When I was a kid and did not finish my dinner, I was told that there were children in China who were starving, and so therefore, I ought to be grateful for what I had. I retorted that if the starving children in China needed food, I’d be glad to send them my leftovers. I was then told, “shut up and eat.”

It’s really strange how one’s viewpoint changes as they age. If I had a child or grandchild, and they were not eating all their food, I’d now most likely tell them about the starving children in India. And they’d most likely roll their eyes the same way I did, then offer a similar retort. This would be because we’d have the same DNA.

Maybe my viewpoint is different because I now have a more all-encompassing world view. I know where China is and where India is and that, yes, there are children here and in other parts of the world that would give anything to have what we have.

I thought all of the above tonight, as I was tending to our livestock. Used to be that the animals in this area were members of a petting zoo. However, now they are pulling their weight and then some. Tonight, I pulled five eggs, a record number for one day, out of the upper roost. And I lugged two and a half quarts of goat milk back to the house.

Pete tying up tomato plants

We are full up on eggs, and it appears as though we again need to make cheese and/or yogurt. The latter prospect really annoys Pete, the head cheese maker. He is less annoyed about the fact that the raspberries are coming on, and that we are still getting enough strawberries in the morning for breakfast. The rest, we are freezing. He’s also recently froze and canned the 24 salmon that he caught last Friday at Fish Creek. We now have enough lettuce, beets, beet greens, rhubarb, swiss chard, and beans to last us for some time. We also have honey from our hives on hand. Turned out it was a good year. And oh yeah, we do have hay in the barn.

I think that Pete is rightly getting tired of doing so much food processing. I will soon focus near exclusively on harvesting.

Why is it that we have so much and yet others in the world have so little? There is an organization called Heifer International – if you send them a donation of a specific amount, they then give farmers money, so that they can purchase livestock. It’s hard for me to imagine, not being able to afford one’s own goat. But I’ll bet you the recipients of these animals are far more grateful than we are. This stands without reason – they are starving.

Yes, abundance comes with its own responsibilities. Food and dairy items have to be processed, and soon. Otherwise, they go bad. And going bad means waste, which is something that we here do not abide by. At least we have this part down.

Next: 214. 8/4/21: The Seemingly Ordinary Events of the Day