Kristmas in Kansas

Christmas 2008 was my third Christmas away from my Winnipeg home.

Ben and I are trying to stick to the every-other-Christmas schedule, so this year was our turn to stick around here. And it has been lovely. Of course, I still did get homesick at times, especially in the beginning of December, when I imagined our house in Winnipeg being transformed into what I like to call a Wonderland. My mom is so good at making coming home feel good. I remember coming home from a dreary day at University on miserably cold nasty days, and knowing that in a few moments I would walk into my safe, festive and cozy house, usually to the sound of some great CD playing, usually to the smell of something good baking, and knowing that there was very likely going to be someone home who was just waiting to sit down over a mug of tea and talk.

Certain Christmas songs like O Du Frohliche make me want to bawl everytime. And of course, Christmas Eve has a soft spot in my heart that literally feels like a punch in the gut when I'm not able to spend it with my family. This year, however, I felt a lot more prepared than last time. I purposely volunteered to help lead the Christmas Eve service so I be able to expend my energy elsewhere besides being homesick and although I still miss the feeling of a full house, I feel very at home here, and we always make sure to have a lot of people over.

Ben and I decided to continue our tradition of making bad verenike on Christmas Eve Day. We successfully ruined them again. This time it was because I bought the regular cottage cheese instead of the dry. What a wonderful and time consuming tradition. (We actually really did have fun.)

After the Christmas Eve service, we made a fire on our driveway. It was a perfectly still, mild night, and we sat there swaddled in blankets with mugs of steamy goodness. It was no Klassen family gathering at Tante Karin's house, but it was a close second.


The festivities are still going on, with several more family gatherings to come. We feel so blessed and fortunate to have so many people, both in Winnipeg and Newton who make our lives so rich. Maybe we'll post some of our New Years pictures in our next post. I think we're having a party...(but don't tell everyone).

Interlude

I thought I'd do something a little different and post a bit of music here.

Andrea bought me an octave mandolin as a Christmas gift two years ago, and I've really enjoyed playing it. It has a nice full sound that sounds good even when it's played solo (as opposed to my normal mandolin, which sounds great in a band but is a little too tinny when it's by itself).

St. Anne's Reel is an old fiddle tune that I've been playing on the octave for quite a while. It has a nice melody and it just seems to fit the sound of the instrument very well.

Recently I reworked the song to make it a little more my own. The melody is basically the same, but I stretched it out to twice it's original length (64 bars instead of 32). I didn't want it to sound slow, though, so I grouped the melody into quick little runs and used the extra space I had between the runs to put in more of a chordal background.

Anyway, here it is. It's not a Christmas song, but Merry Christmas all the same.

It's the Christmas Tree

First, one of the creepiest photos of me that has ever been taken. Even Andrea looks a little scared.


Today we went out to Dwight's pasture to cut down a Christmas tree for our house (Dwight is my uncle and lives half a mile from our farm). Dwight's pasture is known for having a large variety of magnificent, brown, patchy Christmas trees.
They are also free.

Plus, it's almost like a fun adventure to go out into the untouched wilderness behind Dwight's house and search out the least ugly tree possible. It's fun for me because I grew up exploring that pasture as a kid, and know every corner of it. It's fun for Andrea because she really hasn't spent much time there at all and can easily be convinced that we are completely lost, or that I *might* have seen a mountain lion slink behind those bushes.

We had a great time. Here is our tree (it's the one I'm holding):


We put it in the back of the Prizm and secured it with a bungee.

Andrea decorated it while I took a nap on the heat register.

Merry Christmas, Everybody.

Butchering

This is Ben, and this post is about butchering. But for those of you who are made queasy by this sort of thing, you don't need to worry. I won't go into detail, and I won't post any pictures that might make queasy people queasy.

If you want to see the queasy pictures, you can see them on our picture page here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering

Butchering takes place on two consecutive days.

The first day is the gross day, and only a few people come. Generally, if your family is getting meat, it is expected that you will send a representative to help with the gross day. We butchered three hogs, and with maybe 9ish people helping, the gross day took us about four hours. When we were done the pigs were no longer pigs anymore but had magically become meat and were ready to be processed the next day.

I don't have many pictures from the gross day, as there are not many people who would want to see them.

The second day is the processing day, and pretty much everyone comes out to help. Here is a picture of a group of us helping Jerry wash some tubs:

Butchering is very hard work.

We process the meat (that basically means we trim the fat off and cut it into cuts of meat or slices for sausage), grind and season the sausage, cook the fat down into lard, and package everything up. I think there were about 23ish people helping, and it took us from about 7:30am to about 4:30 or 5pm. We had a nice big borscht lunch to keep us going.

Nobody really likes butchering (especially not the first day), but it is nice to know how your meat is processed and to be able to control how lean it is and how it is seasoned. Plus, processing fees generally cost about as much as the pig does so doing the butchering yourself effectively saves you 50% on your meat.

There's also something to be said for being connected to the process that allows us to eat meat. When meat is packaged up in plastic in the store alongside hundreds of other things that are all also packaged in plastic, it's hard to be mindful of the sacrifice that meat requires. Butchering makes you face the fact that your diet has direct consequences for another animal. I'm obviously not a vegetarian, but I think it's important to acknowledge that sacrifice instead of trying to bury it.

I'm sure you are all wondering how Andrea reacted to her first butchering experience. Here is your answer (I'm linking instead of posting the actual picture because it does have raw meat in it): http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering#5274225393339249010

And here's a nicer one if you don't want to see the raw meat: