Bountiful, Bountiful, Bountiful

A few days ago a neighbor was going to harvest a huge grass/bug/crawdad/milk fed pig and called and asked if we wanted the fat to render into Lard. Taryn had mentioned this to him in the past. Well we got maybe 60 ponds of fat that day, some looked like bacon, it had a bunch of meat on it. So I started rendering it into Lard, and cooking the cracklings (OMG YUM), and cooking up some of the meat and freezing some meat for future use.  Now a lot of folks have been hypnotized by certain vested interests into believing that Lard is bad for you, when the fact is it is amazingly healthy, and a kind of fat your body craves... (unlike the horrible and virtually poisonous plant oils like corn and canola which along with Margarine have played a major part in destroying the health of "civilized" people.)  Anyway if you want to know the truth about fats, check out Weston A Price's site.... but that's not the rant I'm on today, today it's about BOUNTY.  Now from the fat we got a few days ago I'll derive pounds of cracklings, and gallons of lard... Then the farmer called today with more. 
Well last year I made a vow that I would not miss the final days of the farm stores sale over in the valley.  Thisteldown Farm on the last two days sells everything really cheap...and as it turns out, gives pumpkins away for free.   So today was the next to the last day, and as long as we were headin up river to pick up more Hog Fat...(and as it turns out Bones for soup) I figured we'd better head over to Thistledown farm and see what kind of deals we could get....

 

And I tell you what, WE SCORED .

We came home with about 30 pounds more hog fat

40 ears of corn

25 pounds of beets

25 pounds of carrots

50 pounds of onions

2 huge heads of celery

2 huge heads of Broccoli

6 garlics

5 huge heads of cabbage for making sauerkraut

4 sweet potatoes the size of footballs

10 Large free Pumpkins.. (dudes, if you are my age eat as many pumpkin seeds as you can, with your Saw Palmetto capsules or tincture, this will protect your prostate....and if you tend towards losing hair, the saw palmetto will grow it back ...with the only minor side effect of making you a little hornier than normal.

Every time I am good about taking the saw palmetto for a while my hair starts growing in thicker. and...well never mind the rest)

4 Boxes of apples for sauce

1 box of apples for storage

So my work was cut out for me when we got home..

It was gettin late so I decided to just deal with the ongoing Lard and crackling project...the corn, and the cabbage.

So here is tonights project

 I got the corn shucked and got it off the cob..

Then I put it in a baking pan with some lard and cracklings, gonna cook it a while in the oven, then freeze it...

On the stove I had cracklings cooking

Here I used a handy corn kernal removal tool to get it off the cob...

Then the dang stove broke. Temp sensor went on the fritz, so the boiler stayed on and would not turn off, even shutting off the power and turning it back on...and the dang thing came on again....  Well I didn't feel like tearing the stove apart tonight, so I got a little break and came in here to write this blog and eat some frozen blueberries..... Now that I've done that I'm gonna go and slice up the cabbage and put it in a crock with some salt and pound it for an hour or so....then add some juice from an old batch of kraut and pickles so we get a jump start with the good bacteria.

It was another wonderful bountiful day....AND Bracken's first real juant out into the world besides going to the midwives...And he was totally good....basically slept all the way there, then had some boob for lunch, then slept all the home.... Maybe I won't do the kraut tonight..... I think I'd rather go stare at Bracken if he's asleep...and if he isn't We're gonna play... YAY!!