The Challenge - Assets, Part 3

I  cleaned out the chest freezers; everyone rejoice with me!!! I got rid of a few random pieces of bean-seasoning bits that were 3+ years old, and I made the executive decision to go on and get rid of the pints and half-pints of oatmeal and cream of wheat berries that have been in there for over 2 years. By way of an explanation for each of those respectively, we had 4 hogs that we processed about 3 years ago; the smoked, fatty ends of the hams and whatnot were wrapped separately to be used as flavor in beans, soups, and stews. As for the oatmeal and wheat berries, we used to occasionally use them in muffins, but, as you can see, we haven't in ages.

Anyway, after I was able to see, I did my best at putting like things together (beef with beef, chicken with chicken, veggies with veggies, etc.). Once I finished that, I had a pretty fair idea of what was in there. At that point, I will admit, I had to fight off some minor twinges of discouragement. My lazy self noted a decided lack of things we used really often and/or are quick and easy to prepare. Here's a quick overview of what I found:

• Pork (all of it's quite old...)
• 1 very large fresh ham
• 1 what I think is a smoked ham
• Various bean-seasoning bits
• 4 packages of country ham, all small-ish
• 3lbs of breakfast sausage

• Chicken
• About 8 whole, all but 1 from a trusted source (Some of us watched "Food, Inc." the other night...)

• Beef
• 2 large packages of ribs that are... really old.
• 3 large packages of roasts + 2 more individual roasts

• Fruit
• 2 quart bags of mixed
• Several bags of blueberries

• Veggies
• Several, but not many, quarts of squash casserole "mix"
• 2 pints (or are they half-pints?) of butter beans
• 1 small bag of black-eyed peas, I think...
• 4 or 5 small packages of spinach
• Roughly 2.5 - 1lb bags of green peas
• 5 bags of ready-to-be-fried okra
• A few pints of shredded carrots

• Nuts
• 1 large bag of hazelnuts
• 1.5 bags of chopped walnuts
• 1.5 bags of pecan halves
• 1 bag of almonds

• Dairy
• 9-ish lbs of homemade butter
• 16 lbs of homemade cheese that's somewhere between mozzarella and ricotta 

It looks like a lot, but, as I said earlier, a whole bunch of stuff we usually use is gone. For example, note the conspicuous absence of ground beef or venison on the list. Thankfully we're going to take one of our steers to be processed in the near future. (More about our farm next time!)