Spicy Italian Sausage

Spicy Italian sausage, from hoof to pantry:

Start with one whole wether, we used this one’s half brother who was 9 months old.

Reduce to smaller pieces:

You are done and ready to cook when it resembles this:

Mix with ground pork trimmings, salt, sugar, water, fennel, caraway, and coriander. Form into balls and fry until nice and brown:

If you have 40 Italian relatives near you are all done except the pasta at this point. If you live in the city you can now package and freeze them. If you however live in the middle of no-where, where you make all your own electricity this is your next step:

The total yield was 20 pints of 6-8, 2″ spicy Italian sausage meatballs in broth, 5 quarts of trim scraps for dog food, and 8 long bones for doggy treats.

Who Knew

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs—
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat
so accurate the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it’s mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

-Richard Hugo

Huntin’ season

Season opened a couple of days ago but what with vehicle maintenance and hurting my back, today was the first day we went out. I was laying awake in bed at dark thirty when my buddy D texts me that he’s sitting in his truck waiting for first light about a mile from my place. I look out the window and there has been a skiff of snow overnight….alright I’m talked into it at this point and go down and wake up The Boy. I send him up to the prime standing location, and I start out on the 3 mile loop to drive ‘em to him. After three hours I’ve looped back to when he was supposed to be but he’s gone. This isn’t a big surprise I had only told him to stay there at least an hour. I didn’t manage to jump anything except a handful of squirrels and a couple of red-headed woodpeckers. When I got back to the house The Boy told me he spotted 3 deer just 15 from the house and another 3 about five minutes after that, but there weren’t any bucks that he could see. It’s been snowing ever since I got back, there should be some really good hunting when this breaks. Hopefully this will also drive the elk down.

New Toy for the Backyard

I’m not sure if I have shared any pictures of our backyard yet. I know a lot of the land in front of the house has been shown in the home pics, but here are some of the other direction.

A friend of mine was hurting for money the other day and made me a deal on a new (for us) 4-wheeler that was too good to not grab. So we now have three, next year hopefully we can find another good deal so we will have one for everyone. The new one is pictured on the far right in the following pic.

I wrote about our early harvest of potatoes in the last post, here is what they look like closer up, and the fixings for that nights dinner. I need to thank bff for the seed for these wonderful spuds too.

The only thing we bought for that dinner was the beef, and come hunting season we won’t even need to buy that. Every year we provide more and more for ourselves. What a great feeling. Oh, the sherry was donated to us after J. left it at a friends house where it wasn’t loved.

Pictures! / Humble pie

Yup, I took a bunch of ‘em today. They ain’t uploaded yet but they are slowly getting here.

This post will be about shooting……….Yup, that second part of the Bill of the Rights. You liberals might know it as the part you skip over from the “freedom speech” to the “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” etc… We went out shooting today. This was not the pre-hunting season sight-in that takes place every year throughout this country. No this was a real honest to god “Inauguration Day Shooting Contest.” Yup this title might have the hints that would get Jefferson, Paine, Adams hard but let me spell it out. The second amendment ain’t about “sporting uses” or hunting. The second amendment is is about watering the tree.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Anywho…. I have always considered myself a good shot. And today I proved I was when I had the conditions I’m accustomed to. I hit a 9″ paper plate 29 out of 30 time from a squatting position at 100 meters. However, when I was forced to stand and shoot (which has very very rarely happened in all the years of forced shots hunting) I couldn’t break 60% hits. This is like ………………well really really bad.

Yea, I’m a slacker.

But E, you have no room to talk.

So, I once again forgot to take pictures, and since I’ve been getting to town and therefore the net about once a week I’m a lil’ behind.

So in “the news”:
I quit smoking on Dec 31
It hasn’t stopped fucking snow in almost a month.
The Kaiser has led to me coining at least 3 original cuss words.
The kitchen sink is installed and functional.
The breakfast bar is drying out so I can sand and install it.
The lil’ lady is on the wagon.
The Spawn are still trying to out do each other with their home schooling.
The lows have been down in the Thirties (above) [que Irving Berlin. We're having a heat wave]
The Gad damned elk have finally decided to come down the mountain and through The Gulch.
The Town has decided since I’m plowing the Gulch road they really don’t have to…this will be fixed soon.
D is “ill” and will be returning to “Big Sky Country” so I will finally be able to meet I’s better half.
K weathered the subzero weather very very well.

This post powered by ethanol.

Goat case II

I forgot to post some of the highlights of this battle.

How the Grinch stole the Christmas pony
By John Galt

Every dude down in P-burg liked animals a lot, but the Grinch who lived just north of Broadway did not.

The Grinch hated animals, like they were all guilty of treason. Please don’t ask why, no one quite knew the reason.

Perhaps his pants were too tight, or his head wasn’t screwed on just right.

It could even be his ego required more people to bow. But what ever the reason, he stood at his door hating that cow.

With a sour cranky frown. He declared “somebody must change this town.

My time to move is practically here. I must find a way to get the animals not so near.

For soon I know the realtors will come by ones and twos. But the moos moos moos, the one thing that will lower my price the most are the moos.

Oh these beasts I can’t stand in the least.

For 65 years I’ve put up with animals and now this darn cow. I must get rid of them but how?”

Then he got an idea, an awful idea, a wonderful, sneaky, awful idea appeared with a gleeful ha ha, “I know just what to do, I will make a new law”.

