Jason Raven

Scout Cam Update 10/29/2011

Two updates in two days?!

We had a great first day of hunting. Everyone saw deer, with a couple of guys seeing around a dozen. No antlers, though. 

There has been a TON of activity on one of our scout cams this week (but almost none on the other two).

In addition to a bunch of does and lambs, there were a couple of different bucks that made frequent visits.

Buck #1 appears to be a 7-pointer, but it's hard to tell for sure:

  

 

 

And this is a pretty nice 8-pointer. The rack isn't nearly as big as the one I posted yesterday, but it's pretty nice. He's been showing up quite regularly lately:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a video of a young deer freaking out. I'm guessing it bit something it didn't like?

 

And lastly for something completely different...

 

Scout Cam Update 10/28/2011

Deer season starts tomorrow!

I took my oldest daughter bow hunting a couple of times and we saw two does and two lambs the first time and a lone doe the second. I hope she's not expecting to see deer every time. The encounter with the foursome was especially good because they got to within 15 or 20 feet of the tree stand that we were sitting in.

I didn't have anything really exciting to post from the scout cams until tonight.

First, here's one that I've been holding on to for a while. It's very unusual to see a buck with a fawn...

 

 

Here's a nice doe and fawn video where the doe kind of bops the fawn on the nose:

 

 

And here's the video that motivated me to update the blog:

 

I thought it was pretty unremarkable at first, but when you see that rack from the front... wow. I think there's another wall-hanger running around the farm!

Gardening 2011 update #4 (Week 11)

The garden has exploded since the last update and new opportunities for learning keep presenting themselves. Hopefully, this blog will help us remember in the spring. The current major issue is our large brassicas. The cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts with their massive leaves are serious space hogs. Our initial plantings of radishes, beets and spinach were harvested weeks ago, but the replacements that we have since sown have suffered in the shade of their larger neighbors. Next year, we're going to add more beds and group the big boys together.

I have abandoned my clipboard and note-taking and I'm not even using the garden planner now. I think it's useful initially, but in reality - once you've pulled up your early harvests your options for replacement crops are fairly limited. I took a trip to the local farm store this morning and picked up a new variety of radish and a couple different kinds of swiss chard to go where the spinach was. Once things cool off again, I may try to get one more crop of spinach in, but I'm not sure that there will be time for it.

The other major lesson that we've learned lately regards watering. We had been using the hose in the evenings or mornings, but it's woefully inefficient. The big brassica leaves work to their advantage there, too, funnelling a ton of water towards themselves and away from everything else. The grass and weeds outside the beds were getting a lot of the water and growing fast - requiring extra work to trim them back down. Going back to the SFG book, I read about the "hand-watering" method. Now, we keep a big tub full of water nearby and use a couple of old plastic drinking cups to dunk in and deliver water to each square once or twice a day. The water gets to the soil and roots instead of evaporating on (or burning) the leaves. If you fill the tub AFTER you do your watering, the water gets warmed by the sun/hot air and that is easier on the plants than getting blasted by the frigid water straight out of our well.

We made our first broccoli harvests yesterday, taking two big heads. Hopefully, they keep going and we'll get some secondary heads, too.

 

Here are views of each bed from a couple different angles.

 Bed 1, Side 1: Good view of how the cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts are dwarfing the basil. There are a couple of empty squares there on the right where I just planted swiss chard and beets. The tall thing on the right is cilantro. It's growing well, but the leaves don't look like the kind you get in the store. Must be a different variety. 

 Bed 1, Side 2: Something has really decimated the basil. I was close to yanking it today and putting something else in it's place. At least we were able to get some pesto made before it became bug food. Speaking of bugs, the Japanese beetles haven't been nearly as bad this year. Knock wood...

 Bed 2, Side 1: A few beets left in one square, more giant brassicas and a glimpse of my sugar snap pea teepees.

 Bed 2, Side 2: The girls are very pleased with their johnny jump-ups and the marigolds have finally blossomed (barely visible on the right).

 Bed 3, Side 1: The shell peas have climbed twice as high as the sugar snap peas. This was another area with lots of room for improvement. Next year, we're putting our peas in a straight line and I'm going to run a single wall of nylon mesh for them to climb right down the middle of the squares.

 Bed 3, Side 2: More johnny jump-ups (I'm going to encourage more veggies over flowers next year...) and a good view of the marigolds. The dahlias on the left-side are extremely leafy and seem to be thriving, but there are no signs of flowers yet... 

All of the peas have been picked quite heavily and the girls like eating them right from the garden. I'm seeing some yellowing and wilting, so I think they are nearing the end, though. 

Gardening 2011 update #3 (Week 6)

We are definitely learning, and cataloging our gardening experience here should help us plan better for next year.

The biggest issue we've seen lately is that entire marigolds are just disappearing. I did some web searching and it seems that they're popular targets for mice, rabbits and other rodents. Maybe I need to put a scout camera on the garden.

The missing marigold's opened up 4 new squares on garden bed #1 and I convinced my youngest to go with more veggies instead of flowers. Similarly, the older kid replaced two of her vacant squares with beets. Angela's garden has already yielded some radishes and some spinach. We snipped off a bunch of spinach leaves over the weekend and each had a salad and I think that the spinach has already grown back even larger now and is due for another cull. We replanted the radishes that we pulled, as well as filling in a few other random holes.

The peas have grown enough so that they need support to keep them from becoming a tangled mess. This is one of the things I will probably handle differently next year. I'm trying a couple of different styles of supports this year (see the photos), but next year I will probably put in one of the more durable climbing walls that the SFG book recommends and make sure all of our climbers are arranged in a more sensible fashion.

At this point, I'd be surprised if our cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts have time to mature. I really should have started them indoors. The other early season change that I really need to make next year would be covering the beds in plastic during the early weeks to accelerate early growth.

Overall, though, we're pretty happy with the way things are growing. I am planning to add at least two more beds next year.

On the other side of the driveway... our cucumber, white pumpkin and ornamental gourds are growing really quickly.

Here's the revised layout based on yesterday's replanting:

 

Here are photos of the beds from this afternoon:

 

 

 

 

Gardening 2011 update #2 (Week 4)

Almost everything has sprouted finally. I think that next year I'm going to put plastic over the beds for the first few weeks to hopefully speed things along. I had made one planting mistake and mixed up a couple squares in the A-D bed. Here's the corrected layout:

 

Just about everything but the chives, some marigolds and one square of broccoli have sprouted. Today, I gave up on the broccoli and re-seeded H1.

Here are the sprout dates for each square:

A1 Marigold (6/4)
A2 Dahlia (5/23)
A3 Dahlia (5/21)
A4 Marigold (6/4)
B1 Johnny Jump-Up (5/31)
B2 Peas (5/24)
B3 Chives
B4 Cauliflower (5/23)
C1 Johnny Jump-Up (5/31)
C2 Peas (5/23)
C3 Peas (5/23)
C4 Cauliflower (5/22)
D1 Marigold (6/4)
D2 Marigold (6/4)
D3 Marigold (6/4)
D4 Marigold (6/4)

E1 Johnny Jump-Up (5/30)
E2 Sugar Snap Peas (5/23)
E3 Marigold
E4 Broccoli (5/20)
F1 Johnny Jump-Up (5/30)
F2 Brussels Sprouts (5/21)
F3 Sugar Snap Peas (5/20)
F4 Cauliflower (5/22)
G1 Sugar Snap Peas (5/22)
G2 Brussels Sprouts (5/22)
G3 Chives
G4 Cauliflower (5/21)
H1 Broccoli - Replanted on 6/5
H2 Marigold
H3 Beets (5/21)
H4 Beets (5/21)

I1 Radishes (5/20)
I2 Basil (5/27)
I3 Cilantro (5/28)
I4 Marigold
J1 Basil (5/27)
J2 Brussels Sprouts (5/19)
J3 Broccoli (5/22)
J4 Spinach (5/22)
K1 Spinach (5/20)
K2 Broccoli (5/19)
K3 Brussels Sprouts (5/21)
K4 Basil (5/28)
L1 Marigold
L2 Basil (5/27)
L3 Beets (5/21)
L4 Cauliflower (5/21)

As expected, the fastest growers are the radishes. The peas are moving along pretty well, too. I have been thinning each square down to the correct number and spacing for each species. We are shy a turnip or a beet here and there, but things are going fine overall.

