Rendering Tallow

I'm getting ready to make 3,000+ bars of soap for Operations Christmas Child.

As of today the current fundraising for the project is at just under half way. $274.

I was able to get a local supermarket to donate beef fat that I am rendering into tallow.

I've never rendered tallow till this week. This post will be documenting how I did it.

It started Wednesday night when my husband and I picked up this....

Then I chopped it up a crock pot full of it and 4 hours later I had this...  Which amounted to 3 1/2 lbs of tallow.

While that was cooking I sorted the rest so I could take it to my sisters to grind it up. As the above pot did not render out much tallow. So, I felt defeated. Till I cam home from my sisters with this.... 

Which one crock full rendered into this! It had 2/3 LESS waste. See how there is not massive amounts of cooked meat bits floating? That means MORE tallow than the first go round. (about 6lbs of tallow came out of this pot)

Now my kitchen looks like this...

While I'm sure some peoples kitchens look worse. I'm a little obsessed with having my counters cleared off. I have zero energy to go deal with this mess. Yet in an hour I need to go milk the goats so I NEED to deal with the mess. I have to have a clean spot on the counter to filter milk.

I still have 5 lbs of tallow in my fridge that is cooled, solid, and needs to be bagged up.

Then Sunday I will be picking up more beef fat.Which I do have some help lined up for, but don't want to take advantage of.  This is a 2 day project with the use of my sisters grinder, with out that it would of took me 3-4 days.

I keep telling myself that every week rendering tallow won't be this busy. They have a sale on beef at the supermarket this week.  Last week the sale was on Pork and they had NO beef fat for me.

So this is how you can pray for me.

Soap making I can handle, that mess stays in my basement. I can leave it and walk away with out causing myself added stress.

I got over 20 lbs of tallow from that box of beef. Which equals approximately 320 bars soap for OCC children. So, it is worth doing it. I just will not have time to do both soap making and tallow rendering. Anyone (or multiple people) want to take over the tallow rendering? Other wise I'll continue waiting on God to supply the funds to buy the tallow.