Thursday, August 31, 2006

Putting food on the table

[For those readers who are sensitive, I'm going to be talking about hunting for and butchering meat. I won't be offended if you decide to skip reading this post.]

I just bought my first gun last week. I'm sure I'm on a list at every government agency by now, but I'm not so concerned with the political ramifications of my decision. Those of you who know me will agree that I am not a violent person, so you might be wondering how I became a hunter. The simple answer is that I don't consider hunting for food as violence.

OK, you caught me, I'm not really a hunter yet. I've never fired a gun at a live target. So, please allow me to backup so I can explain the basis of my opinion.

Living this life, an hour from town and off-grid, has instilled a certain sense of self sufficiency in us. We learned early on that most professionals (electricians, plumbers, etc) don't really want to drive this far for a job. So, I became my own electrician, my own plumber, and my own etc. Christie has a garden every year, and its bounty (meager though it is) fills us with pride. Our chickens have also been producing enough eggs for our needs for a couple of years. It isn't a big step from there to consider raising some animals for food. Besides, we could hardly do worse than AgriBusiness with their feedlots, growth hormones, and mad-cow disease.

We have a few neighbors who are already raising some of their own food, so we talked to them, read books and magazines, and Googled until we felt we knew enough to get started. We acquired some meat rabbits (Florida Whites) and decided that some of the 40 chicks we had this spring would be eaten. Up to this point the biggest thing I'd ever killed intentionally was a grasshopper, however, the only way I was going to learn was by doing.

So, we invited the neighbors over for dinner. We decided to slaughter two rabbits for the meal, they would demonstrate on one and I would do the other. I won't go into all of the gory details, but one thing I noticed was how personal it was. When you cut the rabbit's throat, it bleeds on your hands and shoes. This was nothing like going to the store buying a pack hamburger patties. What's more, the very personal nature of this method felt right. I'm not turning into a blood crazed lunatic, I'm just saying that the hands-on approach gives you a very different understanding of the circle of life.

I have since slaughtered, butchered, and dressed chickens, geese, turkeys, and more rabbits without any trouble. The one rule I always try to work by is this: be quick, and make sure this animal isn't suffering longer than is absolutely necessary.

Now here is where my logic gets a little fuzzy, but I'll see if I can explain. I feel I am ready to hunt with a rifle, to reach out and kill from a distance, because I am willing and able to do it with own two hands. I see the hunting rifle as an extension of my arm, rather than an instrument of destruction. It is just a much longer knife.

Now, as I am so inclined, I did a lot of research on rifles before making a purchase. I wanted to make sure it was a weapon Christie and I could both use safely. It needed to be capable of handling predators (coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, and possibly bear) as well as game animals (deer and elk for now). Since I am left-handed, and Christie is right-handed, a bolt-action was out of the question. Also, I wanted to make sure I followed my rule. In order to be quick and make sure the animal doesn't suffer, I decided on a 30-.06.

So, my first gun is a Browning Lighting BLR 30-.06, a lever-action rifle with right-side eject and 4 round clip. We put a Bushnell ELITE 3200 scope on it. I can already see that this could get to be an expensive hobby because we still need a case and shoulder strap, not to mention that the shells are about $1 each! All I can say is that I'm looking forward to saving money at the meat counter.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Swallowing the Rhino (or How Chico Became "The Man")

No, I'm not talking about some exotic aphrodisiac from the far-east, get your mind out of the gutter!!!

Are you familiar with the old children's song about the woman who swallowed the fly? Below is the final verse, in which you can see that the old lady has clearly gone way too far in order to kill a fly.

I know an old lady
Who swallowed a rhinoceros
Isn't that preposterous!
To swallow a rhinoceros
She swallowed a rhinoceros
To catch the minister
She swallowed the minister
To catch the goat
She swallowed the goat
To catch the dog
She swallowed the dog
To catch the cat
She swallowed the cat
To catch the bird
And she swallowed a bird
To catch the spider
That wiggled and jiggled
And tickled inside her
And she swallowed the spider
To catch the fly
But I don't know why
She swallowed the fly
- I guess she'll die!


