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an accounting of time
sometimes when i’m this busy i just– lose whole days, so i’m trying to write down what i’ve done.
working backwards! today is wednesday. wednesday is harvest day for CSA pickup. today is the last one of the season!
farmkid spends wednesday with my dad, usually, but he and mom switched; he did yesterday, so he could be free today. he spent today helping BIL put rafters up onto the new barn. they made a lot of progress. so farmkid went with my mom instead, and they went to the state museum and saw my boyfriend .
i got up, went out promptly at 8:30 (start time for the workday at this time of year), and put the evisceration room back together to be the egg-washing room again. i found an insulation board and stuck it over the pass-through window from the kill room, so that the little milk-room heater we used to heat the egg room last year will work efficiently. I retrieved all the egg paraphernalia and set it back up.
I just sidebar’d and wrote a post on egg-washing, so, look for that in the queue, i’m sure you’re riveted.
Anyhow. I washed about six dozen eggs, then went on to other things; a volunteer comes and washes eggs on Wednesdays and I figured I’d get her a little headstart.
I went and made dried flower arrangements for a little while, and then I started on lunch. The chickens we processed yesterday were all so small; I grabbed two around three pounds each, and cut them up and marinated them in lemon and lime juice while I went out and worked more on dried arrangements.
Then I came in and cut the chickens up into… well, I meant to quarter them, but I kind of. The knife was dull, the shears were weak, so I cut the leg quarters mostly off, then snapped the spines with my hands, and wound up with the chickens in… rough thirds, more or less? Butterflied kind of, but… not?
Anyway. I put them on a bed of– well, I’d wanted to use a bunch of onions and some celery and potatoes and squash but I could only find a pathetic little handful of onions, because everyone was busy doing stuff and I don’t know how much of the stuff in the walk-in cooler is fair game and how much is counted out for CSA shares. So I put them on uh, some onions, and some apples, and some carrots, and some squash. And I cut up another squash into fries, and made squash oven fries, which didn’t work this time– future reference, oven at 450. yes really. – and then I made a slaw of carrots, a watermelon radish, and a bunch of kohlrabi and some cabbage.
So that was lunch. I spent the afternoon cartoning the eggs and washing the last basket the volunteer hadn’t gotten to, arranging more dried flowers, and now I’m making dinner.
YESTERDAY what did I do of course we processed chickens. Sister made lunch, it was something… Afghani, involving squash? and a carrot? and like. onions? I don’t know, vegetarian, delicious, served over quinoa because we didn’t have anybody to give the morning off to make the flatbread you’re supposed to eat with it.
We did 244 chickens, which was a lot, but it went pretty flawlessly; I just eviscerated, after finish plucking like, three chickens. I felt like I did pretty well; I didn’t cut myself, which was important. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, as it was cold, and it was a formerly-white shirt, which I hadn’t been much concerned about until the sleeves crept down and I absent-mindedly pulled my hand out of a chicken and pushed my sleeve up and oh ew I looked like a slasher film. Sooooo we’ll see how that does in the laundry. (Somehow it happened to both sleeves, too. Amazing.)
The chickens were tiny. We figure it’s because the weather has been cold; they used more calories than expected keeping warm, and so their feed ration, identical to that of the chickens earlier in the season when it was warm, wasn’t enough to let them get fat. There were probably three in the entire batch over five pounds. We’ve had midsummer batches where maybe three in the entire batch are under four pounds, but this one was mostly three-and-change-pound chickens. Too bad, because we charge by the pound, but– a lot of customers want little chickens, so we’ll just be making them happy. We’ll have to work on upselling the customers who like big chickens. (You usually buy a 5.5-pounder? Well, I’ve got two 3.1 pounders, try them in your roasting pan! Here’s a word to the wise though– it takes way longer to cook two 3-lb chickens than one 6-lb chicken and I don’t know why. You cut that six pounder in half and it cooks so fast, but two threes somehow absorb all of the heat right out of the oven. It’s a thermodynamic mystery.)
ANYHOW.
Monday, what did I do? I cleaned the slaughter area. Did I do that all day? I honestly don’t remember. Took Farmkid to school, so for sure that took a lot of time first thing. Aaron made lunch, I know that. I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember… much. And I have no idea what happened on Sunday. I got in on Saturday and worked at the market for an hour or two, but I don’t remember what I did the rest of the weekend. Nope, it’s gone.
Well… I guess that’s that.
Oo someone in Germantown is selling a flock of Icelandic sheep. Quick, who’s got $1200???
