Thankful Thursdays. Nov. 8th.

Things I'm thankful for today include;

The way God made our bodies to heal while we sleep. Last night I went to bed bone tired and sore and slept solid and was amazed at the transformed shape I woke up in 7 hours later.

Papa told me last night that he has a long weekend this weekend! He gets Saturday off!

Bread.. I'm making bread today and the dough made an excellent fry bread lunch for the kids and I. With homemade cheese, honey, jam and milk it filled that hollow spot very nicely!

Nap time.. coming up soon and I think I need one :)

Carrion eaters....Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles. Beautiful.


And the odd one.. is CATS. I'm really grateful they eat mice and keep them out of my house.. but do they HAVE to eat off the beef quarters that are hanging in the addition?? IT'S MINE!!! Just kidding.. they, hopefully, are not eating enough to make a difference (they chewed through the plastic bags covering the beef) and there will be lots for our freezer.

Harvest Time :)

For the most part harvest time on the Griggs Homestead involves animals. In the last week we've harvested 4 pigs and a steer!! And I only got two pictures of pig harvesting and that was on the second day when it was just Papa and I. The day before we had Mrs. E and her two lovely ladies :) from home church, and Mrs. M helping cut and wrap their pork and ours. The E family is trading potatoes, AI services for the cow, for their pork. Mrs. M also traded veggies from her garden this summer; zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, hot peppers, cukes, beets and more and babysitting for her pork. We like these kinds of trades! We cut and wrapped them in the entrance which is nice in this weather. After taking out a bunch of STUFF and putting plastic on the floor we put a piece of plywood on the table in there and covered it with plastic. Papa had the meat saw in the corner with more plastic under it. We started about 10:30 and stopped for 30 minutes of lunch to finish everything but the grinding and sausage stuffing by 3:30. The grinding was done by about 5 and we stuffed the sausage the next morning.. while the kids sat on the washer and watched and giggled. Apparently it's very funny! 

 Here are the three pictures I got! 

Papa putting casings on the stuffer. 

The meat in the tote and my wooden plunger to push the meat into the stuffer. 

A bunch of finished links. YUM!! I believe these are Dakota Hot dogs.

We made Mennonite sausage, Mc Griggers (breakfast type) sausage and Dakota hot dogs. 

Casings soaking in warm salt water. The best casings ever as they have the plastic inside which makes them MUCH faster to put on the stuffer. We did 73 lbs of sausage in an hour and a half and only had one casing rip!! AWESOME!!! 

Right now the steer looks like this 

but covered in plastic as beef has to hang for about 2 weeks to age nicely before cutting and wrapping. That's on the list for this weekend :) I can't wait!! 

Oreo Anyone?

After the 1st two oreos.

After the next two oreo's.. I think she likes them :)