The carrots out back are doing well, and I really should start plant the pumpkins, gourds and cucumbers soon. Maybe tomorrow...

Nothing too exciting on the game cameras. ZERO turkeys all spring, which is very unusual. My oldest and I went to camp 4 times this spring during turkey season and never even bothered to set up the blind. We did see a deer while heading behind the old farmhouse to check one of the cameras and also spotted a muskrat in the pond.

She got some shooting practice in today with her .22 and did very well sitting at a makeshift shooting bench. She's gotten very fast at working the bolt and loading the gun, blowing through a 50 round box in no time. I told her that I wanted to spend the whole summer using iron sights. She might get a scope for Christmas.

Gardening 2011 update #1

We planted our seeds in the square foot gardening beds on Sunday, May 8, which was the predicted final frost date.

I planned everything out using the Mother Earth News Vegetable Garden Planner. I had Angela and each of the kids plan a bed and this is what they came up with:

 

The little one did the top garden, which is why it's mostly flowers. My oldest went with 25% flowers to go with her favorite vegetables. Angela just put Marigolds on the two corners to help ward off some insect pests.

All that week, we made sure that we watered the beds regularly. Week #2 has seen SIX days in a row of rain! It's reminding me a lot of two springs ago. I was starting to get pretty nervous that nothing had sprouted yet, fearing that the seeds may have rotted. However... the SFG book insists that you can't over-water when you follow the method. Much to my relief, when I got home from work yesterday, I saw that we had one broccoli and one brussels sprout sprouted in one of the beds. This morning, the radish square had several sprouts. Three more squares had sprouts tonight when I got home from work.

Here's where things stand right now:

BED #1
A1 Marigold
A2 Dahlia
A3 Dahlia
A4 Marigold

B1 Johnny Jump-ups
B2 Peas
B3 Chives
B4 Cauliflower

C1 Johnny Jump-ups
C2 Peas
C3 Peas
C4 Cauliflower

D1 Marigolds
D2 Marigolds
D3 Marigolds
D4 Marigolds

BED#2
E1 Johnny Jump-ups
E2 Sugar Snap Peas
E3 Marigolds
E4 Broccoli                    (Sprouted 5/20)

F1 Johnny Jump-ups
F2 Brussels Sprouts
F3 Sugar Snap Peas        (Sprouted 5/20)
F4 Cauliflower

G1 Sugar Snap Peas
G2 Brussels Sprouts
G3 Chives
G4 Cauliflower

H1 Broccoli
H2 Marigolds
H3 Beets
H4 Beets

BED#3
I1 Radishes                (Sprouted 5/20)
I2 Basil
I3 Cilantro
I4 Marigolds

J1 Basil
J2 Brussels Sprouts     (Sprouted 5/19)
J3 Broccoli
J4 Spinach

K1 Spinach                 (Sprouted 5/20)
K2 Broccoli                 (Sprouted 5/19)
K3 Brussels Sprouts
K4 Basil

L1 Marigolds
L2 Basil
L3 Beets
L4 Cauliflower

The other exciting news this morning was that one of our apple trees had blossomed. Looking out the window, I counted around 20 blossoms, which I was very pleased with. We had exactly TWO the year before. As I went outside to confirm that I was seeing actual blossoms and not just the shiny undersides of some leaves, I was surprised to find that the "blossoms" we had seen from inside were actually clusters of flowers. There were actually probably over a hundred on the tree. I hope our little tree can support the weight of that much fruit!

 

Spring 2011 Update

I made my first trip to camp for the year this past weekend. My younger daughter started Daisy Scouts on Saturday, so she stayed behind with Angela. I took my older one along with me. My father and I went do the MASTC (Maine Antler & Skull Trophy Club) banquet in Augusta on Saturday, so my daughter was looking forward to a private cross-stitching lesson with Nana on Saturday afternoon, as well as the chance to get to shoot her new .22 rifle that Santa had delivered at Christmas. Quite a diverse pair of activities!

The banquet was very interesting, but far too long. They hadn't held it for two years, so they celebrated both 2009 and 2010 together and it lasted around 5 hours. A three hour annual affair would make a lot more sense to me, but it was my first one and I don't know the history and could certainly be missing something!

Saturday evening, I recalled to my mother that during some genealogical research, I had found a Bell (her maternal family) buried in Brooks, the same town where my mother lived for a part of her youth and the same town in which we were staying at camp at that very moment. Mom was shocked! "Cornelius Vanderbilt Bell", I said, to which she immediately responded "Corn Bell?! He lived right across the street from us! But... we weren't related to him!" I assured her that they definitely were related, as Corn and my mother's grandfather were third cousins.

She didn't think her mother knew it, either, and that was confirmed by a phone call to Florida. Most of my grandmother's family came from the Waterford-area, but Corn's family branched off and came to Brooks by way of Aroostook county. Chances are, even if my grandmother had asked him about the Bell relation - they would have determined that they were no relation. Decades later, though, the trail of census, birth, marriage and death records allowed me to piece it all together. After my parents and I talked about it a little longer, we realized that Corn's grandson married a Raven and that I was related to that family from BOTH sides of my family tree. I think it's incredible that my grandmother had no idea how closely she was related to the neighbor across the street! I knew the name of the cemetery where Corn and his family were supposed to be buried and Mom thought she knew which one it was, so we hopped into the car and headed over and confirmed my data.

My mom, my daughter and I ended up spending time in 4 different area cemeteries over the weekend and along the way I showed her some geocaches I had found. I used my phone's geocaching app to find a few that we had not yet discovered, too, which is always fun. The best one was one that led us to a road sign. My daughter quickly spotted a container tucked into the ground at the base and opened it up only to find a note saying basically "Ha ha - you didn't think it would be this obvious, did you?". The actual cache ended up being magnetic and about the size of a button. That was the first time we had found one that had an "impostor" cache. We all thought it was funny, even though the kid was slightly annoyed that she didn't end up getting the find.

We visited with Aunt Minnie and Aunt Mabel on Sunday morning and put out the scout cameras. Hopefully, I'll have some new videos and photos for next week. In addition to my usual camera, and the one my father bought last year, we've now got a third "cheapie" that can only take photos. The white flash makes me a little nervous that it will spook the deer, but we'll see...

My daughter got her target shooting in on Sunday. She took her first shot and missed. I took a shot to confirm that the sights were set up reasonably close and hit. She continued shooting another 12 or 15 shots - never hitting the target and often off by quite a measure. I took some solace in the fact that at least she was NOT flinching at all - her form was fine. We were almost out of ammo and I tried to stay positive even though she was getting a little frustrated herself.

I shoot left-handed and didn't think it should matter as far as the sights were concerned, but I got ready to take a right-handed shot and as I closed my left eye... the problem occured to me. "Are you keeping both your eyes open?", I asked. She confirmed that she was. Then I had her form a small hole with her hands and look at a distant object through it. As she alternated opening and closing her eyes, I confirmed that she is left-eye dominant, as I am. She took her final 3 shots with her left-eye closed and hit the target twice and missed the other shot by just a whisker.

 

Late Sunday night, we heard the news about Bin Laden. Angela and I took a break from clearing out the DVR and watched Obama's speech. It was a pretty good one, but I wasn't comfortable watching all the young people carrying on chanting and cheering in front of the White House. It reminded me too much of the way so many middle easterners celebrated 9/11. Killing Bin Laden was important, but it didn't feel much like victory to me. He lasted almost ten years, and if he was smart he'll have recorded a recent tape saying that his death was faked by the US Government. That'll throw the whole thing into doubt and he'll "live on" for at least another few years. Maybe not. Who knows. I'm cynical about the whole thing. Kudos to the Navy Seals for completing the mission, but are we safer today than we were yesterday? I'm not so sure.

I should be blogging more often this summer, as I make another attempt at gardening. This time, I'm doing it COMPLETELY differently. I will be trying the Square Foot Gardening method, and I've been trying to go strictly by the book. Building the frames is pretty inexpensive, but the author has you fill your raised beds completely with a mix of compost, peat moss and vermiculite (which is very expensive). What you end up with is basically a custom potting soil, and with each 4'x4'x6" need 8 cubic feet to fill... it took a lot of material to fill my 3 boxes!

Here's a box with the weed block cloth under it:

 

and here it is filled with soil and covered with the square foot frame:

 

I'm planning to fill in the other two tomorrow night and we'll probably be planting seeds on Sunday. I let each of the girls plan what will go in each of their 16 squares. The little one is planting mostly flowers, but the older one is very excited about loading up on her favorite veggies. Angela is just planting a couple of marigold squares to help repel pests.

