Rachel and I pray the Our Father daily.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, 
Hallowed be Thy Name. 
Thy Kingdom come. 
Thy Will be done, 
on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Yet on Saturday, we got WAY MORE than our daily bread, as our friend James was able to get an entire dump trailer full of just-expired loaves of bread from a distributor.

A lot of this bread I wouldn’t consider actual food, as it’s white flour with preservatives, etc., and we don’t eat much, if any, of that kind of bread. Some of it, however, was high-quality organic loaves of bread and bagels. Those we saved in the freezer, and many we brought to church on Sunday morning to give away. We also invited over friends and neighbors to help themselves.

But what do we do with all the rest?

I have a friend with pigs who I hope will come and get some today, and we’ve also been spreading out a bunch of bread in the sun to dry so we can put it in bags to save as chicken and pig feed. If we can dry it enough to stave off mold, it should work. We’ve also been putting some in a big, new mealworm bin on the porch, which we’re going to colonize from our existing tub of mealworms. These will be future chicken feed.

The pigs have eaten bread until they are full, which rarely happens with pigs.

As for the many loaves which we can’t dehydrate, feed, or give away fast enough?

Well, that’s what composting is for. I plan to layer them with other materials in a huge pile and get some garden fertilizer out of all this bakery waste. I’ll bet we can make an awesome compost pile.

It’s incredible how much food gets thrown away in this country. The laws and the enforcement of them have really messed up our ability to just give away the excess. If you want to avoid a potential lawsuit, it’s now safer to just throw expired bread away.

The crazy thing about this is that my friend said he could get another trailer-load of bread every single Saturday. Holy moly. We already have two full freezers and there’s still a giant pile in the carport! I can’t imagine having another load show up every week!

If we had twenty pigs and a hundred children, we could handle it. But whoa… this is a lot of bread.

Thank you, Father.