Saturday night, my husband and I went out for a nice dinner, just the two of us. It had been quite a while since we had done so. It felt like a much deserved break from all of the work we had been doing on Friday and Saturday, cutting and grinding meat from the elk he got hunting in September and the hog he butchered a few weeks ago, to get it ready for packaging into sausage.
Heading into the weekend, I had really been looking forward to an evening out with my husband. And I had really been dreading all the work of helping him process the meat. It was a given that I would help him, but I was not looking forward to it, and I figured it would just be something to offer up.
The funny thing is, as much as I had been looking forward to dinner as a break from all the work we were doing (and we did have a nice time), I actually had more fun with my husband when we were working together. I enjoyed the work more than the break!
On Friday we spent a lot of time out on our screened porch cutting meat into pieces small enough to be fed through the meat grinder. It doesn’t sound like a terribly enjoyable task, but it was actually a lot of fun. We had music playing, and we laughed and talked as we worked.
Saturday, he ground the meat and we got the whole family involved with packaging it. We had around 60 pounds of elk meat to grind and package, along with pork that had been made into about 60 pounds of brats, 40 pounds of chorizo, and 30 pounds of Italian sausage. I feel like I spent the whole day repeatedly washing the grinder and the stuffer and the huge plastic meat bins.
But the family was working together to get it done, and it was so much fun. The girls marked all the bags, kept the tape ready to seal the bags, and stacked the filled packages neatly into the bins for taking to the freezer (in fancy dress up, even).
The girls worked with us on the brats yesterday too, and I just loved seeing how proud they were to be able to help.
Sometimes the things that bring me joy and help me to feel fulfilled aren’t the things I expect. The best part of my weekend wasn’t the fancy dinner with my husband on Saturday night. It was the companionship that came from working hard with him on something worthwhile. It was the feeling of being a team and being happy to support him. It was the joy of watching my girls get so excited about being able to contribute. These are the real stuff of marriage and family.
After all the work was done, my husband fired our pizza oven for the first time, and we had a pizza party and family movie night.
It was an extremely exhausting, and thoroughly enjoyable, weekend.
I showed this to my husband and we reminisced about the times when he kept sheep and I helped him with processing the meet. He wishes he could go hunting too.