wolc123

July 5

July 5

1 hour ago, landtracdeerhunter said:

Sometimes, the best value is in the bargain boxes. I took a liking to Imperial, years ago.

Not sure what it is about this one, but it seems to be completely “unloosable”. Every time I temporarily “misplace” it, it finds its way back. It spent one winter and early spring outside by the dock up at my in-laws place in the Adirondacks, after I lost it outside while ice fishing. A house guest found it the next summer.

It actually spent the last couple weeks up here again, when I forgot it down on the nightstand in one of the downstairs bedrooms on our prior trip. Somehow, it ended up hidden behind the alarm clock. No worries, I got it back again. Before I had that, as my “edc” knife, I’d go thru one or two a year. I’ve got a drawer full of backups now, which I rarely need.

I carried this little “Outdoor Times” USA Case, the last couple weeks. Back to the “spare drawer” with that, when we get home from this trip tomorrow. Old Reliable Imperial is back again.

I was very thankful to have it back yesterday, when I used the ground down small blade as a screwdriver to adjust the carburetor screw on my 1950 Mercury Super-5 outboard motor:

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That got me out to some nice 4th of July smallmouth bass:

July 5

This little “razor blade stainless” Imperial is what I’ve been carrying camping for about the last 15 years. I got it from a $ 1 box at the Alexander Steam show. It took me about 20 minutes of sorting thru that box to find one that was made in USA.

The small blade had a busted tip, which I reformed on a bench grinder. I broke the bone off one side of the grip in a campfire knife/axe throwing contest about 4 years ago. A little JB weld and a file made for an easy fix.

June 21

We’ve got a Coleman extreme cooler that holds ice for several days, even when it’s quite warm out. Only trouble is, the volume is rather limited due to the wall thickness. We used to keep the milk, and other critical items in that, when we went camping.

June 18

My mother in law gave me the complete 3 volume Civil War by Shelby Foote. I’m almost thru volume 1. I hope to be into volume 2, by the time we visit Gettysburg, in about a month. I’m guessing that battle will be covered in that one.

June 15

I finished planting my field corn and sweet corn today. I’m glad the 5 day stretch of rain they had predicted was a typical weather forecasting miscue. The fields are drying out real good now and most of the neighbors are cutting hay.

A big doe was back checking out my work, when I went back up to the barn for more fertilizer. Hopefully, she hangs around for a few more months so I can get her into the freezer during the early antlerless gun season.

I used the new heavy duty compound angling Tufline grader blade, that I recently traded an old disk for, to cut in some ditches in case we get some more heavy rain.

June 8

3 hours ago, landtracdeerhunter said:

We had 3 - 14 inch plows on the larger Allis tractor. It was a 4 plow tractor in most soil conditions, but not in Getsville clay. Pulled much harder. I always elected to take the Ford 2N with 2- 12" bottom Ferguson plow, my grandfather bought in 1948. Never stopping on the headlands, I could plow a whopping 3 1/2 acres a day. Pretty good considering the fields only averaged 4 acres in size between the hedge rows. That Tonawanda creek flood plain would grow some good crops, hit the right year.

We also used a 3x14 plow on our largest tractor back in the day (an Allis D14). Grandpa’s JD M also did ok with its mounted 2 x 12 plow. Although slightly less hp than the neighbors 8n Ford (which I bought from his widow as my first tractor), it seemed to have more torque with its “2 banger” engine, plus it was considerably cheaper back when they were new and it had live hydraulics.

The mounted plow on that JD M was a pain to mount and dismount though, compared to the 3 point on the Ford or the two point system on the Allis.

We are right in that Tonawanda creek bottomland (Our road is actually a couple feet lower than Tonawanda creek road). The soil moisture content for plowing was so good yesterday morning, that I hardly missed the hydraulic draft control, that my old 8n Ford had. That’s nice for maintaining uniform plow depth over inconsistent soil conditions. My JD 4120 had “position control” only on the hydraulics.

