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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2RBvFrr
let’s see how much i can type before i run out of time and have to abandon my computer for possibly-days!
SO when we last left our brave heroine she had been stupidly for no reason up all night and then was about to drive across the state, right? RIGHT.
So. Oh behind the cut is some discussion of processing venison, so do be advised! Otherwise it’s boringly me trying to remember what I’ve been up to.
I did drive across the state. Listening to the band Sleep’s latest album was not as good at keeping me from being sleepy as I’d thought it might. (Look them up sometime; they’re doom/stoner metal, mostly famous for having recorded an unreleasable album during the Nirvana-made-weird-shit-cool-so-throw-money-at-obscure-bands phase of record studio hell– the album was one track, over an hour long, and just a bunch of droning, brutal, meditative doom riffs and a guy singing all on one note about marijuana– it’s since come out, in various forms, and if you can find the unedited version it is a fantastic way to completely zone the fuck out.) (Oh right it’s called Dopesmoker. I didn’t listen to that one, I listened to the new album they dropped without warning last year or so.)
Anyway. I made it, alive– having left Buffalo before 6:30, I got to Troy before 11, so it wasn’t bad at all. I got to the farmer’s market, got out of the car, and immediately relieved my mother, who was attempting to run the farmstand so my sister could go pee, while also attempting to babysit Farmkid and the girl cousin, who is six. They made me read a book to them, and then Mom and the girls left and I took over so Farmsister could go back to the bathroom, since she’d discovered a particular Time Of Month Situation while there. Whoops!
So I worked the farmer’s market until 2pm. Then I came back to the farm and unloaded the truck, unloaded my car, and discovered that the two boys and their father from Maryland were there, along with my older sister. The logistics were complicated– the girls were all staying at Mom and Dad’s, including Farmkid, and then the boys– my older sister’s two sons, and their father– were all staying at the farm. And the dad had planned on going hunting on the farm, but there were some legit bow hunters with permits hunting because apparently it’s legit bow season and we didn’t realize that; we mostly had a couple of nuisance deer that we wanted Southern Brother In Law to shoot, because he’s got a decent rifle with a scope and also a ton of experience at shooting things.
Anyhow. He was a little put out that there were legit hunters and so his activities were curtailed, but he did set up a little blind for himself in the garden, since the bow hunters weren’t planning on hunting there at all, and also the problem deer were right there. Sure enough, he shot one that Veg Manager has been yelling at all season– it was a yearling, small enough to just climb straight through the deer fence; we think its mother had died so it didn’t know how to properly deer, and instead had figured out that it could just live in the garden and destroy shit instead. It won’t flee from the dog, wouldn’t flee from Veg Manager. I threw rocks at it sometimes. It never went far. It was really obnoxious. S-B-I-L shot it but hit it at an angle that like… exploded part of it somehow, which was utterly bizarre– anyway, it went into the compost pile, and was not really cut-up-able for meat.
I don’t remember what we did Saturday afternoon. There was construction going on– the barn just up the hill behind the house, which absolutely must be completed by winter, is progressing. I didn’t help with that, though. I remember that i was exhausted and I wanted to take a nap but also didn’t want to miss out on a family visit. I don’t know what the heck I did do, though. It’s gone to the mists of overtiredness.
In the evening we went to dinner at Mom’s house– but SBIL wanted to stay and maybe shoot deer, and then the boys wanted to stay with their dad even though they have like, 0 attention span (being 10 and 8) and yet. So, we had a girls-and-dads-only dinner, minus one dad.
While we were gone, the boys ate a lot of cookies and watched a lot of TV but did actually do some woodscraft sort of stuff with their dad– most importantly, showed him how to get up into the barn loft, which I’d suggested as a good sniper’s roost for watching the garden. It began to rain, and he availed himself of this, and then over the course of about 30 minutes, shot at four deer, killing three.
They all fell on the hillside just above the garden, which we all should have seen coming, and yet, no one had anticipated this. Naturally, SBIL went up, when he was done shooting, and field-dressed all three, then evaluated his options and settled on getting the farm truck to haul the carcasses back down the hill. As one would; that’s a lot to transport by any other means.
As no one had really thought this through, no one had warned him not to bring the truck through the gate at the top of the hill. The truck got stuck up there last week, and was only retrieved at great effort. SBIL did not know this. He brought the truck up through the gate, attempted to turn left as everyone attempts, was thwarted by the hill and slick mud, and instead turned right. Which is what everyone does, and what one must never do.
