After an exhausting week of work and yoga teacher training, I was happy to carve out two full days off in a row. I spent Saturday entirely at home. My trusty little Honda has really been putting the miles in lately. (I drive 50 miles a day when I go to work in Marble Falls.) It’s a blessed event nowadays when I don’t have to get in the car!! That was the case on Saturday.

I was in the garden for the bulk of the day, cleaning out last year’s dead matter and preparing the soil for this year’s effort. I’m going to buy some worms soon to put in our raised beds. They’ll help get it ready for planting in the coming months.

Then I literally went straight from the garden to our deer-hunting post on “Slaughter Lane.” Aptly named, I must say. Mike was hunting from a different spot and we were texting back and forth. We didn’t see anything but birds for about an hour and a half. Then two does came into my range and I shot one of them. Our last deer of the season! In all this season, Mike harvested two bucks and two does, and I shot two bucks and one doe. We are grateful for the nourishing meat that we hope will last us until next deer season.

Mike butchers all of our venison and grinds it himself with the help of our awesome 4-horsepower meat grinder that his parents gave us. I told him I’d like to learn how to gut the deer, but he said it would make me too valuable to someone else! So our agreement is that he butchers my deer and I clean up pet puke and poo anytime we have to deal with that sorta thing in the house. Deal.

*******

On Sunday, we hunted again but saw nothing. Then, we ate lunch in Llano at China Wok where we learned that the owner and his wife are also named Michael and Annie! He wrote our orders in Mandarin on a ticket and his wife prepared our food. Yum!

We motored on to Fredericksburg and hit golf balls at the driving range for a couple hours. We hadn’t touched our clubs in maybe six months, but our games are pretty consistent regardless, and it was nice to crank up those muscles again. It seemed cold and windy at first, but it turned out to be a lovely day for golf.

We went straight from the golf course to the bowling alley for our neice Cora’s 8th birthday party. My whole family was there plus 18 of Cora’s friends. Mike and I had never bowled together. He said it had been 10-12 years since he’d bowled at all, but, man! He’s a natural.

Mikey goes bowling.

We had a blast and will surely do that again soon.

Happy Birthday, Cora!

Mike and I limited out on our Llano County bucks some weeks ago, so we are strictly doe hunting now. It’s funny how when you’re hunting bucks, there are does galore, and now as we race the calendar to get our does before the season ends, the bucks have been more prevalent. I guess they got the memo.

Life is grand here at the ranch! We enjoyed a wonderfully festive (and extremely busy) holiday season. I hope yours was blessed, too. I’m excited that the new year is here; it’s already different in its hopeful vibe, and great things are in store for us all. I started Yoga Teacher Training on Wednesday at Sana Vida, my workplace. www.sanavida.info I’m really enjoying the instruction and I can already feel the effects on my life. There’s a wonderful self-discipline that comes of tapping into one’s higher self, and I’m enjoying that journey immensely.

Mike and I are working on getting our finances in better order. Always room for improvement. I gave him a copy of The Richest Man in Babylon for Christmas. It’s a book that his father, Doc Blakely (www.docblakely.com), recommended to us. Doc and Pat, Mike’s sweet mother, have taken the principles of that book and The Millionaire Next Door and made them work wonders. We are inspired to do the same. The first step for us is to save 10% of our earnings — to pay ourselves first. Today we are planning to open a savings account to do just that.

We have a film on hand right now from Netflix, to which we subscribe, called “Suze Orman: 9 Steps to Financial Freedom” that we are going to watch tonight. I’ve heard her name lots but am otherwise unfamiliar. Should be interesting. While I’m tossing things out, I’d be remiss not to mention the film (also a book) The Secret. Check it out if you haven’t yet.

Oh — apparently Bailey, our Yellow Lab, was never pregnant. Still no puppies. Apparently the rich puppy food we started feeding her bulked her up to where she looks pregnant. Oops!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Our thermometer shows 20 degrees right now. The weather in Texas never ceases to surprise me. Seems like just yesterday we were sweating profusely in the 110-degree heat. I must say, I love the cold. But mostly, I love the change of seasons. The variety. And the beauty that each holds.

We were so grateful to receive nearly 3 inches of rain over the weekend!! Our rain gauge felt useful for once. If I could draw pictures for you here (and if I could draw, period), I’d make a cute little cartoon charicature of our rain gauge, all happy and dancing with its brim overflowing. Well, we didn’t get that much rain, but that’s how happy we are to finally have some life-giving water on our land.