June 8

19 minutes ago, landtracdeerhunter said:

Worked to wet, that Getzville clay will turn into a parking lot.

Most of it wasn’t too bad today. I got that 4 acres done lickity split this morning, pulling that little 2x12 1951 Dearborn plow in 6th gear with my JD 4120. Only a couple small wet spots on the front field. The soil moisture content out back was just about perfect for high speed plowing.

I’ll get it disked up the first time, as soon as it dries enough, after the next (4) rainy days. I’ll be using my JD 4120 tractor on the the 8 ft pull type disk that first time. After that, I’m dying to try that disk on my Durango field car. It’s got real good Cooper tires, a 318 cu in gasoline engine, a nice Pioneer stereo, comfortable cab, and cup holders.

I’ll be needing to add some length to the control rope though, to reach the front seat. The spots I have plowed have plenty of turnaround space on the ends and sides, so lacking turning brakes shouldn’t hurt me too bad.

June 6

More mud farming 101:

I’m going to try and get about 4 acres plowed for fieldcorn on Saturday. Hopefully, there’s not too much standing water left in those fields. The weeds are high though, so I’ll definitely bushhog first. It’s kind of cool watching the wakes roll off my little old 2x12 plow, as I pull it thru the water holes with my larger 4 wd loader tractor.

I see that there are (4) more days of rain predicted after Saturday. No telling when I’ll be able to get that 4 acres disked up after it’s plowed. My 8 ft pull type disk, also undersized for my 4wd tractor, has good cleaners on it and don’t do too bad in the mud.

I’ll definitely be opening up some ditches, with the new compound angle teracing blade that I picked up last week, prior to planting.

I’m hoping to get that fieldcorn planted by the end of June. Having some good ditches should help with that, since it don’t look like we will be getting much relief from these persistent rains, anytime soon.

I am very thankful to have gotten 1/2 of my sweetcorn planted last Sunday. At least that should draw in the coons for early “damaging” trapping, killing, and burying.

June 2

32 minutes ago, grampy said:

Hay is ready to cut. But way too wet to get in the fields!

Pushing the mowing back a few weeks will save some fawns.

June 1

I’m aiming to get my first planting of sweetcorn in today. Up till now, we’ve had low temps in the 40’s, which is a no-go for corn, regardless of how much it rains. Hopefully, I can find a spot dry enough to plant, somewhere in the “higher” 1/2 acre that I’ve got plowed and disked one time.

I’ll try going over it a couple more times with the disk this afternoon, then cultimulch, then plant the driest half of it. (2/3 72 day, 1/3 92 day sweetcorn). Near the end of June, I’ll plant the other half 1/3 72 day, 2/3 92 day).

The primary reason that I put in the sweetcorn, is to draw out as many local coons as possible, so that I can trap and kill them before they put much hurt on my fieldcorn. I plant that fieldcorn only to keep deer (which provides the bulk of our family’s protein) on my ground thru December.

We do harvest and freeze what sweetcorn the coons don’t get, plus give plenty away to family friends and neighbors. The coyotes have helped me out considerably on the coon control in recent years. They usually exhume the carcasses of the big male coons (mostly all that I’ve caught in my box and dog proof traps the last couple years) within a day or two and handle most of the female and juvenile coon harvest themselves.

NY state allows landowners or lessees to trap and kill unlimited number of “damaging” coons without license or permit of any kind, however they need to be burried or burned prior to the opening of trapping/hunting season, in mid October.

The furs are virtually worthless, so after trapping/hunting season opens, I just toss them out on the fields to feed the buzzards. Besides allowing the corn to go much further, eradication of the local coon population pays big dividends to the wild turkeys, as the raccoon is likely the top turkey nest predator.

The state does not specify how deep to bury the carcasses. It doesn’t seem to matter how deep I go, the coyotes almost always find them and dig them up. As long as I can get a little dirt over the top of the carcass, that deep enough for me.

