Sustainable Living

We are halfway through Christina's dry period.  It's been a month without the morning and evening milkings that kept me grounded in the day, a month of making the milk last, a month without learning the next thing to make good cheese.  I'm trying to focus on the benefits of this rest time, but I'm not very good at living without what I want.

Christina and beefy have eaten the east pasture down and we moved them back. It's been four weeks and the west pasture looks decent. Christina knew just what was going on and headed right over; beefy needed a little more encouragement, but they immediately began feasting on the new fresh grass.  It makes me laugh to see cows with heads down, rocking back as they plow through grass.  They are celebrating eating too.

The book says that cows won't eat an entire pasture and don't expect them to.  But our cows do.  Today when we moved them off the east pasture it looked like it had been mowed clean.  The last few days I've seen them out there working even the little blades.  I worry that they're starving, so we check the hay feeder but they have enough.  I think they just love fresh grass and they'll take a little bit as a snack, even while living of the dried stuff.

With them moved, it means that we have to scoop the cow pies to clean out the east pasture.  Ack!  When will we work that in?  My husband's working on building a little harrower that will break up the cow pies and then we won't have to scoop as much.  I wish he'd hurry.

With the fading sun, hanging the laundry requires a new kind of organization.  The trees to the south, that provide such wonderful shade in the heat of the summer, now shade a much larger area, including the clothesline.  With cooler temperatures and shorter days, it takes all day long to dry a load of laundry instead of just a few hours.  We are limited to two loads a day and they must go up early in the morning.  What I miss the most is the smell of sun-dried cloth.

Jerky has become everybody's favorite snack.  My husband is trying to do jerky with some sliced meat, rather than hamburger.  After making twenty or thirty thin slices, he says that hamburger is the better way to go.  This meat will marinade for a day and then go into the dehydrator.

This sustainable living that we are doing sure does take a lot of work, but it feels like such relevant work and it is grounded in relationship.  Thank you God for meaningful work.