Fortunately, SBIL is no fool, and he instantly realized that this truck was not going to go anywhere he wanted it to. Seeing that it was likely to slide sideways into a fencepost, he simply turned it off, got out, and walked back down the hill.
Meanwhile the boys took their father’s phone and called their mother. Both of them attempted to speak into the phone at the same time, and so we all got a rather shrill, garbled impression of MASSIVE DEER CARNAGE and THE TRUCK IS BURIED UNDER TONS OF MUD and EVERYTHING IS SUPER MESSED UP and WE’VE HAD THE BEST NIGHT EVER MOM DON’T COME BACK. (Ha.)
We came home in some dread, but discovered that the truck could just be pushed straight back and then driven backward through the gate, so that was no big deal. We carried the deer over to it, and put them into it, then with three people and flashlights, turned the truck around on the narrow hillside so as not to have to try to back it down a mud-and-gravel hill that’s extremely steep and at the bottom the road takes a sharp turn and if you don’t make the turn you go through a hedge of maple trees into a deep stream gully. Yikes.
And then I went and cleaned up the kill room so we could dismember deer in it, because the super important thing is that any carcasses must be super-quickly vanished in the absence of proper paperwork. Soooooooooo let’s not talk about a lack of paperwork but there’s a long story about the nuisance permits.
I stayed up until 11pm helping SBIL cut up three deer. Two were yearlings, clearly compatriots of the poorly-socialized Problem Deer. Normally we wouldn’t shoot those, but these are clearly and obviously the ones who have decided that the vegetable crops are The Thing To Subsist off, and have never learned how to do anything else. The ones roaming the rest of the property are fine, and we don’t mind them, but this small group of them, Veg Manager has a personal vendetta against. Not enough for him to pick up a gun, but he’s been considering punching them. They let him get close enough; they’re too tame, and not deerish at all. (The first one SBIL shot was definitely attempting to become a tame deer, and we were Not Having It. It also has eaten an entire planting of beets and was just now starting on destroying next year’s strawberries despite a cobweb of electric fencing.)
The third one was probably last year’s particular Problem Yearling; it had spike horns, but it was actually deer-sized. We actually dug out the gambrel and hung it up to process it; we’d done the yearlings on a counter, since they were small enough to manhandle.
For my troubles, I wound up with a leg quarter cut into steaks, and a beautiful set of backstrap medallions from a yearling, so they should be nice and tender. I have put them into the freezer. Then we cut up a shoulder into stew, which will be tomorrow’s crew lunch– I’ve already made the stew, and boiled the bones for stock to put into it. (We also boiled some T-bone bones, since we had those for dinner. We don’t get much venison/beef broth around this joint, relative to how damn much chicken we get, so.)
I didn’t get to bed until after 11. I was a zombie and I genuinely literally don’t remember Saturday afternoon. Really it’s weird and sort of bothering me.
Sunday I rose and helped with the barn, played with the nieces and nephews, went on a Big Walk with the family, and helped see the southerners off. They’d intended to stay through Monday but the kids had school and SBIL was apparently Suffering from Too Much Family. (i get alone fine with him and don’t get why there’s always drama but I do realize he comes from an intensely dramatic family and so genuinely does not have the reflexes to cope with my family, which is, as an institution, extremely bizarre but generally pretty low-conflict, which i’ve started to realize tends to read to people from high-conflict families as Unfathomable and Unnerving. So I get that he hits a limit at dealing with us because I’m pretty sure he thinks we’re all about to snap at any instant. My other B-I-L, who comes from Extremely Dramatic People, doesn’t have this problem, but his situation is clearly different. Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way, isn’t that the quote?)
I also don’t remember Sunday afternoon. I know I reread both books of the Clocktaur War series on my phone, and was quite absorbed in them, which is great but also terrible, because I get a thing with books like alcoholics do with booze and now all I want to do is read books and it’s terrible. I can’t get anything done because I’m wishing I was reading a book. Ugh. I gotta get off the word-sauce or whatever.
Today is going to be busy, and has been so far, but I’m kind of… I was watching Farmkid and she went to be with her mom and I just didn’t follow, and should have, and I’m just. I’m tired. Give me a minute!
OK I’m going now. I am sure I did not write what I meant to write down. Oh well. I did get like 10 hours of sleep last night so you’d think I’d be coherent but that’s a big assumption to make…
(Your picture was not posted)
let’s see how much i can type before i run out of time and have to abandon my computer for possibly-days!
