Oh, NPR, how you inform and enlighten us all!

I got a few chuckles out of this driving home this afternoon. It brings some light heartedness to the ridiculousness of the presidential primary race and its self-imposed urgency.

If you laugh too, then we can be friends.

Masquerading as Suburban Homesteaders

We are now the proud partial owners of a cow so lovingly named #9633, who is somewhere in transit between a Colorado pasture and a beef processing facility. We've been talking for over a year now about buying grass-fed, hormone- & antibiotic-free beef from a happy local farm, and were glad to find some friends who felt the same. The six of us are splitting a half cow, which will be enough beef to feed us all for quite a while. Which means that we are not only the proud owners of 1/6 of a cow, but the proud new owners of the freezer now in our garage.

As we wait for our meat to arrive, we have decided to try some other freezing experiments. So Sunday at the farmers market, we bought 40-some tomatoes and a few pounds of green beens and carrots. After many hours of cutting, blanching, packing, and garbage disposal repairs (still in progress), here's what we came out with (in can equivalents):

11 cans of tomatoes

4 jars of spaghetti sauce

6 cans of green beans

3 cans of carrots

1 qt of tomato juice

It's been exhausting, but very enlightening as well . Wendell Berry would be proud. And so will we once we get to sit down and enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labor:)