(Your picture was not posted)
an accounting of time
sometimes when i’m this busy i just– lose whole days, so i’m trying to write down what i’ve done.
working backwards! today is wednesday. wednesday is harvest day for CSA pickup. today is the last one of the season!
farmkid spends wednesday with my dad, usually, but he and mom switched; he did yesterday, so he could be free today. he spent today helping BIL put rafters up onto the new barn. they made a lot of progress. so farmkid went with my mom instead, and they went to the state museum and saw my boyfriend .
i got up, went out promptly at 8:30 (start time for the workday at this time of year), and put the evisceration room back together to be the egg-washing room again. i found an insulation board and stuck it over the pass-through window from the kill room, so that the little milk-room heater we used to heat the egg room last year will work efficiently. I retrieved all the egg paraphernalia and set it back up.
I just sidebar’d and wrote a post on egg-washing, so, look for that in the queue, i’m sure you’re riveted.
Anyhow. I washed about six dozen eggs, then went on to other things; a volunteer comes and washes eggs on Wednesdays and I figured I’d get her a little headstart.
I went and made dried flower arrangements for a little while, and then I started on lunch. The chickens we processed yesterday were all so small; I grabbed two around three pounds each, and cut them up and marinated them in lemon and lime juice while I went out and worked more on dried arrangements.
Then I came in and cut the chickens up into… well, I meant to quarter them, but I kind of. The knife was dull, the shears were weak, so I cut the leg quarters mostly off, then snapped the spines with my hands, and wound up with the chickens in… rough thirds, more or less? Butterflied kind of, but… not?
Anyway. I put them on a bed of– well, I’d wanted to use a bunch of onions and some celery and potatoes and squash but I could only find a pathetic little handful of onions, because everyone was busy doing stuff and I don’t know how much of the stuff in the walk-in cooler is fair game and how much is counted out for CSA shares. So I put them on uh, some onions, and some apples, and some carrots, and some squash. And I cut up another squash into fries, and made squash oven fries, which didn’t work this time– future reference, oven at 450. yes really. – and then I made a slaw of carrots, a watermelon radish, and a bunch of kohlrabi and some cabbage.
So that was lunch. I spent the afternoon cartoning the eggs and washing the last basket the volunteer hadn’t gotten to, arranging more dried flowers, and now I’m making dinner.
YESTERDAY what did I do of course we processed chickens. Sister made lunch, it was something… Afghani, involving squash? and a carrot? and like. onions? I don’t know, vegetarian, delicious, served over quinoa because we didn’t have anybody to give the morning off to make the flatbread you’re supposed to eat with it.
We did 244 chickens, which was a lot, but it went pretty flawlessly; I just eviscerated, after finish plucking like, three chickens. I felt like I did pretty well; I didn’t cut myself, which was important. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, as it was cold, and it was a formerly-white shirt, which I hadn’t been much concerned about until the sleeves crept down and I absent-mindedly pulled my hand out of a chicken and pushed my sleeve up and oh ew I looked like a slasher film. Sooooo we’ll see how that does in the laundry. (Somehow it happened to both sleeves, too. Amazing.)
The chickens were tiny. We figure it’s because the weather has been cold; they used more calories than expected keeping warm, and so their feed ration, identical to that of the chickens earlier in the season when it was warm, wasn’t enough to let them get fat. There were probably three in the entire batch over five pounds. We’ve had midsummer batches where maybe three in the entire batch are under four pounds, but this one was mostly three-and-change-pound chickens. Too bad, because we charge by the pound, but– a lot of customers want little chickens, so we’ll just be making them happy. We’ll have to work on upselling the customers who like big chickens. (You usually buy a 5.5-pounder? Well, I’ve got two 3.1 pounders, try them in your roasting pan! Here’s a word to the wise though– it takes way longer to cook two 3-lb chickens than one 6-lb chicken and I don’t know why. You cut that six pounder in half and it cooks so fast, but two threes somehow absorb all of the heat right out of the oven. It’s a thermodynamic mystery.)
ANYHOW.
Monday, what did I do? I cleaned the slaughter area. Did I do that all day? I honestly don’t remember. Took Farmkid to school, so for sure that took a lot of time first thing. Aaron made lunch, I know that. I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember… much. And I have no idea what happened on Sunday. I got in on Saturday and worked at the market for an hour or two, but I don’t remember what I did the rest of the weekend. Nope, it’s gone.
Well… I guess that’s that.
Oo someone in Germantown is selling a flock of Icelandic sheep. Quick, who’s got $1200???
(Your picture was not posted)
