Sunday, November 20, 2011

14-20 November 2011 - Waxing Traps, Hunting, Baby Sleepers...

Land trapping season opens December first and I had some things to do to get the traps ready.

Last year at the end of the season I boiled and dyed the traps but didn't get them waxed.  They're stored out of the weather so I wasn't too worried about them.  Now the season is almost upon us so I spent a day down at the shack waxing traps.  It's not difficult but it is time consuming.  My pot is big enough for two to four traps depending upon what size they are.  Each time I put the traps in they have to stay for abut 15 minutes to get up to temperature before I take them out.  The wax is on top of the water and coats the traps as I bring them up.  I then hang the waxed traps to cool off and put more in the water.  The wax protects the traps and make them function  better in the water or when it's cold and wet.

I've been out hunting several times this week but haven't seen anything except does and fawns.  It's bucks only this year so I'm still looking. This is looking over one of the clear-cuts from last year.  I'm also scouting out new trapping areas on this trip.

I needed to find the corner of the property and did.  There were about four bearing trees in one small area.  They surround the peg showing the corner marker.  The plate shows the township and section numbers along with the corner of the section the marker is in.

This was taken at the NE corner of our property looking to the SW.  The lumber company logged the section last year and is now burning the slash piles.  It was a bit smoky around here for a couple of days.  Sometimes the piles will smolder for weeks.

We buy oatmeal in 50 lb. sacks.  This one is almost empty so Susan will put what's left into a two-gallon bucket and we'll finish it off from the bucket.

The reason the bag is out is because she's making my favorite cookies ... no-bake chocolate/oatmeal cookies!

She made a double batch this time.  This is the first tray ...

She also made cinnamon rolls (no icing on them yet), hot-dog buns, hamburger buns and dinner rolls this week.

Somewhere during the week she found time to do some word puzzles beside the wood stove.

We finally got enough snow to begin melting it for water.  It takes a lot of snow to make a kettle full of water.

That's about fifteen gallons of snow you see there.  The kettle holds about four gallons of water.

We had some sweat pants I didn't like so Susan is cutting them up to make sleepers for Scott.

She used some of his clothes to mark the pattern in the sweat pants.

Then cuts them out and sews them up.  The seat pants were bought on clearance a couple of years ago for a dollar.  She's using a zipper and elastic that she salvaged from clothes going to the dump. When she's finished she'll have about fifty cents worth of materials in the sleeper.

The temperature has been kinda' low this week so the snow has been light and fluffy.  It comes off the solar panels easy enough but it's sure a cold job.  I have to use a ladder this year since I added the two panels to the top.

Scott weighs in at over 20 lbs and he's pretty easy to care for compared to a lot of one-year-olds but there are times he just needs to be held.  It's hard to do that and still get the work done so Susan uses a couple of scarves to make a cradle to support him while she works.  That way she can use both hands at times. 

Scott is really good at helping us take inventory of what's in the cabinets.  He takes everything out and when we put it back we find out what's stored there.

Now he's checking out the food stored under the couch.  We're making an effort to use up the store bought canned goods we have on hand.  Some of it is getting quite old.

No comments:

Post a Comment