Preparations Checklist

Just to give you an idea of all the things involved in preparing for the hunt I am going to undertake on November 8-10, here are the things I've done since I last posted to this blog:

• after the 10-day waiting period, I picked up the rifle that I told you I purchased. 
• I studied for and then passed my hunter's education certificate examination, which enabled me to get...
• my hunting license, along with a pig tag. You have to have a "tag" for every pig you expect to "take."
• I've purchased a whole bunch of things, including:
• a telescopic sight for my rifle
• camouflage clothing (top, bottom, hat, and gloves) designed to make me look like shrubbery
• special "combat" earplugs to protect me from the sounds of the same rifle referred to earlier
• a shoulder pad, to protect me from the impact of that same rifle (noticing a pattern?)
• various cleaning tools to clean, carry, or otherwise treat the rifle under different circumstances
• special laundry soap and personal soap which I'll use to clean all the clothing I'll take on the trip in order to remove all scent. Apparently wild pigs can't see well, but they can smell you from a mile away. Or something like it. So we have to disguise our odors. (This raises the question: why are we trying to look like shrubbery? But, hey, I'm just the student in this enterprise.)
• shooting sticks, which, together, make a bipod support I can use to stabilize myself for shooting from a sitting or kneeling position. This helps a lot, because the rifle weighs 7 pounds, and holding out in front ends up being tiring.
• and, last but not least: ammunition. Bullets. Oh boy. Did you know you can buy bullets on the Internet?
• And then there's all the practicing, and also a rather involved process of working in a new gun and sight.

Phew! So, this is what I've been doing with my spare time. I've been to my coach's Sunol ranch and I've also gone to a new range, the Richmond Rod & Gun Club, which is closer to me than the Chabot range I'd been to before.

It feels like a bit of a sprint, to be honest. I had imagined a slower-paced process. But the opportunity to have my first hunt be one I take with my coach has meant going along with her schedule, and so I accept it. An interesting by product is that my locavore Thanksgiving might feature some wild boar this year.

A big day

I'm appreciating this time out from the rigor of a weekly blogging routine, but I want to sit down and write a few notes about what I just did.

I bought a rifle! The Ruger Hawkeye International. I can't have it until October 5th at 2:00 something in the afternoon, after the 10-day waiting period, but it is mine.

Here's why I bought it: I am too small to borrow any of my coach's guns. It turns out that rifles are very size-specific. It matters how much distance there is between your shoulder and your hand, and also how much distance there is between your thumb and your index finger. My distances are that much smaller than the average man's that I am essentially off the chart for many rifles.

I had to look at a smaller rifle, like this one. My coach is the one who originally found this gun and thought it would suit me, but I had to try out a bunch of other guns first before I could tell what it was I was even looking at. Now I know the difference. With the bigger guns, I can't see out of the scope--the eye piece you look through to find the target. Also, I can't reach the trigger in the way required to press it properly.

Facing this size issue is amazing for me. I have rarely felt this small, and also, I have rarely had such a clear need to state the facts of my condition: "I can't see!" It doesn't do me any good to try to "please" my coach by trying to see (although I'm such an inveterate pleaser, I admit I have done some of that.)

So, this afternoon, I went down to the Old West Gun Room, where I'm becoming increasingly comfortable. Today, it was me and a couple of old guys. Nobody is ever in any kind of hurry down there, and they're all telling stories of their latest exploits. Today, I said it was my big day, buying my first gun, and one of the fellas was happy with me about it. He said there really weren't too many people who took up hunting out of the blue like I was doing. Most people learn it as kids. Anyway, I gotta say, I had a nice time buying my gun. Bob threw in a leather sling too. The gun is handsome, all decked out in leather, with a walnut stock.

So, now I'm a gun owner. Yee-haw!

The Pause Button

This is a quick post just to let you know that I'm going to take a break for a little bit. I have to study for my California Hunter's License, which takes about 10 hours on line, plus a 4-hour class. Here's the online class I'm doing. Since I work full time, I'm going to be squeezing this into the time I usually devote to writing.

I'm doing this because my coach thinks I'll be ready to go on a hunt with her in late November or December, which seems amazing, but I have to take her word for it.

Who knows? Maybe this will go faster than I think. I've gotta say: this is not the kind of material I'm used to absorbing. The closest I've come is my early love of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.

Maybe we'll have pork sausage by Christmas!

