The Cross, the cross, always the cross

It's been almost eight months since I've written on this little blog.  I'm going to try to start again.  I can't say much except we got waylaid by life.  CPS, FSIS, FDIC, SATAN.  No matter where the problems lie or what kind of issue we have dealt with, I've not done a good job of dealing with it and many times have longed for death.  Thank the good God for the gift of faith, though, because it coupled with the fear of hell, has kept me from dwelling too long in those dark alleys.  

It's been a hard lesson to learn that suffering is actually the path to true and lasting joy, maybe not in this life, but ultimately and forever.  It's not a surprise mind you.  Christ was clear as a bell.

"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy,[a] that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."  

Matthew 7:13-14

"[Y]ou will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved." 

Mark 13:13

"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it."  

Luke 9:23-24

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit... Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned." John 15:1-2,4-6

But it's hard.  It does not feel at the moment like the easy burden and the gentle yoke promised by Jesus, unless you keep it in context.  That's one thing, all the quotes above are coupled.  A promise with a threat.  If you bear your cross then you will be saved, if you don't you will go to hell.  Suffering feels like hell, but it isn't, it's just unpleasant.  Even a slow death being tortured by one's enemies isn't hell, it's just really unpleasant.  See here:

"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

Matthew 10:28

So there you go.  You, me, your sweet Aunt Mabel, the neighbor kid down the street, my darling baby boy, we're all going to suffer.  But how well are we going to suffer?  I'm going to try to suffer well and persevere until death, come what may.  

 "[K]eep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong."

1 Peter 3:16-17

Nuestra Senor de Guadalupe, ruega por nosotros

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  It was in the examination of the story of this apparition that I finally went over the edge and came back to the Catholic Church.  I reasoned that a supernatural event that brought millions into the Church in an area of the world that had never heard the Gospel immediately on the heels of thousands leaving the Church during the Reformation, had to be either diabolical or heavenly.  In examining the fruits of such an event, I thought it obviously heavenly and a sign for me that Christ's Church was synonymous with the Catholic Church.  

Below is an example of the ongoing fruits of that branch, from Fr. Z's blog.

St. Juan Diego’s amazing miracle story

Posted on 9 December 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Remember…

If we do not believe in miracles, we do not ask for them. If we do not ask for them, they will not be granted.

We are not alone: the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant are closely knit, interwoven in charity. We on earth must intercede for each other and believe and ask for the intercession of the saints.

Today is the Feast of St. Juan Diego, of Our Lady of Guadalupe fame.  Mexican, native-American St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (+1548), was granted an apparition by Our Lady Virgin Mary four times on the hill of Tepeyac.   He had been declared Venerable in 1987.  St. John Paul II decided to beatify him without the approved miracle.  He was beatified on 6 May 1990.

Under normal circumstances, for a beatification there must be a miracle which has been rigorously studied and approved by the Congregation for Causes and Saints accepted by the Holy Father.   St. John Paul bypassed the process.  Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have done the same occasionally… well… Francis pretty often, as it turns out.

There was a miracle for Juan Diego’s canonization, however.  It is quite a story.

Juan Jose Barragan Silva, of Mexico City, was a drug addict from his adolescence.  He and his mother had been abandoned by his father.

On 3 May 1990 – note the date – Juan Jose, after getting drunk and high on marijuana with a friend, went home and started to cut himself on the head with a knife.  His mother, Esperanza, tried to get the knife away but failed.  She implored him to stop abusing himself and give up the alcohol and marijuana.   He shouted that he didn’t want to live any more so loudly that the neighbors came to see what was going on, but the door was locked.

Juan Jose threw himself off the balcony of their second floor apartment (in the USA this would be counted as the third floor).

In that moment, Esperanza had a “flash”.  Knowing that Pope John Paul was to be in Mexico for the beatification of Juan Diego, she called on Juan Diego to intercede for her son.

Juan Jose fell about 10 meters and landed close to a friend of his, Jesus Alfredo Velasquez Ramirez, who saw him land on his head on the concrete pavement.  Juan Jose was bleeding copiously from the mouth, nose and ears.  They covered him, thinking he was dead.  He suddenly sat up, rose and went to the stairs leading to his apartment.  On meeting his mother coming down the stairs he asked his mother’s forgiveness.  They embraced and remained that way for another ten minutes or so before the ambulance came.

During the ambulance ride Juan Jose said he had lost his vision.  He was able to say a Our Father.  He was registered at Sanatorio Durango at 1830.

The medical prognosis was very pessimistic.

The doctor, Juan Homero Hernandez Illescas, later explained that it was already incomprehensible that he was still alive.

They did tests immediately and found that Juan Jose had a fracture of the epistropheus, a large hemotoma in the right temporal-parietal region extending to the lateral part of the neck and lacerations of the muscles about the parapharyngeal space,  fractures from the right orbital to the clivus, intracranial hemorrhages and air in the cranial cavity and in the cerebral ventricals.

Fr. Manuel Ponce gave him the last rites under the impression that Juan Jose would soon be dead.

He continued to live.

Fore the first few days Juan Jose was sedated. On the fifth, doctors found that his pupils were symmetrical and reactive and that he could move his arms and legs.  On the sixth day he was released from the ICU to a regular ward.  On the seventh day his feeding tube was removed.  He was released on the tenth day after the fall.   Subsequent tests by neurologists and other specialists showed a total recovery.  Juan Jose subsequently gave up his drug habit and started school.

It was determined that his change of condition came on 6 May at the very time John Paul II beatified Juan Diego.

For a miracle of curing to be authenticated as such, the cure has to be sudden, complete and lasting.  It has to be inexplicable by science. It has to be demonstrated that the venerable or blessed was invoked in a particular way.  There are usually spiritual effects, such as conversion of life of the person cured and also witnesses.

The decree concerning this miracle was promulgated on 20 December 2001.  Holy Father Pope John Paul II canonized St. Juan Diego on 31 July 2002.

Arctic chill

I'm finally done.  The temperature is dropping and I'm finally done getting ready for it.  We've had some chilly weather already, but tonight a wall of cold arctic air is supposed to slam into us at 35 miles per hour.

In years past, I've treated that sort of thing rather casually.  Our first year back in the country, I paid lip service to winterizing our pipes (this is before we had any animals or plants) and the end result was a house that was uninhabitable for about 4 days, a broken down suburban, and a back door destroyed by my hammer when I ran out to the house in a borrowed truck to get something I left behind, and forgot the house key.

Often times, the price of wisdom is scars.  I spent the last two days getting ready for tonight.  Yesterday, the kids helped me bring in and stack a week's worth of well seasoned oak wood from pasture stashes, for the fireplace, along with a mountain of kindling wood.  The oldest boy went all around the farmstead with me, winterizing exposed pipes and hose bibs and emptying hoses.  We ended the day like we began it, in the dark.

Today, I butchered the two Christmas geese, a surprisingly sad affair.  After that, I spent time building and outfitting a winter hut for Beulah, our faithful Jersey milk cow.  When the boy brought her in out of the pasture, she settled right in to her little hotspot and ate a bite of cubes.  The 50 baby chicks in the brooder didn't need much, but I did place a barrier it and the cracks I'm sure the arctic air will find.

My wife's grandmother said they always waited for a "blue norther" to butcher the pig.  It was a good idea then, it's a good idea now and that's what we'll do tomorrow.  But for now, it's time to sit by the fire, pray the family rosary,and afterwards smoke my pipe and wait.

We are concerned...

I should be up to my elbows in raw chicken parts right now, but instead I'm sitting at this computer while the Polka Hour is playing on the radio, figuring out how to craft a clever rant, or at least just a rant that communicates my ire against the State.

On Tuesday afternoon I received an email from my inspector that began, "We are concerned..."  Nothing good ever comes from a State agency being concerned about anything.  Well, in this case, their concern consisted of a need for me to demonstrate the percent of water retained in the whole chickens after they go through the ice bath.

"No problem," says I, "I've got a scale and will simply weigh the birds before they go in and then after they come out."

"That's exactly what you need to do, but the scale must be certified and registered with the State."

That would have been a great thing to tell me a couple of weeks ago, not 36 hours before my customers are supposed to arrive.

"If you don't have one, you can still butcher, we'll just have to condemn the birds and they will have to be destroyed."

I spent the next 36 hours trying to navigate the system of getting a scale registered and certified with the State.  It isn't pretty.  First, you must fill out Form RWM-700 and pay an application fee of, in my case, $35 for one year.  Then you must contact a third party contractor licensed by the State to certify that your scales are indeed accurate. Depending on who you find, this fee can run anywhere from $100-$1000.  Then after the scale has been certified as accurate you must request a Weights and Measures bureaucrat to come out and put a sticker on the scale.  Right now that is a 2 month waiting list.  You may not take the scale to them, and the sticker that is there to "protect the consumer" cannot be mailed to you.

To top it off, the Weights and Measures division doesn't actually think that they should be certifying my scale, since it isn't going to be used to determine price, but a non-monetary measurement.  The meat inspectors disagree.  This question has to now be resolved at the level of the State capital.

All of this came about because on January 9, 2001, the US Department of Agriculture adopted by fiat a new regulation because they were concerned that, "Without published limits on retained water, FSIS cannot adequately protect consumers from adulteration and misbranding due to excessive retained water in whole birds."

So there you have it, folks, this is all about you and the Federal government's concern for your safety and protection.  Nevermind the income lost to my family, nor the woman who will now miss the farmer's market she finally got into, nor the two employees that I told on Thursday morning, they wouldn't be needed.

Guess what, though, the inspector still showed up and spent 4 hours working on paperwork in my shop.  I've spent a total of 6 hours working under State inspection, and he's spent a total now of 10 hours doing paperwork for my plant.  Something seems a little off.

The next time you wonder why the food at the local farmers' market is so much more expensive than the grocery store, please remember that not all costs are visible on a sticker.

Time to milk the cow...til next time.

Hilda II

Anyone who's spent any appreciable time in the country has some sort of quirky story about an animal that displayed an astonishing amount of personality.  Well here's one of my most recent ones.  It's the story of Hilda II.

Hilda I was a beautiful red wattle gilt that we got from a breeder down the road for $50.  She enjoyed a steady diet of acorns, scraps, a little pig feed, chickens ( and whatever else she scrounged up.  Her meat was dark red and delicious.  We butchered her in February of this year, and immediately felt the pangs of porcine longing.  Sure she was still with us, in our deep freeze, but it just wasn't the same.

One day, I was visiting a neighbor and three little piglets ran across the drive in front of me.  Out we jumped and at the end of it all, one little porker came home with us.  We put her in the chicken brooder and she began to put on the pounds.  She finally ventured out into the daylight and one unfortunate day she ran away.  I tracked her rootings for a ways down our drive and out onto the roadside, but then lost her.

A full two months later, I see her standing in the neighbor's coastal field, right underneath one of the horses.  We contacted our neighbor and inquired as to her arrival, and low and behold, it was indeed our little Hilda II!  He explained that they had an old nag that was declining in health and was probably going to be put down, until Priscilla (their name for Hilda II) showed up and befriended the poor animal.  The horse and the pig became almost inseparable, and thanks to a steady diet of alfalfa and corn, both began to pack on pounds again.  He wondered if we might extend the arrangement through the winter.  Hmm, someone else feeds out my hog and I still get to butcher her?  Absolutely!

This morning, while driving the kids to school, I saw the two of them, standing in the field happily munching together, oblivious to the destruction to come at the end of the winter, but none the less enjoying life.  It's almost enough to make a guy turn vegetarian...almost.

The doors of mercy are closing...

In the final hours of the liturgical year that witnessed the Jubilee Year of Mercy, and as we move closer to the 100th anniversary of the happenings at Fatima, this little snippet from the diary of St. Faustina keeps running through my mind:

"He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice."

(Diary 1146)

Out of an abundance of caution...

"H-E-B announced today (11/18/2016) that it has issued a precautionary recall of its entire H-E-B Baby Food 2 pack 4 oz. cups product line only. As of this afternoon, the H-E-B Baby Food 2 pack 4 oz. cups were removed from shelves out of an abundance of caution due to a customer report of a small piece of rubber found inside a single container of one variety of the product."

This was the first item that came up on the Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition webpage.  I was on that site, because I just received a call from my inspector to inform me that in going over my 295 page application, they discovered that I did not have a properly filed pre-shipment review log.  I'd never even heard of the thing.

"What's that?"
"It's a record keeping device that says that prior to shipment of the product (NB I don't actually ship anything) all CCP's were properly followed."
"Oh.  Ok."
"It's a redundancy measure.  You've already certified three times in other places that you've done this, but if you don't have one, that is automatic grounds for product recall and destruction."
"Oh. Ok"
"Yeah, it's kind of a big deal."
"Oh. Ok"
"Also, you need to have a thermometer calibration SOP, a signature page, a calibration log sheet and I saw that you only referenced an article in one of your rationales, so we need you to provide that entire article, and, and, and.... so myself and the regional director will be by Monday morning at 9 am to go over all of this with you and detail our expectations for your operation."
"Oh. Ok. Thanks."

CLICK

"Google search: How to conduct a recall."

Folks, I butchered  and packaged 68 chickens for a single farm.  SIXTY EIGHT!!!!!!!!

That inspector was here for 8 hours all total for 68 chickens.  He stood beside me or behind me the entire time.

The average poultry processing plant goes through about 100,000 broilers in an 8 hour shift.  His counterpart was paid the same amount of money as him for the same time period to certify that 100,000 chickens got the same exact stamp my 68 birds did.  Something has gone seriously off the rails here.

Ima hava drink.