Angels Among Us

Some of you may perhaps remember a song by the country band Alabama called "Angels Among Us." From maybe the late 90s? I never cared for the song much. I always thought it was kind of cheesy. It is, but it was what I thought of Saturday night when I met Leroy.

Saturday was a very hard day, for various reasons. I was pretty ready to be done with the day by evening, but I was taking the younger two boys to serve at the Saturday Vigil Mass at the church in the other village we go to sometimes. Mass started at 8 p.m., but they needed to be there early, so we left at 7:15. My low tire indicator light was on, but the town maintenance shop in this village has an air compressor hose on the outside of the building that I have used many times to air up my tires.

There was a truck parked on the other side of the parking lot of the shop when I got there. This will be important later.

It was raining slightly as I pulled up to the shop, hopped out, aired up my tire for a few seconds, and then pulled the air compressor out of my tire to put it back on its hook so I could continue on my way.

Except the valve of my tire got stuck in the air compressor. So when I pulled at it, the valve got ripped out and stayed stuck in the air compressor's chuck. This meant that not only was my tire rapidly deflating, but the air compressor continued to run, with no way to turn it off, as the actual machine was inside the locked building.

There I stood, in the rain, in my church clothes, holding a hissing air compressor and watching my tire go flat.

Not my best moment.

I had my cell phone, so I called A., asking him to bring some pliers to possibly pry the valve out of the air compressor, and also to change my tire. Luckily, we only live ten minutes from this village, so I knew it wouldn't take him long. 

As I was getting off the phone, I saw someone get into the truck on the other side of the parking lot. I went over there and waved down the person who had gotten into the truck, thinking maybe he would have pliers. When he rolled his window down, I asked if he happened to work there.

"Actually, I do," he replied.

THANK YOU, GOD.

This is how I met Leroy. 

He unlocked the shop and turned off the air compressor. I stood there apologizing and explaining while he tried to get the valve out of the air compressor's chuck. This is when I learned his name, that he comes to the shop every morning and evening to feed the feral cats that live there, and that he takes care of his 92-year-old mother. He reassured me that it wasn't my fault that the valve had gotten stuck, telling me the compressor chuck was old and needed to be replaced anyway.

After the compressor had been off for awhile, the pressure came down enough that he was able to remove the valve from the chuck. 

At about this point, A. arrived and I took the boys up to church in the van. They were still in time to serve Mass, and I didn't go back to the Honda. A. told me that Leroy stayed there with him and helped him try to put the valve from the Honda's spare tire on the flat tire. Leroy also found another valve they tried, which didn't fit. And, when the Honda slipped off our jack in the gravel parking lot, Leroy brought out a floor jack from the shop and helped A. change the tire with that.

In the course of our very brief conversation, I had told Leroy that I was going to church. He said he had been watching an Easter Vigil Mass on television before he came to the shop. His elderly mother couldn't really leave the house anymore, so he wouldn't be going to the Easter Vigil at church.

But I went to church, and you'd better believe that I spent much of the two-hour Vigil Mass thanking God for Leroy.

The end.

House Progress . . . and Rabbits

 

So! When we last left our intrepid house-rehabber, he had pulled down the ceilings and was slowly and arduously wheelbarrowing the detritus into the dumpster parked outside the house. He also continued removing paneling from the walls to expose the original stone or plaster, revealing all the many colors the house was painted inside at one point.

He definitely filled that dumpster, which was picked up last week, but he did not quite finish the clean-up. Even absent that handy dumpster, however, the work must go on, so he started filling trash cans and old feed tubs for transport to the dump.

There are still a couple of rooms that need to be cleaned up, but it's beginning to look more like a house that can be worked on, rather than a house that should just be razed.

It's a long time before we will be inhabiting this house, but we've moved in some new tenants in the meantime.

Hasenpfeffer!

We have, in the past, discussed getting meat rabbits, but I'm always reluctant to add yet more animals to our menagerie. Unlike A. and the children, who want allll the animals. 

However, when our neighbor asked us if we would like to take his granddaughter's 4-H meat rabbits--she's no longer doing 4-H, and he's a cattle rancher, not a rabbit-fancier--I couldn't really say no. He wouldn't even take any money for the rabbits. Or the home-built hutch he insisted we take, as well. Or the half-full bag of rabbit food he likewise bestowed upon us.

So now we have six meat rabbits. Two bucks, and four does. 

Our neighbor had them all in the hutch, but we felt bad having them in such a small enclosure.

Jasper sat here by the hutch for HOURS the day we brought the rabbits home. He wasn't the least aggressive, interestingly, he just appeared fascinated. Maybe he thought they needed herding.

Rabbits can actually be somewhat difficult to keep in, due to their habits of digging and gnawing. That's why we put them on the concrete porch of the casita next door. No rabbit is gnawing or digging out of a concrete-floored room with concrete walls. 

