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Putting food in the pantry brings me joy. How odd it took me 62 years to have this hit home.
The plan to have a bin for nuts is on hold. I can dehusk and dry 20 gallons of nuts-in-the-husk. That yields 10 gallons of de-husked Drake or 4 of Sparks 147. A gallon of Sparks 147 is "fluffy" due to the kite-tail on the nut. I am up to 60 gallons of nuts from my biggest tree of Drake and it looks like I have another 20 on the ground.
Drake has been the star of 2021 for black walnut production and ease-of-processing.
---Added later: Twenty gallons of Drake black walnuts, dehusked but still in-shell, dried on the racks with a 150W light bulb and forced air for 30 hours yielded 31 pounds of nuts (meats + shells).
Speculate that cracked nuts that have not released their 1/4 could be put in container and air under pressure (30psi?) added. Then rapidly release pressure with quarter-turn valve. Air trapped between shells and meats might pop meats out---
Now I need to fabricate some wire baskets (with lids) out of poultry netting. The picture in my head is that I will hang them from the rafters in the garage.
Deer hunting
Sprite's grandson is about twenty and he likes hunting.
"T" as he shall be known, has a mother who is very protective. Now that T is an adult, there is nothing to stop him from driving from Okemos out to Eaton Rapids and throwing arrows at deer.
The Captain, Sprite's husband, died about three years ago. The Captain's understanding of animals was without parallel. He could see the scratches around an opening in a tree where a raccoon's claws had scratched the bark. He could see it from 200 yards away while driving 60 miles per hour. Sadly, the Captain is not available to take T in hand and show him how to hunt.
Sprite tries, but she is fidgety. T is an optimist and has been taking long shots, two wounded, none recovered.
From a distance, one of T's failings is that he is flogging a single deer stand that looks over an open food-plot. No surprise, the deer stopped coming to the food plot during the daylight hours.
This morning, I made Sprite a deal. I "suggested" that T set up a ground-blind on the fence-line between our two properties and that he hunt the ground-blind when the wind is out of the north-ish.
We walked around and found a place where there are three deer trails within 30 yards of the fence-line. I suggested a Primos fawn bleat can to stop the deer so T can have a set shot.
Time will tell if the young man listens.
I think that finding the grayest whiskers I could find coupled with a lot of clean up of tools , sweeping up the flor-dri and spilled oil , and respect for said graywhiskers and the old man will share secrets of technology and blood and tears and maybe tracking if you're real sharp . Learned a bunch from a lot of old men that worked harder , were probably twice as smart but willingly shared that life knowledge with me . That's how life is supposed to work . As Ed Abbie said an educated hard working man can not be subjugated .
ReplyDeleteI used to love bow hunting. Then several years ago late in the day I hit one a bit too far back and high and I trailed it until dark and I hung my T-shirt over the blood trail so I could find it in the morning. Later I laid in bed at the camp and listened to it rain. No more blood trail and I never found the deer. I felt so bad that I was never able to draw the bow again when I saw one so I gave it up. Only used a rifle after that because they always went down.---ken
ReplyDeleteI never had any luck bowhunting from a ground blind. If you're close enough for a bow shot you're inside the deer's hypervigilance zone, and the amount of movement required to prep a bow shot always resulted in a spooked deer for me. A crossbow might be a different story, but there are real good reasons for bowhunting from a tree stand.
ReplyDeleteJoe,I hope that this has some relevance. I don't know how much of your nut gathering has to do with gathering from the ground. If it does I hope this finds some use. Have you ever seen the device use to pick up golf balls? It's a tube with a rubberish cap on the end with slits cut into it that allows you to place the tube over what you are picking up and with a push the round objeck goes in the tube and doesn't fall out. when the tube is full(they usually use clear plastic for the tube)you dump the contents into your bucket. Beats bending over.
ReplyDeleteAbout ten years ago a man at the shooting range had a device that was a wire cage on a stick that rolled on the ground to pick up brass. I researched it at the time, it was designed to pick up nuts. He was getting 9mm and.45 brass, you would probably need a larger size.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought, use a pooper scooper. Don't recall if the ends are open but they can be blocked with some sheet metal or plastic and some pop rivets. You can also use it to harvest the nuts from the tree.
ReplyDelete