Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 9 November 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening and happy Friday-eve! I hope you have amazing plans for the holiday weekend that allow you to spend time with your family and/or friends enjoying the freedom that continues to be protected by amazing volunteers that put their lives on the line for all of us. The Fast-jet Friday pic this week is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle flying low past the Welsh mountains in the Liberty Wing (48th Fighter Wing, RAF Lakenheath, UK) heritage paint scheme. This has been another busy but great week. We met customers and friends at the drop site in Ava Saturday morning. That worked well for all of us and we will continue throughout the winter as long as folks are interested. We got the beef herd on the move again, working their way through the pastures for what will most likely be the last time this grazing season. The cool season grasses never really kicked off this year and there just isn’t much there for them to eat. As we got them moving, we took a pause through the pens in order to tag this year’s calves and castrate a couple of bull calves. We left one bull calf intact, as he looks really good and we think we can use him in the future. Our cows are very calm and Shelley and I are able to work them through the pens by ourselves, honestly, with very little talking. We moved the ewes and rams into a new paddock and then we also moved the lambs into a new paddock. We’re still deciding what pastures we want to use to winter the sheep. Their heavy impact with the hay we unroll really improves the pastures so we want to pick the right ones. The pics today are of the pigs as they were moving into their new paddock. You can watch the progression from standing at the old boundary, to slowly making their way into the new paddock, to wandering through the forest checking out the new ground. They are doing very well and growing as they should. The beef chicks are about 3 weeks out from processing and are also growing well. Shelley and I were alone on the Dust’er Mud Podcast again for episode 15 where we discussed the most often asked question we get regarding our ‘crazy' way of eating… “What do you eat?” I’ll leave a link below and you can check out the conversation where we discuss the tools we used to learn how to transition from a Standard American Diet (SAD) to a ketogenic lifestyle, to include over a year being strictly carnivore.
I’ve kept my military-related topics, here in the blog, fairly superficial…maybe recruiting or living conditions, even a chat or two regarding my feelings in retirement, but I just can’t keep quiet about this topic. Yesterday, Voice of America reported that a US Defense Official says there have been FORTY-SIX attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17, 2023 with four of these happening after a US airstrike on an Iranian weapons storage facility in Syria the night prior. In these 46 attacks, FORTY-FIVE US soldiers have been injured, according to the Pentagon, including multiple Traumatic Brain Injuries. About two weeks after the first of these attacks on Americans, the US carried out an airstrike on targets in Syria. President Biden called them deterrence strikes. Again yesterday, the White House and DOD called the most recent strikes deterrence strikes. Allow me to get a bit nerdy in the Defense Department lingo to help us all understand what is going on here but I will use a playground analogy. Deterrence is the act of keeping someone from doing something—“Don’t hit me, or I’ll hit you twice and kick sand in your eyes!” In the playground, like international politics, deterrence is fairly easy because it allows the deterred actor to just walk away and say “I wasn’t going to hit you anyway.” Easy. No loss of face/machismo/credibility. The more difficult act is one of compellence. Compellence is the act of convincing someone to QUIT doing something they are already doing. On the playground, compellence is trying to get someone to stop hitting you, that has already hit you. As everyone that has seen a playground fight knows, the end of the fight normally happens when the two are forcibly separated, not when the attacker is so threatened that they stop. Back to the Middle East. The US strikes are stated to be deterrence strikes, which means they are not messaging the forces that attacked the US forces. The US strikes are a message to Iran to keep them from entering the conflict—deterring Iran—don’t do something you already aren’t doing. OK, where is the COMPELLENCE to force the Iranian proxy forces to quit launching attacks on our soldiers? It’s not there. Compellence is hard, it requires overwhelming, unquestioning force to convince them to stop doing what they are already doing. They are already attacking US forces. As proof that they weren’t compelled to stop, they launched FOUR more attacks after our last strike, injuring THREE more Americans. This is BULLSHIT! The US Government is using American forces as disposable pawns, placing them in harms way, but not protecting them. Yesterday, one of our remotely-piloted aircraft was shot down. How long before American troops start dying? What is it going to take? Either compel the enemy to stop, or get the American military out of the way!
Dust’er Mud Podcast Episode 15: From Standard Plates to Ketogenic States—Our Dietary Evolution
Local Farm Report for 4-8 November 2023
Harvest:
55 Chicken eggs
58 Duck eggs
18 Gallons of milk
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Thank you for speaking up. I often wonder what your thoughts are and appreciate your honesty. TBI is life changing and they say it so casually as if it’s fixed with a band aid. my prayers are with our soldiers both active and retired.
We are supposed to be providing leadership in the world.
Instead, we seem to be showing the world how NOT to conduct oneself.
Whether you look at our monetary, fiscal, commercial, diplomatic or military policy...all seem dysfunctional.
We have been blessed beyond belief, but have squandered the blessing. We are like the one who gave up his birthright for a bowl of beans.
God help us!