Simple is Scalable: Real Beef Parcel

Since selling beef, we've only offered customers the ability to buy large amounts through a quarter, half, or whole beef, or various cuts.

The problem with this is that it's hard for busy people to choose what they want. 

The bulk order takes planning, the cuts take knowledge.

So we designed a product that solves that problem. It's not for every consumer, it's for learners.

It's the Real Beef Parcel. In the Standard option, you get a box of beef with a roast, four steaks, and and four pounds of ground beef. It's all you need to be able to say "I'm eating grass-fed beef."

The best part is that I think this model is scalable because it's simple.

Now the job is getting this into the hands of those who know they need it.

Photo Post May 16th

Prepping Garden Soil

Hi,

Went out today and loaded a couple wheelbarrows of composted manure and transported it 300 yards uphill to my mini garden bed. There's got to be a better arrangement for the cows in relation to the garden (think permaculture, here...)!

This small garden plot is one I've kept up with minimal labor over the past four years. I'm using Steve Solomon's technique; one wheelbarrow, one spade, one rake, and one hoe. By spacing plants apart more than normal, there's less need for supplemental water. There have been good to excellent yields each year so far, and I haven't watered once! I aim to keep it up as long as I can.

As I'm in the small little garden patch, its easy to think its tiny and insignificant compared to what could be done on a large scale. That's true, but I find I enjoy doing it for other reasons. It's not so much the harvest I care about, it's the experience of seeing the union of heaven and earth at work.

What I mean, is that by the fact of Jesus victory over sin, the earth and the elect of man which were alienated from God at the fall, are brought back into harmony by the redemption of Christ. The soil and plants are allowed to continue to bear fruit for man because God looks upon the earth through the work of Jesus and sees it cleansed from the effects of sin. Jesus has bought it all back from the curse, and though it now "groans and travails," it is (like we are) waiting expectantly for the renewal of the heavens and the earth at the end of time.

It's kind of funny then, the more I spend time in the garden the more I enjoy gardening as a philosophical and theological meditation period. :)

Peter

Cows This Evening

Quick photo on the way to milk!

The Cabin So Far

First layer in place

Dad helped me tack down the tarpaper on the cabin today. We're supposed to get a half inch of rain tonight, so getting that first layer in place is important. I don't think we've had rain yet this spring, only snow. 

Studebaker Solo

Here's a tune I learned from Kenny Smith's Acutab instructional DVD. Hadn't played it in a while, but really enjoyed getting back into it. Enjoy!

Tiny House: Interior Framing

Progress may be slow, but it's always exciting for me. A quick review of interior partitions I'm puttng in the 12' x 20' tiny house.

Sunny Morning

A great day to be alive! The spring weather we've been having makes me motivated to jumpstart some spring projects -- like fencing and barn mud management.

David said a year ago we had -50 temps, but today we have 30+ degrees! I'll take that.

Lily, a Jersey calf we had in the house is now stationed in the barn. I moved her out this morning.

Dad is off on a Grand Forks delivery today, so its just Mom, David and I at home. Andrew is filming a wedding about five hours north of us in Canada.

Hope you have a great weekend!

A Moment of Milk

The last bottle thudded into the cooler and I dropped the lid into place. Raising myself from a bent over position I reached for the handle of the sliding glass door on the cooler and maneuvered it open. Packing milk for the next morning's delivery had left one sole bottle, partially filled with creamy whole milk, sitting in the glass-front cooler awaiting my thirsty gaze.

A well-practiced flip of the cap and the bottle was traveling to my lips, soon coating my taste buds in a soothing delicious white fluid. Pure milk, nothing added, nothing taken away. Oh the joy of the thought! This thought. A thought you may well benefit to enjoy with me. The fruit of earth's riches. A bounty of heaven! The union of divine blessing on mere temporal creation -- in short -- God's promised daily bread that, whether asked for specifically or not, Jesus has imparted by grace to me.

That pure milk, coming from the healthy udders of cows I cared for since they were born, produced by cattle stimulated by solar energy converted into grasses, cut, dried and stowed away for winter's feeding. Milk, the fluid portion of which, mined from below the crust of earth, was drawn from reservoirs of filtered ocean water carried by clouds onto the mainland of America.

This thought, with others like it, raced through my head as I swallowed down the remaining milk and replaced the lid, turning back to my task at hand. Oh the glory of the riches of God ministered in this simple part of my day!

