This Time of Year

   The holidays are a busy time of year for entertainers like myself, and this year was no exception. The exception has been the weeks following New Year's Eve! Usually a time of rest, I have been busier this month than I was last month. The sad thing is that I'm not really making any more money, but that's a whole other story...

   This week will mark four decades that I have been on this planet. I'm not sure how I feel about that. In many ways it's just another year and they seem to get easier as each one goes by. At the same time I cannot escape the feeling that time is running out. Time for what? I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps I just need to take some time to reflect...

   Now that the leftovers from the holidays have finally run out we have started making use of some of the food we canned last fall. I am happy to report that the brined dill pickles turned out excellent! In fact, the flavor is not unlike those of Mrs. Neushins', one of my favorite commercial brands. That will be a recipe to hold onto!

   I was worried that I made way too much salsa. When the tomatoes weren't coming in from the garden I bought tomatoes from the local produce stand to make salsa. Then when it came time to decide what to do with the 31 pounds of green tomatoes we did harvest, we opted to make green salsa, green tomato relish, and dilled green tomatoes. As a result, we have a lot of salsa, but we have been able to go through several jars already with a variety of Mexican dishes. Yum. The dilled green tomatoes turned out pretty good as well, though they are a bit mushier than I had hoped. Still, they'll make excellent relish! We have plenty of relish...

   We did have one canning casualty this year -- our first so far. I went to the pantry to retrieve a jar of chili for dinner one evening and found that the seal had broken on one of the jars. While it smelled fine, we did not want to take the chance of poisoning ourselves, so that went to the compost pile. The rest of the chili appears to have sealed fine and we have enjoyed a couple jars of that so far.

   Our experiment with chicken soup also turned out fantastic! Back in October we learned that contemporary canning guidelines shun the use of things like pasta and rice in canning recipes (of course, older canning recipes use rice and pasta as do commercial canners -- I need to research this one further). So we instead canned chicken soup with only chicken, carrots, and onions in broth. The plan was to make rice or pasta to add to the soup when we opened a jar and that has worked just fine so far.

   The corn turned out great! I wish I had made a lot more spaghetti sauce as we are almost out of that already. We are almost out of canned beans as well. We haven't tried the beef stew yet, but we used the same recipe as last year and that was delicious. There is still quite a bit of ketchup (which also turned out great), some applesauce, and an assortment of jellies and jams as well.

   Next year we'll make more spaghetti sauce, beans, and chili.

   An update on taxes: as I said in Reloading, Revenue, and Resolutions, I was recently contacted by the state and informed that I have been delinquent on state taxes that I did not know existed. I have now filed and paid all of my back taxes. Fortunately, I don't make much, so the taxes were pretty small. Today I am playing phone tag with the representative from the state to make sure there is nothing more I need to do at this time.

   The resolution to pay down our debt has been going slow but steady. The two credit cards with the highest interest were the ones with the smallest balances. I had been able to stash some money before the first of the year to pay off one. Today we are sending in a payment to pay off the other. That feels pretty good. Now come the big debts that won't be so easy to pay off. We just need to stay focused and keep paying as much as we can whenever we can. It's going to be a tight year, but it'll be worth it to finally get out from under everything.

   Finally, thanks to a generous gift card from my mother, the family and I will be making a trip to Cabela's tomorrow. I'll be able to get to those reloading projects sooner than I expected. Thanks mom!

Hunting Is A Form Of Gambling

I don’t hunt for “sport”. I was first drawn to hunting because I enjoyed the communion with nature, finding it’s secrets, and sitting still and quiet in it’s glory. I had been hunting for some time before I actually experienced the rush of stalk and ambush. In the end, though, hunting for me has always been about putting food on the table (or the freezer, mostly). It is part of stocking the pantry and feeding the family.

For me today, hunting legally for food is not so far removed from gambling for income. When I lived in North Carolina I believe a big game tag with taxes and fees cost about $46. That $46 bought a large ticket with a line for one to four of each big game species available for hunting that year and a hunter possessing such a license could hunt any animal with any weapon provided it was within the season’s parameters. One could hunt with a bow, rifle, shotgun, or muzzleloader a variety of game such as white tail deer, turkey, bear, boar, fox, coyote,… probably twenty animals in all with a single tag for under $50.

