Ninja Cow Farm LLC

“Eliminating bacteria entirely is always the goal, but in reality, it’s simply not feasible.”

In what world, besides in an operating room, is zero bacteria a goal. The more we kill all the bacteria, the more we enable the bad bacteria.

Article on the USDA and inspections

Yesterday, after breakfast and setting up paddocks for the cows, the inmates and I went to work on the two deer that Spork and I had put in the cooler. Brian had never butchered a deer, while John had some experience. Everyone was an expert by the end though. We put together an assembly line and knocked out both deer in about an hour and a half. John broke down the halves into major cuts, the Brian and I trimmed off all the meat and handed it to The Princess who was in charge of grinding the hamburger. The Spork stuffed the vacuum seal bags and sealed and labeled. It was a true group effort.

Except for the tenderloin, we ground everything into ground meat. The Mrs tells me that we are almost out of ground pork so the timing is right. Now she can mix venison in with the remaining pork and stretch it out.

I’ve just returned from 2 and 1/2 days in Jackson, MS at the Stockman Grass Farmers grazing and finishing school with Annabal Pordodomingo. I have a book full of facts and pages of notes. Most of what I learned will be used in my cattle management but some of it I’ll be sharing here with everyone. Look for details as time goes on of the things I’ve learned that I can share with you.

It’s good to be home. I do hope we don’t get another cold spell because we’ve had water problems galore while I’ve been gone. I had to lean heavily on Miguel while I was gone to get all the water issues (read: broken pipes) resolved. The bad part was I just learned today that he’s been sick the entire time I was gone, something he failed to mention. Thanks to Miguel for toughing it out and keeping things good for me on the farm.

Also thanks to the inmates John and Brian who kept the animals fed and in the correct corral. We’ll be dressing deer tomorrow in addition to catching up on all the work I missed this week. Hopefully it’ll stop raining long enough to get some work done.

So the following article popped up on Fox News last week about how the government is getting more involved in your food.

Article on Fox News

I thought I’d go through the ten items and give my two cents, for whatever that’s worth (probably not 2 cents)

#1. Meh, if they’d stayed out of the low fat BS in the first place, we wouldn’t be dealing with transfats now. More bans lead to more problems.

#2. Interesting comment on how raw milk is akin to ground beef. You’d think raw milk would kill you on sight based on how it’s treated. I don’t know how many gallons of it we’ve consumed and have yet to die. I don’t blink at eating a rare hamburger, the same goes for raw milk.

#3. Bloomburg is the worst of the nanny state ideologues, period.

#4. I just mentioned the farm bill. Enough said there.

#5. Menu labeling. They can’t say it’s GMO on the label, but they can require all the other things we don’t need to know to be on the menu. What’s this going to do? I guess we’ll get an End User License Agreement (EULA) before we dine like we do on every piece of software. Everyone reads those, right?

#6. Food trucks are awesome. I really like how some of them operate and really step out on their menu and their ingredients. I haven’t eaten menudo from the food truck yet, but I’m sure I will someday. I have eaten tacos in my bedroom slippers while driving a gator. That was a fine dinner.

#7. This is monumentally stupid. We tax working Americans. We then take that tax money, at the point of a gun, btw and give it to farmers to artificially lower the price of corn while simultaneously charging tarriffs on sugar to make sugar less competitive. Corporations then make a product that people want, using cheap corn syrup as a sweetener which makes a soda 99 cents while a bottle of water is 3 dollars. We then use taxing authority, which was never intended to be punitive, to tax the soda because soda is bad. Less laws make for better results, not more.

#8. Good, this is the free market working.

#9. This was a scary one. The new rules were onerous and left very little room for small producers, which is exactly the type of producer consumers want from farmers markets and farm to consumer setups. Knowing your farmer is the best safety system their is. Large corporations want complex regulations because it creates a huge barrier to entry for competition.

#10. I agree with the point here. If a kid nagging for McDonalds is why you stop, then you’re fooling yourself. You stop because it’s easier. Being a parent isn’t about easier. If you wanted easier you should have stayed in college and not scheduled any classes before 10am. Being a parent is about being unpopular with your kids and enforcing a code of conduct that includes what goes in their mouths. Do our kids get desert? Yep. Arsenic in low levels won’t kill you and neither will sugar. However there has to be proper balance to a diet. Even McDonalds won’t kill you although we never eat fast food as a choice. Has stopping beer ads changed the drunk driving results? Underage consumption? I honestly don’t know but I doubt it.