7125 Old Stage Road Raleigh NC 919-322-0197
We will be working normal hours for this week. That means 2-6 Wednesday and Friday and 8-5 on Saturday. We are also well stocked on all our goodies, including wine if you should happen to need some for your New Years celebration.
Plus the girls will have chocolate chip cookies on Saturday. Get some before your New Years diet starts on the 1st!
We are starting to get requests for what our hours will be over the holidays.
We will be open normal hours this Friday, from 2-6pm. We should hopefully be receiving our latest load of beef back from the processor Friday morning so you’ll be getting calls about your special orders.
Saturday, we will be open from 8-noon. Because of Christmas, we are shutting down early so the family can spend time together. We also will not be conducting tours on Saturday all day.
New Years I’ll address next week.
Have a very merry Christmas everyone!
Recently I received a call from a customer asking if I could mount a scope to a Mosin Nagant. He said he had the scope, the mount, drill bits, everything. He’s bought a nice little kit off of Amazon that had everything you needed. He just needed it mounted. It was to be a Christmas present for his son and he’d watched a YouTube video of how to do it but felt it would be better to have a gunsmith do it.
Having gone back and watched the YouTube video he referenced, I sure am glad he brought this thing to me rather than attempting it himself. Some of the key parts that make the thing work properly aren’t installed by anyone I can find showing their methods on the interweb. Reading through the reviews on some of these things, the expected poor results are all over the internet since people aren’t installing them correctly.
There are three main parts to installing this kit. The bolt, the mount itself, and modifying the stock to accept the new mount.
Step one was to change the bolt.
On some rifles you heat and bend the bolt. This gives clearance from the bolt handle to the scope. It also makes the bolts more “Americanized” and more agreeable to an American shooter. This particular bolt has a short body and the kit came with a new bolt so we just lopped off this old one with the trust Porta-band.
Once the handle was off, I moved over to the mill where I machined the face perfectly flat. This made for proper mating of the faces and also made it look considerably better.
Once it was flat, I had to locate the center of the circle. This was harder than it looked because the metal was not actually round but misshapen somewhat. I got it as close as possible for the condition of the forging. Within a few thousandths.
Once the center was located, I locked the mill in place and center drilled the initial hole.
Then I drilled the hole itself. There is a supplied drill bit and tap that comes with this kit. The drill bit cut very poorly and was obviously made of jello or butter or something equally ineffective at drilling metal. I had to take it to the grinder several times to sharpen it in order to get through the few drilling operations of this job. However with sharpening, it did do the job so it was good enough for this kit. I doubt it would have worked for someone trying to do it like on the YouTube video.
I wasn’t brave enough to power tap this hole. I simply rotated the mill by hand and everything tapped just fine.
Timing the handle is an issue. It needs to be torqued to the correct spec, and line up at the right position at the same time. I must have been living right this day because it came out perfect on the first try.
I’d given the customer the choice of using Loctite to secure the bolt, or TIG welding it in place. Were it my gun, I’d have welded it but the cost of the extra work was more than he wanted to do. For plinking at the range, a goodly amount of red Loctite will be fine.
There was a good bit of fiddling with the scope mount to get it in the correct position. This scope mount is made for the eye relief of the standard Mosin Nagant stock. However my customer had added a butt pad/extender to his gun so the eye relief had changed. That meant I needed to move the scope mount back a bit to try and compensate. After positioning the mount about 10 times, I finally had it where I wanted it and marked my position. But first, I had to figure out how this mount was made to go on.
The kit comes with two larger screws, two smaller screws, and two ground stainless pins. There were six holes, and six pieces of something that went into the holes. The larger screws hold the mount to the scope. The smaller screws are mechanical locking screws that hold the large screws in place and keep them from backing out. The pins were index pins that actually hold the mount in place. Easy.
Except the pins didn’t fit the holes. There were no instructions with the kit but the kit is sold as having everything you need to install it. I looked on Amazon for any tips from a previous installer. Nothing.
I watched the videos on YouTube. The pins were shown as part of the kit but they were never installed by the users. I think the assumption is that the screws hold the mount in place and the pins? Meh, must be extra.
