New Year

If you're looking for some kind of uplifting, deep thinking, high hoping schmutz here, I ain't got it.

Other things I ain't got include resolutions, so you won't find that here either.

I've always been a sort of plan for the worst and hope for the best kind of person and I figure 2014 will continue to prove to me that that's probably the least stressful way to go about life without giving up on caring entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a Debbie Downer here... I just don't know what 2014 is going to bring yet. There are goals I want to accomplish and things I want to start doing more, and others I want to start doing less, but those decisions and the steps to start implementing them started months ago, for the most part, so making them resolutions doesn't make much sense.

What I do know about 2014 is that I'll take whatever it throws at me and come out still breathing, still kicking, and still able to find something (some days anything) to smile about. I'll keep loving those that I care about, and being the best person I can be. I'll cherish the friendships I have and the memories of those that I've lost over the years, just like before.

I'll be a shoulder for some friends, a vent for others, and they'll variously do the same for me.

And at the end of this year, as with the last, if I've been honest with myself and stuck by my own lights for what is right, I won't have anything to be ashamed of, and hopefully I'll have a few things to be proud of.

And that's really it. I hope for all of my readers a happy, healthy year, full of laughter instead of tears, but being a pragmatist, I advise you all to stock up on Kleenex anyway. It's not like it goes bad after all, and there's always flu season....

The Genes Will Out.... Brickscuit Edition

I grew up in a mixed family. I don't mean racially or even religiously, mind. No, the conflict was about biscuits.

See, Sugar had only one use for canned biscuits (she called 'em whop-biscuits for the sound the can made) and that was monkey bread, because it didn't matter what kind of dough you used. 

She was adamant, biscuits should be homemade. 

The problem was, Farmmom couldn't make biscuits. She was perfectly willing to learn to make biscuits it just never seemed to work. Sugar handed over her awesome biscuit mix (recipe here, seriously try it) over and over again but they just never came out right.

And by not coming out right I mean we used them for batting practice, and to play fetch with the dogs..

"You're kneading them too long, you want to knead them just long enough to get the dough to hold together." Sugar told Farmmom. Farmmom tried again, and again they came out hard. So Sugar, convinced that short of baker error her biscuits were no-fail, made up a batch and counted strokes with the spoon, as well as how many strokes to knead the dough, and wrote the recipe out for Farmmom that way.

And they still came out hard as rocks.

The next time Farmmom tried, Sugar was standing over her shoulder confirming that she was doing everything right, walking her through it step by step. They slid the biscuits into the oven and Sugar was sort of smug and triumphant, because she knew they'd come out this time.

Except they didn't. Brickscuits again.

Sugar finally gave up on teaching mom to make biscuits, and we became a whop-biscuit household. 

By the time I was big enough to make biscuits Sugar had pretty well stopped. Her arthritis made it hurt to knead the dough. Not that she used whop-biscuits, mind, she just didn't have biscuits at home anymore. So I had never tried to make biscuits until the other night.

See, Farmmom and I had been putting together some holiday goody boxes for our renters, and we were including some cactus jelly, so I thought some biscuit mix would be a nice addition, and whipped some up. Had some extra, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and finally find out whether mom's Brickscuit genes won or not.

The verdict is that Sugar's genes beat out Farmmom's, and I'm now on biscuit duty. 

(For the record, the difference in the biscuits pictured is actually two different ways to do em. The big ones are made according to sugar's instructions, buttering half the dough and folding the dough over creating a two layered biscuit. The smaller ones are single layer, which is how most people do biscuits. In the future I'll roll the dough out a little thinner for the two layer version. Nothing wrong with em, they're just big honkin biscuits that way.)

Green Chili ala Poppa Dick

It's been cold.... and I mean COLD for the last week.  Yesterday I made a pot of Poppa Dicks green chili. This recipe works well with any meat from pork to venison.  I used some venison that our renters gave us. Farmdad was bragging and someone asked for the recipe so here we go.

Poppa Dicks Green Chili

1-2 lbs of cubed meat
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 large can of green chilies
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cumin
2 diced jalapenos ( according to taste)
salt & pepper

Brown the meat, celery and onion in stock pot.  Don't cook it done just brown it a bit.  Then add the tomatoes, green chilies, jalapenos and spices.  Add water to cover everything.  Bring to a boil.  Turn heat sown to just a simmer and let it cook for several hours.  The longer it cooks the better it is.  Add water as needed.

Hunter Safety

So, I finally got my hunter safety certificate this weekend.

