No Longer Down the Wrong Road

When you’re going down the wrong road, the first thing you need to do to get back on the right road is stop going the wrong direction.

This morning, as I was reading the Bible, I remembered that I am trying, any time I start feeling hate or anger, to cast my cares on the Lord (for he cares for me). So I started writing.

The first care was, “How are we going to store the meat?”

The pigs have been a source of concern for me for some time. They could easily eat through $50 worth of food a day (though we don’t give them that much). And with three ladies all potentially going to give birth, potentially to, say, eight surviving piglets each, two litters a year: that will quickly spiral out of control financially. And from a land management standpoint, too. Fifty or so pigs a year is about 46 too many.

But Phil likes the pigs. They have good manure; they eat the farm wastes; they do a good job turning over the earth.

Then suddenly, he realized that they aren’t fitting well into the rotations on the farm. They are moving, but they aren’t really integrated. They just do their own thing off to the side.

And so the pigs will go, and we will trust that, as we need more for our family and our land, the Lord will provide weaned piglets.

How to store 1000 pounds of meat or so? Hmm.

And then we have the chickens. I had planned for about 700 chicks this year, with some losses. That would give ten families a bird (or so) a week for the year. But I had expected them to already be taking birds, and we had hoped to have cold storage ready to store extra birds. When I managed to fit only about 35 birds in one of our freezers, and realized we have another 200 birds already in the pipeline….

My cares have been heavy.

The backlog of very expensive to produce meat, combined with the measly amount of milk, the three eggs a day, the market garden disappointment….

Not to mention the relationship strain this project has caused. Phil and I hardly have time to talk, other than, “This is what I’m planning to do today.” If he wants to talk about what he’s seen in the Scriptures, I get antsy: there’s more to do!

The boys are rarely incorporated: if I don’t do it myself, it will take too long!

And I used to like myself, not in a prideful way, but, I hope, in an honest assessment sort of way. And I have hated myself lately, not even recognizing the angry, stressed, vicious person I’ve become (mostly internal; I feel vicious).

So we decided to be done. No more full service CSA. We will figure out a way to kill our chickens and pigs. Hopefully we won’t have to rent a meat locker, but we value our organic, soy-free meat too highly to sell it at a loss. Or at least, not much of a loss. That stuff is expensive to produce! Maybe we’ll smoke the hams, dry cure pork sausage, can the chicken and make a lot of stock.

From the instant we decided this, the joy of the Lord returned to my spirit. I have been desperate for it; missing it; seeking it. And there it was.

Stop going in the wrong direction.

When we moved here, I prayed every day that the Lord would protect us and that we would do that day what he would have us do. I would guess that somewhere around the year mark, I stopped praying that.

Well, I’m starting again. I want to be fully in step with what God is doing.

And I look forward to seeing how he redeems this six month exercise in futility. I know he has a plan, that he redeems, and I am running toward that plan.

With a several year supply of high quality protein.