Appreciate the value of things, not the price.

We’re almost there! We’re almost raising all of our own meat. Wow. I can’t believe how close we’ve gotten to this dream of mine.

Granted, we’re a long way from producing the majority of our own produce. The garden needs to come a loooong way. But hey, we’re not here to talk about the garden! We’re here to talk about the meats.

By this time next year, the only meat we should be purchasing is beef and specialty meats, like possibly turkey. We rarely buy any special meats or turkey anyway (unless it’s Thanksgiving), and the venison we will hopefully get this fall should replace a lot of our beef consumption, too. Beef is one of the easier meats to find around here that has been pastured and not given antibiotics or hormones, too, so I’m not worried about that.

I’m just amazed and excited about where we are!

We have two wethers (castrated male goats) who will join freezer camp in a few months.

We have a pig who will become bacon around January, and another which will produce more bacon bits next year.

We have the beginnings of our rabbitry and will hopefully be harvesting our first rabbits this winter.

And we also plan to raise meat chickens and a few Thanksgiving turkeys next spring as well.

I know I shouldn’t count my eggs before they hatch. After all, plans change and unexpected things happen. But I refuse to live life without excitement and hope. And this is exciting!

We will know what these animals ate.

We will know how they were treated.

We will know what medicines they were or were not given and why.

We will know they were raised and butchered humanely.

We will know that our own hard work and care went into the production of our food.

All of those things are worth a lot more than the cost of raising our food. So much more.

Cheers