Mean, Mean Rooster

 { I copied and pasted this from my Facebook status from a couple weeks ago because I want it to be forever imprinted in our family history.}

After chasing both The Princess and Little Brother, our huge, white rooster lost his life today. The Hot Contractor heard poor, little, 2yo Little Brother screaming bloody murder outside. He looked out the window, and saw the horror. Grabbed his gun, and told the kids to stay inside. Just as he was about to do the deed, he heard The Princess banging on the window. He turned around to her yelling, "ARE WE GOING TO EAT HIM FOR DINNER?!?!" He smiled and nodded, then shot the rooster, chopped off his head with an axe, de-feathered him, and stuck him in the freezer. I love my husband!

Oh, Deer!

A couple weeks ago, the Hot Contractor shot a deer outside our front door. It was a very exciting, much-anticipated night, as he'd been trying to get a deer for the entire two month deer hunting season that was one day from closing. Here's how it all happened...

We were sitting at the dinner table, about to start eating, when The Hot Contractor had to pee. Instead of using the toilet, like a civilized person, my Hot Little Hunter (I'm considering changing his name to this) decided to go outside to relieve himself. Of course! That's what you do when you're a hunter...always on the lookout! As he was out there, he could hear a deer out in the brush (the sun had just set, so visibility was bad). He came in and grabbed his .30-06 which was mounted above the door (just like Charles Ingalls). Not more than five minutes later, we heard the shot. He'd shot a doe. A big doe.

He spent a couple hours hanging her outside that night, and we left her for a couple days. Then he skinned and processed her. Here are some pics I took of that.







The head (I know, gross, huh?).






Another "head shot".






Here's the Hot Hunter himself.






And the deer skin hanging on the back of our truck. Lovely, isn't it?






Then we had to process the meat. We made a bunch of it into jerky (which lasted like 3.5 days, it was SO GOOD!), saved some steaks and roasts in the freezer, and made the rest into ground meat. We have this handy dandy meat grinder attachment for our Kitchen Aid, which has come in handy a couple times now (the first being when we processed our 500 lbs of beef last year). Here's a pic of him and The Princess, hard at work.






{Please note the pink sparkly princess dress. I love that she's grinding meat while wearing this.}

And now we have a freezer full of organic, grass-fed venison to last us all winter. And it cost us $15.30 (for the deer tag). Love it! Thank you, Hot Hunter!

Herb Drying

We decided this year, that we would dry our herbs instead of letting them die in our garden. I sent The Princess out with her preschool scissors to cut the herbs off the stems. Here's the little cutie.





We brought them in and washed them; thyme, oregano and basil.

Then The Princess put them on the food dehydrator trays. Here's thyme.





Sparse, I know. Then there's oregano.





We had a couple trays of oregano. I put them in this order because I figured the tiny thyme might fall through the cracks onto the bottom tray. Oregano would be less likely, and basil very unlikely. I figured they wouldn't get too mixed together this way. Here's basil.





We had basil coming out our ears!

I turned the dehydrator on to 95 degrees. I'll leave it all night, and check them in the morning. From what I read, it shouldn't even take that long, but I'd rather be safe, than have moisture (and eventually mold) in my herbs.