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Learning to Live Sustainably
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It's Finally Piggy Pick-up Day!
Well, it's 5:30am. The alarm says it's time to get up, head out, pick up Mary, & be on our way to meet Mahlon (the farmer who raised our piggy). We make it there with a few minutes to spare, so we spend the time talking about all the different dishes we are going to make with the meat Mahlon is bringing us. (And by 'we' I mean Mary will cook for Mary and Fred will cook for me.) Now, I'm seriously hungry. Then, we spot a pick-up truck pulling a trailer and making it's way into the parking lot where we are waiting. We are betting that is Mahlon and our piggy. Yep, they are driving toward us and pull in next to us. YAY, our piggy has finally arrived!
After introductions and expressions of gratitude (because we really are grateful that Mahlon took the time and effort to raise our piggy well, feed our piggy well, and deliver our piggy to us so we can eat well), it was time to load our piggy into our coolers. Once we got those coolers full, thanked Mahlon again and ordered our next piggy (which will be ready in the fall) and a steer (which will be ready about the same time), we headed back to Mary's house to unload her coolers. The entire ride was spent talking about how much we liked Mahlon and were happy with our choice of farmer. Mahlon genuinely cared about the well-being of our piggy and about the quality meat he was able to supply us with. When you are ready to take this food adventure, we would be happy to get you in touch with Mahlon. Just give Mary or me a shout anytime or visit us at the L2LS booth at LEWFM any Friday. In fact, a great first step to eating local would be to attend the 'Whys and Hows of Eating Local' series presented by L2LS & LEWFM. The first workshop will be held in March so keep an eye out for details on the L2LS & LEWFM websites.
Once I got back home it was time to get our piggy tucked away in that new freezer. I sorted the cuts and put each cut together, made a list of what we had and how many packages of each cut so we could keep track of what we have left.
I even found a handy home for the pen so it would be close at hand whenever we need to mark off another package that's being used.
The one thing that we realized after looking at our freezer full of pork and our list of cuts is that we will likely not be able to make it last until the fall when our next piggy is ready. That is all part of learning to live sustainably. We need to fully understand how much of each item we need to feed our family and it's a learning process as we introduce a new item - like our piggy. But, we've adventured enough for one day and tomorrow we have fat to render. See you then.
Well, it's 5:30am. The alarm says it's time to get up, head out, pick up Mary, & be on our way to meet Mahlon (the farmer who raised our piggy). We make it there with a few minutes to spare, so we spend the time talking about all the different dishes we are going to make with the meat Mahlon is bringing us. (And by 'we' I mean Mary will cook for Mary and Fred will cook for me.) Now, I'm seriously hungry. Then, we spot a pick-up truck pulling a trailer and making it's way into the parking lot where we are waiting. We are betting that is Mahlon and our piggy. Yep, they are driving toward us and pull in next to us. YAY, our piggy has finally arrived!
After introductions and expressions of gratitude (because we really are grateful that Mahlon took the time and effort to raise our piggy well, feed our piggy well, and deliver our piggy to us so we can eat well), it was time to load our piggy into our coolers. Once we got those coolers full, thanked Mahlon again and ordered our next piggy (which will be ready in the fall) and a steer (which will be ready about the same time), we headed back to Mary's house to unload her coolers. The entire ride was spent talking about how much we liked Mahlon and were happy with our choice of farmer. Mahlon genuinely cared about the well-being of our piggy and about the quality meat he was able to supply us with. When you are ready to take this food adventure, we would be happy to get you in touch with Mahlon. Just give Mary or me a shout anytime or visit us at the L2LS booth at LEWFM any Friday. In fact, a great first step to eating local would be to attend the 'Whys and Hows of Eating Local' series presented by L2LS & LEWFM. The first workshop will be held in March so keep an eye out for details on the L2LS & LEWFM websites.
Once I got back home it was time to get our piggy tucked away in that new freezer. I sorted the cuts and put each cut together, made a list of what we had and how many packages of each cut so we could keep track of what we have left.
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| Thanks for filling our freezer with good local food, Mahlon! |
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| Notice the cute giraffes holding the list in place. |
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| Now that is pretty handy. |
And, I made a mistake without realizing what I had done. I put that huge bag of fat that we planned to divide into 1 gallon freezer bags so we could render lard in manageable batches into the freezer along with all the other meat and went about the rest of my day. And, when Fred got home from work and wanted to lay out a ham steak for the next day's dinner, we weren't sure which cut was ham steak. Time to call Mary and ask her to tell us one more time what each cut is used for. Oh yeah, fresh ham slice is the one that we know as ham steak. So, whenever you get discouraged because you don't know something or you get overwhelmed by how much you don't know about learning to live sustainably, remember that we can all do it together, one step at a time. There is always someone who is willing to help you on your adventure. Lucky for me, Mary is happy to share her knowledge so I'm feeling pretty good about this whole experience.
Now, back to that fat mistake. I was supposed to put it in the fridge so we could divide it in the evening after we returned from date night. Easy to fix - we called Mother and asked her to move it from the freezer to the fridge and hoped it wasn't too frozen (the fat is much easier to deal with when it is very cold/not quite frozen. Also, working with a sharp knife is helpful). I know what you are thinking: "What a fun way to end date night - rendering lard!" Actually, it wasn't so bad. It didn't take very long and we had a pretty good system. Fred wielded the butcher knife, I put the pieces in the bags, and Mother was the official bag opener, holder, and closer. We ended up with 8 one-gallon freezer bags of pork fat. Tomorrow we will render the first batch into lard.
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| Let's hope it isn't too frozen. |
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| OK, so it's pretty frozen, but totally workable. |
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| We ended up with 8 bags of fat to render. |
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Mel Farnsley &
Mary Hutten, Owners
info@learningtolivesustainably.com
513-481-1914
Visit us Fridays 3-6pm at
Lettuce Eat Well Farmers' Market
3820 Westwood Northern Blvd.
Cincinnati, OH 45211
info@learningtolivesustainably.com
513-481-1914
Visit us Fridays 3-6pm at
Lettuce Eat Well Farmers' Market
3820 Westwood Northern Blvd.
Cincinnati, OH 45211
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