Birthday Critter Cam Predator Trifecta Surprise!

Bobcat Track

  Four weeks ago while camping with Kenny, we took a nature walk on the trails and on one trail, this track caught my eye. It was bigger than most and it had no sign of claws. So I snapped a picture so I could compare to googled bobcat track images and this is a dead-on match for a bobcat track.
One place I saw a similar track was in one of the creek beds so I set up the trail cam to point down that creek bed. Imagine my surprise a week later, after a lot of rain, to find the creek bed was no longer dry. I had to execute a yoga-like creek straddle to rescue the camera from the tree where I had planted the camera.

Pond with water and snake

 The photo above shows the pond full of water. As we approached the pond, Penny, as always, leapt into the pond with a huge splash. Next thing I hear a huge hiss and look up to see Penny face to face with a snake, fangs barred and hissing loudly in fear. It scared the heck out of Penny too, who leapt out of the water in fear and as I had my camera handy, I took this picture of the snake swimming rapidly in the opposite direction. Penny no longer leaps into the pond with such abandon.

Coyote with prey

Today, my birthday, I went out to Die Weide to feed and water Herbie and took a very long slow walk on the land - the kind where I walk two or there steps, then stand still and listen for birds to spot with binoculars. I spotted a new woodpecker species today and I need to get my bird book to identify it.

Then I grabbed the memory stick from the trail cam which I had placed pointing to the dam on the natural pond. What a haul! Above the trail cam captured a Coyote carrying something obviously it wishes to eat.

Bobcat on pond dam!

And here, for the first time and standing as confirmation of my bobcat track spotting skills, is the whole series of photos of the bobcat on Die Weide's pond dam.

Bobcat traversing dam

Bobcat looking in water

Bobcat sees something on near shore

Bobcat ready to leap

Bobcat cropped closer

Last, but certainly not least a Fox on the pond dam! A predator trifecta!

Fox on pond dam.

Double Dose of Nature's Sad Side

Today the land presented us with a double dose of Nature's sometimes sad story. The picture below is of a sugar syrup feeder for the bees - with dozens of swarming bees. Unfortunately I've figured out that this was a case of another hive robbing our hive.

syrup bee feeder

It took a while to figure out but I had never seen more than one or two bees around this jar at a time and this time, no more than two hours after placing the jar it was swarmed and already drawn down by a quarter.

When we arrived earlier in the day the hive was peaceful with only a couple of bees around the entrance, but on this second trip the holes were filled with bees and I noticed that several bees were fighting on the ground below the hive. That's when I figured we're being robbed! I've never dealt with this before and I let them be. When I got home I found out that we needed to reduce the entrances to a single hole to help our hive defend themselves from the robber bees. The likely result is that the robbers will steal the food our bees need to survive the winter and we may loose the hive. We'll try feeding our bees more to help them survive the winter, but since the hive lost 50% of its population during the summer, I've been worried about them making it anyway. Thus, nature's sad story one.

The double whammy sad day came as we walked the woods on the way to the trail cam. Inge spotted a full skeleton of a young buck on the big cactus trail. Since all that was left was bones and sinew we don't know how the deer died. The sad thing is that on October 1st my trail cam took the picture below of this very same deer being incredibly curious about the trail cam.

Young Buck Inspecting Trail Cam UP CLOSE!

 The below picture is of the skull found with the skeleton. I confirmed by various markings that this was apparently the same deer. I haven't walked that path in three weeks so I don't know how long he had been there. Given there was nothing but bones I doubt it was firearms deer season casualty since that started yesterday, November 2nd, but it could have been bow season victim which started September 28th. However, if he was shot, it was by an unscrupulous hunter because Milam County restricts hunters to taking deer whose antlers expand past the ears and this buck was too young to meet that criteria.

Demise of a Buck

I hope we can rescue the bees but we were both saddened at the loss of the buck. Even so, if we didn't visit Die Gruene Weide we would loose the experience of being with nature. Sometimes you've gotta take the bad with the good. An example of good below show how this week's rain filled the pond for the first time since spring. It was beautiful to hear the water burbling over the stream.

