Growing Home: Freeze-dryer cleanout, regular deer season prep and progress on hickory top

First cleaning of the freeze-dryers vacuum pump

I don't know how many batches we have put through the freeze-dryer, but it was definitely past time to open up the vacuum-pump for a cleaning! I didn't get any pictures of how filthy the innards were, but if you look to the back edge in the pictures below, you will get some idea. I scraped alot of gunk and rust out of the pump and cleaned it as best I could with paper towels.

See the gunk between the baffle plate and the body? That's pretty much what the entire inside looked like when I first opened it!

The cover cleaned ok - but the sight glass was hard to clean. It really didn't get very clean....

More apples!

After cleaning, I added clean oil (and ordered more oil filters - they evidently take WEEKS to ship!) and we then did another batch of apples.

This is what they look like going into the freeze-dryer.

Regular-hunting season preparations

There was a major wind storm for 2-3 days last week that seriously had me concerned that my little blinds would be in the next state. I was surprised to find that two of the blinds didnt move at all! One blew further into the woods but didn't sustain any damage.

This blind is the closest to the house and you would think that I would see the fewest number of deer here - but NO! This blind gets plenty of traffic! I think it is because it is on the way from the fields to the forest.

I actually drew a bead on a deer with the crossbow while in this blind!

The view from just in front of the blind

This is the blind that blew away. I moved it back to its original position...

Then I moved it again..

And finally moved it to behind this pile of brush (its not there yet in this picture)

The "deep" woods blind (I think - they all look alike...)

After i got the blinds taken care of and the trail-cams setup again, I started to get ready to sight in my .30-06 rifle. I haven't used it in years and I was a bit anxious to shoot it. I didn't want to shoot it out in the fields in the clearing because I was afraid that the sound would carry and scare the deer. So I set up a target at 25 yards and sighted in.

There should be a orange surveyors flag somewhere in this picture! Anyway, I positioned myself at the edge of the woodshed to take the shots.

You can almost see the target at 100 yards - dead center in this picture.

At 100 yards. Well, i hit the target anyways! LOL

The 25 yard shots were damn nice.

All of my ammo is FMJ! I will have to go get some hollow-points or some kind of expanding bullet. It's not legal to hunt with FMJ

My FMJ bullets! Cheap surplus from god-knows-when

More hickory milling

I milled up the top portion of the hickory log this weekend. I got less useful wood than I was hoping. There were more bugs and the tree had more branches up high which caused some defects.