Mike and I decorated our Christmas tree Monday night, and it adds some holiday cheer to our little house. Lucy, our cat, came around to play with the ornaments while we were rifling through the box. So far she hasn’t tried to climb the tree, so that’s a good thing.

Mike and I are busy-busy these days, going in nearly too many directions at once. Mike has a full plate with his work, and I do with mine. We are looking forward to the holidays with family, and we’ve already set aside some vacation time for early 2012!

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Have I told you how much I love my job?? I work at Sana Vida Wellness Spa & Tea Bar in Marble Falls, and it’s become my second home. I’m not sure of my exact start date there, but it’s been a year now. I’m so blessed to have been led there. I’m a staff Licensed Massage Therapist, and I also work the front desk a couple mornings a week. In January, I’m so excited to announce that I’ll begin Yoga Teacher Training there! Yes, I’ll learn to be a yoga teacher. Right here in Marble Falls, at my workplace! How convenient. This is something I’ve thought about for years, and it’s wonderful to see it becoming a reality!

To learn more, visit www.sanavida.info. If you live in the Marble Falls area, I invite you to join us at Sana Vida this Friday, Dec. 9, from 3-5:30 p.m. for a Holiday Open House. We’ll have lots of great offerings on our One-Day Sale plus snacks and beverages and two yoga classes beginning at 5:30 p.m. On Saturday, my friend Sheila Dudley, Licensed Clinical Hypnotherapist, will offer a Distance Healing workshop at noon at Sana Vida. She’s amazing.

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Here’s a recipe that was a big hit at our Thanksgiving table:

Carrot Habanero Soup

Piercing the habanero chile and letting it steep in the cooking liquid (then disposing of the chile) infuses the soup with pleasant heat. If you like your soup hotter, seed and chop the habanero, and sauté it with the vegetables.

Yield: 5 servings (serving size: 1 cup soup and 1 tablespoon yogurt)

Ingredients

• 1  tablespoon  olive oil
• 1  cup  thinly sliced leek (about 1 large)
• 1/2  cup  chopped onion
• 1  pound  carrots, chopped
• 1  whole habanero pepper
• 1  tablespoon  minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1  garlic clove, minced
• 1/4  cup  dry white wine
• 3 1/2  cups  water
• 1  cup  chopped peeled sweet potato
• 1/4  cup  fresh orange juice
• 1/2  teaspoon  ground coriander
• 1  tablespoon  honey
• 1/2  teaspoon  salt
• 5  tablespoons  plain low-fat yogurt
• Chopped fresh cilantro leaves (optional)

Preparation

Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add leek, onion, and carrots; sauté 7 minutes or until tender. Pierce habanero several times with a knife. Add habanero, ginger, and garlic to pan; sauté 2 minutes. Stir in wine, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add water and sweet potato; bring to a boil. Partially cover, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes or until tender. Stir in orange juice and coriander. Remove and discard habanero.

Place half of carrot mixture in a blender; process until smooth. Pour pureed mixture into a medium bowl; repeat procedure with remaining carrot mixture. Press carrot mixture, in batches, through a large fine sieve into pan; discard solids. Stir honey and salt into carrot mixture; cook over medium heat 5 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Ladle into bowls; top with low-fat yogurt. Garnish with cilantro leaves, if desired.

Paula Disbrowe, Paula Disbrowe, Cooking Light, JANUARY 2005

Just wanted to let you know that Mike is having some technical difficulties with his newsletter and has been unable to send it out this week. It’s a server problem with his e-mail provider, so we’ll be making other arrangements in the very near future. Check your email (even your spam folder) in the coming week for what may appear as a different format of Mike’s weekly newsletter.

In the mean time, join us tonight at River City Grille in Marble Falls for a night of great music! Tina Wilkins and Mike Blakely co-host and open the show at 7 p.m. Matt Davis & Colby Miller will perform as guest artists during the second half. We hope to see you there!

Oh, he might even rope me in to sing some harmonies…

annie

If you’ve ever grown your own tomatoes, you know the pride that accompanies the picking of a big, red, ripe one from the vine. It just means more to you, having come from your own soil.

Now make the leap with me to deer hunting. Annie and I know from experience that harvesting venison from our own patch of Texas whitetail deer habitat elicits a feeling of accomplishment even greater than the successful cultivation of a healthy tomato patch. We live on venison year-round. We do our own skinning, butchering, meat grinding, sausage making, and smoking. During the hunting season, we fill our freezer with a year’s supply of healthy, low-fat, hormone-free deer meat.

