgold Nectarine, and Moorpark Apricot.

His tree was pretty big when he brought it home and it fruited the first year.  (The photos above show the tree a year later when it had been pruned and trained.)

Brian wrote "All of the grafts produce fruit, but it is a challenge to keep them balanced so they grow evenly."

His advice is timely since I'm going to be grafting some new varieties onto my pear trees this winter.  I hadn't understood why my orcharding books recommend adding no more than four different varieties to one tree, but Brian's experience rang a bell.  Of course it would be tough to keep multiple varieties on an even keel so that the most vigorous doesn't take over the tree.

Has anyone else had experience with fruit cocktail trees?  I'd be curious to hear if your results are any different if you stick to the same species for all varieties (for example, four types of apples on one tree.)

We had some trouble getting the truck started last week during a very cold morning.

It turned over fine but kept stalling out.

The problem was more than likely some water in the fuel. I added the above bottle of HEET, waited about an hour and it started right up. The instructions recommend adding a bottle every time you fill up when it's cold out and I think I might just start doing that to avoid any future cold starting issues.

Our winter cover crop experiments this year aren't completely limited to figuring out the best planting time.  We're also trying a new species --- Austrian winter peas.  This variety of field pea is supposed to reliably winterkill all the way to zone 6, so we shouldn't have to worry about weed problems in the spring.

I've mostly steered clear of legume cover crops since they serve a different role than grains and crucifers.  The latter do grab some of the free nitrogen that might otherwise wash away over the winter, but their primary purpose is to make lots of organic matter to improve your soil long term.  Legume cover crops have a different role --- to fix nitrogen out of the air and lower your fertilizer inputs.  I was most interested in soil building, so skipped the legumes at first.

I couldn't resist trying out Austrian winter peas, though, and not just because everyone was talking about how cool they are.  My primary purpose was to plant them in the chicken pasture to give our flock some tasty, high protein greenery at this time of year.  Strangely enough, my chickens seemed to prefer the oat leaves, although they may change their tune as winter progresses.  But since I was buying the seeds anyway, I figured I should try Austrian winter peas in the vegetable garden as well.

Field peas grow best if mixed with a small grain (like oats) so that the peas have something to climb.  I noticed that my peas tended to pull the oats down a bit, perhaps negatively affecting how well the oats will grow.  But I've enjoyed the duo anyway because the peas started coming into their own this month, just as the oats slowed down.

The real question will be how well the Austrian winter peas break down in the spring, and how much they reduce my dependence on manure.  As Harvey Ussery pointed out in his awesome book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, if you keep adding off-farm compost or manure to supply your vegetable garden with nitrogen, you may eventually end up with toxic levels of phosphorus and potassium in your soil.  My soil is already quite rich in both of these nutrients, so it wouldn't hurt to dial back my manure applications and try to grow the more ephemeral nitrogen on site.

Next month's volume of Weekend Homesteader is out a bit early.  Volume 8 includes in-depth information on:

• Choosing and planting your first fruit tree
• Staying warm during winter power outages
• Figuring out which tools your homestead really needs
• Finding free and cheap supplies

For those of you who are new to Weekend Homesteader, this series walks you through the basics of growing your own food, cooking the bounty, preparing for emergency power outages, and achieving financial independence.

I hope you'll consider splurging 99 cents to buy a copy of my newest ebook from Amazon's Kindle store.  And many thanks in advance if you can find the time to write a brief review.

As usual, I'm also very glad to email you a free pdf copy to read if you don't have the spare cash, or just don't want to deal with downloading an app so you can read the ebook on your computer or phone.  Just email me with your request --- no strings attached.

Don't forget that Weekend Homesteader: November is still available, ready to help you roast a chicken and some delicious root vegetables for a more manageable Thanksgiving dinner.

Finally, my offer is still open --- send me a photo with your additions to or interpretation of the projects in any of my Weekend Homesteader ebooks and if I use it in the print book, I'll send you a free t-shirt.  See this post for more information.

Today was the first day of regular deer hunting season around here.

I noticed two eating our parsley plants around lunch time and decided to get the gun.

The biggest one took off like a flash, but the smaller one hesitated at following what may have been his mom for just a second when he saw me. He leaped over the garden fence and landed in the narrow chicken pasture enclosure by the coop. He tried a few times to jump over the second fence but couldn't get enough of a running start to clear it. I know it wasn't very sportsmanlike of me, but I got as close as I could, braced myself on a large stump and killed my first deer, which turned out to be a small buck with no antlers.

We spent the rest of the afternoon dressing it out.

One less garden predator and some fresh pasture fed venison to go in the freezer equals a pretty good day in my book.

