Finally, we started seeing a little bit of sign. We got on a ridge with Eric working one side and me working the other. Eric signaled that he had seen 2 does bedded down on a little flat area on the side of the ridge. We decided that since I’m 6 months pregnant and won’t be wanting to put an incredible amount of work into hunting, I’d take the shot if one was presented. So we snuck out to a spur off the ridge where I had a good gun rest and a good view. Turned out I could see 2 does and 2 bucks. The bucks were standing and I decided I wanted the 4-pointer. Spindly rack, but a big, healthy buck. He was standing facing me and then bedded down that way, so I didn’t have a good shot at him. One of the does was bedded down quartered away from me. I knew she would be an OK shot. The other buck (slightly smaller, but still good-sized) was standing broadside to me, but he was licking his side obsessively. He just wouldn’t quit. Where his head was, if I’d have shot him in the heart-lung zone, I’d have blasted him through the head as well. What’s the point in taking the buck when you’re just going to ruin the mount? I also remembered that I’m a meat hunter and should take what tastes best.

So I decided on the doe, settled in on her, and shot. She never got up, just died where she lay, so the rest of the deer didn’t really know what happened! Turns out there were several does in the area and they all decided it was prudent to leave, as did the smaller buck. The big buck, however, just stood there. So I told Eric that if he wanted the buck, take it! Since he’s really after elk this year, he was only going to shoot if he had a perfect shot. He crawled over to my gun rest and set up. The buck stood there and waited for him, broadside, so we ended up with a buck and doe!

After we dressed them out, I let Eric drag them to the nearest road while I walked back to get the truck. Of course, I took an ill-advised “shortcut” and ended up making the whole thing over a mile longer than it had to be. It was waaaay too much hiking for me at this point in my pregnancy, 6+ miles over rugged terrain for the whole day. I felt about 80 for a few days afterwards! But it’s worth it. We got a lot of meat!

It was amazing how different the experience of shooting a deer was this year. Last year, the decision to shoot was fraught with ambivalence and followed by so much sorrow, regret, and then elation all mixed up with a healthy dose of adrenaline. This year, I knew I was going to shoot one of those deer, that decision was made once I saw them. Following the shot, I still felt a little sad and deeply grateful to the deer and to the land, but I was mostly happy to have so much good meat and a wonderful day in the woods with my husband.

This place, our new home, is almost paradise to me. We sit on the north end of our big valley and no matter which way I turn, my eyes meet mountains on the horizon. The views are wide open and this time of year, with everything so intensely green, they are nothing short of breathtaking. Our neighbors are all a respectable distance away. If I cut my finger and cuss, I don’t have to feel embarrassed that someone may have heard me. But they are there to wave at and talk to and get to know. One neighbor plowed up a garden plot for me and he will show us how to run our hand irrigation lines when our alfalfa field needs it next! How’s that for a good neighbor?!

The only reason I say “almost paradise” is the mosquitoes that were harassing me today. I suppose they will be gone by the end of the month or sometime next month, though.

This weekend, we worked all day long both days, building fences, preparing the garden, planning and laying out the garden and beginning to plant. EZ was all around handyman working on his mile-long list of chores. We had fun, but the days were long and exhausting.

In contrast, this afternoon, the work seemed easy. We only had a few hours available, after all. I was able to get in a row of various Brassicas I had started and planted another row of squash. The real excitement, however, is that EZ started to get our drip irrigation going. I am so excited about this drip irrigation for the garden! When he laid out a few rows of line and started up the system, I was jumping for joy watching the water drip out along its way. After a couple of days of trying to haul a hose around my 1300 sq. ft of garden, I realize what a time and sanity saver this will be. Plus, it’s drip irrigation! How cool is that?

Well, I am happy and tired and ready to float off to sleep, savoring the deliciousness of this life we have chosen and worked for, but are so very blessed to have.

My view says ‘hi’:

It’s a unflattering picture of him, but this is how we usually see him: barreling full-speed to God only knows what. He’s a German Shorthaired Pointer. He’s one hell of a hunter. He’s one hell of whiner. I’ve never met a dog with more spunk or attitude. He’s loud, brash, smart as a whip, fast, enthusiastic, demanding, head-strong, persistent, cunning and did I mention loud? He’s also a cuddle-bug, empathetic, sweet, genuine and goofy. He’s a love-or-hate kind of dog and I stand firmly on the love (yet sometimes want to strangle) side.