Now, if you’ll allow me to belabor the tomato analogy one more time, imagine plucking your best, biggest, most perfect tomato ever from your own garden. That, metaphorically, is what I accomplished as a deer hunter recently, here on the Seven Stars Ranch.

I grew up out in the country, but in an area where I never saw a live deer running around. However, my dad took me deer hunting at age 12 to his old South Texas haunts, and that’s how I became a serious, life-long deer hunter. Over the years, I bagged a lot of deer on property owned by other folks – on deer leases, mostly. My kills included some pretty impressive wall-hanger bucks with big antlers.

In 1991 I finally realized the joy of harvesting my own “homegrown” venison. I had purchased 77 acres near Marble Falls. There were not a lot of deer on the property, and very few that you’d classify as trophy bucks. Still, I found the consumption of venison taken from my own land to be far more satisfying than any I had ever bagged elsewhere.

I owned that acreage for 17 years. The last hunting season there, I shot and killed the largest buck I had ever taken on the place – a nine-pointer with about a 15-inch spread. Hardly a trophy-book buck. (The rocky soil there didn’t yield blue-ribbon tomatoes, either.)

With the profits from the sale of that acreage, I purchased the Seven Stars Ranch, here in Llano County. I knew very well that Llano County was the epicenter for whitetail deer hunting in North America in terms of numbers of deer. The area boasts a deer population density as good or better than anywhere on the continent. When I closed the deal for the land in the spring of 2008, I immediately started looking forward to doing a lot of deer hunting.

My surprise came when my very first buck that I bagged on this new property measured better in body and antler sizes than my best buck ever from my former property. And, over the past three years, I have continued to kill good, mature bucks every season, all bigger than my old spread’s specimens.

So, I entered this hunting season with a different personal agenda. I decided I wasn’t going to shoot a mature buck unless I saw one that would obviously out-measure the ones I had bagged the previous three seasons on the Seven Stars. I would shoot spikes and does for meat, and for population control during this drought year, but I wouldn’t shoot a big one unless it was my best homegrown buck ever.

Accordingly, I passed up several shots at some pretty nice bucks in the two-to-three-year-old age classes. I held fast. Last Friday, I shot a spike for meat. An enjoyable hunt, considering that I rattled the little cull buck up for a 15-yard shot.

Last Saturday, November 12, the evening weather seemed too warm and breezy for hunting but I decided to go to one of my favorite spots anyway. Before I even got to the place, I passed up an easy shot at a nice, young eight-pointer. Arriving at my chosen location, I sat on a five gallon buck with a swivel seat on it, behind a small mesquite that I use as a rifle rest. The site affords a view down a little dirt ranch road I call “Slaughter Lane,” because of the amount of venison I have collected there.

As I blinked at gnats in my face, I watched several does cross the lane from my left to the right, the way they usually move here in the evening. Then a small buck showed up. I knew this youngster. I had already passed on him twice before this season, and I let him go again.

I caught sight of some movement very close to my left and found a yearling spike buck passing about 20 yards away. I had my rattling antlers with me, though the weather was way too warm and blustery for perfect rattling conditions. I decided to rattle them briefly, just to see how the spike might react.

I smacked the old antlers together pretty smartly and the spike ran off in terror. But then, about 200 yards away down Slaughter Lane, I saw a large-bodied deer step out of the brush to look my way. My scope was on him in an instant, and I was stunned to see chocolate-colored antlers spreading far and wide, both right and left. My safety was off immediately. I didn’t need to second-guess that rack. My crosshairs settled in behind the shoulder and I squeezed the trigger before I even had time to get nervous.

The buck bolted into the brush, but I had confidence in the shot from my .257 Weatherby Magnum. I crept down Slaughter Lane and found a blood trail, but the spots were few and far between and the sun was setting. Knowing my deer-trailing Labrador Retriever, Champ, could track the buck faster with his nose than I could with my eyes, especially in the waning light, I ran to my truck, drove the short distance to my house, loaded Champ up and hauled him to the place of bullet impact.

Though bred to retrieve birds, Champ is a remarkably efficient deer tracker, given even the faintest of blood trails. Within a hundred yards of the starting point, I could see his white fur coat milling around in a circle in some heavy underbrush. I clawed my way into the brush and found my deceased buck on the ground on his left side, the right antler soaring above the ground, Champ wagging his tail proudly over the trophy.

Stunned and elated at the antler spread of this Llano County buck, I counted nine points and noted the good bone mass of the rack. I petted my well-trained, 105-pound tracker and dragged the buck back toward my truck, arriving winded. After I muscled the deer onto the tailgate, I reached for my tape measure in my handy tool box. The outside antler spread measured over 22 inches! Champ and I were two happy hunters!

