The big once a year beef order came in this week, which meant a rework of all the freezers, pulling older meat out, sorting, checking for freezer burn. Putting the new in sorted in types in fully newly emptied freezer, with the older going into the first use freezer in the kitchen pantry.

So much sorting to be done but it needs to happen.. the chickens are going to be thrilled, thawing out some nice organs bags, some for the hounds the rest to be tossed in for the chickens to go wild on. They love their meat in winter in a big way.

The big surprise was the loss of our smallest freezer, you can look down the stairs and see the light on it, so it gets qoute “checked” regular but it turned out that didn’t matter, while it was cycling, cutting in and out, it was not working..

The good news.. it was only half full and it is our smallest size freezer..

The Bad News, it was my cheese fridge, to replace that cheese at todays store prices at least $500 to $600 at a bare min, plus what would be a $200 or so massive beef Brisket plus some really nice beef steaks, another couple hundred if bought at store prices. My guess is if we had to replace it at current store prices, we lost at least a thousand or more plus the freezer itself.

Its truly the wrong time of the year to have extra milk coming in to make cheese, so that will have to wait for spring, thankfully I have at least a few months which will need to be stretched till at least spring before I can start making and putting up more cheese.

I am just thankful that it was not holding my extra butter! Still what a waste, sadly nothing was able to be saved. Did you do a bulk buy direct from a local farmer this year or this fall? I grew my own chicken, duck, turkey, an lamb to go with what we already had in our freezers. I bought locally raised beef from just down the road from me (in farmer talk that means I can get to the farm within 15 min drive time).

This is our fourth year of buying our beef from them, I do miss having a calf/steet to a point on the farm in some ways, I like cows.. however I know that the beef I am buying has a much better life then even I could provide. I used to buy a half beef-Half Dairy calf from Farmer R and they were well started and I love raising up a calf. But I will admit that I know its better to be born and raised by momma. They have much larger pastures with great shelter belts of trees in each field.  Cows are herd animals and I know they are living their best cow/calf life. I did my best to give a good life to my calfs/steers and I did good.. but I know that the ones I buy now have even better in ways.

We raised two pigs in 2021 and we do have some pork still but not to much. I will have to decide if we are going to add a weaner or two in the spring or if we are going to buy half or whole from one of the local producers.