food!!!!!!!!!

the food here just keeps getting better and better. Potatoes are coming out now, and we had an awesome potato sald, and mashed potatoes with 3 different kinds of taters, including purple potatoes. On monday, a bunch of homesteaders heading home saw a roadkill deer on the highway and stopped. they found that it was still really warm, a fresh kill, and brought it back to the homestead. I got back from picking cherries in town( there's a whole cemetary full of 100 year old cherry trees) and came home to find a dead deer on the ground with a bunch of kids standing around it, clueless as to what to do with it. we consulted a few books, and proceeded to skin and gut it. it was quite an experience, one that a number of us guys at the homestead had been talking about wanting to be part of, so we were really excited and nervous at the same time.

after two hours we were done, and we went to sleep, woke up early in the morning and started to cut up the meat into steaks and jerky sized strips. when it was over we had over 30 pounds of venison steaks and jerky, and a whole bucket of stock bones which i used to make 2 gallons of venison stock, which is now in the freezer along with most of the meat. that night, we three butchers went out into the woods, had a bonfire, and stuck a whole side of ribs on the fire, slathered in a barbeque sauce i made. before eating the meat, we talked about the animal, and how thankful we were for it and how we hope it's in a better place, how we hoped it lived a happy healthy life,(which it probably did), how by being a part of the process of getting the meat on to our plates felt so right, compared to the way most people in our culture get their meat.

It was the most deliscous meat i ever had! well maybe not, but it was amazing and tasted great. we've already made some jerky in a food dehydrator which came out good too.

we're really in cherry mode here at the homestead, bringing 20 gallons of cherries back with us everytime we go picking. Most goes to jam, some to cherry pies and cobblers.

even though it's the middle of july there are still tons of oyster mushrooms in the woods. and the gardens are filled with kohlrabi, onions, chard, kale, spinach, lettuces, there are at least six different edible flowers. I may be roughing it, living in the woods and all, but the diet is not rough.