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Foie Gras, Farming as a Catholic and More with Ross and Dorothy McKnight
229 Plays1 year ago
Ross & Dorothy McKnight, of Backwater Foie Gras, are an inspiration and pioneering Catholic couple. They have built a reputable farming business without a background in farming or homesteading. This was an exciting interview where we learned about Foie Gras, the McKnight's journey to farming and manners in which the Catholic Faith can be unpacked on the homestead.
The Mcknight's interview is one that echoes many themes in our own lives - that a lifestyle firstly inspired by the Catholic Faith, is good. That raising children on a homestead is beneficial and that a life in pursuit of Heaven is always worth living.
We are inspired by this interview, and not just about our newfound understanding of Foie Gras, but about the need for perseverance and continually striving to respond to God.
Additional Notes:
Backwater Foie Gras offers courses to help instruct people in homesteading and farming methods. Be sure to consider joining Ross and team at Backwater Foie Gras during an in-person course including the upcoming Art of Foie Gras.
Real Estate for Life is a real estate brokerage with over 1,400 Prolife Real Estate Agents worldwide. They have completed over 10,000 real estate transactions and they report 65% of their revenue goes to a Prolife or Catholic Apostolate. You can quickly find an agent near you through their website at Realestateforlife.org. And if you let them know that you learned about Real Estate for Life from Little Way Farm and Homestead, that helps support our family in continuing the work of Little Way Farm and Homestead. Now, back to the episode.
Link: https://realestateforlife.org/
For more information about Little Way Farm and Homestead, including the farm, podcast, and upcoming projects, check out LittleWayHomestead.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Little Way Farm
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Little Way Farm and Homestead is a regenerative and educational farm in southeastern Indiana. Motivated by the Catholic faith, we strive to inspire, encourage, and support the development of homesteads and small-scale farms in faith and virtue. I'm Matthew. And I'm Karissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
00:00:24
Speaker
Ross and Dorothy McKnight of Backwater, Foie Gras, are an inspirational and pioneering Catholic couple.
Meet the McKnights: Unlikely Farmers
00:00:30
Speaker
They have built a reputable farming business without a background in farming or homesteading. This was an exciting interview where we learned about Foie Gras, the McKnight's journey to farming, and manners in which the Catholic faith can be unpacked on the homestead.
00:00:44
Speaker
The McKnight's interview is one that echoes many themes in our own lives. That a lifestyle firstly inspired by the Catholic faith is good. That raising children on a homestead is beneficial. And that a life in pursuit of heaven is always worth living. We are inspired by this interview and not just about our newfound understanding of foie gras, but about the need for perseverance and continually striving to respond to God.
00:01:07
Speaker
I do want to alert listeners that you will hear some audio distortion from Carissa and me. Well, mostly me. I unintentionally turn the input on our microphones up just a bit too loud, and you will hear that during the interview. We take pride in producing a podcast that is not only engaging and inspiring, but that also sounds pleasant. So, please pardon this recording mishap.
00:01:30
Speaker
As always, we thank you for joining us on the Little Way Farm and Homestead podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode. Please consider leaving a positive rating and review wherever you might be listening. And lastly, we have exciting news coming up. To stay informed, consider joining our email newsletter, which will be linked in the show notes or visit us at littlewayhomestead.com.
00:02:04
Speaker
Ross and Dorothy, thank you for joining us on the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. We are very excited for you all to be here and we're looking forward to a very fun and enjoyable conversation with you all. Very impressed with a lot of the work that you all do, and I'm excited to learn more about it. So thanks for joining.
The McKnights' Foie Gras Farm Journey
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having us. Good to be here. So we'd love if you guys could just start by telling us and explaining a little bit more of what you do.
