The few days before hunting season, Ken went out and bought himself a new stand. You can see he is pretty lucky putting it together in green grass and temperatures of 50's. Not so lucky come the opening day. No snow to differentiate deer from woods. Also hard to track if you become lucky enough to spot one.

We had our first very heavy frost this week. As the sun came up and it started to warm, walking on the grass to hang out clothes was like walking on seaweed at the beach. We had small ice patches over the flooded areas of the yard.

Since it was cold outside, I decided to go ahead and can the 10# of carrots I bought and start my first attempt at potatoes. Being expensive later in the winter, I found a deal at the "zoo" as we call it for $1.99 per 10# bag of potatoes. I don't have a root cellar or cool place to store them, so I want to try canning them. I bought 50#, but started with 10#. They filled 7 quart jars. It seems I lost a little packing juice so I will have to fill them a little less next time. This is a Friday Tom has off, and he is acutally taking it off! He got up early and headed out to the woods for a few hours. Still no snow, but it is cool and clear and maybe the deer will be moving. I hear shots now and then over the past week but don't see many people going by the house with deer. Ken is officially laid off for the year so he may be out to do some hunting too. He has been discouraged because of all the yahoo's out there being to close to each other. The other day he walked into the wood and was standing there when some yahoo came in behind him a little later, stopped, lifted his gun and put his scope right on Ken, made a survey of the area, dropped the gun and walked only a few yards off to the side of Ken. He decided to take off. Some people just shouldn't pass the safety course!