Do you want to learn about your soil without paying a lab?  Jar tests are a quick and fun way to figure out the texture of your soil.  Simply put some of your garden soil in a Mason jar, add a bunch of water, shake it up, and let the soil settle into layers.  Sand will drop to the bottom, followed by silt, then (eventually) clay.

In the photo at the top of this post, my soil has been settling for about a day, but there's still a lot of clay in suspension (dirty-looking water.)  I wanted to post about it now, but I'll take a second round of measurements later once the water is entirely clear.

Using the data so far, I can figure out the percentage of each type of soil particle by measuring how high the layer is and dividing by the height of all the soil in the jar.  My soil is 29% sand, 64% silt, and 7% clay.

Next I use a soil texture triangle to figure out what type of soil I have.  I start at 29% sand on the bottom of the triangle, then follow that line up and to the left at an angle until I reach the line for 64% silt and 7% clay.  I put a red dot at the result --- a silt loam.

You can get this same information by looking at the soil survey for your area.  I have an ancient paper copy, but you can get the same information online nowadays.  The front garden area where I took the sample for my jar test is listed as a Teas-Litz silt loam --- looks like I did it right!

Here's what the soil survey says about Teas-Litz silt loam:

I was backing up the truck to unload another cube of cinder blocks the other day when this tree came out of nowhere and slammed itself into the tailgate.

The tree barely noticed the bump and went back to sleep when it became obvious that nobody was hurt.

I'm thinking instead of having the dent pounded out and the locking mechanism repaired I should just maybe find a replacement tailgate at a junk yard like Tracy recommended in an earlier comment and save a little time.

I've been trying to think through why I'm so uncomfortable with the Occupy movement.  They're definitely "my" people, and I certainly agree that the way our nation kowtows to big corporations and the ultra-rich is just plain awful.  However....

• I have trouble feeling sorry for the middle class.  A few weeks ago, gourmet chefs decided to show their solidarity with Occupy Wall Street by cooking up free meals for the protesters.  They were annoyed to discover that "professional homeless" people showed up to partake of the meals, so the chefs downgraded their offerings to simple brown rice "to keep away the people who may be freeloading."  (Quotes are from this Huffington Post article.)  Now, to be fair, the article goes on to mention ways other cities' Occupy movements have tried to help out certain homeless people, but I think the story still illustrates a major flaw in the Occupy movement --- they're not really the 99%, but the middle 50%.  Yes, the middle class is getting crunched, but the lower class has been crunched for a long time and I don't believe in trickle down economics.  We should start at the bottom and work up, not at the middle and work down.
  
• I think middle class Americans are already too rich.  In at least three cities, Occupy participants are trying to prevent people from losing their homes due to foreclosures.  Now, I agree that there have been a lot of fishy practices in the foreclosure field, but I also think that foreclosures are simply a symptom of Americans thinking they are entitled to live above their means.  I can tell you with certainty that the bank isn't going to come and repossess our trailer, both because it's worth nothing and because they don't own any part of it.  By world standards, I suspect that Mark's and my living conditions are at least in the top 5%, and I honestly feel very rich living here.  Yet, I doubt that the average Occupy participant would dream of living in an ancient trailer, which makes their efforts to prevent foreclosures seem like another middle class struggle to get more stuff.
  
• Activism works a lot better if you know exactly what you want.  My last point comes from years of working at a non-profit struggling against social injustice.  I know that it feels really good to Occupy participants to think that they're working together to form a consensus about what really needs to change.  But I suspect if they would simply come up with a list of five demands, most local and state governments would give them at least some of what they're asking for simply to make them go away.  The fact that after combing through their multiple websites, I still can't find concrete things they want suggests that Occupy participants are merely angry and don't have an action plan to work toward solutions.
  

What do you think?  Do you believe in voluntary simplicity and still want to Occupy?  Tell me how I'm wrong.

"We're going to have to do something about the deer," I told Mark over lunch.  "They're getting in the garden again."

Fast forward ahead an hour and I hear a gunshot that sounds awfully close.  I run outside --- "Honey, are you okay?!"

"I killed it!" my husband crows.

It turns out he hadn't quite killed it, though he had knocked it off its feet.  Mark had to rush inside and reload before putting the anterless buck out of its misery.  But then he was the king of the farm for the next two days, having saved the garden and killed his first deer.  By local standards, Mark had also beaten my record from two years ago since my first (and only) kill had been a doe.

I can be awfully competitive, though.  Two days later, as I talked to Daddy on the phone, I saw a deer walking right down the garden path as if headed for our front door.  "I've got to go," I told my father.  "There's a deer in the garden."  "Kill it!" he replied.

