Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
I raise beef cattle, my friend has a nice herd of dairy cows. I trade steaks and ground beef for raw milk and cream. I appreciate his herd, he thinks well of mine. Both of us spend a lot of time with our livestock and have good relationships with the animals in them- I could tell you the month and the year of each one’s birth, their relationship to each other, etc. and I know he could too, so we have a solid handle on both the personalities and temperaments of each as well as the herds collectively.
I would not even dream of trying to milk one of my cows though I am sure it could be done and I know that while he could probably eat one of the Jerseys if he had no other options, it would be a distant second choice to one of the T-bones that come off my Herefords.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Same species, different animals. Both serve a purpose, both excel in their respective areas of accomplishment. Anyone who knows anything at all about the animal kingdom- of which we are a part- understands that differences within species make huge differences in behaviors and outcomes. It’s natural, it’s how all lifeforms survive and improve and it will never be anything but a fundamental reality.
People who live in ivory towers, the urban dwellers have been so long divorced from Nature and it’s rhythms, the endless complexities that rest upon foundations of simplicity can not and will not ever come to understand this. They live in a fantasy world composed entirely of human constructs, artificial environments, and false gods. Only one week ago an entire nation agreed to engage in a mass delusion, voluntarily. To pretend that the day was somehow off by an hour and in need of artificial correction.
Not one person in a thousand has even the faintest inkling as to why we even do this, let alone how easy it is to choose blatant madness over observable reality. We stick with a single clock all year round and for six months out of the year we are out of sync with most everyone else, but perfectly in tune with Nature. We try and avoid making any appointments during this time to allow for the human herd to come to it’s senses at some later date and just smile to ourselves in the interim.
Humans have allowed themselves to lose touch with reality because they fear one thing more than death itself- to be set apart from the rest of the herd. They don’t even see that what they are “choosing” to do isn’t even a free choice, but a manipulation by those who have no moral qualm with being the herdsman over the human cattle they harvest.
If two human beings can divorce from one another, then it stands to reason that two human groups can choose the same path. We have different destinies and they will be fulfilled no matter what kind of artifice or fakery is used to try and outsmart Mother nature.
Hmmmm…….parallels a recent post me thinks. Like expecting blacks to ever integrate and become productive members of this society? Am I close?
I told my cousin that while I enjoyed the hunt with her this weekend, I prefer the role I have for myself here for many reasons. The main one is that with the herd of deer depending upon our triangle of land to give them safe harbor from the guns MOST of the time looks at me as landscape. She will be back, but I will be in non-assist mode. Some things are only fair.
My cousin was in one of those wanna-be and came close country all girl bands that never made it big, just played backup for BIG and Rich once or twice. Like Gretchen.
One of the really good things that Trump is doing is freeing the state department from pushing this kind of bullshit all over the world. The State Department was stocked to the gills with homosexuals under Obama and Hillary Clinton. They’re very upset at having to work for Trump, and Rex Tillerson is marginalizing and just flat getting rid of as many as he can.
Last night I finally bit the bullet and watched Valerian and the city of 1000 asshats. It was truly horrible. No. Beyond horrible. It was infected with an unending stream of SJW drivel. The actors (and I use the term in the loosest possible way) were constantly spouting transgender stereotypes. The direction was awful. The writing (if you could call it that) was awful. The computer graphics were awful. All of the computer generated creatures were cartoonish. All of the reviewers are trying to explain why nobody went to see it without using the HSF explanation but the truth is that nobody cares about great imagery. That’s a dime a dozen these days. We all want a story that we can believe in and that does not include men with women inside them and domineering witches that for some unfathomable reason attract gay little alpha males.
No TV program or movie nowadays is worth watching, if you ask me. I haven’t turned on my TV in at least five years, maybe more. Haven’t been to a movie since my college-aged son was about 5.
Home run farmer.
I was talking with the Mrs about our time change the other day. It is abusive and unfortunately many of us (most) have to live with it because of the nature of our work. I’m a merchant so it is what it is.
Where I grew up there was no time change. Maybe that’s why I’m such a stick in the mud at parties? Some of us can see the world for what it truly is, others are happier with the illusion. Perhaps you’re right. Maybe it’s time to go our seperate ways?
The questions is – how?
I’m open to suggestions.
