Let Them Eat Grass

Get ready for a faux-monologue featuring the central theme of HBO's Chernobyl: "What is the cost of lies?" I can't stop thinking about this question, so I thought I'd pawn some of my existential fears off on you. Excpet instead of bemoaning the shortcomings of communism, I turn my attention to something more familiar. Namely, our food. Once again, "Off the Record" is a more extemporaneous venture than my normal show. It will feature topics outside of the usual narrow categories of food, broken ecosystems, and a better way to live. Today's episode will be about food, but in a consciously theatrical manner. If you can't deal with theatrics, you'd better turn it off.

Milk is our our first food. It's sustained us since the beginning of time. The Lapplanders, Biblical Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Spanish, and early American colonists all drank it. It's probably been the least controversial thing on the planet for the past couple thousand years or so. When cows eat grass in a pastoral setting, they produce good milk. But we've lost that logic somewhere along the way in modern America. We lock our cows in 6x6 foot stalls and make them stand on concrete for the duration of their short lives. We feed them grain. And then we pretend to watch in horror as people get sickened by the milk. Pasteurization was invented as a way to sterilize wine, but along the way it got applied to milk. Supposedly it makes milk safe. In fact, drinking a glass of pasteurized, homogenized milk is pretty dangerous. After researching for this episode, I refuse to drink another glass. Update: I have updated this episode to reflect a more balanced take on conventional vs. raw milk

Last week I said I wouldn't make a new episode if my daughter was born. I had no idea it would be so fast! Well, she was born on July 18, 2019 at 10:42pm in Barnett, Missouri. She, in my ever so humble opinion, is absolutely perfect. Kelli labored for 23 hours, pushing for about 1.5 hours of that. My wife is nothing short of a superstar, and I'm so proud of her. The birth was pretty hairy. Kelli was losing a lot of blood and Tesni had secondary apnia--couldn't breathe right. This week has been pretty crazy for us. Kelli has been getting used to only sleeping for 1.5 hour stretches and still finding time to take care of herself somewhere in-between nursing. Her mom and dad have been living out of our house to help with our transition into full time parenting. They've been taking the night shifts whenever Tesni is asleep. But, like I ask in this episode, please email me at [email protected] to tell me what you're passionate about when it comes to real food, broken ecosystems, and a better way to live. Please!

Raw Milk is milk that hasn't been changed or adulterated in any way. It's been drunk by everyone from the Israelites of the Bible, to the Romans, to the Spanish Conquistadors, and finally, to us. But, somehow we've decided in the last 90 years or so that 4 millenia of milk drinkers had it wrong. Raw milk is actually super dangerous, or so the American medical and political establishment would have you believe. Today's episode is the first of a 3 part series. Today I just wanted to cover the basics. I attempt to answer one main question: Why is raw milk better for you? Next week I'll be taking you through the history of the controversy... covering everything from time immemorial through about 1912. It's a tall order, but I think I can manage. Check out my patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=18435655

The Impossible Burger is a burger made exclusively from plant protein. And, more specifically, genetically modified (GM) soy. Its creators claim we can do no less than save the planet if we eat them at scale. Its creators also claim that any and all forms of animal agriculture are not sustainable at scale, and that most of the environmental degradation on our planet is traceable to private herds of livestock. They cast a wide net... a bit too wide in my opinion. While CAFO's are objectively destructive to the environment and ecosystems they inhabit, our farm has been the recipient of our stewarding touch. Regenerative agriculture seeks to heal what industrial agriculture has destroyed... and I see Impossible Foods as a sly industrial food company trying to evade the fact they are brazenly selling GM product to unknowing customers. While conventional beef production in CAFO's emits about 33 pounds of CO2 into the air for every pound of animal protein, the Impossible Burger emits about 3.5 pounds of CO2 for every pound of plant protein. Sounds great, right? Yeah... until you realize that a farm employing regenerative agricultural techniques in Georgia called White Oak Pastures measured NEGATIVE 3.5 pounds of CO2 for every pound of animal protein they produce. That means they ABSORBED 3.5 pounds of CO2 for every pound of meat. Crazy stuff. Can we solve technology problems like carbon emissions with more technology like the Impossible Burger? Listen to the episode and find out!

"Off the Record" will be a thematically driven show I release from time to time. It's unscripted and pretty laid back. I envision the show as a catalogue of low moments and honest talk. All the stuff that happens to me, or other people I interview, that didn't go the way we thought or simply proved disastrous, will make it on here. Today's show theme is "time". I am shooting for Dan Carlin's contemplative vibe, but I wax lyrical on just how arbritary time is. But, arbitrary or not, time is important. It's a yardstick for our lives. And 2 second improvements can really make your life easier. I talk about our dairy operation, and the difficulties I encountered at first. I went from spending 6 hours a day down to 2 hours a day. And time travel is possible, by the way.

The radical ideology of wilderness abandonment is getting misapplied to our public and private land. We are seeing the unfortunate consequences of the "hands off" ecological approach. Everything from beetlekill in Colorado to California burning wildly out of control. Still, we persist in our belief that we need to keep our hands off the land. Rather than use our opposable thumbs for good, we just need to stay off entirely. We are losing farmland to wilderness at a frightening pace in our country. 3 acres every 60 seconds. At that rate, our farm would be gone in 2.5 hours. Is there any alternative to this madness? Can we produce food in a way that heals the land rather than destroys it? Is land better off being abandoned? Here is the new patreon page... check it out: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=18435655

Diets are usually about eliminating stubborn belly fat. That's reductionist, but hang with me. And they are usually recycled. What's in and what's out is really just repackaged every couple of years and given a fancy new name that millenials can get behind. But what I haven't seen is a diet that isn't just totally about you. Why can't our diets promote consistency in our often chaotic lives? So many diets just end up being short-lived fads because we can't maintain the impossibly high idealism we started them with. Real life just seems to crush it. There needs to be enough flexibility in a diet that allows for times to break it without having to throw all of it out the window. I offer to you "The Stewardship Diet". I started the stewardship diet about ten months ago with my wife Kelli. It's basically an improvement on the paleo diet, with an acknowledgement that there's no way to follow it perfectly. It's regenerative, flexible, and forgiveable. I hope you enjoy it.

Eating pasture-raised anything has better ecologically regenerative effects than grain-fed anything. But not all meat is created equal. We also run sheep and chickens on our farm, but our cow herd is definitely the backbone. In this episode I delve a little bit into how our production makes our pasture-raised beef different than meat you would find at the grocery store. Pasture Beef is the number one land-healing food you can eat. They get quite a bum rap in the news media nowadays, and I think I need to be their strong advocate. Any pictures of muddy feedlots and disgusting environments don't have anything to do with the animals (they enjoy being quite clean), but rather with the farmer who owns them. Farmers own the blame for taking an animal who is able to heal the land and allowing them to ruin it. I interviewed David Boatright, my fellow farmer and best friend, for this episode. He is pretty knowledgeable about everything farming related, so you should enjoy him.

I gave a communion talk at my church a couple months ago on the ingredients of communion. I decided that the content fit nicely into the parameters of "real food" we set for this podcast, so I wanted to share it with you. I heard many years ago that if Jesus instituted communion in 2019, we would probably be drinking soda and eating pizza. I disagree. I think that Jesus chose bread and wine because they communicated something very specific about himself. I think bread and wine teach us about permanence and impermanence. We will dive into the history of 1st century near-eastern bread-making and winemaking in this episode, so hold on tight.