I'd like to tell you a similar tale about our lives, and (hopefully) explain why we had to pickup a goat last week...

It all started when Christie decided she liked birds. We got some chickens from a local rescue and I mentally checked that off as a Mission Accomplished. The next Easter, we got a handful of chicks and ducklings from a family who thought they would be cute in an Easter Basket. After that it gets fuzzy, there were some geese and ducks from the rescue, and maybe some other critters, and then suddenly I was awakened by a terrible clatter. I realized immediately that we had just crossed over from Mission Accomplished to Mission Impossible.

OK, it wasn't that sudden, but it felt that way when early this spring Christie's shipment of 40 chicks, 15 ducks, 15 geese, and 15 turkeys arrived. It was around March/April, and it was too cold to have them outside, so we setup a hatchery for each species complete with heat lamps. For those of you who have never had an impromptu hatchery in your living room, these birds were noisy and stinky! In late May we finally released them all to frolic and play. It was sometime in June before we got the house to smell normal again.

What we didn't know at the time [cue sinister music, perhaps a selection from Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev] was how brave the coyotes were getting. At one point we had a coyote taking a nap in one of our pastures, less than a hundred yards from the house, in broad daylight, with three of us yelling at him!! This spring we lost at least 6 ducks and an untold number of chickens to the mangy, flea bitten, varmints. Some protection was in order! We adopted a one-year-old, 100 lb., Great Pyrenees named Louie. He was bred to protect the small and innocent (sheep, goats, etc) from the cruel and heartless (wolves, mountain lions) and the low-down, dirty, and rotten (coyotes). He's a great big, fluffy, white, ball of love to us, and a terror to any predator who dares to step on his turf.

Louie's instincts were strong. Too strong, in fact, because he started spending all of his time at the neighbor's house protecting their sheep and goats! It seems that horses didn't need him, and birds were beneath his notice.

Oh, what to do? We started driving over to their house to pick him up each night. He would come home easily enough, but by morning he would be gone again. We made a deal with a local butcher for meat scraps to feed him. Bribery worked a little, instead of having to go get him every night, a couple of times a week he would come home on his own! Now this was progress, but he was still spending most of his time at the neighbor's house.

As a scientist -- OK, I'm a computer scientist, but you've got to work with me here! Ahem ... as a scientist, I figured we had to get to the root of his behavior. If he likes to guard small animals ... then ... if we had some suitable livestock ...

I never got to finish the thought. In a flash, Christie was on the phone researching where and how we could cheaply acquire sheep and goats. Within a week we had begged, bought, or adopted three goats and a lamb. The lamb was a bottle-fed orphan and we named him Oliver Twist. Oliver is very personable and makes a fine addition to our petting zoo. Two of the goats were adult, lady goats. They will provide us with meat goats and milk in years to come, right now they are comic relief. They have been raised to be tied out in a field during the day, and sleep in the barn at night. They are named Clara and Annabelle.

The final goat is Chico. We only just picked him up last week because we wasn't weaned yet. He is "The Man" because he is (or will be) our stud goat. At present, he is only about 6 weeks old, and is the cutest little bugger you'll ever see. The ladies don't take much notice of him yet, but I can see he'll grow into a handsome young man.

So, to recap...

We got the goats (and Oliver) to keep the dog
We got the dog to protect the birds
But I don't know why we got the birds
-- I'm at a loss for words.

;)

All in all it is working out well with Louie now. He is spending the majority of his time at our place and just visiting the neighbors sometimes. He has chased off the coyotes more than once, and they tend to stay gone for a few weeks before getting their courage up again.

I'm a little worried about the rhino, though, because we already have a minister here (Janice), and once Christie gets an idea in her head ... look out. If we get any packages from Africa, I'm going to Return to Sender, unopened!

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Breathe in. Breath out. Repeat.

That is my mantra today. Keep it simple, just try to survive.

Our guests went home yesterday, but not without a typical bit of Wild Mountain Farms excitement. Monday night we got a message from the airline saying that their flight out of Missoula was cancelled. After many phone calls they got it smoothed out. Well smooth doesn't exactly describe how yesterday went, but at least we got them home.

