Sunday, it was about dark. Ellie was at church practicing for the Good Friday play and Levi was playing video games in the basement. I barked at him from the top of the stairs “EGGS”. He went and gathered them and then came back and started writing . I thought it was a reminder to remember to gather eggs or an apology for forgetting to gather eggs. Nope. This is what it said.

Dear Mommy + Daddy, I’ve decided to go to the greenhouse until someone comes over and convince me to come back. p.s. It is about the stupid eggs! sincerely, your son Levi

I gave him a 1/2 hour and went over to the greenhouse. Told him I understood, cleaning eggs sucks. Boring work. I offered that he could help us in the garden for two hours each day as soon as he got off the bus. He declined. I said, well, you can tote two 5 gallon buckets of feed each to the pullets and laying hens each day. He said he was not strong enough. A bucket of feed weighs 30 lbs so two would weigh almost as much as Levi. I told him that was not a problem, he could use multiple buckets and make 5-6 trips. He decided that he would stick with gathering and cleaning eggs because it was something he was kind of good at…

She has her suspicions about Santa since she found out that the tooth fairy leaving silver eagle dollars under her pillow was me.

I got my suspicions about Santa too but I am not 100% sure.

Ellie finally fell asleep. Jenifer and I worked furiously filling the stockings while choking the attached bells so they would not ring. Hung the stockings and laid out the main presents.

Ellie is getting an acoustic guitar and Levi is getting a Star Wars Clone Warrior huge tank thing…

Similar to the GI Joe of my youth but a much small scale and much better marketing…

Jenifer immediately went to bed after we had did our elf work, but I got on the computer to check the weather to see when it would start raining.

While sitting at my desk, I heard a burp from my sauerkraut crock that I had started Sunday.

That made me laugh. Having a crock of fermenting sauerkraut burp at you early Christmas morning is a blessing. I am not sure what the gases are but they are probably responsible for climate change or something.

I had planned for one of these pigs to end up in our freezer but Ellie named one Penny and Levi named the other Stacy as they came off the truck.  Carl took the other two. They are 14+ weeks old and weigh over 50 lbs each. George is glad to have some of his kind around.

We named our Ossabaw boar George Washington pig, because he came from the Mt. Vernon Estate.

Natalie and Cassie of the Grateful Growers came down Monday afternoon to use our equipment to butcher eight turkeys and a dozen old laying hens.

They were helping out a neighbor with the turkeys and the hens belonged to them.

It was an somber but enjoyable day, killing animals you have raised from birth for food automatically drags up a lot of philosophical questions.

Doing what we do is somewhat solitary work, except for market days. The most enjoyable aspect of last Monday was having fellow farmers on our farm doing a chore we were all familiar with.

Natalie and I did not discuss catching the turkeys or chickens in the trailer, or the best way butcher, scald, or pluck. We just started doing it with little conversation. Cassie and Jenifer set up their stations for the final hand-plucking and evisceration.

Sounds a little gross, and it is, but if animal protein is part of your diet, you should feel obligated to know how it was raised, killed, and processed.

For the last 5-6 years, turkey day for us has been the Monday before Thanksgiving when we dress out and get fitted turkeys right off pasture ready for the oven. Monday, I had high hopes despite the fact we got 1.4 inches of rain Sunday night and it was still raining when we started at 6:45 am. The ground was already wet and the rain had made a sloppy, mucky mess of the ground around the barn and everywhere else.

High hopes is the name of the gremlin that perches on the rafters in the barn and sleeps on our equipment waiting for us to be led astray as soon as we think know what we are doing…

Jenifer, Levi, and I had loaded our turkeys on the trailer Sunday afternoon and parked them next to the processing area. Our neighbor Carl brought his turkeys here early Monday morning.

We had an awesome work crew show up to help. Carl and Sierra from Carlea Farms, some farmer’s market customers and friends, Mike, Michael, and Rob; and David from Renfrow’s Hardware.

Carl and I had started hauling the 35-40 gallons of water from the house to the barn. We have 2 five gallon buckets fitted with gamma lids specifically for this purpose. Our water is well water, which is typically 55 degrees, so if it saves time and propane if we fill up the buckets at the house with hot water and tote them to the scalder. I could not get the scalder to fire up, not even the pilot light and it had worked fine a week ago. I spent close to two hours trying to get it to work. We pulled out plan B, which is a turkey fryer kit we can use to heat up water for scalding.

Mike suggested calling the phone number on the scalder. I dismissed the suggestion, saying I got the manual laying in the kitchen, those folks are in Missouri and won’t be up our time, and I just did this a week ago and know what I am doing.

Michael took Mike’s suggestion and called the phone # and handed his fancy iphone to me. I am talking to a girl/woman in Missouri who, after describing my problem, asked me if I purged the lines for 3-5 minutes by holding the pilot light button in… DOH It was quite humbling, especially since I did that exact same task a week ago.

Tom, our Naragansett turkey that has escaped Thanksgiving for the fifth year, was quite popular the week of Thanksgiving He was featured on the Sunday front page of the Stanly News and Press in this photo.

Wednesday, he was on WBTV evening news.

Lust- Means a range of things. Could be a neighbor or co-worker. Could be as dorky as seed catalogs that start arriving this time of year. My definition of lust is what you want but don’t need.

But I need this truck.

But then Jenifer boiled some for supper… They were awesome! We generally eat the cull vegetables, except for sweet corn, which we selfishly hoard and I think Rose Finn fingerlings might be added to the list.

We quit for lunch around 12:30 and it started to rain around 1:00. Not hard, just enough to make digging potatoes out of the question. So I took a nap after lunch and then went shopping…

The Thrill of Shopping

Shopping for me involves going to Lowe’s for lumber and hardware and Tractor Supply for pine shavings for the turkeys and the laying hen’s nest boxes.

I also got the thrill of going to Radio Shack, Office Max, and Wal-Mart looking for a USB to Ethernet adapter and vice-versa.

Ellie wanted a laptop and we told her we would match her 1/2 on the purchase. She made her half in 3 weeks selling flowers so we had to pony up for the other half and we went to Best Buy in Concord to take advantage of the state tax- free days this past weekend.

Wireless Farm

I also bought something I have been dreading, a wireless router.

Some of you may not know what I am talking about and, believe me, I am in your camp while others will consider me a luddite for having trouble hooking up a simple router.

The installation instructions were simple, remove the Ethernet cable from the back of the computer and plug it into the router… Our 7 year old computer does not have an Ethernet cable. It is a USB plug. Which led to the fruitless search for adapters at Radio Shack, Office Max, and Wal-Mart… I was told multiple times I needed to go to Best Buy… jeez.