Have you Heard of This?

A family member shared an awesome post of facebook the other day…

Dolly Parton has a program called the Imagination Library.  The Imagination Library sends a free book to a child every month from birth to 5 years old.  Like them on Facebook here.  As a teacher, getting books in the hands of all kids is something I think is extremely important.  The brain develops very rapidly between birth and 5 years old.  Reading and exposing children especially children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families to books is very important to their success in school and ultimately in life.  Children coming into school from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are already behind – they have about half the vocabulary of a kid the same age from a professional family.  Half the words!  Reading is important even at a early age!

Anyway, off my soap box … Dolly Parton is one of my favorite country artists but now I love her even more. 

This is not available everywhere (it’s not in my area unfortunately) but check to see if it is available in your area!  Then read to your child every single day!

Can't we all just get along?

Why is it that defamation seems to be acceptable when advertising food? It is the only industry that I can think of where it is acceptable to say 'buy my product because yours is bad' instead of 'buy my product because it is the best.' I don't know when this started but I sure wish it would stop.

When VW advertises the saftey of their vehicles, they just tell us how great theirs is. They never say 'buy a VW because a x brand will kill you.' It seems to me there would be a lawsuit and I would imagine consumers wouldn't stand for it. 

So why is it that consumers are ok with this in food? I saw a website today that was promoting raw milk as one of their products. Note that I don't personally drink raw milk but I'm all about people having options. But raw milk is a high risk product. People can die or become very ill. 

But my issue was in the fact that they called other farming practices harmful. Ironic since their concerns are with hormones, GMOs and RoundUp. None of which are connected to consumer deaths and are widely accepted as safe and highly tested and regulated. 

Why is is they have to add fear into order to sell? Your products should sell on their merits. If you have to scare someone into buying your product, you must not have a great product to begin with. 

I'm am all about people having options. If you want organic, buy it or grow it. If you don't believe the over 1000 scientific studies about GMO saftey, that is your right and you are welcome to buy the many products that don't contain them

We still sell our natural beef. And we spell out what that means. In our case no added hormones and no antibiotics. Our steers eat grass and corn because it is a system that works for us. When most people ask why our beef tastes so amazing, I can honestly tell them it is because of the dry aging process. But you will never, ever hear me try to sell you my beef (or any other product) by bashing they way someone else grows their product. 

If we could all do this, I think agriculture would be better off.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

This spring has been incredibly busy! I say that every year but I guess we keep piling on more projects.

This year we are growing:

Beef cows

Sunflowers

Sudan

Corn 

Sweet Corn

Pumpkins

And our personal garden too.

In May we were busy as volunteers at our local fair. This is probably my favorite volunteer project! 

The drought is a very critical issue for us still. We are in a location with the best above ground storage water practically in the state but we still battle drought. With low soil moisture, the ground was sure thirsty when irrigation began. The lingering drought is the reason why we chose to grow Sudan this year. It is a lower value crop but very drought tolerant.

We will not be coming back to the farmers market selling beef. We are considering pumpkins. We decided that the costs of attending the market was too heavy on our family for the return. Instead we are enjoying more Saturdays as a family.

We do still have a very limited quantity of beef that we are selling to our existing customers. We are currently fully sold for this year.