20 minute read
Voices
Exploring Hendricks County
By Jackie Horn
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Sunflower seeds are a favorite food for a wide variety of birds including bluebirds, sparrows, and finches.
For The Birds
The birds are flocking, preparing for migration. The squirrels are busy digging up my backyard and burying acorns and hickory nuts. I haven’t seen the hummingbirds this week. I assume they’ve already started their journey south. Some may find this time of year depressing but I enjoy watching the preparations Nature makes for winter. The leaves changing color and falling. The grasses and wildflowers turning to seed. The bushes bursting with colorful berries. Hickory nuts, walnuts, and acorns... I can’t step out of my backdoor barefooted for all the acorns littering the ground. It’s that time of year again. Time to clean the birdfeeders and stock up on sunflower and thistle seed.
I am one of the 81 million people in the US who enjoys feeding the birds. With that many people providing sustenance, it would be easy to think ourfeathered friends couldn’t survive without humans feeding them. Don’t kid yourself. They’d do quite
A bright red cardinal at your feeder will brighten your day.
well without us. People feed birds because we like to watch them and how better to get a closer look than to lure them with food? Put a feeder near a picture window and we can be mesmerized in the comfort of our warm homes.
Cardinals, juncos, and sparrows on clean-up duty, eating the fallen seeds from the feeder.
Feeding birds isn’t cheap. Whoever said “eats like a bird” didn’t feed birds! They are gluttons! Nationwide $5 Billion a year are spent on wild bird food! John and I started with a single feeder and now have eight!
In the winter, we offer seed, suet, and peanuts to entice woodpeckers, juncos, sparrows, wrens, titmice, jays, and cardinals. Come spring, we switch to grape jelly, oranges, and sugar-water attracting orioles and hummingbirds. While it’s somewhat sad, we feed the hawks too. The Hawk comes to the feeder occasionally. (We usually can tell she’s been here by the pile of fluttering feathers on the ground.)
Woodpeckers prefer suet. neighborhood Cooper’s
That figure above doesn’t include the cost of feeders, birdbaths, and nesting boxes/birdhouses. That’s another $960 million/year. The Horns have three birdbaths, and a couple of birdhouses.
Finches can empty a thistle seed feeder in less than a day
Accessories, I don’t have a figure for how much money Americans spend on those. Between the two of us, John and I own several pairs of binoculars (a set for each car, the sunroom, the living room, a “good” pair for the field, and a few spares). We have books and phone apps to identify birds by location, color, habitat, and even song. And we aren’t hardcore birders. We don’t even belong to the Audubon Society!
The pleasure we experience when we identify a new species at the feeder or recognize a return visitor makes it worth every cent to us.
Birdwatching doesn’t have to be expensive. One of the simplest ways to attract wild birds is to make your yard welcoming. Plant native bushes, shrubs, and trees that provide food and shelter for wildlife. Dogwood, Beauty Berry, and Crabapple are just a few examples. A water source is also important. An expensive fountain or elaborate birdbath isn’t necessary. A terracotta saucer or shallow pan works just fine. It will need to be dumped regularly to prohibit bacteria, algae, and mosquitoes in summer and ice in winter.
Whether you go all out and set up a deluxe feeding station or just drop a few breadcrumbs on the ground in front of your window, there’s something special about watching the birds flutter and hop from inside your cozy house. Eighty-one million people can’t be wrong.
Jackie Horn and her husband, John, transplanted from Warsaw to Plainfield to be near family. An Advanced Indiana Master Naturalist, Jackie is a retired substitute teacher who continues to teach (and learn) about all things outdoors. John is a retired CNC programmer and the photographer on the team. The Horns enjoy traveling, walking, hiking, kayaking, and bicycling.
Here We Grow, Again
A crowd gathers to watch the rush hour traffic on Danville’s Main Street in the 1860’s.
This past summer, the town of Danville approved new home starts that will double the number of houses in our town within the next several years. Some of my fellow citizens are in favor, but many more are opposed. I am against growth when sitting in traffic, but in favor of it while walking the trails in Plainfield, enjoying the benefits of growth. Of course, it’s easy to favor the growth of Plainfield while living in Danville. The champions of growth are not without compelling arguments. More homes equal more tax dollars, which mean better schools, more parks and walking trails, more jobs, young families, and a deeper pool of civic talent. Several first-generation families in our town just opened Danville Dips, an ice-cream shop, on our town square. How can I be against ice cream?