After work today, I took him and his big bro, Barry, out to some BLM land outside of town for a good romp. He tore around as illustrated above, occasionally stopping to point at some bird smell or something. When we got back home, I caught him licking furiously at his paw. I called him upstairs to the bathroom, pulled out some tweezers and had him lay down. I sat down on the floor and he handed over his paw in a way that most dogs would be a little hesitant about. He’s been through much worse–such as a leg and face full of porcupine quills–on several occasions. He had 3 big cactus spines in his paw. I pulled each of them out and inspected his paw for more.

When I was done, he got up and I expected him to scamper out of the room and go play. Instead, he put his head down and pushed the top of it against my chest. I scratched his neck a bit and then he rubbed his head under my chin, slinked against me and plopped down in my lap–all 70 pounds of him. He looked up at me with a face of pure love. This dog, who can be so incredibly challenging sometimes, just slayed me at that moment. It’s times like this that make me such a sucker for this dog.

You have plenty of time. You’re young; you have our whole lives in front of you to attain our goals. You don’t have do it all at once. If you overwhelm ourselves from the start, you run the risk of burning ourselves out. So only add a thing at a time. Once you can handle that easily, think about adding the next thing.

Be 100% ready for the animals before you get them. You should have VERY good fences already built, good quarters for the animals established, and have your research done before you bring anything home.

Start with chickens. See if we really like caring for animals before we dive in.

Don’t get goats. They’re a pain in the ass, he says. I sense a bias here, but what do I know?

Don’t get exotic breeds of sheep. Get Rambouillet or Targhee. He says that these breeds have better flocking instincts and thus try to escape less, tend to be docile, and do well in Western Climates. I had been wanting to get an endangered breed to help protect genetic diversity, but perhaps we should start with easy breeds first, at least.

Don’t overfeed your sheep. He said that that’s the primary reason sheep get sick. He said sheep are very hardy animals if they are fed appropriately.

Don’t rush. You’re young. You have lots of time. Did he already say that?

This is where I find Jesus at his most human. We all pray at Gethsemane. We all pray that God or some higher power, or just to the air in front of our faces that they will relieve the inevitable suffering that we have to endure simply as part of being human. We all sit in our darkness alone and plead that the fates be changed. The only difference being that I think few of us mere mortals would say “only as You will it” with true honesty as Jesus did.

There is a song that I think expresses this rather poignantly. It is called “Jesus was an only Son” by Bruce Springsteen. This is part of it:

In the garden at Gethsemane
He prayed for the life he’d never live,
He beseeched his Heavenly Father to remove
The cup of death from his lips

Now there’s a loss that can never be replaced,
A destination that can never be reached,
A light you’ll never find in another’s face,
A sea whose distance cannot be breached

Well Jesus kissed his mother’s hands
Whispered, “Mother, still your tears,
For remember the soul of the universe
Willed a world and it appeared.”

This story of Jesus pleading to reverse his fate is such a comfort in my own minor tragedies that still bring me to the garden, pleading. Because, unlike His own time in the garden, I know that I am not alone.

1.5 cups Barley Flour
0.5 cup Potato Flour
0.25 cup Tapioca Flour
3 tbsp Arrowroot Flour
2 tbsp oil
Water until it was a decent consistency

Oh man, it was BAD. I have never had anything like it. The inside of these would just NOT cook. At first, I thought I must have just had the heat way too high, but nope. I turned it down enough that they took 15 minutes to still not cook all the way through. It was bizarre. They tasted very, very potato-y, but I’m not sure what type of flour it was that caused the consistency problem. I would suspect the tapioca flour, but it seems like a common part of many commercial wheat free flour mixes. It was awful.

Once I made wheat-free “tortillas” that were much more like pancakes than this. The mix was barley flour and oat flour (which I was out of today). It was more of a “whole-wheat” taste. I’m going to keep trying to get something passable.

Now how did we choke these horrible, potato-y, doughy beasts down? Fruit sauces. Mmmm. I make a habit of freezing fruit in the summer for use in crisps. This morning I made a Huckleberry sauce with the last of my Huckleberries and a Blueberry-Cherry sauce. I just put the fruit in a pan with a little water and a pinch of sugar for the huckleberries and simmer them down to a good consistency. Mmmmm. Drown these gawd-awful things in enough of those sauces and it’s actually darn tasty! Yay for fruit!

