WHAT TO DO WITH A RAW GOAT HIDE

This weekend we needed to butcher our little billy goat, so because of this we ended up with a raw hide to do something with. Natasha helped me gut and skin the goat and voiced her desire to work the hide to keep, so we made a Fleshing beam. We had some Tan Oak logs at the back of the property, so we selected a short one, and used a draw knife to shave most of the bark off and smooth it as much as we thought we needed.

Then We hung the hide loosely over the fleshing beam and I explained to Natasha what we were trying to do, as far as removing any left over meat or fat from that side of the hide. We didn't have a fleshing knife, so we had to use a Machete with rags wrapped around the handle and blade, so no injuries would happen.

It took most of the day but Natasha was persistent and got it fleshed out. I have to say I was very proud of her persistence and work cleaning the hide for tanning.

And needless to say she was very proud of what she had accomplished. When the fleshing was done we submerged the hide in some tanning solution for seven days. At the end of the tanning period, Robert Hausmann, our grandson assisted me in stretching the hide on a wood frame I had made.

The hide was drying on the frame for about a week and actually tightened enough that some of the strings used for stretching, broke.

The hide at this point is pretty stiff, and Natasha happened to be back for the weekend, so we proceeded to build a scrapper for her to take home and finish the hide.

 In these two pictures the scraper is not complete, I need to clean the weathered surface of the antler, remove sharp edges and smooth out, and make the scraper edge curved so as to not cut through the hide, and maybe sew on some buckskin on the handle.

My grandchildren are absolutely beautiful! Even in a home tanned goat hide.

Hey pretty girls are always concerned about some fashion.

Maybe a hairy mini-dress?



Or could it turn into a coat for Scooby? 

OK, I finally got the scraper done, cool.

A LOT LESS WOOD IN THE POND

This weekend our eldest son and his wife and two of our grandchildren came over to the coast. While here our son got the bug to work on removing wood from the pond, which he worked very hard at all day.

It's a little funny, but we had all of the visible wood removed by the end of last summer, then winter filled the pond and a whole other batch of wood showed up on the surface of the dry pond bed. 

This was only one of the many loads he hauled out and onto the burn pile.

Sorry about the platform bird feeder at the bottom of the picture.

Some of these loads were quite a bit of wood at once.

When looking at this picture remember that the hill is steeper just above the burn pile, so about only half the pile is showing.

So when I took these picture and when D.J. quit pulling wood, many more loads of wood made it out of the pond.