Hog Haulin', Kitchen Cookin', The Final Day
After multiple unsuccessful attempts over the weekend to haul the remaining pigs from the woods back to the barn, on Monday we finally accomplished our task. It took three trips and a lot of walking up and down the hillside in the woods, but we got them. I doubt we could’ve without Hallie and Hasten. Our third trip was for a sole stubborn hog. After finally getting him loaded, Hasten insisted on riding in the trailer with him back to the barn. On Tuesday morning, I hauled seven of the biggest hogs to the processor.
Amy spent lots of time in the kitchens this week. In the kitchen at home preparing meals for our family. In the on-farm kitchen at the barn preparing meals for you. In addition to regular beef bone broth and chicken bone broth making, it had been a while since we fired up the smoker. While I was gone Tuesday, she trimmed and seasoned four beef briskets and three Boston Butts. After wrestling practice that evening, I put them on the smoker. On Wednesday after teaching the kids, Amy pulled the pork and packaged it. Later I helped her package the smoked brisket as she sliced it. If you’re trying to figure out a quick and easy way to feed guests local farm foods over the holidays, ORVF pulled pork is hard to beat.
With Christmas orders coming in, we’re spending some extra time in the freezers filling orders. Thanks to you who continually eat ORVF meats. And a big thanks to you who gift ORVF meats to family and friends over the holidays.
On a positive note, after nearly two months in the shop, the Transit meat hauler is back on the delivery route. On a not so positive note, the repair bill. Ha. Amy immediately started calculating how many months of deliveries it would take to cover the cost. We’re glad to have it back on the road. And fingers crossed it carries us and coolers of meat on down the road for years to come.
While farming and on the road this week, I listened to The Final Day by William R. Forstchen, which is the third sequel to One Second After.
“We and others warned and were ignored…”
“Such had it been. And whether with hope or fear, such it would always be. There had been a chance to have prevented it all, but all the voices who had warned of its coming had been ignored.”
“We have to hold to our oaths to protect The Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.”
“It was the sick mathematics of living versus dying. Who is the inner elite who cared no more for their duty and moral responsibility and thought only of themselves?”
“In an earlier age, a world long ago, those standing in the hallway would’ve been described as a ragtag looking bunch at best. Winter camo made out of bedsheets, most of the young men unshaved, all of them thin, wiry after two and a half years of privation and two deadly campaigns behind them… eyes cold and obviously expecting that before the day was out, it would turn into a fight to the death, and though scared were ready to face it.”
“We’ve lost so much… But then again, maybe we are learning again about the simple gifts of still being alive, the gifts of a warm filling meal, family and friends together… a family entertaining themselves while the cold wind of winter swept down from out of the mountains and across icicle coated orchards and snow drifted fields beyond. He realized that at this moment, whatever was about to come, it was good to be alive.”
Have a good week.
Will