greenstorm

Today was butcher day. I'd wanted him to come roughly three months ago, to do the little boars before they got big and annoying and hormonal -- my lines get a bad taste in post-puberty uncastrated males so they aren't really edible by humans. The boars had been starting to fight, harassing the females when they tried to eat, and generally behaving like ill-mannered teenagers.

So it was a relief to have the butcher come by, because I've been way overstocked on pigs for awhile and it's been stressful and a lot of work, but. Six nearly hundred-seventy-ish pound liveweight pigs, plus a three hundred some odd pounder for me and to can as carnitas and trade for a trailer. My butcher takes them down to primals but definitely needs help hauling the intact carcasses from the pig field to the butcher site; then I haul the primals in buckets into the house and work at breakneck speed to get everything packaged enough to fit into whatever cool spaces (fridge, freezer) I have fast enough to empty the buckets to get them back down while he breaks down the next one.

I also need to transfer the gut pile into something, today it was feed bags (I've tried rubbermaid bins in the past and it's too heavy and breaks them, I've tried garbage bags and it tends to rip those too, so feed bags are the best so far) and get them loaded into the truck and, ideally, to the dump before predators come looking. If you're counting everything needs to be lifted at least twice, there's a lot of knife work, my vaccuum sealer gets a workout.

Bcause there was so, so much meat I called the head of the sled dog club and he came and got a whole bunch of the boarlets. Feed prices and gas prices are both astronomical right now so hopefully it helps some folks with lots of working dogs out. Normally he takes my extra grocery store meat, I think he was pretty happy to get this.

Then things have to be skillfully layered into the freezers since if you dump a bunch of hot meat into a cube that only chills along the outside it can take a week or two to freeze all the way. Fat needs to be rendered - Kelsey will make me doughnuts with a bunch of it, she says. Bones need to be simmered then boiled into stock. Meat needs to be demoned and chunked and packaged, since I don't have time to can it tonight. Stock will need to be canned.

I'm partway through the process now; a bunch of the dog meat is still in primals set outside to chill, I'll move it to the safety of the shipping container when the temperature has dropped a little more. The bones are piled on the stove to be washed and then boiled overnight (thank goodness for glass-topped stoves that can act as counter space) and I have a 5-gallon bucker and a pile of scraps that I should put on to simmer tonight. I can almost shower and go to bed.

A bunch of things happened today that were interpersonally challenging -- Tucker went to see a movie we wanted to see together with a friend, Josh is making some relationship decisions -- and I also felt like I was bearing a lot of weight (I guess I was literally, but also figuratively) and lonely in the midst of all this. But here's the thing. I was running flat out for about fourteen hours so far today, and now when I sit down I can set the phone down, set the computer down, and my mind is quiet. It isn't bored, it isn't stormy, it isn't dissociated, it's simply very present and peaceful.

This feeling is good, and I only really get it from heavy manual labour. I lost it when I transitioned to desk work. That's... not great. But also, I have that feeling right now. Right now! And it's good. And I know how to get it, I just need to move roughly a ton of something and jog around a bunch in a day.

Bed is going to feel really good tonight.

Hope all is as well for you.