Life has a certain rhythm out here in the country away from urban existence that depends on there being certain signals in the lighting available a half hour or so before sunrise and an hour after sunset if you are in a clear field and less than a quarter hour if out in the shadows of the woods.
Time changes are ongoing here and setting one’s clock by those makes a lot more sense to me.
You life sounds so wonderful, Maggie. Although I don’t know if I could kill the rabbits unless I was starving. But you never know until you try, right? I could be tougher than I think.
I would have thought that the dairy farm would be multi-purpose. You have to breed the cows every so often so that they continue to give milk. So you would have calves that could be raised for meat.
There are farmers who utilize whatever they have, sure, but not on any scale. Most dairymen sell the calves right after birth (they’re after the milk and there’s not enough to share with a calf) and yes, someone eats them although dairy calves raised off their mothers are pretty close to the very bottom of the beef food chain. There isn’t a huge market in veal these days and dairy animals are bred to put all of their energy in to milk production, not muscle development so they are not what you’d call beef cows by a long shot. I think most of it goes to the pet food/soup markets for slaughter at very low prices.
Sad but true, as I had some wonderful veal for dinner last night. Here there is rarely any for sale ever, and now I know why. We buy it whenever we can, as the flavor and tenderness is quite good. Thanks HSF another day of learning about life from you!
I know why the caged bird sings, why the caged beeve baby cries, & why human cruelty never dies. CAFO is as CAFO does.
Sous-vide, marinade – or both – grass fed, free range.
Crate motors are usually cruelty-free. Crate baby beef is cruelty-consumed. One is what one eats-assimilates. One is how one does. But, one was all of that before one had anything to say about it. The re•veal.
Hey HSF, I have a question for you that should be right up your alley. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple weeks and it surprising does not seem to have a good answer.
Here it is:
A man is a male human. A woman is a female human.
A buck is a male deer. A doe is a female deer.
A rooster is a male chicken. A hen is a female chicken.
A cow is a female _____. A bull is a male _____.
Please fill in the blanks. Cattle is the plural, but there doesn’t seem to be a singular for whatever a cow/bull is. Cow is what most would think until you say a cow is a female cow and a bull is a male cow. Then it makes no sense. Other animals have names for their species, but apparently cattle do not unless you go back to the old english. How can this be? What are they? Please help.
Bovine
While he’s at it …
Ya got yer chickens. Hens. And roosters. I know roosters fuck the hens. But, who is fucking the chickens?
(Other than Syrians, and possibly HF who has “good relationships”, wink wink, with them.)
Hens generally refers to egg laying birds and chickens means poultry in general- layers or meat birds. And the roosters seem to know which hens are spent (no longer fertile) and which ones are still producing eggs. Funny, that whole nature thing.
Funny how the roosters know. All this time I thought Missy Prissy was “spent.” She sure looked spent. I guess Foghorn knew what he was doing all along. Interesting.
Beeve is the word we use for single animals that aren’t being described by sex. Beeves is also an acceptable plural for a mixed group of cattle.
That was the best thing I could find, but I don’t know anyone who uses the word beeve. I asked a few people who make their living with cattle.
It is interesting to me that the word cattle apparently is derived from chattel and that may explain why it has no singular version of it. They were just looked at as ubiquitous property and not looked at as a species or an individual. Seems like every other barnyard animal has a name though. If you told someone that a cow was a female beeve they would look at you like you were nuts.
Bovines are a larger group that include species other than cattle, so that is not the correct answer.
People use it up here. I think it’s more of an Old English thing, so New England and all…
Isn’t the word that would resolve the issue “heifer?” Doesn’t that denote hot young gal cattles shaking their booty to attract bulls? Forgive me if I’ve seen the “rut” just a little too up close these last few days, but there are reasons these terms were created for reasons other than to piss off feminist morans.
Maggie, that’s what I thought as well.
What I was told by local farmers, heifer before she is bred and calves. After that she is referred to as a cow. The bull is a bull calf, if his testicles are removed..(what is the word for that?)..he is referred to as a steer.
No, not heifer. That describes a particular subset of cow. Sort of like girl is to woman. I want to know the cattle word that equates to human. Beeve is it.
“At once with tidings of his slaughter’d beeves, And he, incensed, the Immortals thus address’d.”
“The Odyssey of Homer” by Homer
Nature’s the container. It holds it all, everything. There is no “divorce” from it.
