Category: News, etc.

I always try to ask my customers for feedback on the meat when they buy something. Firstly because I want to know if people like what we are producing so I can make sure they are satisfied with their purchase, but secondly because I want to be able to share the message with others who maybe haven’t tried our steaks and pork.

When Drew and Kat came out to tour our farm, I asked them like I always do for feedback. Drew sent not only the following awesome email back,

Dan–It was a pleasure to meet you and see the farm!  We really appreciated your hospitality and it was a ton of fun for my whole family to see all of the animals including a newborn calf.  The meat is unbelievably good and it is refreshing to see first hand how much TLC you give your animals.  The whole process is incredibly humane and your emphasis on sustainable farming is commendable .  We will definitely plan on getting all of our meat from you and we also plan on getting another freezer soon so we can load up.  I look forward to spreading the word about Ninja Cow Farm.

But he accompanied it with pictures of dinner above, and breakfast below.

Thanks Drew and Kat for the awesome feedback!

Thanks to Miguel for this idea.

As I mentioned before, we have some new sausage products from our last batch of pork. I thought it might be useful to see how to cook some of these items.

This morning I started with some chorizo left over from last nights dinner.

I cut open the sausage links and removed the sausage from the cases. I discarded the cases and browned the chorizo on my griddle by turning it ever couple of minutes.

While the chorizo was cooking, I beat three eggs in a bowl to a good consistency. Just the same as when I make scrambled eggs, I added some milk and salt to the eggs.

Once I was happy with the browness of the chorizo I turned out the eggs to cover the chorizo.

At this point it’s just like scrambled eggs. Remember, if it looks done in the pan, it’s overdone. Pull it early because the eggs still cook for a minute or two off the fire.

Plate and serve with whatever beverage you want. Today mine was with a banana, peach, vanilla smoothie from fruit I put up last summer.

The verdict? Awesome! What a nice change from regular eggs and bacon. Not that there is anything wrong with bacon!

We still have plenty of chorizo, along with hot and mild breakfast sausage, bacon, and all other kinds of porky goodness. You can see all of our products on our buy meat page.

Last week I attended the 10th annual Keeping the Farm Workshop. The workshop is put on by Wake County’s Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD); Wake County Parks, Recreation and Open Space; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service; USDA Farm Service Agency; N.C. Cooperative Extension Department; N.C. State University Agriculture and Resource Economics; North Carolina Forest Service; and Friends of Wake SWCD.

It’s basically a combined meeting where everyone from all these various agencies, along with some attending agencies such as the NC Department of Revenue all come together for a combined meeting for the benefit of Wake County landowners who are farming in any way. I first attended this meeting back in 2007-2008, I don’t recall exactly when. It was a catalyst to a LOT of good things that have happened to our farm and a lot of the impetus for me eventually getting into farming full-time.

For this year, I took some notes of things that seemed worth keeping up with. They are in the order of how I wrote them down. They may not make sense to anyone else, but I keep everything else here on our website, I thought I’d keep this info here as well. Maybe some of you dear readers can get some value out of these tidbits.

NC Department of Revenue

The NC Department of Revenue always gives a popular presentation. Many of the landowners present aren’t actually the farmers but are instead leasing their land to farmers. They “farm” to keep the farm in Present Use Status, a term that means the land is taxed by the State of NC at a farm rate, vs. the rate the land would be worth as a development. The NCDOR was currently working on their once every eight years property value reassessment. Much time was spent on how to appeal property values, what methods were used to value properties, etc. This matters because there is currently 2.9 BILLION dollars worth of property that is being deferred in present use value in just Wake County. This isn’t the total value of the property, this is the difference between the present use value and the full market value. If this present use value program didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a single working farm in Wake County which means no local food, no open space, etc. That amount was pretty staggering to me, and worth writing down.

I’m on the lookout for some pasture land to lease. I’m hoping to expand what we have here and be able to grow more cows with our current system, and maybe through a lease have an option to buy at a later date. It would be especially helpful to find land that is very close to us so we can work it easily. As I mentioned, there are people at this meeting who don’t farm their land but want it to remain in farm status for tax reasons. One point covered in the NC DOR time was the concept of a farm unit. If a farmer buys another piece of property he normally has to buy something already in farm status or he’ll have to pay three years of property taxes at the full rate while he is qualifying for farm status. However, if the property is located within 50 miles of the already qualifying tract, and is owned by the same entity (person, LLC, corporation, etc) then the new tract can be immediately qualifying because it’s linked to the original tract. I already want to be close, but knowing there is a 50 mile limit makes sure that I stay within a certain distance. This might not be hugely applicable today, but 10 years from now I may have to go further and further away to find affordable land.

