https://x.com/vancecrowe/status/1973712314911064159?s=61
This talk hits hard.
It’s relevant, It’s prescient, and It makes you uncomfortable in the best way for people that care about growth.
Let it challenge you.
Vance is talking about how to interact with ideas we disagree with by understanding them before dismissing them. This requires mutual respect in an interaction. This process of working to understand is called “Steel Manning.”
As an example, he brings forth the idea that he believes bitcoin is a better investment than ag land. He says young people should “park real money in bitcoin and wait for the land to be able to be purchased by it.”
This is both a great example because it’s controversial to most, but also because he seems to have a good understanding of it, he means it in good faith, and most people will have to learn more before they can agree or disagree.
He follows this idea up by asking people “Can you steal man this idea?”
This is where the follow through on the disagreement needs to happen. Not just here, but many many other places. In our interactions online, With our families, with ourselves. Can you say you will honestly steel man ideas you disagree with?
I’d encourage you to watch the attached talk that can also be found in podcast form and on YouTube.
If you appreciate my efforts here, please consider following along and also taking a look at my Substack https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelringfamilyagriculture
You may have heard the phrase
“You’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.”
It’s a generalization, but it’s true, and often it’s other things
Colleges, screens, tribes - They can all be just the same as “people” in that phrase.
I’ll say something uncomfortable: We all get indoctrinated. We all have an ideology. We all get “brainwashed.”
So let’s choose what that looks like for ourselves.
Let’s be intentional about what that looks like for our kids.
Who spends time with kids at home, online, and especially at college, can drastically affect their future.
Hard choices about this now, could save a lot of heartache later.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-vance-crowe-podcast/id1463771076?i=1000726489380
It seems to me that we aught to be students.
Students of history and the Lindy solutions to these problems from other times and places when history rhymed with where we are now.
Where are the timeless lessons of how to build a culture and how can we apply them to our new digital age?
The past couple years has felt like dragging dead weight of my business ventures. I’m plenty leveraged and I’m going to keep failing a lot for years to come.
That said, there is literally nothing else I’d rather be doing.
I’ve structured my life to do what I want. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m on a path to get there that I have no right to complain about.
We are going to make it.
Working with high value cattle is weird, man. They are like teenagers: mostly capable of looking after themselves but occasionally do incredibly dumb things.
I raised a heifer one time that won her bred and owned show at a jr national and then a couple years later went missing.
I hiked through the river bluffs for two days until I found her in a neighbor’s woods. I put a halter on her and walked a mile home and she never did it again.
She wasn’t like a kid to me, but she did rival a decent dog. If it was a random feeder steer I probably would have just poked around every few days until I got a sighting of it and then acted.
Not Hilary though. I dropped what I was doing and went out to hunt her down.
So often we have this interplay between our emotions and our actions and it seems to me that the true measure of how we feel is shone through what we do about it.
You might feel like someone is special, but are they “drop everything for an indefinite amount of time” special? It’s worth considering, but you don’t often know until the rubber meets the road and it’s time to act.
What will you really do?
Happy holiday weekend everyone.
I think the heifers have figured out how to rotate to new feed.
https://blossom.primal.net/1ee628099c61427bbf1cadc3b6d951ec21a9567fc95e482961a8d68e894d7c97.mp4
Conception to plate around here. Still some labor yet to do this weekend at the personal-use butcher shop.
Happy holiday weekend everyone.
I think the heifers have figured out how to rotate to new feed.
https://blossom.primal.net/1ee628099c61427bbf1cadc3b6d951ec21a9567fc95e482961a8d68e894d7c97.mp4
I got offered 50 acres to rent that is currently rented by someone related to me who will be upset that they are losing it. They will lose it regardless of whether I’m the future tenant. It doesn’t affect me if their ire is directed at me so I’m doing it anyway.
Let’s go.
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If you want to have land offered to you for rent as a farmer you need to cultivate a reputation of being someone who it feels natural to rent to. It should just make sense that *of course* you would come to mind for such a thing.
Same thing with being handed any opportunity.
Great start to the holiday weekend.
I finished building an engine and had a cookie delivered by my 5 year old who skipped down the driveway in her princess dress up clothes to come see me.
Email lists are power and Substack is letting me do that atm. My thoughts as well.
Thank you. I will look them up. I’d like to build more of that here for all the obvious reasons
If it is intensively grazed in between longer periods of rest, some of that traffic can be a net benefit to the soil. It’s just a management thing.
He deals with a lot. Really competent dude.
The pasture that my family has had access to since my mom was a little girl is 12 acres and it’s a great resource. My bulls are hanging out there right now. I’m amazed how much steep ground the cows can access. Both species at once could be a good option. I won’t own a sheep but I have someone I may start custom grazing them for and we have some goats around.
I’ve been running into more regenerative ag/homesteader types on here and wanted to show a brief picture of one ecosystem we are currently curating for our group of replacement heifers.
https://blossom.primal.net/a5c4ce7d88976778326a7fa892aef987129cb5865557edcfa71263a1c8d9530c.mov
I’ve been bootstrapping my projects by doing repair work. The proof of work is undeniable in a one man shop. Work gets done or it doesn’t. Problems are all on you to solve. It’s frustrating, humbling, and usually ends up pretty gratifying.
There’s a guy at church that asked if he could do a little devotional with me in the morning. He’s a VA social worker and wanted to be able to center himself before going to deal with heavy stuff all day. I agreed and it’s been going well. He’s a chill dude and it has taken me quite a while to figure out his background. Turns out he did a couple hairy tours and has some honors for it.
And that’s the story of how I ended up with a ex army ranger named Karl as my alarm clock. It’s been almost two years, and as you may imagine he’s very consistent.
Life is weird, man.
Today I learned that a company didn’t bid against me on a job because someone I know inferred that I already had the contract for it even though there was actually a few more days left to submit a bid.
It’s an interesting feeling when people conspire in your favor without your knowledge.
A lot of ranchers think this fence building setup is ridiculously cool, but it is my least favorite job on the place… smashing trees with the crawler excepted.
https://blossom.primal.net/9f3e8329327632ac277100f26f118b46de4fbef783c202ffef6324c698433223.mp4
Here’s a look at one of the ecosystems we’ve built most recently https://x.com/ringfamilyag/status/1954954261428605334?s=61
Thanks for listening. I’m not a soil expert by any means, I just play in the real world and try to make systems that work.
I’ve started writing about some projects I’m working on and my thoughts. I’d appreciate it if you checked out my first offering.
Calving season and the laws of nature.