Except that’s wrong. The pins are what hold the mount in place. The lock it into one position so it doesn’t move under recoil. The large screws are what keep the mount from backing off of the pins. But they don’t hold the mount in a fixed position. If they did, you’d never get the screws into the holes. They would be too tight. In reality, there is slop in the holes for the screws, as there should be. Without the pins, the mount would shift around under recoil and the gun would never hold a zero. Then the final set of small screws mechanically lock the big screws in place. Kind of a metal version of Loctite. Now that I had a plan, it was onto the work.
These were located, center drilled, drilled, and tapped just like the bolt hole was previously. Once they were tapped, I could mount the scope base and use it as a guide for the index pins.
With the mount secured in place by the screws, I drilled through with a #9 drill bit. This bit is .001″ smaller than the pins measured. This was on purpose. We want the pins to be bigger than the hole, but just barely.
With all the machining done, I went back to my gun room to do final installation. The index pins went into the freezer and the receiver went into the vice. I cleaned up and did some office work while the pins froze. Then I heated the receiver and the scope mount till it was toasty but not glowing red.
With the receiver hot, and therefore bigger, and the pins frozen and therefore smaller, I tapped the pins into place with a small hammer and punch. The just pressed in under force. I then left everything alone to return to room temperature. When everything cooled, the extra size on the pins locked the mount to the receiver as strongly as could be done with this setup. This is the key to this mount. The screws just keep it from backing off. They don’t actually hold it in place.
You’ll note that this style of scope sits just to the left of center. That’s they way these things are designed. I did ask the customer if he wanted it fully to the left or rotated some more towards center. This was where he wanted it.
Doing the machining work is mostly setup. Once you get everything dialed in and locked in place, it goes pretty quickly. Doing the wood work is all hand work and test fitting. It’s enjoyable work because it’s quiet and meditative but it does take a while.
I simply bore sighted the scope onto the gun and left the dialing it in to the customer.
All in all this was an enjoyable project. For what the customer had in the rifle, the kit, and my labor, I’m not sure he had his money’s worth out of it as a pure shooter but for the cool factor he has a really nice gun.
Yesterday afternoon (and all night last night) I worked on installing a recipe program on our website. This new program allows us to enter our recipes in a format that makes them extremely usable . You can search by ingredient and adjust quantities on the fly for the number of people you are serving. You can also easily see the recipes on one page and have an idea of what you are getting into just from a quick look. When you look at the individual recipe, it has a print icon on the upper right so you can get a printable recipe to take into the kitchen making the transition from reading about it to actually cooking it very easy.
I’m about 10 hours into setting this thing up, so it’s functional but not all there yet. I now have to go back and copy all the old recipes across from the old format to the new format. Plus redo the pictures, etc. This will be a work in progress but over the next few days you should see recipes moving to the new format. In the mean time, we have the old format recipes located at the bottom of the recipe page so no matter what you are looking for, it’s still there.
Take a look at the new recipe page and let us know what you think. Do you like the new format? Is something broken or could it be set up differently. We value your feedback.
Speaking of feedback, there is a way for you to enter your own favorite recipes on our website via the same tool we use. Just click here, and you can enter your recipe for all of your fellow foodies to enjoy. We personally love trying recipes that you like so we’d love to hear how you are cooking our products.
In part 1, I detailed the cattle plan for the next two years. You’ll note a few things about this plan.
One, we still have cows that are well and truly finished to take us through the winter, except for February. These weights are from back in October so they’ve actually added a bit of weight since then. Remember, a well finished grass fed cow weights about 1100 pounds. We have cows finishing the middle of next year that already weigh 1000 pounds. We are in good shape.
Two, we were planning during early 2016 on growing our operation to where we would finish two cows per month in 2017. That plan has been shelved. We were looking to add more land in 2016 and land prices have gone sky high. We are not going to add land anytime soon.