I know what you're thinking, and the reason I've never gotten it before now was mostly that I had other people to do the hunting for me, since my main goal is getting something tasty to bring home and eat, rather than the thrill of the hunt.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the rush of getting a big buck, or successfully stalking an antelope. I get that it trips people's trigger and that's awesome. But that's not me.

I'm not against stalking an antelope even though I may never do it... but my reason would be more along the lines of "but the deer is standing there looking at me like I might have a snack for it while the antelope saw me blink and he's over the horizon."

I'm willing to put the effort in for the good meat, but good deer and good antelope are pretty interchangeable to me flavor wise, but the effort to get them is vastly different. Especially since in my opinion if an antelope isn't pretty calm to start with and dropped in its tracks it's bad antelope, not good.

So, mostly, when I got a craving for game I'd tell FarmDad or Darlin Man "Go shoot some x and I'll cook it" or just "Go shoot some rabbits and we'll throw em in the freezer" because I love rabbit.

But, this weekend there happened to be a class and it happened to be free and also happened to be conducted by the most entertaining and personable game warden we've had in these parts for ages, so I figured it would be less boring than it could be and figured I'd go ahead and get it done.

Did, didn't learn a whole lot I didn't already know via osmosis, but it was entertaining. We had several kids in the class and the game warden (quite correctly) built his teaching around them, not the adults (of which there were also several,) and got really interactive with them which was fun.

Got a hundred on the written test and got handed my card since I have my concealed carry and thus am assumed to have safe firearms handling skills which are part of the whole thing here in Colorado, but I went out to watch the live fire anyway because I enjoy watching the kids get to shoot.

All in all there are worse ways I could have spent that time, and now I can get my own danged small game license and get my own danged rabbits... though I did discover via our game identification/habitat handbook that we are viable habitat for spotted skunks. I don't think I've ever seen one, but I totally want a pelt.

Also, in-state mountain lion and bear licenses have plummeted, cost wise. On the bears that's mostly because the bait-is-bad contingent got baiting for bears outlawed. I can understand the part where drawing them in from miles away isn't sporting, but I also understand first hand the consequences of the resultant population boom (they got rid of the spring bear season at the same time, IIRC.)

Over a hundred bears have been euthanized just so far this year, just in Colorado Springs, according to the game warden. Just in Colorado Springs. The population pressure without the control and higher likelihood of a successful cull that we had with the spring hunt and the bait has resulted in less food to go around and more bears coming into contact with humans.

Which is why I never reported the monster black bear that would walk down our alley when Darlin Man and I lived right by that little dry creek that backed onto undeveloped hilly scrubby area. Because he wasn't getting into the trash, he wasn't going after the dogs (he checked them out a time or two but believe me if he had wanted to eat them the fence we had there wouldn't have caused him any inconvenience at all) and he was literally just passing through. But if I'd called him in, he could have been euthanized for that. There was a certain amount of nothing you can do, keep your trash cans fastened closed and don't interact with the bears kind of attitude where we were but in other areas they have gone to a no-strikes policy. Bear is in town, gets reported, bear gets tranqed or trapped and loaded up, taken out of public view, and put down.

So, being the proper nature lover that I am, I do have a bit of a yen for a black bear hunt. It'd be neat to be able to have a bearskin rug from a bear I got, and that would be one more bear towards a properly balanced system in which we get a good number of healthy bears doing their ecological job instead of a bunch of borderline or unhealthy bears that come into town because there's not enough food in the hills, but there is in all those garbage cans in town.

I don't know that I ever will do a bear hunt, since we don't have enough in this area to make it a problem, and I don't really know the area over west by the foothills where they are a problem well enough to feel comfortable hiking about in them by myself. Here we get the occasional bear on a telephone pole or last year I think a little cinnamon stage juvenile took over someone's doghouse because he thought it was a good place to den up. Over there we were picking up trash all the time and watching Gigantobear (I'm telling you that black bear had to be hip high or more on me at the shoulder, and built like a brick shithouse... he was big for a black bear) take his evening stroll down the alley because it was easier walking than the streambed.

So yeah, if I could get a decent guide that I trusted to hunt with for a bear hunt, I'd definitely consider it. On the other hand it's not at all like it's a driving passion or anything, so I probably won't look too hard.

Ah FarmDog...

FarmDog has always had a bit of a licking.. issue. Mostly she'd lick her paws for a while, usually while I was trying to sleep. 

In recent years, as she's gotten older and stiffer, it's gotten worse. As the weather gets cold, she gets achey, which only encourages her licking. So she'll lick sores on herself. 

