OCD Friday

Lettin' my obsessive/Type A freak-flag fly today!  It seems that whenever my husband is due home from the ship I always get in the mood to organize things just prior.  I am not quite sure why, since I will spend the first day pointing all my accomplishments out to him because he will not notice them otherwise, he is just happy to be in a bed that isn't directly under the catapult of the flight deck and have clean laundry.  Apparently he supports my OCD personality, because last year for Mother's Day I got...a labelmaker!  Yes, folks, not a day at the spa but at least a step up from a broom, lol!  Actually it turned out to be the perfect gift especially since I started canning last year.  Today I finally got around to making my "freezer inventory".  This has been on my mind ever since I started freezing our garden produce, but became an absolute necessity since we picked up our beef share last week.  I have a small deep freeze we purchased last year and it is now packed to the lid!  Now instead of unpacking all the contents every day to see what I can drum up for dinner, I just "shop" by looking at my list posted on my fridge.  I can update it when it becomes a mess and print out a new one!  I just cross off what I take and use it also to make my grocery list.  Pretty simple really, but one of those things I kept putting off.  

And another adventure I couldn't miss... the grand opening of the new "Trader Joe's" here in Virginia Beach.  We were here at opening time, mostly because I knew there would be alot of giveaways and it's right down the street from our house.  We got a couple of free reusable shopping bags and some cookies, then stocked up on "Two Buck Chuck" Shiraz and beat feet outta there.  Before today, the nearest one was about an hour away near one of our airports, so I would visit in conjunction with my mom or husband flying in or out!  So the freak flags were flying here too...check out the mob scene:

The first of the radishes were picked yesterday.  Now if I could just learn to like them...

Here are some miscellaneous things going on around "the Estate"...

Baby bunches of grapes, aren't they cute?

Finally!  The potatoes are doing something!

The new Colonnade apple trees are actually growing!

Clematis is enjoying our weather right now

Remember licking the beaters when you were a kid?  That's one good thing about getting old, we get the BOWL now!!!

That's probably it for weekend posts here.  Sailor/Farmer comes home very soon so I will be busy working and doing things that he won't notice, and will most likely spend Mother's Day mowing the lawn :)

Have a good weekend y'all, and Happy Mother's Day!

Almost forgot...anyone have any experience with "The Food Saver"?  Would love to hear your reviews/experiences before I purchase anything!

What's that smell?!

Today was the day our beef share was ready for pickup, so we headed out to Full Quiver Farm, anxious to be done with feedlot raised meat and get on with the good stuff!  I figured the kids would want to wander around and check out the animals, pet the goats, etc...WRONG!  My youngest decided he didn't like the smell of the farm and hung back, which is why only my oldest is in these pictures!  Now this kind of rubbed me the wrong way because, hey, I grew up in Minnesota and LOVE these smells, especially now that I live in suburban sprawl!  And to be fair, this farm had only a mild, pleasant scent of a small family farm...geez, one day I will have to drive by a feedlot or massive hog operation with the windows down so he can get a whiff of THAT!  It just shows me that I have a little work to do to make sure my kids know and appreciate all that goes into the food that arrives on their plates.  Come on...who can resist this face....!!!!

About the meat:  this is the good stuff!  Humanely raised, humanely slaughtered, pasture-fed, local abbatoir processed.  I don't put as much stock in the official "certification" as I do in seeing the farm for myself and talking to the farmer about their practices.  Certification is wonderful, but it is costly and thus prevents many excellent small farms that are otherwise qualified from obtaining it.  See the farm, talk to the farmer, taste the meat...pasture raised happy animals taste better than their grocery store feedlot counterparts! 

I thought I would show what a standard "share" or "variety box" that many farms use consists of, since I was nervous about having enough room to store it all, and had no idea what it contained until we picked it up!  Of course there are other cuts available for purchase separately, or you can go grand-scale and get the side of beef that some farms offer, but this "variety box" is becoming very popular with the urban/suburban population due to its manageable size, which is roughly 45-50 lbs.  

Here is the box on my dining table for size estimation.  This baby could fit in the back of your old college CRX! 
This is how much came in the box.  All vacuum packed & labled.  While probably a little much for your standard freezer (it would fit, but you would have no room for anything else!), this easily fit in my little deep freeze I purchased last year along with all my other stuff (my freezer is pictured above behind the dining table, as I have no room in my kitchen for it!)  It's a tight fit, but that's only because I am full of frozen veggies still from last years harvest and also a share of pork in there.  I think with a little creativity like plastic baskets or such I can get it to not just fit but be organized as well.  Freezer was under 200.00 and has already enabled me to not only preserve my garden produce for winter but also buy in bulk thus saving on my grocery bill.
The contents of the beef share:

1 lb Sirloin Steaks

4 T-Bone Steaks

4 Rib Steaks

2 large Chuck Roasts

1 Tip Roast

1 Bottom Round Roast

1 Shoulder Roast

2 lbs Short Ribs

3 lbs boneless Stew/Kebab chunks

5 lbs very meaty soup bones

16 lbs ground beef packaged in 1 lb segments

So there it is, if anyone was wondering what's involved in a Beef Share program at a small humane farm!  Farms usually offer the same type of share program in pork and lamb if they raise them.  And of course, we picked up eggs while we were there...nothing like fresh eggs!

To my sailor/farmer husband who is out to sea right now...sorry you missed it...we'll save you the soup bones, that is, if the Garden Dogs don't get to them first :)