The Feed Store

Pruning is difficult because we are forced to make a conscious decision to remove something that has been part of a growing plant. But these cuts are necessary and even life-giving.

What I’ve just attempted to describe are the joys of the edge. Freedom, I believe, has a limited half-life when it’s in the heart of civilization. Anarcho-pastoralism means that there’s the most freedom near the edges, but freedom-lovers are ever in a struggle to move outward.

We’ve recently started the annual tradition (three years going strong!) of holding a wild game dinner with our friends and church community. Each family brings a dish harvested from the East Texas area, and past menus have included crab, venison, wild pig, crappie, and, of course, squirrel. We tell stories about the harvest of each, and each family explains how the dish was prepared—from start to finish.

"Anyone who does much language study knows that training your ear to hear the language spoken correctly is half the battle of language acquisition. If you know what sounds right, then when you encounter the words spoken incorrectly, they will sound wrong..."

Nature stepped in in her wonted way and took complete control.

If only I had the patience of trees; if only I let time inch me, push me, stretch me ever upward, defying gravity’s pull. My demand for instant responses mocks the good work of time. Trees chasten my fleeting desires that dart hither and thither by slowly pressing, intentionally pushing, and inevitably plodding upward.

Cows do not kill people; people kill people. Especially people who claim cows are the problem. Cows are key players in solving the problems created by industrial agriculture.

Oakland Township, MI My small, exurban farmstead is sustained, in part, by the relationship I forged with my local feed store. To help the reader...

Today I make a COVID resolution: I will learn to be more lamby-like, as Carl would say: to think like a lamb.

My infrequent episodes of bringing death to animals have always taken an emotional toll on me. Making a weekly trip to the slaughterhouse for over a decade, as Comis did, seems bound to leave a mark. Can such a wound be redeemed or is the purpose of this pain to dissuade us from the actions that bring it about?