A Good Problem To Have

In the past week, I have been kept so busy it seems I barely have time to sleep. It's a problem.  But, it's a good problem to have.  Definitely a first world problem, and even more elite than that as I doubt many Americans have this particular problem.

You see, I have more food than I can keep up with, and I'm running like a chicken with it's head cut off just trying to preserve all this food before it spoils.

Speaking of chicken, that was the first long day of food preservation in the past seven days.  My mid-June batch of broilers went to the processor early one morning.  I dropped them off, went to work, and after my morning's work was complete, I picked them up again.  Rather than having them shrink wrapped, I told the processor to just throw them into several large bags, because I would be parting out most of them once I got home.

My plan had been to freeze maybe 10 of them as roasting chickens; taking the ones that weighed 3.5-4 pounds and freezing them whole, in individual bags.  The rest, and especially any that were 5 pounds, I would cut into boneless breasts, leg quarters, and what I refer to as "soup carcases" (the bird, minus legs and breasts, that I will toss into a pot and boil until the meat is fall off the bone tender, and then use meat and resulting broth for soups, casseroles, pot pies, etc).

Turned out that none of my birds weighed less than 4.5 pounds.  The processor had praised them, telling me I'd raised a "really good looking batch of birds", and now that I was weighing them out, I could see why he'd complimented them. Not a scrawny bird in the bunch; they were each meaty and well rounded.  A couple even topped six pounds.

It took me about three hours to weigh, sort, cut, package, and freeze 26 broilers and one rotten rooster (that I'd had enough of his shenanigans, so he went to the processor too).  And once done with that, I still had to clean and disinfect the kitchen, cook dinner, and see what in the garden needed harvesting that day.

Harvesting the garden has definitely morphed from a fun "what ripe veggies will I find today?" scavenger hunt to a flat out chore.  My back aches from bending and picking, not to mention from carrying full half-bushel baskets.  Suddenly just about everything is ripe today.  And more is ripe tomorrow.  And more the next day. And the day after that. It's hard to find the time each day to work, take care of the late-July batch of broilers (who recently moved from the brooder to the grow out pen), cook meals, harvest the garden and preserve what was harvested. 

It's hard to use my kitchen, it's so full of baskets of freshly picked veggies.  Baskets on the counters, baskets on the floor.  Baskets on the stools.

So much food!  So much fresh, healthy goodness!  I'm so exhausted!

Such a first world problem.  I'm so blessed.

The End, My Friend

August started out with problems for The Old Man, my ancient half-Arabian horse. 

While he looked good, his vitals were okay, and his activity level remained normal, he went on a hunger strike.  For some reason, he decided that, for about 24 hours, he didn't want his pelleted senior horse feed.  He still grazed, and he still gummed hay (his molars being long gone, all he could do was mash the hay into wet cuds and then spit them out), but the pellets were unappetizing.

Then, after a day of turning up his nose, he began to eat them again, although not nearly as much as he needed to since they really were his only sustenance what with not having teeth to masticate the grass and hay with.  Some days he ate 1/2 his serving per feeding, other days he ate maybe 1/4.

This went on for a few days.  And then came the last day.  He ate only a few bites of his breakfast, and the barn owner called to tell me.  I went out to check on him as soon as I was done with work, around noon.  With the exception of flared nostrils and somewhat heavy breathing, he looked and acted normal.  He didn't even look like he was losing any weight despite having cut his daily intake drastically for five days.  For good measure, I took his temperature (oh the humility!  The rudeness!  The indecency!), which was in the normal range, ruling out illness. 

I was about to go home for some lunch, with the plan of returning in a few hours to check on him, when suddenly he seemed to be having a hard time breathing.  His inhalations got very loud.  His eyes got alarmed, and his body language changed.  He went from calm to looking very agitated.  He came trotting up to me, stopped, almost lay down, then stood upright again, his sides heaving.

He paced, his breathing becoming louder and louder.  I called the vet. When he'd first gone off his feed the week before, I had told myself that if I needed to call the vet, I would be putting The Old Man to sleep.  But hearing him now, and seeing how distressed he had become, I knew it was time.  I couldn't wait to see what happened, let him go for hours and see if he got better.  This didn't look or sound (especially sound!) like it was going to go away on it's own.

The receptionist at the vet's office could hear The Old Man's breathing through the phone, even though when I called I was standing probably 12 feet away from him.  She immediately looked up which vet was on a call closest to my area, and called them.  Within 20 minutes, the familiar red truck with the white vet box pulled into the driveway.

By this time, The Old Man was literally roaring each time he tried to draw a breath.  He was also staggering, having a hard time staying up right. Less than two minutes after the vet laid eyes on him, she was retrieving the euthanasia kit (a giant syringe of the pink juice the vets use on horses) from that white box.  He was already on his knees before she even inserted the needle into his jugular.  It was clearly time to ease him out of this life.

I had no regrets about ending his life.  He was clearly in distress.  I do wish that I'd done it perhaps a few days sooner, and avoided whatever it was (pulmonary embolism?) that had made him incapable of breathing in the end. 

The Old Man

April 1984 - August 2018

a very old horse indeed

Yarn Along: August

Happy August!  (Didn't July go fast?!?)  Happy Yarn Along!  I'm joining Ginny this afternoon for the August Yarn Along.

I'm still working on my Polka Dot Party Socks.  Sock #1 is done, sock #2 is nearly to the heel portion.  While I'm dreading doing the heel (wrap and turn heels are just not my thing), I'm really hoping to get this sock finished in the next couple of weeks. I'm dying to start my next pair--pattern and yarn all picked out and everything, with a finished project deadline of early October in mind.

Meanwhile, the garden has me busy canning just about every other day.  Cucumbers are going strong, my peas are finally filling out their pods, the bush beans are ready to burst into production and I need to pull up (and can) my beets before the deer eat them all!

I'm reading little these days.  I currently have a couple books from the library; Berry The Hatchet is a light reading mystery, and Quiltmakers 1000 Blocks is eye candy and inspiration for projects this fall.  Summer surely is a busy time of year, and I'm dreaming of hours in front of my sewing machine once the garden is finished for the season.