Looking for common ground

I fly and collect flags. I have historic California flags, various peace flags, rainbow flags, flags from Catalan, France, Italy, and so on. Normally, I fly a different flag each month, sometimes based on what I consider to be the major holiday of that particular month. So, June's flag is the New Glory, a rainbow Stars & Stripes. That stays up until July 5th when I switch over to the French Tricolore in preparation for Bastille Day. August is Iris's birthday month, so she gets her pick.

The California Bear Flag

This month, I am flying the California Bear Flag, the flag flown briefly when we were a republic all by ourselves, for 26 days in 1846. Whenever I fly this flag, it reminds me of our state's link with that other state with a true republican past, Texas. I don't often consider my common ground with Texas, so this is an opportunity for me to reach out, as it were. When I do, I remember that we both have Mexican pasts, and we both made very dodgy, even reprehensible moves on our pathways toward statehood.

I'm looking for common ground with a new group of people now, the folks who know about marksmanship and hunting. In this country, that comes bundled with a bunch of other stuff. So, I'm spending time with members of the NRA. On and off, I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. For instance, when I drove into the parking area at the San Leandro Rifle & Pistol Range, it was full of Ford F-150s and other big old trucks, while I was in our little black Prius with the lefty bumper stickers. Gulp.

So how do I go looking for common ground? I've thought about this for a while, since back before we invaded Iraq. I noticed then that I really don't have a whole lot of experience talking with people who don't agree with me. I also noticed that this gap in experience was shared by many of my fellow countrymen and women. It occurred to me that it would be an act of patriotism, and a move toward world peace, for me to get better at this skill.

Now, I have an opportunity to walk the talk. How I'm going about it is by taking it at a slow enough pace that I have time to absorb what I'm doing, more or less. And, I'm disclosing to the people I meet in this new world exactly what I'm trying to do. In other words, I have to be willing to let myself be known, at least to some extent. And when I learn something new about a person or group I've met, I look for an echo within myself, to see if I can find a parallel or a place of intersection. That's one way to find common ground.

Another is that I am open to learning and my coach is open to teaching. That is a real starting place.

Sausage making

A note on all the images in this post: if you want to see them larger, just click on the image.

John Stewart of Black Pig Meat Company gave a terrific demonstration of sausage making at the Eat Real Festival last Sunday in Oakland's Jack London Square. I am eager to learn this skill in advance of bringing home a wild boar, as I've heard that sausage is a common way to prepare boar meat.

Stewart began by sharing his sausage recipe:

• 15 pounds of pork (he uses pork shoulder)
• 100 grams of salt (he uses only kosher)
• 1 T. chili flakes
• 3 T. freshly ground black pepper
• 5-6 cloves garlic
• white wine to cover (though in the demo, he used red)
• and he also added water, which he said released the proteins in pork.
• 1 1/3 c. toased fennel seeds, pulsed in a coffee grinder

Sausage stuffer (l) and meat grinder (r)

For equipment, he used a hand cranked meat grinder and a hand cranked sausage stuffer. Both were home-sized and ordered from www.sausagemaker.com, a vendor he recommended for home cooks. I was glad to hear him advising the use of the two-machine approach, because I have my grandmother's meat grinder, and snap-on sausage stuffer accessories are not available for antique grinders.

Cutting the meat

His first step was to cut the meat away from the bone and into strips the right size to fit into the meat grinder. At this point, I asked if he ever used wild boar. He said yes, adding that wild meat is almost always lean, so you need to add some commercial pork to get the fat content up. He likes about 20% fat for a tasty sausage.

Grinding the meat

Then, he started grinding.

Mixing the meat & spices

After the meat was ground, he took the other ingredients and mixed them with a hand-held mixer. Then, he poured them over the pan of ground meat. He hand mixed it all together, wearing surgical gloves.

At this point he said "If what you want is breakfast patties, this is sausage!" However, if the goal is "true" sausage, the next and final stage is filling casings. For fresh (uncured) sausage, he recommended natural casings. These are also available from sausagemakers.com.

Rinsing the casing

Natural casings are packed in salt and must be rinsed inside and out. I asked if he ever made his own casings (which are pig or sheep intestines). He said no, this was not something he would ever want to do. Processing an animal already takes about 15 hours, and this would add so much (unpleasant) extra work that it just wasn't worth it.

Next, he slipped the casing entirely onto the end of the sausage stuffer, which had been fitted with the proper-sized nozzle (based on the size of sausage he wanted). He twisted the end slightly.

