Philip Nelson » Ranch

Big buck at the Ranch.

Philip — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:28:53 +0000

Had a great weekend at the Ranch and found this AWESOME pic on one of my game cameras. Had to share it!

Book Find: Back to the Basics

Philip — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:48:51 +0000

Half Price Books in San Antonio was having a Memorial Day 20% sale today and it was my duty to check out their stock and expand my EVER GROWING book collection. Picked up two books for my 2009 “Read a Fiction per Month Challenge” but the find of the night was a book published by Readers Digest in 1981 called “Back to the Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills”.

I’m an “info nerd”.. I love to know how things work, how things are made and how they did it in the “olden days” and this book is a exhaustive reference of how to do just about anything that doesn’t require electricity.

Here is a chapter list
1. Land: Buying It – Building It.
2. Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, and Sun
3. Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock
4. Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round
5. Skills and Crafts for House And Homestead
6. Recreation at Home And in the Wild

Preserving food, cutting your own lumber, raising livestock, making cheese, shaping rocks for a stone wall, cooking on an open flame and MUCH more are in this amazing book.

Can’t wait to try my hand at Cheese Making..

Note: The book is now in it’s 3rd edition and is available from Amazon.com

Skinning the Snake

Philip — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:58:15 +0000

When it comes to wildlife, I hate to waste anything that is killed. Since I waited too long, we couldn’t eat the Rattlesnake meat but I decided to try my hand at skinning it. Since I had pretty much blasted it’s head, I lost about 6 inches of savable snake..

First step was to cut off the remainder of the head and mangled area. Then we started snippind down the belly to remove the skin.

My trusty assistant insisted that we wear rubber gloves while skinning the snake.

The girls are actually excited to get in on the fun.

The "fruits" of our work. I thought it was only fitting to wear a GI Joe Cobra shirt while skinning the snake.

Next order of business was to pin the skin to a board and sprinkle salt on the “inside”..

My youngest daughter is incharge of the salt.

Rattlesnake Roundup

Philip — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:09:23 +0000

Hoping to see a trophy buck, we spent the weekend with my Dad and my son at the ranch. At the end of the day, we got more than we bargained for.. I head that dreaded rattle and looked down to see a +3ft long rattlesnake!

To give you some perspective of the size, below is a picture of my 7 year old daughter holding the snake.. You can tell from the mangled head that my Glock did the trick.

My 7 year old daughter checks out the Diamondback.

Let the Paintball Wars Begin…

Philip — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:50:22 +0000

Ok.. For those that know me, you won’t be suprised to hear that I’ve found a new hobby.. Paintball. It started with my son requesting a Paintball birthday party. During my research for his party, I started looking to the costs of buying a paintball gun. WOW! You can really spend some cash on paintball. One of my long time NewTek clients runs an awesome paintball website called War Pig. He gave me some advice on which paintball gun.. Opps.. that should be paintball marker to keep from scaring people away from the sport.. Being the cheapskate that I am, I turned to eBay for a more affordable alternative.

Got a GREAT deal on a Tippman Custom 98 with mask and paintball hopper for just $40 including shipping.

When the gun arrived, a bunch of NewTekkers took turns shooting paintballs at Tim’s outdoor pizza oven.. Sorry Tim.. Wow! What a blast..

Here is a shot of Irene King taking out her aggression on a stack of pallates behind NewTek

On Saturday, I took the paintball gun to the ranch. My son Noel had a great time shooting a little target practice with our new gun. Notice that I added a $4 roll of camo tape to the gun to make it look super sweet..

Noel takes aim at some aggressive boards..

Philip turns into MAD MAX!

Philip — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:33:37 +0000

Today was a Ranch day and on the list of to do’s was building a fence around my valley game feeder…

First stop was Country Boy’s Feed and Supply to pick up cattle panels and fence posts. The wire panels were a little bigger than I had hoped so we had to get creative when loading them…

Here is the drivers view as we headed for the ranch..

I felt like Mad Max driving down the road with the 20′ long welded wire cattle panels strapped to the top of my truck.

: My truck is now battle ready. You can see my cabin on the hill behind the truck.

At the end of a hard days work, the fence around the feeder is done.. The hogs will HOPEFULLY have a hard time getting in there to steal food from the Elk and Deer!