The Month of May's Homestead Harvest

1 of 3 patches of turnips. The tops are tasting yummy at this tender stage.

1 of 2 spinach patches. It came up really well this year, but has went to seed quickly.

Sugar snap peas

lettuce blend

green bean rows

Raspberry brambles. Maybe next year we will transplant to nice rows and trellis.

Easter Egg and French Breakfast radishes. The Easter Egg have outperformed this year. The seeds were both saved from last year's crops that went to seed.

cut lettuce and spinach

In May we harvested 9 1/4 pounds of produce, counting mulberries picked off the tree.
Radishes, spinach, lettuce, chard, turnip greens, and cilantro were our fresh goodies.

And Riley shot a couple turkeys that filled 10 quart jars of meat and 18 quarts of broth.

Hunting

If you don't like looking at dead animals, this is not the post for you!

A few snapshots of this year's hunting days...

Riley sighting in his gun.

The field-dressed doe hanging until we're ready to butcher. 

We put 16 pounds of meat in the freezer from this yearling.

Bucket of parts saved for luring traps.

Jerky in the making. Thinly sliced meat in a pan ready to be coated with marinade in the bowl.

Deer Jerky

3 lb deer roast or loin, sliced 1/4"

1/2 c soy sauce

2 Tbsp liquid smoke

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

several dashes of hot pepper sauce

Mix marinade ingredients and pour over meat. Soak at least 8 hours. (I have left it in the fridge, covered, up to 48 hours.) Lay meat pieces on cooling racks placed in jellyroll pans. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper. Bake 10 hours at 180*. Jerky should bend, not snap apart. I have also put the strips in a dehydrator, but the jerky had a slightly different flavor our family didn't like as well.

Little sister gets to take a turn sitting, waiting, watching, reading, and possibly videoing.

Two turkeys, just in time for Christmas dinner.

The second doe, shot in January, was the last chance for meat this season. We kept 30 pounds from this one, mostly canned chunks for soups and casseroles.  

Jumble of January

After our nice vacation back east with family, we jumped right back into a full schedule at home.

The Sunflower Tournament took place the second weekend in January. We watched games, sat at the admission table, and observed our son being awarded his first basketball medal (as his team placed 1st)! Most of the rest of the season's games are way away...1, 2, and 3 hours from home. We are finally catching on to the pack lunch/supper plus snacks thing down. And don't eat during the short intermission or you might miss your child's baskets!

We enjoyed some snowy weather and some warm weather within a week of each other!

Riley sat in the tree stand on the last day of deer season (with a borrowed crossbow) and shot a doe right through the heart . We quickly butchered it the next morning as the temperature was so unseasonably warm and we wanted no rotting meat. Since we have plenty of ground venison in the freezer, we made 16 pounds of jerky and the other 26 pounds into stew meat chunks.

We took a field trip with PCHEA to the Historical Museum and the Wildlife & Parks Museum to celebrate Kansas Day.

A new salad recipe was tried (for those pack your lunch moments when lunchmeat is boycotted-by mom, chicken salad is not appreciated-because of its messiness, and pasta salad is abhorred-by everyone; but it is so easy and filling so I keep trying).

Another batch of chicken bone broth was slow-cooked for more January soups.

Other significant remembrances:

We started watching Chuck Missler's series, Learn the Bible in 24 Hours, on Sunday mornings with a small group.

Hubby spent the day with a friend coming and going to Nebraska to check out farm machinery.

We enjoyed a card game night with cousins, chili soup at friends, and a Pizza Hut treat with more friends.

That is January in a Jumble!

December Delights

Art class: Learning one point perspective.

Baking Days: birthday cake, french bread, gingerbread cookies.

Violin Concert.

Christmas goodies.

1st fur buyer meeting of the season.

Hunting, Baking, Playing Ball

The first days of December were busy for us.

Several evenings, before rifle season, Riley drove the golf cart down the end of the lane to the intersection where his hunting spot is set up in the trees. He is still waiting for the buck.

Riley & Annie's basketball teams held a jewelry/ bake sale fundraiser. Annie made 2 plates of cinnamon rolls for that.

Later in the week we attended a benefit supper for friends whose son has lymphoma. I made a chocolate chess pie & 2 cream pies for that. 

Then we wanted to try a new recipe: focaccia bread. So one evening for supper we devoured almost these 3 focaccias with toppings...Italian cheese, tomato garlic, and apple cinnamon.

South Central Kansas Thunder played their first home game vs. Reno County Sabers. Annie's team lost by 1 basket as it swished through when the final buzzer sounded. Riley's team won by a decent lead. (Maybe 15-20 points? I forget the final score!)

We had new friends over for Friday night supper and games. 

We tied a festive ribbon on our door wreath and got out the little nativity set that used to be my parents'. The girls played for hours with the small figures.

Saturday Annie mixed up cultured salsa with a bucketful of green tomatoes from our garden that had ripened in the garage. We harvested a total of 218 pounds of tomatoes this year!

That evening we ate delicious chili and cookies at our neighbors'. 

December started with bang of busyness! We like activities, but we like quiet times too.

Thank You God for life's variety of blessings!

Trapping Season 2013- 2014...by Riley

The first set I put out in November was a deer carcass staked up the hill from the house with a foothold trap in front of it. It produced a coyote on the 5th night. 

The next set to produce was a dirt hole out on the milo field a 1/4th of a mile from the house by an oil field drive. It caught a coyote a couple weeks after the set was made. 

A few weeks passed, by that time it was the middle of December, and I hadn't caught anything else, so I made a dirt hole behind the shop where Daddy works about 5 miles down the road. It produced a coyote the first night. 

The next catch was the beginning of January: a bobcat in a snare on the edge of a grass field by some trees about a 1/2 mile from the house. 

It went about 2 more weeks and I caught a coyote in a snare a couple hundred feet away from where the bobcat was snared. About three weeks later I caught another coyote in a snare ten feet down the trail from the previous coyote. 

It went a little while... One day I went with Daddy down to Sawyer to work on something at the farm where he used to work, and saw lots of coon tracks. I set three traps. One connected with a coon the first night. There was nothing for a couple more nights, then a coon opened the connector on the trap chain and got away with the trap. Several days later we were back down at Sawyer. I set two more traps to make it three again. About a week later one connected with another coon. During that time on a trip to Sawyer, we picked up a coon that had been hit on the road. That was the day before season ended. 

The next week after season ended we took everything to the fur buyer. I got $125 for the bobcat, $25 each for two coyotes, and $12 for one coyote. As for the other two; I messed one up trying to skin it while it was frozen and had to throw it out, the other one was too mangy to keep. I got $20 for one coon, $14 for one coon, and $7 for one coon. I'm happy with what I got this season. Next season I hope to catch 10 coyotes, 3 bobcats, and 15 coons.