Penny in the Pond

Beer Brewing from Boil to Bottle

After years of thinking about brewing beer, I received a loan of the book "The Brew-Master's Bible" from my daughter's boyfriend, Stephen, and after reading it, decided to move from thinking to doing. Along the way I took pictures (not all in focus) of the process. I'll outline the process in the photo captions. I purchased equipment and recipe from Austin Homebrew Supply. I chose the AHS Broadway Amber Ale recipe for my first brew.

20 Qt Pot and bag of crushed grain to steep.

Brew equipment soaking in sanitizer.

Beer Recipe Ingredients and Instructions.

After heating two gallons of water to 155 D.F. added grain bag to steep 30 minutes.
Removed bag, gently drained the bag added 1 gal h20 & returned water to a boil.

Removed pot from heat and added the three malt extracts from the recipe.

Added more water and brought to rolling boil - everyone mentioned boiling
over at this stage but I didn't have a boil-over.

Added bittering hops (here) then after 45 minutes added flavoring hops.

Inserted the wort chiller to boil off germs. Also added the Aroma hops
at 55 minutes from start of boil.

Placed brew kettle in sink filled with ice water and started cold water
flowing through the wort chiller. The red thing in the pot is the
thermometer to track cooling the wort to 80 D.F.

After wort cooled, poured into the primary fermenter.

Added purified (but not distilled) water to top off at 5.5 gallons then stirred thoroughly.

At this point I measured the specific gravity which came out to 1.052. (The recipe said it should be 1.053.)

Pitched the yeast which was a "smack pack" variety. I chose this
yeast because it has a more forgiving temperature range to ferment in.

Fermenter capped and the bubbler installed.

After the beer fermented in the primary for one week, I racked the beer from the primary (plastic bucket) fermenter to a 5 gallon glass carboy for the 2nd stage of fermentation. However, I forgot to take a picture of the racking process.

The primary fermenter after racking - lots of yeasty beasties in here.

Glass carboy secondary fermentation. Placed both primary and secondary
fermenters in a large bucket of water into which I dumped ice bags once per day
to attempt to keep the temperature around the 64-74 range this yeas likes. 

Second week - bottling time! Sanitized everything then
racked the beer into the bottling bucket. 

Using bottling wand, filled bottles. Wasted about a bottle of beer in over-runs.

Capping bottles.

Bottled Beer set aside to mature for 3 weeks.

The haul - a one liter (33 oz), a 22 oz, 12 16 oz, and 26 12 oz bottles.

My five gallon brew produced 559 ounces of beer or 4.36 gallons. I left a bit behind in both the primary and secondary fermenters to not siphon up the sediment. At every stage I cleaned up the brew gear immediately after use to make sure I wouldn't have to clean up dried up sediment from pots and buckets. I figure that's a useful habit to develop as it looks like the sediments could be a bear to clean if left to dry in the containers.

Before adding the sugar required to generate carbon dioxide for bottling I took the final specific gravity measurement which came to 1.014 as specified by the instructions (yea!) (OG-FG) * 131 gives the alcohol content of the brew which come to 4.979. (Percent?)

Next week I'll try one out as we're putting on an Oktoberfest for friends and if the beer is ripe enough I'll share. However, it should, according to the instructions, age at least three weeks for best results.

Future Vampire Protection and Cam Buck

Planting a box of garlic

 Inge and I went out for our usual Herbie water and feed trip today. We watered the orchard using the well for the first time and my main chore for the day was to plant the garlic I bought. Turns out I bought a lot! I planted four rows with about 22 bulbs per row. So somewhere between 88 and 90 plants if they all come up. I had so many that we brought the remaining cloves back home and will plant another couple dozen in the home raised bed gardens too. (Along with planting fall cabbage, spinach, and lettuce.)

If this year's onions are any indication, we should have a lot of garlic next year! Inge weaved the onion we harvested in June into large clumps that we're still eating. I look forward to seeing woven garlic hanging in the house too. Look out vampires!

