A Confluence of Events

9/26/08 - 6th Day - Late Afternoon. Preparation of the Sabbath. Well, I never did get around to posting the Bunky Awards winners, but I will try my best to get on that early next week. A confluence of events occured, as I mentioned in my last post, which brought about a flurry of canning activity around here involving the whole family. In addition to the windfall of the large amounts of inexpensive tomatoes, our hens starting increasing their egg production this week. Providentially, at about the same time we received a surprising call from our "milk ladies" (the ladies from whom we used to get good, fresh, raw milk) saying that their cows were now back "online" and they were getting an oversupply of milk. So we arranged to take them a supply of eggs in exchange for 4 gallons of whole milk. This led to us making butter from the milk, then canning the butter and 4 half gallons of milk in addition to our tomatoes. This week we put up somewhere around 80 quarts of tomato product, including bloody mary mix, salsa, and spaghetti sauce. I went back to Sligers Produce in Brownwood today and they still have a pretty large amount of tomatoes left. We definitely could put up some more spaghetti sauce and salsa, so if I have time next week I might go buy a few more flats. We are also (Lord Willing) going to go get 4 more gallons of milk from the milk ladies on the Lord's Day so we can put up some more milk and butter. After that, we will start working on cheese and sour cream - two of our favorite farm products.

Today, out of necessity, I was re-arranging our root cellar and I thought about how quickly it was filling up. As is expected on an off-grid farm, we are particularly low in stored meat, and we were remarkably low on vegetables and other canned goods until this week. Usually, around this time of year, a larder will be low on meats because butchering is usually done in the late fall or winter, and the vegetable harvest is usually overflowing. Because of our drought year, we are where we expected to be on meats (very low), and before our tomato windfall, we were very low on vegetables as well. We are doing very well on fruits, jams, and jellies. On the hoof we have 8 or 9 cattle, of which one steer (Pedro) is scheduled to go to the butcher on October 8th.


This is a picture of Pedro. Pedro was our first full-blooded Longhorn born to us here on the land. He was born about 3 weeks or so premature and we bottle fed him for awhile before he was able to reach and start suckling on his momma. He has always been a little fella, and at about 25 months old he is about the same size as some of our one-year-olds. But it is time for him to go, and we can use the beef and hamburger to put into storage.

Also on the hoof we have the two pigs, both of whom we hope are pregnant and will drop before Ranchfest. One of them (Mimi) we will butcher some time in late November. We also have two goats which will be butchered (Lord willing) in December or January. If the Lord wills it, our Holstein should drop a calf in February or early March, which means we will be getting all of our own milk and dairy products from right here on the ranch., and if all goes well, we will have some more pigs ready to be butchered before the cold weather goes away in March.

So, that is our plan. It is all a process and we take one day at a time. We make our plans, and the Lord directs our feet.

In the meantime...

a bunch of rich politicians are going to be robbing their constituency of over $700 Billion in order to maintain a failed economic system which was built on and supports a failed industrial system - all so that rich bankers won't lose their yachts, and fat, dumb colonized urbanites won't have to give up their Blackberrys and Iphones as they grow more and more dependent on the hologram of freedom, liberty, and prosperity all defined and explained to them in the Holy Bible.

Peace,

Michael Bunker