Our buyers did their inspection of our house this weekend and it looks like they’re really going to buy it from us! I guess this is really going to happen. What a relief…

Our latest idea for what we might do with our property, as far a small business venture, is hops. The price of hops is way up right now (to the point that our favorite brewery had to jack up the price of their beer by a quarter a pint). But even when it isn’t, it seems like a decent money-maker for the amount of work involved. We bought rhizomes for 5 different breeds of hops recently. We’ll start those this year and see how they do, which breeds do best, and whether we like it. Maybe someday we’ll ramp up to an acre or more of hops for local breweries or home-brewers. We’ve even been reading up on what it takes to get organic certification.

That’s one of the things I love about this place we’re buying. The options are pretty much only limited to what we have the time, skill and inclination to do. How lucky are we?

Our agent kept saying that things will happen when they’re meant to. I always thought that was a bunch of rubbish. Things just happen, I said. I think I may have to recant. I don’t know how to view this as anything other than a huge blessing. I lead a truly charmed life.

I did have a feeling, though, that this offer would come in now. You see, I’m in San Francisco right now. My sister and I are here visiting a good friend. I thought to myself that if an offer was going to come in, it’d be while I was vacation, because then it would be a huge pain in the ass. Isn’t it nice when Murphy’s Law works to your advantage?

The Good News: Tomorrow, we’re going to put in an offer on another house that is, in many ways, even better.

This house isn’t quite as cute or as big as the other one (but it’s still very cute), but the history of it is really cool. The sellers are a couple in their 80′s who built the passive solar house in 1990. They had a huge organic garden, fruit trees, a big greenhouse (two of them, in fact). I’m not sure if they had animals or not. Now they’re too old to get up and down the stairs easily, much less continue on with all that, so they’re selling.

We would have an established garden plot, an easy-to-reassemble greenhouse, a neighbor is currently paying a small amount to irrigate and hay the remaining acreage, so it’s definitely fertile land (for Helena). There is a big ol’ maze of a barn with some heated rooms. Basically, when it comes to our agricultural ambitions, we’d only be limited by our own aptitude and inclination, rather than by the amount or quality of our land. It’s also very cool that we would be continuing with their original vision for the place.

It’s in a beautiful spot, near Lake Helena and looking out over the Valley. The area is mostly agricultural, so it’s still pretty wide open (I expect that will change in the years to come). The things we don’t like about the house are all easy fixes for the most part. The kitchen is not much bigger than my current one (read: too damn small), but there is a perfect spot to put in another counter. The formal entrance is awkward, but easy to remove entirely.

It’s still at the top of our price range, so wish us luck in the negotiations! And once we get an offer accepted, wish us luck in selling our house!

Real estate sucks. There, I’ve said it. We found The House. We loved it. Great location, nice land, super-cute house with an attached greenhouse, guest house, 2 productive wells. Everything we were hoping for and more. It was the kind of place I can see myself in for many years to come. It was just so “us”.

It had been on the market since December, but we hadn’t gone to look at because it was just a tad out of the range of what we wanted to pay (less than 10k! We can still easily afford it, we were just being stubborn and cheap!). What a mistake… When our agent called to find out about covenants so that we could be sure we wanted to put in an offer, she found out that an hour before we saw the house, an offer had been accepted. It sat there for 3 whole months, and was gone right when we decided we wanted it. I guess we’re not entirely out of the race. The offer is contingent on a house selling. So if we sell our house first and get an offer accepted, it’s ours unless the other folks will go so far as to get a bridge loan or something! It’s a remote chance, but I’m really praying for it. I just haven’t seen anything else out there that even compares.

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In more promising news, I started some seeds yesterday! Brussels Sprouts, onions, kale, rosemary, sage, oregano and the most lovely broccoli I’ve ever seen. I might have started them a touch early, but I’m just too excited. I couldn’t wait!

This is my first year starting seeds indoors, so I’m excited to see how it turns out. I bought a flourescent tube light and set them up in our heated workshop area. I was surprised it was so cheap. I’ll be sure to take photos as they sprout!