Tangible Work

Isaiah helped Phil most of the day today. They moved the broiler chickens, the bane of my existence, together. These delicious birds are enormous, fully matured and beyond, ravenous consumers of expensive grain—and we have no cold storage to process them. Frantic yesterday, I pulled every chicken bit I could out of the freezer: all the legs, heads, necks, and carcasses, determined to make massive quantities of chicken broth. I figured I would also cut up all the remaining 200 (?) birds as we kill them, and make stock right away from the backs. Surely that would save me space in the freezers.

After making my first batch, I started to fill quart jars in order to use my new pressure canner. And I completely lost it, as I realized that, with an inch of head room, a quart jar holds about three cups of liquid, and that, once pressure canned, the chicken broth could store at room temperature. Do I really want to consume a meat product that can be stored at room temperature? That just doesn't even sound natural! And it horrified me to imagine how much propane it would take to pressure can 100 jars of chicken broth, when, if I made broth as we ate chickens, I could just leave it in the refrigerator.

Stop the insanity! So I ended my plan to pressure can chicken broth. I have no idea how we will solve the much-too-much-meat dilemma. We will probably purchase another chest freezer, but that will only hold about 50 birds. What to do after that? Aggressively market our product? I don't know where to begin.

The chicken dilemma, combined with many cups of soaked spelt that refused to sprout and simply turned to mush inside instead (are organic whole grains flash pasteurized? argh! the things I don't know!), meant a mini-meltdown. But it was short-lived, and I soon felt better.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's not stuffing my angst! I let it all out!

The rest of the day was quite pleasant. Phil has figured out how to move the cows very rapidly. The chickens laid right about two dozen eggs. The boys jumped on the trampoline, so happily situated right in front of the motor home.

The sheep grazed in the stone fruits.

Abraham made a domino ziggurat.

He sounded out his name, and spelled it with wooden pieces, minus one letter "a." Abrham is an achievement for a beginning reader!

Phil and Isaiah headed down to the lower pasture to set up the sawmill.

At one point, they came back upslope to get some forgotten item. Phil had stopped the tractor, but hadn't set the brake, when Isaiah ran up to him. Phil's foot slipped, and in that split second, Isaiah jumped back while Phil re-engaged the brake. Phil came in and said, "I feel woozy. Isaiah just almost died." Life on the farm has death a split second away.

I read today in Hosea about a daughter named Ruhamah: "having obtained mercy." I put that on a sticky note on my computer, and all day long I've thought, "I have obtained mercy." In this case, Isaiah yet lives.

After spending most of the afternoon with level and wrench, precisely making sure that the sawmill was level, Phil sawed a few lengths of a cedar tree as dusk fell. He came up the hill, smelling delightful, and said, "I love sawyering! And the end of the day, I have something tangible to show for my work!"