There is a sheep in my freezer!

Last week there was nothing really pressing that had to be done, except for taking care of the meat sheep wether we had.  It was time for him to be done eating and for us to start eating him.  We had talked about doing it ourselves.  We went back and forth.  The weather was giving us grief, it was just too cold to work out in it.  Then we saw a break and decided to go ahead and do it ourselves.  So on January 22 we began the process which in total took three days.  Granted one day we did nothing on it as we had something else to do.

Now mind you, we have never butchered our own sheep before.  Yes, we just did a goat wether, but the size difference is significant.

The sheep was so large that we had to use the tractor to haul it from where we shot it to where we hung it up to bleed and be gutted and skinned.  I would guess it was somewhere close to 175 pounds.

It took us around one hour to get the job done and then we left it to hang overnight.  On Friday we proceeded to debone most of the front two thirds.  Most of it was made into stew meat with a few nice cuts to be used as roasts.  On Sunday we did the hind legs where we got some more stew meat and four nice leg of lamb roasts.  The main "hams" were cut into two pieces.

I now know why the price for processing a sheep at Bellengar's is $100, it is A LOT OF WORK.  Greg and I were whipped the evening of the first two thirds.

I have the pelt that is now waiting to be defleshed, salted, and stretched to dry.  Then I will tan it and decide what I want to make from it.  This one has almost four inch long wool, so it would be a really NICE rug.

So now that we have all that work done we have about 70 pounds of fresh almost organic meat in our freezer.  That feels really good.  As my granddaughter Marion, would say "It feels fulfilling."

Having done this and also having had a short talk with a friend that I haven't spoken with in over 40 years has made me realize something...I am doing just what I have ALWAYS wanted to do, and I think that I am doing a pretty good job at it as well.  I can be self-sufficient.  I could, should the need arise, feed myself and my extended family.  If we worked together we could, at the very least have enough food to keep us all well fed. 

Being self-sufficient is something that I have always had as a goal for my self.  I can remember buying our first house and thinking where I was going to plant fruit trees and where I would put my garden.  I also remember when I was just a kid, two of my friends came over to play and what we were playing was "plant the garden".  We were pretending to plant a garden in my backyard.  We were just grade school kids.  I guess I wasn't just playing, I was setting myself life long goals.

Now if I could just figure out why the pictures we took the other day are not on the camera or my cell phone.  I had some really goofy shots and I wanted to use one right here....