Free In Idaho!

The Idaho Automatic Weapons Collectors (IAWCA) will be holding their first shoot of the year this Saturday.  The St Paddy’s Day Fun Shoot is, as the name says, a get out and shoot fun time, to blow off the cobwebs, so to speak.   As usual, shooters and spectators are welcome.  Range fee will be $20 for IAWCA club members, $30 for non-members.  Spectators are free.  You don’t need a full auto for this shoot either.  There will be both full and semi weapons, old military bolties, and probably a few high power rifles as well.  Among the usual “interesting targets” this year will be a pick up truck.

The event is this Saturday, March 13th.  Registration and set-up begin at 10AM, a mandatory safety meeting will begin at 11:30, and the first “commence firing” command will be given at noon.  Once again, the Black’s Creek Rifle Range just south of Boise will be the site.  Come on out!  See how long that pickup lasts against a couple belt-feds and a bunch of shoulder fired machine guns.  What else do you have to do Saturday, clean the garage?

Happy is when you come home and find the Brown Truck Of Happiness has brought you garden goodies!  For all you gunnies out there, it doesn’t only bring things from Midway, Brownells, and all those other C & R and CMP type places… sometimes it comes from garden spots, like Maine.  Who knew?

I love March.  The seed catalog orders are arriving.  The sun is actually warm in the afternoon.  I’ve been working on prepping the raised beds, and building some new trellises for the beans, cukes, and cantaloupes.  It was 62 degrees out there yestereday!  I’m so sick of layered clothing I could spit.  And yet, with all the promise of Spring, we’re still planning to get a snowshoeing date later this week.  We can see the lights of the ski hill from our backyard, and they still call to us.

March is when baby chicks start showing up at the feed stores.  I went to “chicken class” at one of the local stores this past Saturday morning.  I told you about the Victory Garden classes we’re taking, and how full it was.  Well, the chicken class was even bigger.  By the time the class started it was standing room only in the stockroom of the feed store.  They had around 50 or 60 folding chairs set out, all the wheeled chairs from their office, bales of pine bedding set out, and when they couldn’t get any more in the room (I counted 76 people) they turned away another 25 folks who couldn’t get in (they’re going to schedule another class later).  I think this whole backyard garden and backyard chicken thing is going to be big this summer, in ways that it hasn’t in the past.   Bing vegetable gardening, square foot gardening, and backyard chickens, and you’ll find a ton of great information from the hardcore folks who do it every year and always have.  And of course, newbies join in every year as well.  But this year, something is different. 

When I sat down, the man next to me asked “how many head are you running in your herd?”  Cracked me up.  I told him two.  He and his wife have 30, but they live on a small acreage and let their flock free-range.  The experience range in the class was all over the board.  And after the hour long class, the Q & A went another half hour or so.  I understand that a large number of the pre-order for chicks at this store is already promised out to customers, and a lot more names went on the list Saturday morning.  Chicks may be scarce this spring.  The economy and the dark clouds on the horizon have more than the normal number of folks thinking about how they can produce some of their food from their own yards.  Our paper had an article about backyard chickens last year, and my Sweetie’s cousin sent us an article last fall from the paper in her large Texas city.  How is it in your town?

Another thing I like about March is all the shows coming up at the fairgrounds.  This weekend it’s the Sportsman’s Show.   I think I need to go to “Mule Deer College”, and I’ll see if they have an archery class as well.  I wonder if there’s a turkey hunting class too?  Hmmm… I’d better get there early Saturday. 

The week after that it’s the biggest indoor car show of the year, the Boise Roadster Show.  We never miss it.  By the way, it’s been fun around town the last few days with this spate of “warm” weather we’ve been having.  Nice toy cars are popping out like crocuses all over.  Yesterday, to go with all the Vettes I saw, there was a gorgeous convertible GTO, a sweet first year convertible Malibu, and a very tasty ‘37 Ford driving around.  I oughta dust off the ‘56 and see if it still runs, eh?  Right.  Put it on the list.

That same weekend is the St Paddy’s Day shoot that IAWCA puts on.  That’s the first range day of the year and it’s a great way to clear the cobwebs if you haven’t already.  What’s the old saying?  “Happiness is a warm beltfed”… Let’s see, what’s in the safe that I haven’t shot all winter?  (no, I don’t have a beltfed)

Then there’s the Home and Garden Show.  Then the flea market.  Then it’ll be April.  Then the Semi-Auto Match, and the CMP matches start, and then the gun show.  And I have to figure out how to get all the plantings done… whew.  I love March.

