Beef Butchering & Processing ~ Farm to Freezer

Going to talk a little about beef butchering and processing today, we live next to farmer John who raises beef and chickens, it's a total blast, we moved here over 4 years ago and couldn't have asked for better neighbors! So we buy our beef from the neighbor, butcher and process ourselves, we have big gatherings when we do this, it goes faster and is so much fun during the process, doesn't seem like work at all!

So meet the neighbor John, ornery ole critter!!

I won't get too gory & yucky on here, but it IS butchering and it is graphic so close your eyes if you don't like this kind of stuff.

yep, its dirty work, but it is so nice knowing what goes into your freezer, who raised it, and what went into the meat we will server our family!

You do see it's the guys out there right? us gals are inside waiting patiently for our part, after they do the cutting, we do the wrapping :) and not to mention it's warmer inside too!

Let the fun begin, now to get the cuts everyone wants

How thick you want your steaks?

Let's trim them up boys!

Ok, so I meant the beef, not the other members of the family!!

Nice trim job :)

and of course we eat some too, cast iron skillets loaded with chunks of beef cooked over the wood stove, snack while we work!

All that is left is grinding the burger and getting it all wrapped, that was fun, a group of good people filling the freezer and having fun while doing it, wish you were here . . .

Our Happy Homestead in the 1970's

Aerial view of the happy little homestead in the 60's?, my how things have changed since then!

(previous owner's son gave us the 3'x2' print)

Moving some plants to new home

It's May 2009, we are transplanting some plants on this visit to the new house, we don't actually move in until August 13, 2009, so we have a few months of transplanting and interior painting to get done before we move in, so much nicer to do these things BEFORE you are living in the house right?

How about a few snapshots of the basement dungeon?

oh yes, it certainly needs a makeover, when we live here it will be USED as the laundry room will be moved from the kitchen upstairs to down here . . .

Yup, that's our beast of a tiller, brought it down to create new planting beds to transplant some of my flowers from the old house down here

did a strip bed up the front walkway and moved some plants, looks better already LOL

amazing what a little yardwork can do for a place eh?

and our view from the big front window, ahhh nice

and do you see that scraggley looking shrub, I am told it's a orange or yellow azalea transplanted here in the 70's from West Virginia by the then owners son, who just happened to breed and raise horses in the little red barn in the photo down below

and even better still, a view we will have  looking out the dining room window reveals an awesome heirloom Yellow Transparent apple tree, oh my gosh, can you say excited?!

I am already imagining the applesauce I can make from this gorgeous old tree, in our area, folks would pay an arm n leg for some of these apples!! They go fast at the fruit stands if you can even find them.

and  we put up some new birdhouses today, trying to entice them here before we actually move in :0)

the kids being ornery, waiting on us old farts to finish the yard cleanup we are working on

so they get bored easily, well I knew I didn't like that hand railing to begin with, but now I can see that kids certainly love it for entertaining purposes, spent gosh knows how long sliding down that thing!

that's all for today's visit, we will be back to do more work before we get moved in, see ya then!