INFINITY

8/3/98
Harvest time! The season I get to reap my rewards from all the
much harder work of raising our critters and veggies to be plump and
ripe. Caring for livestock, including feeding, watering, and
recycling the bi-products of eating and drinking, compares
(in my definition of hard work) with forking the garden and
mulching. The two physical laborings meet with a wheelbarrow in
hand at the compost piles, the ultimate end to all cycles and
also of fresh new beginnings. Soon I'll take my winter's rest.
Someday I'll take my final rest, maybe in that same compost heap,
to give birth to countless micro-organisms which in turn will
feed increasingly larger species, until returning to our home, the Earth.


Not yet though, harvest has just begun. It will be another month
or so of stocking up before the more intensive, if easier chore
ends. Anyone who has canned a pantry full of garden produce may
argue about it's difficulty rating, especially during an
August heat wave. There are jars, lids and utensils to sterilize,
fruits and vegetables to pick and prepare, and finally, the
packing and processing.


With freezing, there is similar preparation before blanching
and bagging. The freezer usually has to be defrosted,
cleaned and it's contents rearranged to accommodate the fresh load.


Drying food may be the easiest of the many different methods
of stocking up, unless of course you have a root cellar. Even
so, the food must be sliced, chopped, or otherwise prepared
before dried. Herbs must be clipped, tied in bundles and hung,
hot peppers need to be threaded together, onions and garlic braided,
the list goes on.


Green and yellow string beans have been frozen, more are
awaiting some canning salt before being pickled. Tomatoes and peppers
are changing from green to red, it won't be long before they will
cause a marathon sauce-making episode. Some cabbages have been
frozen and others have been shredded for cole slaw, still more
grow larger because of the thinning of their bed. Carrots and
beets behave the same after pulling every other one for soups
and salads. The remaining carrots will be sliced and frozen or
dehydrated. Beets will be pickled and canned. Cucumber vines climb
the fence and corn stalks they are interplanted with. Sweet
jerkins will be pickled this week, bread and butter pickles will
follow, and as soon as the dill heads in the herb bed go to seed
they will provide the sour pickles.
 

Butchering is the most difficult of all my winter's preparations,
both physically and mentally, not to mention spiritually.
I have slaughtered and butchered venison and hogs, but so far
have hired the beefers done. I do our own poultry and rabbits
along with fish and game.


The two month old calf in the barn is next year's beef.


Bacon and smoked hams are ready to be picked up at the butchers,
a six-week old piglet now looks very small in the pigpen.


Ten rabbits are ready to butcher, half the chickens will be
butchered before snowfall. The turkey will be Thanksgiving dinner.


The next cycle has already begun. Resembling the sign for
infinity it joins like a figure eight or a magician's trick
rings. A round Styrofoam incubator on the shelf beside me looks
completely natural next to the circular dehydrator. The incubator
is hatching a new batch of chickens and the dehydrator is
drying beef jerky. Birth and death, beginning and end.