Bountiful Blessing

Yesterday morning I was making breakfast, pancakes and eggs, and was thinking to myself how nice it would be to have some red meat…we hadn’t had any read meat since Thanksgiving, we have STEAK and not turkey on Thanksgiving, but that was a while ago and we had long since ran out of the stock in the freezer and had not the time to make a trip to the beef farmer’s to buy more (we’ve been soooooo busy with our E-Bay business, it being christmas time and all…) so I really had a hankering for some red meat…

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon, Nathan steps out the door to put some packages in the mailbox to mail off to E-Bay customers and there are 3 DEER in the yard!  It’s been hunting season for awhile around here and he’s been trying on and off to get one, as he has the free time to do so, cause we’ve been awful busy with the E-Bay business…  So, he ran back in the house and grabbed his gun and in less than 10 minutes we had red meat! 😀

a young buck, that’s my arm in the pic in the process of gutting the deer…he downed it with a belly shot and then finished it off with a bullet to the head

Usually he kills the animals and I butcher them and cook them up.  The first fall that we lived in this house (2009) we got two deer, a large doe and button buck (button means he had very small antler nubs).  Fall 2010 there was a newborn baby in the house and NO TIME for hunting….Fall 2011 there was another newborn baby in the house and NO TIME for hunting…  So, it goes without saying that we are very grateful for this bounty of wild game!

This is the third deer that I have ever butchered (but I have also butchered 2 goats and they are similar to deer in size and construction..) and it went a lot more smoothly than the first time around!  The first time, I was about 8 weeks pregnant with Charity (our 2 1/2 year old daughter) and trying to fight back the morning sickness induced nausea from the smell of the guts….I’ve also gotten a lot more physically stronger since then, so this time around it was a piece of cake to remove the hide and saw through bones etc. Butchering large animals requires a good deal of upper body strength…

*drool*

Last night, for our traditional Friday Night Sabbath Feast we had roasted venison loin and the tenderloin along with roasted potatoes and baby greens from the garden…it was SO GOOD!  He was on the small side, but we still got about 50 pounds of meat, along with the liver and heart which I plan to cook up tonight, and plenty of bones for broth making.  We’re even having fried venison for breakfast!

the hide with head still attached

Now to try my hand at tanning the hide.  The first time we got deer I wanted to try tanning the hides but couldn’t stomach it due to the morning sickness, this time however I am going to roll up the hide and put it in a bag and stick it in the freezer and buy the supplies I need off the internet.  You can use the brains of an animal to tan it’s hide, unfortunately the brains were ruined by a bullet, making them unsuitable for brain-tanning.  I’m very excited to make my own leather!

Thank you O LORD for this Hanukkah Sabbath Blessing! 😀

A Different Perspective

First, a history.  I grew up in a traditional nuclear (my parents are still together btw, a rare and beautiful thing in this day and age..) southern baptist christian family.  We celebrated every holiday with gusto!  and Christmas was the biggest and most special 😀  Growing up, I loved Christmas…setting up the tree as decoration, baking cookies and a birthday cake for Jesus, giving gifts to each other to celebrate His Birthday, and oh the lights, I always loved all the Christmas lights!  One year, as a young teen, I think I was about 14 years old, I used some of my babysitting money and bought a 2 foot tall fake Christmas tree and decorations and decorated my room all up for Christmas in October! 😆

Then, around The Christmas Season in 2005, when I was 22 years old, I discovered some articles online about the pagan origins of Christmas and how it wasn’t really the Birthday of Jesus and I was shocked!  and then dismayed and then annoyed…because, you see, I really did think that it was His Birthday.  Living in a family of 4 kids, birthdays were always a big deal at our house and having been trained  from a very early age that birthdays are special and require big celebrations, I naturally took the birthday of my risen Lord and Savior as a VERY BIG DEAL!   Then when I found out that it wasn’t really His Birthday, my next thought was “then what’s the point??  why bother??”  As I have said in previous posts, I have a very hard time in playing along with a lie, if it’s not true then it’s not for me.

I then brought all of these articles to Nathan’s attention and he was like “yeah, I already know all that, it’s all true.”

“WHAT!?  Then why didn’t you tell me??  Here we’ve been married for 3 years and celebrated 3 Christmases together and yet you never told me!”

“I thought you knew, everybody knows that…you don’t know that?? and besides you look like you really enjoy Christmas, I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”

“But if it’s not HIS Birthday, then there is no point!”

“That’s exactly what I’ve always thought too.”

And that settled it.  We still finished out Christmas 2005 since it was already upon us, and we halfway celebrated Christmas 2006 for the sake of family who were visiting us during The Christmas Season in our new home in West Virginia after we moved from Maryland, we didn’t want to spoil their holiday…but, since then, we have not celebrated Christmas or Easter…this year will be our 6th year not celebrating Christmas.

Now, this is where you wrongly assume that I am going to tell you about all the EVILS of Christmas and rant and rave and I have done that in the past and the response I got was always very telling …”so what?” people would say “we like it, don’t ruin it for us!”….and again, shock, dismay, annoyance…all these feelings would envelope me.  I could not understand why people who profess to be His Followers would want to invest so much time, and energy, and money and resources into something that wasn’t even true!!

My Birthday is on May 11th, if someone came up to me on July 11th with a birthday cake and presents and balloons and said “We know that it isn’t really your Birthday but, it’s the thought that counts right?? Happy Birthday!” would I be happy about that?  Frankly, NO.  The person’s willful and blind ignorance would reveal that they really had no love for me, they would have been better off not remembering My Birthday at all.

Look, I don’t really care what other people do, I’m not trying to ruin people’s holiday.  I understand, it’s your culture…your ways, and they are different from my own culture and ways of thinking and doing…it’s always been that way, all of my life, even when I did celebrate Christmas.  It’s like going to China or India during the midst of some celebration completely foreign to my own culture, I’m not going to be an ass and hate on it, and if you wish me a Merry Christmas I’ll wish you one right back because I know it’s important to you.

Yesterday I took a trip into “da big city” to do a bit of shopping, it was soooooo busy, with all the Christmas shoppers and the music and the decorations and the toys, oh the toys!  And I was waiting in line behind an old grandmotherly type lady who had lotsa toys in pink boxes stacked up on the counter for purchase, most likely for a grand daughter or two and she held up a toy and showed it to me and said “do you know if this is the right toy?” speaking of some actress/singer on some TV show…and I replied “I’m sorry but I really don’t know…” pointing to 2 of my sons that were with me “…I’ve got boys, so I really don’t know what the girls are into these days”  and she sighed and said “well, I really hope it’s the right thing cause she’d be really upset if it isn’t and I’d hate to waste all this time and energy for nothing”.

And I was so sad!   At that very moment I just felt like crying!!  Because here was this older grandmother lady so badly wanting to relate with her grand daughter and please her and receive her love, and spending all this time and energy and money, which she most likely doesn’t have much left of…and most likely she probably bought the wrong thing and the girl will not be pleased and all the grandmother wanted was some love and to make her happy…and for what purpose is it all?  Just to make people feel like they are never good enough? and can never do enough? . . . I was depressed for the rest of the day…