Northern Farmer

Well, after a week off around here things might, just might get back to normal. Had me some computer problems starting last Sunday and it took till Friday evening to get things back in order. Really though it was a fairly peaceful week without the thing operating here. Didn’t mind it all to much. Could I ever do without it? You bet!! Remember, it was Friday evening when it got going again and two days later I’m finally getting around to doing something on this contraption. Nice to have it going, but sometimes I wonder if life wouldn’t be allot better without it. In reality, it does help generate a few sales for beef around here, but compared to word of mouth and regular means of advertising it falls way short. Word of mouth is probably generating over fifty percent of on farm sales and it seems to be expanding all the time.

But I figure I should write something here, it’s been a while and I can’t saddle Jim with the whole works. Although he does look like a likely heir to the Northern Farmer blog if anything ever happens to me. This last week was a week of hauling manure, which is always exciting, well ok, maybe not the number one thing I enjoy in life but it ain’t that bad either. I’d haul till the ground would thaw out in early afternoon and then have to quit. The ground is still froze about six feet deep here but the top few inches get pretty slimy when the temps go above freezing in the afternoon. No sense in rutting everything up until it’s a disaster, eh. Also this last week when I wasn’t connected to the computer world I spent one day making and smoking around 130 lbs of our home made sausage. Now for the inquiring minds out there I won’t post the exact recipe here but it’s about three quarters pork and one quarter beef. Good stuff if I must say so! Then when all the sausages were stuffed, this is ring sausage you know, I went over to the neighbor’s farm where he has a big cement block smokehouse and smoked up the whole batch. Used hard maple wood, smells pretty good and the sausage was done up just right, believe me. I like that job, plus it makes me smell good too! Took about five hours, and that day was around 60 above outside so the main thing was to keep the fire from getting to hot. It’s different than smoking in the dead of winter when it’s colder outside.

Oh, by the way, anyone interested in Minnesota justice, remember this past December when I posted about our fence being tore down by someone and my daughter and I found the license plate ripped off by the barbed wire? It’s done now, just read it today in the county paper. So for any would be fence wreckers here’s what it’ll cost you, listen up! Over a three thousand dollar fine, $2700 stayed, one year in the county jail, stayed, total restitution to yours truly, two years probation. Now if anyone is wondering about the stayed sentences, well one slip up and there’s a big price to pay. So I’m satisfied with the local law around here. Looks like they carry a big stick upholding landowner rights. Plus with the total restitution there shouldn’t be anything out of my pocket book and the labor will be paid for. See what you learn around here!

Now lets see, smokehouse covered, fencing justice covered, manure covered, lets get back to the old smokehouse! Now I’m sure there’s plenty of folks out there that know what I’m talking about when it comes to a building size smokehouse. This isn’t one of them rinky, dinky things that you see sold all over in homesteading rags or hunting catalogs, nope, this is the real thing. It easily has the capacity for anything a country family would ever want to use it for. Then take some maple wood or some apple wood and there’s some good food coming up that can’t be bought in stores! It can be used for hot smoking or cold smoking, either one. Sausage like we make is hot smoked, but I don’t get it too hot, gotta get it just right. Fairly warm to the touch, but not hot. Then when the rings turn that beautiful brown color they’re pretty well done. But during the time that I’m smoking it I really don’t want to get to far away so it gives a person a few hours reading time and that’s what I do. I was reading about eternity that day and wow, let me tell you it was an eye opener. I’ll have to get on this subject here and there in the future. There’s more written about it in the Bible than I ever figured, it’s all there! Then I was thinking about how I was doing a job like the oldtimers did, no different, I mean sausage is sausage and smoke and fire are smoke and fire just like they had. No electricity needed, no internal combustion engine needed, nope. Just doing it all the way they did it years ago. The only thing different would be storing it after the job was done, hmm, will have to look into that one of these days. But I was thinking about the oldtimers, not bothered by the modern world’s noises, doing jobs like this humming an old gospel song, praising the Lord while working on the old farm. Didn’t have the distractions that are coming at us from every angle. When the Holy Ghost would speak, they could hear Him. Now everything is so cluttered, so noisy. We’re always “so busy”. What we’ve lost is terrible, we’ve lost the opportunities to live a life being able to hear God. Oh, we can pray, go to church, but when you’re surrounded by clutter and noise 24/7 something is lost.

This last week this was what was on my mind. And I can testify that at that smokehouse I had a wonderful afternoon. Quiet out, smoke smelled good, got to study a bit about eternity, got to dwell on the Word. I thought, this is quite a moment in life, this is one of the things it’s all about. A person doing an important job, unobstructed by the modern world’s noise and insanity. More of this has to be a goal in life!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.