I crept down the hall and picked up the loaded rifle.  Slipping off the safety, I eased open the front door and steadied the gun against the door frame.  As Mark likes to say, he could see the deer fall to the ground right outside his window --- my shot had severed its spine and the youngster died almost instantly.  Once we dressed them both out, my antlerless buck was just a hair bigger than my long-suffering husband's.  I told him he was just going to have to get another deer to even the score.

Which is all a long way of saying --- this week's lunchtime series is all about venison.  Is it cost effective to hunt your own?  How do you butcher it?  How do you eat it?  Stay tuned for the answers, including a special guest post on chimney top smoking.

(If you're a vegetarian, or just disgusted by pictures of meat on the hoof, I apologize in advance.  You might want to steer clear, at least until we reach the kitchen on Thursday.)

We recently learned the hard way that a generous layer of mulch material in the isolation coop goes a long way in preventing your chickens from walking in their own waste the night before processing.

The legs and feet are obvious holding points for plucking a chicken. Having the feet clean and free from poultry waste makes the grip more pleasant and fun.

Cold weather last week finally nipped the lettuce and greens growing outside our quick hoops.  I'm curious to see how long the veggies under cover stay pristine and happy.

But you can't live on lettuce and tatsoi alone.  Over the last couple of weeks, we've started to thaw out a bit of summer bounty from the freezer.  And to use more grocery store components --- flour, yeast, cheese, and pepperoni, locally grown (but not in our backyard) old-fashioned winesaps, and even a splurge on far flung avocados.  (That's all for yesterday's lunch.)

Storebought food makes the first taste of our October-planted lettuce even more special.  We've been eating the September lettuce for over a month, and the leaves had started to get a bit large and bitter.  Sweet and succulent baby lettuce from a brand new bed calls for a celebration!

I hate to admit it, but the biggest reason it's been two years since we killed a deer is because of the butchering.  In 2009, cutting up a full-size deer was a daunting task and left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.  Since then, I've become a pro at gutting and dressing chickens and am no longer even mildly horrified by the task.

Add in an awesome meat grinder that Rose Nell gave us (thank you!), and turning a deer into freezer-ready packages of quality meat took only about two hours per animal.  That's two hours of me cutting and Mark fetching things and taking pictures.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm a master deer butcher, and I actually made most of the process up as I went along.  So I hope anyone who's cut up more than three deer will leave a comment with some tips to make next time go even smoother.  Meanwhile, those of you with weak stomachs should move along and I'll show everyone else exactly what I did.

Step one was to remove the entrails.  All I needed was a good sharp knife to carefully cut through the skin of the deer's belly without puncturing the guts.  Then I reached in the hole and yanked (and then poured) everything out.

One of the deer had a couple of small white spots on its liver, so I gave that to the chickens to play it safe.  I saved the other liver, and let Lucy have the entrails.

Question one for the pros --- How do you deal with the last bit of intestine that attaches to the anus?  With chickens, I just cut out the whole vent, but due to the structure of the deer's pelvis, I had to cut through the intestine, giving the possibility of a tiny amount of fecal matter contacting the meat.  I'm sure there's a better way.

Next was the hardest part --- skinning the deer.  Next time, I'll probably make Mark do this because skinning two deer in fast succession made my carpal tunnel act up. 

Except for needing a lot of hand strength, though, skinning is pretty simple.  We hung each deer up in a chicken pasture gate frame (boy did those come in handy) and slit through the skin in a circle around the neck.

Next, I slit around and up each foreleg.  The bottom half of a deer's leg has no meat to speak of, so I didn't skin that part.

Now I pulled the skin back off the forelegs.  I used a knife now and then during the skinning process, but mostly pulled instead of cut, since yanking does a better job of keeping all the meat on the carcass.

A slit from the legs up the neck and then down to the gutting incision allowed me to start to "undress" the deer.

Yank, yank, yank!  Before long, it looked like my naked deer was wearing a skirt.  I cut off the tail, then pulled the skin right down to the deer's "knees" (really, they're ankles, but they look like knees to us.)

Here's where I had a bit of trouble.  My goal was to cut off the deer's lower legs (the meatless parts), but I couldn't seem to find the right spot on the joint to allow me to just cut lightly and bend to separate the two bones.  Is there a trick to this?  I hacked at ligaments and twisted a lot, eventually removing all four lower legs.

Here I am finally getting one of the lower forelegs loose.

Old timers tend to let their deer hang for a few days at this stage to age the meat, but it wasn't really cold enough and we didn't have an animal-proof spot.  So I just cut it up and stored the meat in the fridge for a while to get the same effect.

