Hello all and welcome to our weekly Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

How has your week been and what have you been busy at???

We have had a busy, tiring and emotional week.

The first half of the week was all right and my husband and children managed to butcher a young bull and hang it in the cool room. We have been busy preserving tomatoes and corn and drying apples in slices. These apples are so delicious and I am going to try and get heaps of them done for snacks.

Wednesday night our son-in-law, daughter and children arrived, all ready to get into our butchering session.

My father-in-law came out to help us Thursday and Friday and we also had another friend come on Friday and he will also be helping us on Monday.  We did have lots of laughs together and we all managed to work together well most of the time.

On Thursday we butchered 10 pigs, and minced the meat. On Friday we butchered 5 pigs and they are hanging in the cool room to be cut up tomorrow.

These will be made into bacon, proscuitto, chops and roasts. We are excited with these ones as they are lovely and big and my husband has been feeding them grain soaked in our own milk for months and they have a lovely layer of fat which is so necessary for flavour and tenderness.

We made over 1000 pork sausages on Friday which we flavoured with different herbs such as garlic, chives, mixed herbs, and italian spices.

Thank you to all of you who were praying for our neighbour Mrs S. She passed away early on Friday morning. We were able to help out by looking after her grandchildren again on Thursday and Friday and they were such a help and blessing to us.

They are really great children and are so willing to do whatever we ask of them. On Thursday they all picked our tomatoes again and I now have another few buckets to process. On Friday they baked biscuits and then in the afternoon helped me make the sausages. They did a really great job and the oldest daughter helped me to twist them which saved me a couple of hours of work.

We finally finished up the meat on Saturday with the divvying up and labelling of the bags. Our son-in-law did a great job of stacking our share in our freezer and I am so pleased that I will be able to get to it a bit better than I normally can.

Even though we were busy we still had down time to socialise and play with our lovely grandchildren.

Granddad enjoys playing with the little ones and tickling and hugging them.

Our week was emotional because our No 1 son left on Saturday morning to go working in NSW.  He is away for 3 weeks and then home again for a week, then he is gone again for another month and back for his 21st party and then he is off again for another 5 months.

As I said last week it is a bittersweet thing for us. We raised him to be a man and now that he is and going off, we are finding it hard. We love our children and are so blessed with the relationships that we have with them and our son-in-law. We all have a great time together.

So after all that has been happening this past week, I had a rest on Sunday afternoon to catch up and get ready for the coming week.

Okay, onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were…

“Intimate Issues: 21 Questions Christian Women Ask About Sex” + LINKUP by Donna at Soul Survival Free Ancient Greece Lapbook by Tina at Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Talk To Me by Sharon at Sharon Sharing God

Thank you to everyone of you who took the time to link up. Thank you also to those of you who encouraged someone else by leaving a comment. Please know that your comments mean a lot to me as I am sure they do to others.

This coming week is somewhat quieter after Monday. Monday we are finishing off the pigs hanging in the cool room. Then it is back to work for my husband for the rest of the week.

Friday we have Mrs S’s funeral and then we are heading away for a couple of days to a Men’s Fellowship Camp. We go to this camp each year and enjoy the Bible studies and fellowship with the other people there.

It know it is a men’s camp but the wives can go as well and seeing as we are the youngest couple there we bring our children too. It is good for them to learn to talk to all different age groups and not just be peer socialised.

Our stall out the front is going well and our corn is just about finished. We have sold tomatoes and apples out there as well and once the pumpkins are finished we will probably sell some of those also.

Well my friends I pray that you are all well and that God is working in your hearts and lives.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings to you all dear friends xxxx

 

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.