A Primitive New Year

Our New Year's Day was a bit more primitive than we planned.

Worked on the hand-carved dough bowl... That's definitely a primitive item from pioneer times.

Gordon and Unc cut up a deer carcass to be ground into venison hamburger meat.  Except for the electric meat grinder, the whole hunting and butchering your own meat thing could easily be considered a primitive endeavor.

We allowed the dogs, all 11 of them, to chew on specific venison bones in the back yard. That harkens to their primitive carnivore origins, and made for some very happy dogs.

But we did not plan on the electricity suddenly being cut! The wind had picked up considerably, bringing in a sharp cold front, and apparently a branch had fallen on the electric lines somewhere between our little compound and the nearest asphalt.

In five or six hours, the power was restored.  It was such a dreary, overcast day that we had to light the kerosene lamps as soon as the power went out. 

These two lamps illuminating the venison processing belonged first to my great-great-grandmother Alice Penelope Kelly Hamer or to her father C.D. Kelly, another link to more primitive days.

Yes, we  had black eyed peas for luck and greens (in our case cabbage, but it was still a leafy green vegetable) for money in the new year. I wonder if that is just a Southern tradition, or if it shares similarities in other parts of the country or in the world?

Gordon, who never eats any vegetables, did not eat even one black-eyed pea or even a tiny bite of cabbage.  If 2008 holds bad luck and money shortages, then we know who to blame, don't we?  *wink*

Comments

[June]

That is quite an interesting New Year's Day you had there. You were certainly busy and the power going out certainly underscores some of those "primitive" skills needed long ago.