Cutting off the hams (back legs) was easy --- just slit through the meat and twist until the ball-and-socket joint comes loose.  The front legs came off nearly as simply.

Next came the tenderloin (aka backstrap.)  Some picky modern hunters consider this the only part of the deer worth eating, and it's the part I save to make steaks out of.  The meat is above the ribcage, along the bony projections above the spine.

Finally, I cut around the neck and twisted the head off.  I gave Lucy the latter and brought the ribcage inside.  After rinsing it well, I sliced off any easy chunks of meat, then put the rest in a big pot of water to simmer into the base of venison stew.  Deer butchering complete!

I'm just now starting to see the light at the end of this waterline project tunnel.

A few more steps and we'll have indoor running water that might not freeze.

I'm probably far more excited than this small cluster of mushroom merits.  But here's the thing --- this is our first ever batch of fruits from spawn we grew ourselves.

This strain of mushrooms --- Pohu --- came to the farm in February of 2010 in the form of bought plug spawn.  We inoculated box elder logs and enjoyed our first fruits that fall, then more this spring.

In March of this year, we saved some stem butts from the oyster mushrooms and used them to create cardboard spawn.  Then, on April 13, we pushed the mycelium-filled cardboard into gashes in the sides of box elder log and covered the spawn up with melted beeswax.  (That link shows us inoculating the stump, but we repeated the process with logs.)  We buried the logs partway in the ground as mushroom totems and hoped the oyster mushrooms would do their thing.

The brilliant part of our plan was putting the mushroom totems where we pass every day walking Lucy.  I'd long stopped checking on the totems when the first fruits appeared, but my eye is trained to mushrooms, so I saw the moist clusters Tuesday morning even though I wasn't really looking.

This experiment is only a partial success because the two sister totems --- one with wild oyster mushroom spawn we collected in Asheville this spring and one with Blue Dolphin spawn --- haven't yet fruited, and neither have our two experimental stumps.  However, we inoculated the logs late this spring and I think I see a bit of mycelium on each one.  So maybe we'll see fruits from all three next year?

After butchering our deer, I ground up all of the meat from the front legs, the neck, and the ribcage.  I left a bit of meat on the bones for Lucy, and saved back the hams and tenderloin to be cooked whole.

Both of our deer were antlerless bucks, not quite fully grown.  That means their meat is tender, but they're a bit smaller than even a full-size doe.  Still, we got a hefty helping of meat.  Here's the average from the two deer:

• Hams --- 9 pounds
• Tenderloin --- 1.6 pounds
• Hamburger --- 5.8 pounds
• Total --- 16.4 pounds
  

We actually got quite a bit more meat than that since I wasn't very careful to pick the meat off the ribcage, but did pull off that meat to go in the stew after the bones had cooked down for a few hours.  We also got one good liver and lots of bones for Lucy.

I figure our gun has now paid for itself by bringing in over 57 pounds of meat.  Over the last two years, we spent $200 on the gun, about $80 on a laser (which my 20/20 hindsight says would have been better spent on a scope), and about $70 on bullets for target practice.  That's about $6 per pound, which isn't so bad for high quality free range meat.  Once we kill a few more deer, the numbers will look even better, and since these deer were so easy to process, I suspect more will head to our freezer before long.

We ended up keeping a rooster and three hens from the latest batch of Light sussex chickens although one of the hens is most likely an unknown Light sussex hybrid.

The smaller flock seemed a bit lost at first, but are starting to look more like a cohesive group the last few days.

One of the first pictures I took of this flock was of a group of four freshly hatched chicks. I wonder how many of the original four made it to the final team of future foragers?

There are a lot of perennials with leaves that can be used as greens, but I have to admit that I prefer the flavor of our annual greens most of the time.  So you can imagine how excited I was upon hearing of perennial kale --- perhaps it could be my answer to the early spring greens shortage?

And then reality set in.  Eric Toensmeier tried out several varieties of perennial brassicas in his Massachusetts garden with very little luck and concluded that they are only reliably winter hardy to zone 8 or 9.  At the same time, the perennial brassicas detest heat, so he only recommends the currently available varieties for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest.

However, Toensmeier challenged us all to develop a new perennial brassica that can withstand hot summers and cold winters.  Brassica oleracea already contains a heaping handful of annual and perennial species and he suspects experimental crosses might yield the perennial holy kale...I mean grail.

To that end, when some kale plants overwintered last year, I left them alone.  Most bloomed and died (kale is a biennial --- that's what it does), but one survived and kept plugging along.  I can't actually remember whether this kale bloomed and I picked off the blooms or if it just kept growing.  All I know is that I've been harvesting a few leaves from my kale plant off and on for the last twelve months.  Will it survive the winter again unprotected?  Will it skip blooming again and prove itself a true perennial?  Only time will tell.