There is a big trend right now for farmers to lease their open farm land to solar farms. The money is good and the work is nil. However the NC DOR cautioned the group that solar farms DO NOT qualify for farm status so the 50 acres you just leased for a pretty penny will not be taxed at the normal rate. The only way around this is to begin raising sheep and grazing the land between the panels. I mentioned that many of these owners aren’t the actual farmers. Becoming a shepherd might not be high on their agendas. It was obvious this wrinkle had caught some people by surprise and I’m sure the solar people don’t mention it when they are soliciting. To put this in perspective, if I put my farm into solar farming, my tax bill the first year would be three years of back taxes, plus the current year up to the date my status changed. That’s about $140,000 I’d owe in one lump sum. It would take years to make that back off of a solar lease. And if you didn’t have the sheep herding lined up from day one, you’d still owe that money, then have to pay another $140,000 over the next three years while you regained your farm status, all the while tending sheep which to my knowledge aren’t a hot commodity on the sales side of things. Not a happy experience.

Sheriff Donnie Harrison

Sheriff Donnie Harrison always attends the workshop, and he always gets a very warm welcome. The sheriff’s office is who most farm property owners rely on for their law enforcement as most of us are outside of city limits. Almost without exception, the people at the meeting praise the deputies for he job they do, and praise Donnie for the job he does as their leader. Donnie is a farmer himself and grew up in Bear Grass, NC so there is a relationship there with the farmers. One topic that always comes up when Donnie is speaking is shooting and the associated complaints. Sometimes it’s the owners in the room complaining, usually it’s the new subdivision that moved in next door complaining that the farmer is shooting. Donnie reiterated that as long as the shooter is on his own property and is more than 300 feet from a property line, that shooting is legal in Wake County. If there is a complaint, then the deputy will investigate it but there is no issue with shooting as long as it’s legal. Donnie did clarify that if you are hunting, you can shooting right up to your property line. I did grab Donnie after he spoke and bring up the topic of using suppressors to limit noise complaints. As much as I like Donnie Harrison, he has a long standing position that he will not sign off on ATF forms permitting local residents to apply to purchase a suppressor. I pointed out that if residents had suppressors, they would limit the noise issue. His answer was that people can apply for suppressors and they do it every day, they just need to form an LLC or corporation and bypass the Chief Law Enforcement Office (CLEO) signature. Basically it’s a political issue that I do understand. There are people in Wake County that would be very upset to hear that suppressors are being approved by the sheriff’s office. By using the loophole of the LLC, Donnie can let it go forward without putting his name on it. Still, it’s frustrating because I’d love to quiet down our shooting.

Donnie also addressed trespassers, another hot topic. He recommends that people post their property with purple paint on trees or fence posts. The paint must be 8″ high as a mark, 3-5′ off the ground, and no more than 100 yards apart. This is a relatively new law that was enacted because trespassers would take down no trespassing signs and then claim they never saw a sign. Paint is harder to remove.

Donnie also recommended that people having issues with trespassers use game cameras, or any camera that works. He said video and pictures help quite a bit when the deputy is trying to solve a trespassing issue. One farmer stood up and told what he was doing with trespassers. He said that he’d learned that if he caught a trespasser, the deputy would show up and do his job, then the judge would throw out the case because it was a first time offense, which wasted everyone’s time. What he did now to save time was he took a picture of the trespasser and told the trespasser he was keeping the picture and if he ever saw him trespassing again, he’d call the sheriff and take the picture of the first trespass to court so it would immediately be two strikes. He said he didn’t have to spend so much time now, he never sees the same person again, and he’s ready if he does have to go to court. Donnie thought this was a great idea and applauded the farmer for his efforts and ingenuity. Since I ALWAYS have my phone with me, I thought this was a great idea as well.

Every year, Donnie covers the eviction process because like us, many landowners have rental houses. The process is wasteful and time-consuming, but it is what it is. Basically start the eviction process with the clerk of court and follow the process even though it’s frustrating was the advice.

