Transit Towing, End of Season Celebration, Kidless
Multiple mornings of scrapping ice of the windshields. I guess it’s that time of year. Cool enough to get the outdoor wood stove fired up. We’ll be burning wood for the next 6-7 months. A little cutting and hauling firewood this week but not as much as I had planned.
We thought we got the transit van squared away and ready to get back on the road. We thought wrong. I loaded it up full of coolers at 5:30 Saturday morning for Amy to take it to the Abingdon Farmers Market. It made it down there just fine. Coming back home was the problem. Thanks to the help of other farmers at the market, Amy was able to get the van started in hopes that it would get the girls and the coolers of meat back home. Despite its spontaneous shaking, lack of power, and “acting funny” as Amy described, the transit made it almost halfway home before finally declaring it wasn’t going to make it any more. Hasten and I came in the Suburban to get them off the side of the exit ramp at exit 32. The tow truck came shortly after.
The diagnosis wasn’t good. Hoping it would be as simple as replacing a couple sensors, our mechanic sadly reported the news we were afraid to hear: It was going to take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. Possibly needing the motor replaced. Let’s hope not. Packing coolers back in the old suburban will work in most cases for the time being, but it doesn’t have room for all the Abingdon herd shares needing to be delivered tomorrow. Looks like I’ll be taking the truck full of coolers to the market tomorrow.
Even after the breakdown and towing, Saturday evening turned into the highlight of the week. Amy put on a couple pots of chili using ORVF chicken and ground beef, and I threw a bunch of ORVF chicken wings on the smoker (and left them cooking on the smoker while going to pick up the girls from the side of the highway). That evening most of our chicken processing crew came over for some fellowship, food, and fun around the fire. It was a good time.
Amy and I have been kidless all week. Amy’s parents, wanting to spend their vacation with grandkids, took all four back to Knoxville with them after church on Sunday, giving both Amy and the kids a much needed Fall break from school. I think we missed them more than they missed us. They had a big time with their Papaw, KK, and cousins. Though we missed them, it was nice to have some peace and quiet and time to ourselves. A flashback to the old days of life before kids.
After church Sunday, Amy and I got cows and pigs in the barn for an early departure for the processor Monday morning. Or so we thought. After getting the cows and pigs loaded and ready to pull out towards NC at a little after 6:00 Monday morning, I got a message from the processor that they had a main water line problem and couldn’t take any animals until Tuesday. At least I wasn’t already on in route. Unload the trailer. Re-group and re-plan the week. Reload the trailer and on the road to the processor at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning.
With chicken season behind us, it’s nice to have a break from moving chicken shelters everyday. I pulled chicken shelters a total length of about 5.5 miles this season. Still moving one shelter of growing egg layers to fresh grass daily.
Amy and I didn’t get as many projects checked off our farming list this week as we hoped. We did, however, get another date for the year checked off after our meat delivery to Bristol and Kingsport yesterday evening. Amy made more beef broth and chicken broth in addition to rendering leaf fat into pork lard and rendering beef kidney fat into tallow. She has a list of pre-ordered lard and tallow she’ll be filling today before putting the remaining inventory on the website.
On the road to the processor I finished listening to “The Warrior Poet Way” by John Lovell. Here’s a few more quotes that stood out to me:
“Should we not expect men to challenge evil, embrace what is good, and fight to protect it? Shouldn’t we be ready to rock the boat and stand unflinchingly against a world gone wrong?… To be a good man, you must become a paradox: strong but self-controlled, violent but gentle, ready to go to war one minute and prepared to give piggy back rides the next. This kind of man is fierce in word and deed, while remaining compassionate and humble. He is fully soldier, fully lover, whole man. This is what I call the warrior poet, and it is the standard required of all men.”
“Deep down I know I can be more, but often this gap between who I am and ought to be feels like too much to bridge.”
In his chapter about “facing death before you die,” Lovell writes, “If you’re able to laugh, it means you’re still alive. Graveyard humor helps men weather the storms of life and reminds us that we’re here, for now.”
About his kids, “They spend a lot of their time with us, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We are raising our own kids, not the state or a screen. Our children are not completely left to their own devices, but they do get to experience a tremendous amount of freedom within good boundaries.”
“When it comes to educating a child’s mind, if you have helped them fall in love with reading, then you have done an amazing job.”
“Children, I think, would be healthier if they were allowed to struggle a little more. If we let them learn to fail and get back up again, they’d be stronger and more resilient than if we continue to insulate them from hardship and keep handing out participation trophies.”
“We need mothers to keep our boys alive, and we need fathers to make them hard to kill. Because a boy who is coddled, does not grow up to be a good strong man.”
“We’re not scared because we’re ready. The man with the boat isn’t as afraid of drowning as the man treading water.”
Have a good week.
Will