I've become interested in preserved meat since my offgrid house's fridge is small, runs on propane, and has no freezer, which makes storing meat difficult. Also, experiencing delicious jamón in Spain gives a whole new appreciation for cured meat.

When Anna gave me a whole venison ham, this was a perfect opportunity to experiment with smoking meat. Rather than build a smokehouse or a smoker, I simply used my chimney. So the fire that's keeping me warm and warming bathwater is at the same time adding delicious flavor to my meat.

Meat has surely been smoked on chimney tops for ages, and this page shows how that can be refined into smoke boxes attached to the chimney, and so on. Since my house is built into a hill, it's easy to get up on the roof, so the chimney top is good enough for me.

The whole ham was a bit large to fit, and I worried I could lose it down the chimney, so I butchered it into individual steaks.

One was marinated in salt, one in soy sauce, and one "control" was left alone.

After the first smoking (4 hours), the meat was still quite rare, springy to the touch. At the top of the chimney, the smoke is at most warm, not hot. It only cooks the outside of the meat, and as the fire is dampened down, it becomes a true cold smoker. Even after this first smoke, the venison had a delightfully smokey flavor.

The second smoking (4 more hours) and third (12 more) firmed the meat up, but did not cook its interior any more. Instead, it seems to be losing moisture, and shrinking slightly. I could continue smoking the venison indefinitely.

My favorite flavor is the salted smoked venison. It makes a terrific antipasto and also a good sandwich. The soy sauce flavor adds perhaps too much complexity on top of the smokiness. The unmarinated meat is my least favorite by itself, but I liked small scraps that were smoked for 5 hours, and then cooked in a stew. They turned out to taste and feel much like sausage.

A word on wood -- I used my regular firewood, which is probably mostly maple, and I smelled the smoke and made sure I liked its quality before hanging any meat. It would surely not work as well with pine or soft woods. I'd like to try with some apple wood, and try adding some herbs to the fire too. I'm also going to try to smoke some cheese; the trick will be to keep the smoke consistently cool.

Joey Hess is Anna's brother and technical advisor (paid in venison.)  He's a household name in the Linux world and is the primary person behind Branchable, the software that runs this blog.  In his non-technical time, he likes to camp, hike, play board games, and fly kites. (And he probably does lots of other things that Anna's not aware of.)

We had a great Thanksgiving driving over a river and through some woods to share a delicious feast with family and friends.

Speaking of surprise mushrooms, here's another one!  I tossed the contaminated grain spawn onto the compost pile and ignored it, but it looks like the oyster mushrooms had gotten a good toehold on at least a bit of the grain.  Although there's black mold present, the oyster still managed to produce two little mushrooms.

This doesn't change my analysis of the grain experiment as a failure, but it does testify to the resiliency of oyster mushrooms.  Definitely the easiest mushroom to play with for the backyard homesteader.

While Joey was smoking one venison ham, I was roasting another.  I had used this same recipe on a leg of lamb with outstanding results, and the venison was nearly as tasty, although tasting a bit more like roast beef and just barely requiring a knife rather than just a fork for cutting.

If it's been frozen, first thaw your venison ham out thoroughly.  Then slice up three big garlic cloves into slivers and pick a couple of tablespoons of fresh thyme sprigs out of your garden.  Cut small slices into the ham and insert a piece of garlic and thyme in each slice.  For best results, let the ham sit for a couple of hours before cooking so the flavors of the herbs can soak into the meat.

Cut up a bunch of root vegetables to go in the pan, tossed with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  My favorite combination is two onions, one large sweet potato, and two medium potatoes, with six cloves of garlic pressed over them.  But you can mix and match whatever root vegetables you like best.

Put the roast on top of the roots.  Brush some olive oil on the meat and sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper on top.

Bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for about half an hour to seal the juices inside, then turn down the heat to 325 and roast for at least two more hours.  I got hungry and pulled it out when the meat was still  medium-rare, so next time I think I'll allot at least three hours at 325 for a nearly 5 pound ham like this.

You can eat roast venison ham plain or on sandwiches.  Five pounds is a lot of meat for two people, so I ended up cooking the second half of it up into a pot of chili.

What's your favorite recipe for cooking with venison?  Do you make outstanding venison jerky, awesome venison sausage, or something entirely different?  I hope you'll post with a comment --- we've got a lot more meat to experiment with!

Our latest attempt to keep an automatic chicken waterer from freezing is working.

