Ninja Cow Farm LLC

The tour of the distillery was pretty neat. Unlike most distilleries I’ve been to, this one wasn’t set up for tourism. It was a side room built onto a 70s era commercial building. Everything was located in one relatively small room and seemed a rather small operation for the volume of product they were producing. There were two fermentation tanks, both 1250 gallons.

As we toured the room, our tour guide explained the process of going from sweet potatoes to vodka. Having some experience with the process myself, I thought he did a great job. He also allowed everyone to taste a drop of the product at the various stages which was eye opening to me.

Covington Vodka comes from the name of the sweet potato that makes up 99% of the crop in the US, the Covington sweet potato. I’d actually had some Covington Vodka once before as Dustin had bought some when it first came out. He always has the newest toys. I’m not really a vodka drinker since I’d had some experience with vodka in my younger days and pretty much swore it off (ugh, screwdriver anyone?) but I tried a drink he’d made and really didn’t see where it tasted any different than any other vodka. Of course, it was in a mixed drink so really I was tasting the drink, not the vodka.

This was a chance to see and taste the real thing.

On Wednesday, I had a tour planned with the Johnston County Agri-Business Council. Normally with the way I felt I’d have just cancelled but I am the upcoming President of the Wake County Agri-Business Council and I needed to make some connections with our neighbors who have a much more active group than we do. I really had no idea what we were getting into as I’d only learned about the tour a few days before. I headed out early to go meet everyone and fortunately it was at Lazy O Farm in Smithfield.

I wasn’t really sure how I’d handle the tour because I couldn’t really stand for long but Lazy O has a really great facility and we were all comfortably seated  in their barn. After about 45 minutes of conversation, everyone loaded up on vans for the first part of the tour which was to Farmville, NC to Covington Vodka and Yamco.

Yamco is owned by the three largest producers of sweet potatoes in the US. Turns out about 50% of all the sweet potatoes produced in the US come from NC! After learning all about not only sweet potatoes, aseptic bags and shelf life, pumpkins, squash, and all kinds of other low acid products that Yamco handles for major food producers, it was time to move onto the tour portion of the time.

Everyone was given a hair net, which I should have put on my face since I don’t have any hair to speak of on my head but oh well. We then proceeded into the food production side of the facility. Yamco uses a patented and unique process with commercial microwaves (100,000 watt vs the one your kitchen which is 800 watts) and they are able to produce a superior product that goes into mainly baby food but also a whole host of other foods that are on pretty much every aisle of the grocery store. It is a pretty major facility with far reach into our food system. But were were here for the vodka tour.

That next morning I had an appointment with the collision place here in Garner to have them look at the bent hitch on my truck.

The whole insurance thing was wonky because the hitch was mine to have inspected, but the trailer was my friends to have his inspected so I felt kind of silly driving up for an inspection of a $20 hitch. It wasn’t till I arrived and was talking to the adjuster that it hit me (I’m kind of slow). My back started hurting the day after the wreck. I couldn’t for the life of me figure how such a small wreck had caused so much pain but it sure seemed to be the case as other than this wreck I’m in the best shape of my life and can pretty much do anything except stand for long periods of time. Now I could barely get out of bed.

We got the hitch straightened out (figuratively, not literally, they gave me a check.) I ran my errands around town and then went back home and got back in the bed. Again, something I never do. I was barely able to get out of bed to take Spork to football practice and then got right back in the bed because Tuesday I had to go to Sanford to pick up a new, to me, stock trailer. That was mostly driving so by the time I got back, I felt pretty much ok and I could stop being useless around the farm. I grabbed our power washer and proceeded to power wash the inside and outside of the trailer, plus the concrete right in front of it. I felt pretty good moving around and was glad I was back on my feet. Then about 2 minutes after putting the power washer down I was in bad pain again. Uh, I over did it. Back to bed because tomorrow is a long day.

Sunday morning Spork and I got up to do our normal routine of feeding all the animals on the farm. Fortunately the guys had pretty much pre-loaded everything so most of what I had to do was drive the tractor and truck, which was great because that is about all I could do. Spork did the lion’s share of loading the few boxes we had to and we got everyone fed. Then I went back to bed, something I NEVER do. I spend all the rest of the day in bed on Sunday, finally breaking down and taking a muscle relaxer which absolutely nothing for me. As evening came, the pain was still pretty bad, enough that I wasn’t able to go to sleep so at 2am I brought out the big guns, the steroids. I still had some from an injury past and I knew that they would help with any inflammation and hopefully whatever else might be the problem. I can only take them once per year so I really don’t like to take them if at all possible.

Even after taking the steroids, I was unable to get to sleep all night due to the pain. Fortunately I have plenty of experience not sleeping from when I used to work for a living, so getting up and making due the next day is normal for me. I didn’t have too much of a hard day. Miguel and Vicente were both working, it was raining off and on, and I only had one appointment and some errands to run. Nothing that I couldn’t handle, back pain or no. First, the appointment.

While I was on the phone with the insurance company, Miguel unloaded the implements and when I came down he pointed out this.