NC Forestry Service

The forestry service also always presents at this workshop. The changes mandated by the legislature last year putting a price on forestry plans was covered along with some tips on having a forestry plan. Since I had a two-year wait to get my forestry plan done that evaporated when the charge came into being I didn’t mind the charge at all. I also learned that my plan should be updated every 10-15 years, something I had not asked at the time my plan was created.

I also learned that I could design my own forestry plan at mylandplan.org. Since I’m a do it myself kind of person anyway, I liked the idea of taking my existing plan and updating it on this site. I’ve done the initial layout of my farm and the site is easy to use. I’m looking forward to doing more work with it in the future and hopefully start working our way towards a silvopasture project.

One tip from another farmer in the room was to always use a consulting forester if you were going to sell timber. He told the story of how a logger approached him and offered $50,000 to log his stand of timber. Interested, he contracted a forester and after the forester put the timber out for bid, the timber brought $168,000, a $118,000 difference!

It was also recommended that you ALWAYS have a contract when selling timber. A handshake simply won’t cut it in these days and times.

And for a quick note on something that doesn’t fit anywhere, it was recommended that the farm and any property be put into an LLC for liability and also for estate planning purposes. A portion of the LLC can be gifted to your children each year thereby helping with estate taxes.

Breakout – Tony Kleese Earth Wise Organics

919-622-5897 tkleese@earthwiseorganics.com

Tony did a breakout session on how to attract new farmers to your farm to buy it or lease it. He started off with the demographics he sees in new farmers. He said there are two main groups of new farmers, people in their 20-30s and people in their 50s, which I’ll call the sound and the old group.

The young group usually have some college. Maybe they graduated with a lot of debt and are wondering now what. They are usually confused about what they want and think maybe farming/local/eco is the way to go. They have no clear path and little or no experience.

The old group are baby boomeresque. Their kids are gone, they’ve made money, and now they want to live their dream.

One last group mentioned is the existing farmer family. What was interesting about that group is that the kids were all told to get out of farming, to go get jobs in the city, which they did. However the grandkids are now coming back to the farm and getting involved. They are seeing a future in farming and the grandparents are encouraging it.

Lastly, one interesting change has been that in Tony’s experience, 1/2 of the new farmers he talks to are women routinely. This is a change from the past where farming has been male dominated.

So what kinds of farms are people looking for. Again there are two groups. One group is homesteaders. They may or may not (probably not) make money off of the farm but they want self sufficiency and independence. The second group are commercial producers who are looking to be as effective and efficient as possible. These two groups need different kinds of farms.

So what do these new farmers need? Organic, local, grass-fed. They need small-scale farms. For veggie production, 3-5 acres. For cattle, 100 acres. This was distressing to the older land owners in the room with me. They wanted someone to buy their 300 acre tobacco farm and keep farming row crops.

New farmers don’t want to be too rural. They want to farm, but have access to the mall, internet, and culture. Wake County was prime for these types of farmers according to Tony. Housing was needed on farm already existing, especially for the young farmers. Tony commented that they will live just about anywhere in some pretty rough conditions as long as they had somewhere to live. They also need some infrastructure such as water, fencing, a well capable of more than 10 gpm. For fencing, he said that it’s not as much about keeping animals in as it’s about keeping deer out since many farmers are looking to grow vegetables.

New farmers also need a tractor, something in the 35-45 hp range.

Interestingly, the young group refuses to borrow money. They are very risk averse after finding out what college debt did to them and having been through the last downturn. The old group will still borrow money. This means that to sell to a young farmer, you need to let them work their way into ownership vs. expecting them to go get a bank loan and buy you out. Tony recommended leasing to the young group. He said the older group will write a check, but only if it’s the property they want.

So where do landowners looking to sell find new farmers? Tony recommended contacting:

• Central Carolina Community College (CCCC). They have a sustainable farming program that is pretty active. It’s one that Tony helped start.
• Inter Faith Food Shuttle, they also have a training program for new farmers.
• Breeze Farm Incubator
• NC State/CEFS in Goldsboro with their program down there.
• In the mountains Warren Wilson College has a new farmer program.
• Carolina Farm Stewardship Association is well connected in the new farmer community.
• Debbie Roos at growingsmallfarms.org
• The Produce Box knows a lot of growers maybe looking to expand
• Eastern Carolina Organics

I wasn’t able to attend the other two sessions since I ended up talking to other farmers and friends in the hall. Overall, I’m glad I went. There are a lot of connections you can make, and a lot of people who are trying to help me do what I do. Plus it’s free!

