Cooler Packing, Homeschool Prepping, The Republic
Saturday was our biggest meat delivery day of the month. Amy took herd shares and pre-orders along with other beef, pork, and chicken to sell at the Abingdon Farmers Market while I delivered herd shares and pre-orders to the Marion Farmers Market. Amy’s transit van was packed as full as its ever been. Between the two deliveries, we had to use every cooler we had, plus a few disposable foam coolers. It took about five hours of packing coolers on Friday to prepare for the deliveries. We had already filled the shares weeks ago after getting meat back from the processor, but getting them all into coolers and knowing whose is in which one takes a good bit of time and thought to prepare for. Amy is always a little on edge before these big days, hoping she has made all the right adjustments and doesn’t forget anything. I’m thankful for Amy’s organizational mind and ability to keep up with it all. I’m also thankful for all you who have renewed your herd shares and signed up for another year ORVF meats. With Abingdon herd shares growing, she’s been thinking about adding another Abingdon delivery option to see if that would be more convenient for some folks. Maybe on a Monday evening. We’ll see.
When we went out to move chickens Monday morning, we noticed the chickens had some visitors. Instead of the unwelcome foxes and skunks that have been consistently visiting the chickens at night, this time they were visited by some of our pigs that escaped from the woods and journeyed about 200 yards to pay the chickens a visit. The electric wire in the woods had come unhooked. We fixed the fence and finally got them all back in.
Our processing crew was about half the size as it has been, but everyone worked twice as hard and still got all the chickens in the freezer by mid afternoon. This time with no plucker problems, thankfully. Ever grateful for friends coming out to help.
Amy has been doing a lot of homeschool planning for this coming school year. Researching different options and choosing which curriculums to go with. There’s a lot to choose from. She’s a good teacher, and our kids’ educations are high on our priority list. But it’s hard to do everything. She’s nervous about her ability to keep up with the cabins, the farm stuff, the house, and the schooling. Their school will start in September, so we have a week or so to prepare and figure out our new schedules. It’s looking like I’m going to be their PE teacher this year. It’s also looking like Carter is going to be doing a lot more morning farm work with me.
If prepping for teaching our kids wasn’t enough, Amy has also been teaching an online course for Barn2Door, trying to help other farmers connect to people through email and Mailchimp. I think she has one more class to teach next week.
Bush hogging on the tractor this week, I’ve been listening to “The Republic” by Plato. It’s a dialogue between Socrates and others discussing justice, philosophy, governance, and the ideal society. Not just in discovering the ideal society, but in preserving and maintaining it. The ideal society produces blessings and abundance for all. The comfort of those blessings is what then leads to its downfall. Contentment grows to greed. Greed grows to the pursuit of power to accomplish its gains at the expense of others. Into something far from ideal in which it started.
“In what manner does tyranny arise? That it has a democratic origin is evident… And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy?”
“There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of moderation can not exist together in citizens of the same state to any considerable extent. One or the other will be disregarded… And in oligarchical states, from the general spread of carelessness and extravagance, men of good family have often been reduced to beggary.”
“The evil blazes up like a fire… (As a solution) Let there be a general rule that everyone shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less of this scandalous money making and the evils of which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the state.”
“A commotion may arise within in the same way. Wherever there is weakness in the state, there is also likely to be illness… And then the state falls sick and is at war with herself. And maybe at times distracted, even when there is no external cause… And then democracy comes into being, after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power.”
“And now what is their manner of life? And what sort of government have they? For as the government is, such will be the man… In the first place, are they not free? And is not the city full of freedom and frankness? A man may say and do what he likes?… And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases. Then in this kind of state there will be the greatest variety of human natures? This then seems likely to be the fairest of states, being like an embroidered robe… There will be no better in which to look for a government. Why? Because of the liberty which reigns there.”
Have a good week.
Will