I've had an unusually busy week this week, so I haven't made time to join in the fun on this thread
I have been reading along, though, and wanted to toss some thoughts in. Sometimes Dave and I do things for so long that we forgot exactly why we do them, I think!
Re: ribs- These days we have children old enough to help, obviously. But that's really recent. It used to be that this job was just Dave and I and they were little "go-'fers". Last year they took over about half of my job, and this year I've had the pleasure of just snuggling with my baby and pitching in now and then with the freezing.
I'll also organize my freezer when we're all done
Oh...back to ribs. When it was just the two of us, we're so exhausted that no one wants to grill ribs for dinner. We then have the problem of how to store the ribs if we don't eat them right then! They don't fit nice and tidy in the freezer because the rest of the animal is taking up all that space. So the only thing left to do is cut them out and call it good. Gotta do what you gotta do, ya know? Maybe next year I'll fire up the grill while they work on the rest. I do love me some ribs!!
Freezer: Obviously we go through a lot of food around here! We have 2 chest freezers, one big one, one about half the size. In general, the big one is used for beef/pork and the other for everything else- veggies, grains, breads, make-ahead-meals, fish, frozsen pizzas- whatever. As we start working our way down, I'll condense everything to the big freezer, and clean out the little one. Then, we'll get down to just enough to fit in the little one and we'll move and clean out the other one. At that point, I defrost and clean out the big freezer and start pestering Dave to harvest since I'm out of food
I make very good use of boxes, but mostly milk crates to keep everything organized. So I'll pack in all of the ground beef into 4 crates, and stack them on top of each other. I don't care about the stuff at the bottom, since it is the same as the top. We just move through it top to bottom. By using the crates, stuff doesn't really roll out to the bottom and get lost. I also almost never have to dig around to the bottom to find something. I think cleaning everything totally out every year helps as well. No 10 year old freezer burned food- we eat everything and start all over again.
Yes, out of 7 children only one favors me (and possibly Raffle Boy a bit as well). Those Whitinger genes are very strong!
Tallow- We get a LOT. Probably 8 gallons or more. I use probably 5-6 for soap. The rest gets used for various things like Crisco replacement for greasing pans, oiling tool handles, and we save some for sausage making or any other time we want some clean animal fat. While I do have all of the supplies to make tallow candles, I really dont care for the smell. I could make the candle over the grill fire if I absolutely had to in an emergency, but otherwise- no thanks. I'll stick with my soy candles
Tom- thank you very much! I had a lot of talks with our almost 4 year old during the process. He was upset because he "liked that cow". We had to talk a lot about how we took good care of the cow so that she could feed us for the year. Once he finally accepted all of that (which took most of the day) I had to convince him that we didn't need to shoot all of the cows!