SO when we last left our brave heroine she had been stupidly for no reason up all night and then was about to drive across the state, right? RIGHT.
So. Oh behind the cut is some discussion of processing venison, so do be advised! Otherwise it’s boringly me trying to remember what I’ve been up to.
I did drive across the state. Listening to the band Sleep’s latest album was not as good at keeping me from being sleepy as I’d thought it might. (Look them up sometime; they’re doom/stoner metal, mostly famous for having recorded an unreleasable album during the Nirvana-made-weird-shit-cool-so-throw-money-at-obscure-bands phase of record studio hell– the album was one track, over an hour long, and just a bunch of droning, brutal, meditative doom riffs and a guy singing all on one note about marijuana– it’s since come out, in various forms, and if you can find the unedited version it is a fantastic way to completely zone the fuck out.) (Oh right it’s called Dopesmoker. I didn’t listen to that one, I listened to the new album they dropped without warning last year or so.)
Anyway. I made it, alive– having left Buffalo before 6:30, I got to Troy before 11, so it wasn’t bad at all. I got to the farmer’s market, got out of the car, and immediately relieved my mother, who was attempting to run the farmstand so my sister could go pee, while also attempting to babysit Farmkid and the girl cousin, who is six. They made me read a book to them, and then Mom and the girls left and I took over so Farmsister could go back to the bathroom, since she’d discovered a particular Time Of Month Situation while there. Whoops!
So I worked the farmer’s market until 2pm. Then I came back to the farm and unloaded the truck, unloaded my car, and discovered that the two boys and their father from Maryland were there, along with my older sister. The logistics were complicated– the girls were all staying at Mom and Dad’s, including Farmkid, and then the boys– my older sister’s two sons, and their father– were all staying at the farm. And the dad had planned on going hunting on the farm, but there were some legit bow hunters with permits hunting because apparently it’s legit bow season and we didn’t realize that; we mostly had a couple of nuisance deer that we wanted Southern Brother In Law to shoot, because he’s got a decent rifle with a scope and also a ton of experience at shooting things.
Anyhow. He was a little put out that there were legit hunters and so his activities were curtailed, but he did set up a little blind for himself in the garden, since the bow hunters weren’t planning on hunting there at all, and also the problem deer were right there. Sure enough, he shot one that Veg Manager has been yelling at all season– it was a yearling, small enough to just climb straight through the deer fence; we think its mother had died so it didn’t know how to properly deer, and instead had figured out that it could just live in the garden and destroy shit instead. It won’t flee from the dog, wouldn’t flee from Veg Manager. I threw rocks at it sometimes. It never went far. It was really obnoxious. S-B-I-L shot it but hit it at an angle that like… exploded part of it somehow, which was utterly bizarre– anyway, it went into the compost pile, and was not really cut-up-able for meat.
I don’t remember what we did Saturday afternoon. There was construction going on– the barn just up the hill behind the house, which absolutely must be completed by winter, is progressing. I didn’t help with that, though. I remember that i was exhausted and I wanted to take a nap but also didn’t want to miss out on a family visit. I don’t know what the heck I did do, though. It’s gone to the mists of overtiredness.
In the evening we went to dinner at Mom’s house– but SBIL wanted to stay and maybe shoot deer, and then the boys wanted to stay with their dad even though they have like, 0 attention span (being 10 and 8) and yet. So, we had a girls-and-dads-only dinner, minus one dad.
While we were gone, the boys ate a lot of cookies and watched a lot of TV but did actually do some woodscraft sort of stuff with their dad– most importantly, showed him how to get up into the barn loft, which I’d suggested as a good sniper’s roost for watching the garden. It began to rain, and he availed himself of this, and then over the course of about 30 minutes, shot at four deer, killing three.
They all fell on the hillside just above the garden, which we all should have seen coming, and yet, no one had anticipated this. Naturally, SBIL went up, when he was done shooting, and field-dressed all three, then evaluated his options and settled on getting the farm truck to haul the carcasses back down the hill. As one would; that’s a lot to transport by any other means.
As no one had really thought this through, no one had warned him not to bring the truck through the gate at the top of the hill. The truck got stuck up there last week, and was only retrieved at great effort. SBIL did not know this. He brought the truck up through the gate, attempted to turn left as everyone attempts, was thwarted by the hill and slick mud, and instead turned right. Which is what everyone does, and what one must never do.