Nothing attracts the racoons better than not quite ripe sweetcorn. They will usually start to hit it soon after it starts making eats. As soon as I see the slightest “damage” in the form of a nibbled or torn open ear, I’ll move in with the traps. The early catch, near the earliest sweetcorn, is always the heaviest.

I bait my dog proof traps with dry cat food, and my boxes with peanut butter coated marshmellows. No furbearer is easier to trap than the coon. They can also be taken with a # 1-1/2 or 2 foothold trap, by covering the pan with tinfoil and placing it under shallow water.

It’s rare that I get enough corn to eat any of it from my first early corn planting, since the coons get so much of it. Me and the coyotes usually catch up with them by the time my second third and forth plantings get ripe though. That works out good, because that later 92 day silver queen sweetcorn is my favorite for freezing.

May 29

Happy b-day grampy.

May 26

He’s up there with Jesus now. Of that there is no doubt. I love the way that he unashamedly shared his faith with others, while he was down here with us. Definitely among the better TV personalities, hunters, businessmen, husbands, fathers, and collegiate quarterbacks.

May 26

53 minutes ago, First-light said:

I was told full inclusion passed.

Nope.

May 25

19 hours ago, New York Hillbilly said:

Coming off a long, hard winter, with the honey bee population already suffering huge losses, this freaking rain is making beekeeping life miserable. Urghh! The efforts I put into getting my 4 hives through winter beat the odds, and resulted in all 4 making it in great shape. But the success has had its drawbacks. I am now feeding a greatly expanding population of bees because they cannot fly out in the rain and cold to forage for themselves. It also keeps virgin queens from being able to complete their mating flights. There is so much more to beekeeping than sticking a box of bees in the backyard and sitting back and enjoy seeing them out there. With that said, as strange as it may sound, even with the expense, work, stress, and worry, I’m glad I got into this. If I have any regret, it would bee (pun intended) I didn’t start many years ago.

This is looking like it’s going to be a tough year for apple tree pollination. We used to have quite a few Cortlands, in an orchard my grandfather had planted on our farm right after WW 2, but they’re all gone now. I’m not even sure what kind of apples the two trees I have now are, but at least one of them (that I bought from tractor supply) is a later ripening variety and not as tasty.

I think I got the other one from Walmart, and it finally produced its first apples last season. I trimmed both of them early this spring and they were both loaded with blossoms. I’ve never sprayed either of them, but I planned to this year, after the blossoms are gone.

I probably will spray them, at least up to “June drop”, anyhow, since I’ve already bought the spray. If all the apples on them drop off, I’ll stop. They both look pretty good and should soon be getting into the prime years of production.

Quite a few years ago, when our kids were still young, my wife coaxed me into killing all the honey bees, that had made a hive in an old whiskey barrel, that was outside next to the barn. We still had a few Cortlands then and they produced much better on the year those bees moved in. There was quite a drop off the year after she got me to kill those bees.

I’ve got neighbors with hives on both sides of me now, so if the weather would just cooperate a little, we should be able to get at least some halfway decent production from those new trees.

I’ve never eaten an apple from either one of them (just took a bite or two from the buggy ones that were never sprayed from the first one). The deer definitely seem to like them though. Unfortunately, they are right next to the road. A nice buck got killed by a car and laid right under one in the morning a few years ago.

I didn’t see it in the dark and someone stopped and cut off its rack while I was at work that day. Not sure how big the rack was but looked to be at least a 3.5 year old, based on the size of the body.

May 21

MUD FARMING 101:

I definitely picked the right year to sell one of my old 2 wheel drive tractors. That 1951 Ford 8n, originally purchased by my old neighbor from Yoder brothers in Clarence ctr, would have struggled on the half acre that I plowed up for sweetcorn the other day, with all the wet spots.

We towed it over to my buddy’s place with his truck on Saturday, after we got back from fishing. My wife had taken my pickup truck, on her annual Ohio shopping spree, so we needed his truck to get my boat to the lake.