Guiding the sausage into a spiral

He had also filled the container of the sausage stuffer with the ground meat mixture and now started cranking it. Rapidly, sausage started emerging in front of the machine. He guided it into a spiral shape on the table in front.

When he had made all the sausage he wanted, he cut off the casing and twisted the end. He said you can repack the casing with salt and it lasts a long time.

Twirling the links

He then took up the length of sausage, decided how long he wanted his sausages to be, and then twirled the "rope" to get the links.

Removing air pockets from links

Then he pricked each one to release any air pockets. He had a little forked tool for that purpose.

He said that, with fresh sausage, the best storage is freezing in as airtight a container as possible, in amounts you would be likely to use. Just cut them apart before freezing.

The finished product

Doesn't this seem like something we could do ourselves?

Memory lane

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tipped me off about some new research on the middle-aged mind.  The article is a review of Barbara Strauch's book The secret life of the grown-up brain: the surprising talents of the middle-aged mind. (As an aside, the Strauch book apparently defines middle age as stretching from 40 to 68. Are we now expected to live to 136??)

The Chron noted that "The mild forgetfulness associated with middle-age...is real, an artifact of distraction, a surfeit of things worth remembering." So that's it: I just have too many things to remember! No wonder some of them are dropping out of my ears onto the floor.

Apparently, learning new things helps. But, I find this a double-edged sword. Here's why: as regular readers of this blog know, I am now working with a marksmanship coach. She's assigned me some homework this week. It's the memorization kind. Um, actually, I'm noticing that I really rusty in this department.

I've gotten so used to referring to things stored in electronic form on one device or another that I really don't make myself remember much of anything anymore. I do remember things, but this is a happenstance rather than a plan.

It turns out that all my "referring to things" is actually more of a problem than I thought. Recent research conducted at UCSF is showing that excessive uptime is having a detrimental effect on memory: "when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience." Further research, this time at the University of Michigan, found that "people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment."

In other words, we're suffering from overwhelm. At least I am. I used to be one of those people with a fairly deep "general fund" of knowledge, the kind of gal you wanted for a teammate if you were playing Trivial Pursuit. I now know a heck of a lot less than I used to know. At least it sure feels like it.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm doing some memorization tasks, stretching my neurons. Then again, maybe I should just go for a walk up in Tilden.

All Natural

Today I pollinated my pumpkin patch. It's something I've never had to do before. I don't know why, but this year the birds and the bees have fallen down on the job.

It could be the new variety of pumpkin I'm growing.
It could be the weird extra-foggy weather we've been having.
It could be a bad year for bird and bee whoopy.

In desperation, I searched for and found instructions for pollinating pumpkins.

Girl pumpkin flower: see her shapely figure?

It turns out there are boy pumpkin flowers and girl pumpkin flowers. I've only ever noticed the girls. (Is that such a surprise?) Other years, there have always been a few early "lost opportunities." That is to say, a number of those small baby pre-pumpkins just die and fall off. But, by July, I get pumpkins taking hold and growing.

Boy pumpkin flower: a manly profile

This year, here we are at mid-August, and I still don't have any pumpkins growing! This makes me alarmed, because these are baking pumpkins, and I count on having a home-grown pumpkin for my Thanksgiving pie. The clock is ticking.

To intervene on behalf of future pie, I took the boy pumpkin flower and exposed the stamen by peeling off the flower. Then, I rubbed this on the stigma of the girl flower. I did this for as many of the girls as were available--about four or five today.

So what's natural about this? My answer is: what's not? I'm part of nature, after all.

I have a particular horse in this race, which I will now disclose. I belong to what has, since August 4, 2010, been described as a suspect class. (This is a beneficial distinction, it turns out.) For the longest time, what and who I am, including how I managed to become the mother of my best beloved son, has been considered by some (including many voters in my adopted home state of California) to be unnatural. Even though Judge Walker's wonderfully deep and detailed ruling is currently on hold for what feels like forever to me, his words are still on record.

For instance:
"The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed."

I remember having a big argument with my father in about 1978 on this same point. My father believed homosexuality is a choice--really, an act of perverse willfulness. That's why, even though he was an ACLU member who defended the civil rights of others, on this issue, he wouldn't bend. He's been gone for more than 20 years now, so his time has passed too.

It's my time now, and I say that doing things differently doesn't make them unnatural. It's all natural, because we are all part of the whole.