Thoughts On Thought and How God Wants Us To Think

From a battered, torn, folded manuscript scribbled on in the barn by Peter in July 2015. All errors are my own. Read at your own risk.

Thoughts On Thought and How God Wants Us To Think

A Christian is not simply a person carrying around a certain set of propositions that he believes are true. It is partly that, but thinking like a Christian involves knowing God and lovingly speaking on His behalf.

People today seem to have a different mode of thinking than people did back in Bible days. If you look at the children of Israel in Egypt and the pagan nations of Canaan, you notice a common fear of "the gods" by the pagans, or "The Lord God" of Israel, right? This fear someone higher than man is something that seems to have been bred out of us in modern days.

When someone talks about the weather, we don't usually credit it first of all to personal forces, right? Why is that? Is it because science has eliminated the need for God? No. It is only the common unbelieving frame of thought that we have caught in our age. Dr. Cornelius Van Til stresses the change that happened at the time of Immanuel Kant in modern philosophy. Kant wasn't the first to think this way, but his ideology caught on in popular philosophy.

For me, it helps to follow trains of thought back in history to see where they developed from and who is behind it. Van Til does just that in his books. Taking insights from "A Defense of the Faith," "The Case for Calvinism," and "A Christian Theory of Knowledge," Van Til has showed me how post-Kantian thought is drawing upon the same non-Christian method as Aristotle and Satan. Aristotle is known for his logical method, and was an early greek thinker. Aristotle's method of explaining God and the world drew upon two concepts that he assumed were eternal. This may be hard to grasp, but it's worth a try. Read on and give it some thought!

Basically, for Aristotle there are two abstract concepts; forms and contingencies. These concepts had existed forever and weren't necessarily created by God. The first was the concept of form. Pure form. Once you have heard the second you may be able to see where this is going. For now, just think of form all by itself.

The second concept Aristotle needed in his method was contingency. Pure contingency. Taking pure form and adding pure contingency, you get the possibility of what Van Til called, "brute fact." This may take time to sink in, but it is worth understanding so you can avoid the sin of thinking this as much as possible.

So with the possibility of brute fact, there was then the possibility of eternally existing principles which could be equally true for God and equally true for man. The way Van Til said it, "That which holds a finite man imperfectly, is one and the same with that which holds an infinite God perfectly." In other words, there was a blank space of abstract no man's land, where you could, as it were, pencil in God, and pencil in man. There was an environment surrounding God and man with certain laws that each may appeal to. This is where the ground gets shaky. Because of this no man's land that encompasses both God and man, the laws of that tract of land, such as logic, were eternally co-existing with God. God did not necessarily create the laws of logic, he has co-existed with logic as a little god beside Him. Logic then, was identical for God and man. And with logic being identical, then all knowledge too was identical for God and man, and man was lifted up into oneness of being with God.

This lifting up of man to be one with God in knowledge, means that he must also be a god, since you cannot separate knowledge from being. This train of thought leads right into Plato's scale of being, and fits into Roman Catholic theology and Armenianism.

Do you follow me? I know it is hard to grasp, especially for us living in times where modern post-Kantian philosophy is normal.

True Christianity denies all other gods and receives the personal revelation of God in scripture as the only special communication to man by God. There is no brute facts in God's world. No pure forms or contingencies. The world is beaming forth the personal Word of God. Nature speaks God's praise because it is in Him, of Him, and through Him. There isn't any truth that stands abstractly apart from personal covenantal communication. When we know the Truth, we are knowing Jesus Who is the Truth.

I hope you don't gloss over this and I'd encourage you to crack open a philosophy book by Van Til and start drinking in a dose of medicine for a mind that is infected with popular sin. The reward for a transformed sight and view of the world is worth it. It is not less than what God has commanded by our being born again and renewed in His image.

All for now,

Peter

Using Milk to Tenderize Beef

Hey!

I'm excited. We fried up our first Jersey steaks tonight. Those bull calves just jumped a lot in my estimation.

But we didn't just do steaks the "normal" way. We did an experiment.

Dad has a keen sense of what texture, taste and properties he wants to experience in the food that he sells to others. And he cares enough to dig into the processes that contribute to raising that food as well.

When a customer told Dad they learned that milk can tenderize beef, Dad knew this was something we had to try.

So we did.

This afternoon I grabbed our trusty kitchen guide to grass-fed cooking, Shannon Hayes' Grass-fed Gourmet cookbook, and flipped to a recipe for bison sirloin steak (pg 42).

