Greenstorm's Journal

Mom came up on Sunday night. It's Tuesday. My brother came with her. I like them a lot, we've been doing some canning, I enjoy their company.

My house has three total internal doors, 2 of which are to bathrooms. It's pretty much a big open airspace with a couple rooms off that which don't have doors (and can't really, during the heating season the woodstove heat can only enter a room if there's no door blocking it) and it isn't really a labyrinth. So.

I put mom in the bedroom with the closing door because it's right next to a bathroom and otherwise she'd have to navigate a lot of stairs in the dark if she needs to use the bathroom at night.

I put my brother on the livingroom couch because I can't fit a bed into the pantry right now, and even if I could that is still right under my loft bedroom and the floor isn't in any way insulated for sound.

I sent them to the store together while I worked, but really I just needed a moment of silence.

My brother snores and gurgles when he sleeps, and he sleeps late. And he sleeps in a place where the sound carries very loudly and clearly to the loft bedroom where I'm sleeping. There's nowhere else to put him or me. That's twelve hours of body noises a day, and whenever that's not happening I have to be *on*: if I don't feed mom a stream of things to do she gets creative with ways to help and starts throwing things away or cleaning things which... only works if she's supervised. Plus I have had a bunch of things that need doing: straw needs bringing in, fencing needs doing, canning needs doing, butcher day is coming up.

It's been a lot. And they're here till Canadian Thanksgiving, which is Monday. There will be a butcher this weekend.

I need to find somewhere I can just... breathe. I can't stand the idea of communicating with anyone right now at all, and I need to do so for work. And, of course, there's that doctor's appointment in two hours that I need to be able to think and speak coherently for.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

I tend to want to write in the evening and *do* in the morning. I tend to have time to write at work in the morning. It leaves me a little topsy turvy feeling.

I've been quite enjoying my life in the last couple days. As my coworker said, if my animals are happy, I'm happy. The geese are in full mating swing; the 3rd cohort piglets are getting out and eating my extra eggs, frolicking in the yard, and generally being a happy nuisance. The same could be said for the cats: Demon is definitely integrated and he's keeping Whiskey on his toes running up and down the stairs. I need a little more than animals, though.

Mom was up for an extended long weekend, Thursday night until this morning. We did some farm stuff, hanging a chicken roost and splitting off the chantecler breeding group. We repotted my African violet pups for the seed swap on the 14th. She came to some yoga etc classes with me. She was at the end of her soap from last visit so we made her some more. She dug snow off the top of my trailer while I carried hay. A neighbour also came up and shot 3 100-lb (2nd cohort) pigs for me. Two were boars for dog food; the third was for my freezer.

We gutted all 3 on the Saturday they were shot and hung my pig in the downstairs fridge; the 2 dog pigs went into the snow on the deck where they've frozen and I can use the reciprocating saw to cut them up for the dogs.

Yesterday we took my pig apart: skinned, took into primals, and I cut roasts and chops and wrapped roasts with butcher twine (!!) and we vacsealed them. Overnight there was a crockpot with lard, a crockpot with pork bone stock, and a crockpot with ribs. I sent the ribs home with mom this morning when she went because we'd had skirt steak and bits and pizza (with my lacto-fermented jalapenos and some anchovies, yum!) for dinner last night. I have bacon left to cure and a shoulder primal left to cut apart in the fridge, the rest is frozen. Nice to have a freezer full of pork again, and nice to be experimenting with roasts and chops (though I really do need to do some charcuterie).

I can unequivocally say the ossabaws are amazing to eat. Even at 6 months/100lbs they're dark and well-marbled, so tasty. As mom says: "it's like lamb". Also I really won't consider a larger breed, 100lb pigs are a really good manageable size and the adults at 250lbs are good to handle with two people. I can't imagine how folks do those huge pigs.

Anyhow, because it's morning I'm talking about the farming details: lists of activities, times, weights (40kg liveweight, 28kg gutted and head off, 20kg in the freezer). But what I wanted to say is this, again and again:

I fit well into this life. It's nice to have someone else, or some other folks, around from time to time. I wouldn't want them around all the time. But I really like the way my life is now. I've worked towards this -- towards the move from the city and this farm and career path and relationship style and all these skills achieved in a precipitous learning curve -- without knowing if I would actually enjoy the result. I mean, I was really really sure but that's not the same.

And here I am, in it, and I love it. Killing is sad. Animals are stressful, relentless, and rewarding. Maintaining land and a house is not cheap in money or labour. But now that I have the time to relax back and enjoy it I am enjoying this life so much. I absolutely need more land-connected people in my social media circles, on dreamwidth or other longer-form would be especially nice. I could use more in-person folks but I am working on that in various ways.

I'm a part of the thing I think is important, which is the land.

Now to prep for Avi's visit. I think we'll be killing roosters, and maybe jarring pork stock and rooster, and maybe making soap and splitting off a couple more breeding groups.