Readers: when I wrote this post, Sparks and I joked about its potential for causing controversy. Well, it turns out that it has sparked some. I’ve stated my position in the comments, if you’re interested in reading them.
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope yours is merry and bright. We are working on preparing Christmas dinner, here, and configuring our new Wi-Fi Kindles (woohoo!). Sparks gave me my “big” Christmas present yesterday, though.
Meet Stewie. Isn’t he sweet? He’s a Brown Swiss steer, and we’re buying a half of a half of him when he’s butchered in January. Because we’re not buying a quarter, we don’t have to pick hind end or front end–we just get half of everything on one side of him, snout to tail.
Stewie was bottle-fed as a calf by Sparks’ boss’s son. He spent the summer in a grass pasture and is now comfy in a barnyard and stable with three other steer, being fattened up on corn and hay. He’s never had antibiotics or steroids. He’ll be processed and hung for two weeks, the way beef ought to be. We’re so excited and pleased to be having this adventure in local, extensively-farmed, properly processed meat. Hooray! It’s all of our crunchy-granola, River-Cottage dreams come true.
And since a half of a half of Stewie wasn’t gonna fit in the freezer side of our french-door fridge, we also have a brand-new, 16-cubic-foot freezer to put him in. And also gooseberries, blackberries, black raspberries, rhubarb, peaches, applesauce, pear sauce, salsa, tomato puree, hot peppers, and all the other goodness we hope comes out of our garden. Hooray!
