In the Woods

Well, the week before last we went goose hunting and hardly saw a goose and only heard a very few quite a distance away. Now that goose season is closed and Blake has two chain saws he was nice enough to invited me to go out in the woods and cut some firewood. Karen was gone for the weekend at a conference so off to the woods we went. Geese were everywhere flying low over the woods, taunting us. Darn geese.

Most of the time when we cut fire wood it is in a woods that has been logged. Loggers fell the tree they want, cut the main trunk and leave the rest, normally there are lots tree tops that can be cut up into firewood. The owners of the woods normally want the tree tops cut up to "clean" the woods. Branches are piled for wildlife habitat and the limbs (bigger that 3-4") are cut to length, the top of the trunk not taken by the logger is cut and spit into manageable sizes loaded on a truck hauled home and stacked to either use, if it is dry, or season if it is not. Years ago when we were heating with wood I would cut 10-15 truck loads a years. The old saying goes that firewood warms you twice, once when you cut and split it, and once when you burn it. I have found that it warms you three or four times and it really makes you tired and sore, and generally beats the snot out of you.

Blake has been cutting in this particular wood a couple of years and the tops are pretty well cleaned up. Some that are left are beginning to get a little punky. Another thing that happened in this woods after the logging, is that a bad storm went through and knocked the tops out of several larger trees and up rooted a few more. So we started working on fallen timber and in the case of this tree one that was left stand without any top

A trunk like this without a top sometimes is hard to get down. It lacks the leverage necessary to cause the momentum to make the tree actually fall. it sort of gets hung up on its own lower branches and the smaller trees around it.

This tree also had a big old raccoon that had been sleeping in the hollowed out top. He got a trill ride.

We hooked the cut off trunk of the tree to Blake's truck and tugged it our where we could cut it up.

We cut about two and a half trunks loads. Split and loaded one and got to spend all day in the woods.

That evening Blake dropped me off at home. I dragged myself into the house, drank a couple of glasses of water and decided to go out for a couple of miles walk to try to work out some of the stiffness before I fixed dinner and relaxed. About a mile from the house I walked by a field that we have watched all goose season hoping to see some geese feeding in it, since we had permission to hunt it. As I got of to the edge of the field I spotted about three big flocks circling the field to land. A few steps further and at least 100 geese rose up out of the field with a loud clamor and joined the 100 in the sky. Darn geese.

Sunset Sunrise

Friday night as I arrived home I notice that there was a nice sunset so I drove down the lane to the lake and took a few shots as the sun lit up the sky.

I could hear the geese before I saw them, but I was able to get a couple of nice photos of a small flock of geese flying across this nice background.

The geese headed from south to north, but eventually turned and headed east toward me.

I got a shot just as they were flying over my head.

Later that evening Blake called to see I wanted to go goose hunting in the morning. We got to the field where we planned to hunt a little after six o'clock. We got our decoys, layout blinds and the rest of our gear to the spot and set out well before light.

Goose hunting in a field is a little different than other types of hunting. Geese for one thing make a lot of noise when they fly so you can hear them quite a ways off and usually have time to jump into your layout blind.

So you often can stand up and walk around scanning the sky for some indication that geese are anywhere near by. It is also possible to ask questions like "does this look like a goose?"

On this particular day we did a lot of standing around.

After a while the sun started to rise lighting and coloring the sky and clouds.

It was a beautiful morning. Perhaps a little colder than it needed to be. There weren't many geese flying that day, so there was a lot of waiting .

The sky and clouds were pretty though

Layout blinds are fairly comfortable, relatively speaking. ours are set up to look like corn stocks, so you have to cover them with something else if you don't have enough corn stocks in the background. In this case old bed sheets work reasonably well. You have to dress lightly while you are carrying all the gear out into the middle of a corn field. Often you break a sweat and have to be careful not to get too wet, it was about 10 degrees that day, When you have everything set you have to put on more layers and lay on the snow covered frozen ground for four or five hours. It's great fun when the birds are flying. We didn't have any birds bother us that day. We didn't have to clean our guns. It was a nice morning. We got some exercise and saw a nice sunrise.

See isn't this fun!!! Let me know if you want to go next time. You have to carry your own stuff though.

Clarice's Birthday Weekend

Clarice turned some different age than she had been before this past week . Several of us gathered at our place to wonderfully sing, to celebrate and to eat cake. Well... two out of three is not bad. Later in the week we made arrangements for a football game to be played in her honor.

Clarice's birthday is within a couple of days of her Grandpa Bennnett's birthday. We probably have 30 picutres with the both of them blowing out candles together.

She opened gifts as the grandmas looked on.

Since Clarice likes parties so much we schedule the superbowl to happen near her birthday so others could get in on singing "happy birthday"

Pre-game festivities

There was a fairly balance group of fans, some in Purdue garb mainly cheering for the gold and black team and others cheering for Blue and white.

Clarice and Jon's living room has been the setting for at least a half dozen of these superbowl parties. There is a pretty broad age group with a bit of a focus on providing a place for Grace College students to hang out with some of our church members.

The game was a good athletic contest, fairly played.

For haf time an ancient rock and roll band played in honor of some of the old guys in attendance. Maybe I need a hat and more drums.

One of the themes of the party was funny hats. here's Jon with his fourth hat.

At the end of the day just like last year one team won and one lost. The winners celebrated and the losers felt bad that they lost. We had a good time.

Shhh... We're hunting wabbits

In the time honored tradition of Elmer Fudd we went wabbit hunting. I went on my first rabbit hunt with my dad when I was about 3 years old. I have hunted for almost 60 years now. Blake and I have gone rabbit hunting at least once a year since he was just a little guy. Originally the Harris guys (my dad, sometimes Dave and Brandon, usually Blake and I) would do a rabbit hunt on Thanksgiving Day. In recent years Blake and I would go on a rabbit hunt with a fellow from Blake’s work that had a pack of beagles. Since we hunt rabbits on a farm that we also deer hunt we usually wait until January well after deer season. Last Saturday, January 30, it was cold and bright with fresh snow.

This year two guys from Blake’s work went along with Blake, Skyler and me. We had four beagles and Blake’s black lab, Toby. Toby was really excited to be on the hunt, perhaps a bit too excited.

Skyler, is hot on the trail

Not 20 minutes into the hunt we noticed that Toby had gotten hooked up on some kind of sharp object and had a nasty gash in this leg. The rest of us headed on while Blake took Toby home for some first aid.

By this time the beagles were into the heavy cover, so we just waited for Blake’s return while the four dogs ran around in circles in the cattail marsh.

Some of the cover was really too heavy, there were tracks, but we didn’t actually see any rabbits.

Rabbit hunting with Beagles can be a bit boring while you wait, sometimes as much as an hour, for them to chase rabbits out of heavy cover.

After a couple of hours we decided to head to the other end of the farm into an area that was a bit more open so when the rabbits started running we could actually see them.

This worked much better. In about 30 minutes we had rabbits and decided to call it a day.

It was a good time in the field and an appropriate extension of the rabbit hunting tradition.

Rabbit Stew

One rabbit
One onion
Two carrots
Two celery stocks

Some mushrooms
Two potatoes
½ cup each beef and chicken broth
Cut everything into bit sized chunks
Roll rabbit chunks in flour, salt and pepper and brown with olive oil in hot pan .

Deglaze the pan with balsamic vinegar.
Throw everything else in with a bit more salt, pepper and a bay leaf in a crock pot or Dutch oven
cook on low for three to four hours

Tastes pretty good