Did I mention Girl Scout Cookies?

Picked up the chickens yesterday and brought them home.  They seem to approve of their new digs, the food’s ok, and the grass is a treat.  I think they settled in pretty easily, although the dinky dog makes them nervous, even though they both out-weigh him by a couple of pounds.  Must be that pointy little muzzle.  But the best part is, the instant gratification of 2 eggs on the first day. 

Or should I say “employees”?  I was coasting along at a leisurely pace, building this in the garage, thinking I had plenty of time until we got chicks and raised them awhile.  Then some friends told us they were moving and asked if we wanted a couple layers right now?  Why certainly!

Despite the blizzards on the East Coast and the 11 inches of snow in Dallas yesterday, here in the SW corner of Idaho we have a fairly mild winter happening.  Yes, the snowshoes are in the back of the truck, but it seems we’re thinking more about gardening than snow sports right now.  The weather guy is talking about temps in the low 50’s this weekend, which is 5 or more degrees warmer than average.  Sweet!

My Sweetie is finishing up the Master Gardener course.  All winter she has been telling me “you should do this class, you’d love it”.  So when one of her instructors mentioned a “Victory Gardens” class scheduled for this February and March, we decided we should take it together.  After all, even though we have gardened and canned and preserved for many years, we’re not that smart and we seem to be in a rut of sorts.  We’ve not really pursued ways to maximize what we do in the garden.   Maybe we’re odd that way?  Some gardeners get really obsessed with it all, but we’ve avoided that.  Too much else going on?  Perhaps… but this year we want to step up.

The first class was last night and I have to say, I was a little taken back by how many folks showed up.  I believe there were more than 50 there.  The experience level ranged from old-timer to farmers to backyard gardeners to complete newbies.  Some folks were new to Idaho, coming from other states with different climates, and were trying to get up to speed fast on how to be successful here in the high desert.  Others, like us, are trying to learn new stuff to expand our bag of tricks and get the most out of what we have to work with.  

I was also a little surprised by how many of our classmates mentioned things like “grow all of my own food”, preparedness, self-sufficiency, and worry about the economy as their motivation for coming to this class.  I expected reasons like “I like plants” and “I want to grow tomatoes”, but that wasn’t really the case.  Our instructor mentioned that during the WWII years, Victory gardens accounted for as much as a third of the national consumption of fruits and vegetables.  Now that is impressive!  Could be, our country could do that again… who knows?  If not the country, it will be so at our house.

The other thing we learned is that it’s time to plan.  We got lots of printed stuff to help with that, and that’s going to make a big difference this year.  In the past our gardens have “happened”.  This year, they’re going to be “planned”.  We’ll do some from seed, like the carrots, beans, lettuce and such, but buy started things when we only need a few plants, like tomatoes and cantaloupes.  We’ll have four raised beds at the house this year, and we hope to use a little space in a family member’s larger homestead garden for a few spuds.  Oh, and we’re going to put some laying hens pet chickens in the mix this year.  The coop is built and painted.  I’m waiting for the weekend to get it roofed and build a small enclosed run.  We were planning to start with chicks from the farm store, but some friends are moving and giving away their flock, so by this time next week we’ll have a couple hens from them that are already laying.  We still plan on raising chicks but that’ll give us eggs right away instead of having to wait months for the chicks to grow up. 

Last year we had fresh strawberries for breakfast from our garden 30 times.  The plants doubled, so this year we should have many more.  We harvested 188 tomatoes, which we ate “fresh” all the way to Thanksgiving, and we still have lots of dried in the pantry.  There are still a few onions in the garage, and potatoes.   Couple dozen cukes, and near twice that for zucchini (I need to teach my Sweetie to give the zucchini for gifts instead of the dried apples), many dinners of fresh beans, and we never did eat all the carrots.  This year we are planning for much more and there should be a blog post or two about our expanding outdoor growing adventures.  We’re anxious to get growing.  Hurry Spring!

Yeah, sometimes life gets very full.  My Sweetie and I have put more than 1000 miles on the truck over the last few days.  We took advantage of some easy weather to take care of some business in the north part of the state.  My apologies for the empty blog… the computer didn’t make the trip with us.  Yes, I planned it that way.  One of the goals this year is to actually “I can quit any time - I really don’t need it”.  Leaving the computer home was very nice. 

