So Doggone Full

*warning pic of raw meat inside*

There is no overdoing it when it comes to gratitude. Holidays should be about celebrating abundance, not guilt. Pop the velcro on your Christmas sweater (like I did) and gnaw on, friends. (Just maybe, don’t have a midnight poop emergency, like I also did.) —Molly, the extremely old farm dog

Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

• Gimlet is doing so well! She has figured out how her legs work and now zooms around. Yesterday she tried grass for the first time (which is a real let down after warm milk). Benni is taking such good care of her, and they’re both just thriving.

  

• We kept a rooster from the spring batch of chicks we raised, and he has come into his own roostery self this week. Roosters are not great about asking for consent, but this week I saw him go after a hen who was not having it. She turned and chased him all the way back to the barn. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. I guess if you name your chickens Gloria SteinHen and Ruth Bader Ginsbird, you can’t be surprised when they refuse to put up with rooster bullshit!

• I was so proud of myself for getting my cover crop planted in the garden last weekend. Unfortunately, the wind blew the garden gate down and yesterday I caught the chickens eating every last wheat seed!! I guess I’m starting over on that project this weekend.

• Chris was successful in bringing in a deer this week. Neither of us finds hunting particularly fun, but we feel it’s better to eat the deer than have them hit by cars or die of starvation from overpopulation, since we don’t have apex predators anymore. We’ll use almost every bit of the animal, compost the few organs we don’t eat, and let the dog and the chickens pick the carcass clean (yes, chickens are tiny dinosaurs that gladly eat meat). Our freezer is full and we are so grateful.

Here’s What I Loved This Week

So much of our Thanksgiving meal came from our farm. I’m so proud of our hard work. Here’s a list:

• All the onions and garlic used to season the bird and the stuffing.

• The dried apples in the stuffing were from last year’s crop.

• The sweet potatoes and carrots in our whipped yams were from the farm. We also made a purple sweet potato pie!

• The chicken stock in the stuffing and gravy were from the meat chickens we raised this spring.

• The turkey! It turned out so well!

• The potatoes for the mashed potatoes.

• The rosemary, sage, parsley, and thyme.