Happy Halloween

Here are pictures of the pumpkins we carved this weekend! We haven't carved pumpkins in so long and we enjoyed doing it!

Picking out my design....

Yum!

Hard at work...can you tell what it is???

Final outcome....they look pretty good don't you think :0

A haunted house...
A Witch! Tony's turned out really good. Guess he's pretty good with that knife. He's got a lot of practice skinning.

First Day of Trapping

Here's some pictures of the first check of trapping season. I have about a 30 mile road line with 16 sets.

The skinning shed is half of the garage. It is more room than I've ever had to work with. The 4 coons were pretty good size. 2 were nice and silver, the other had some yellow to them. They were all pretty blue.
Finished Product:

Here's my work area:

Special Visitors

So this summer Tony and I headed out to a fellow co-workers house. They had been having problems with a woodchuck under their neighbors shed and they asked if Tony might come out and try to catch the thing. Well the evening turned out to be a really fun night. We ended up having a fire, eating pizza and drinking a few beers. We had a great time and laughed our butts off discussing this and that. Than all of the sudden Tony asks me if I'm ready to leave. I'm like no, it's only 8 o'clock. Well a half hour goes by and I can tell he's getting very impatient and I couldn't figure out why because we were having such a great time. So I finally give in and say we can go, and he hands me the keys and tells me he'll meet me at the truck. So I knew something had be up. And like any girl hopes for, I'm thinking he's planned a romantic night. Well once we get home and I falled to see any flowers and he heads to the couch and opens up the paper I knew that couldn't be it.

Now I'm just waiting to figure out what the hell was going on. I only had to wait until 9 when I heard someone outside say something like, "How they hell am I supposed to know, dumbass." Than I guessed it. Our two great friends Loretta and Michael drove all the way from Kansas to come and visit us for the weekend.

From what I hear the drive sucked, but if anyone has spent more than two hours in a car with Michael Heighert, they know what I'm talking about. Loretta had to spend 8 hours with him :)

Once they got all their stuff in the house we headed out to Torge's (Austin "Hottest" Night Club) and had a couple of beers and a few laughs and some dancing. Michael was very disappointed everyone was doing the Cotton-Eye-Joe wrong, so we had to go out and try to show them how; it didn't work.

Than of course Michael was hungry so we head to Burger King and he proceeds to purchase $17 off of the value menu. More food than all of us could eat, let alone 1 person.

After sleeping in on Saturday, Tony and I took them out to the Tendermaid. This place is really cool. It's like stepping into an old 50s soda shop, not to mention they have WONDERFUL shakes! After that we headed to the Famous SPAM Museum, where there are loads of fun to be had by all :) No, the Spam museum is pretty neat and it has tons of information about the history of Hormel and than of course SPAM. It's corney but it's also fun, especially for kids and the young at heart. Not to mention it is one of the top 5 tourist desinations in the State of Minnesota.

Later that night we stayed in, had supper and played the awesome farming game. Which is a game I will never win but I try.

Sunday it was time to say goodbye. Tony and I both appreciate Loretta and Michael coming all the way to visit us. It was a fun weekend and it means alot to us to know we have such great friends in our lives. We love you both very much and we can't wait until we can see eachother again, which hopefully will be very soon!

First Snow

Tony and I had just returned from Kansas where we were hoping to find a little warmer weather than it had been in Minnesota. We found no such luck. Anyways we got home on Sunday night and a few light flurries were in the air. When I woke up on Monday morning to head to work the ground was starting to get covered. By the end of the day, Austin had received about 3 inches of snow! This was Oct. 11, 2009. I cannot ever recall having snow that early. The earliest I can remember is on Halloween when I was younger. Everyone keeps telling us this isn't normal. For some reason we are hearing this phrase constantly. We heard it all summer and now again in the fall. I'm beginning to wonder if they are all trying to trick us :)

Here's a couple of pictures Tony took late Monday morning.

I'm hoping we get a least some sort of fall weather before we jump into full blown winter. Hopefully my wish is coming true. The weatherman says it's supposed to be in the upper fifties the rest of the week. By the way, many of the trees have already turned and lots have lost their leaves. We had a pretty dry September which caused them to turn early. We are in luck though, some are just beginning to get their fall foliage.

2009 Deer

This year I shot my first buck. It was also the first deer I've shot with my bow. It was a six-point buck, probably a year and a half old.

