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I took our eldest rabbit shooting.

He is almost four, and has been begging to come for as long as he could talk.  So, I finally bit the bullet (ha) and took him with me.

I am fortunate in that I have several places that I am allowed to shoot rabbits exclusively.  This includes a couple of places only a few minutes drive away.  I grabbed everything we would need, and off we went.

We stopped at our destination, and I, once more, went through the rules.  Safety first, last and everywhere in between.  He was aware that the hunt would be terminated if he walked in front of me for example.

Normally I hunt ‘open bolt’.  That is, a round in the breech, with the bolt half open so that it cannot fire, my rifle is also a Savage with the accu-trigger, which is difficult to fire by accident.  As I now had someone else to think about, I had nothing in the breech, with the bolt closed.  Seeing a rabbit would mean deciding whether or not to take the shot, opening the bolt, closing it over a round, pushing the safety catch off, aiming and firing.  This meant that I would only really shoot animals that were sitting still for a while, as anything else would get away before I was ready.

We saw plenty of rabbits playing too far away for a shot, and I had a chatterbox on my hands.  He soon learned the value of silence though (if only that lesson would carry over to home…), and was seeing more rabbits than he had before.

We got two, enough for a first ever hunt, and he has already seen them cleaned and skinned in the past, so this process holds no surprises for him.

Rabbits contain very little meat, mostly in the back legs and the back.  We had a meal of Rabbit legs done on the barbecue, which was very tasty.  Amazing how sweet wild meat tastes.

Rather than waste any, we salted what was left and smoked it.  It was very, very tasty.  We need our own smoker so I can cold smoke it rather than a hot smoke.  Salting and cold smoking meat is how you make bacon.  Rabbit bacon is most definitely in our short term future.

We’ve been thinking a lot about our kids education recently.  The oldest is nearly 4, and education in New Zealand begins between the ages of 5 and 6.  In the lead up to school, children can attend a Kindergarten or similar and until last year there was a mobile kindy that came twice weekly to our village.  No more.  The nearest kindy is now just over 20km away and there are long waiting lists to get a three year old in, and minimum for acceptance is 3-half days a week.

We decided to enrol him in Pre-school Correspondence School.  It has worked brilliantly.  Every month to 6 weeks we receive a satchel containing 4 library books, a puzzle, a cd of music and lots of literature for me in support of the months theme.  The beauty of this system is that I give feedback on how the latest offerings were received and what else is going on in the child’s life, and the next posting is tailored to this information.

This has then opened the discussion for home schooling, or even continuing with the correspondence schooling.  Our preference is Sudbury schooling (which I’ll discuss a bit later in the post), but there are none in New Zealand or even Australia.  For this to be an option it would entail a huge move OR starting one for ourselves….  anyone out there interested in helping us get one started?  In all seriousness, we’ve asked the Ministry of Education for the guidelines and regulations involved in setting up a school and will soon advertise for expressions of interest, in helping start a school and for potential students.

Current education leaves much to be desired. How so?

• children are put into an authoritarian system (school) and are expected to function in a democratic society once they leave school

• children are segregated into age groups, if not gender as well. Where in the real world is there segregation in age groups? Doesn’t every adult deal with all types of people, all ages, all walks of life?

• education mostly focuses on teaching, not learning. If there is no motivation, the teaching will not yield learning.

• students are discouraged from asking questions where the teacher doesn’t have the answer. Discussion and debate are discouraged, unless the teacher can have the upper hand.
• a child’s individual style and speed of learning is ignored. The learning that would naturally progress is altered and forced.

What is Sudbury schooling?  Basically it is kids deciding what to learn, when to learn and who/what to learn it from.  They use self-initiated activities to learn – like you do as a baby, when learning to crawl and walk or dress yourself.  This is then ‘fun’ learning, rather than forced or coerced.  Students interact with one another and the staff freely, irrespective of age. They learn to interact as part of their community and have responsibility, for themselves, for their education, for their environment, and for each other.  Each member of the student body and staff have one vote, and an equal say in the running of the school.

I was looking up Sudbury Schools, to make sure I had my story straight, and the one that is linked is the original Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968. This is the successful model on which many other (Sudbury) schools have been based. Most are located in the US, but there are a few in Japan & Israel and the rest in Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, & Germany). I discovered one called Open Source Learning, (Sudbury in Hawaii) – I’d never thought of it this way, but the name what it describes fits totally into our philosophy.

Interested in reading more?  Click here.

These people can say it so much more eloquently than we do.

Onwards and upwards for open source living!!

If you have been following these ramblings, you will know that I had a trip planned to hunt Red Deer with Tim Benseman.  The trip has happened, and I am back, resting my creaky knees.

Spoiler alert!  I did not shoot a thing.

It was still one of the best hunts I have ever had in my life.  The property we were hunting on belongs to Tim’s father, Simon, and has been in his hands since 1982.

Initially it was a sheep station, and I think cattle were run there at some time as well.  Now, it is an enormous lifestyle block, covered in trees and regenerating bush.  It is a beautiful, spectacular, isolated piece of paradise, bang in the middle of nowhere.  Located somewhere along the Motu road, between Opotiki and Gisborne, it is not an easy place to find.  We turned off the Motu Rd, onto a farm, and I thought we had arrived.  However, we were driving through a neighbour’s property and didn’t reach the front gate for about ten minutes.  There are Red Deer, Fallow, goats, pigs and Pitt Island sheep to hunt.

We parked, loaded rifles, and set off.

The first thing that struck me, and it was to be a recurring theme for the day, was the native bird life.  I have never seen so many Tui or Kereru (native woodpigeon) in one place.  It was fantastic to see.  Apparently you can hear Kiwi calling at night, and I am sure I saw their tracks at one point.

However, I was there after larger game, and Tim showed his skill as a guide very quickly.  To my mind, a guide should move quicker than you, but quieter, know the country like the back of his hand, have an intimate knowledge, and respect for, your prey and it’s habitat.  Tim certainly excelled in all of these.  We started hunting at 6.00am, and walked up various creeks, gullies and defiles.  There was plenty of sign, but most of it fairly old.  At one stage a large red deer, almost certainly a stag, had come out of the bush, onto the path, and followed it for about 100 metres, and then dropped back into the bush.

Tim guides from the back, and barely says a word when hunting.  This is a refreshing change from a couple of my recent hunting companions.  He guided with hand signals, and the occasional touch on the shoulder.  If I couldn’t figure out where he wanted me to go, he would lead briefly.  This happened twice in the day.

The first hunt, we were out for four hours, and didn’t see an animal at all.  Not even a goat.  We drove up to the lodge, and had a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.  After a while we decided to have a bit of a sleep, as it was midday and we had both got up at 3.30 that morning.  A few other people arrived about half an hour after we lay down, so it was back up, another coffee, and a bit of a chat before we were off again at about 3.00pm for an afternoon hunt.

We drove to the back of the property, had a look at the portable sawmill, and were off again.  This time the sign was fresher.  More footprints, more fresh droppings, and we saw three goats from the road.

This hunt followed the same pattern, up creeks, down gullies, into hidden clearings, through narrow openings, all as silently as possible.

About three hours in, with no sightings and an hour to go, Tim suggested we head up onto the tops (ridges).  We debated it very briefly, as my knees were starting to play up. (I have given my knees a hard time in the past and now they are repaying the favour…)  It was a brief debate, as I really wanted a look from the heights.

We attained the top of a ridge after about 20 minutes walk.  It was a steep, and slippery formed track, with fresh deer prints all the way up.  We sat for a rest, and Tim glassed (binoculars) the opposite slopes.  We spied what we thought was a pig, but turned out to be a goat, and then another.  Then Tim spied a backside.  A deer with his back to us, on the slope opposite, about 600 metres away in a straight line.  Or, about 200 metres down, and 200 metres up again, all while traversing that 600 metres. The deer turned sideways, and we could see it was a spiker (one year old male deer).  Was I up for it?  Yep.  Were my knees?  They would soon learn who was boss.  So that was it, we were off.  The 200 metres down was easy and quick.  We stopped at the bottom for a muesli bar and a drink for a quick energy top up, and we were off again.

Up the hill at probably the slowest pace Tim has seen someone walk.

We stopped for a brief respite about halfway up, and looked back to where we had come from.  And saw movement.  Out with the binoculars.  Deer.  Three, no four.  Five.  Six.  Six deer playing in the sun about 450 lineal metres away.

Tim asked if I was confident with a shot at that range.  I’m not.  With the scope dialled all the way up to 9x, the deer still looked small.  I know where my rifle shoots out to 200 metres, but have no idea how much it will drop when you more than double that distance.  I have since done the math, and it is 50 inches, or 1270mm.  A little over one and a quarter metres.  Even if I was dead on target, I would have to aim a metre high to get a hit.  I would have missed.

We watched the deer play for a while, then a large stag came and chased them back into the bush.  We continued climbing.  We reached the spot where we had seen the spiker, and of course he had gone.  He was probably scared off by me breathing like a fire engine.  Tim didn’t have the decency to breathe heavily, or break a sweat.  Tim told me there was a good game trail just a little further up the hill.  Damn.  Up we went.  Sure enough, there was a dirt path, and fresh hoof prints.  This guy knows his stuff.  We followed the deer up the path, until his hoof prints veered into the bush.  By this time it was about three quarters of an hour after the hunt was supposed to have finished.

We started to head back to the car, down a steep clay path that wound it’s way into the valley where we had left the mighty Isuzu Bighorn.

About halfway down Tim called out softly, and pointed to an area of murky bush.  I stared in the direction he was pointing, and it moved!  I closed the bolt, lifted the rifle, and watched another spiker disappear into the pines…

We continued our walk back to the car, and saw nothing further.

We drove out, back to Ohiwa, where I was staying, a two hour drive.

Somewhere, on the way back, I managed to lose my mobile phone, so it was 11.30 before I could inform the family that I was out, and safe.  Not too bad, except they were expecting us out before eight.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t get any venison?  Mildly.  But it is still one of the most memorable hunts I have had.  Spectacular country, and good company.  Also, Tim has invited me back in May for three day hunt.  And the rest of the family can come and stay in the lodge.

That’s the hunting part of the weekend, I’ll tell you about the fishing later.

Labour Weekend is upon us, and unfortunatley, we have had to cancel the planned trip away.  We were going with another family with two young kids.  On waking up on Friday morning, two of ours, eldest and youngest, were sick.  Arlo has blisters in his mouth and is miserable, and Raiden has a cough that sounds like a seal barking.

Arlo was eventually diagnosed with severe thrush, after three trips to the doctor in four days, and is making a rapid recovery now that we know what it is and how to treat it.

I have a hunting trip paid for, so I am still going.  I will leave at lunch time today (Saturday), hunt all day Sunday, and return either Sunday night or Monday morning.

I am disappointed that the rest of the family isn’t coming, but it is better than infecting all and sundry.

Let’s hope that the hunting trip is fruitful, and I will post some photots on my return.

Reading a recent post by  kindred spirits Joel and Dana on Well Preserved inspired this chilli sauce.  I’ve been wanting to use up the bulk of end-of-last-season’s-chillies in the freezer and didn’t want to make the chilli sauce I’d made previously.  The idea – roast them – of course!  Update: this chilli sauce tastes great and is a lot hotter than the other one – same chillies – so it must be the roasting that does it.

Ready for roasting – on high, under the grill.

Make sure you wear gloves for this part.  I tried 2 ways of getting the pulp & seeds out, first slitting each chilli open and scraping the contents

and only the skin is left.  As I had so many to process this was too slow, so I tried cutting off the top and squeezing from the tip of the chilli, with the back of a knife, to the opening.  It worked very well and did end up faster

Also, the seeds tended to come out in one big lump,  so if you wanted to get rid of most of the seeds (to reduce the heat of the sauce), this is the time.

There really wasn’t much bulk in the end, so rather than make a puree to spread, as I’d intended, I needed to add some tomatoes to bulk it up.

Chilli pulp

2 small tomatoes

7 cloves garlic, crushed

3 anchovy fillets

decent splash white vinegar

some water for liquid volume

Simmer it all, until the anchovy fillets have disappeared.  Puree if you want & bottle into sterile jars.  This will need to age for the best part of a week, so the fishy taste mellows.

Since this is a chilli post, this is the place to put an awesome chilli site we’ve come across recently.  They know their chillies!!  We are going to order some seeds from them.  So no doubt there will be some more chilli related posts to come.

Cold smoked salmon, double cream brie, kalamata olives, green olive, cherry tomatoes, mushroom, capsicum, boiled egg,  grapes to cleanse the palate, and a good crusty bread!  All topped off with a good, chilled Banrock White Shiraz.

Sometimes, you just don’t need to cook.

En Guete!

One of the easiest things to make is mayonnaise (my mum will be laughing right about here, as I tried and tried to make mayo over the years and for some reason always failed and now it works every time and I don’t know what I am doing differently – same ingredients and method – who knows?!).  It takes only a few minutes and is much, much better than any commercial mayo I know.

1 egg at room temperature

splash of vinegar (1 tbsp or so, usually cider, but sometimes malt or white wine vinegar)

little salt, pepper & tabasco (as per taste)

olive oil

Put egg, vinegar & seasonings into a container and mix briefly with an electric whisk (or blender/food processor). Pour in a little oil and mix again, so that the egg starts to thicken. Now drizzle oil slowly, while whisking, until you get the consistency you need.  Put it into a jar with lid and keep in the fridge.

* all ingredients need to be at room temperature

* you can use lemon juice instead of vinegar

* I sometimes add some mustard (1tsp or so)

We needed mayonnaise for a salad last night, and Paul presented it so well, that a photo was warranted and the wine, a Banrock Station Crimson Cabernet went superbly, so I also thought it worth a mention too.

Labour  weekend is coming up fast.  It is a long weekend here in New Zealand.  The last weekend in October traditionally signals the end of the cold weather, and the start of summer.  Given the unseasonal snow we had recently, this might be a bit premature.

Nevertheless, we are going to celebrate Labour weekend in proper Kiwi fashion.  We are renting a bach (holiday house for those out of the country), and going to the beach!  I have taken a couple of extra days off work to take advantage of it.  Five days in a row!  It’s going to feel like a proper holiday!

We will be sharing the house with friends, so all up there will be four adults and five kids in the house.  Ages (of the kids) are 3yrs 11 months, 3yrs 8 months, 1yr 10 months, 5 months and three months.  Ages of the adults are all in the realm of “should know better”.  So I am not sure how much relaxing will be done.

What I do know is that we will be taking a Kon Tiki long line (an electric system for taking your line a long way into the surf), and fishing for snapper off the beach.  The place we are going, Ohiwa, also has huge shellfish beds, so we can dig for pipi and tuatua.  We are also meeting a friend up there who has a flounder net and a boat, so the possibilities for fresh seafood are very high.

I was also fortunate enough to be given a guided hunting trip for my birthday, so on the Sunday I will be out chasing Red Deer.  Our freezer is very empty at the moment, so I am looking forward to filling it with fresh game meat.

We have been eating a lot of fish recently, so catching it for ourselves is very appealing.  Trout is wonderful, but variety is the spice of life, so salt water fish will be most welcome.

We are also looking forward to the kids being able to run around like the maniacs they are.  They have been to the beach, but are both probably too young to remember it, so it will be a good experience.  Also, our three year old and the other one are very close friends, so they will wear each other out every day.

We will post some pictures, and hopefully have some mouth watering recipes for you too.

It has been a while since I was able to go out hunting.

I cut my knee open fairly badly four months ago, whilst out hunting, and that was the last time I went out.  Arlo was born about a month after that, and things have just settled down to the point that I can abandon Irene for a few hours and go for a walk with a rifle.

Last night I went out rabbit shooting.  I have an agreement with the local golf course that lets me shoot rabbits there, so I took advantage of the somewhat rare sunshine, and out I went.

Mike, a friend, and I walked for about an hour before we saw one rabbit!  And then missed it…

After a while we came across no less than 15 rabbits sitting out in the open, and managed to get seven and one hare in about ten minutes.  I cleaned them out in the paddock, and we now have rabbit in the freezer again.  We are both pretty happy about that.

Today, I finally planted out all of the potatoes that were sprouting.  I am not sure if my early potatoes are in late, or my late ones are in early.  We have had so much rain, and a bit of unseasonal snow, that planting wasn’t possible.  Let’s hope that was the last of the really cold weather or they will get frosted.

There are a few myths surrounding potato planting.  The first is that you should buy new seed potatoes every year, as sprouted potatoes won’t grow.  We have successfully dispelled that myth, as that is the only way we grow potatoes.

The next is that you can’t plant them in the same place two years running.  We have done that too, you just need to be meticulous about replacing what the first crop uses.  Good composting techniques are essential, and it is a good idea to plant a rotational crop during the dormant season.

Finally, we have been told that you can’t leave spuds in the ground over winter, as they will rot.  Patent lies.  This is one of the benefits of a potato crop, you can use the planted bed as storage with no problems, as long as the soil drains well, or you have a dry winter.  Excess water will rot the potatoes, but I dug up healthy potatoes today during planting of the next crop.  We now have seven inter-planted varieties, and are looking to plant another large bed in a few weeks.

E.Coli image from Vestal Design

The unfortunate case of Stephanie Smith has polarised consumers and food safety authorities, with some insisting that now is the time to introduce irradiation of food.  Comments in blogs and on official websites are rife, and there is a lot of misinformation and ill informed speculation.

For those who haven’t seen the story, Ms. Smith is paralysed from the waist down after eating a burger tainted with E. Coli.  The burger that she ate was labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties” from the American manufacturer Cargills. This gives the (no doubt deliberate) impression that the patties are made from high quality cuts of meat, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.  The meat products are cut from low value areas of the cow.  This makes sense, as producers want to maximise the profit from every beast, and you are not going to get prime fillet or roast cuts in a hamburger.

For a start, the low value cuts are from areas that are more likely to come into contact with fecal matter, the first point of infection from things such as E. Coli, amongst others.  Secondly, the people processing the meat are low paid, transient workers for the most part, and are expected to self inspect and self regulate.

You can train people in procedures, but you can’t train them to care.  Even things as basic as handwashing are a low priority for some people.

From “How Stuff Works”:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

So, the place that the E. Coli came from is almost impossible to trace, due to the wide geographical location of the ingredients.  It is unlikely that it came from the plant in South Dakota, as they use ammonia to treat their fatty trimmings.  Sounds tasty…

On the face of it then, irradiation makes sense.  It will use low dose radiation to kill pathogens, without harming the food.  And if we can rid our food of things like E. Coli, then Ms. Smith would still be where she belongs, at home with her family.

In fact, all it does is allow for shoddier food handling practice and complacency, as there would be a general belief that if the food is irradiated, it is safe.  The risk of recontamination of food after irradiation is very serious as a near sterile food is an ideal medium for very rapid growth of re-introduced bacteria. Irradiated food must therefore be handled with even greater care in homes and restaurants.

Also, there are facts that are not reported, or hidden deliberately from the public, such as the fact that food irradiation does not inactivate dangerous toxins which have already been produced by bacteria prior to irradiation. In some cases, such as C. botulinum, it is the toxin produced by the bacteria, rather than the bacteria itself, which poses the health hazard. (Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com)

It has also been shown that through irradiation “the chemical composition and nutritional content of food can change. Radiolytic by-products are often formed in irradiated food. Very few of these chemicals have been adequately studied for toxicity. One such chemical – 2-DCB – can cause DNA damage in rat colon cells at high doses.”

It also destroys much that is good about our food.

Vitamin E is reduced by 5%, and Vitamin C by up to 10% through this process.  This means that a lot more of our food would become empty calories, contributing to the obesity epidemic and related diseases.

Irradiation has also been shown to cause mutations in some bacteria.  This gives rise to the potential for resistant strains.

Irradiation also has the potential to mislead consumers, because it can make old food look fresh, and it also kills some of the pathogens responsible for the “off” smell that signals decay.

There is plenty of information surrounding this issue, but we seem to get only one side of the story from the media and Government sources.  Large corporations are all for it, as it has the potential to reduce costs, and therefore increase profits.

If irradiation is introduced, I want to see mandatory labeling on all of the goods that have been irradiated, or contain irradiated products, so I can avoid them like the plague.

What is needed, is a shorter food chain.  One where you know and trust the producers of your food.  Where you can see the way your food is raised and processed.

A food chain where people understand what they are eating.

Get well Stephanie, our thoughts are with you and your family.

Eat fresh.  Eat local.  Eat natural.  Eat simple.  Eat wild.  Eat slow.