Something about fruit trees has always interested me, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. If I had to guess, I would say that a number of things contribute. I think that part of it is that I just like fruit. Fruit is generally sweet and delicious but still entirely healthy. It might also be the idea that you can grow or harvest your own food, and in some backwards way you feel like you're cheating the system by not buying fruit from a grocery store. But a fruit tree is not a one-season commitment like most crops, so perhaps because I’ve lacked the dedication to make a long-term commitment, I’ve had a sort of “grass is always greener” mindset. For a long time, I’ve wanted to grow apple trees or any other fruit trees, but it’s such a commitment that I haven’t been ready to make. Most trees take more than five years to come to fruit, and my worry was that I would plant a tree somewhere that I might not have access to later on. So, I contented myself foraging for berries and being jealous of other people’s trees loaded with apples… If you’re starting to feel bad for me (or wonder about me), don’t worry. This past summer, while scouting for deer, I began to notice old fruit trees on a property owned by Emily’s family’s farm. The property is affectionately call “Geher’s” or “Gearzy’s” after the former farm owner. But to me, it’s a little slice of heaven on a hill top on the aptly name Peach Orchard Road. Now these trees are old, and haven’t been cared for in over 20 years, but this year they produced a lot of fruit, which is why they caught my attention. Emily and I went out a few times with Will strapped into the “Ergo” Carrier, picking pears first in August, and then apples later in September. The pear trees were shorter and easier to pick, with some of the ripe fruit laying under the trees. The apple trees were much taller, and I had a ridiculous system of throwing a ratchet strap into the tree to shake the branches, allowing us to collect the apples that fell easily. Will thought this was hilarious. We ate much of the fruit fresh and then had mixed success in canning. I made an amazing apple curry chutney that has gone well with several meals. We made pear sauce, pear juice, apple butter, and some slightly metallic tasting apple juice (not sure what happened there). We also had pear halves that turned to mush during the canning process, causing an epic argument, but we’re keeping at it. Now the fruit in this orchard was not pretty, nor was it very large. Several trees had seen better days and may be near the end. But there are also many, that with the right care and pruning, could be restored. We’ve gotten permission to do some rehab work which will take several years. Unfortunately, trees can only take so much pruning in a season before damage is caused, and with the extensive need for manicuring, it will be sometime until these trees are in a normal annual pruning cycle. We will be leaning on the help and expertise of others as much as possible while we research caring for fruit trees. We are hoping to remove the dead or nearly dead trees (we’ll be using these for some smoked goodies) and replace them with new trees, and possibly some other varieties. It’s hard to say what all will happen with this orchard, but we will do our best to keep you up-to-date. At some point, we would like to have a communal harvest day in which our friends and family can come together to pick fruit, eat, and enjoy each other’s company. Perhaps we can use some pruned apple and pear wood to do a barbeque, and Emily can provide a few of her now “getting famous” sour cream apple pies! Stay tuned!
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I’d hunted archery for a few years, but never really dedicated myself to it the way that it truly requires. A super-old PSE Compound Bow and some cheap arrows that I picked up at Wal-Mart made up my gear for some time. My family weren’t archery hunters, neither were any of my close friends, so I didn’t have a great knowledge resource on where to get started. I also was working for a non-profit, not making a whole lot of money, so the cash to go out and blindly purchase all of the necessary supplies was not in my reach. My confidence with the old PSE was not great, which didn’t help either. In 2014, my brother gave me an old Martin bow (old, but not nearly as old as the PSE). It needed a new string, new arrows and some tuning, which I took care of that summer and began practicing regularly, amazed at my increased accuracy with the “new” bow. I got to where I was confident out to 25 yards, which was good enough for me at the time. I was always on the lookout for new spots, especially those that allowed me to slip into the woods quickly after work and hunt that last hour or so before night fall. I had a few such spots, but none that had worked out, up to this point. It was after church one Sunday in mid-October, that I was speaking with a woman from the choir, that somehow the topic of deer hunting came up. She mentioned that there were always deer in her back yard including a few big bucks. I half joked that I’d be willing to come “help out” with that problem. Surprisingly, she responded “sure!” Now, it was a few weeks until I got to her house, and I was not very optimistic. Her home was just at the edge of town, and her backyard butted up against a tiny peninsula of woods at the end of a much larger tract of timber. I figured that maybe some deer would come down through to invade the neighbor’s garden, but not enough to pattern for hunting. It was late October and the leaves had not yet fallen off the trees, which made visibility relatively close, which was ideal for such a small parcel. I walked into the woods and spotted several large buck rubs on some cedar trees. My outlook was on the uptick. I hung a trail camera near a well worn trail and got out of there quickly, having read that deer in developed areas are even more skiddish about humans in their territory. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone about this spot the way I did. Typically, you should wait a week or two to check trail cameras, but I was impatient. The thought of the big buck, making rubs in this new spot was eating away at me. I got out of work a little early on October 30th, grabbed my laptop and quickly drove to my new spot. I hurriedly grabbed the SD card from the woods and ran back to the car to see what the camera had managed to capture in 3 short days. The very first picture – a fat raccoon. Great… Next picture – I took a deep inhale – a “huge” buck! It was an 8 point, right in front of the camera! I didn’t even bother to go through the rest of the pictures but threw my Summit climber tree stand on my back, grabbed my bow and gear from the back of my VW station wagon, and hurried back into the woods. I had about an hour before sunset, so I scampered up the best tree I could find and settled in. Pulling out my range finder, I was able to see that I was about 40 yards from the neighbors fence, and only 75 yards from their back door. For archery season, you must only be 50 yards, but this was still a very tight spot. It was maybe 10 minutes before I started to hear and see deer. A hundred or so yards to my left (the other neighbor’s property), I saw groups of does starting to get up out of some thick cover and make their way up the hill, following a well worn patch along the chain link fence. They walked right by the house,, crossed the front yard and then the street, leading into a different patch of woods. Several doe groups followed this same pattern… I was worried that all the deer would do the same and none would make their way in front of my treestand. About 20 minutes of shooting light were left when I saw a much bigger deer rise out of the thicket and follow the same path, I was sure I saw antlers, but not certain of the size. He was ready to go out of sight when I blew a grunt call at him. He stopped. I blew a few more short calls. He turned around and charged back into the thicket. I was fairly certain I had spooked him and thus sealed the fate of the evening’s hunt. I was feeling anxious and excited at the same time. No deer had come my way, but I had probably seen 20, including one that appeared to be a nice buck, so there was certainly reason to be happy. Daylight was fading, I figured I had ten minutes of shooting light left. I heard a thump and some rustling off to my left and behind me. Turning slowly, I spotted a nice buck coming out of the little creek bottom and angling towards me. I readied an arrow and turned to get in position. “THUD.” My quiver, which I had taken off the bow knocked into the base of my stand. The buck froze and looked around. “That’s it” I thought, “I’ve blown it...” But the buck continued slowly, seemingly shrugging off the foreign sound. I drew back as he crossed behind a large tree. The buck crossed an open path at about 15 yards, and I bleated at him with that ridiculous sound, “maaah.” He stopped perfectly broadside. I took a deep breath and released my arrow. Those milliseconds in which you watch an arrow fly are so strange. For hunters like me, the adrenaline of that moment lead you an almost out of body experience. When you decided to take the shot, your mind goes blank and you have to hope that all of the practicing and muscle memory will pay off allowing your body to go on autopilot and do what it’s supposed to do. It did. The arrow hit right where I had aimed and I knew I had made a good shot when the buck dropped forward. He tried to head up hill immediately but, unable to run in that direction, he turned and drove himself down hill with only his back legs. “Crash!” That moment after shooting a deer is only a bit less intense than the shot itself. I had been so involved in the previous moments, but now, I was helpless, with no action I could take to change the outcome of what had just happened, but all of the adrenaline left telling my brain to do something. I was shaking like a leaf, trying to catch my breath. I had to sit down and compose myself, trying hard not to question myself or my shot, making myself more anxious. I called my older brother first, because I still needed to “do something.” “I just smoked a monster” I said, sounding like kid hyperventilating. He quickly asked where I was and said he’d be there shortly to help recover the deer. I didn’t want to track the deer alone, and I really didn’t want to push him if he hadn’t yet expired, so I climbed down the tree and took my gear the hundred or so yards back to my car. My brother arrived about 20 minutes later. By that point, I’d been able to stop shaking, but retelling the story brought back some of nerves. He just couldn’t believe that I had been hunting on this tiny property. We went into the woods and I quickly found my arrow which had broken after passing through the deer. There wasn’t very much blood to follow which worried me initially, but the trail was still easy to follow because the deer had clearly torn up the dirt in his descent down the hill. We followed the path of fresh earth for 50 yards and easily located the buck in the same creek bottom he’d first emerged from. It had been a perfect heart shot, entering just behind the shoulder, and exiting through the other, making certain that he didn’t go far. He was enormous by my standards, with a heavy set of antlers and 8 points. I wasn’t into scoring antlers at the time, but he was somewhere in the 120” range. Not a trophy buck for everyone, but certainly one in my book. His body was massive (the butcher estimated his live weight at about 220 pounds), taking a lot of work to drag even a short distance and proving difficult to fit in the back of my station wagon.
I spent the next few hours, driving around and showing my hunting buddies my trophy, which by the way, was not the 8 point from the trail camera picture. I would meet up with him in 2015, but that’s another story. I’ve since abandoned my little spot, realizing that I was extremely lucky to have harvested this deer without having it leave the property and expire in a not-so-friendly neighbor’s backyard. But the experience in this hunt hooked me. I am an archery hunter through and through. I’ve upgraded my gear a bit, and gained so much knowledge about deer habits and archery hunting, but this experience taught me several things:
Today we had the honor of cooking for our first real customers! Ian contacted Zach about cooking a surprise meal for he and his wife, Amy's 11th anniversary. She was totally shocked! Here is Zach serving up the appetizer, fried shrimp! Click here to follow us on Instagram! Here is another beautiful shot of the fried shrimp appetizer, along with the balsamic orange glaze that accompanied it. This was made with the juice of a few oranges, which was then cooked down to a syrup! It also had cloves, cinnamon, and a chile pepper. Yum! Next up was the coconut curry cod over basmati rice, served with home-made chappati flat bread. The meal ended with a peach shortcake dessert topped with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, raspberry jelly, and mint! If you'd like to discover for yourself how good all of this was (it really was!!), hop on over to the e-mail sign-up page to register for updates about when we plan to begin accepting reservations, what the upcoming menus will be, etc.!
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The Broken Antler BlogPhotos of beautiful meals & fun cooking stories by The Broken Antler (Zach Stotter), if you're into that sort of thing. Archives
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