The heat tape feels like a more elegant solution compared to shining a heat lamp at the nipple area or using a stock tank heater like the Ice and Easy.

It got a pretty good test last week when the temperature got down to 27 degrees, and I'm sure it will get a chance to prove itself in colder conditions before long.

Modern marketing has convinced us that if we just had the right possessions, we would be happy.  The concept has even spawned "retail therapy", the idea that if you feel down, a good shopping trip will perk you right up.

In stark contrast, science suggests that buying more things makes us less able to appreciate life's small pleasures.  I've also noticed that any emotional boost I might receive from a purchase dulls quickly as I get used to my acquisition and the fun toy fades into the background.  (Often, the purchase glow dies even faster as I succumb to buyer's remorse.)

But sometimes, you really can buy happiness.  A full year after installing our ultra-efficient, tiny wood stove, I still smile every time I glance in her direction.  Basking in her warmth is one of my favorite cold weather activities, and perhaps that explains the longevity of my pleasure at the purchase.  Even though it seemed like we were buying a hunk of iron, we were really paying for a lifetime of experiences, and experiences are the one type of purchase that scientists report stand the test of time.

...knows how many bales of straw he can fit in his car.

The parts Festiva can hold eight once you strap four to the roof.

The day before Thanksgiving, we met with the non-profit who owns the farm we want to share with interns.  They were tentatively enthusiastic about the idea, so I'm starting to work out the nuts and bolts of the project.

That means making lists of locals who can share knowledge about beekeeping, working mules, Salatin-style pasturing, organic farming, sustainable forestry, and more.  We're figuring out which fun and useful projects we can fit into year one on the homestead --- composting toilets, pasturing chickens and meat goats, improving a spring, beginning a small garden, playing with aquaponics, maybe building a tiny kitchen.  We might even be able to team up with a group a couple of miles down the road to give interns a window into an established intentional community and a spot to take a hot shower and check their email.

Meanwhile, I'm hashing out a budget to see if we can afford to hire someone local to cook the interns supper every day to soften the hard ground they're camping on and to keep the community from thinking of the internship farm as a bunch of crazy hippies.  (The intentional community we hope to hook up with is still known locally as "the hippy farm" over three decades after establishment.)  That, in turn, means dusting off my grant-writing skills so the interns can afford to come learn.

Here's where I want your feedback.  I've decided to donate my book advance to the project and have high hopes I can snag at least another $5,000 from foundations to get the internship project off the ground.  But if I put all of my ambitious plans into action --- paying one local expert per week to lead a quality workshop, feeding interns all three meals, paying for their tents, buying the supplies and animals to make the first year's projects a reality, setting aside funds so that one intern can come for free on a scholarship --- we're still stuck charging interns $2,000 apiece for a 12 week stay.

Is that too much?  Would it sweeten the pot if we teamed up with a local school and gave college credit?  Or would you rather see the fee cut in half for a simplified internship --- fewer local experts (only the ones who I wouldn't have to pay), less or no food, bring your own tent, etc.?

Its been about a year since we applied a coat of DAP high temperature caulk to our first Jotul wood stove chimney pipe and the only thing left is just a few chips laying on the roof.

I suspect something was wrong with the tube we got because it took an extreme amount of pressure to get it to squeeze out and once it was out I had to keep applying water to keep it moldable.

The 3M high temperature caulk we used on the second Jotul was much easier to apply and is still holding strong.

Our kitchen peach tree is currently hosting 10 praying mantis egg sacs.  That means between one and several thousand predators are inside, itching to eat up bad bugs in the garden next year.

I'm not quite sure why the praying mantises love our kitchen peach so much.  Maybe the complexity of the forest garden island or the large size of the tree makes them feel safe there?  Other peach, pear, and apple trees just as close to the garden each host one or fewer egg sacs apiece.

No matter what their reasoning, I think those praying mantis mamas have good taste.  The kitchen peach is currently my favorite yard tree too!

Do you have a strategy for keeping warm if the electricity goes out during a winter snowstorm?  Electric heaters clearly won't work, and gas furnaces require electricity to operate.  Even wood heat might not be reliable if you depend on an electric fan to blow warm air where you want it.

An energy efficient wood stove in a central location within your home is the best choice for warmth (and cooking) during power outages, but the time and money required to install a wood stove is beyond the Weekend Homesteader level.  This week's lunchtime series helps you find other options to stay warm if snow knocks down the power lines.


I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Weekend Homesteader: December.  The 99 cent ebook walks you through the basics of planting your first fruit trees, staying warm without electricity, understanding the uses of essential tools, and turning trash into treasures.  If you're interested in other aspects of basic emergency preparedness, Weekend Homesteader: November gives tips on storing drinking water and the upcoming Weekend Homesteader: January will cover backup lighting options.