 

Buffalo Chicken Chili

This was the winner of last weekend's Raven/White Chili cook-off. The recipe came from CookingForEngineers.com, but their instructions aren't consistent between the recipe and accompanying article. I always like to get my "mise en place" on, so that's incorporated into my instructions and I think it's much easier to prepare my way. You could do steps 1 through 4 early in the day and store them all in the fridge until you're ready to cook, which would reduce the total time it takes at supper time to about half-an-hour. All you need for hardware is a few bowls, a measuring cup, a wooden spoon and a good sized pot (I use a 6 quart stainless steel stock pot).

Buffalo Chicken Chili

1 roto chicken
1 lb ground chicken
2 Tbs. olive oil
3 Tbs. unsalted butter
salt & pepper
3 celery ribs
2 carrots
1 red bell pepper
1 onion
5 garlic cloves
2 Tbs. chili powder
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 12oz beer
1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1 15oz can tomato sauce
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes

1. Veggie Bowl: chop up the celery ribs, carrots, red bell pepper and onion into a fine dice and put them all in a bowl together. Toss the 3 tablespoons of butter on top.

2. Spice Bowl: combine the chili powder, cumin, coriander in a small bowl. Mince the 5 garlic cloves into the same bowl. Pour in a tablespoon of olive oil.

3. Chicken Bowl: pull all the meat off of the roto chicken and render it into small chunks using whatever method you prefer: tear it with your fingers, shred it with forks or cut it up with a knife.

4. Tomato Bowl: in a bowl (or big measuring cup), dump in the half-cup of Frank's Red Hot Sauce, the tomato sauce and the diced tomatoes.

5. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to your pot and heat it over medium-high heat until the oil is shimmering. Add the ground chicken and cook it until it browns. Season with some salt and pepper. The more brown that sticks to the bottom of the pan, the better. Dump the cooked ground chicken into the Chicken Bowl with your roto chicken meat.

6. Dump the Veggie Bowl into the now-empty pot and stir it around as the butter melts. Stir every couple of minutes for 10 to 15 minutes. The veggies should get soft and the onions should start to brown.

7. Push the veggies to the sides and make a hole in the middle of the pan. Dump in the contents of your Spice Bowl into the middle of the pan and stir them around for 30 seconds or so to let their flavors bloom in the oil.

8. Dump the Chicken bowl into the pot and stir it around really well to coat everything evenly with the spices. The bottom of the pan should be very brown. Dump in the beer and scrape the bottom to get all of that flavor off the pot and into your food.

9. Dump in the Tomato Bowl and give it a stir. Simmer for 5 minutes (or longer, if you want it thicker).

 

Vacation. All I ever wanted.

An update - as requested by Ned.

And it's a non-hunting post. The deer aren't moving enough in all of this snow to justify putting the cameras out, so I need to talk about something else for a change. 

 

Last weekend, the family took our first "vacation" together in a long time. We went to Boston for two days and over-nighted in a hotel. I'm going to blog our experiences to make sure we remember how it went when it comes time to planning our next trip.

 

First of all, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected and feared. However, my expectations were REALLY low to begin with.

Clash of the Titans

THORNDIKE - Maine hunting legend Darryl Raven moved one giant step closer to matching his son's collection of shoulder-mounted white tail deer trophies on Saturday. Raven, 60, was minding his own business in a local powerline when a massive 21-point buck burst through the tree line and ran toward him. Raven fired one warning shot, but the beast paid no heed. Raven's second shot connected and the giant was felled. Raven was accompanied by Trevor, 9, of Knox, who loudly exclaimed "Did you see those horns?!"

The deer dressed out at 243 pounds, which was good enough to take the still-early lead in the Deer Derby held each year by J.P. Wentworth's General Store in Brooks. The gnarly old buck had been witnessed several times on scout camera this season and last, which was confirmed by close comparisons of the antlers with the video clips. Based on the fact that he had almost totally worn down his top teeth, the deer was probably slightly past his prime and would have had a difficult winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video footage of the victim, just hours before the slaying:

 

And another video from the week before: