Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 16 12/28/04

Today was a good day. I guess I find myself constantly trying to not get involved. Albert and Marie listen to a lot of my advice about their lifestyle and their business. They’re doing better, healthwise than 99% of the population and there is still room for improvement. I’m getting emotionally attached, I need to step back. I need to just sit and observe and not try to make it "Nate’s Perfect Amish Organic Farm." I sat around a lot. I helped Albert pack a little. I’m pretty good at cutting the cheese into 1 lb blocks. I usually get right around one pound when I cut. They need a cheese knife bad. I’m cutting a 14 inch in diameter and six inch think block of cheddar on a cutting board the size of 2 decks of playing cards with a dull knife that bends like rubber. I finally got my Vedic astrology books. I think Elizabeth is going senile. I asked if she could look for them today and she said she wouldn’t look for them but hopefully at sometime during the day, her memory will be jogged and she will remember where she put them. I knew she never would have found them so I told Albert that she was being difficult. He talked to her and told her how I was disappointed in her. 5 minutes late, my books are on the counter. They were in the attic. I knew it would work. We had to go to Homer Adams today to make ice cream. Albert also needed some chickens slaughtered so we tied a wagon containing 30 chickens in boxes to the back of the buggy and head to Homer’s. I felt uncomfortable doing this. It’s one thing to ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar, or to stop by unexpectedly. I felt uncomfortable saying, “Hey, we know we asked to make ice cream today with your equipment. Can we also slaughter, de-feather, skin, and gut 30 chickens using your facilities without any notice?” It didn’t work out thank god because Homer was using the hot water thing you dip the chickens in to get the feathers off easy to make cottage cheese. Peter and I would have been there for hours. We were on the way to Homer’s and Peter asked how long I was staying for. I said till about Mid January. He thought it over and said I should see if I could stay another month or so. At first that made me suspicious (why am I so negative?) Immediately I thought, “Oh, it’s because they need help and they want me for free labor.” I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way. On the way home we stepped by Fischer’s Health food store, which is a health food store run by the Amish so I could get some fruit and show Marie what Rapadura (unrefined cane sugar) is. We were riding back, I offered Peter an apple. He said, “No, it’s your and you paid for it.” I said, “Yeah, but I like to share.” He said something along the lines that I’m sharing a lot by helping out, and that they’re glad that I am here etc. I was touched and not that suspicious. We were milking the cows at night and John, Albert’s brother was hanging out. He said that I’m doing a good job, etc. It was like “Stroke Nathan’s Ego Night”. That part made me feel good. I didn’t feel so good when I called my mom. She’s stressed because UPS can’t find one of my packages, and I messed up and sent them in a way that cost about a hundred dollars more. She was upset because she said we’re living on borrowed money right now. I don’t want my parents to be poor or be in debt. I want them to have money and not have to worry; they are such wonderful people who have helped so many no matter how little they have had. They have always looked out for me. I want to make money so they can have money. I need to figure that out. How I can help people and make money? I know I will. Vedic Astrology will help with figuring that out. Ben (my cousin) is saying that astrologically, I am right on and doing exactly what I need to. We need to both figure out what we need to do to help our moms. He feels the same way about his mom. Plus, the tsunami thing happened where so far 60,000 people have died. That is a bummer.

For breakfast, I had an avocado with lettuce, butter, bacon, eggs, cream and sauerkraut. Marie had some sauerkraut this morning and said she liked it. I knew she would come around. Dinner was spareribs with super fatty meat and bones that were soft as French fries. I ate mostly the bones. I love marrow. Mashed potatoes and green beans and carrots. I just had some whey. I love whey. Oh yeah, I ate an apple with dinner too. “Dang-A” (Thank you).

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 15 12/27/04

I have been her exactly two weeks. Time really goes slow when you’re not sleeping through it. I spend a lot of waking hours with these people. I got a chance to make breakfast today. I made eggs frittata with cheese, bacon, onion and garlic and spices. I really need to get some good fresh herbs; it would make things really good. They loved it, it tasted really good. I tried to make another dessert with just cream and eggs. It just doesn’t work. I followed a recipe in the Wise Traditions catalogue and still didn’t come out like I wanted it. It seems too eggy and firm. I need some advice. They loved it though. Lucy was fawning over it. She was hanging out right by me on the couch. I would give her a spoonful... Her teeth would touch the metal of the spoon and make a clicking sound. She would take a bite, look away, then stand on her tippy toes to see if there was more. I would say, “Me?” (like “may”) which means “more” in German. She wanted a lot “me”. They started smiling and laughing, they’re not afraid of me anymore. I really want kids. Lucy and Lisa make me want to have kids. I was really lazy today. Just hung out. Took a midday 1-2 hour nap. It was extremely cold and windy today. It was so cold that I didn’t want to breathe through my mouth because it made my teeth cold. The guy who delivered the chicken feed today said it was minus 15 with the wind chill. We were joking about the bull, it came after him once too. He said he’s a city boy and he can’t tell the difference between male or female. I asked what city, he said “New York.” I told him I had just come from there. He said he was there on 9/11. He said the fire ball was beautiful and ugly at the same time. He said it felt like someone threw an M-80 at his feet. He was going to say more, then had to go help the other guy in the truck. The name of the company was Schreck and sons, I wonder if he was one of the sons and they were brothers. They both had narrow faces and squished, lower 3^rd of the face. Elizabeth still hasn’t found my Vedic Astrology books yet. I told her the books are about stars. I didn’t want to tell her it was astrology because I though she might not like that. She started getting suspicious, she said, “Like using stars to tell time?” I said, “I don’t think so.” I like messing with her, not in a mean way. I like to joke around with her a lot to make her laugh and smile. For breakfast I had scrapple, egg frittata, sauerkraut and a pear. Lunch was cheese, sauerkraut, another pear and cream. Dinner was creamed corn, veal, lard made French fries, sauerkraut, homemade ketchup. They ate the dessert, chocolate vanilla custard or whatever it is. I was cleaning the gutter with Marie tonight, she kept saying “Gouda Gao,” (Good Horsey). I was pulling the shovel. They call me “The Horse” a lot. Jersey cows are so cute. The tan one we have is adorable. Short, big puppy dog brown eyes, and really fat, like pregnant fat, she’s not pregnant though. Holsteins are a little more scary, they’re huge. If cows played basketball, Holsteins would have a definite advantage. I’m letting Albert use my cell phone tonight, it’s really cold and lonely at the phone on the road. I want him to be able to spend time with his family more at night. I have free minutes after 9pm and on weekends. I hope I’m not being a bad influence. He just came in and asked how to use my phone. He said he thinks he dialed my mom by mistake. I think he called Diane (my girlfriend). This is funny.

Living experience on a raw farm

Day 13 12/25/04

I played ping pong with George today. He’s really good. They have a ping-pong table up in the barn. That’s where they hang out with their youth group sometimes. He has this incredible backhand serve with a crazy spin. He beat me about 5 times. I beat him once. We kept on asking each other what the rules were. He played Ping-Pong by the same rules I always played by. He asked if when the score is tied if we say “5 up” or whatever the number is. I said, “yeah, or 5 all.” It was fun. He was showing me how to hook up my cell phone to the diesel generator. He had something called an “in-router”, I think. It had an electrical outlet. I was very happy because I didn’t think there was an electrical outlet within 2 miles. All of a sudden, Elizabeth started yelling his name, then something in German very fast. He looked up and said, “What the Frick?” We run outside, one of the Jersey cows got stuck in the manure pit between the manure sprayer and the wall. She had fallen in the hole halfway. It looked like this (insert picture). We had no idea how long she had been there. She had pooped all over her back legs and her head was the only thing keeping her from falling in. She was upset. George ran to go change his clothes, he had on his nice ones ready for the youth group. I stayed with the cow. It was kind of nice because I could touch her and she couldn’t move away like they normally do. I was caressing her face, petting her, saying “shhhh”, etc. I don’t know if it calmed her or not. George came back and we saw Peter and he came over. None of us knew what to do. I suggested hooking up a horse to her and pulling her out. They didn’t think that was a good idea. We thought of a lot of different ways, we finally put a yoke around her neck. We attached a rope to it and George and I pulled as hard as we could. It took about a minute and we finally got her out. She was shaking really bad. There was a cold wind, her knees were scratched and bloody. It was funny, George and Peter were arguing about the best way to get her out. A little father and son argument. It sounded like my dad and me, the way I talk back to him sometimes. She couldn’t walk for a couple of minutes and finally went back inside. People started showing up for the youth group dressed really nice. George went and changed. We put the cow in a big pen inside with her two calves, hay and water. I felt good. It’s Christmas, I am living with the Amish and I am all alone. Albert and Marie left to go singing with their friends and I have the whole old house to myself. I went over to Peter's house, they were having a singing. Susan and Naomi’s youth group was there. Albert told me to get cleaned up (he meant it in a nice way) if I was going to go over. I got cleaned up the best I could. I don’t have any really nice clothes so I just put on a clean pair of pants and a dark grey sweater, I tried to make my hair look semi-nice. I didn’t shave because I’m trying to grow a beard to keep my face warm because it is so fricking cold. I rode Albert’s scooter other there. The 16 year olds were milling around. They seemed surprised to see me. I don’t think they expected to see an English there. I looked down, I felt uncomfortable looking them in the face. It seemed like they didn’t know whether to say hi to me or not. I walked in. There was more Amish and more of them were staring at me. I set my stuff down in a corner and went looking for a familiar face. The house was filled with 100-200 Amish. All the men and boys were hanging out together and all the women and girls were hanging out together. It felt like the women were staring at me, or more like inwardly startled to see me. They tried not to stare. I saw Elizabeth and said hi. She showed me where to sit. I was feeling really un-comfortable. People didn’t know whether to say hi or not. This little Amish girl sitting in front kept turning around and staring at me. I sat next to a gentleman named Daniel, he was warm and friendly. All the Amish kids in the youth group walked by to shake everyone’s hand¹. Some of them didn’t know whether to shake mine or not. Some did and smiled; some barely touched mine and walked away. I remarked to Daniel that a lot of them had limp handshakes. He said, “Yeah, cold fish.” I laughed because he knew what that was. We both smiled. All the girls looked alike. Same outfits, maybe slightly different colored dresses. Every girl had pretty much the same color. Same with the boys. Same haircut, same colored shirt mostly, same shoes etc. The girls sat on one end of the room, the boys on the other. I guess so they could look at each other and decide who their future mates would be. They started singing beautiful songs in German. Daniel opened the book and put it where I could see it. He asked if I could understand it, I said no, but I would read anyway. The songs were very haunting and beautiful. All of them were in German which made them sound even more haunting. It took them a couple of minutes to finish each sentence, they sang so slowly. They would draw out each syllable to the max and sing it up and down the scale. It was really pretty. Some of the Amish girls kept looking at me through the crowd of people. I was looking at a couple of them too. The unflattering dresses hide a lot, but you can still pick out the pretty ones. Many of the women were not pretty, many of the men were not handsome. I began to understand what Albert and Homer Adams meant when they said that a lot more illness and birth defects were starting to affect the Amish community. So many of the faces were right out of the Weston Price book. Crooked teeth, narrow faces, crowded arches, receding chins, messed up lower 3^rd of the face. It was really prevalent. A lot of them just looked weird. I left after 30-45 minutes. I thanked Daniel for his kindness.

1 It reminded me of Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

living experience on a raw food farm - the butcher

Day 12 12/24/04

We woke up a little earlier today. There’s a rhythmic sort of sound in the barn. The cows mooing, the sound of the milk machines sucking, sound of cows turning on the water and drinking, Marie saying “Whoa”. The sound of the poop and pee hitting the gutter. There are a lot of layers. At night when it’s time for the cows to be milked we have to call them in. We yell “Come-On!” It sounds like that, I don’t think it means anything in German. I think we say it because it sounds like the cows mooing a little bit. I think it’s our half-assed way of trying to trick them to come in, like it’s their cow friend saying “Hey come on, it’s fun in here and there’s yummy grain!” We were taking the milk over in the spudnick to be separated into milk and cream. We have to do that twice a day usually when Peter has a lot of orders. The spudnick looks like a little Russian satellite. Maybe that’s why they call it the spudnick. It’s a big metal ball on wheels that you empty the pails of milk in and can use to transport short distances. We were almost at Peter’s house and Albert saw a car turning down his street, "The butcher’s here.” He said. We were going to butcher a calf, a cow, and two pigs today. I though we were going to do it at night for some reason. Maybe because I associate “killing” and “death” with being hidden. I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I was still feeling weird from yesterday. My cut was still open pretty bad. The raw honey that I put on it was helping, I think. My body heat was melting it, every once and a while I’d have to wipe it out of my eyebrows and eyes. The butcher picked us up and took us back. He was a Mennonite, he had his son Joseph, about 12 years old with him. I forgot the butcher’s name. He looked like a butcher or a hitman. He looked like Jude Law’s character in Road to Perdition. He was wearing a Mennonite hat and glasses, blue medical gloves, he was driving with them on. Thin pale face. His son had crooked teeth, pale, looked like a normal young kid. He was wearing mechanic's overalls. The kind where it’s like a full suit and the pants are attached to the shirt. They both had bloody knife holsters. We parked behind the barn and Albert went to go get the calf. I helped them open the barn doors. They started putting on these butcher utility belts with knives and sharpeners etc. I went to go help Albert. He was trying with all of his strength to push the calf out of the barn. It was a small white and black Holstein calf. There was a rope tied around its head. I started pulling the rope while Albert pushed. The calf really didn’t want to go. We got it to where the butcher was. He had a small rifle. Albert held the back while he held the rope. He put the rifle on top of the calf’s head. The calf was still struggling. He pulled the trigger, it made a loud pop. The calf immediately dropped to its knees making a loud crack on the cement floor. It fell to the ground and started twitching with a stream of blood coming from its head. Joseph started laughing and shaking like the calf. Sparkle was barking. The butcher came over and stuck the knife into the cow’s neck, or maybe it was the heart and blood gushed out. The blood was really dark red and made little streams that went down the hill. They started cutting off the legs and slicing the calf into pieces. Albert and I went to the barn, I don’t remember if it was before the calf or after. We had to get a harness around the bulls head so we could call it out. We had to trick it. Albert tied a string to the part of the gate that the cows put their heads through to eat. He gave the bull some grain to get it to put its head through. The bull did and we pulled the string closing the gate on its head. The bull didn’t like that and was fighting. I was with the butcher and watching them with the calf. I went down to help Albert and I saw the pigs already dead in the horse stalls. They had been shot in the head and had their throat cut out. We got one of the Belgians (the big horses) and tied a rope around the pig to the horse. We dragged it up to the back of the barn. The horse started freaking out and wouldn’t go all the way to where the dead calf was. I think it smelled the blood and didn’t want to be next. We finally got it up there. We went and got the other pig. This time Albert had a stick and had to whack the horse a couple of times to get it to take the pig up there. They cut apart the pigs. It was weird they had a couple of different garbage pails for things. They would put the head and skin in one, hooves in the other. It surprised me how non-kids gloves they were. We went to go get the bull, it took Albert and me both pulling on it to get it out of the barn. We tied it on the back