This post is part of our Emergency Warmth lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Staying warm during power outages Heating one room Dressing for warmth Choosing emergency sleeping bags Activity keeps you warm

The heart of our new heated chicken waterer is one of those electric pipe heaters.

A few pieces of tape helps it to stay flat against the bucket while you carefully sandwich a modified bucket over top.

The trickiest part of homesteading is walking the tightrope between too little, enough, and too much.  When you get all of your food at the grocery store, it's easy to just buy what you need, but how big should your summer garden be if it's going to provide all of your winter food too?  I've just about figured out food, but am still learning how much firewood we need for the winter.

In a perfect world, you cut your firewood a year in advance so that the wood dries and burns at peak efficiency.  We haven't quite achieved that goal yet, but we have learned that there's little use in cutting firewood in our climate once winter's damp sets in.  So what we have in the wood shed now needs to last until spring.

I've been burning wood with great abandon over the last month, lighting a fire whenever I feel like it even if we don't really need it.  It's been a mostly warm fall, but I've still had fires on about half the days this month, usually just a fire in the morning or evening, not one that lasts all day.

As you can see, we've used up about two thirds of our first tier of wood, which wasn't stacked quite as high as the other two and a half tiers.  At this rate, I suspect we might run low on wood late in the winter and have to drive some wetter wood in from the parking area.  Hopefully next year I'll have a better idea of how much firewood we need and can have it all under cover by the end of the summer.

(As a side note, yes, our young Light Sussex do think the wood shed is a much more fun spot to hang out than the coop on a rainy November day.)

One strategy for keeping your family warm is to choose a small room and heat it using a backup option that doesn't require electricity.  This is my least favorite method because it's awfully easy to spend a lot of money on a backup heater that seldom gets used, and thus doesn't work when you need it.  However, many Americans can't wrap their minds around heating themselves instead of the room (which I'll discuss in the later posts), so I'm including the room-heating option.

If you choose a one-room backup plan, your first step is to decide which room would be easiest to keep warm without electricity.  Your whole family (and any cold-sensitive pets, like guinea pigs and parrots) should fit inside without getting on each others nerves, but the room should also be as small as possible so that it's easier to heat.  South-facing windows (or north-facing windows if you live in the southern hemisphere) will let in solar radiation that will warm the area considerably on a sunny day.  The room should have space for everyone to sleep, so a master bedroom, den with a foldout couch, or area with lots of bare floor is a good choice.

Once you choose your room, think about blocking off cold air that might want to flow in.  That means having some heavy curtains (or blankets with a way of tacking them up) to keep heat from flowing out windows at night.  The room should either close off from the rest of the house with a solid door (and a rolled up towel to fill the space underneath), or you should plan another large blanket or curtain to block off the entranceway.

Your room may already have a fireplace or wood stove, in which case you will just need to keep it stocked with plenty of dry wood, kindling, paper, and lighters for getting the fire going.  If not, you can install a standalone propane heater that doesn't need to be vented to the outdoors (around $200 for the low end model.)  A cheaper alternative is a free-standing kerosene heater (around $120), but be aware that kerosene heaters create carbon monoxide, so you'll need to increase air flow through your room for safety.  Kerosene heaters also tend to be a bit sooty and stinky, but that problem is lessened if you light the heaters and turn them off outdoors, carrying them inside only when they're already in use.


I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Weekend Homesteader: December.  The 99 cent ebook walks you through the basics of planting your first fruit trees, staying warm without electricity, understanding the uses of essential tools, and turning trash into treasures.  If you're interested in other aspects of basic emergency preparedness, Weekend Homesteader: November gives tips on storing drinking water and the upcoming Weekend Homesteader: January will cover backup lighting options.

I decided to go with the smallest section of electric pipe heater for the DIY heated chicken waterer.

The longer lengths were just a few dollars more, but I thought it would be best to start out at the bottom in an effort to use the least amount of energy.

People with really cold winters may need a longer section.

Goldenseal and ginseng both grow wild in our woods and are harvested for their medicinal roots.  Ginseng, especially, is much sought after, bringing hundreds of dollars per pound when dried.  Years ago, I planted some ginseng in my woods, hoping the $100 worth of seeds would grow into $10,000 worth of plants over the next decade.  Sadly, my neighbors came and stole the plants before they'd matured.  I don't really blame my neighbors since they probably figure I was too much of a city slicker to know what ginseng is, and it's hard to turn down hundred dollar bills you walk past on the forest floor.  Still, the failed experiment ensured I wasn't going to plant any more ginseng in the back forty.