Looks like some of the force of the impact made it all the way to my truck. I know how much load I’ve put on this hitch and it was all it was designed for and more. It’s never so much as wiggled. Now it’s bent up 20 degrees. Hmm. A little harder than I realized but oh well, just more bent metal. No big deal. The truck is still fine and since it only had 4000 miles on it, that’s a relief!

This all happened last Friday. Saturday day I went to Holly Springs to see Jennifer with Buck Naked Farm as she sat up and worked her first farmers market booth. She had a cooler of our meat (plus an awesome display of her wares) and as I was there she sold a few packs of beef and pork. As I was hanging out, I noticed that my back had started hurting. Not unusual if I stand for a while but it was hurting in a place it never hurt before, and in a way that felt odd.

Saturday night we had dinner with the owners of the new farm we are leasing, and where the cows are right now. They were super nice and awfully gracious. After dinner I sat outside and talked to the father for a bit and just couldn’t seem to get comfortable on his chair. That was odd because the chair was plenty nice, but my back hurt no matter how I sat. Maybe I’d stood too long at the market. I should have known better than to show up without a chair but I sat on the cooler instead. Hmm. I wonder what that’s about?

It wasn’t a big deal. Just a little bent up metal. A young girl who goes to Garner High School, my old school, ran into the back of my truck and trailer as I was waiting to turn into my drive way last Friday. It was wet, she was likely distracted (texting, talking, singing along, who knows), and she bumped the back of the trailer. It bent a little metal but not too much.

It didn’t seem like that bad of an impact. Of course I’m pulling a 1000 pound trailer, carrying about 4000 pounds of implements, behind an 8000 pound truck so I think I outweighed her car a bit.

So it looked like everyone was ok and only a little bent metal on the trailer. No big deal except this wasn’t my trailer. Oops. I had her pull into the farm and come up to the office to call her insurance agent. Turned out she had a train of cars following her home with all of her friends so we had an impromptu party with a bunch of high school kids while being on the phone with her insurance company for an hour. I made every effort to be nice while she was here. I know how nerve wracking it is to have an accident at 16 years old. Having to call mom, dealing with an accident the first time ever. She was shaking just a bit in the beginning but only for a short time. She quickly settled down and handled everything like a pro. Fortunately nobody was injured and everything would be a simply fix. Or at least I thought. But that is the next post.

Today started at 3:30am. Most people wince at the thought, but I’m a happy camper. Today is my birthday and I started off early. I woke up as I normally do, no alarm clock so it doesn’t feel quite so early to me.

I’m spending my morning getting office work done, doing payroll so my guys are taken care of, answering emails, planning out the next few days, etc. Once the guys get here and I go over today with them, I’ll go over to the house for breakfast with the family.

After breakfast, a bit more work around here, and then I’m heading to a field trip with the kids to Yates Mill Pond. I’ve been before but it’s 4 minutes from here and really cool. Plus, small world, Miguel put the roof on the building when they were building it.

After the field trip, I’m having lunch with my friend Paul that I grew up with. I’ve literally known him all my life. We were neighbors when I was born. He and his wife have started Buck Naked Farm and they are the source of our honey and soap now.

After lunch, I’ll be bringing Paul’s trailer back to the farm and loading some implements that Paul is going to borrow. Then I’ll switch trailers and drop off our recycling (that’s about 7000 lbs of recycling) then head to pick up steel for our new loading chute we are building. I was supposed to make those runs yesterday but the pigs needed some TLC instead. But that is another post.

Finally I’m keeping the girls tonight while SWMBO goes out to dinner with one her girl friends. Yes, SWMBO has a note on my birthday. Not to worry though, we are celebrating my birthday tomorrow by all cooking together as a family, my one request for my birthday.

An early start, good weather, good food, good friends, and some easy farm work. Sounds like a perfect day to me.

Thank to SWMBO for sending me this article on how farmers are producing electricity from the poop generated by their cows. It is a good article and I’ve talked to a few farmers who have installed these power generation systems and they work well. Like the farmers mentioned in the article, some were looking at installing additional systems based on their experience so far so considering how much they cost, they must be a good return for a conventional farmer.

So first, good for them. They are taking what is a toxic by-product of their farm and generating electricity, fertilizer, and cow bedding material from it. It is a closed loop system with little outside inputs besides lots of money. It’s not exactly a new idea, as anyone who has seen Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome knows. Oh well, it is a good solution to a problem that was created by concentrated operations in the first place.

But what about on our farm? I’ve had customers ask us what we do with all the cow poo. Do we have lagoons? Do we have a discharge permit? Good Lord no. Poo is only a problem when you generate it artificially by concentrating animals at unhealthy levels. Our cows poop just as much as confined cows do. But instead of having to scoop it up and haul it to a lagoon, we let the cows poop it on the ground right there in the pasture. Then we move the cows the next day and that poop becomes a hub of life for the bugs and critters that are part of the natural ecosystem. By the time that cows come back to that same patch of grass in 30 days or so, the poop is completely gone. Biology has turned it into part of the soil. This is the natural system, the way God intended it, which means it works without ANY outside inputs.

Oh, and I mentioned previously that even Organic farms produce meat with super bugs. Do you think cow bedding made from cow poo might have some bugs floating around in it? The more you try to work around the natural system, the more you introduce new problems you hadn’t thought of.