Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 20 December 2024…
Hey Y’all!
Good afternoon and happy Fast-jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle—but a bit different than I normally share. Today is a story of our daughter Hannah “HAIL” Slayton’s return from her Middle East deployment. The first pic is her in the jet as she arrived to her parking spot. The second is the canopy popped as she is preparing to get out of the jet. Third is a close-up of Matthew and Hannah showing the joy of a loved one returning from combat. The final pic is the two of them departing the flight line. WELCOME HOME HAIL!! The temps have been mild until this morning when it was in the low 20s. We received another flooding rain event, the third in a few weeks time. Our dirt roads are rough and washed out. Our farm trails are water-gouged and very rough. We love the rain, but these large rain events in our Ozark hills cause an excess of water that does so much damage. The big news on the farm this week is the addition of two new beef calves. The first was born Saturday the 14th and is a heifer. The black cow I showed and talked about last week from the vet visit had her the day after I wrote the blog. Mom and calf are doing very well. The second was born yesterday and I got to witness the entire thing! I don’t know if it is a boy or girl as I decided to leave them alone and let them bond. Both mom and baby are doing well. I believe those were the last calves of 2024 putting us at 8 beef calves and 2 dairy calves—bringing our current total number of bovine on the farm to 40! We delivered 4 whole hogs and 1 half hog to customers this week. We also restocked the lamb freezer at the store with 4 lambs—the leg-of-lamb is already almost gone! We plan to take 4-5 per month to the processor for the next few months in an attempt to keep the freezer full. We are going today to pick up 2 lambs today from another local farmer that will make it into the store soon. We are excited to be partnering with local farmers who are doing things the same way we are, regeneratively. We believe this is the way of the future and are pouring our very lives into making it happen.
We believe our health starts with our food. The centralized, industrialized, chemicalized, ultra-processed foods are at the core of the health crisis Western nations are facing. We wanted out of that system so badly that we chose to leave a very successful career in the Department of Defense in order to grow our own food. We set out 3 1/2 years ago on a journey to learn how to make amazingly delicious and nutritious food. Neither Shelley nor I grew up doing this, we didn’t do an internship on a regenerative farm, nor did we go to school to learn to be farmers. We embarked on this journey as we approached the age of 50 with determination and drive to learn quickly. We embraced the idea of “fail quickly, fail often.” We read books, listened to podcasts, watched YouTube videos, and most importantly just did it. I’m sure we could do things better and I know we don’t do things the same way others do. **BUT, we are finding success. We are producing enough food for our family and stocking a meat store for our local community. It is being so well received that we can’t grow enough on our farm to stay stocked so we have to do something. We believe we are at our capacity on our farm without hiring help and we aren’t big enough yet to make that financial leap. So, we decided to begin partnering with other farmers that want to grow amazing food on their regenerative farms but don’t want to do the marketing and sales side of the business. Our partnership is giving those farmers an outlet for their products that doesn’t reinforce the industrialized system, but instead reinforces the local food movement. It gives our local community access to more regeneratively grown, nutritious, and delicious meats. It gives us product for the store without having to expand our farm operation. We are so very excited to be expanding the business in this manner!
We have been so busy this week that we didn’t do a video or podcast. If you haven’t, please go to our new podcast channel, the Dust’er Mud Podcast channel, and subscribe. Thank you! https://www.youtube.com/@DusterMudPodcast
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Welcome back Hannah! Enjoyed the post. Reminds me of each step we take is a step forward. LOL Mostly! Thank you for all you do!
Very happy to see Hannah is back off deployment!
Congratulations to your daughter! Thanks so much for looking into John Deer and what they are doing to farmers! Thank you for being the Natural Regenerative Farmers!!!