So it also contains the herds & herdeds that compulsively insist in “the others’” general – oh so general – direction that ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’
Beyond the natural accidents of birth comes the natural herd : love it or leave it…or – if it can be gotten away with, under color of law or other herding-lynching configurations – “or else.”
Stay out of, away from, herds, continues to be good advice, but naturally, only to those who are not herd denizens to begin with. Stay out, because herds & herdeds consider individuals to be “unnatural.” And “unnatural” justifies, to the feeble hivemind – preymind – absolutely any carnage imaginable.
“More important than the general conclusions about the primacy of the single combat, which we also have deduced from what are seemingly games of entertainment, is the conclusion of Damm that most primitive games are really questions set to fate – an idea to which Berkusky first gave expression in the case of the tug of war, a ceremonial rain-magic. He assumes that the tug originally set destiny the question whether the rain-bearing monsoon would come soon or not. “But as all such questions of the future which man himself has to answer, because external factors are beyond his influence, tend to develop into a magic activity, it looks as if here also we have an attempt at forecasting the future, preceded by rain-magic.” The same is true of a ceremonial wrestling-match which the Batak in Sumatra carry through each year with reference to the sacrifice to the “common father of their race”: a bull is killed, & according to the manner of his fall, whether with the wound above or below, so will the tribe’s fate be; & the wrestlers belonging to the various tribes try to influence the fall of the beast in accordance with their wishes & by their own strength – which really amounts to “correcting fortune” in connection with the question put to destiny.”
“Instead of shedding real blood, which neither promotes growth nor causes rain, we have a sham fight as a sort of deception of nature, which is here the real opponent & vanquished by deceit.” ~ unattributed, for whatever satisfaction that may give rdawg
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one…
Burt Lancaster, reign-man…con man… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzumw9k7ijQ
“The question is,” said Humpty dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.” Now, sign this non-compete, take “your” place in the herd….
A five or six thousand cow dairy is now a common size. A dairy this size would freshen, calf, all five thousand each year resulting in around fourteen calves per day. Odds would say half being bull and half being heifers. The calves are removed and sold to a third party. The big dairies contract with other cattle raisers. often ranchers with grassland, raise these replacement cows, since they can do it more cheaply on grassland than in a feedlot. The young females are called heifers. The heifers are then sold back to the dairy. The dairies, I believe, have right of first refusal. The bull calves are castrated and fattened as any other beef cow would be. The meat from these fattened, Holsteins mostly, is indistinguishable from meat from beef cows. The sale price of dairy animals may be slightly less than that of beef animals, but this is only due to less yield per centile.
You’d know better than I concerning Industrial Ag Ops. Around here a herd of 20 animals is considered good sized though there are some bigger dairies along the Connecticut River that have a couple of hundred. I’d dispute the claim that meat is indistinguishable from breed to breed any more than wines are all the same, but I guess it depends on who’s cooking, too.
They don’t call them beef cows for no reason.
It’s true that meat from a Holstein steer that was fed a low-roughage ration is nearly indistinguishable from Angus. They bring a slightly lower price at market only because of non-uniformity on the ‘line’ at the slaughterhouse. The bean-counters desire uniformity above all else.
The milk from Jerseys and Guernseys have a higher butterfat content, making a better milk, but the Holsteins have higher solids (13%) so their milk is economically more efficient for the byproducts (yogurt, cheese, etc.). It’s a bean-counters world now. Thus the proliferation of Holsteins. Most of the hamburgers you will ever eat come from culled Holstein milk cows.
Jerseys have yellow colored fat in their flesh. It is visually unappetizing, but doesn’t effect the taste.
Around here Jerseys are the most common although there are some Holsteins and I’ll admit they are nice looking animals. Don’t recall ever having beef from one, but I’ll certainly see if I can’t find a steak out there to see what the flavor profile is like.
I’m cooking the neck (cut up into cubes) from the bull we slaughtered Saturday for dinner tonight. Carrots, onions, garlic, bay leaves, apple cider and red wine with wild mushrooms. Been in the oven at 200 degrees since yesterday morning. Smells incredible. Will serve it over roasted butternut squash coulis.
Can’t wait.
Ten cents more on the pound for black steers, angus or not. Folks around here wanting to process beef like the taste of black meat. I suspect it is racist.
once you try black you can’t go back–
It’s been that way for the last 30 years, Maggie. Whenever I saw a mostly black Holstein bull calf at the sales-barn I would always buy it to raise as fat cattle. And sure enough, it always brought 10 cents more at slaughter.
