Chasing Pigs, Last Batch of Chicks
On Monday I hit a lick bush hogging.
Tuesday was our 14th wedding anniversary. I spent a good portion of it preparing a new pig paddock: weed whacking the perimeter, running hoses, setting up the water, putting up the hot wire. Amy started a batch of beef bone broth and sharpened knives for processing. That afternoon we caught chicks in the brooder to take to the shelters in the field. Then crated almost 200 mature chickens in the field for processing the following day. Not the most romantic anniversary, but family dinner around the table that night made it all worthwhile.
On Wednesday we had all the chickens packaged and in the freezers by 2:00 that afternoon. Then a couple rounds of hay bale tag before hauling a group of pigs from the barn out to the newly made paddock in the woods. Although we had a training hot wire set up for the pigs in the barn, they apparently were not well trained. I’d say almost half of them ran through the wire and got out. The energy previously exerted chasing kids playing hay bale tag, I wish I had saved for chasing pigs. Ha. Then it rained.
On Thursday we got our last batch of baby chicks for the year. More pig chasing. That afternoon Amy and I made our first quarterly delivery to new location in West Jefferson, NC. We can raise a lot of good meat, but it all hinges on families and individuals in our region who value local pasture raised meats. Most of our deliveries begin with an individual telling friends and neighbors about our farm. We can’t thank y’all enough for valuing what we produce and telling others in your community. Ice cream on the way home. We’ll call it an anniversary date. Then more pig chasing through the woods when we got back home.
More listening to UNDISCOVERED SELF by C.G. Jung.
“The evil that comes to light in man and that undoubtedly dwells within him is of gigantic proportions, so that for the church to talk of 'original sin’ and to trace it back to Adam’s relatively innocent slip up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated. Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his consciousness knows of himself, he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible things have happened and still go on happening, but it is always ‘the others’ who do them.”
“The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the obscure misgivings are there before our eyes if only we would see. Man has done these things. I am a man who has his share of human nature; therefore, I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time… None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.”
“It would be an insufferable thought that we had to take personal responsibility for so much guiltiness. We therefore prefer to localize the evil with individual criminals or groups of criminals while washing our hands in innocence and ignoring the general proclivity to evil.”
“A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite. It is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless, and in need of support, the very ground and motive of dependence. The perfect has no need of the other, but weakness has, for it seeks support…”
“Where love stops, power begins. And violence. And terror.”
“Happiness and contentment, equability of soul and meaningfulness of life, these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a state, which on the one hand is nothing but a convention of independent individuals and on the other continually threatens to paralyze and suppress the individual.”
“I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being, that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.”
God, with his infinite power, does not seek to tyrannically rule over populations by force. Rather, he gives the individual the freedom to choose direction. Thus allowing his power to flow out into the world through the individuals who choose to walk with him.
Have a good week.
Will