One of the things we found out is that right at the moment there isn’t near as much snow up north as there should be.  Very easy winter so far.  Here’s what it looked like last March at the Boomershoot site.  Here’s what it looked like Sunday.  Yeah, it can change in a minute up here, but so far, we’re more worried about a too early Spring than we are too much snow.

I feel for all you folks back East.  We’ve had a pretty easy Winter so far.

Today was the 9th Annual Frozen Chosin M1 Garand Match presented by the Nampa Rod and Gun Club in Nampa, Idaho.  This end of January event is one of those “start the new year” matches that many of the high power and CMP shooters look forward to, since there haven’t been any matches since the fall.  This year’s event drew a great crowd of battle rifle enthusiasts out to the frozen, windswept sagebrush to see if they remember how to shoot.

The match consists of two stages, both shot prone (no rests) at 200 yards with Korean War era rifles with iron sights.  M1 Garands, a couple of carbines, a 1903, an SKS or two, an AK, and a  couple of Mosins made for a diverse field.  Stage one was 16 full sized E type targets all raised at once.  Each four shooter team had 2 minutes to put as many rounds down range as possible, with the goal of hitting every target as many times as possible (but at least once per target).  1 point for each hit, and minus 10 for each target missed.  Stage two was more difficult in that the targets were prone F type silhouettes, raised in pairs, four pairs at a time.  These were exposed for 30 seconds then dropped, with the other four pairs raised for 30 seconds.  Lather, rinse, repeat, for 2 minutes, sending as many rounds down range as you can.

Oh.  I forgot to mention the walking target.  During the prone targets’ exposure there was a constantly “walking” E type target, worth 2 points per hit (or minus 20 for a total miss).  Needless to say, this walking target figured prominently in most team strategies.  Each team member was limited to 100 rounds for both stages, and to make things interesting there was a roughly 12 mph cross to quartering wind “complimenting” the very flat lighting.  Actually, these are pretty good conditions for this match.  Every “old-timer” had a story about the year it was 20 degrees, or the one it snowed all day, or the time it was so foggy nobody could see the target line.

Our team didn’t win, although we managed to shoot better than some of the teams.  I’m not sure that we expected to place high, considering the very generous prize promised to the match winners… a K98 Mauser redone by the Israelis to 7.62 Nato, one for each member of the team.  The really good shooters didn’t stay home today with those on the line.  17 teams turned out and the competition at the top was fierce, and it was tied for much of the match. 

I didn’t see who the winning team was, but we did get to see them shoot.  All the teams took their turn in the pit working targets.  Sometime during our shift in the pit the winners took their turn, and it was evident watching the targets from down below.  “Wow, look at the guy on target 5!”  followed by “yeah, and his buddy on 9 and 10 is putting on a clinic!”   I’ve never worked the hot end of a rifle match from the pit.  The *crack* of the bullet going overhead, followed by the thump into the dirt berm, then the distant report of the shot from the line was a new experience for me.  And I have to admit, even with a scope I have a difficult time watching the targets from the spectator area 220 or so yards away.  But watching the holes appear from directly below the targets was fun.  And being out of the wind for an hour or so was wonderful.

Good job, Nampa Rod and Gun Club, it was a great saturday of shooting!  Lord willing, I want to shoot it again next year.  And we’re already talking about how to change our stategy!

I received an email with the schedule for this year’s CMP Rifle Match schedule.  This is a standard CMP match, consisting of four targets at 200 yards.  10 rounds slow standing, 10 rounds rapid sitting or kneeling, 10 rounds rapid prone, and 20 rounds slow prone, with 2 sighters on each stage.  Match Rifles or Service rifles with iron sights (Garands, ARs, and M1As are most common, but hey, it’s casual so bring what you have, all shooters are welcome).

The matches will be on the first Tuesday of each month, beginning in April, except the second Tuesday in July and August due to schedule conflicts.

April 6th

May 4th

June 1st

July 13th

August 10th

September 7th

Matches take place at the Black’s Creek Rifle Range and registration starts at 5:30PM, with shooting starting at 6PM. Cost is only $12, bring your own ammo.

I made it to half of the matches last summer and I really enjoyed it. This year I will be trying to make the whole series. And don’t be intimidated if you’ve never shot a competion before, just come on out. Sure, there are some great shooters in the match rifle class, scoring in the high 400’s, but the scores in the Service Garand class range from the 300’s down to the 100’s. This is a great opportunity to shoot your first competion in a very casual atmosphere with some great company at a great range.  Shoot a lot and just enjoy yourself. Come on out and try it!