Fighting Disappointment

On Thursday, I woke up to find another six of my quart jars had spoiled overnight. I have 15 jars that still appear to be good, but with the early demise of the cucumbers, the poor germination of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, potatoes; the ill-advised staking of the 500 tomatoes; the incredible growth of weeds, many now over 10 feet tall: I have been fighting what seems like an ocean of discouragement.

Add to that a frequent hour search for Reese (tonight I never did find her) to get a half gallon of milk. And the amazing humidity, when 89 degrees feels like 106. In all honesty, it bummed me out enough that I asked Phil what he likes about this life.

He likes being with the family. He likes the physical labor, "much more than engineering." He likes the spiritual growth.

And all these things are true, and good. And I can acknowledge them with my mind, but it feels sometimes like my heart rebels.

Maybe that's like the Israelites, crying for their leek soup in Egypt, while they were fed the food of angels, the manna from heaven.

Maybe I can have grace for myself and not assume I'm the worst Christian in the world because I'm feeling discouraged: I can deal with life's disappointments without adding spiritual failure to them.

Today was pretty good (right up to the impossible search for Reese). Phil got up at 5am, and I followed twenty minutes later. We got everything set up for chicken processing (plus I did some dishes while Phil moved the sheep). We began processing 14 week old chickens at 7am, expecting to do about 70.

Surprisingly, we only had 52 to do, and some of those may actually be from the next batch. They varied by weight a good deal: one was 3 pounds even after processing. Four were so big they couldn't fit in freezer bags, and, thus, have not been weighed.

We were pleased to have, on this fifth batch of chickens, more than 50% to kill. Clearly, 68% isn't a whole lot better, but we are making progress. We were stumped a bit about where the chicks went: we didn't have any major death losses in their chick stage, and didn't have any noticeable losses after they moved outside. But still, 30% of our birds vanished.

Phil suspects that when we first moved them outside, they fit through the netting and were picked off by one of the neighborhood predators. It's a reasonable guess. We didn't have that sort of death loss with the first batch, because we kept them in the chicken tractor. By the time we quit that, they were too big to fit through the netting.

It's a good tip for the management of the next batch of birds, about ready to head outside: put them in a movable pen, and keep them alive. Don't let them wander, lest they die.

On a very different note, the boys and I just finished my absolute favorite book from childhood: Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. I've read it probably more than 20 times at this point, and reading it aloud to an appreciative audience made me see new things even now. It's my comfort book, and it was a pleasant diversion this week.