Girl, you are more ‘country’ than I would have guessed.
I am not wanting to log in and suggest this to Admin for review, but do want to drop it here somewhere. Since I know this post of HSF is not from him at all but from being such a well stated opinion it deserves a wider read according to Admin or others on another comment thread.
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/11.17/chaos.html
The chorus of “we live in the best time to ever be human and it’s only getting better” is deafening in the mainstream. I think we live in what is among the worst. Technology makes things easier but rarely better. Yes, there are trade-offs, as always. Not dying from simple infections, traveling around the world in hours not weeks or months and flinging shit with like-minded individuals from all over the country are nice things; being separated from nature, being reliant on an incredibly complex system for our very survival, and hell, just not seeing the stars like they are meant to be seen, etc comprise a huge price to pay–most of it unseen.
We are addicted to convenience. Convenience is nice, our addiction will be deadly to our complex society.
The very basic question that is never asked by anyone mainstream concerning technology/modernity: Of what value is a thing that is easy to acquire?
An optimist is someone that thinks that we live in the best of times.
A pessimist is someone that would tend to agree with that sentiment.
A realist probably thinks they are both wrong…
Steve C.
Spring, Texas
Time is valuable. Each has an allotment of it…that was not acquired. ‘The finer things’ according to individual lights, take time, same as working sunup to sundown does\did. That schedule may well be a finer thing to some. Not to me. Tho I did work such a schedule, & more, for a long time.
A finer Luddism is an option for any who desire to pursue it…but not for those pursued by it, living subsistence la vida loca.
Ability – luxury? – to choose one’s druthers, ‘free to chose’ (monetarist crank title), is desirable. Being cranked, by monetarists or any others, is undesirable. But cranking is self-evidently the finest thing, to many minds.
Optimist: Glass half full
Pessimist: Glass half empty
Realist: The glass is half full but in a minute it will be empty so I had better be close to the tap.
Engineer: Glass is only being used to half-capacity
HF are you pissing about daylight savings time or speaking of bovine destiny? If time, then I agree that it’s ludicrous to mess with time. If you are saying that cow breeds are significantly different and will take a different path through the pasture to reach cow nirvana, I disagree. The genetic difference between Herford and Holstein is slight even if they differ in looks and end use. Cows evolved from something, just as dogs came from wolf. Best hunting dog I’ve ever seen was part Collie. If you are attempting to explain our future using the facts of the natural world, then you missed on this one. That crisp morning air probably got you high.
I think I was talking about both things.
Yup, both.
You know, there’s a lot of people who would agree with you- about there being no difference between a chihuahua and a presa canario because after all, they’re both descended form wolves- but I bet you’d find few people willing to make that bet if it included taunting each breed until it got angry.
Everything came from something else, but intelligent design, in whatever way you’d like to think I mean that has altered them until they have become distinct and dissimilar things. Enough distance allows you to pretend they all look the same, but up close and personal? That’s where the distinctions come into play. If your premise is that the genetic distinctions are slight than I’d have to agree with the scientists who observe that even slight genetic difference equal huge differences in end product.
The difference between the number 1 and Infinity seems endless, while the difference between an IQ of 75 and 135 is non-existent in comparison, but which person would you rather have operate on your child, the guy with the 75 IQ or the guy with the 135?
There are people who routinely make the argument that there’s no difference between a Taco Bell gordito and a grass fed filet mignon at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse because they’re both beef.
It begs the deeper questions on distinction, what is it? where does it come from? how does it come?
We’ve all heard the one about no two snowflakes being alike, right? Ok, so what does it mean? It means that snowflakes are rapidly frozen droplets (containing trillions of molecules) of water that form such complex crystal structures that there are essentially an infinite number of possibilities–so many that the probability to two being identical is essentially Zero. Expanding on this idea, it is logical to say that no two OBJECTS anywhere are truly identical.
Drill down further, is every MOLECULE distinct? Every proton, neutron and electron? Every quark, nuon and gluon? IDFK.
There is a vast gulf between similar and identical.
That kind of IQ is dangerous to its owner as well as it’s greater collective organism.
The old saw about the shoreline of the ocean being an imprecise border, where it is impossible to determine exactly where the land begins and water ends proves that there is neither land nor water.
