January 13, 2007

Playmates. Bro. Gary preached the sermon on Sunday on "Standing Up for the Truth".  We had leftovers for dinner then took naps.  We got up around 4:00 and I made pizzas to take up to Ralph Dickersons for supper.  Ina Sue fixed a salad, iced tea and gingerbread with lemon sauce.  We had a great evening visiting with "Raush" (Carolina's term).  I'm afraid that "Raush" and his girls spoil her....  He has given her so many gifts and clothes through the last years...
Picking Pansies. Monday was a pretty normal day.  I had a busy day at work.  William Brubaker had been helping us out for several weeks over Christmas but he returned to college this week.  Hendrick is teaching Bible School at Heritage again this year so he will be gone for the next 3 weeks.  That leaves Adam and I to tend the Computer Solutions side by ourselves...  Landon was really grouchy for Ina Sue today.  She thinks maybe he is starting to teeth.  Carolyn Heatwole came over for a while in the afternoon and helped to entertain the children so that Ina Sue could get some work done.  We had taco salad for supper then I spent a good bit of the evening trying to work out some issue on a laptop for Tim Myers.
Shopping with Mommy I went in to work at 5:30 Tuesday to work on accounting and to get ready for a meeting.  Unfortunately when I went to leave, the car wouldn't start.  After trying for about 5 minutes I swapped out my keys and took the minivan instead.  Then when I got to work I had a problem disarming the alarm and even though I called the police right away, I still had four police cruisers come screaming into the parking lot with lights flashing.  They were nice about it but I could tell they really wished that I had been the burglar they have been trying to catch.  The rest of the day went fairly smoothly for me.  Ina Sue made us one of our favorite recipes for supper.  Sausage pie!
An evening with friends. My car started just fine on Wednesday morning and gave me no more trouble.  Ina Sue loaded up the children and headed up to Orangeburg for some shopping.  We had several things to return to Lowes and she also went to the mall and to Freds and Walmart.  She was pretty beat by the time she got home and her and the children all went to bed for a nap. 
The pigs await us.... I had another very full day at work on Thursday.  I've been spending a bit of time working on a surveillance and door access system for the Fitness Center of Generations Unlimited there in Barnwell.  I pretty much got it all finished up today with just one or two wrinkles yet to iron out.  When I got home at 6:30 Ina Sue already had the van packed up and the children dressed in their pj's for our trip.  We left for Virginia around 7:00 and after stopping at Subway for supper drove straight through.  We got to Mt. Crawford at 2:00 Friday morning.  Pretty tired!
The butchering lineup. I got up at 6:00 Friday morning and got ready for our PRMC meeting.  We met at the Pike church at 8:00 and had a good meeting.  Donna Beery & Karla Heatwole provided us a delicious dinner and we were able to wrap the meeting up soon afterward.  Ina Sue took the children with her and went to visit her good friends Toni Ray & Bonnie Brubaker at Valley Structures.  Then they went to the Farmer's Market in Dayton and to the "Clothes Line".  They met Marsha at the Farmer's Market and ate dinner there with her.   
Keith kept really busy....  :) In the evening we went up to Sparkling Springs to Eber & Gloria Wenger's house for supper.  Duane & Natalia Showalter were also there with us.  Gloria served us a wonderful supper of lasagna, salad, green beans, french bread and a delicious coconut crème dessert.  Wow!  We had a very nice evening visiting together with our friends and didn't get left until about 10:30.  I was very carefully backing out their lane (or what I thought was their lane) when we heard a clatter out the back of the van.  It turns out I was actually backing through their front fence. :(  Thankfully we got stopped in time and I don't think there was any damage to either the fence or the van.
Paul Zimmerman did a great job for us. Saturday was the big Kenneth Showalter butchering day.  We had butchered the last several years at Ina Sue's cousin Charlie Martin's facility.  For different reasons, it didn't suit Charlie this year so Mother found an Old Order farmer, Paul Zimmerman, who had a nice setup and was willing to work along with us on the project.  Papa, Uncle Nub and Paul had killed and skinned two 500lb porkers the day before.  When we got to the butcher shop they were already hangin in halves and ready to be chopped up.
Cousin Charlie let us use his smoke house. We all started in carving meat.  As time went on Uncle Lee and Aunt Reba stopped in to help and Daniel Miller even came by to lend a hand for a while.  It was a whole lot of meat and took until about 5:00 to pretty much finish things up.  We had vegetable soup, sandwiches, relish trays, bars and other goodies to eat throughout the day.  Of course their was the meat sampling that went on as well.  We divided the pigs with a half going to us, to Keiths, to Roberts, and to Papa's.  We ended up with 67lbs of sausage, 12 pints of canned ham, 7 pints of canned tenderloin, 5 pans of ponhaus, 5 packs of puddins, several packs of smoked ribs, and we gave our lard to Aunt Reba.  We got back to Papa's around 6:00 and were able to get a little rest before Mother, Robert & I drove back to Charlie Martin's to take the sausage out of the smoke house and package it for freezing.  For a more detailed pictorial history of the butchering click here.