My neighbor will vote with me any day, if I tell him it’s the government way.

The barber will be harder seeing as the family owns a bay, but him I can sway.

He chuckled and clucked, with this law and my sneaky plan. I will make P-burg just like Bozeman.

Jackie Butler’s pet cow will need to go, then the arrogant goats owners I know.

Even with the new law I’ll need a reason that is phony, to take the little Comings girl’s Christmas pony.

Then with my next law I will make the plot thicken, when I take the sheriffs chickens.

It will require some finesse but Vietors steers will become less.

I’ve already done away with the hogs, very soon I’ll be able to get all the dogs.

Cats and hamsters and birds too, yes that’s what I’ll do.

And then something will need to be done about all these loud kids, if I trapped and sold them how would I solicit bids.

And the more the Grinch thought about all he planned to do, the less he cared if it was greeted by a boo, or a boo hoo hoo.

The good people of P-burg need to look at what the Grinch took, when that stupid law was added to the book.

May 2, 2007

Response to Notice to Abate Nuisance

TO: Stephen Immenschuh, Sheriff
Box 188
Philipsburg, Montana 59858

I received your letter and would like a chance to respond. I realize you are a busy man and would probably prefer to spend your time on more important issues than this, but I realize your priorities are sometimes shuffled by political pressures in the community.

It is my assertion that my chickens are out of town limits while they range on private property, and since there isn’t even a “Town Limits” sign on Broadway near where the supposed infractions have occurred. I feel it would be in the towns best interest to have a State certified surveyor determine the exact boundary. The town attorney would need to document this as well if he chooses to push forward with this petty frivolous matter.

Until we have an exact boundary determined I have spoken harshly to my flock and told them not to wander too far to the East. All but one have said they would do their best to comply. The lone dissenter was my Big Cock who said old fat joggers should be less busy-body guinea hens, mind their own clucking business, and let simple honest folk pursue their own lives.

The end of the Goat Case.

It must have been back in 2004, a friend was moving out of the area, and gave me 3 goats and around he a dozen chickens along with the sheds/coops and even fencing. Around this same time a peckerhead councilman here was pissed off at his neighbor for not hauling off their cow manure. Now, anyone else in town (if they had a problem like this) would have complained to the sheriff and the offending party might have been charged with the “Nuisance Ordnance” if there was a valid grievance. I said anyone else, but this lowlife politician figured he wasn’t just an average subject…I mean citizen, he had super-bureaucratic powers and decided it was his god given mission to rid the town of all livestock. Except of course the sheriff’s chickens, the other councilman’s horse, an old ranching families cows, a business owner’s daughter’s pony………………….Well, these kind of petty laws don’t sit well with me to begin with, and if you add some selective enforcement I get really really pissed off. They tried to sneak this crap by the public by using the title “penning ordinance” instead of “Ban of all Livestock” and provided no notice of the text of the document. So during the adoption process I put this sign up.

Whoo hoo, that pissed off the councilman and he tried to get the sheriff to charge me with harassment, but of course there was no case. They did however pass the ordinance even though there was a huge amount of opposition to it. I don’t think anyone spoke in favor of it. Mind you these are the same idiots who think a town with 300 sewer hookups can afford a 10 million dollar sewer plant, and using that same level of intelligence they charged only myself and one other person (out of at least 5 people) who were “in violation” of the new ordinance.

Fast forward several years through 5 Motions to Dismiss, one trial, and countless appearances in two courts.

Today it, well part of it ended. In exchange for me not going to the second trial, and if necessary appealing to the State Supreme Court………..in which we (my lawyer friend and I) had a sure case….
The original trial took place in Justice Court, using a complaint from District Court which that court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction……

I took a plea. It was too sweet not to.

I will pay a grand total of $100, which will be divided as such:
$100 applied to the $210 in court costs, in other words the Town will need to pony up an additional $110 for the court, in addition to the money they have paid their attorney, the money they have paid to the surveyor, the money they have paid witnesses, and I’m sure other costs.

The really fun part is over winter I will be working to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal that bullshit law, and two others those bastards cherish.

The finial score:

Me: -$100
Town Hall: At least -$800
So even if there is a misdemeanor conviction on my record, in the starving the beast arena I whooped their asses.

Who ever said you can’t fight town hall, wasn’t as doggedly determined as myself.

Logging Competition

So, a couple of weeks ago a friend asked me if I’ve ever ran a two man buck saw. Way back when I was getting my Wildland Firefighter Sawyer Cert, I had to learn all manner of motor-less logging equipment for working in “Wilderness Areas” , so I was stupid enough to admit this to him. Anyways this is what I did today. (These are professionals, competing in “The Jack and Jill” event)
This is Don and myself (facing away from the camera) My partner, Don (who had never ran a cross-cut buck saw) and I finished our cut in 35 seconds, it was last place, but I sure had fun competing. Our four man relay team (how I got suckered in) finished around fourth, and this event had a lot of teams (almost all professional loggers) since there was a $1000 winner take all purse. Colin did the ax throw and had a respectable 5 throw and tag, our log truck strapper was probable the second fastest there, and Don and I weren’t the slowest on the buck saw.

This event was part of our Flint Creek Valley Days celebration and was sponsored by a lot of local businesses and Montana Logging Association I’m taking K and WR to the Street Dance latter tonight also.