of a long wagon to which two of the Belgians were hooked up to. The bull was freaking out, it was falling down, jerking its head, it really did not want to go with us. We started going towards the barn. I jumped on top of the wagon. I was above the bull and watching it. It was really angry. We got it to the barn and we had to back up the wagon to get the bull in a good spot so we wouldn’t have to drag its dead body too far. The butcher jumped on the wagon and started kicking it in the side of the head and ribs to move it over. He got it to a good spot and put the rifle in the center of its head. All of a sudden the bull stopped struggling and stood still. The butcher pulled the trigger and the same "THUNK" sound happened when it hit the cement floor. Earlier when we brought the dead pigs up to the barn, Sparkle started attacking it. When the calf was still shaking and dying, Joseph was laughing and shaking too, mocking it. Sparkle started humping the cow’s legs¹. We were butchering the bull and the butcher looked at Albert and asked him, “Did you know that we buried my dad Tuesday?” Albert didn’t. Albert said, “So he is sound asleep." The butcher said “No, he is wide awake.” He stated talking about how his dad would talk about “the Lord” to everyone he met, and that is why he is in heaven. He said his dad died of brain cancer. While we were butchering, he would stop everyone once and a while and say something about his dad. He would smile or laugh; talk about memories. How they did not have to take the car keys away from his dad, Ken, when he wasn’t fit to drive anymore. The butcher said, “Some people you have to take the keys away from, but not him.” It seemed like he wanted to talk about his dad. Sometimes he would say something about the Lord like “People who run with the Devil, that’s what they get.” Stuff about the Lord and Devil. Maybe he was doing it because that’s what his dad did and he was trying to be like him. Maybe Joseph will be talking like that in a couple of years. I was surrounded by death. It was one day before Christmas and in those two days before Xmas I had killed more and seen more death that in all of my life put together. I wonder if I am gong to have nightmares. I wonder if the animals I killed are angry at me.². I feel weird. I went to Wal-Mart with George, Susan and Naomi toady. I left the unfinished ice cream in Homer Adams freezer and I needed to stop by the health food store to pick up some groceries. We hopped in the horse and buggy. We drove for around half an hour. On not so busy roads, on busy road and full on stop light/4 way intersections where we barely made it through³. It was Xmas day. The streets and parking lost were crowded. It was difficult to try and navigate a horse and buggy through a crowded Wal-Mart parking lot. We got to a hitching post at the far end of the parking lot. There were a couple of other carriages there. We got out and walked over a hill to Wal-Mart. We were shopping for doll baby strollers for Lucy and Lisa. It was fun, there were other Amish people shopping also. It was white trash and physical degeneration city. We were also looking for ice skates. We walked up to some of the employees behind the knife counter. They weren’t wearing uniforms or name tags. I could hardly tell if they worked there. As we got near them I heard the fat, white, toothless, dirty striped shirt girl say to the guy, “I can’t believe you ate 5 dozen eggs, you must be crazy.” They probably needed some Jersey butter. Employees, customers, everyone looked really messed up. Physical degeneration, it’s everywhere. I know it’s everywhere but it doesn’t sink into my head until I’m smack dab in the middle of a place like Wal-Mart. They didn’t have the doll baby strollers, neither did K-Mart, Dollar Tree or any other. I got Marie a retractable clothesline hanger. Naomi said that’s what she wanted. From there and back it took about 4- 5 hours. It’s exhausting to ride in a horse and buggy. It’s very cramped. I stopped by Homer’s to get the ice cream and give him a copy of Weston A. Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. They didn’t have it but knew about it. When I first met Homer I didn’t really like him too much. I liked what he did: good food and grass-fed Jerseys. I felt that he was cocky, self-assured, handsome and strong and he knew it. I didn’t like that about him even though that is exactly how I am. It’s funny sometimes when I meet people who are a lot like me, I don’t like them. They bug me. He’s a great human being, loving, caring to his family, dedicated to spreading his knowledge, why do I think the worst of people? I showed up and he was having dinner. I said hi and showed him the book and gave it to them. They smiled as I was leaving Homer asked, “How much do we owe you?” I said, “Nothing, Merry Christmas," and looked down. They smiled. I smiled.