Not a huge deal, glucosamine helps and when she does manage to do it in spite of everyone telling her to stop licking (which she does... for a bit) I just throw some triple antibiotic on it, wrap it in gauze, and then vet wrap.

Usually she'll lick the vet wrap until told not to but mostly she leaves it alone aside from being pouty and showing you her ouchy for sympathy at every chance. Occasionally she'll take the vet wrap off to get to it but she knows it's only temporary and she'll get wrapped again as soon as I see it.

Yesterday she tried to be sneaky:

She chewed the bottom off the vet wrap, leaving most of it intact, so that she could get to the sore. Of course she got re-wrapped, but I had to get a picture first. She did a pretty good job of making it inconspicuous, honestly.

Edited to Add:  Do you see this sad face? You see how injured she is? She's showing you how injured she is.

Potted Plants

No, I'm not talking about the recent legislative change that made it legal to have five marijuana plants for personal use. Even if I were into the whole pot thing, I'd be leery, since there still isn't any legal method to acquire said plants.

I'm talking about garden variety potted plants. Literally. Look:

That's my plant table. This spring Farmmom decided she wanted to start some of her own seeds, and since the spring here is unpredictable, that meant starting inside. So she bought a little flourescent fixture and a plant bulb, to put over her little plastic seedling greenhouse. 

Then I got Tiny Tim, my tea tree (yes that's him in the far right, with his own lamp, because he wasn't always on the table) and discovered that some of the creepy crawlies around here just love him, so outside for some Colorado Sunshine wasn't an option unless I wanted fuzzy white bugs all over him instead of pretty white flowers. So he got a lamp.

As the summer progressed I made use of the plant light for my fruit tree cuttings (some of which are in the back there, hopefully making roots for themselves... if not, I'll just have to get new cuttings in the spring, cause I want tiny mulberry trees damnit!) and a couple of mom's potted plants that were ailing. Those eventually gave up the ghost, but they were older plants and had survived longer than we had expected them to anyway.

Since it's looking like things will be moving forward on the roof at the farmhouse, and the move to the hermitage is more imminent all the time, I've been plotting on food plants that can be grown in pots. See, the farmhouse has a lovely porch with tons of windows. With a little help in the lighting department over the winter, it'll be a great space for having such food producing plants as can thrive in pots all year round. 

So far, I've managed to get chives and mint established. The pot of mint I found for three dollars turned out to have two plants in it, so of course I split them. 

What's with the empty pot on the left you ask? It's not empty, I answer. See, we had a head of garlic sitting around left over from pickling. When I went to use some for a pot roast I was throwing together yesterday, it was showing signs of imminently sprouting. So what I didn't use, I stuck in a pot. So that will eventually be several heads of garlic. 

When it's a sixty mile round trip to the store, it's worth growing whatever you can yourself. 

Tiny Tim is doing just fine, in case you were wondering. Producing flowers and berries regularly... well, just look here:

A flower and a berry side by side. That berry will turn red for a few days, then start shrinking and and drying up. The little white flowers are pretty as a picture... though not pretty enough to reassure Concerned Worm, as you can see. 

So far, there's far less bonsai to Tiny Tim than you would expect. I do a little clean up on his leaves now and then to make sure he's getting plenty of light, but mostly I just water him and let him do his thing. If I wanted him at the height he is now, that would be a different story, but for now he's got some growing to do, and he'll do it best without a lot of interference.

All in all I've had better luck than I expected to with my potted plants, and I'm really enjoying them.

Major

Major hasn't found a permanent home yet. Being the sucker that I am, I can't do nothing. So I've started a fundraiser.

Because she needs rescued, and I'm the rescuer. Most of you know how uncomfortable I am asking for money, or even receiving gifts. But this is for a good cause, it's not for me. She's in a fantastic place now, but as she grows there are going to be issues having four akitas in one house. Mostly because her mother is very dominant with other females. It's a lot easier to handle dominance issues when most of the dogs are under 30lbs than when they're all nearly 100lbs.

So, if you can afford it, whatever small amount you can afford. Whatever comes in through the fundraiser will be used for Major. I'll be opening a savings account where the funds will live until Major needs something.

The donation page is here, and I'll post updates as we go.

Please do not feel compelled to donate if you can't afford it. I understand completely that money is tight all over. But, if you have a little to spare, you can help an adorable puppy. That's a good cause no matter how you slice it.

Here's the page. If nothing else it's worth checking out for cute puppy pictures.