4:00AM - Wake up
4:30AM - Take first guest to Missoula airport
5:30AM - Drop off guest at airport
6:30AM - Return to ranch, eat breakfast
8:00AM - Take other two guests to Kalispell airport 2.5 hours away (suprise!)
11:30AM - Drop off guests at airport

... at this point, you'd think any sane person would crawl into bed for a nap. Well, at Wild Mountain Farms, we're crazy like a whole litter of fox pups! Read on ...

12:00PM - Lunch in Kalispell
1:00PM - Pickup goat ... it is on the way home! (The story of the goats will have to be another post)
2:30PM - Return to ranch, settle in Chico (the goat) with Oliver (our lamb)

... nap? Well, I may have passed out for a few minutes while Christie was handling the critters, but then it was right back to work ...

4:30PM - Take Natasha (visiting mare) home, thus closing Breeding Season.
5:30PM - Stop off at Sportsman's warehouse to buy a hunting rifle (that will have to be another post as well, I'm afraid)
7:00PM - Back on the road to Natasha's house
7:50PM - Are we lost? No! There's the turn to Corvalis ... whew
8:00PM - Natasha returned home safe and sound
9:00PM - Dinner at Applebees (yeah, well, it was the only thing open)
10:30PM - Heading home
11:45PM - Home at last, jiggity-jig

Is there a moral to this story? Nah. All I know is that I spent about 20 hours awake, and 15 hours of that driving all around Montana, including driving up and down our mountain three times and I'm tired.

Breathe in. Breath out. Repeat.

Monday, August 21, 2006

The Book of Dave

And lo it came to pass that the Bubbas would be returning to the land of The South. And Dave said unto Christie "Rejoice! For we are passing from the season of Guesting into the season of Leftovers" And Christie was afraid, for truely Dave and Christie's refrigerator was stuffed to the hinges with the remnants of good meals gone by.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Cooking for Bubbas

We have our second group of vacationers with us this week. They are self-described Bubbas from South Carolina and Virginia. These three guys are an unlikely trio, and are fascinating to be around.

The first night they were here, I took the easy route and cooked Johnsonville Brats at the outdoor fire-ring. We sat around the fire eating, drinking some beer, and telling stories. At one point the discussion turned to barbecue. The quietest member of the trio launched into a 20 minute explanation of the "best" way to BBQ a whole hog. I won't relate the entire discourse, but suffice it to say it takes all day and involves using the skin of the hog as a "bowl" in which to simmer the pulled pork and sauce. The sauce is made from scratch and includes ingredients measured in gallons and pounds.

I'm telling you that so I can tell you this...

When I was getting ready for bed that night, I glanced at the menu board for the week and got a sinking feeling in my gut. There it was in green dry-erase marker: BBQ Pork Ribs, scheduled for the next night. "Oh my God!" I thought, "I am going to serve BBQ to Southerners!!" Christie thought this was really funny, but I wasn't laughing.

Now, one of my specialties is Country Style Pork ribs, served with a local BBQ sauce. This cut of meat isn't really a rib at all, it is boneless strip of meat that comes from somewhere near the ribs. The Costco butcher shop cuts these strips into something more adequately described by words like hunk, chuck, or slab. These monsters are about 2"x2"x8" of pure pork with nice marbling all through. Needless to say, it is a moist and tasty "slab" of meat. I believe you could serve these on shoe leather and they would still taste good! Just for good measure, I rub them with some Chef Paul's Magic Seasoning.

The next evening came, and I built a nice big fire in the pit. The cooking went well, with corn cobs on the outer rim of the grill and the meat cooking in the middle over some nice hot apple wood coals. Rain threatened, and the first big thunderclap rumbled through our valley just as I was about to add the sauce. The sky opened up soon after, and I quickly declared the outdoor portion of the cooking finished. We ended up serving the meat bare with the BBQ sauce as a dip.

To my immense relief, the guys tore into that meat. We started with 9 lbs. of meat for 6 people and ended up with about 3 lbs. of leftovers. They even requested we serve the leafover meat the next day for lunch! At that point, I relaxed, knowing that my poor, Northern, imitation of BBQ was well recieved.