Treat your friends and your family to some beyond organic ninja cow beef this Sunday at your Super Bowl party. We still have plenty for your needs. We offer discounts for bulk purchases. Contact me today to make arrangements.

Whenever I sit down at the computer I generally check WordPress, Quickbooks online, Square, Outlook 365, and Mint. That let’s me see marketing and animal records, financials and billing, credit card processing, communications and reminders, and budgeting all in one place. These all stay up on my computer most of the time. Also all these programs are running remotely from the web which is nice because all this information is available whichever computer or device I am using. Since I have a laptop at home, and an office computer, it’s really handy to be able to manage seamlessly between devices.

Today I was surprised to see that we have surpassed 500 posts on Ninja Cow Farm’s website. Previously we celebrated 400 posts which I thought was a lot. That was only in September of last year or less than 5 months ago. That’s a lot of posts considering I was in the middle of selling my company at that time and wasn’t farming full time then. I guess that means we’ll be at 750 this coming year then which sounds crazy considering it seemed we were at zero just a blink of an eye ago.

The number doesn’t really matter, the content and the connection with each of you does. However big round numbers are too hard to resist making special. If anything, I should shorten my posts and post more frequently but lately I haven’t had time to do the extra work and break posts into shorter snippets. Maybe things will free up as I settle in farming full time. Although I looked at my schedule this week and right now I only have one day free to do anything not already scheduled. Where do my weeks go?!

I just updated the beef page with what is in stock and what is out of stock. We are effectively in stock on almost everything but we only have a few pieces of each cut left, except for hamburger which we have plenty of. Check your freezers to see if you are getting low and let me know what you need before we run out completely.

We have some cows that may be close to finishing. I normally don’t finish in the winter but the cows look so good right now we may go ahead and finish one just to help the sad freezer out and to see what a winter finished cow is like. I’d have already made that decision but in all my moving in and cleaning up, I’ve misplaced my cow record book and I can’t look up to see the age of the cow that needs to go. Miguel thinks the cow is about 2 years old and he’s usually right on these things. I frankly don’t remember but I’d really like to see the record before I make the decision. I’ll keep looking. The problem is I filed the record book “somewhere safe” which means I’m never going to find it!

On the pork front, we just took three pigs to the processor so even though our pork freezer looks pretty sad as well, it will be bulging by the end of the week. Until we can get a cow processed, it may be pork chops and carnitas for everyone. 🙂

Exactly one week ago I sold my company, lock stock and barrel. I grew up in this business and have known it all my life. Since 1993 I’ve worked full-time in the business and since 2003 I’ve run the company. You could say that it’s an ingrained way of life.

The idea of leaving all that behind and going into farming full-time was pretty scary. Actually it still is. Can I feed my family (duh, even if we fail we grow food), can I pay the bills, will I enjoy the work, will I get bored? One week in, I have some preliminary results.

This week I’ve talked to a few people who’ve just assumed that I am now independently wealthy and readily adapting to being a lazy layabout. I am quite independent although unfortunately not the financial kind. I also am not laying about. My days are starting early and ending late. In fact my average day has been from 5am to 7pm each day. That’s not awake to asleep, that’s can to can’t. Yesterday ended with standing outside with a water hose and spraying the pig mud off of my clothes so they were clean enough to wash with the laundry. Not exactly R&R.

I have managed to make breakfast for my family every day since the sale. This may sound a little silly, but making breakfast for them is a big deal to me. First, I love breakfast. I’m a morning person and having that start to the day is great. For years I didn’t eat breakfast because there was no time. Then for years I argued with the Mrs. because as a non-morning person whatever would get your belly off your backbone in the quickest way possible was enough for her. It was wholesome and healthy, but not a hot just made breakfast sometimes and that didn’t cut it with me which I would unhelpfully point out. So now I make a point to come back to the house every morning and make a from scratch breakfast. I get to see my family for an hour and wish them good morning before we all go about our day. There have been a couple of mornings where I had to run out without cleaning the kitchen but at least I was there to make breakfast.

However, the best and most significant part of this past week, and the reason for my post, has been something that is noticeable here on the blog. You’ve probably noticed that the frequency of posts has slowed down a bit, especially for a farmer who is suddenly full-time. You’d think I’d have daily posts, hourly posts, based on the frequency I posted while working two full-time jobs.