Garlic Patch

According to a couple of articles I read, garlic grows larger if subjected to a chill period and one article recommended for Texas gardeners to chill the cloves in the refrigerator for some time to induce the chilled growth improvement. Due to schedule constraints, I chilled the cloves for over three weeks. I hope we get some huge cloves as a result!

Critter Cam - Young Buck

I planted the trail cam to point at a faint trail across a dry creek bed. The cam, as usual, got a lot of Herbie the donkey pictures, a night-time raccoon picture, and this picture of a young buck checking out the camera before bolting in the next picture.

Forecast is for rain overnight tonight. The land is dry enough that every bit of rain helps. I didn't water in the garlic in the hopes the rain will water them in for me.

Water! Huaah, We're Gonna Pump You Up!

Pump Me Up!

 Look Ma, we have water!

Water Pump Unpacked

Today Inge and I set out to install the Water Well pump which we purchased from Simple Pump and the installation was relatively simple. Unpack the 9+ foot long tube. Read the instructions. Install the six inch casing around our four inch well casing. Install the well cap.

Well Head Cap Installed

Install the pump cylinder and each of the pump rods and don't forget the rod control spacers! 

Install the Fiberglass Pump Rod.

Install the PVC pipe over the rod control, being careful not to break the fiberglass rod.

Installing A Pipe Section

Install the Well Head and Pump water!

Pump Installed! Top of Stroke

 Top of stroke.

Pumping Well Water mid-Stroke

Middle of Stroke with a Stream!

We have a gusher!

We have a gusher! Next week I plan measurement pumping to re-visit the recharge rate and to evalute the pump's flow capacity. The pump is rated at 5 Gallons Per Minute (GPM). I'll pump into a 35 gallon container and measure the time it takes to fill it up with steady (but not insane) pumping. I will also re-measure the recharge rate to confirm my calculated rate.

One thing of note - the water smells of sulfur. I took a finger dip test taste and it doesn't taste like anything (which is good) but I wouldn't drink it without hefty filtering. We chatted with our neighbors, sharing the victory and they knew another neighbor's well up the hill also smelled of sulfur.

Easy Does It in Humid Heat

Inge Kayaking on Llano River

 The top picture was from our Kayaking trip last Sunday on the Llano River. The temperature in Austin exceeded 100 degrees F and it wasn't much cooler on the river. We took the usual paddle upriver route and at the usual rapids stopped and rested a bit before floating back down. We loaded the kayaks with a few choice landscaping rocks, which makes the trips down the rapids a bit tough because the extra weight increases the chance to get hung up on rocks.

Normally, we have a lot of fun kayaking the river, and we did have some fun spots, like "panning for gold." Yes, literally we pan for gold. A few years ago we bought green plastic gold pans which we load with sand and gravel using garden trowels. We then swish them around removing the sand and gravel until nothing but heavier black sand is left which we inspect for gold. We've never found any gold but it's fun to try! (Yes, gold has been found in the Llano River!)

We also spent some time swimming, though the water was hotter than I ever remember. But the trip back with Inge frequently getting stuck on rocks in the rapids and loading the kayaks in the heat had the two of us enacting a minor grouch fest. The truck's air conditioning helped sooth that away though.

 

Late Summer Blooms

This week we went to Die Weide with garden bed preparation in mind. I set Inge up to water the orchard and I started broadforking another section of garden. I finished one 120 sq ft section and forked half way through another before I started getting woozy from the heat and that ended the hard work for the day though I managed a few less strenuous chores before we headed out.

Between last week's heat induced kayaking grouch fest and today's forking up wooziness, I've learned that both Inge and I need to be more mindful of how the heat is affecting us and ease up when we "feel the heat" in detrimental ways.

I planted clover seeds in the area of the garden that will be fallow until spring. I've read that this is good garden practice and will add the resulting foliage to the compost heap to return the nutrients to the soil. The Weide compost heaps generate compost at a much slower pace than the home heaps. The Weide heaps contain dead leaves, donkey dung, and other rather drier material than the home compost piles and thus mature much more slowly. I am hoping that adding freshly harvested clover leaves in the spring will improve the compost production as the best compost heaps contain an even balance of green and brown materials.

I've reserved the front section of the garden for a fall crop of red and green cabbage and my first attempt at growing garlic. We were both too tired and overheated to plant those today but I hope to plant them next week.

Bare Dry Soil - Rain Needed

To reinforce last week's post about the dry conditions, I posted the above photo showing a lot of dusty dry soil between sparse plants. We've had some limited rain this year just often enough to make the garden grow reasonably well, but not enough to give the ground a saturation soaking. As we left today there were a lot of clouds to the south, but current radar shows nothing near the land or our home in Cedar Park.

The well pump arrived last week and I hope to install it in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing how the well holds up to pumping. The static water level has fluctuated between 12 and 15 ft depth, which is better than I expected. Any rain at all results in a higher static water level rather quickly. Rain apparently percolates through the soil very well here.

Dry, Dusty, and Crunchy Land

Texas Garter Snake

Last weekend I invited a coworker and her son to visit Die Weide as they've been reading my blog and looking to purchase their own piece of Texas paradise. While walking the back trail, her son, Wes, spotted this snake, subsequently identified as a Texas Garter Snake. He, at eight years old, had no fear of snakes and wanted to pick it up. We didn't let him, but he did touch it. It was more than 2 ft long.

Funny thing about that is in the several years we've owned Die Gruene Weide, we've only seen three snakes, and I never spotted one. Inge spotted a corn snake in the copse of trees near Picnic Pecan, and she spotted the water moccasin in the creek below the pond. (During one of the few times the pond held water.) And now a complete stranger to the land spots the garter snake. I guess I'm just snake blind.

This weekend I went out to water the orchard, feed and water Herbie,  the donkey, and move the trail cam elsewhere. I had placed the trail cam in the orchard to see what was eating our peach trees and found out it wasn't Herbie as I suspected, it was a doe and her fawns that decimated our orchard. The deer denuded two of the six peach trees and seriously damaged a plum tree. In the garden the asparagus  had been browsed down to stubby stalks - all the former delicate green and lush asparagus vegetation gone! Hopefully they grew enough through the summer to regenerate next spring.

The one sad thing I found today was that the land was very dry, dusty, and crunchy. This years long drought is taking a toll on the land and it doesn't take long for the Blackland Prarie to exhibit the cracks and movement of the predominately clay soil drying up. The vegetation withers, curls, and browns and crunches underfoot. When the land looks like this I have much less enthusiasm to write because I am so saddened to see how unhealthy it looks in drought conditions.

When the land looks like this I dream of living in a place like Washington State, or Oregon, or Kentucky, or North Carolina. Some place where the land looks lush and green from spring to fall and a garden grows with only modest additional watering requirements. I could, even now, transfer to North Carolina with my job, but we've put so much work into Die Weide, that it would be a shame to loose out on the orchard of 11 trees we planted and the garden and so on. So I dream of green while suffering and lamenting over the drought that I seriously worry may be a persistent and permanent new feature as a result of global warming. I would be seriously sad if this dry summer condition becomes the forevermore norm because from a gardening perspective, there's not much productive that comes from land in this desiccated condition.

My Own German Sourdough Roggenmischbrot Recipe and Baking Instructions

Roggenmischbrot Ingredients Staged

Today I set out to bake my German Rye Sourdough mixed Rye Bread. (Echtes Deutches Roggen Mischbrot aus Sauerteig) I really love eating the fine bakery breads in Germany, but found all pretenses at German bread in U.S.A. to be pale comparisons to the real thing. Being an enterprising sort not willing to give up on eating such a wonderful treat, I set out to teach myself how to bake a loaf of Roggenmischbrot that would do Germany proud.