Goldenseal roots aren't quite as highly priced, which is probably why my patch of goldenseal (not planted by me) is still around.  I'm most interested in the medicinal qualities of goldenseal since the roots contain a strong antibiotic that complements the echinacea growing in my garden.  My doctor sister once explained to me that echinacea is best above the belt and goldenseal below, and a few minutes of research confirms that goldenseal's effectiveness is due to increasing the secretion of mucous membranes (thus helping with problems like urinary tract infections.)  All of that said, the few times I've wanted to chew on some goldenseal roots, I felt too sick to climb up to the top of the hill to harvest them.

Which is all a long way of saying that when my mother gave me some ginseng seeds and goldenseal roots, I thought, "Why not try them out in the forest garden?"  The forest garden island around my kitchen peach has the high organic matter and mycelium-rich soil that woodland herbs crave and has been a good home for Burdick's Wild Leek.  I figured ginseng outside my kitchen window definitely won't get stolen, and goldenseal in that location will be close enough to dig no matter how bad I feel.  I'll let you know how the herbs do in their semi-cultivated location next year.

As I mentioned previously, I don't really recommend planning to heat a whole room with a backup heating arrangement.  If you don't use your backup equipment in your everyday life, it will take a long time for that equipment to pay for itself and the heaters often won't work when you need them to.  Instead, I recommend changing your habits so that you heat your body instead of the room, both during outages and to whatever extent you're comfortable with during your daily life.  The great thing about learning to stay warm without electricity or fossil fuels is that you'll be prepared no matter how long the power outage lasts, and will also enjoy a lower heating bill during normal winters.

So how do you warm your body instead of the room?  The first step is to invest in some winter clothes chosen for warmth and utility instead of style.  A good winter coat, a hat that covers your ears, warm socks, sweaters, and long johns go a long way.  On cold winter days, I wear fleece long johns under normal pants, two pairs of socks (if they fit in my boots), and on top am decked out in a t-shirt, a thin fleece shirt, a thicker fleece shirt, and then a winter coat.  Throw a wool hat on my head and some good gloves on my hands and I'm quite comfortable even sitting still at 40 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you head down to the local goodwill, you can probably find most of these pieces of clothing for just a few bucks apiece.

Three environmental conditions can make the outfit above useless, though: wind, wet, and constriction.  I'll start with the last, which is the least intuitive.  When you're building a house and adding insulation to the walls, you'll soon learn that you can't cram two layers of insulation into the space meant for one layer and get twice the protection from cold.  Instead, that double layer of insulation will actually work less well than a single, properly installed layer would have.  Insulation --- and that includes your winter clothes --- works by creating pockets that trap air in place.  So if you put on two pairs of socks and cram your feet into boots meant for one pair, your feet will be colder than if you'd only put on one pair because the constricted clothing will push out all the insulating air pockets.  Ditto if you try to wear long johns under close-fitting jeans.  That's why, when planning your winter layers, you'll need to choose some clothes a bit bigger than normal to go on the outside.

You're probably more familiar with the way wind and rain can make you cold despite lots of insulative clothing.  If you're going to be inside during cold weather, you probably won't have to worry much about these problems, but you should plan ahead in case you need to go out.  A waterproof wind-breaker on top of your other clothes goes a long way toward keeping both water and chilly winds from penetrating.  This is especially important if you use synthetic fleece clothes, which wind cuts right through.

You also need to think about water that starts on the inside of your clothes --- sweat.  If you're outside chopping wood and notice that you're starting to heat up, take off layers until you're comfortable again.  Otherwise, your sweat will quickly chill your body once you stop moving.

Finally, keep some plastic grocery bags on hand to deal with wet feet.  Boots eventually spring a leak during slogs through the snow, and wet feet make even the most cheerful person cranky.  If you can put on dry socks and slip each socked feet into a grocery bag apiece before putting on your boots, the plastic layer will keep water in your boots from seeping into your socks and coming in contact with your skin.  You may look like a homeless person, but you'll be a warm homeless person.

I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Weekend Homesteader: December.  The 99 cent ebook walks you through the basics of planting your first fruit trees, staying warm without electricity, understanding the uses of essential tools, and turning trash into treasures.  If you're interested in other aspects of basic emergency preparedness, Weekend Homesteader: November gives tips on storing drinking water and the upcoming Weekend Homesteader: January will cover backup lighting options.

This post is part of our Emergency Warmth lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Staying warm during power outages Heating one room Dressing for warmth Choosing emergency sleeping bags Activity keeps you warm

Got the waterline ditch filled in today.

Tonight should be a good test with temperatures predicted to be in the mid 20's.