Instead, I’ve been sleeping. I don’t mean taking afternoon naps in the easy chair, I mean 7-8 hours a night of actual sleep. As a business owner, I’d become accustomed to 4 or so hours of sleep per night. Sometimes less than an hour a night was the norm for days at a time, sometimes there was no sleep at all. The result of all that extra time was that I’d post here on the blog trying to be productive. This week I have averaged at least 6 or so hours of sleep per night, with the last three nights getting 8 hours. Honestly I thought I’d live the rest of my life and never sleep an 8 hour night again. I assumed it was part of getting older. Turned out it was part of being stressed. Farming and de-stressing has me sleeping like I did when I was a kid. Whatever else may come, sleeping like a normal person has been a welcome change, one I look to continue with.

I’m going to work on getting a few more posts up though. Just because I’m snoozing doesn’t mean I can slack on what is now my day job!

Yesterday I scheduled to pick up hay pretty much all day. I also needed to load hogs to go to the processor and get some office work done. And of course I made time to make breakfast for the family, but the main thing was to haul hay. We are down to about a weeks worth of hay and Bryan, my friend and hay man, has 60 bales with my name on it that he’d probably like to convert into cash and open space in his barn. The endless rain had backed off a few days so maybe it would be dry enough to get out of there with a trailer loaded.

Getting out is a concern because the entrance to the farm drops off rather sharply. I can get in unloaded, but leaving loaded means the landing gear of the trailer drags the ground, making a horrible noise, scraping my wonderful trailer, and actually high siding the truck a bit making me stuck half in and half out of a busy road. Not a great combination. Fortunately they added another gate so I could get in and out much easier. Unfortunately, that gate is across a large pasture with no gravel or asphalt. Ground conditions matter.

Luckily I didn’t have to worry about the ground conditions in the pasture, because I couldn’t even make it up the incline to the pasture. What you see pictured above is my truck, hooked to Bryan’s truck, and also hooked to the hay trailer. You see, our first load of hay wasn’t in the barn, it was outside. It was also still soaking wet. A dry bale of hay weighs about 800 pounds. 800 pound bale x 17 bales, 13,600 pounds. Plus an 8000 pound trailer, 21,600 pounds. That’s a lot of weight. A wet bale of hay?! Who the heck knows, 1200-1500 pounds per bale maybe? Couple that extra weight with the ground being wetter than Bryan or I thought it would be and I couldn’t move at all. No problem though, I had plenty of chains on the trailer so we just hooked Bryan’s truck to my truck and made another attempt. I once pulled our company lowboy, something like this…

with my half ton Chevy Avalanche. It was stuck on the farm and I hooked a jerk strap to it and pulled it right out much to the driver’s amazement. Surely Bryan with his four-wheel drive diesel and my four-wheel drive diesel daisy chained together, we could pull this little incline. Um, no. We didn’t make it ANY further than I had by myself. Both trucks were spinning all four tires.

Not to worry, a quick search and Bryan had located the keys to the farm tractor kept on the farm. I’ve watched farm tractors pull mud buggies out of mud pits with little effort. A farm tractor is built for pulling. Unhook Bryan’s truck and hook up the farm tractor. Here we go! Um, no. About 10 feet further, and now some nice ruts in the ground where the farm tractor dug in.

How about the skid steer we loaded the hay with. It’s heavier and stronger than the farm tractor. Not even close.

Bryan’s dad was home, how about he comes and helps? So we chain Bryan’s dad’s truck to his truck, to my truck and give it a go. We also try a new route that isn’t quite as big of an incline. And this time we’re…stuck. Sigh. There isn’t anything to do but for Bryan’s dad to take Bryan to his farm to get his big farm tractor. They take off and I walk around shutting off idling engines and cleaning up the mess. I shut off Bryan’s truck, the farm tractor, and my truck. I check my email, note how nice of a day it is. It really is beautiful, sunny and warm. Then I think I’ll do something, I don’t recall what, with my truck. I walk back over and pull the door handle. Locked. Huh? How did that happen. The keys are inside because why would I take them out. Passenger door, locked as well! The pod that holds the window and door lock switches is broken on this truck and it’s loose. Somehow the doors locked in all the getting in and out. So now in addition to being stuck, I’m also locked out of my truck. You can laugh or cry at this point. Since I could be at work, I figure I’ll laugh instead. Bryan eventually shows back up and I tell him the new twist to our tale. He jumps back in his truck and tears off to the fire department where they have a lockout kit. A bit later he shows back up and with a skill that’s troublesome to see on this Christian man, he’s into my truck in seconds.