I started out baking bread from five different Mischbrot recipies found online, each of which lacked the flavor or consistency of what I remembered. But the fifth loaf came close, so I decided to modify the last recipe myself based on previous baking experiences. Two attempts later, I found the recipe and baking process that delivered a wonderful crunchy crust genuine German loaf of sourdough bread.  Two years later this recipe consistently bakes a perfect pair of bread loaves every time. (I'll put the sourdough starter instructions at the bottom of the blog page.)

The recipe (with pictures of today's baking effort below):

530 g sourdough starter and yeast starter additive

   Yeast additive (mix next three ingredients and let rise - optional)

   1/2 C General Purpose flour

   1 Package Rapid Rise Yeast

    1/2 C lukewarm water

    Rye Sourdough starter (enough mixed with above yeast mixture to make 530 g)

300 g Rye flour

800 g Bread flour

30 g salt

600 ml water (just over 2 cups.)

Proof the sponge (add 1 C water and 1 C rye flour to sourdough starter in bowl and let stand/feed overnight)

(optional) Mix Yeast additive ingredients in small bowl and let rise about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, measure out dry ingredients in large bowl and mix. Add the 530 g yeast/sourdough mixture. Start adding and mixing in the water until a well mixed sticky ball produced. Roll sticky ball out onto dry clean counter and knead 12 minutes, without adding extra flour. Rye dough must be stickier than white bread dough or the bread will come out dry and crumbly.

Put kneaded dough ball in large bowl, cover with clean kitchen towel and let rise for 1 hour to about doubled. Punch down, lightly knead and pinch into two loafs. Knead each loaf about 20 strokes and form into desired shape. Lightly sprinkle cornmeal on shallow baking pan (I use steel cookie sheet). Place loaves on pan, cover with towel and let rise for about 1 hour. (Slightly longer in winter than summer.)

Preheat oven well ahead of time to 475 degrees F. I preheat the oven with an Iron griddle on the bottom shelf, with the bread rack one level above. After the bread has risen, cut three slits into each loaf using a razor blade. Put the bread in the oven, and immediately pour 1/3 C water on the griddle to generate a cloud of steam - that's the secret to a crunchy crust. Bake the bread 10 minutes at 475 then lower the temperature to 400 degrees F and bake 50 minutes more. (Keep an eye out though, baking time is a bit shorter in the Summer.) 

Remove from oven and place loaves on cooling rack. It's best to let it cool down a good bit, but I admit to slicing it while too hot and enjoying it right away.

Sourdough and Yeast Added to Flours and Salt

 Note - The optional yeast additive helps speed up the dough rising. If you want, just use the sourdough starter, but the dough rise times need to be extended. (Rule of thumb: double dough first rising, then allow loaves get to "loaf size" on second rising.)

Sticky Dough Ball Rolled onto counter and ready to knead

Really Sticky! (Notice wedding band on counter at top
I've kneaded that into my dough before!)

After 12 Minutes of Kneading. Dough ring, but no extra flour used.
It's a bit tacky to the touch.

Leftover Rye Sourdough Starter poured into jar ready for next loaf

Dough Has Risen!

Punched down, divided, lightly kneaded and loaves formed.

Risen to bread size and slicing top with razor.

Notice Iron Griddle for temp control and steam generation.

Sliced while still steaming hot! Crunchy Crust Yumminess!

Rye Sourdough Starter
In suitable starter crock or jar (see picture above) mix one cup rye flour and one cup water and leave in warm place in kitchen. Every day for five days, pour off a small amount of starter and mix in 1/2 C rye flour and 1/2 C water. By 5th day, the starter should smell yeasty and bubble lightly. It's ready!

Long term care: Place starter in refrigerator and once a week, pour off small amount and mix in 1/2 C rye flour and 1/2 C water.

To use - "proof the sponge" the night before baking bread. Remove starter from refrigerator, pour into medium sized bowl, and add/mix-in 1 C rye flour and 1 C water. Let stand overnight and by morning a bubbly yeast infested bowl of goo will be ready to use to bake bread as described above. If you use the yeast additive, there will be enough starter left over to put back in the jar and into the refrigerator for the next loaf.