Winter has arrived

It snowed here yesterday, we now have about 3 inches on the ground. I am hoping that the warmer they are forecasting for later in the week actually happens. It is way to early for snow to stay. I hadn't prepared my mind for it at all. What a shock.

We are butchering three beef this morning.  No ecoli here....we hire a fully certified and licensed mobile butcher to come and do the killing and gutting.  They are downed with one clean shot to the brain, while they stand placidly eating their meal of grain. Nice and calm.  Hung by the back feet while the hide is removed and then the tractor moves them to clean ground and they are gutted, cut in half, length wise and lowered into a plastic covered truck box, each beef is encased it it's own layer of plastic, and then hauled to the meat cutters where, as per our instructions the beef is hung for 21 days in a large cooler until tender and then cut to the customers instructions. Frozen over night and delivered to their door.  The meat is never near or in contact with any manure that could contain ecoli.

The difference between our beef and the XL beef is that ours is not killed, gutted and cut up in the same place, and our beef hangs in a cooler for 21 days to tenderize it, while the XL beef is cut and boxed the same day it's killed and shipped to stores, where it is mechanically tenderized.

Gruesome details I know and I have probably put you off beef for at least a month by explaining the process, but it's good to know where your food comes from.

I have been painting the past couple of days, trying to finish a large 30 x 40 canvas.  I always start out excited as I spread the first layer of colour on a new canvas, the background.  Next I define the areas by adding more and darker colours, my favorite phase is adding the detail.  But the painting always goes through this phase of ugliness, or it's not the painting that does, it's me. I go through this phase of thinking I've completely screwed it up now...and then just want to smash it and throw it in the trash...but I keep plugging away and then it starts to look good to me again. hahahah, it drives Rbt. crazy. It drives me crazy.  The whole tortured artist thing...hahahaha 

And yes, it's another landscape, I feel the need to keep trying to capture the beauty of nature again and again, never quite getting it just so. I am driven...but sometimes I break free and paint a building or bird or something inanimate.

After painting a picture of some flowers from an odd perspective a sister of mine commented on a social media platform that at least it wasn't a landscape.
Huh, as if.  I happen to love my landscapes, so there...(sticking my tongue out childishly)

Gotta go find Rbt his insulated coveralls, it is officially winter when he starts wearing warmer clothes.