After one has successfully harvested a deer, it must be field dressed. Field dressing is the removal of the internal organs of the deer (or other hunted animal). Removing the internal organs ensures that the body will rapidly lose heat and prevent bacterial growth on the surface of the carcass. This process is critical to preserving the meat properly.
Hunting has become an important source of meat for us over the past 2 years. The deer we have harvested have been our primary source of meat for about 7 or 8 months out of the year, depending on how you look at it. I know some might be against the harvesting of deer or other wild game and I don’t really want to go into why one shouldn’t be against it. I would like to explain why and how we hunt and what it provides for us. I would also like to share my history with hunting and hopefully provide some encouragement to others who might have an interest but might feel that it’s to overwhelming to start. This is the first of maybe 3 or 4 posts on deer hunting.
[My primary objective when deer hunting is to successfully harvest a deer, but I also am able to spend some needed time in the woods observing]
Fall provides a great opportunity for us to collect a mulch source that is free and is an important element in building our soil. If at all possible, the soil in a garden should never be left exposed or bare for an extended period of time. Whether you use cover crops, straw mulch, leaf mulch, shredded newspaper, or landscape fabric (not my first choice); mulching is vital to protecting garden soil. Our strategy to provide soil protection for late fall and winter is to collect the massive amount of fallen leaves, mulch them, and apply them directly to the garden beds.
[Mulching beds with fall leaves is one of our important soil building strategies]
Whether you are buying a whole chicken from the store or like we will begin doing in the spring, you raise your own chickens for eggs and meat, you need a good resource on how to go about cooking it. The November edition of the Weekend Homesteader ebook has great information of cooking up that chicken.
[Photo credit to The Walden Effect]
Ground Cherry (Physalis pruinosa) is a new food crop we experimented with this year. The ground cherry is in the nightshade family (tomatoes, potatoes, etc) and a close relative to the tomatillo. The fruit, which is encased in a paper-like husk, tastes like a cross between a strawberry and a pineapple with sort of a tomato like texture. The fruit can be eaten raw, or used in jams/pies/breads. We ate many raw while working in the garden this year and also made ground cherry jam.
[Wait to harvest ground cherries once they have fallen off the plant onto the ground and have turned from green to golden yellow and the husk becomes a papery, straw color]
The jerusalem artichokes in the hugelkultur bed started blooming in late fall. The photo below was taken on September 3rd. By the end of September all the sunchokes were in full bloom and getting really top heavy from all the flower heads. It didn’t take much wind to cause the tallest plants to topple over to the ground.
We experimented with a few different polyculture combinations this season. Some seemed to produce and work well, others not so much (more on polycultures and our experience with them in a later post). One polyculture that did seem to be promising was the sweet potato/bush bean/beneficial weeds polyculture. This year’s sweet potato harvest resulted in yields that seemed to be comparable to a single bed or rows of sweet potatoes.
[Sweet potato and bush bean polyculture with some volunteer flowering plants popping up here and there]
Is the hype surrounding the use of the Compact Fluorescent (CFLs) light bulbs to save energy and money really true? Paul Wheaton’s CFL article points out some compelling arguments suggesting that CFLs might not be all that energy efficient after all compared to incandescent light bulbs. A CFL light bulb will actually have a shorter life span than a incandescent light bulb if you household is in the habit of conserving energy and frequently turn lights off when not in use. CFLs don’t perform well when turned off and on many times.
[CFLs seem much cheaper because they are subsidized by our tax dollars and higher eletric utility rates]
Above is an updated photo showing the jerusalem artichokes and hugelkultur bed as of May 31st 2011. I’ve added 2 pepper plants, 2 garden huckleberries, and a few other herbs her and there to try to fill in the sides. I’ve also tried to leave the dutch white clover that is coming up to act as a living mulch.
Guerrilla gardening is most commonly viewed as the act of planting and growing vegetables, herbs, and trees on others people’s property without the owners permission. Usually an abandoned or neglected plot or in parks or recreation areas. Though some might not consider my guerrilla gardening legit since I was on land that I own, I look at guerrilla gardening as gardening in an unconventional location. Kind of like guerrilla warfare if you will. This past weekend I got on my camo pants and long leave shirt; my machete, a hand trowel, and a tray of stinging nettle seedlings; and headed into the woods to do some gardening. Jack Spirko has an excellent podcast episode on guerrilla gardening – Guerrilla Gardening for Fun, Education and Survival. The image above is made available for use under the 
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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