Would you eat this?Last year Doc turned 3. On his birthday, he said that he wanted a deer. Red-Pepper shot a nice 8-pointer on his birthday, and since we were starting to experiment with salt-curing, we decided to salt cure and cold smoke a chunk of venison from it, with the goal of trying it on Doc's 4th birthday. Well, now the time has come!!!

Progress can be hard sometimes...We're heading the right direction. Progress is being made and skills developed. Years of expectation are reaching a clearing view of the overall goal and the outdoor kitchen is taking shape. In between working on this project, I visit Patrick from MTknives and he sharpens my draw knife for me. Thanks Brother!

The VERY LAST Time!I was finally getting my posts in place for the outdoor kitchen, but I had to stop before putting in the two last posts. Those posts are the two nearest my stairwell to the root cellar and storm shelter. If I put those in place, it will forever block off this opportunity, which is parking my van over the stairwell to make doing oil changes easier. Yup, we'll have to do one last oil change this way before we will never, ever be able to do it again.

What interesting shots!Some time ago, long before this winter storm weather, I had an idea about creating a children's book called, "Can Bugger Catch a Bullfrog?" The goal was to have an entertaining tale about perseverance in the face of struggle be crafted with a plethora of interesting images to accompany it. I was hoping to have some cool-looking photos of a massive bullfrog repeatedly escaping the capture efforts of our boy, "Bugger."

This project has taken forever, but it's still progressing.The outdoor kitchen is on the way! After prepping some cedar logs for our posts, it's time to stand them up and attach them to the concrete slab. This is going to look amazing! Let's get this!

I should have been doing this for years!We've been cutting down a lot of trees around here recently, so to store it and keep it dry, I tried to have a brainstorm. In this video, I show off how I plan on keeping this dry for a couple of years to season it while I also create a storage area for the children's bicycles and other outdoor toys. What do you think? How did I do?