That old Ford tractor had quit on me, early last summer, with an unknown “no-spark” issue. My 5 year newer Farmall Cub exhibited a similar issue, while I was plowing snow with it, in January. It’s just too difficult for me to keep two of those old non John Deere tractors operational, while I still have a full time job.

I was going to push the Ford into a corner of my barn, and let it sit there about (5) years until I retire. My buddy wanted it, to leave down at his southern tier camp, for hauling logs for milling. He said he has it running already. I gave him a new coil that I had bought for it, and a new wiring harness and a bunch of other spare parts, including a new rear rim.

Amazon had accidentally shipped me two of of those, when I ordered 1, a few years ago. Oddly enough, that old Ford plowed the best that it ever did last spring, with just one loaded rear tire (on the sod side). It also has a worn out brake on the other side, from about 75 years of riding that, to compensate for the traction differential when both rears were loaded.

Towing it about 5 miles to my buddy’s place was fun. The left front wheel would start shimmying pretty good at about 17 mph, and just one working brake made slowing down a little dicey.

There’s an “s” curve, on the road thru the swamp, which has claimed a few lives when folks took it too fast with their cars. There were some buzzards circling over that curve, as I was towed thru it. I wasn’t quite quick enough with my phone to get a picture of them (plus I really needed both hands on the wheel to keep control thru that curve).

That old Ford still has all (4) original tires on it, original paint, had always been stored inside, and only has 2100 hours on the proofmeter. I didn’t include the 2x12 plow, that came with it on the deal, but I let my buddy borrow it whenever he needs it.

That plow is a little on the small side for my 4wd JD 4120, but smaller implements work a lot better than big ones on my mucky bottomland farm, especially on a wet spring like we are getting now. It’s pretty cool watching the wakes roll off the moldboards, when I pull it thru standing water, without even getting any wheel spin.

I’m hoping to use my Dodge Durango field car, which has Cooper with good deep tread on it, for most of the disking, and much of cultipacking (until I get my Farmall Cub back from the mechanics) later this year.

I think my 8 ft pull type disk should be just about perfect behind that. I’ll need a longer control rope to reach the front seat of the 4 door suv, with the hatchback open. No problem keeping the hatch back up, because The AC don’t work on it anyhow, but the Pioneer stereo still works great.

It was still a little too wet to try it on the first pass with the dusk, on that plowed half acre, this week. I had to use my 4wd JD 4120 tractor again. That tractor has R1 tires and a loader on it, that I could use to pull myself out with, if I ever did loose traction in the mud.

That JD 4120 could easily handle a 10 foot disk, but again, a small implement is way better in wet conditions. My 8 ft JD disk has good cleaners on it, so it does pretty good in wet conditions. I’m still aiming to get half of my sweetcorn planted, and maybe my fieldcorn ground plowed, by the end of May.

May 19

I’m hoping to get half of my sweetcorn planted on the last day of May. I’ll try and get all of my fieldcorn planted thru June, and the other half of my sweetcorn in around July 1. It’s been a long tube since we had this wet of a spring.

May 15

That’s pretty interesting. I’m glad it includes the chest girth. 47” is huge. The largest that I ever measured (since G-man first introduced the importance of that measurement here maybe 10 years ago), was 43-1/2”:

Our youngest daughter named this busted up 3.5 yr old 6 pointer taco. He certainly made lots of them. I’m guessing a bit over 200 lbs field dressed.

May 7

On 5/6/2025 at 12:16 AM, NYLongBeards said:

Oh is there a specific area that’s open to the public? I thought you needed a permit or something.

Just drive down rt 3a and look for any non-posted land and you should be good to go.

April 20

Happy Easter Everybody.

The Lord is Risen !

April 18

Several of my coworkers have had that. One was a hunting buddy of mine, and he had purchased a used 44 magnum pistol that had a scope on it, about a week before his torn retina. He hadn’t yet shot the pistol and his doctor recommended that he didn’t.