Hard to say for sure, but if I hadn’t rattled those antlers together, I might never have even seen the big 22-inch rack. But one thing is for certain. I would not have shot him had I not passed up the smaller bucks.

I aged the big buck at a prime six-and-a-half years. He weighed in at 120 pounds, which is pretty big for Llano County. The antlers scored 124 inches, my fourth-best ever after 40 years of hunting, and by far my best buck ever harvested on my own property.

It was better than pulling a perfectly-formed Big Boy from a tomato vine in our own garden. Watching Champ excel at the tracking chores made the memory even more special. In fact, I’m thinking of training Champ to help me harvest tomatoes next. Perhaps I’ll let you know how that turns out in my next guest blog for Peace Of Land…

Mike and his prize buck, "Twenty-two," harvested right here at home.

Mike & Champ basking in each other's company on the morning after Mike harvested his trophy buck.

I shot Lefty at 7:40 this morning and left him dead in his tracks. Mike rattled him and a couple other bucks up for me. It was a great team effort!

Venison tenderloins for dinner tonight!!

My elation at this statement indicates my relief at learning I had not in fact killed the 8-point-buck I shot at yesterday. Mike and I looked into the darkness last night for any sign of the buck. We found nothing; no blood, no tracks, no body. Only some fur in the barbed wire fence we feared he’d crossed over before dying out of sight on our neighbor’s property where we couldn’t find him. We searched again this morning, with the benefit of daylight, and still found nothing.

Mike hunted this evening and Elvis, who Mike nicknamed last week because of the little bit of velvet left on his antlers, appeared across the fence with his harem of does. 

“Either that or it was an Elvis impersonator!” Mike said.

 We were both so glad and relieved that he wasn’t wasted, and now the hunt is on again. He’s the nicest buck we’ve seen yet this year on our ranch. Mike said he’s saving him for me. 

I hope we’ll soon  be enjoying a “hunk-a-hunk-a-burning-love” on the grill!

I sang with Mike publicly for officially the first time, meaning it was planned, rehearsed, sound checked, etc. The setting was a private house concert in my hometown of Fredericksburg, Texas, in the amazing home of friends. And what a thrill it was! I was so touched by the roar of applause from the audience after Mike and I performed our first song together. I felt adored and appreciated for the voice I’ve kept hidden for so long.

Mike & Annie after the house concert with hosts and friends, Hugh & Becky.

I’m not sharing these things here to brag; I’m recovering from a *VERY* botched a cappella solo performance that left me completely humiliated in front of my college peers and a Mennonite congregation somewhere in rural Kansas about 12 years ago.

I received a partial choir scholarship to attend Bethel College as a freshman, and I was so excited to audition for a solo for the first time in my college career. I landed the part, and the song was “How Can I Keep From Singing.” I had listened to Enya’s version of the beautiful tune for years and felt like I already knew it. My solo included the opening lines — others would later join in – and was to begin a cappella.

I traveled one Sunday morning, as we often did, with my all-female choral group to a nearby church. The college president would give the sermon, essentially asking for material support, and our choir would sing. The congregation would host all of us for a potluck after the service. These were lovely occasions and a great way to represent our school and for the school to garner support.

When it came time for my solo, I had notes in my head from a different key, from the song we’d just sung, although my starting note was accurate. There is nothing worse than an off-key a cappella solo. Seriously. But it did get worse somehow. My choir director, who was later criticized for this, had me restart the song what seemed like 5 or 6 times in an effort to get it right. I did not.

I can’t remember what happened after that. I just recall sinking into my seat in those choral risers that are usually at church fronts. Luckily, I wasn’t in the front row, so I could hide behind my ashamed compadres as they kept singing and I tried to shake it off.

Then came the potluck. I don’t even know if I ate. I remember escaping to our bus very quickly, ready to put an end to that horrible situation.

I did later nail the solo, just within days of that, in a college-wide performance in the campus chapel, a beautiful, old structure with amazing acoustics. I love the sound of a cappella singing in chapels. Especially aged ones.

I was glad to close that chapter, to not have to sing that song anymore. I moved on to other universities for various reasons during my college years. I never joined another choir, and I have not sung publicly since then. It felt so good last night to “get back on the horse,” as Mike has encouraged me to do.

Speaking of horses, he’s recovering well from his mare-kicked leg wound, and we’ll physically get back on our real horses again soon. Until next time, get back on your own proverbial horse.