The anti-growers fear it will mean more traffic congestion, which it most certainly will, and worse, more crime, which remains to be seen. I’ve heard some people say they don’t want “those people” moving to our town. If you want to have fun, watch people squirm when you ask them what they mean by “those people.” I’ve heard people who’ve lived here less than three years rail against newcomers, as if their ancestors had platted our streets in 1824. Several of the new residences will be apartments, causing some folks to sniff about renters and their theoretical dangers. When my parents first settled here in 1957, they rented for three years before buying their first home. Twenty-some years later my father was serving as the president of the town board. “Those people” we fear today will likely lead us tomorrow.
This growth is not just Danville’s story, it is central Indiana’s story. People from across the state and nation have discovered what many of us have known for decades, that central Indiana has much to offer—affordable housing, charming neighborhoods, excellent healthcare, good jobs, fine colleges, all this a stone’s throw from the sylvan splendor of the Hoosier National Forest, which nearly makes up for the Indiana legislature. What we sometimes lack—innovation, a global perspective, and political and ethnic diversity―will be improved by new citizens who don’t always look like us, think like us, vote like us or worship like us. Thank God! Or for that matter Allah, Bhagavan or Yahweh.
Danville has a population density of 1,298 folks per square mile, plenty of elbow room compared to Carmel, who shoehorns in 2,139 folks per square mile, while still making room for 137 more roundabouts. Danville’s answer to traffic congestion is to build some sort of bypass, one possible route carrying traffic right through my living room, or so it seems on the map. For the record, I’m opposed to any road project that involves my living room. Another suggested improvement would split my son’s cattle farm in half, which doesn’t feel like an improvement to him. Nevertheless, the opposite of growth is stagnation, which serves no one well. We all need fresh infusions of life to keep things from silting over. Drive through any town that has declined in population since 1950 and ask yourself if you’d want to live among its shuttered storefronts, its weed-choked sidewalks, its tattered Trump flags, and failing schools. It is only then you realize “those people” are in fact your salvation, your insurance against your town’s decay and death.
Visit Boswell or Knox and ask them if they would like to grow, if they would like their empty buildings filled with bright and cheerful businesses, their schools filled with students eager to learn and teachers eager to teach, their churches filled with kind and thoughtful folk. Ask if they would enjoy a town park with a swimming pool and somewhere to shop other than Dollar General and a nice restaurant that doesn’t close at 2 PM.
I returned to my hometown in 1999 after being away for 20 years, thinking it would be the same as I had left it, but things had changed in my absence. I complained about these “godawful new subdivisions that are going up everywhere,” until my dad pointed out that I lived in one. Twenty-two years later, I’m still here, living in a neighborhood that was Sam Anderson’s horse farm when I was a kid. Bob Dylan nailed it on the head, “Admit that the waters around you have grown…so you better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone.”
Here’s to swimming.
ANoteFromBee
We are fast approaching the time of year when vegetable soup would be good for supper. I have been said to make very good vegetable soup. That was not always the case. It has taken a lot of practice to come up with good soup. I think the secret to good soup was given to me by my uncle. He suggested I add ketchup. He was given this tip by his father. Nobody can make a small amount of soup. So I share with friends. I add some fruit and my friend has a meal.
Recipe for Bee’s soup (All amounts are approximate)
1 lb. browned ground beef small cans of corn, green beans, and carrots 2 cans beef broth 4 medium potatoes cut up and cooked 1 can progresso vegetable beef soup 1 can vegetarian soup 1/3 cup cabbage 1 can zucchini in tomato sauce any other vegetables you wish 1/2 cup ketchup 2 cups water Simmer for about an hour
Bee Jones
William Allen White
JUST AN OBSERVATION
Ten And Two
By Janet Beam
Remember back in the old days when driver training was offered during the summer? For a couple of weeks in the summer, we met our teacher at the school in order for him to make us safe and courteous drivers. Judging by the behavior of some driving today, some of those teachers failed miserably. But I digress.
The instructor had a set of pedals on his side so he could avoid a life-changing accident if necessary. He also had a large wooden block on the floor in front of him. The goal was to never, ever cause that block to fall over. Which, unfortunately, this driver managed to do by slamming on the brakes instead of coming to a gentle stop.
The most notable thing I remember learning is that you should drive with your hands at ten o’clock and two o’clock, which seemed utterly ridiculous to me with my 15 year old brain. Who drives that way? Old people! The cool way to drive was with one arm out the window and the other casually holding the steering wheel either on the top or on the bottom or by the cool steering knob you would just have to have on your own car, whenever you managed to get one.
There are just too many things people are doing while driving where they absolutely cannot have both hands on the wheel. Who hasn’t seen someone eating a meal, drinking hot scalding coffee or ice cold tea, blowing their nose, picking their nose, holding a cell phone, texting, reading a newspaper, a book or watching a video on their phone, applying makeup, cleaning their ears or clipping their fingernails? With all this important stuff that absolutely has to be done while driving, there was no way, once I passed this class, that I would be at ten and two.
Fast forward 60 years and what do I find myself doing? Driving with my hands at ten and two. It all of a sudden seems the most natural way to drive and the safest.
Just an observation.
Have Some Fun Making Pumpkin Planters!
By Colletta Kosiba Hendricks County Master Gardener
Making Pumpkin Planters
Yes. In the fall real pumpkins can be planters for your mums or sedums. Growing plants inside pumpkins is easy. Use your imagination -there are all kinds of plant possibilities. Any pumpkin will work, but a round fat pumpkin with a flat bottom is easiest to plant in.
Use a sharp knife to slice off the top, remove the insides. (Make the opening large enough for digging and planting.) Then fill the hollow pumpkin half full with lightweight potting soil. Take 2 or 3 purchased bedding plants, set them on top of the soil in pumpkin, then fill in around the plants with more potting soil, making sure to cover the plants at the same level they were originally planted. Water the plants and your pumpkin flower pot is done!
Hold a Bouquet
Pumpkins will a hold colorful fall bouquet. After cleaning the pumpkins innards out, insert a jar or can inside pumpkin to hold the flowers and water. Make a Candlestick Small pumpkins can be hollowed to hold candles. Use tiny ones for table decorations. Add fall touches of color with pumpkins around your home. Have some fun!
Put a face on a pumpkin and put in a planter - instant Halloween decoration!
What did the pumpkins say at happy hour? Let’s get smashed.
A Bark From the Past: Henry
[Editor’s Note: The Republican’s first four-footed correspondent was Henry. A mixed breed rescue dog, Henry would make observations about being a dog in a small town. The articles, which ran in 2006 - 2010, have been languishing in the computer’s memory and we thought a new audience might enjoy some canine commentary.]
WOOF! I’m back! Not that I actually went anyplace. But, our computer went down and my humans were not in a particular rush to get it fixed! Of course not! They both have computers at work! They can get their stuff done without a computer at home! But, hello? What about me? I’m the writer in the household! I’m the one who has to have a computer here! Remember Henry?
Every time my human held up a treat and said, “Speak!” I just wanted to say, “I could if you would fix the doggone computer!” But all I could do was bark and salivate and wait for my treat. But, now the computer’s back and so am I!
I have been studying a problem that I keep hearing about on the radio, the state of the nation’s economy. Now, as for this economy problem, my humans have been getting lots of mail wanting them to get new credit cards. Well, I remember from my experience with that box of cell phones I found that anything you get with a credit card, you have to pay for again later! So, it makes sense to me that if you only bought what you could pay for now, and not have to pay for stuff twice, that would go a long way toward solving this crisis! And, the problem is, the alphas you people seem to pick have yet to figure this out.
What you have to do is take away the government’s credit card and give it some money!
So, how about this? Get a big mayonnaise jar and drop all your spare change into it at the end of every day. When it’s full, send it in! That way, the government will have all the money it needs, and you can get rid of all that change that rattles around in your pocket or purse and weighs you down!
A Squirrel About Town
By Archy
I told Archy one of my co-workers had seen a squirrel in the alley behind our office and wondered if it were him.
“I would expect that was Al. He frequents that area and is quite comfortable around humans, Archy said. “He’s an alley squirrel, quite a different lifestyle from we who inhabit government property.”
Not suspecting that squirrels had a stratified social order, I asked him to expound further.
“Alley squirrels are what you might describe as ‘from the other side of the tracks.’ They steer clear of the Squirrel Salon and prefer the back alley squeakeasy,” he explained. “Don’t you mean speakeasy?” I asked. “Not at all,” Archy replied. “They mix together the dregs of beer bottles, then set the bottles up in an impromptu bowling alley. Whoever makes a strike emits a high-pitched squeak in celebration. We can hear them here at the court house, but I think they’re out of the range of human ears.”
Archy paused, looked around, and said in a whisper, “I’ve joined them a time or two!”
From talking to him I’d never have taken Archy for a tippler, but he read my thoughts and quickly corrected them.
“With our high metabolism alcohol has little effect on us,” he clarifed. “Besides, the more elite members of the Squirrel Salon delight in lowbrow activities.”
I recalled the words of another Archy, the literary cockroach from the imagination of Don Marquis: “The fish wife curse and the laugh of the horse, Shakespeare and I are frequently coarse.”
“Exactly!” the squirrel said. “It takes a high intellect to appreciate the groaner joke or the unbearable pun.”