00:02:29
Speaker
Sure, well, we run a foie gras farm, which is perhaps a little off kilter. There are some people in the farming world. There are only around five or six producers in the United States, two of which are larger scale, more industrial producers. And then the rest of us are just very small scale. And I think mostly more traditional pasture-based
00:02:56
Speaker
operations. So producing foie gras is an art in a way in that it requires a lot of individual attention to each duck and some particularly refined processes in order to obtain the end result, which is the fattened liver of a duck in this case. And of course, we also use the whole duck carcass
00:03:24
Speaker
And it creates a really beautiful carcass, a really beautiful finished quality carcass because of that fattening process that we use. There are a lot of misconceptions about foie gras, but maybe we can get into that later if necessary. But we have five children currently, one or two of them help around the farm. The rest are still very young. Dorothy is running the household.
00:03:49
Speaker
educating the children while I'm out there in the field or slaughtering ducks downstairs in our small processing plant.
00:04:04
Speaker
our ground business, our farm, that's how we make a living. But we do, I guess, quote unquote homestead, along with everything else. So we have like the old McDonald farm of the horse and the cow and the sheep and the pigs and the I can't keep track what am I
00:04:21
Speaker
We have rabbits, chickens. So we try to incorporate all of those things mainly for our family and we produce our own meat. I don't know the last time that we purchased meat, but that's predominantly just for our own family's consumption. We raise pigs for our own family's consumption, although I do a couple of pigs a year for others. But anyway, that's kind of a 30,000 foot view of what we have going on here.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, so you do the homes a little home setting and you do the farming as well with the foie gras. How did how did this all start? Maybe what's the background look like on this? How did did you all grow up home setting or what's the background to get to this point? No, we did not grow up home studying or farming at any level.
00:05:10
Speaker
We both grew up in somewhat suburban settings, although I had a little bit more woods to run around in, which was nice. I enjoyed being outdoors a lot, dealing with creatures that I would find, things like that. But as far as, I guess, closer to the beginning of the farm and how our interests sort of trended in this direction,
00:05:33
Speaker
Like many in our generation, I have an autoimmune disease. And so I became a lot more interested in the food system, of course. And there's just like a very common story, more interested in the food system and kind of what I was putting in my body and where it was coming from. And we started to do some very low level gardening and I guess, homestay and keeping chickens, keeping rabbits on three quarters of an acre in our first little home.
00:05:59
Speaker
meat chickens we did there as well. That's crazy that we did that. And so I had started to develop this desire to actually be, you know, a farmer to produce good food for the community.
From Suburban Life to Farming
00:06:11
Speaker
But, you know, and I had made a proposal to a former employer of mine,
00:06:17
Speaker
actually runs an alligator ranch. I worked at an alligator ranch. But that's very, you know, Louisiana, I guess. Anyway, so he had a lot of unused acreage, but he wasn't interested in putting chickens on it, because I think mainly because a lot of the
00:06:34
Speaker
the income for the Alligator Ranch is really around tourism. And so people being there and maybe he had fears about manure and the smell of chicken, whatever. But so that didn't work out. So but it was kind of already on my mind that I wanted to start a farm. So I went into finance, became a financial advisor. But at the beginning, when I was hired, I told my my employer to my boss who hired me.
00:06:59
Speaker
that in three years I wanted to start a farm. So I ended up being four years, but, and three, it was three. Okay. And it started from a hospital bed really, because I had to end up getting a total colectomy. And so I went out and I just kind of, you know, that gives you an opportunity to reflect on life. And I was like, you know what? Like, what's the point of holding off any longer? So.
00:07:28
Speaker
him saying it started from a hospital bed. We did talk a lot about the future farm from the hospital bed, but I don't know if you remember, but we already had ducks at our house while he was in the hospital.
00:07:43
Speaker
Sorry, the drugs do a number on your neck. We often have moments where I'm like, actually it was this raw, so do you remember that this happened? Yeah, all the general anesthesia does a number on your neck. It was like a month before that big surgery. We did. We did get ducts, and actually we produced our first really beautiful foie gras on our three-quarter acre lot.