I now live in the great state of Washington. I love it here. If I could be in Oregon I might be happier, but the Pacific Northwest is my home. Despite all of the great things the Northwest has to offer, hunting in Washington is expensive. A tag to hunt just one deer and one elk (and buy the vehicle permit to park in a hunting area) is between $80-$90 in Washington State. In addition, you have to choose which season you wish to hunt (bow, rifle, or muzzleloader) and you may only hunt that season, regardless of your success. What that means is, if you buy a rifle hunting license for deer and bring home nothing by season’s end, you do not even have the privilege of giving the state more money to hunt the late bow season in hopes of breaking even on the deal. It’s no wonder poaching is such a problem in Washington.

Hunting is not easy. Every now and then an easy shot may present itself and we are thankful when that happens, but even then there is a lot of work to get the animal from hoof to plate (this is true in hunting just as it is from CAFO to Wal-Mart). Most times, though, a single animal successfully hunted, killed, and butchered is the result of countless hours of finding where they are, finding a place to sit and/or stalk, waiting them out, learning to call, learning to shoot, butchering, not to mention all the tools required. I’m not here to argue the virtues of hunting, though…

What I’m trying to get at is the fact that I can pay $80+ and – assuming I already have everything else I need to hunt – MAYBE put one lean, nature-fed animal in the freezer, two if I am very lucky and have a lot of free time on my hands. Or I could pay a little more than twice that and put less meat in my freezer from a decent, but less natural source. It’s a real crapshoot we’ve created.

I feel like it’s time to discuss population and balance…

Trip Report

I returned with the family last night from a three-day, three-night trip to Portland to visit family and friends. We were all happy to find that the chickens seemed to have done just fine with their pen near the woods in the backyard, still having plenty of food and water. This was the longest stretch they have been left on their own and with recent incidents with neighborhood dogs we were a little concerned, but they did just fine. There were about a dozen eggs in the nesting boxes and only one was broken. Not being particular, chickens are happy to eat their own eggs so we’re going to have to be diligent about collecting eggs regularly for a while so they don’t get into a habit.

Our trip began as my son and I loaded up the car and picked up my wife from work Saturday evening. We stopped at Burgerville for dinner on our way down. Now, it is true that Burgerville is fast food, but we like to support them when we’re in the neighborhood because they do it better than any other fast food joint (save maybe In and Out Burger, which I’ve never been to personally, but I’ve read good things). They strive to offer local, sustainably produced food and seasonal menus, they offer healthcare to their employees, they utilize recycling and renewable energy programs, and generally do a better job of responsible business then many higher-end restaurants. We like that.

We made it to my mother-in-law’s around 9pm and had the run of the place as she was away until Sunday. We were all beat so we took the rare opportunity to watch The History Channel for a bit before retiring for the night. The next day we met a friend at the Wider Gasthaus for lunch. Widmer does their bit with renewable energy and recycling and offers incentives to employees who use “green means of transportation”, which is not too difficult in Portland. We stopped by my wife’s grandmother’s after lunch to visit and our son stayed there for the night.

That evening we had dinner with a large group of friends at the Laurelwood Public House and Brewery, a first for me that came recommended after looking into several sustainable eatery options. The Laurelwood was a great choice as they support local, sustainable, and organic options when they can. They also do a really good job of being kid-friendly and environmentally responsible. After that it was darts and beers at The Horse Brass Pub with more friends and then we staying up way too late geeking out Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Julia Nunes, and Beatles Rockband before crashing for the night at a friend’s in the Lloyd district.

The next day I was dropped off at the wife’s uncle’s place for a lesson in reloading. I brought along three boxes of random reloading gear from the wife’s grandmother’s late husband. We spent the afternoon reloading fifty rounds of .30-06 ammunition while he walked me through the process, showed me how to set up the various dies, and explained all of the charts and measurements. We did a few rounds of 9mm for comparison and then went through the boxes of random gear. Probably the greatest score was stacks of primers. I don’t know how old they were, but the price tag on a box of 100 was sixty-nine cents. There were some tools and gauges, lots of brass and bullets, and a few other random items that we divvyed up between the uncle and myself. We spent that night at the mother-in-law’s place and got to visit with her and my wife’s aunt who was in town from Illinois.

Day three it was time to pack up and head home. On our way out of town we stopped in to visit my grandmother and some of my wife’s ex-co-workers. We found a Chipotle and stopped there for lunch. We were not familiar with Chipotle, but heard about them on the special features of the DVD for Food, Inc. and decided to give ‘em a try. Hooray! Another restaurant trying to do business trying to work with nature instead of against it! Chipotle calls it “Food With Integrity”. I appreciate a business that wants it’s customers to know more about it’s food and where it comes from and I am happy to support that.

We made one last stop at Cablela’s to pick up an order that was in and a few more things I needed for reloading and made it home before dark.

Today I have all kinds of things to get caught up on, so it’s time to step away from the computer for a bit.