Fortunately, SBIL is no fool, and he instantly realized that this truck was not going to go anywhere he wanted it to. Seeing that it was likely to slide sideways into a fencepost, he simply turned it off, got out, and walked back down the hill.
Meanwhile the boys took their father’s phone and called their mother. Both of them attempted to speak into the phone at the same time, and so we all got a rather shrill, garbled impression of MASSIVE DEER CARNAGE and THE TRUCK IS BURIED UNDER TONS OF MUD and EVERYTHING IS SUPER MESSED UP and WE’VE HAD THE BEST NIGHT EVER MOM DON’T COME BACK. (Ha.)
We came home in some dread, but discovered that the truck could just be pushed straight back and then driven backward through the gate, so that was no big deal. We carried the deer over to it, and put them into it, then with three people and flashlights, turned the truck around on the narrow hillside so as not to have to try to back it down a mud-and-gravel hill that’s extremely steep and at the bottom the road takes a sharp turn and if you don’t make the turn you go through a hedge of maple trees into a deep stream gully. Yikes.
And then I went and cleaned up the kill room so we could dismember deer in it, because the super important thing is that any carcasses must be super-quickly vanished in the absence of proper paperwork. Soooooooooo let’s not talk about a lack of paperwork but there’s a long story about the nuisance permits.
I stayed up until 11pm helping SBIL cut up three deer. Two were yearlings, clearly compatriots of the poorly-socialized Problem Deer. Normally we wouldn’t shoot those, but these are clearly and obviously the ones who have decided that the vegetable crops are The Thing To Subsist off, and have never learned how to do anything else. The ones roaming the rest of the property are fine, and we don’t mind them, but this small group of them, Veg Manager has a personal vendetta against. Not enough for him to pick up a gun, but he’s been considering punching them. They let him get close enough; they’re too tame, and not deerish at all. (The first one SBIL shot was definitely attempting to become a tame deer, and we were Not Having It. It also has eaten an entire planting of beets and was just now starting on destroying next year’s strawberries despite a cobweb of electric fencing.)
The third one was probably last year’s particular Problem Yearling; it had spike horns, but it was actually deer-sized. We actually dug out the gambrel and hung it up to process it; we’d done the yearlings on a counter, since they were small enough to manhandle.
For my troubles, I wound up with a leg quarter cut into steaks, and a beautiful set of backstrap medallions from a yearling, so they should be nice and tender. I have put them into the freezer. Then we cut up a shoulder into stew, which will be tomorrow’s crew lunch– I’ve already made the stew, and boiled the bones for stock to put into it. (We also boiled some T-bone bones, since we had those for dinner. We don’t get much venison/beef broth around this joint, relative to how damn much chicken we get, so.)
I didn’t get to bed until after 11. I was a zombie and I genuinely literally don’t remember Saturday afternoon. Really it’s weird and sort of bothering me.
Sunday I rose and helped with the barn, played with the nieces and nephews, went on a Big Walk with the family, and helped see the southerners off. They’d intended to stay through Monday but the kids had school and SBIL was apparently Suffering from Too Much Family. (i get alone fine with him and don’t get why there’s always drama but I do realize he comes from an intensely dramatic family and so genuinely does not have the reflexes to cope with my family, which is, as an institution, extremely bizarre but generally pretty low-conflict, which i’ve started to realize tends to read to people from high-conflict families as Unfathomable and Unnerving. So I get that he hits a limit at dealing with us because I’m pretty sure he thinks we’re all about to snap at any instant. My other B-I-L, who comes from Extremely Dramatic People, doesn’t have this problem, but his situation is clearly different. Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way, isn’t that the quote?)
I also don’t remember Sunday afternoon. I know I reread both books of the Clocktaur War series on my phone, and was quite absorbed in them, which is great but also terrible, because I get a thing with books like alcoholics do with booze and now all I want to do is read books and it’s terrible. I can’t get anything done because I’m wishing I was reading a book. Ugh. I gotta get off the word-sauce or whatever.
Today is going to be busy, and has been so far, but I’m kind of… I was watching Farmkid and she went to be with her mom and I just didn’t follow, and should have, and I’m just. I’m tired. Give me a minute!
OK I’m going now. I am sure I did not write what I meant to write down. Oh well. I did get like 10 hours of sleep last night so you’d think I’d be coherent but that’s a big assumption to make…
(Your picture was not posted)
