Stories from the Farm

With CowMatch, I knew what I wanted to build but didn’t have the technical skills to take it further. Now Jason and I are combining his skills with my years of buying, selling, and raising cattle to build HoofnHorn, a platform that helps breeders market their livestock and connect with buyers.

Joy had a heifer tonight, and we named her Peace. It started as the right name for a P year and a calf from a mating I had been hoping would give me another heifer, but by the end of the night I realized the name fit a lot more than the calf.

A few years ago, a conversation after one of our early cattle auctions gave me an idea. I tried to build it, eventually let it fade away, and honestly didn’t know if I would ever come back to it.

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.

Technology has given small farms like mine new ways to survive, but it also requires land, power and infrastructure. As development reaches farther into rural America, how do we make room for progress without losing the farmland we still need?

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.

The cow I once begged someone to put a price on has now given me five heifers. This latest one arrived just in time for my birthday and reminded me why some of the purchases you second guess the most end up being the ones you’re most thankful you made.

Tuco turned one today, so I figured it was finally time for a post about him. I've had Catahoulas for...