Also, we have learned that finishing in 30 months vs 18-24 gives us a much better product. We are getting the marbling and fat of a grain fed cow in a cow that has only eaten grass, hay, and produce. It’s pretty amazing. We are going to tweak the times in our plan as we go but for now I’m planning on a 30 month age when we process our cows. This is quite a bit different from what anyone I know does where the name of the game is to get cows finished as quickly as possible. We are going the opposite direction, slowing things down and focusing on quality instead of volume. It’s quite a bit slower and means we have less cows available each month, but we think it’s for the best.
In support of this decision, we have greatly reduced our marketing efforts and are concentrating on our core group of customers and word of mouth. One cow per month is plenty for our current volume and we look to maintain and grow our business organically vs. through outside marketing. We still greatly appreciate your referrals, even more so now because that is how we acquire new customers. But I have a pretty quick answer to people calling here trying to sell me on their marketing campaign.
Despite not growing at the original planned rate, 2017 looks to be a good year. Even though we plan to only process one cow per month, the cows weigh quite a bit more. In 2015 we averaged about 500 pounds hot hanging weight per cow, meaning at 1 cow per month we had about 6000 pounds of beef for the year. In 2017, I hope to average about 850 pounds per cow or over 10,000 pounds of beef. Not exactly double but about 70% more than 2015.
Even though it will take us 6 months longer to finish the cow, we hope that moving more meat in the same trip will gain us some efficiencies in other ways. We are also expanding our store this winter, and also increasing our freezer space. If we can house more beef on site, I can cut out the one trip per month, and instead take two cows every other month, halving my trips to Siler City each year.
Some of these are firm plans. Some we are still just looking at. But the plan is to get more efficient in our time for 2017, allowing for more time spent on the farm, and less time driving. All while bringing you the absolute highest quality product you can get anywhere.
I’ve been slack on posting to our website lately. Part of that is because our hosting company managed to blow up our server which caused all kinds of drama. Part of it is that I’ve been busy with the Civil Air Patrol and Spork, and our involvement with it. Part of it is because I’ve been working on putting this plan together for quite some time. It takes more time than you think to go through all this data and get a plan put together.
And last, part of it is because I’ve been sleeping like a baby. Like all night. Without waking up. I used to get up at 2am, 3am, whatever, and come over to the barn to work. It kept me from waking the Mrs and the kids and let me be productive. However lately I’ve been afflicted with this need to sleep 6, 7, even 8 hours at a time. It’s terrible. I can’t get anything done. Luckily, I did something dumb the other day and made the Mrs mad at me. Since I’m always slightly concerned she’s going to kill me in my sleep anyway, we ratcheted things up to DEFCON 1 and viola! Up at 2am. Phew! I was worried this sleeping thing would never end! Who knew being stupid could come in so handy.
After cleaning off my desk, responding to about 1000 emails, procuring our health insurance for next year, getting IRAs set up for the kids, calculating how much hay we’d need for winter, reconciling the 6 months of back logged bank statements, ordering Christmas presents, fixing all the guns that were languishing on my bench, and generally making things sort of organized in this chaos that is my office, I was able to finally work on the 2017-2018 cattle plan. And thank goodness I did.
I hate not knowing what I’m doing. But worse yet, my guys hate when I don’t know what I’m doing. Part of being the boss is you are supposed to have some form of leadership. Bumbling from crisis to crisis isn’t leadership. It’s an overpaid employee with a fancy title. So after a few hours of work, here is the current cattle plan for the next few years. Comments and explanation to follow.
