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What Get's You Out Of Bed In The Morning?

written by

Ben Simmons

posted on

December 25, 2021

Good Morning and hello from your farmer,

When I was serving in the Air National Guard and received my letter that I had 20 good years towards retirement...it started me thinking about whether I continue serving or retire.

Back then, most folks I met seemed to only be working for retirement so they could "stay home" without any real objective in mind other than do as little as possible.

For me, my health was very good, I was enjoying what I was doing, and l liked being around the people and mission. As the years ticked by I always thought I would know when it was my "time to retire". So, I stayed - for another 16 years.

But, I did not retire to sit at home and do next to nothing with my time. I like and need to be busy.

That's why I am so blessed to have the responsibility to steward this farm and raise healthy, nutritious, and great tasting meats for families.

Never in my wildest dreams back in 2009 would I have thought we would be where we are today. But, God is faithful and has led us much further than I ever thought possible.

For us, our passion lies with our drop sites where we connect directly with families. We want to help families meet their objectives!

We know that moms have a crazy busy life and wear many hats - there are kids around the house - decisions to make about "how can I get a clean healthy meal on the table"?

Many of the farm jobs we can hire someone to do. But, we like to make the deliveries because that is where we connect and build relationships with our customers.

To be honest, we also enjoy the many positive comments folks send us weekly - like the six or seven folks who enjoyed and felt connected to our team of folks that help us that we introduced in last weeks newsletter.

​I want to close by sharing Beth's Chicken Soup recipe. It is very easy, healthy, inexpensive, and soooo good (I'm enjoying some as I write this).

For this batch Beth started with 3-NGF Chicken Soup Bones from our processing this week. She put them in the crockpot about half full of water about lunchtime on high. When she came in from finishing chores, she deboned the chicken and cut in small pieces. The chicken yields about a pound of meat each and some healthy broth. Then, she added to the broth in the crockpot, homemade cream of chicken soup (or you can use a can of store-bought), salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic, and about 3 Tbsp. of butter. She put the chicken back in the crockpot and added some half and half (we didn't have enough milk). You can make it as thick or thin as you want with the amount of milk. Get everything hot, but don't scorch the milk. Serve with saltines crushed up in it. YUM!!!

So, what gets me out of bed in the morning? The joy to be a blessing to others.

As always, thank you for rewarding our hard work with your trust and support.

More from the blog

Farm & Market Updates

Market Update – Our farm objective is to raise nutrient dense meats without all the chemicals, vaccines, hormones, and etc. And be able to provide them to a community of families at a reasonable price. We measure success based on pounds sold verses dollars earned. Current beef prices are making that harder to accomplish as families seek options to reduce their food bills. I know we have not passed along the full impact of higher prices to our customers which means we are not making as much as before nor are we selling as much beef.

Beef Pricing Update & Sausage

Beef Pricing Update – Beef prices continue to increase and hit a new All-Time high AGAIN last week. This week, the Chief Production Officer (CPO) for JBS Meats (one of the four largest beef packers) stated that prices will remain high for at least the next two years. His rationale was the low cow herd numbers, little to no indication farmers/ranchers are retaining females to grow their herds (at these high prices they are taking the money now while it is there); when females are being retained it will take over 2.5 years before a calf will be ready for harvest (9-month gestation + about 24 months old at harvest). Lastly, consumer demand remains strong.

Taste Test

Greetings Ben and Beth, I'm really looking forward to my next order pick up. I'm trying to improve my cholesterol numbers, thus eating more chicken, and ran out of your chicken products. I ended up buying some industrially produced chicken, and man was that a mistake! It smelled terrible raw, also while it was being sauteed, and also later when I reheated it to put into an otherwise healthy salad. I have enough of this subpar stuff to last until I pick my order, but I don't think I can ever buy this CAFO stuff again.