Since Jersey beef is naturally lean, I thought it made sense to try a bison recipe. Cooking times might be longer. On top of the breed difference, the fact that the steer was harvested at a younger than prime size (700lb) could also make a difference.

Using the simple ingredients of basil, coarse salt, pepper, and olive oil, I slathered the first T-bone steak and rubbed in the seasonings.

Then I took the other steak out of the fridge. It was about 16 hours ago that I submerged the T-bone's twin from the package in a baking pan of creamy raw Jersey milk.

The milk dipped steak held the seasonings well, so I only rubbed in the mixture and prepared it just like the other steak.

As the recipe said to do, I let them sit for a bit. Then, drying them off, I seared them for 3 minutes per side on the stove in a bare skillet.

Mistake #1. Don't sear in a bare stainless skillet! The house looked like a chimney and smoke curled everywhere.

After the searing, both steaks were set on a baking sheet to slowly cook for a couple hours while I went out to milk.

Long story short, here's the response:

Written November 2015

[Video Post] Tiny House: Math Works

See how it's coming along!
(correction: I said geometry, it should be trigonometry:

"Trigonometry is about triangles, relation between their sides, opposite angles etc. sine, cosine and tangent are few of the trigonometric functions. Geometry is a broader term dealing with points, lines, surfaces, shapes etc." ref. google)






Any suggestions? Let me know your thoughts.

Tiny House Update: Math Works

I just have to say, construction is a real-life expression of logic:

If a is true and b is true, then c must be true as well.

If this board is square and level, and this board was measured correctly, then this should fit perfectly!

I calculated the dimensions of the first common rafter for my tiny house on graph paper yesterday. Then today I set up the ridge beam and measured out the dimensions for the rafters. 

I was pretty excited that it fit so nicely!

Gotta like that fit!

Marking off where the beam should meet the posts. 

Setting up the beam with only one person. Screwed some braces to hold once side until I climbed up and lifted the other side.

To Grow Your Mind

Wrapping your mind around a project can be difficult when you're new to something. But growing your mental abilities before you encounter a difficult job makes it easier to get started.

For example, if I walk into a messy room and don't think about cleaning up in an orderly way, the job can easily feel overwhelming. But if I gaze around the room first, and identify the main things that are out of place before I begin to act, then the problem gets narrowed down to one manageable task at a time.

I am convinced the process of thinking through a task is made easier by reading books, and especially learning concepts. To think conceptually puts your thinking on a higher plane than simply taking a job at face value.

The way I came to love thinking conceptually was by memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism. No conceptual thinking or meditating can rise higher than when we rest our thoughts on God Who made all things, and receive an understanding of His ultimate plan for history by knowing His Word.

From the starting point of the fear of God, all other fields of knowledge can come easier to our minds because they fit into the overarching canopy of God's revelation; in His Word and works.

The book, "The Art of Explanation" illustrated this fact by saying that in order to make it easier to understand the tree, you need to start by talking about the forest. In the same way, all the different bodies of knowledge are very difficult to piece together if you don't first start with God.

In the book "Mathematics Is God Silent" the author quotes a book on Johannes Kepler the famous scientist, saying that to Kepler, the study of the world was essentially an act of worship to the God who created it.

Thinking conceptually, in the form of mathematics, biology, geometry, language form, etc. is very really the thinking of God's thoughts after Him, as Rushdoony said.

Today, as I worked in the barn building a stanchion frame, the beauty of everything turning out square and level made me realize that my love of thinking conceptually about God, bore fruit in His making me handle the square and level with accuracy. A 3' x 3' slab of OSB slid into place like a cabinet door! I couldn't take credit for it. And the more I work from day to day with the fear of God in my mind, the more fruit I know will be seen in ways only He knows right now.

For this I am thankful and will praise God.

Please take this as an encouragement you to grow your mind by reading books and thinking conceptually.

Uploaded from mobile. Blame Samsung for errors.

OPEN C GUITAR TUNING -- Blessed Assurance

Thanks to Thomas Pederson for teaching me the open C guitar tuning. Enjoy!

Tiny House: Concept to Creation

It’s the most fun I’ve had creating something ever!

Dad used to tell us someday we’d be making things out of the real legos, and this is exactly that.

I enjoy thinking conceptually and creating things from my imagination. Often times I'll scratch out a schematic for something I’d enjoy making if I had the chance.

Maybe a template for a barn, or a diagram of a future barnyard.

As I’m standing there with my pen and paper towel in the barn, sometimes my drawings seem as real in my mind as if I had actually spent the time creating it.


