Christmas Break 2013

During this break from school, with all the kids being around and without as much direction as they are accustomed to, I felt that they needed some encouragement to get along with each other, as direction-less children often lead to conflict.  We packed up and headed to Panera Bread for breakfast that first Saturday morning, and they suffered through Daddy lecturing on and on and on and on and on about being Generous, about being Selfless, but mostly about being Respectful Of Each Other.  I told them that any time we hear angry yelling, hitting, or arguing, that was an indication of 2 people handling conflict incorrectly.  The correct was is to state: "It feels you are being disrespectful toward me because..."  To which the answer is ALWAYS: "I'm sorry that you feel that I was being disrespectful; I will stop doing...", even if they feel that they weren't being disrespectful.
The reason for that is because the point I'm trying to get across to these kids is that it is really about how our actions make the other people in our lives feel, not our intentions.  I know, this seems a little elemental, but in our house there seems to be a lot of conflict. We look at friends and family who have similar sized and aged kids as we, and are rather amazed at the lack of conflict in their home.  I don't understand this; is it me? Or is it just my DNA structure that I have passed down to my kids, the DNA that doesn't mind conflict?  Anyway, this is my experiment, it seems to be going well the first 5-6 days.  The nice thing of it is, the lack of structured days allows those who don't catch the vision to sit in their chairs quietly for a period of time, or in extreme cases, in their room for extended lengths of time.  We are usually busy enough that neither one of these two options are very viable...
Mostly, I posted this to look back and see; to be able to remind myself of doing this, and to gauge the effectiveness.  At some point in time, my kids will read it and roll their eyes and say "Oh yeah, I remember THAT Christmas break!"

Butcher day

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was this little piggy's butcher day.  This was the first time that I have slaughtered a hog with the intention of butchering it.  I did it twice last year, with pigs half this one's size, and just cooked the whole hog. This year, even my smoker trailer couldn't have accommodated this whole hog; it weighed in at 340 pounds!!!  That is around a third larger than the average butcher weight of 225.  He was remarkably not very fatty; he was in great shape from spending most of his life with plenty of room to run around.  I had friend James Alongi along to help, and good thing, too.  Jason Nather also swung by to chat and wound up elbow deep in pig blood; he couldn't help himself from jumping in.

Below is the carcass, ready to be reduced into primal cuts.

One side of pork belly:

I know this is a funny picture; but I included it, because it is me illustrating out loud how stinking heavy just one of  these hams were.  It was nearly everything I had to haul it across the room.

My kiddos, on the job! Pulling all the little scraps off the bones for the "grind."

Bacons and Hams brining away in the fridge, getting ready for the smoker next week.

We did something different this year, Wifey even got on board with it.  We rendered lard!  The by-productof making lard is cracklings, which I ordinarily love, but I didn't feel so great when I woke up this morning, so when I walked into the butcher room to check on them; I about lost my cookies.  The smell of the fat rendering overnight in a little room was a little overpowering for someone who is sick.

And of course, the lard, gelling nicely.  

Anyway, this proved to be a bit more difficult than I expected, but in a sense, I expected that, and didn't care.  I know I get in over my head on most of my projects, but I usually find my way out of them okay...

A feckless moment!

Wednesday, in honor of my 14th anniversary, Wifey and I decide to go out to coffee together first thing in the morning. She was coming into town anyway to work in the office, so I told her I would take the kids to school, since I wasn't going in directly to the office; I wasn't in my usual hurry.  I got the kids all loaded up in my pickup and while giving them my usual schtick and jive, this time about not being able to find the way to their school, since I'd not taken them before, and hoping to not forget to stop and let them out, etc. I didn't hardly realize it, but the 2 youngest boys were eating it up, believing it. So after it dawned on me that they were believing it, I took a "wrong" turn, avoiding the highway, and went a way that they had never gone before.

This was a total blast because the boys were in the back, nervous as cats at a rocking chair factory, telling each other "Ohhh, I don't want to be late!" and "I just want to go to school!" and me in the front, pouring fuel on the fire: "hmmm, none of this looks familiar..."  and "This doesn't look right at all..."  and, of course: "I know what we can do; we will just follow the first school bus we find to IT'S school, and you can just go to school THERE!" The girls were hip, though, throwing in their own comments like: "I'm pretty sure I recognize that house from last time we went to Missouri..."  and "We are soooo lost!"

