We started with $500, a little barn in Sparta, North Carolina, and absolutely no idea what we were doing. Eight years later, the best part of the Southeast Highland Cattle Show & Sale has very little to do with the cattle and everything to do with the people who helped build it.

I grew up hearing a lot about the end times. This world is temporary. Jesus is coming back. But lately I've been wondering whether Christians sometimes took that belief and drew the wrong conclusion from it. Maybe believing our time here is temporary should make us more concerned with how we care for what God placed in our hands, not less.

President Trump’s new cattle executive orders address issues farmers and ranchers have been fighting over for years, including country-of-origin labeling, meatpacking competition, processing access and livestock predators. There is a lot here worth supporting, but before we celebrate, I think it’s worth separating what was actually changed from what has only been promised.

Mountain land has always been valuable to somebody. After watching how quickly Western North Carolina has changed, I’ve started thinking differently about what it means to own a piece of it, what we trade away for money, and what we have a responsibility to leave behind.