00:08:04
Speaker
While you had an ostomy bag. While I had an ostomy bag, which is fun. And it was 20 ducks. 20 ducks, some really beautiful foie gras. I was really amazed. And so once we knew we could do it, then we just kind of went for it.
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, I love this headline already from alligator ranch to foie gras somewhere to hospital foie gras somewhere in there. And it's, it's incredibly interesting. What we find more and more is while yes, there's these common themes and these common conversations often around food.
00:08:35
Speaker
There are an enormous amount of variety in the individual stories that lead someone to the conviction that they want to move away from the comforts of city life or of modern aesthetics into a life that is often particularly difficult or at least seems a lot very difficult to actually go through.
00:08:55
Speaker
For example, right now we're heading into winter and it is December and it's raining in about 40 degrees outside and it's very uncomfortable, but still we have to take care of the animals and go outside and take care of things that need to be done around the farm and the homestead. What conviction do you think people are experiencing right now or maybe even yourselves or folks like us that they are willing to push into this lifestyle in the current world?
Farming, Faith, and Virtue
00:09:20
Speaker
I think it's sort of a very primal understanding that it's objectively good and when it's so difficult to, I think, make that determination living in the modern world with all the trappings and conveniences of the post-industrial era. When you look at farming, it's just kind of self-evidently good. And that can, of course, take this sort of fantastical or sort of idyllic
00:09:49
Speaker
shape in one's mind so that
00:09:52
Speaker
You know, I know for us going into it, we were just, all this energy and all this excitement, of course, but it is, you know, now that we're, what we started the farm 2019, we're in 2023. That, I think that whole perspective is now so nuanced and it's, it changes a lot because as you'd well know, there's so much hardship that is character forming. But yeah, I think it's just that innate sense that
00:10:20
Speaker
that it's good. And Genesis, of course, is a pretty good example because God basically said, hey, go farm. It is interesting. I think often I was sitting outside yesterday, I think it was, and I was looking around at a whole bunch of the chickens as I was feeding them some some grains. And I thought, wow, you know, we are we have the opportunity to steward this creation. And this creation is beautiful. And it's amazing to be included in that makes me think of, you know,
00:10:47
Speaker
You know, when you have someone that you really respect and they grant you care of something that they love or they respect and how much pride you take in returning that good back to them in a way that is honorable. And it just makes me reflect and think often about it. It's really interesting. I do want to turn just a little bit, though, on this foie gras. Am I saying that correctly? A foie. So think like F-W-A-H. Foie. Foie. Gras. Gras.
00:11:15
Speaker
Obviously, you mentioned it at the very beginning. Sometimes there's visceral reactions to foie gras. One, how do you get to that as your specialty meat that you are now known for? Maybe talk a little bit about the history of it or why people should or should not have that visceral reaction to it. Well, and just explain what is foie gras.
00:11:37
Speaker
Sure. So the foie gras is the fat and deliver of a duck or goose. Predominantly today, duck is used. And about 90% of foie gras production comes from the moulard duck, which just means mule in French, really. And it's a sterile hybrid cross between a pecan duck and a muscovy drake, if I have that right.
00:11:59
Speaker
I always get it confused whether it's the female male. Anyway, so it's a Moolard. We do not use Moolard because we brought them down once and they just really struggled even in
00:12:12
Speaker
Well, if they struggle in our warmer temperatures of spring, that's a problem because we, of course, need to operate until temperatures start to get prohibitive, which is about consistently around 75 degrees once we get up there. So what we use is the muscovy duck, which is actually a tropical bird.
