Meat Time

bacon, say no more. 

scrubbing the  counter with salt to sterilize was the only job I took on

Meat Time 

With the smell of bacon on the stove and an entire deer carcass on the kitchen counter it was "meat time" last night. Noah shot a nice fat three point buck last week, now we would have more than enough meat for the winter, we where able give half the deer away to our friend, Hilary and his family. Hilary had never done cut and wrap before. Noah is no expert but he always gets the job done and it looks perfectly fine to me.

getting ready to start in 

The venison is all in the freezer and Noah is at, Hughs, right now using his grinder to get us a bunch of ground. If all this meat talk makes you hungry we are going to try out the winter market tomorrow at the QCC with freezer sales of beef and pork.

Harvest Time

Off to Market 

The cattle are off to market. Now is maybe a good time to become a conscious carnivore if you aren't already. Thank you to all our customers who pre-booked sides and quarters this year, we hope you enjoy our first year of Hillcrest Farms beef. To those who would like some beef but a quarter is to much for you we are doing freezer sales right now. So give me a call and book a time. I would also love fed back for ideas on the easiest way for you (the customer) to shop freezer sales. Would you like a day you could just drop by once a week? Or does appointment work better for you? We also have freezer sales pork for sale from our pigs we raised. We are getting more meat birds and hope to have those for you in the new year, 2013 is just around the corner!

Morgan "helps" Dad corral the cattle

I have to say I'm more than a little proud of the basil Noah started this spring and I planted. It just kept giving and I just kept topping, it made it's way to the Saturday Market a few times this summer and hopefully I'll have more for you next year. Thank you to my sister boys for helping us get our last load to market, we'll make you the leaders of the child labour work force anytime. 

the house smelled wonderful that day 

We had a local food harvest Thanksgiving get together with friends, the food was amazing. The topic of the evening was chicken poo, I'd leave breastfeed come and back and still chicken poo talk. That's what happens when you get a lot of food growers together, oh the glories of chicken poo. 

A Thankful Heart

On August 15 our we had a son. A beautiful boy, still and without breath or pulse. All time stopped and the world moved in slow motion. How could I get my baby to breath? I knew his little soul had yet to enter his body so while people rushed and whirled about me, sirens went.. I just called him to come to us. He had a big choice to make, with oxygen being pumped into his little blue, grey body and the sound of people counting and calling, after about ten minutes and what seemed like forever and a moment. He took a breath and about five minutes after that a pulse.  Whatever I had been through in life nothing can prepare you for a time like that and nothing but my faith and my loving husband could have brought me through the next few weeks. Not being able to hold your newborn child and seeing them in so much pain is like having a part of you slowly die. The light goes out of your eyes and you feel almost unable to move your body because it feels like most of it is missing. After seventy two long hours of waiting I was able to hold my little boy, skin to skin, and the light just flowed through me and him and in that moment we both knew life was now sweet and the healing had just started to begin. Over the next two weeks in NICU with our son who we named, Morgan James, many miracles happened. Either Noah or I was always by Morgans side firmly holding his hand softly singing to him or talking  to him in a hushed tone, letting him know we believed in him. Every time a machine would come off,  the day he first moved, the day the feeding tube went in and he got his first golden colostrum, the day I could start trying to breastfeed, the day we were moved out of the red room, the blue room and finally the green room, the day the feeding tube came out, the oxygen monitors came off. The day his sister, Lyra,  got to see him without any IV or machines attached and kiss him on the check. I can't express thanks enough to our friends who showered us with love and support at this time. I felt like death eating hospital food, the food that was brought from near and far to nourish us made all the different to my mental and physical  state. After exactly two weeks to the day in the morning, Morgan, had a MRI. That afternoon the first results came back as, normal, and half an hour later we were discharged. In the past weeks we have had so much love come our way through unselfless service and support from family and many friends. It fulls my heart to over flowing I am amazed by all of you. Life has never been so very sweet, I have never felt so full of love, gratitude, patience and strength. My family has recieved a great blessing and I will ever be so thankful for my mother and father for teaching me about a loving Father in Heaven and for the gift of prayer. Now we are home and things are starting to go back to what life used to be but nothing will ever look the same to me as I have been there and back again and I truly know how blessed I am.

holding sisters hand 

the day after we came home 

Eight weeks, such clear blue eyes.