We were originally going to separate the bucks with two does each by having the white ones in the casita and the brown ones in the hutch, but we decided instead to put a divider down the center of the casita porch so the brown ones have more room, too. A. is going to do that today.

We might have to use the hutch to separate the bucks after the does have babies, because we're not sure how aggressive and problematic the bucks might become with the young. To be honest, we're not sure about anything, because we've never had rabbits before.

We'll learn, though. And isn't that what life is all about? Growing and learning every day?

Right. Or something.

Boo! Time To Butcher a Bull!

Warning: Dead animal photos ahead.

 

Yesterday, A. made a real grocery run for the first time since August. He went because we had an appointment to get the dogs neutered first thing in the morning. So he left at 6:30 a.m. and returned home around 3 p.m. with a van full of animal feed, groceries, and two very unhappy dogs.

I was still putting those groceries away when our elderly neighbors about five miles away called to ask A. to help them with a bull they had found with a broken leg. It was going to have to be killed--large animals like that are done for if they break a leg, unfortunately-- and the vet they called had told them that if the bull wasn't running a temperature, they could butcher it. 

So they had to take the bull's temperature. And you don't do that for a bull with one of those handy forehead thermometers. No, you have to shove the thermometer into its rectum. 

A. thought this might be a dicey proposition for two eighty-something people and a large bull, so he offered to go help with that. And off he went.

Ten minutes later, the FedEx guy showed up with two big boxes of pantry things I had ordered from Walmart. I was still putting those away when A. called from the neighbors' house to tell me he was on his way home to pick up coolers and all of the family so we could all help butcher the bull.

This is what being married to A. is like, yes.

As soon as A. got here and we had loaded the coolers and made sure everyone was wearing coats and boots, we slithered our way up the muddy road to the neighbors' house.

The bull had been killed near their house, thankfully near the driveway. A. was in such a rush because by this time it was 4:15 and we were going to be out of daylight to work by in just a couple of hours. So A. dropped to his knees in the mud and snow and started skinning.

The neighbor helped some, but given that he's got more than 40 years on A., A. tried to spare him as much as possible.

A. has butchered a lot of animals, but this was significantly different because of the size of this particular animal. There's no way to hang something this big without a tractor to lift it. He couldn't hang it and gut it, as he would with a sheep or a deer. 

So he butchered it the way the Plains Indians butchered buffalo: on the ground.

First he peeled the hide off on one side and cut away the meat on that side. He started to put the meat into the coolers, but it was still steaming hot, which is definitely no good. We needed to get the meat cooled down. And how would we do that without a walk-in cooler?

I know!

The neighbor supplied some very large trash bags, which we spread in the snow so we could lay the meat on them and let the snow chill the meat.

Just chillin'. (Why yes, I do crack myself up.)

Somewhat disturbingly, some of the pieces actually twitched once they were on the snow, as the muscles cooled and contracted a bit. The children thought this was the coolest thing ever, and monitored the meat to see if they could find one that was twitching. 

Little ghouls.

My job was mostly to arrange the meat on those bags as A. tossed it on there. I spread it out and kept flipping the chunks over to cool both sides. I also pulled the bags onto fresh snow as the snow underneath melted. 

A. was cutting as fast as he could this whole time, while our neighbors continuously sharpened knives to keep him supplied with a sharp blade at all times. They have a lot more experience sharpening knives than I do, so I was happy enough just to do the meat flipping.

After A. got as much meat off the one side as he could, we needed to flip the animal. It was still hundreds of pounds, though, so the neighbor got his winch puller and put it on the bull's hind feet. Cubby cranked the winch while A. heaved on the front of the bull to flip it.

Heave ho!

Then more cut cut cutting as fast as possible as the sun set and the light faded. The last bit had to be done with some handy solar lights the neighbors had.

Spotlight on the bull.

When the light was completely gone, A. called it quits so he wouldn't hurt himself. We loaded all the meat into both our coolers and the neighbors' coolers and headed home. 

A. skinned and cut up almost that entire animal in just a little over two hours, which is a pretty impressive feat. 

We just left the coolers of meat in the car overnight, because it was cool enough to do that, but it was too warm today to leave them there. We needed to get them in the freezer. But in what? I didn't have enough plastic wrap or ziptop bags on hand to store all this meat. 

We thought A. would have to take a trip to the closest grocery store (120 miles roundtrip) to get supplies, but I decided to call the guy who runs the tiny store in the village first. I asked him if he had any gallon ziptop bags and he said sure. I asked how many, and he said he buys them by the thousand.

Oh. Okay then. 

So A. only had to drive 20 miles roundtrip to buy 200 bags. Sweet.

We hauled the coolers out and spread the meat out on top of one of the freezers to dry out a bit as we started the butchering and packaging.

Welcome to the meat market.

At this point, it was just standard butchering procedure for us. I set up the dining room table with the cutting boards, knives, bags, and large pots for stew meat pieces, along with a bucket for the dog scraps, and we got to work.

