beef and bulk harvests

it's starting to get chilly! we've been harvesting the last of our hot crops (tomatoes are all pulled up, and we've pulled all the red and green ones from the hoophouse!). I made fried green tomatoes for dinner last week. the peppers are holding on but we'll probably pull them tomorrow because we're expecting a hard frost tomorrow night. We've been spending other time getting the farm ready for winter. Today we did the 2nd of the "bulk harvests". that's when we harvest everything we planted for a whole crop all at once, and put in the root cellar. so we finished pulling up the rutabagas, putting them in feed bags and stacking them down there last week and today we started on the celeriac. We like to sing that as "celeriac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac...you oughta know by now", so we've had billy joel on the mind all day. plus this afternoon we were stacking wood, so we got to listen to the radio (no "movin out" but other billy joel classics we got were "always a woman to me" and "we didn't start the fire").

Tomorrow the new guy from the slaughterhouse will come for Lina and for the other 4 pigs. I spent a bit of time with her yesterday. She's always been pretty flighty - we all can get close to Chloe and she even "hugged" me yesterday, cradling me between her neck and her body. Lina is very curious and let me get up close enough for a brief pat, but then shies away. When I moved the chicken fence last month she was in the same pasture as them and kept jumping the fence (while it was on!) once she had figured out where the chicken feed was. She's definitely mellowed out a bit in the last couple of weeks. She's still a true advocate for others. when we have Chloe in to get milked or when we put moses in at night (we have to separate him overnight from Chloe or we don't get any milk), Lina moos constantly for 20 minutes. When we're milking she's even figured out how to stick her head through the open window to moo more directly at me and Chloe. We will certainly miss her, and hope that the farm members that buy the beef this fall really enjoy it. It's a really interesting and emotionally challenging part of farm life for me. I value so much eating meat from a farm where I know it's been not just humanely treated, but treated with love and respect. Lina has had a special place in our year here.