1 This is an example of black comedy. This cute baby calf is dying and in death throes on the floor (black), and this little dog named Sparkle is getting off by humping it’s quivering leg (comedy). I wonder if God thought it was funny.

2 The butcher said according to the bible, animals have no souls, so apparently I am in the clear.

3 Lancaster, Pennsylvania is a culture shock. I have been living in Los Angeles for the last couple of years. The only horses I see are the ones that the cops ride at the beach. On that Christmas Day, we were bumper-to-horse and running red lights. Everyone in the cars seemed used to it. The Amish were used to it. As if car exhaust wasn’t bad enough, I had to deal with horse exhaust too!

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 11 12/23/04

I woke up earlier today than usual, around 6:00am. It was sprinkling and the sun had not come up yet. Once we started milking, it started raining a lot harder. We ate breakfast and I started helping Marie make ice cream. I was going to go over to Homer Adams’s house to slaughter turkeys and they needed ice cream made so I was going to bring it over there to do it. I got into the buggy with Barbie (Amos’s sister) and she drove me in the rain to Homer’s house. Homer is the Amish version of an attractive man. About 6’0-6’1, handsome, strong, hearty disposition. He welcomed me and took me to the back where they were slaughtering turkeys. He introduced me to Richard, a friendly co-worker. Richard took me to the Turkey pen. He showed me how to catch them, “Grab both of their wings.” I had never slaughtered or killed anything more than a bug before so I was nervous¹. I didn’t want to hurt them when I caught them so I tried to be gentle². It made it more difficult to hold on to them. I felt like it didn’t make sense that I was trying to be gentle because they were going to be dead and I was going to kill them soon. We took four and put them upside down in buckets with holes in the bottom for the heads to come through. Richard showed me how to do it. He said you need to pull on their necks and then cut the veins on either side of their throat. He said that you don’t want to cut their wind pipe because then they won’t pump out a much blood and that will make the meat bloody. He did it to one, the bird didn’t even struggle that much. Blood started spurting out on his hand. It felt really weird. He let me do the next one. This was going to be the first time that I’d ever intentionally killed something with my hands. I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t want to do it too hard because I didn’t want to hurt it and that only made it hurt more. Warm blood spurted on my hand. It felt really warm. He finished it off for me because I couldn’t do it right. The bird was struggling. I tried to do the next one. I cut a vein and I accidentally cut the windpipe. I heard it start gasping for air as its neck pulled up and down. I think I did the next one, I can’t remember. We finished and we went to the room where the birds were being cleaned. It was inside, it was rainy, windy and grey outside. They showed me how to eviscerate and clean it.
1. Cut off the butt hole
2. Slice open the abdomen
3. Remove the gizzard (save it)
4. Remove the intestines.
5. Remove the liver carefully and take off the green gallbladder, making sure not to puncture or it will make everything bitter.
6. Take out the heart (save it).
7. Remove the lungs and anything else.
8. Turn it over and remove the oil sack on the butt.
9. Cut out the soaking sack in the neck area without dislodging the grain in it onto the meat.
10. Wash it, put it in water.

