I Am A Seven Cow Wife

That title will only make sense if you are familiar with the movie "Johnny Lingo," a church movie I grew up watching several times, probably due to my Sunday School teachers being unprepared to teach a lesson.  It's a good movie in that totally politically incorrect in an outdated  feminist way but I can remember thinking as a young girl that I'd like to marry the kind of man who thought as Johnny Lingo did.

As it turns out, I did marry a man who deals in cows.  In fact, should the custom have been present, I'm sure Jay would have made a grand gesture with said cows to woo me.  Instead of offering them to my father in exchange for my hand in marriage, however, he used profits earned from his 4-H steers to buy my engagement ring.  And since we've been married, he's kept anywhere between three to eight cows of his own at his dad's ranch. Truthfully, those cows have never impressed me much.  We are not cowboys.  We are not ranchers.  It's just something I felt was between him and his dad and didn't have much to do with me.

Until recently, that is.  This year, having what I believe is currently seven cows (or six.  Maybe five.  Like I said, I don't really know but in true Mahana spirit I'm going with the bigger number because I'm worth it) has directly blessed my life.  You see....it means I finally got my heart's desire: an upright freezer.

I don't know how a simple appliance became so coveted and elusive for so many years.  In Spokane, we didn't have the money and then we didn't have the room.  In SLC, we didn't have the room or the longevity required to need that kind of storage.  Then, here in D-town, we were renting and unsure about future space (chest or upright).  Also, after waiting for so long, I didn't want to rush into anything.  I wanted my future freezer to be perfect.

Every fall, Jay's dad selects which calves he's going to keep and which calves will be sold.  Boy calves, or steers, are almost all sold (although we did keep one for Seth to use as a 4-H steer.  We're hoping he'll have some cow money for his own Mahana one day) but some of the girl calves, or heifers (horrible word, in my opinion.  I don't know why.  Probably because it sounds too close to "hefty" and I just don't think girls should ever be called hefty, even if they are cows), are kept to become future mama cows.   I don't know why I wrote all of that out except to explain that instead of selling or keeping one of the cows that normally would have been sold or kept, we had it butchered for meat.  Thus my need for a freezer.

I ordered the size I wanted from Home Depot (the big one!  I figure you get about one shot in a lifetime for a new freezer and I was getting one that would last for thirty years) and it was delivered last week.  Sadly, it was too big for the space.  But not by much.  I had horrible flashbacks to the last time I ordered an appliance that was too big for its space but this turned out to be a much less painful fix.  Jay has better tools than he had four years ago and a little jigsaw cut along the top got my freezer in its space in no time.

Jay measures the refrigerator's height to determine how much off from the bottom lip of the cupboards he needs to cut.  Probably something I should have originally done.  It just seemed like such a big space for a freezer that anything I picked should have fit (sheepish grin).  

Using a planer to even out the wood. 

I helped him move this freezer holding over three-hundred pounds of beef just as soon as I took this picture.

A beautiful sight.

I don't think I have ever had more than six or seven pounds of meat in my freezer at one time (the one attached to my refrigerator.  Not my new glorious upright.  Perhaps the parenthetical detail isn't necessary since I have already explained how I had never previously owned a separate freezer or butchered a cow but it did allow me to describe my upright as glorious, which is true and qualifies as new information so I'm going to keep it in) so I really didn't know how much meat to expect from an entire cow.  I knew it would be a lot.  I just wasn't quite prepared for how much.  

Laaaaaaa (musical note)!  It fills the entire freezer!  

The top shelf is roasts.  The second shelf is filled with various kinds of steaks.  The third shelf contains the two briskets, stew meat and ribs.  And the bottom two shelves and door are filled with ground beef.  Yes, we are carnivores.  Look away, PETA.

So, there you have it.   How I became a seven cow wife as well as the proud owner of a freezer.  Much credit must be given to my own personal Johnny Lingo who says I'm worth it ;-)