00:12:34
Speaker
but it still has the ability to store fat in the liver and they really thrive here well for the most part and they do well with with gavage and they produce probably the best meat as far as waterfowl is concerned that one has ever tasted but the process is thousands of years old it's probably almost as old as human existence itself we have you know examples from egyptian hieroglyphs of
00:13:02
Speaker
of foie bra production happening with geese using hollow reeds and pellets of grain that have been formed to drop down the reeds into their esophagi or their crop. And that's the thing is it's sort of like any other form of animal agriculture is sort of the recognition of the
00:13:19
Speaker
the native abilities of an animal to do X, Y, or Z. So if you grain finish, for instance, a cow, it's going to have more fat content. And cows do naturally eat grain. But guess what? They don't eat as much grain in their natural habitat as we give them. However, they're capable of digesting it. They'll eat seed heads, for instance, out in the field. But they're not going to get a giant mound of seed heads. We give that to them. And so similarly with foie gras,
00:13:48
Speaker
We do a very similar process. It's just that it's now tailored to the physiology, the biology of the waterfowl. And they have esophagi that are keratinous and flexible and stretchy. They don't have nerve endings in them. They don't have a gag reflex. And so all of these ideas that really in North America, we just get our only exposure to foie gras is really PETA, putting terrible photographs out there, which I don't know where they get them.
00:14:16
Speaker
wherever they get them, it's not a happy place. So you can do it badly just like you can do any form of agricultural agriculture badly, such as feedlots, you know, industrial feedlots, but you can also do it well. And so we should judge it, I think, by the
00:14:33
Speaker
when it's done well, the highest common denominator rather than the lowest common denominator. And so anyway, it's not a harm to the duck. It's in accord with its nature. We're just giving it more grain to digest than it would otherwise be able to get. But they do gorge themselves in the winter prior to migration. So that's where foie gras comes from is if you're a hunter, you shoot a duck, just as it's taken off to migrate, you open it up, you might find a golden liver in there.
00:14:59
Speaker
Is that something that you grew up on? I'm trying to think of this, though, too, because I'm not certain that I've ever been exposed to that as a potential culinary option, at least through my upbringing or where we live. To be clear, where we live is in southeastern Indiana.
00:15:15
Speaker
in a very rural part of the country. I suspect there are lots of ducks around where we live based on maybe migratory patterns, but we don't have a lot of swamplands and things like that where they necessarily would congregate. So maybe that's a part of it. But how did that end up your specialty meat? It's really interesting. So we did not grow up with this at all. No. At all. Ross said we started the farm in 2019. So 20
00:15:41
Speaker
18, we became very fast, very close friends with some friends of ours that had moved from France to Louisiana. And well, the wife was from France, the husband had been in France for like 10 years, he was American. So they moved to Louisiana. And they're the ones that introduced us to foie gras at the time that we met them.
00:16:04
Speaker
Ross had been in the finance world and he was doing well, but he was gradually getting more and more unhappy and he was away from the home a lot. And he still had that goal of farming, but we weren't really necessarily sure what we wanted to focus on. So they're the ones that introduced us to foie gras at first.
00:16:25
Speaker
And that kind of planted the seed months later, I don't know, maybe nine, 10 months later, we were like, okay, I think we should do this. But Ross also has, do you want to talk about the French background? Okay. So Louisiana is, I don't know how many people sort of have a comprehensive idea of Louisiana and the history, and we're not going to go through that because that would take forever.
00:16:48
Speaker
Louisiana was a French outpost for a long time and Louisiana really became what it was and remained and developed into what it was prior to and during the development of the United States and really was something completely separate.
00:17:06
Speaker
in so many ways, culturally, linguistically, religiously, right? It was Catholic, it was predominantly French speaking, and obviously the culinary traditions are really well developed and very strong, and we care a lot about food. And so, and I care a lot about that heritage because
00:17:26
Speaker
Like so many other cultural revolutions in the world, our language was eradicated. It was taken from us in a political, you know, more top down way where it was like, okay, we're going to take away opportunities from you if you don't speak English. And children were abused in the schools for speaking French.
00:17:46
Speaker
and punished and mocked. And there's lots of terrible stories. But it's just this sort of the idea of the great cultural leveling, right, in order to sort of take advantage and, of course, then economically exploit an area. So that's sad. But what's beautiful is that the culinary tradition still exists. And I think it's probably the most Catholic place in North America.