It felt really weird to do all this. The birds were alive 15 minutes ago. As I was pulling out the intestines, poop would come out the butt and get on my hands and the bird. It felt gross at first, and then didn’t feel gross after awhile. My work area smelt like turkey and turkey shit. I was feeling really weird. Richard and Homer were used to it. We finished up the turkeys and went to go get the chickens. Homer had two big yellow crates. He said most of the chickens were small, so try to get the biggest ones. The chickens had a chicken area and they were running all over the barn in the cow stalls, horse pens, etc. I was chasing one. I stood up and I felt and heard a crack. I opened my eyes and looked around. I had hit my head on a low hanging ceiling something or other (hay bin). Homer had heard it or seen it and asked how I was doing. I said I didn’t know, something was dangling in my eye. It was a piece of skin with some eye brow attached to it. He asked me if I was bleeding, I said I didn’t know. I started feeling warm drops fall past my face. He came and looked at me and said to follow him and we’d get a band aid. I followed him into a side room and he got me some supplies. His wife Lisa came in and said that I’ll probably have that scar for the rest of my life³. I bandaged myself haphazardly up and walked back to start slaughtering the chickens. Before I had hit my head and after we had finished the turkey’s we had supper which means lunch to the Amish. It was great, Homer is a farmer and a dairy man so he had his milk products and vegetables there. His butter was so bright orange that I though it was cheddar cheese. He said it was that way because all of his cows are Jerseys. We talked about Sally Fallon and Weston Price. He mentioned they started getting into this lifestyle because his wife was sick and was on a bunch of different medications. He mentioned that she had “chronic fatigue, hypoglycemia and her whole endocrine system was shut down.” He talked about his wife being sick and being on drugs a lot. I don’t know if that bothered her or not. They talked about their kids and the major difference in them in the ones conceived before they changed their eating habits, and the ones afterwards. They said the ones conceived after they started eating better were fatter, seemed healthier and didn’t cry as much. They said they didn’t talk about this much around the one who was conceived before this lifestyle change. We walked back to the slaughter room and put the chickens in the buckets. I was getting good and was able to do it without too much trouble. I was feeling weird and I didn’t know if it was because I was killing or because of the cut in my head. Homer walked away and I tasted some of the chicken blood. I’ve heard it has health benefits. It tasted like my blood, but with a slight chicken taste. I felt okay on it, I noticed an alert feeling, but I didn’t eat enough to get a full blown effect. They defeathered the chickens and I started cutting them up. I was getting good and faster. I ended doing them all but one. The most interesting part was the soak sack. A sack that poultry have where they soak the grains they eat before they digest them. I guess this shows why it might be good for humans to soak their grains too. I felt slightly nauseous and happy, and weird the whole time. We finished. I wiped off all the blood as best I could and I went to go make ice cream. For an hour and a half we tried to get the machine started. We couldn’t so we gave up. I helped him out a little bit then George (Albert’s brother) picked me up. We were talking about Christmas and girls. He joked and said that if I married one I might be able to live with them. We both laughed. I got home, it was rainy and windy, I was tired and wet and I had to milk the cows with Peter and Marie, Albert was busy packing. I really did not enjoy doing it. Homer’s farm feels different. He raises Jerseys. All the animals hang out and co-mingle in the barn and he seems genuinely happy and satisfied about what he’s doing. Albert and the whole family are really busy now with so many orders. Albert can’t worry about packing and milking at the same time so he is always busy and stressed which makes Marie and the kids stressed. I felt like I didn’t want to be there. I feel like Albert is doing as good of a job as he should. For breakfast I had an egg with cheese, sauerkraut, bacon and apple butter. Supper (lunch), Jersey butter, crisp lettuce, fresh turkey, meat and vegetable stew. Dinner some cultured buttermilk, snack: cream, whey, and apple.

1 I was just coming off of being vegan for a year and a half and now I was killing chickens. I grew up pretty sheltered so this was a huge deal for me.

2 It was ironic that in order to kill the chickens quickly and more painlessly, I had to be firm and grab them hard. I wanted to be gentle, but that made them hurt more. This is where I learned how to be firm and loving at the same time.

3 I didn’t know if this was coincidence or not. This was the first time in my life that I had ever intentionally killed something. On that same day, I got a permanent scar on my face that will remind me of that day everytime I look in the mirror. Maybe, this was God’s way of saying, “Hey, respect life!” Or maybe God was saying, “Now you look like a badass!”