He brought it over to my range, and asked me to see if it was at least “on the paper” from 50 yards away. I was a bit intimidated, having never shot a pistol of that caliber, and remembering watching “Dirty Harry”. He also said that the ammo was very expensive.

Expecting the worst, I flinched big time on my first shot, a clean miss of the paper target. Surprisingly, the “kick” was quite tame, maybe 1/4 of that of my 18” barrel 12 ga Remington 870, the time that I stupidly put a pistol grip on it, and fired it from the wrist with a magnum slug. My wrist hurt for weeks after that one shot. This Ruger single action .44 magnum felt like a cap gun in comparison.

He didn’t want to give me a second expensive hunting load, but I said that I’d pay for it if I missed again, so he reluctantly gave me another. My second shot hit within an inch of the bulls eye.

I’m not sure if he ever shot that .44 magnum after his surgery, but I know that he did take at least a couple more deer with his ML and crossbow after that.

I don’t see him much anymore because he’s been retired for about 5 years. He hasn’t mentioned any complications from the surgery, but I imagine he’s still a little reluctant to hunt with that .44 magnum.

April 14

I just sneaked a couple bites of the pickled heart for a pre dinner snack and it was delicious:

It’s not going to be easy saving some for the Easter breakfast at church.

April 14

On 4/13/2025 at 8:01 AM, landtracdeerhunter said:

Are you guys talking about a sealed jar or after the jar is opened? I would think the pickling would preserve the meat, as long as it it in the frig. Anything pickled, keeps a long time in the frig. IDK, maybe meats different, pickled.

I have never sealed the jars. There are two plastic Tupperware type containers of deer hearts, that my wife pickled yesterday, in my beer fridge right now. I’ll probably start eating it tomorrow. Im going to try my best to save one container for our Easter breakfast at church next Sunday. Some of my buddies want to try it.

April 13

They are thawing out now, and should be getting pickled tomorrow. I’ll try and stay away from it, until Good Friday or so.

April 13

8 hours ago, New York Hillbilly said:

Question for Wolc or any of you guys/gals with any experience with pickled meats. I made pickled tongue on March 9th, fully intending to enjoy it on my birthday the 18th. It’s always tough for me to stay out of it long enough to give it time to soak, so I stuffed it way in the back of the fridge, after sampling it just enough to satisfy my craving.

Well as things go, between work, chores, and family stuff, I forgot I made it. : ( Birthday came and went and I never remembered I made it.

I just came in from working on the chicken pen, garden, and picking up the yard that was a mess from winter. I figured I would have lunch, and all of a sudden remembered the treat I was supposed to eat 3 or 4 weeks ago.

My question is, will it still be safe to eat? I did taste some just now and it tastes good, but I freaked myself out and tossed what I had on my plate in the garbage. It would bum me out to know I wasted it, but would bum me out even more if I food poisoned myself. I sort of want to be around for a few more seasons, and prefer not to cut things short and have cause of death “cow tongue”.

I am not sure if it would still be good. I’ve never kept it longer than two weeks after pickling. I usually start on it, the day it’s made. It’s seems to peak in flavor, after about two days, and it tastes about the same for up to two weeks. I really like it and it rarely lasts over a week.

Speaking of pickled heart and tongue, my wife didn’t get to mine yet. She was away over Valentine’s Day this year. I’m trying to coax her into making it for me over Easter. We still have two deer hearts in the freezer.

Most years, she makes it on Valentine’s Day and we take it up to her parents in the Adirondacks the following weekend. They love the pickled heart and I save most of that for them, while I eat mostly the beef tongue (they don’t like that).

The in-laws really missed it this year, so my wife sent her mom my grandmas recipe, and she just made some pickled beef heart up there. She said it turned out real good.

Good news -my wife just told me to bring the hearts and up from the freezer and she will pickle them for me tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder. I couldn’t find any beef tongues in there, but there are still a couple of beef hearts in the freezer.

If these two deer hearts turn out good, maybe I’ll get her to pickle the beef hearts for next time we go up to her parents, on Memorial Day weekend.

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