preparations
Apr. 22nd, 2019 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7So the first All Hands On Deck farm thing is this week-- Wednesday is the Spring Pork Pickup, where everybody who ordered whole/half/quarter shares of pigs comes to the farm to get them.
I think I've explained this before but it's a state law thing about ways farmers can sell meat directly-- half the pigs go to USDA facilities so they can be sold direct, retail, by the package, at the farmer's market or in stores or whatever-- but the other half have a much cheaper method where they don't have to be loaded for transport, easier and kinder, but you have to have sold the animal while it was alive, as a whole/fractional animal, not by the cut of meat-- technically, you custom-raised that animal for the private individual who is going to consume it, and no resale is allowed. (It is allowed to do this for a restaurant but i think there are additional certifications; we do it sometimes, but usually we make the restaurant take it as an entire dressed/scalded carcass, which most chefs are glad to do.) So these are the whole animals processed that way-- they come back in individual cuts of meat, but packaged by the individual animal, and then we have to go through and divide them up because most of the customers ordered halves or quarters.
It's a bit labor-intensive-- they come back as a series of cardboard boxes filled with nicely shrink-wrapped frozen meat, but we have to make sure each customer gets what they specified. They get a choice of, like, sausage flavors, and whether to package shoulders as roasts or grind more to sausage, that sort of thing, and then we gotta divide it up evenly not just by weight but also by parts-- make sure each quarter gets a hock, make sure if someone gets an extra butt roast than the other person gets extra ribs or something, just to make it as fair as possible.
For that, i have to have cleaned the evisceration room, which is also being used to store some of my yurt parts-- namely, the stove, which I'm not even sure I can set up this year, but I want to try, so I've got to get it out of there at least.
Complicating matters, the Farm-Fam are away for Easter weekend and aren't getting back until Tuesday night, which means I can't really clean the evisceration room until-- eek-- the morning we need it. Gosh. Which means I'm going to have to just take the stove and put it into my car to get it out of the way, and hope I can set it up before I next need to transport anything in my car.
So, I'm spending today preparing, which is great because it rained all weekend so I couldn't do any of the laundry-drying or garden-bed-preparing I wanted to do before I left, so I'm doing it today.
And I'm going to leave this afternoon, and spend the night in Rochester with my bestie and her kids (maybe her husband too, idk, whatever man), and spend tomorrow morning hanging out with them, and then go to the farm.
Hm, maybe I'll leave a little earlier just so I can unload my car and get the stove out of the evisceration room and if there are a lot of eggs built up in there maybe I can get some of them washed, so that the next morning it'll be quick to clean the room. I don't technically have to, but I like to clean it to the same sterile standard as I do prior to chicken processing for pork sorting, so that we can set the packaged meat down on surfaces and not get dirt on the packaging. I know it's not the same as when it's a bare carcass, but I like to treat it as if it is, because I know people are going to handle that package and then take the meat out and handle the meat.
Farms, and their dirt, can carry a lot of pathogens. yes, even organic farms-- maybe even especially organic farms-- there is a lot in nature that can kill the shit out of you, or hurt you. A couple of years back, B-I-L got giardia, which is no fucking joke. No one else on or affiliated with the farm got it, so he may actually have picked it up somewhere else entirely, but it's the kind of thing we're all terrified of. So we don't fuck around with sanitation.
Anyway. So far today I've got two loads of laundry on the line, finished painting a sign for the farm, cut out the insulation for the casserole carrier I'm making Farmsister for her birthday, fed the cat, petted the cat a while, posted a fic chapter, packed my duffel bag, and finally hauled the rubber trunk mat out of my car and washed it-- some lamp oil had spilled on it after I unpacked the yurt into it, and I'd just thrown some newspaper down and drove around like that all winter. Fortunately, the rubber mat had contained it all, so that's nicely scrubbed and drying off, and the Horrible Mess I Was Avoiding For Months has turned out to be totally fine, so. Good!
I'm also going to try to make dinner Tuesday when I get in, so I should think up something I can put in the pressure cooker so I can get that going as soon as I arrive and then unload/reload the car and go take care of the egg room. Hmmmm. *ponders* I can never think of what to cook when it's important, but when it's not I always have so many ideas. Usually when other people are like "what should I make" and i"m like "oh this incredibly complicated and esoteric thing I can't explain would be just perfect!" lol.
I still want to put some cardboard down and at least lay out garden beds, but I just don't think I'll be able to. I could at least stick the nine-pack of bachelor's buttons Sister gave me into a pot or something, maybe... if I leave them here in their nine-pack, they Will Die, because Dude won't water them. So, that's a goal. That, and cutting out the rest of the fabric for the casserole carrier.
I think I've explained this before but it's a state law thing about ways farmers can sell meat directly-- half the pigs go to USDA facilities so they can be sold direct, retail, by the package, at the farmer's market or in stores or whatever-- but the other half have a much cheaper method where they don't have to be loaded for transport, easier and kinder, but you have to have sold the animal while it was alive, as a whole/fractional animal, not by the cut of meat-- technically, you custom-raised that animal for the private individual who is going to consume it, and no resale is allowed. (It is allowed to do this for a restaurant but i think there are additional certifications; we do it sometimes, but usually we make the restaurant take it as an entire dressed/scalded carcass, which most chefs are glad to do.) So these are the whole animals processed that way-- they come back in individual cuts of meat, but packaged by the individual animal, and then we have to go through and divide them up because most of the customers ordered halves or quarters.