“What did the squirrel teacher say when the class lined up in order of height?” I said. “Stop critter-sizing,” Archy answered. We both laughed.
Hunting Tips & Reflections
By Mike E. Neilson
Mike Neilson, longtime Danville High School teacher and longtime hunting enthusiast is sharing his hunting experience with our readers. He’s also shared his knowledge in three books, available on Amazon. com.
Home Butchering
How about us hunters that like to do it all on our own? Like many hunters, when I took my first couple of deer, I had no butchering skills or equipment, so I just dropped the deer off at a processor. However, I just wasn’t satisfied with the product and decided to jump in and do it myself.
On the plus side of butchering your own game, there is absolutely no question if you got your own deer back and if you got as much meat as you think you should. (Side note: Unless you have processed a lot of deer, you truly have no appreciation of just how much or little meat you can get out of a deer.) I have evolved a system over the years that works for me, and it might work for you as well.
Cutting your own deer gives the hunter a certain satisfaction and closure to the whole hunt. I have been processing my own deer for over 30 years and I still enjoy every moment except for washing everything up. Somehow, I seem to get more knives, tables, and other tools messy. Just another step in the whole processing step, clean up is essential for continued butchering efficiency.
Okay, so what’s the downside of home butchering. Lots! First you need to have room to process a deer. Where are you going to hang your deer after you’ve field dressed it? Outside in a tree or along a barn works but your neighbors might object. In the garage? Yep, I’ve done that a bunch much to the chagrin of my wife or the kids when they went into the garage to find something or hop in a car. Do you have access to a walk-in cooler to let the deer hang for a couple of days or do you need to cut it up quickly? Outside temperatures play a big roll. Too hot and you need to get that hide off quickly and cool the carcass. To cold and it’s a pain to butcher a deersicle.
Great, the deer has been field dressed, and hung up. Now you have to skin the deer. Are you saving the hide or tossing it? I’ve done both and it’s simply a personal preference. I’ve had the hides tanned out for pelts as well as leather. This is another subject for another day, let’s get back to butchering.
Proper Gear
Do you have the proper gear? Any old knife will cut but some knives are better than others. Everybody has their favorites in shapes and sizes of blades, I’m more interested in how long the blade holds an edge and how easy it is to resharpen. Don’t try to butcher a critter with a dull knife, just don’t. This is where accidents happen. Take a few moments, touch up the blade or grab another knife and keep cutting.
Where will the actual butchering take place? The kitchen table could work for the whole process if you are single or the family is all in with the butchering. Plastic folding tables work best for me. Not only are they mobile, but they are easy to clean and double as a cutting board as needed.
Where will you put the meat once it is cut from the carcass? Where will the bones go? What about the hide, head, horns (if applicable) and hooves? Each of these questions are vital to get the most out of your butchering experience.
I like to use plastic totes to hold the meat after I cut if off the bone. This keeps the meat clean, and I can separate what gets ground up for summer sausage and burger, versus roasts and steaks. I also have a tote for scraps and bones that I will either feed to my dog or take them to the back 40 for other critters to enjoy. I will also put game bags over the meat totes to keep flies off if the weather is warm.
I have wrapped meat using the old reliable freezer paper, I’ve also used Ziplock bags but my favorite method is to vacuum seal the meat after I have cut the meat into servings. (Note: if the meat is warm, allow it to cool before sealing to avoid freezer burn.) I also write on each package what critter it is from and what cut I’ve sealed. Most of the time this is obvious, but it just helps with clarification on cuts, species and when it was killed and butchered.
Other Equipment
As mentioned earlier, I have a vacuum sealer for the meat. I’ve found the meat lasts longer when I keep it this way. If you go this route, you will need special bags for your sealer. Sometimes you have to recut the meat if the bag is too small or your hunk of meat is too large, a variety of sizes might be best. These bags aren’t cheap either, so costs are always a factor.
I also use a big grinder to take the scraps and meat to be ground up as burger. From this I can make summer sausage, brats, snack sticks, or burger. Another useful tool that I’ve added to my personal meat locker is a sausage stuffer. Again, summer sausage, snack sticks, breakfast sausage (wild boar, thank you very much), and venison bratwurst all go through the stuffer. Then there’s the smoker that I use to create some of the meat mentioned above plus lots of jerky.
I do not have a band saw to cut bone-in steaks but I do know people that use them and love those saws. I usually debone all the meat and separate the roasts and steaks by muscle groups. To each his own but boneless meat is just more versatile for my needs.
Whichever route you take after the kill, I wish you the best of luck this season and a freezer full of tasty meals.
