Meat and Apples with Apple pie topped with apple sauce

A few weeks ago I began to harvest apples from our apple trees.  The first day I picked a dozen apples.  A few days later we decided to begin harvesting the apples before they spoiled or were all eaten by wildlife.  One and a half trees later we picked 10 dozen apples.  Overflowing in apples I decided to make apple sauce. 4 batches of apple sauce later with 7 dozen apples remaining I made apple pies.  4 apple pies later with 3 dozen apples remaining I made meat with apples.  Today, there are 2 dozen apples remaining and I do not want to eat another apple... Even the deer did not want all of the apples from the tree.

 

Guest House

I would like to present our new guest house.  This long weekend we tested out the camper.  We took the long drive through the bush to the back field of our property.  There we set up the trailer; that is after 3 hours in the pouring rain we were finally able to make it level. 
Prior to moving the trailer our neighbor was very concerned this would scare some of the wildlife away.  I am not sure how many animals we had before but we definitely heard coyotes and something that was breathing loudly that was either a deer or the concerned neighbor.   We are pretty sure it was a deer...  I am sure it is safe for house guests.
At the very least unwanted house guests. 
 

Human vs. Animals Part II

There have been two more battles won with the wild.  Well sort of.  This evening while I was eating the corn on the cob I got from a neighboring farm I decided to put some salt on it.  Just like every other time I use salt I shook the shaker over my food when none other then an earwig came out.  Obviously, I screamed and when I told my husband what happened his response was "It must be a Jewish earwig because that was kosher salt".   I guess living in the country has made us somewhat complacent to the presents of other animals...

The other battle I have been having is with the crows.  We have been fighting over apples.  Specifically, the apples on my front yard apple tree.  I needed to take action because neither the dog nor I could stand by the tree all day scaring them away.  My first idea was to build a scarecrow but then I read that you could put up foil and old pie plates to scare them away.  It has something to do with the bright reflection with the sun.  I found one pie plate, one 6 muffin sheet and some fishing line.  And Voila my tree looks like a poor mans christmas tree but I can safely say that for the last week no crows have eaten an apple. 

How the basement renovations started...

We had the first big rain in two months.  This was great for my grass that has started to turn a little yellow.  It was not a great way to find out that the drains in the basement are connected to the outside drains that collect rain water. 
Yesterday during the storm the dog got very scared by the lightning and ran to hide somewhere downstairs.  In the past she has hid and then gotten stuck somewhere strange so we went downstairs to find her.  That is when we saw water coming up out of the drains and half our basement in an inch of water.  Apparently the drain plugged somewhere outside so instead of draining out the water drained back into our basement. We spent all evening moving things out of the water, ripping up carpet and pulling of damaged wall paneling.   The good news is our basement is very ugly and I had planned to renovate it eventually anyways.  The bad news is we have to do it now instead of next year when I had planned to do it. 
   

I really don't hate animals but...

Today I started by checking on the hickory tree that I have been waiting for the nuts to fall off of so that I could plant it in a few spots around the property.  When I got there the nuts were all gone.  I search through the bushes looking for any left on the ground but to my disappointment, even though my research says the bitternut hickory is even a last resort for squirrels, the squirrels or chipmunks did get desperate enough.  Next year I will come by earlier for the nuts. 
Then I went to check on my tomatoes...they were fine yesterday almost ripe in fact.  Today the only ripe tomatoes were eaten.  Next year I invest in some heavy duty chicken wire and begin the fight against nature. 
The only good news is so far most of the apples have remained and I managed to find an untouched blackberry bush. 

 

Apple cider wishes and porcupine dreams

Today a professional forester came to our house to perform a woodlot assessment.  While I did not think our property had any valuable trees one always secretly wishes.  The final assessment was that we were not sitting on a gold mine but an animal kingdom in a swamp that does not grow valuable hardwood trees well. 

We did found more woodpecker nests then I have ever seen in my life and good apple trees for me...and the deer too. There are also a number of trees that he told us to take down so we will not be lacking firewood. 

We also found out we have a lot of porcupines and they are eating the tree bark. Now we are going to have to go hunting for porcupine shelters and destroy them. Pulling quills out of the dog is the last thing I would like to do in the evening.  I have caught her chasing after porcupines in the past so I know we would be in trouble. 

As long as the porcupines stay out of the house I think we will make it through the fall...
  

Poison what?

Even though our property is a lot larger then our old  0.2 acre town lot we for some reason have not yet invested in a riding lawn mower.  This means that my husband spent the summer getting his exercise cutting the grass with a push mower.   It would not have been entirely horrible except that in the beginning we were still new to the lands and were not very good at distinguishing plants and trees.  Let me tell you it is not always a good idea to learn by trial and error or should I say poison or not poison.  About a month ago Max decided to cut through a bunch of "shrubs" to make a clearing to throw brush from the trees we had been trimming along the roadway.  A few days later the rashes started to appear.   That is when we started to learn about poison ivy.  Before this all I knew was the expression "leaves of three leave it be" but a lot of plants have three leaves.  So we called in the expert: my mother-in-law.  After she fell of her bike about 15-20 years ago into a patch of poison ivy she learned the hard way to recognize poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac and poison anything really.  She walked down the property with us and found the culprits.   
Once we found the large patch of poisonous plants along the road we began the annihilation.

Here are some tips:

Poison Ivy

1. Wear Rubber boots and a pair of gloves. The poisonous oil (urushiol) apparently stays on your clothes so that you can keep spreading the rash back to yourself or others. 
2. Wash your dog.  Who would have thought the oils would stick to her to little paws and then spread the rashes to weird places when she rolled the oils around on our bed?  She is getting used to being hosed down and she smells so nice after being washed with a little bit of baby shampoo.
3. Don't cut, burn, rub, poke or eat poisonous plants.  Bad all bad.  Cutting the plant spreads the oils into the area and on the lawn mower...very bad.  We never burned the plants but were warned over and over again that inhaling the smoke will kill you, extremely bad.
4. If you do touch the plant. Go inside and wash yourself and wash all of your clothes with a lot of soap.  This is why rubber boots are so good, they wash well.
5. Round-up is your friend.  We spent hours spraying plants with round up.  They will after a few years of spraying completely kill the plant and in the short term remove the threat of rashes.

Poison Ivy a few weeks after being sprayed