Well, this project is actually becoming a reality!

Last spring I borrowed dad’s framing book and kept it on the barn shelf. Once or twice a day I flipped through the chapters and illustrations, gradually making my way through the book.

From tricks of the trade, to engineering principles and wood types, I enjoyed getting a feel for what goes into planning and creating a floor plan and elevation for a house.

After going through the book I felt I had a handle on the basic framing principles. I then started making a series of rough sketches on graph paper using a pencil (so it was easy to reconfigure) and set to work putting my learning to practice.

I have to say, the plans have morphed into newer and newer revisions as I went along.

Youtube videos and small cabin design websites helped me get a feel for what was possible, and for what fit my tastes.

I like simplicity, and I liked small compact designs, but I didn’t need it to rest on a trailer. With that in mind, I created a design a bit larger than some tiny houses that were shown. More like a small cabin.

The floorplan is simple. It’s 12’x20’ outside dimensions. There's a small porch, dining/living area, kitchenette, office and shower/bathroom on the main level. Then a bedroom and storage area in a loft that spans about half the ceiling.

Before deciding to build something myself, I shopped around for available pre-built options. None of the affordable options really caught my eye, and I would end up with something very basic and constructed out of 2x4s. I wanted something winterizable and custom built for me. That's why I started designing and building it myself.

I have now finished about three walls. Two are fastened in place, supported by braces, and the third is framed and almost complete.

I wrapped up my tools and put them under a tarp last night in case of rain, and plan to get them out today to finish the third wall and start on the fourth.

Butchering Laying Hens

In from the field for a moment...

Dad tested the temperature from the scalder with his finger, only to retract and say the water was electrified! A few breaker flips later, a thorough troubleshooting session was complete and Dad figured out the upper heating element was dysfunctional.

The elevator called earlier today saying the hog grain was ready, so Dad is now on his way to pick up the grain and a new heating element. Four dead chickens are in the tin cones as I write and I'm waiting for the remaining element to finish heating up to 148 degrees.

Signing off -

Peter

The Inspiration Of A Sword

I came across this draft of an email as I was browsing the file today. It was written after I rode horseback in makeshift period garb for Andrew's academy promotional. Thought I'd share it with you since I was thinking of it.

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Knights in shining armor are inspiring. I think every boy (and man?) gets a thrill in seeing the clash of steel against an enemy in a close combat situation. For many of us though, swords and armor have a special spiritual significance when we remember the Bible depicts the power of the Word as the "two edged sword" of the Holy Spirit that pierces the soul of man (Hebrews 4:12). Also, we remember our God is King, the King of kings, and the Ruler of the universe. Under Him and in Him by the fact of His saving us from our sin, He is our leader Who leads us into battle, subduing Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20). History will be complete one day, “...when [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” (1 Corinthians 15:24-26). The Christian life is a warrior’s conflict, even more serious and dangerous than the depicted horror of evil in The Lord of the Rings. But our battle is real and happens every day. It casts deep and lasting ramifications in time and history regardless of what we believe about it. But Christians don’t have to worry. Our God is the “Lord of Hosts.” He is victorious over all people, nations, ideas and whatever else. This makes me excited about swords, knights, kings and the triumph of good over evil. It is true! It’s inspiring to fight the good fight of faith. To swing the sword of the Spirit for our Master. Doesn't it inspire you too?

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My New Project: Building a Tiny House

Hello,

I am excited about a new project I'm starting. With a long standing inspiration from Dad, I've decided to start building a tiny house!

You might wonder what a tiny house is. A tiny house is basically a small cabin that has all the workings of a full house, only a tiny version. Many people are building tiny houses on trailers to allow mobility. While I don't intend to put mine on a trailer, I am building it with portability in mind.

There are a bunch of great websites from people catching on to the tiny house idea. tinyhousetalk.com is a good one I came across. The concept is that you don't really need a huge amount of space to operate. Staying small is economical for a beginner, and just the basics will do in most cases.

An inspiring young man documented his tiny house story on his website here: www.landtohouse.com

I'll plan to share a few pictures now and then and show you how it goes as I learn what I'm doing.

 The beams are notched to tie the floor platform together and help keep things together when being moved.

The beams have a 48" space between them for mounting a panel underneath to support the floor insulation.

Setting the joists in place was like building with Lincoln logs. They fit very nicely.

Finished for today.

"Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it." Psalm 127:1

Stay tuned!

Peter