Now with all the equipment in the world, we hook my truck to the Deere tractor and pull the whole mess up the hill and onto the asphalt. If you’ll remember, this wasn’t actually the hard part. Getting off the farm is the hard part. With some conversation, it’s decided that I’ll go out the way I came in, on the asphalt but up the sharp incline. Bryan’s dad jumps in the skid steer to give me a push and I head up the incline and high side as expected. However with tires smoking and traffic held up and briefly entertained, we get the truck and trailer onto the road and headed home. It’s now nearly lunch time and I have one load half way done. Welcome to farming!

For the second load, Bryan brought all the hay up to the driveway and loaded me on level ground and on asphalt. MUCH easier for me, and for everyone else. 17 more bales and two loads for the day. That should hold us for a month or so, until I can get back and pick up more hay.

 

I mentioned before that I was selling my company and taking up farming full-time. Well Lord willing, today is THE DAY. We have a signing around lunch time today and if everything goes correctly, I’ll be a free man after that. I think we’ve set a record for how quickly we went from starting the negotiations to finishing the deal and even with that, it can’t go fast enough. Nothing this large is clean cut, so there are multiple true up periods with both Deere and the buyer so in reality the closing will go on for many months and the deal itself is structured over years but today is the day everything gets signed and I lose my day job. Sarah, my assistant, my “work wife”, and our HR manager is going to do the paperwork to terminate me as well so I will try to get a picture of that. I’ve never been fired before so I want to record the moment.

Knowing I had a new focus in life coming, over the Christmas and New Years holidays I was able to try out a new routine as a man of leisure. By the end of the week off, my days had settled into this.

Wake up about 3am. Go over to the barn where I have my workshop and my home office. Work either in the office or in the shop till 7:30. At 7:30, greet Miguel when he arrives. Quickly discuss the days plans then head over to the house where the family is awake, or at least making signs that they will be. Make breakfast for everyone. Clean the kitchen then head back to the shop/barn/office about 8:30-8:45. Work with Miguel all day till about 5:30. Head back to the house and have dinner with the family, usually prepared by SWMBO from something we grew or killed here on the farm. Head back to the barn/office and finish up some work, usually something boring like bookkeeping that I don’t do during the day. Get back to the house before bedtime, about 8. Take a shower, kiss the kids, pass out. Wash, rinse, repeat. I think I was averaging about a 14-15 hour days each day and according to the pedometer on my phone, I was walking about 15,000 steps per day. This compares to the 2000 steps I take when I’m behind a desk at work. Yep, this life of leisure sure is relaxing! Actually it is, I can’t stand just sitting around.

This past week has been hectic for me because besides all the details of the ongoing deal, it was time to move out of my office at work and fully into my home office. We’ve been in business for 52 years, we’ve been in the same office for about 30. I was pulling records out from the 70s. Heck I even found the records we had from the grading company in the 50s buried in the file cabinets. All of it had to be sorted, boxed, and hauled out. It then had to be resorted here at home, labeled, and filed. I also had to take down all the wall hangings, gather the mementos,  and move the furniture out. Prior to all that, I had to clean out my home office, also known as the man cave, because it had become the home for misfit furniture and spiders with nothing better to do than spin webs. It felt a lot like moving into the dorms in college.

Yesterday I brought home the last load of stuff from the office leaving my office empty and sad looking. Everything has been hauled up to my home office and now I only need to put away a few more boxes of stuff and the 200 plaques and awards and pictures I took off the walls. I’m not much of a decorator and unlike college, I can’t just thumb tack everything up. I need it to look good because, one, it’s my office and I want it to look good. And two, it’s the world headquarters for Ninja Cow Farm LLC. When the international bankers show up to discuss high finance, it can’t look like a dorm room.

I’m really sad about leaving my employees behind, and walking away from a company that’s been in business for 52 years. However, the buyer has kept everyone except for four people out of 125 so that is really good. They are also taking the business forward and everyone remaining will have opportunities that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. All in all its a positive move for everyone except Miguel. I told him recently that he is now my new work wife. He’s certainly not as pretty as my current work wife but he sure can cook!