Christmas Letter 2009

It’s that time again, time to light a Yule log, don the gay apparel (not a favorite tradition of mine) and dash off my annual holiday greeting.

It’s been quite a year! I hardly know where to start. Maybe it’s best if I recap chronologically.

January – We brought in the New Year by firing shotguns into the frigid night sky. What fun!

Sadly, we learned that a sudden barrage of gunfire in the middle of the night provokes great anxiety in chickens. A strange sound came from the henhouse, a sort of chicken-scream, followed by a clunk and a thud. The frightful awakening caused our hens to spontaneously drop their eggs before pitching over dead, en masse. We filled the freezer with chicken.

February – The groundhog forecast a quick end to winter. Groundhogs make poor prognosticators. (Winter held for another 12 weeks.)

March – I finished boiling syrup on March 12th. Using the boiling tub for such a short time each year seemed a waste, so I tried my hand at distilled spirits. I have only a hazy recollection of the balance of March.

April – See March... I’m told a good time was had by all!

May – Spring finally arrived! We saw the groundhog for the first time since February. We dined on groundhog that evening. In case you’re wondering, it tastes like groundhog. It was a sweet revenge.

Popcorn futures were up, and looked to hold real promise, so we planted all our tillable acreage in popcorn.

June – We rebuilt the outhouse after the seat gave way and the wife took a dip in the honey pit. She had been telling me it needed some work. I suppose it’s my broader base that prevented me from recognizing the problem earlier.

July – Vacation! We took a daytrip to a floating peat bog that’s surrounded by a swamp called Buckeye Lake. It wasn’t until our arrest that we learned this bog, the only one of its kind in the world, is a protected area. Our daytrip became a three-day trip with free lodging and meals, complements of the County Sheriff.

Meanwhile, the neighbor found the power line we had run from his house to ours. He unplugged us… again. We lost everything in the freezer.

August – The weather was so hot that our popcorn popped right there in the field. What a racket! I set up a roadside stand and tried to sell popcorn-on-the-cob. It never really caught on.

September – To offset the loss of farm income, I started a new business. My system for winning the lottery seemed sure to offer a lucrative financial reward.

October – Our oldest son had what some might term success in deer hunting. It’s unfortunate that the neighbor’s bull was brindle colored, but the freezer is full of meat again.

November – The wood shed burned to the ground as a result of a Cornhole mishap when my younger son was experimenting with exploding corn bags–he thought it would enliven the game. Sanctions by the American Cornhole Association are pending.

December – We’ve been burning losing lottery tickets for heat, but the stack is running low; I’d say we have less than a cord remaining. The top six feet of the neighbor’s 20 foot spruce made a wonderful Christmas tree! We blamed the power company.

Well, that’s our year in a nutshell, though the year’s not over yet–anything could happen! Please include us in your prayers, and Merry Christmas!

Home Economics

In these economically challenging times, it has occurred to me that I could probably earn some extra scratch by writing a book about money saving tactics. Not that I have any particular knowledge in this area, but I think I could fake it. First, I’ll organize an outline and present it to the big publishing concerns. After that, I’m pretty sure all I have to do is sit back and wait for a fat advance check to arrive in the mail.

Outline:

Home Economics – Stuff your mom forgot to teach you!

Chapter 1 - Dumpster Diving: This is a great way to get free stuff, but be safe. Before starting, learn and understand the dump schedules. You don’t want to be inside a dumpster wrestling a raccoon (or homeless person) for a moldy bag of mashed bagels when the waste management engineer drives up to collect what is rightfully his.

Chapter 2 - Dining with Friends, Neighbors and Coworkers: A great way to manage your grocery budget! The key is in maintaining balance; one that is tipped in your favor, naturally. When the couple next door invites you to enjoy a nice steak dinner, you can’t return the favor by offering them mac-n-cheese with chunks of hotdogs mixed in. This is when you want to use the meat products you rescued from the dumpster. Take care to mark the steaks you bought for yourself, to ensure there's no mix-up when you serve the meal.