You either see patterns or you choose not to see patterns as part of some sophisticated intellectual waffling. It turtles all the way down.
It’s just the way I think…sophisticated intellectual waffling is perhaps an accurate, if unkind, way of putting it.
I cannot help but see infinite complexities in the world around me. But like another old saw says: You can’t stop the birds from flying overhead, but you can stop them from making a nest in your hair.
In my day to day life, I keep things pretty simple. I think it’s mostly true that all the really important stuff in life we learned in kindergarten.
But, from time to time, I also like to think as far out there as my intellect and imagination can take me.
Also, I seek to prove nothing, just to stare in bewilderment at the whole of existence.
OR
The more TBP-approved response:
“That kind of IQ is dangerous to its owner as well as it’s greater collective organism.”
So’s your face.
Or, as Mark Twain used to say:
“…I never let schooling interfere with my education…”
Steve C.
Spring, Texas
HF your ability to convey your thoughts amazes me. I labor to put into writing what I am thinking. I believe I am in the majority. It seems to be true that you are in an environment that suits you. Your enthusiasm for breathing is evident. I have come to understand that the natural world that you remain closer to than most, is your inspiration. I believe even those that have never made their living from the land would agree with me that they can feel the connection you have with your land. I have pondered this connection with the natural for some time. I believe that the natural world, the day to day hawk eats rabbit, leaf falls from tree provides the answer. The answer then, is asking the right question. The natural world does not provide the answers, it provides the boundaries for asking the right questions. One becomes closer, but only closer, to the answers because the right questions were asked. The answers are still as elusive as always. You will find satisfaction and direction knowing that your questions are valid. For now Occam and his razor are the best we got.
Those are those really smart types who figure there is no inflation as long as that Taco Bell Gordito can be had as a substitute if that tenderloin gets to be too expensive. See? Taco Bell instead of grassfed loin… no inflation at all.
(We got all of our backstrap from that buck and that doe kept whole for wrapping with bacon.)
“We” hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The a priori’s matter. Those are all the same. The differences, in their multitudes, do not substitute for, or prioritize ahead, of the a priori’s.
IQ’s one of those differences. It’s an isolate. A compartmentalization. A reduction.
There is no shortage of high IQ bad people. I’ve met some. I’m sure you’ve met some too. That isolate is not enough to hang a decision on.
An idiot savant surgeon could be preferable. Not that such a preference can, or will, ever see light of day. High IQ’s, bad ones, see to such things not being seen. And, insult to injury, feel entitled to do so.
Just an aside in reference to the decline of a once great magazine, The National Geographic. The gender issue was just the tip of their politically correct iceberg. Near every single article drops in the ubiquitous rationale of “climate change” for whatever subject they are writing about. When Vladimir Putin becomes the cause of climate change, the circle will be unbroken.
Thanks again, HSF…waiting on the next batch of maple syrup.
Uh, “climate denier” Rupert Murdoch/20thC.Fox is what happened to NG, if I am not mistaken.
The busted clock “pattern”… DST or not. Beware the pattern-maker. And the pattern-seller. Beware “their,” too – cuz it’s typically just you doing the making\selling (tho there is a huge aftermarket dance partner, too) — emperor’s robes fashions.
The qualification, as always, is that beware-abilty is pre, or not at all. The matrix seems to be a pattern that projects patterns & “protects” pattern paternalists from patternlessness. Gen geo pattern likes – has no choice but – to stay in the tank…..patterns projected & recognized may be one of the highest forms of self-flattery. There is a mishmash of cog biases “incentives” involved.
Taleb fortune cookies:
“Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.”
“The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither”
Play the ponies patterns. But be careful out there. Getting paid, especially early on, via a portent-pattern can be a most difficult thing to recover from. It’s one way doing the same thing over & over all the while expecting different results becomes OCD – because once upon a time, somewhere over the rainbow, there *was* a different result. You got paid. And intermittent reward schedules can be very compelling, even unto addiction.
Play is good. Being played, not. Playing self, the worst.
Daylight Saving Time as Americans know it was instituted by corporate lobbies, not farmers.
https://qz.com/1120488/daylight-saving-time-as-americans-know-it-was-instituted-by-corporate-lobbies-not-farmers/
And I have mixed emotions about how it affects children going and coming from school.