I figured out that all those years of holding out for a big Kansas Monster wasn't really paying off. So my strategy for this year was to get any kind of deer before trapping season.
I had been hunting on a piece of public land right outside the Austin city limits. It has really good habitat, but there was always someone else hunting at the same time. One hunter I talked to recommended a spot about 10 miles South of Austin. There is a half mile hike from the road before the hunting area begins, so it gets a lot less pressure. I went out there on Monday, Oct 5, early in the morning. I got sidetracked on the way there when some horses started to cross the highway in front of me. I stopped woke up the owner and helped get about 7 horses back in the pen. At least none of them got hit. Once I finally got into the hunting area, I missed a doe twice at 20 yards. This is also when I found out what a year of not shooting my bow does to me. I found a good spot to set up the next time I came out.

I went out again on Wednesday, Oct. 7 in the morning and there was patchy frost on the grass. I couldn't find the spot where I wanted to set up because it was too dark. I stayed put until daylight and then made my way to the good location. I sat on a log facing the Southeast wind. I waited about 45 minutes and saw a doe about 40 yards ahead of me. It was going away from me so I blew a few doe grunts. I didn't see the doe again but this buck came into view and started heading my way. I couldn't of asked for an easier shot; sitting down, drew when it went behind a tree, moved the bow into position when it went behind another tree, it stopped and looked at me for a second than took a step forward and was shot at 15 yards. It was shot a little low, but it died pretty quick. I shot it at about 8:20am.

I went back to the truck to change clothes and get a knife and gloves. I found out I need more practice field dressing, but I got the job done. I started the 3/4 mile drag out and was glad I changed out of my coveralls. It got to the point where I would drag for a minute and rest for 2. I got it to the truck at 11:30.

I had help from Lisa getting the deer hung in the garage. I had to make do without a proper gambrel using a trapping stake and a dog leash. I then got off to class at 1:00, but got back at 1:20. I took the deer into the big game registration station across town. I got there and answered the questions and they said we were done. I asked them if they needed to see the deer, which they did not. So then I somehow managed to get the deer back on the trapping stake by myself. I skinned it out and washed it down. Then I went to class at 3:30.

Because we went to Kansas on Thursday night, I butchered the deer from 12:00 to 4:30 Thursday afternoon. I might not have cut it into all the correct cuts, but most of it is going to be ground up anyway.

Well there's the very long version of my 2009 deer. I'm sure you'll hear from me again after trapping season starts the 24th.

New skill: Lumberjack

Okay, so I'm not quite a lumberjack but I did learn how to chop wood a couple of weekends ago. I mentioned in an earlier post that we got like 6 truck loads of wood at a farm auction. Well Tony was outside dying traps. He was getting ready for the upcoming season. We have made a small fire pit in our back yard and he was boiling the traps over this. Anyways, you need wood to make a fire so I decided to give my lumber jacking skills a try. After a much need form lesson from Tony I was good to go. Here's what I learned.

#1. Always keep your legs apart, that way if you miss you don't have to take a nice trip to the ER. (Don't worry, this didn't happen, but safety first people.)

#2. Chopping wood sure does make you feel 'manly.' Not that I want to be a man but you get my point.

#3. Careful selection of tree type is important. I can only split oak....leave the sycamore to your husband.

Below is a picture of my not so good form but as you can tell I did split it in half :)

Later that evening we decided to use the fruits of my labor and build us a fire for the first time in the fireplace. If you know me, you know that I was paranoid my home was going to burn down the whole time. But, alas I have learned to try to stay somewhat semi calm through the experience.


Here is a picture of our fire (please ignore my messy house):

Wallpaper no more...

So in mid-July we decided to dive right into the remodeling scene. First stop, Home Depot. After spending a nice chunk of money we were finally set to repaint the master bedroom. Only one thing stood in our way....wallpaper! We were blessed to find out that there were three layers that we had to chisel our way through. The first layer was pretty easy to pull off. The second and third, not so much. I was good to go for about the first three hours. I wussed out after that and left Tony to pick up my slack. Don't worry, I helped out again after I had a nice cold rum and coke. :)

What was supposed to be a weekend job turned into a week long project. After much hard work and very few 'disagreements,' we were finally finished.

Tony picked out the paint colors for the room. The original wallpaper wasn't too bad, just dated. Tony picked Lilting Laughter for the ceiling and fresh praline for the walls (where do they come up with these names?) basically white and peach are the colors.

We've included a few photos of our first remodeling adventure to share with you all. Next up on the list, the kitchen!


Before:

During:

After: