Grab-bag

Pear-sauce

I netted 7.7 quarts of pear-sauce from 1 qt of apple cider and 22 pounds of Asian pears. The sauce was much thinner and runnier than apple-sauce. That shouldn't have surprised me. Asian pears have a texture that resembles watermelon.

1.5 ounces of freshly grated ginger was too much for my tastes but Quicksilver thought it was "yummy-treat", perhaps because she didn't have any expectations.

Trail-cams

I found the stash of trail-cams my deceased brother left me. They were in plain sight in a clear, plastic bag. I was looking for a box. Duh!

More pictures of Skinny Girl and her two fawns last night and several raccoons foraging beneath a chestnut tree. So far nothing with head-gear (antlers).

New deer hunters

One of my nephews is about to take up deer-hunting. His buddy runs a food-bank in Mulliken, Michigan and Hanna-Davis Meats will process deer that are donated for a suggested $50 donation.

My nephew has property and is geeked about collecting "meat" on his own land. Looking at overhead imagery, he has a cottonwood tree in a fence-line 70 yards downwind of where deer travel from point-to-point of cover. And the cottonwood tree is about 150 yards upwind of his house. Easy-peasy hunting, change into orange when he comes home from work, walk out to the tree and settle into a tree stand 8' above ground.

Deer hoists

My plan is to mount a manual winch in the roof-truss of the pole barn on the property I am managing. The winch is a Reese boat-trailer winch with a 1500lb rating. It uses a synthetic strap rather than a steel cable. 

I don't know if God will smile upon us and we will harvest any deer off of the property, but God favors the prepared. It will be pretty slick to back the truck into the barn, do a little bit of rigging and be able to lift the critter up into the air. It will be even better if we can do the golf-ball-dead-weight skinning trick. Yanking the hide off the critter really helps them cool down quickly.

Deer exclusion experiment

I drove fence posts to create a 12'-by-24' deer exclusion area. The long axis runs north-south. Based on conversations I had with Lucas I sprayed half of the area with herbicide to knock-back what little vegetation was there but left the other half as a control. The half I sprayed was a 6'-by-24' long strip on the east side of the enclosure.

Species that I saw included Blackberries, Black Locust, Poison Ivy, Goldenrod, Violet, Smooth Brome and Orchard Grass.

The reason for the Herbicide/not-Herbicide is that the vegetation that has a head-start is biased toward deer-resistant and it unintentionally penalizes the less deer-resistant. This experiment mimics in a very small way what might happen to the forest floor if Chronic Wasting Disease wipes out 85% of Michigan's deer population.

As a tiny bit of background, I had a small colony of Dogtooth Violet and Bloodroot on my property but it extinguished. I am fond of both of those species and would like to have them come back but doubt that that can happen at existing deer densities.

One thing I don't plan on doing is to add any outside seeds. This is purely an experiment in seeing what the native seed-bank can accomplish. My expectation is that I will have lots of bird-borne seeds (from various berries) and some wind-blown seeds (which tend to be sun-loving pioneer species). There may also be a few stray seeds that walked in between the cloven-hooves of deer.

Chainsaws on a pole

Based on the overwhelming response in comments, I bowed to the inevitable and purchased a DeWalt Pole Saw.

The pole comes in three sections. It seems unwieldy with all three section but I am pretty sure I will be able to do a lot with just two sections.

Wedding Showers

Mrs ERJ came home with five pounds of desserts (brownies, cookies and caramel fruit-dip). She brought home sandwiches and kabobs and vegetables.

Man, I just can't eat like I used to. That stuff is going to kill me. Fortunately, Mrs ERJ agreed to make the desserts disappear.