| Number | Ear tag color | Weight | Date born | Finished date |
| 759 | Red | 1255 | 02/01/15 | 01/01/17 |
| 43 | Yellow | 1289 | 07/01/14 | 03/01/17 |
| LF18 | Red | 1219 | 02/01/15 | 04/01/17 |
| 21 | Red | 987 | 07/20/15 | 05/20/17 |
| 47 | Yellow | 1006 | 10/15/14 | 06/01/17 |
| A4 | Yellow | 908 | 07/14/16 | 08/14/17 |
| A12 | Yellow | 902 | 07/14/16 | 09/14/17 |
| 54 | Yellow | 817 | 05/11/15 | 10/11/17 |
| A9 | Yellow | 810 | 07/14/16 | 11/14/17 |
| 30 | Red | 875 | 09/20/15 | 12/20/17 |
| 55 | Yellow | 755 | 07/22/15 | 01/22/18 |
| 57 | Yellow | 810 | 09/01/15 | 02/01/18 |
| A3 | Yellow | 764 | 07/14/16 | 03/14/18 |
| A6 | Yellow | 753 | 07/14/16 | 04/14/18 |
| 42 | Red | 787 | 12/01/15 | 05/01/18 |
| A1 | Yellow | 677 | 07/14/16 | 05/14/18 |
| 40 | Red | 743 | 12/01/15 | 06/01/18 |
| A7 | Yellow | 650 | 07/14/16 | 07/14/18 |
| A2 | Yellow | 668 | 07/14/16 | 08/14/18 |
| 41 | Red | 689 | 01/01/16 | 09/01/18 |
| A11 | Yellow | 650 | 07/14/16 | 10/14/18 |
| 37 | Red | 632 | 01/20/16 | 11/20/18 |
| 13 | Red | 663 | 11/20/15 | 12/20/18 |
| A8 | Yellow | 524 | 07/14/16 | 01/14/19 |
| A5 | Yellow | 515 | 07/14/16 | 02/14/19 |
So what does all this mean? For that, you’ll have to wait for part two, where we discuss cattle finishing, land plans, expansion plans, and general farmer dreaming.
You’ve got to love this story.
“What are you doing?! You gotta badge?”
“Nah, I ain’t got a badge.”
Watch the 2 minute video at this link. Made me feel better the whole day.
We are still well stocked on beef, pork, lamb, dairy, honey, soap, etc. and Lucy will be in the store today from 2-6pm. I know we have some folks coming who’ve contacted me, but for those who haven’t checked in a while, just know we are open and ready for you.
I’ll be heading to get a restock of pork, chicken, and dairy tomorrow on my normal weekly run, however I’m going to switch shortly to a Monday trip instead of Thursday. That will make sure we are always freshly stocked on Wednesdays with anything we’ve run short on during the weekend (which happens!).
So keep Wednesdays in mind for your shopping days.
Of course, we still have cookies on Saturdays and we’re always open then.
This is the view of our new fridge this morning before opening. Yes it’s well stocked, as is the entire store. But our most recent enhancement is the lighted board at the top. Our now somewhat famous Ninja Cow is proudly on top, backlit and awesome. We’ve had it in place for a week or so and this fridge is definitely the first thing you notice when you walk in the door.
So what’s the big deal? It’s a fridge with an existing logo. Meh? Who cares. Well I remember when this room looked like this.
A couple of freezers drug out of the garage and into this dark, dirty, neglected barn room. That was our store when we first started.
Now we continue to improve it, bit by bit. Even going so far as to have our logo on our fridge. Knowing where we’ve come from, it’s just cool to have made it so far that we have our logo on our own commercial fridge full or products from our awesome farmers.
This winter, we have plans to improve it even more. There is always something in the works around here so keep checking in with us. We always have something cool. Like today, when the girls will have chocolate chip cookies! Get here early and get them while they are still warm!
This past weekend was a whirlwind of fun. My oldest sister came to town. I asked what she would like for me to make and instantly she said fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy and collard greens. I love that my siblings always know just what they want to eat at my house and let me know they expect it. Now if I could just get those in my house to tell me what they want for dinner daily. Every wife and mother’s dream, right?
Fried chicken is an American classic. While each portion of the US has it’s own style the South has uplifted it and taken it to another level. Every family has it’s own recipe as well. I have one myself that only 1 person has a copy of to give to my daughter upon my death. This person is not my husband but then again he has watched me make it enough he could probably make it and it would be better than mine. While this is definitely a great fried chicken & has some of my secret recipes ingredients, it is not my super secret recipe.
The NCF store has whole cutup chickens for $6.50 lb. Let the work be done for you. We also sell Kefir for $6.50, While there are several flavors we’ll be using plain. This is a happy accident, I ordered buttermilk, when it didn’t come in I needed a back up plan the kefir was there and it spoke to me. It said I have the lactic acid you seek. So I grabbed it and am so happy I did!
Fried Chicken