00:18:11
Speaker
But I think food is really an expression of the joie de vivre that we have, the love of life that really comes from the faith, the knowledge of the goodness of God and of his love for us and of the beautiful things that he creates.
Restoring Culinary Traditions
00:18:26
Speaker
And of course, Louisiana is called the sportsman's paradise. We have alligators, we have all these migratory waterfowl, we have deer, if you want to go fishing or hunting, this is one of the places that's a destination.
00:18:38
Speaker
in the world. And with that is sort of nature's pantry. And so nature's pantry sort of being what the Acadians, when they came down, they looked around, they said, OK, what are we going to do? Well, we come from this French tradition. But this is the pantry that we have to work with now, which is quite different. And so a lot of beautiful things have come out of that. And I saw foie gras as sort of restoring this great patrimony of our French heritage.
00:19:07
Speaker
to Louisiana, to my home, to really my native land, my motherland, kind of giving this thing that belongs to us, I think by our birthright, back to us, and then doing something for the culture in that way. So I have a great attachment to those things, if that makes any sense.
00:19:28
Speaker
Well, it does. And one of the things that is continuing to be impressed on me is the relationship that can be understood between agriculture, local cuisine, and the Catholic faith, and the way that a lot of these customs evolve over time and can even be used as a way of helping to express the truths of the faith.
00:19:44
Speaker
you all are Catholic and you produce a very unique specialty meat, at least in the context of the United States. Do you find that it's easy to connect the Catholic faith with the way maybe you raise your children and the agricultural production between the homesteading and the farm? Yeah, you know, I remember some early conversations with the children when they were
00:20:07
Speaker
just kind of like observing slaughter, right? And how the idea of how something must die so that you must live is, of course, throughout the imagery and the symbolism and just the very reality of the faith, right?
00:20:23
Speaker
every day, something must die so that you may live. And in the same sense, the reenactment of Calvary happens every day. And so anyway, yeah, those things are certainly flush throughout the lifestyle. And also, I think it's
00:20:39
Speaker
I mean, just the idea of the domestic church and the fact that with farming and homesteading, you're necessarily around each other all the time. And so you have to consistently deal with each other's faults and each other's failings, along with the good things that occur. But the sense of duty, right? So that everyone has a duty in the family.
00:21:01
Speaker
and on the farm, especially my son. And so, you know, if it's not done, well, there are real world consequences that happen. And so instruction about virtue, obviously, is something that's really
00:21:17
Speaker
I guess just very well conducted by the environment in which we live now where, yeah, there are things that have to be done. And if they're not done, there's serious consequences. Like we can't have breakfast because the eggs are, you know, aren't here, you know, and it's getting late in the day or, you know what I mean? So things like that. And then just, you know, obviously the things that they do well, I think
00:21:42
Speaker
There's, there's not just like, Oh, you drew a good picture. That's great. Um, but, but it is great. I mean, sure. But wow. Like you, you actually accomplished something that in a very real way, affected the family in a positive way and sustained us in some of our needs and the children get to participate in that. And I think there's not really a good replacement for that in, in the more, um, conventional lifestyle. So.
00:22:10
Speaker
Hey there! We hope the first half of this interview has been edifying to you. We will get right back to the second half, where we will hear more about homesteading in the Catholic faith, but before that, we did want to encourage anyone listening who might be considering moving to land or buying property to check out Real Estate for Life.
00:22:26
Speaker
Real Estate for Life is a real estate brokerage with over 1,400 pro-life real estate agents worldwide. They have completed over 10,000 real estate transactions and they report 65% of their revenue goes to a pro-life or Catholic apostolate. You can quickly find an agent near you through their website at realestateforlife.org. And if you let them know that you learned about Real Estate for Life from Little Way Farm and Homestead, that helps support our family in continuing the work of Little Way Farm and Homestead. Now back to the episode.
00:22:57
Speaker
Did you have children prior to beginning the farm? We did, yeah. Were you able to kind of see a distinction between those who were born maybe after you started the farm and the agriculture production was already going versus before? And I'll say for us, we definitely did. We started our farm after our first born.
00:23:17
Speaker
I believe it was just the first one. I think the others were born around the farm. No, I apologize. Tip first too. And so I found that even things like confidence and dexterity and their willingness to participate in the farm, even at a younger age has been remarkably impacted by being around livestock and animals and being welcomed into the agriculture activities. There was definitely a difference. So when we started, um, we had three children, they were like,
00:23:43
Speaker
I don't know, probably five. They were five, three and one. So still very, very young in that the first two kind of remember what their life was like beforehand, but now they just immediately started thriving. It's been really beautiful to see, but since then we've had two more children and especially the toddler, he's going to turn three in February.
00:24:09
Speaker
He's really been thriving because he doesn't know anything different. He's the farm baby. He was born upstairs. Oh no, not him, but the little baby was born upstairs. Oh, I'm sorry.
00:24:20
Speaker
But yeah, it's been really beautiful to see they, they've just, they really thrived versus beforehand. We were on an acre, but you know, we spend most of our time inside. Ross was gone a lot. We didn't really do too much outside. That was other than, you know, normal kid stuff playing outside, maybe trying to grow some vegetables, but.
00:24:48
Speaker
It's really broadened their imagination and there's plenty for them to do here.
00:24:58
Speaker
I think so, but I think you're getting at Ross. It's that the activities are productive and not that they necessarily have to work in the same way that we may have to work, but that they see the consequences of their actions. Maybe that's not even the right way of saying it. They can see the results of their activities, even their actual play and what they do just for fun and entertainment. Their imaginations are flourishing.
00:25:25
Speaker
They're jumping off of trees and climbing around and running after animals and having fun and understanding all at the same time the limits of what they physically can do and also the potential consequences that can come if they don't do what they're supposed to do. So we've found that it's not just a good place to be to help teach children. It seems to be a very natural educational experience for children and it's really easy to teach them about the faith all at the same time.
00:25:52
Speaker
And so that's a huge reward and a blessing I think to us and a privilege for certain. I agree. One thing I want to pivot just a little bit, one thing that a lot of people find very difficult is one distinguishing between a homesteading lifestyle and farming as a actual venture to create an income. How did you all draw that line and make that decision to actually proceed in farming as opposed to just homesteading? You know, I think it was just,
00:26:22
Speaker
I had a background, obviously. So in the world of personal financial services, which
00:26:30
Speaker
I'll say I'm happy to be out of. You must build your own book of business. You must learn to be an entrepreneur and you must apply all the aspects of entrepreneurship and marketing and all those things in order to be able to build a business because at the end of the day, you have to sell yourself or a product or service, predominantly in this case, products and services, in order to make a living.
00:26:58
Speaker
I think I had a certain degree of confidence that I could build a business, that I could sell the product, that we could make that work. And I also think that it's sort of unfortunately necessary if you want to live on a farm and you don't want to leave the farm.
00:27:17
Speaker
then you must make it produce something that generates an income. It must, it must create a marketable product, which isn't, I'll say, I'll be the first one to say that's not ideal. That's this is something, God bless you. This is something born out of the modern era, really, because we don't get to enjoy sort of the community. And, and just the generally, I think,
00:27:45
Speaker
Oh man, more human lifestyle of just subsistence farming. So anyway, I guess it's a product of our current economic environment that we need to generate an income from our farm. We must generate cash flow that is to pay bills.
00:28:02
Speaker
Oh, dear. All these things are very exhausting for me to talk about. I'm sorry. But like I just I kind of it drives me nuts sort of in a sense that that it's necessary. At the same time, I love very much producing foie gras because it is it requires so much of me.
