Freezer Fun, Late Night Canning
Spending time sorting meat and filling orders is a pretty regular part of what we do, but I think we did more freezer work this week than any week prior to. Monday afternoon it was sorting through chicken and making sure we have enough parts set aside to fill chicken shares through the off season. We’re getting close. Tuesday it was filling pork shares, wiping us out of mild shares. Wednesday was beef shares, which wiped us out of ground beef. And yesterday we filled orders for Amy’s Carolina delivery today plus orders and coolers for the Abingdon Farmers Market tomorrow.
After filling pork shares, we didn’t have enough sausage left to fill all extra orders. Sorry to those who have been patiently asking for it. You are no more disappointed than our 5 year old daughter Wren. Our family typically eats a pound of sausage with eggs everyday for lunch. Since running out of mild last month, Wren has been asking everyday when we can have sausage again. With a restocking of ORVF pork last week, only to run out again this week. This is typically when we say, “If you want sausage, join the ORVF pork herd shares,” but right now our pork shares are at capacity. We’ll need to increase our hog numbers before opening additional pork shares spots. Speaking of adding pigs to the farm, we did get couple more new additions this week. Hopefully we’ll be welcoming more pigs to the farm next week as well.
Also pig related, pigs are known for being smelly and making a mess. They certainly made an unexpected mess of the barn early in the week. The water stays on to the pig waterer all the time with a float valve to cut the water off when it’s full, while allowing water to fill it back up as they drink it down. There’s a rubber plug in the waterer that can be removed for draining. Apparently the pigs somehow got the plug loose one evening. Which drained the tank. Which left the water on all night long. Instead of filling up the tank, the water filled up the whole barn. What a mess! Sometimes I wonder why I even try to plan out my week. Ha. Always something.
Week two of homeschooling went well. I miss having my chicken helpers in the mornings, but I also enjoy the time to myself. Coming back from the Abingdon Farmers Market with a crate full of local tomatoes, one of their homeschool projects this week was canning pasta sauce and salsa. After their school day and then freezer work in the afternoon, Wednesday evening she had all four of them in the kitchen slicing and dicing tomatoes. They each had their little job and were glad to be a part of the process. As with most of our projects, this one took longer than anticipated. Amy finally finished the canning just before midnight.
Thankful for over a half inch of rain yesterday.
Moving chickens, I’ve been listening to BEYOND ORDER by Jordan B. Peterson. In rule 3 “Do Not Hide Unwanted Things in the Fog,” he talks about the importance of confronting relational issues rather than ignoring them in hopes of avoiding conflict. We tell ourselves to avoid conflict for the sake of the relationship, but he notes that the longevity of the relationship suffers when issues, even minor ones, are not addressed.
“Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not… Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel’s back, and that is particularly true for those daily events that everyone is prone to regard as trivial, even the plates on which you eat your lunch. Life is what repeats, and it is worth getting ‘what repeats’ right.”
A couple more from what I’ve listened to so far:
“That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.”
“If you want to become invaluable in a workplace, in any community, just do the useful things no one else is doing. Arrive earlier and leave later than your compatriots… Work when you are working, instead of looking like you are working.”
“The ultimate question of man is not who we are but who we could be.”
Have a good week.
Will