Chapter 3 - Home Heating: Some entrepreneurial wit once came up with a tool that would tightly roll newspapers into logs that you could burn in your fireplace. You can still find these rollers (usually in dumpsters – see Chapter 1), but the newspaper business being what it is today, you may find fuel a bit hard to come by. My advice is to tough it out until temperatures drop below 50 degrees, then start burning pieces of your neighbor’s privacy fence. He won’t be outdoors again until spring. By the time he realizes that his fence, boat trailer tires, dog house, barking dog, and the maple tree in his side yard are gone, the evidence will be up in smoke.

Chapter 4 - Shop Thrift Stores: Take a tool kit, pepper spray and a cane when you embark on this experience. The tool kit is for re-assembling the parts from several broken items to make one good working item, which you can then purchase at the damaged goods price. The pepper spray is for those aggressive shoppers who will attack you, or your pile of goods, without hesitation, and for no apparent reason. The cane is to clock the really aggressive ones upside the head when the pepper spray doesn’t work, or to correct their children when they become a little too boisterous.

I’ll stop after chapter four. There’s no point in overwhelming my readers with a glut of advice they’ll never bother to use anyway. And I’ll need to save some of my ideas for the companion book I’ll put out when the advance money is gone and royalties begin to drop off.

I think I’ll call the companion: Book Writing – The Art of the Con.

Wild Game Recipe

So… you've enjoyed a successful day of hunting! Maybe you didn’t bag the trophy buck you had hoped for, but toward the end of the day you settled for a couple of squirrels that had annoyingly cursed you throughout the afternoon. Maybe, too, as you were walking out of the woods, your meditative thoughts were interrupted by a rabbit that exploded from a tuft of grass at your feet. Too bad for the rabbit!

You hike through three miles of rough woodland terrain to find your vehicle (that was parked 60 yards from where you were hunting), load your SUV with the 400 pounds of gear you lugged into the woods, and head for home.

Now, it’s time to transform your wild game (which, if flattened, would be termed road kill) into a sumptuous meal. This recipe can be used for the preparation of any wild game. If you follow the recipe carefully, you will be pleased and well satisfied with the results.

Ingredients:
Two pounds of wild game, cleaned and dressed (black tie optional)
One-half (1/4) cup of gunpowder
Two large cans of moist dog food
Four gallons of kerosene
Three pounds of cayenne pepper
One quart of oil-based paint (any color will do)
Two liters of whiskey (If using Canadian whiskey convert from litres to liters)
Vinegar, baking soda, liquid dish detergent, red food coloring, warm water
Three pounds of beef (or pork)
One gallon of barbeque sauce
Large sandwich buns


You will also need a short traffic cone, 21 gallon trash can, and every he-man’s favorite tool—a roll of duct tape.

Combine the wild game, gunpowder, dog food, kerosene, cayenne pepper and paint, in the trash can. Seal the lid securely with duct tape and bury the can, Korean kimchi style, in a sunny location of your backyard. Be sure to flag this spot for later retrieval by the EPA.

Bake the beef (or pork) at 350 degrees, for one hour and forty minutes. While the beef (or pork) is baking, drink the contents of one of the whiskey bottles.

Next, set the traffic cone over the empty whiskey bottle using the remaining duct tape to secure this apparatus to a solid base (It should look reminiscent of a volcano, if not, use more duct tape). Start drinking the second bottle of whiskey—slowly now, pace yourself.

Pour warm water into the neck of your volcano until it is half full. Add detergent, food coloring and baking soda to this mixture; then, slowly pour in the vinegar until it erupts. Repeat until the beef (or pork) is done, you run out of volcano ingredients, or you sober up.

Finally, use a fork to shred the beef (or pork), adding a generous measure of barbeque sauce. Serve on buns with side dishes of your choice.

Enjoy your meal! It won’t take three days to digest like the wild game would have, and the rest of the family will actually eat what you’ve prepared.

With this recipe you will enjoy the added benefit of a free show when the EPA arrives to search for whatever the neighbor saw you bury in your backyard. After consistently overlooking the flag you left, they will call in backup from the ODA, FDA, ATF, FBI, PTA, AFL-CIO and Homeland Security.

It’s appetizing, nutritious and fun! Bon Appetit!