Git Along Lil' Doggies

I just had to get rid of the Halloween video.   We had a great Christmas and New Years.   Got a snow for Christmas Eve.  First time in years we had a White Christmas.   For New Year's our group and the extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins all went on a Trail ride near the ranch.  The following are photos of the excursion.

Happy Halloween

College Band

The girls are having a great time in the OU band....The Pride of Oklahoma.  The following are some photos from the year thus far.   It's Catie's third year and Elizabeth's first year with the band.

Catie Gets a House....Sort of.

Catie got to move into a brand new set of apartments that is really like a small village of single units, duplexes, and small multiplexes.  Catie and her roommates got one of the single units.  As you can see below, they are cute little cottage like units.  They have the whole thing, both floors.  Its a three bedroom, three bath unit with great room with kitchen, dining and living downstairs.

Another shot of the complex looking up their street.

Elizabeth Goes to College

Needless to say, moving Elizabeth off it College was exciting and sad at the same time....not to mention "back breaking".  The following picture is of just one of several loads that we took to her dorm room. 

Yes, somehow it all fit.  The next picture is of her dorm room and her little piece of heaven....all fifty square feet of it.

Canning Blackeyed Peas at the Ranch

Well our garden did great the second half of the summer and into early fall.  The Blackeyed Peas we planted as the second summer crop did incredible.  We canned two different batches over a couple of weeks, froze some, and ate alot.  We had a meal of Blackeyed peas and corn bread at Jackie's over the Labor Day weekend.  Ummm Doggies!

Spinybacked Orbweaver

Spider Species Gasteracantha cancriformis

Okay the tractor post is not even cold yet and I'm posting again, but I just had to put this up. We came across this spider on a web on the property this weekend. It's apparently commen from California to Florida but nothing like we'd ever seen. It looks like a crab with spiny appendages, hence the name. The little tuffs of cottony web along the web are a defense mechanism to allow birds to see the web and not fly through it. That's what I like about our property. You get to see nature in all it's glory and species likely long since killed off in our cities and urban areas. We have alot of pictures of unusual insects. One day we'll post all of those.

Happy 40th Birthday to our Tractor

Thought it was about time to post to our blog again. This year is going fast. The picture above is of our 1969 Massey-Ferguson Tractor. I thought it was about time to give it a facelift and have been working these past few weekends on a new paint job. Not really a true refurbishment, but mostly to keep down the rust. I've painted the red coverings, part of the rims, the front grille and most of the darker grey engine and drivetrain items. Still have some work on the wheel rims, but it's almost there. Looks too good now to use.

As for our garden, from the last post, we produced alot of Blue Lake green beans from the 5 rows planted, but most everything else did not produce. We had problems again with our watering system. We bought a new system and it worked for a while, then quit as well. We're now on our 3rd system. Not sure what is going on. Could be the heat we guess. We tilled under everything except some tomatoes that are doing better, and replanted a full garden of Black Eyed Peas on July 4th. Within 2 weeks, the plants have grown to 12-14" high. It's quite amazing and we're hoping this trend continues and we get some peas for our efforts later in the summer.

Tweeting and the Ranch

Well, I gave in. My ramblings can now be seen on Twitter at HiddenSpringsR in case anyone is interested.

On the Ranch, the garden is up, but had to replant several items. Extended cold snap or simply not enough water and sun may have been the culprits. Onions, radishes, carrots, brocolli, green beans, cucumbers and two kinds of squash all up. Decided to add pumpkin, canteloupe, watermelon, and some tomato plants this last weekend. These all did well year before last, before we were auto-watering, but died out in the heat of the summer without water. May do better this year if I can keep the watering system running. Seems to want to eat batteries in less than two weeks.

Later.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet. That is the Question.

Well actually I just got tired of seeing the sausage picture as the top of the page. While I am proficient at writing a multitude of emails that are quite long, I find it difficult to find topics for this blog. It was an experiment really, just to see what blogging was like. Now I feel as though I have simply come on stage too late and missed the boat. Everyone is now tweeting, or twittering, or whatever it is called.

Anyway, back to the blog. We planted our garden a few weeks ago, and we're worried that the recent cold snaps may have hit the garden just as the seedlings have sprouted. I'm going out to check them. Hopefully they have survived. My backyard garden did get hit and I lost all the young plants. I will have to replant that for sure.

Tweet you later......Not...........Well Maybe.

What would that be like?

"Hey world I am here."
"Hey world I am doing nothing."
"Hey world I don't have anything to say, but I'm saying it."
"Hey Ma, look at me.....top of the world."

Mak'n Bacon - Actually Sausage

Okay, this blog was not supposed to be all about hunting and the aftermath, but since I am the one posting, and that's what's mostly been going on, well, here we are. We tried two different recipes for making sausage out of the trimings. One's a typical country style recipe, and the other was more Italian. While the Italian is okay, and we'll use on pizzas and other such, the country style is more to our like'n. We had some this morning for breakfast with eggs and it was great. The recipes called for only a certain percentage of fat to lean ratio. I said it should have more fat to look like store bought. Turns out, it is very lean and while not exactly like store bought sausage, it is quite good. It's more like a hamburger patty. Has that coarser texture, which actually is quite good. Not like eating the typical piece of greasy sausage. Our trimmings made 13 lbs of sausage total, about 5 lbs of bacon, and we had about 5 lbs of pieces that we bagged up for using in beans. Uhmmmm Doggies! We'll all have to plan ahead and have some next time everyone is up to the ranch.

Bringing Home the Bacon

Well I finally got one. This picture was taken shortly after the kill. It was an interesting experience. I used cartidges that I had just reloaded that afternoon. We are estimating it weighed about 200 lbs. It took about 2 hours to skin, gut, and clean the hog. Luckily the temperature was 40 degrees, so we were able to let it hang overnight. I butchered it the next morning, another 4 hours to cut up, clean, package and ice it down. It rendered about 100 lbs of meat. Two large hams, two shoulder roasts (one we cut out a Boston roast), two large pork loins (we cut some into loin chops), two spare ribs, two back ribs, bacon, canadian bacon, and about 10 lbs of trimmings to make into sausage. We've never made sausage, so that will be another new experience. We smoked the spare ribs at the property and brought them home. They were great. No gamey taste at all. Just good, smoked ribs taste.

Another Sooner !?

Elizabeth just found out she has been accepted to OU. I guess we'll have another Sooner from the Lone Star state.

Hogs a Plenty

Well this post is really just to test getting a photo in the blog, but it shows how many hogs are regularly on the property. This past Friday, I got out early enough to sit in the blind for two hours just after dark....nothing. Saturday I pulled camera pictures to find out they had come in at 3 am. Saturday night I again went out just after dark for an hour, but again, nothing. I thought I was wasting my time since they were coming in after midnight. I set my alarm and got out there again from 2am til 4 am. Again, nothing. On Sunday I pulled camera pictures again just to find out they came in the evening before just after I went in the cabin. Trickly little devils. So, Sunday evening I went back out just after dark and only had to wait 30 mins for them to come it. After hours, days and nights in the blind, my heart was beating so hard I missed my shot. Dang!
Oh, well, there will be more chances to come.

Hello from Hidden Springs Ranch. We've just set this up, so we're just learning. We'll have more later.

Happy New Year to Everyone.!