Anyway, we drove right there, maybe 5 minutes slower than they usually take, and by then I had them thoroughly convinced that we were approaching Wichita, and that I was going to push them out the door at the first school we found.  I thought the jig was up as we approached their school, but I guess they didn't recognize it since we approached it from the North instead of the South, the younger one sees all the kids unloading from school buses, and says: "Hey, Daddy, that school says 'Yoder!' Oh! Ooohh!"  (the realization dawns...)

Poor kids... But darn, I do love to be a daddy.

As a side note, here is a picture of my youngest after he walked into our creek that was completely covered in leaves.  He wasn't very happy about the picture...

a horrible place to wake up...

Heh; is there anything else really to say?  So, I'll say it again; Heh.  I guess on a chilly November night, one might be looking for somebody to snuggle with, but really?

Why do I do this to myself...

Sometimes I find my life really rewarding; sometimes I find it really overwhelming. I just came in from building 7 little 4X4 sheep pens around the places where I'm going to have fruit trees planted here sometime in the middle of the week.  The term "sheep pens" is something of a misnomer, though; they are going to keep the sheep out as the sheep like to eat small saplings and bark and leaves.  I spent all stinking afternoon out there, barely finishing before dark, and spent probably 25.00 per each on them, (yeah, not counting the stupid tree) between the panel fencing and the posts.  I bet I've planted (counting re-planting) close to 35-40 fruit/nut trees, not even counting the maples and Austrian Pines, and thus far received nearly nothing out any of them. So far, we've eating roughly 6 Apricots, 1 Peach, and maybe 5 Pears.  I've dumped Hundreds of dollars into these stupid trees.  I thought my turkey meat was expensive!

Someday, I'm certain, it's going to really pay off.  I'm sure that there will be a year that I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands, we will be close to starving, I've done a good job of taking care of the trees, it will have been a good wet year, there will be hardly any bugs, and there will be lots of fruit on them.  I will pick all this luscious fruit, can it, and we will all be full and happy and watch everybody else slowly starve to death around us, and we will just sit back and laugh and laugh and wonder at the cleverness of me...  Why else would one go to sooo much trouble just to have fruit or nut trees.  Jeez, it would be one thing if I had nothing else to do.

I think that I will issue a self imposed moratorium on fruit trees for my farmlet.  At least until I start reaping and benefiting from some of my labor.

Cider

A pretty good tummy warmer after a cold day:
Make a simple syrup (half cup of sugar, half cup of water) boiled with 24 half inch chunks of ginger and a long stick of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of 90k cayenne powder.   Pour in one inch of Bourbon in the bottom of a half Gallon Mason jar, and add a half inch of dark rum. Mix in syrup with cider enough to fill to top of jar. Serve either chilled or warm.

The combination of all the warming ingredients produces a nice warming drink that will go down smoothly on any cool or cold day, without any overpowering flavors or too much heat. The Bourbon flavoring is almost imperceptible, just leaves a nose full of heady aroma.

catching up on blogging

Wow, so much has happened since I last blogged; it seems an eternity ago.  I don't think I mentioned that prior to the big rains, Hutchinson had some really massive hail, so we have just been swamped at work, which translates to swamped at home.  But I have managed to get a few things done around here; one was Apple Day! It was very similar to last years; a little less silly, but a lot of fun, anyway.  We actually had 2 Apple Days this year, we pressed 8 bushels total, and we had Aunt Karen here to help the first time, but I lost all the pictures of the first one.  Here are some pictures:

Swamped seems to not do it justice; just this morning, I noticed an email that I hadn't seen saying that I have been shipped 6 more fruit/nut trees that I ordered a long time ago.  I have been looking for them, and was going to dig holes for them so that I didn't have to do it in the dark after work, but I spent half the day at the chapel yesterday at a workday, so I will spend all afternoon today digging holes and building fences around them to keep the sheep off of them... Ugh.