Hurrying to catch up

The days and weeks have been galloping along here, at a pace too fast for my liking, but this is Summer. Harvest time, pig processing time, preserving time. And all of the usual jobs; cows, poultry, preparing wholesome meals from scratch and gardens as well.
I don't know how I ever managed all this when I was working longer hours over many more days of the week.
I so love our "simple" life and am now even more grateful that I'm semi-retired, but the hours are long, the days too short, and the work seems to never end. Sometimes it can all feel quite overwhelming and it is then that I need to take a breath and remind myself to focus on each task at hand, instead of having six things on the go at once. Well, as women, we are always multi-tasking, but my aim is to practice mindfulness in all that I do, being grateful for having the ability and the tools to do it. 
Who enjoys vacuuming the house, (?) but I'm grateful to have a vacuum cleaner, and indeed, a house to vacuum. I'm grateful to have taps and hoses attached so that I can hand water some of the gardens, unlike many women in other countries who have to walk miles each day to carry a container of water back to their home. Oh yes, we can quickly slip into ungratefulness when we are tired of watering the garden again because the rain didn't come as predicted.
Autumn is just around the corner, and slowly but surely, the tasks are being ticked off, one by one.
The pigs have gone, so that's one less job to do each day. Twice a day feeds, yard cleaning, water trough filling.
I picked up the carcasses from the abattoir last Thursday (they were killed on Tuesday) and we hung them in our refrigerated cool room until Monday.
They were big pigs, dressed weights were 103kgs and 102kgs, but the fat ratios were just perfect, which is always a big relief to me. I have no idea how to judge the fat ratio of a live pig, other than looking at it and making a judgement, but I do know that a pig that is too fat is just as undesirable as a pig that has too little fat. Getting it right has become a skill that I'm learning to master. Phew!
Monday was pig processing day. After all of our morning tasks were done, cows milked, chickens fed, gardens checked and watered, we donned our aprons and made a start.
It took all day, the cutting up into roasts and chops, packing 10kgs packs into the boxes for the orders, the customers turning up all afternoon to pick up their boxes of pork and ordering their pork again for next year.
We kept some of the pork, and I diced, minced and packed chops and roasts, into our freezers until they are groaning full.  Two buckets of bellies and bacon bones are in the nitrate free brine in the fridge until Brian fires up the smoker on Saturday.
Now I need to clear some space in the freezers to make some room for the bacon, smoked hocks and bacon bones after they are smoked as these will be our year's supply of all things bacony.
Some family dinners between now and Sunday should clear up a bit of space if I cook up a couple of sizable chunks of meat.

This is only one of three freezers!  That beef dripping will be used for soap making in the next week, and some of those tubs of cream will be made into butter. Maybe there will be space for the fifteen meat roosters that are ready for processing after all.

Brian installed the filter tap a couple of weeks ago. We have rain water through the house and although the water is  filtered before it reaches the inside taps, we decided to put in another filter because we are hearing more stories of people becoming sick from their rain water.

Celery.

Never underestimate the purposeful power of flowers growing among the vegetables.

The rubber snake that scares more people than pesky sparrows!

Yay..!! The Queensland Blues are finally starting to set.

That smiley face. (Love)

There is a hint of dampness in the air this morning as I finished milking Lavender, and the temperature has dropped.  There's only one thing for it.... light the kitchen wood stove for cooking up the pork roast with side vegetable dishes for a family dinner tonight.

Cheers!