The Harvest is Plentiful

And in more ways than one this year.  This past year has been one of incredible growth for our family.  We've made changes in our church fellowship, began cementing long-thought-out ideas about what we believe, how God is leading us, what our family should be doing to learn and to serve God.  There have been some hard times, but mostly it has just been a trip through "What has God got in store for us now!" every day. 

I will delve more deeply into spiritual matters at some point, but for today, the harvest I am referring to is.....venison!  Yummy, lean, organic, venison.  You can't get any healthier meat than that which you harvested, cleaned and processed yourself.  This week we had another family over to process.  Nevin and our friend Dakota each got an 8 point buck last Friday.  After hanging for a few days, the meat was ready to processed, packed up and frozen, to await the day it becomes dinner!

It turned into a family shindig, with Dakota's mom and sister, and our boys participating in the fun.  We had some workers, quite a few watchers....and a successful evening.

If you freak out on seeing a butcher at work, don't look at the pictures.  If however, you get excited to see a family working together to provide for themselves, take a gander!



Nevin has this down to a science. He cuts all the meat to "custom order" for the chef (that's me!) - he does a wonderful job on hand-cutting some beautiful steaks for the grill.



Ben is in training here - first time to actually do any butchering.  He got his first deer two years ago.  And remember, I can log this as homeschooling!  Science or home ec????



Ben, Dakota and Nevin cutting up the pieces to be ground into burger.  We grind our own, and mix it with some ground pork.  Venison is so lean that the ground meat doesn't hold together well for burgers or meatloaf, so the pork really helps.



As the meat is cut up, all of us ladies take it in to rinse it off and wrap it and label it for the freezer.  So nice to have packages perfectly portioned out for our family meals!  While we were working we took breaks to eat chicken and dumplings and just enjoy each others' company and the pleasure of the harvest.

The freezer is filling up - such a satisfying feeling!