Three hours later, all that meat was trimmed, cut, packaged, and in the extra freezer we brought over just last week from the abandoned house next door. That freezer must be at least forty years old. I was sure it wouldn't work, but A. plugged it in and it started right up. So we brought it over here, thinking we might need it if Cubby gets an elk on his hunt in December.

Instead, we filled it a third full of approximately 250 pounds of grass-fed beef that we got for free. A happy Halloween indeed.

Still Here!

It occurs to me that my last few posts have focused quite a bit on the raging fire near our house, and a lack of updating here may lead some people to fear we were swallowed by that fire.

We were not.

We had one bad night when the wind was blowing directly to us from the fire and we could see it just over the paved road a few miles to the south of us. We figured that if it jumped that road, there was nothing to stop it from running right through the (very dry) pastures to our house. That was the night I packed all the essential documents and put the bag by the door.

A. stayed up to watch, though, and around 10:30 p.m., the wind shifted just a bit, the humidity went up, and the crisis was over for us.

Also, there was a big truck with a water tank on the back that was running up and down that road for hours, soaking the ground on the south side.

Can I tell you how grateful we are for the 75 men and women who showed up to help fight this fire? SO GRATEFUL. Most of them were from volunteer fire departments all over the northern part of the state, and they had to come a looong way to help. The community donated food, water, and places for them to sleep, and the school opened up so they could shower.

It's very comforting to live in a community that can mobilize so quickly when there's an emergency.

That fire is about 90% contained right now, burning in isolated pockets of trees on unoccupied range land. It probably won't be 100% out until it rains, though, and we don't have much of that in our forecast.

Anyway. Let's hope that's the last of the fire talk for a very long time.

Over and out.

Shepherd Vibes

First we got a reputation around Blackrock as people who will dispose of unwanted roosters. This reputation was re-established at our home in northern New York, where we once again found ourselves offing extraneous male chickens for neighbors.

And now? That reputation is only growing in our new home.

We have a new short-term resident.

Say hello to Big Boy.

Yesterday A. called the guy we get our milk from to tell him we wouldn't be there today to pick up our usual two gallons because I'm still trying to catch up from the backlog of milk that accumulated during A.'s trip. When A. got off the phone, he informed me that we would shortly be receiving a wether to butcher.

Say what?

A wether is a castrated male sheep. They're castrated to make them easier to handle as they grow, so they can grow to a bigger size before being butchered. It also keeps the meat from getting too strong a taste. The milk people, who already have sheep, had been given three wethers by a woman whose father had always had sheep. He died; she wanted to get rid of the sheep. 

The milk people did not, however, particularly wish to butcher three large sheep. In the course of conversation with the milk lady, I had mentioned that we used to have sheep. And that we butcher our own animals. So I guess we were a logical home for an unwanted meat sheep.

We also suspect they do not wish to eat that much mutton.

Because this dude most definitely ain't no lamb. That's a full-grown sheep. And wether or not, that meat is going to be strong.

I was not enthused about this. I eat lamb, albeit somewhat grudgingly. It's not my favorite, and I have zero interest in eating mutton, which is of course even stronger tasting than lamb. A. said he would probably give most of the meat to some of the older people in the village, many of whom grew up raising and eating sheep.

In the meantime, however, we have a sheep. 

My parents are coming for a short visit on Thursday*. A. very thoughtfully said we could wait to butcher Big Boy until they left. They're not really into the homesteading lifestyle, so I think they'll appreciate that. Also, the weather is going to be too warm to hang the meat for aging until a week from Thursday.

But mostly, the delay means that A. is a shepherd again, if only for a little while. And that makes him very happy indeed.

* They asked what they could pick up for us before they came, no doubt expecting I would ask for something like lettuce or avocados. Instead I asked if they could pick up fifty pounds of feed corn for the sheep. And this is why I have the reputation in my family as the weird one.

The Peach Magnet

There seems to be something about me that attracts old men bearing peaches.

At Blackrock, it was our very elderly neighbor who dropped off baskets of peaches that I managed, despite a ten-month-old baby and two other children, to make into canned peaches and a LOT of peach puree for yogurt.

And now I have another ten-month-old baby and three other children, and there are more elderly men dropping off peaches.

The first to come by was Rafael, our most excellent produce supplier. He pulled up on Sunday in his white pick-up truck with a bucket of small yellow peaches from one of his trees. He told us he had picked 15 gallons, so we should take the whole bucket.

I had no problem with that.

Then this morning, another white pick-up truck* pulled up in front of the house, this time with Nick. Nick is also an older man who goes to our church. He lives a few blocks away in the village. He brought us a bag of slightly larger white peaches.

It appears we already have a reputation as people who will take excess produce. I'm fine with that reputation, especially if it results in ten pounds of free, delicious peaches.

* Never have I seen so many white pick-up trucks. It's become something of a running joke with me and A., all the white pick-up trucks driving slowly around. He tells me it's because the white ones are the cheapest heavy-duty trucks. I just think it looks like an episode of The Twilight Zone.