It's a bit labor-intensive-- they come back as a series of cardboard boxes filled with nicely shrink-wrapped frozen meat, but we have to make sure each customer gets what they specified. They get a choice of, like, sausage flavors, and whether to package shoulders as roasts or grind more to sausage, that sort of thing, and then we gotta divide it up evenly not just by weight but also by parts-- make sure each quarter gets a hock, make sure if someone gets an extra butt roast than the other person gets extra ribs or something, just to make it as fair as possible.
For that, i have to have cleaned the evisceration room, which is also being used to store some of my yurt parts-- namely, the stove, which I'm not even sure I can set up this year, but I want to try, so I've got to get it out of there at least.
Complicating matters, the Farm-Fam are away for Easter weekend and aren't getting back until Tuesday night, which means I can't really clean the evisceration room until-- eek-- the morning we need it. Gosh. Which means I'm going to have to just take the stove and put it into my car to get it out of the way, and hope I can set it up before I next need to transport anything in my car.
So, I'm spending today preparing, which is great because it rained all weekend so I couldn't do any of the laundry-drying or garden-bed-preparing I wanted to do before I left, so I'm doing it today.
And I'm going to leave this afternoon, and spend the night in Rochester with my bestie and her kids (maybe her husband too, idk, whatever man), and spend tomorrow morning hanging out with them, and then go to the farm.
Hm, maybe I'll leave a little earlier just so I can unload my car and get the stove out of the evisceration room and if there are a lot of eggs built up in there maybe I can get some of them washed, so that the next morning it'll be quick to clean the room. I don't technically have to, but I like to clean it to the same sterile standard as I do prior to chicken processing for pork sorting, so that we can set the packaged meat down on surfaces and not get dirt on the packaging. I know it's not the same as when it's a bare carcass, but I like to treat it as if it is, because I know people are going to handle that package and then take the meat out and handle the meat.
Farms, and their dirt, can carry a lot of pathogens. yes, even organic farms-- maybe even especially organic farms-- there is a lot in nature that can kill the shit out of you, or hurt you. A couple of years back, B-I-L got giardia, which is no fucking joke. No one else on or affiliated with the farm got it, so he may actually have picked it up somewhere else entirely, but it's the kind of thing we're all terrified of. So we don't fuck around with sanitation.
Anyway. So far today I've got two loads of laundry on the line, finished painting a sign for the farm, cut out the insulation for the casserole carrier I'm making Farmsister for her birthday, fed the cat, petted the cat a while, posted a fic chapter, packed my duffel bag, and finally hauled the rubber trunk mat out of my car and washed it-- some lamp oil had spilled on it after I unpacked the yurt into it, and I'd just thrown some newspaper down and drove around like that all winter. Fortunately, the rubber mat had contained it all, so that's nicely scrubbed and drying off, and the Horrible Mess I Was Avoiding For Months has turned out to be totally fine, so. Good!
I'm also going to try to make dinner Tuesday when I get in, so I should think up something I can put in the pressure cooker so I can get that going as soon as I arrive and then unload/reload the car and go take care of the egg room. Hmmmm. *ponders* I can never think of what to cook when it's important, but when it's not I always have so many ideas. Usually when other people are like "what should I make" and i"m like "oh this incredibly complicated and esoteric thing I can't explain would be just perfect!" lol.
I still want to put some cardboard down and at least lay out garden beds, but I just don't think I'll be able to. I could at least stick the nine-pack of bachelor's buttons Sister gave me into a pot or something, maybe... if I leave them here in their nine-pack, they Will Die, because Dude won't water them. So, that's a goal. That, and cutting out the rest of the fabric for the casserole carrier.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-22 04:23 pm (UTC)But actually doing the work? Not a chance this year. I suspect I’ll go back to it after retirement.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-22 04:45 pm (UTC)gardening is for shit, on a home scale.
if it's your job, sure. the farm, i'll plant stuff on.
but the farm has basically no garden beds for personal enjoyment. sometimes my mother comes over and weeds the one bed where there are lilies nobody has time to look at. we don't really... garden, at the farm.
But I couldn't leave without at least giving these little babies a tiny chance.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 03:52 am (UTC)I personally wish we had no grass. In addition to being a nightmare to make look good, it makes me itch. Unfortunately, I’m probably getting overruled since himself has some kind of fantasy about how wonderful grass is. I’m trying to convince home to just do weed cloth and wood chips for this year.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 10:07 am (UTC)#foodnotlawns
My dude won't do anything with our yard except mow it, so if there are things he can mow, he's good, but if he's not sure he can mow it, he will just leave it and it will go absolutely bullshit bonkers, which includes grass in places too narrow for the mower, or grass he doesn't like the look of, or whatever. He's just decided anything that's not obviously lawnmower-friendly is My Problem, and since I don't live there in the summers, that just means it's a fucking disaster, so.
I wish you luck in getting rid of lawns, but have no advice.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-22 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-24 10:17 am (UTC)I think I need to mark Complete Education complete and put the rest of the loose end tie-ups into a separate work, now that I look at it, but argh, I hate organizing. LOL.