00:28:19
Speaker
It requires virtue I don't really have. It requires a lot of skill and a lot of attention to detail and sort of an indefatigable attention to detail every day. And that I very much, like you mentioned, see the real world results of if I don't pay especially close attention to everything that I'm doing. So we love it very much while at the same time recognizing that
00:28:45
Speaker
This isn't the ideal structure of society. We're not in Christendom anymore. What we're trying to do is approximate the lifestyle of someone who lived in Christendom. But right now we can only approximate it because we haven't retaken the social order. We haven't reconquered our holy Catholic empires.
00:29:07
Speaker
It's an important distinction and I think that there is a very strong conversation to be had here. I think of it from time to time as well, the distinction between subsistence-based lifestyles solely versus the need to make an income because we live amongst a society that nearly demands that we provide money to the society, whether we want to or otherwise. But in that,
00:29:31
Speaker
You know, there is this idea, I think, that we can expand on where we take little steps each day to better create a world that we want our children and our grandchildren to live in and so on and so forth generationally. And the home setting portion of it, I think, really helps to communicate that. And I've found that it's particularly challenging and humbling to myself as I continue to dive into it and realize all the opportunity for virtue that I have to grow in and that a lot of us have to grow in.
00:30:00
Speaker
I do wonder at times if maybe that's partly why we are so drawn to this lifestyle of working with our hands in manual labor and human scale labor because it does expose these things that we know we need to work on spiritually and it helps to encourage us to truthfully grow.
00:30:16
Speaker
in virtue and be open to receiving God's graces. That being said, a lot of people are looking to figure out how to farm and they are Catholic and they want to know, how do I get started with? What's a good idea? How do I make sure that I don't sink myself economically?
Farming as Spiritual Penance
00:30:31
Speaker
How do I make sure my relationship between a husband and wife flourishes and doesn't become impacted negatively because of the challenges in creating a business that is a farm?
00:30:41
Speaker
What advice or insights do you all have as a couple that is from at least what we can see successful in creating a market and a marketable product and pushing into that as a way of providing for your family? I'd say that the hardships and the difficulties and the burdens are inevitable, but that they are also good because farming is a very productive form of penance, I think.
00:31:05
Speaker
And I mean, my perception of my wife, Dorothy, as I experience
00:31:13
Speaker
pretty intense hardships with just the workloads some days and the things that must get done one way or another, no matter what, especially following an illness, for instance, because when you're sick on the farm, as you guys, I'm sure you all know very well, man, it's still gotta get done and it's the worst. And then not only that, but for instance, we had harvest coming up and we all got the flu. And so the harvest got pushed back.
00:31:40
Speaker
And at the same time, I had just slaughtered a pig for someone. And it was in the cooler. And we all had the flu. And so it's like, man, OK, all this stuff is now going to pile right on top of itself, all the ducks, the pig, everything. And that's exactly what happened. And so the following week, after being miserable sick, was miserable with the workload. But I think we've developed a great deal of empathy for each other and also
00:32:09
Speaker
because we're Catholic, you know, it's easier to connect these things to the spiritual life and to understand that God allows all of our sufferings, right? He permits them and His permissive will. He allows all of our sufferings, but He only ever allows them for our good. And so, you know, while I am not an example of someone who always keeps that front of mind,
00:32:36
Speaker
That is ultimately the reality. That's the truth. And so if you can strive to keep that front of mind, then obviously there's some solace there. Even when you're suffering terribly, maybe you have the flu and you're doing gavage like I was and I still had to go fat in the ducks morning and night. And so that's, I think, very productive spiritually, because then you're like, oh, I'm part of the economy. God wants me to be part of the economy of salvation in some way. And he suffered, right?
00:33:06
Speaker
and meditation on the passion and on the works of our Lord, the sufferings of our Lord, I think is extremely profound and beneficial, especially for small scale farmers because man is it by the sweat of your brow that you bring forth food from the earth. So anyway, that's my brief response and I think I got off topic. I would say a couple things.
00:33:34
Speaker
When we first started our farm, Ross was like the first year, year and a half Ross was still recovering from his surgeries and then he had to have more surgeries. And so I had to help out a lot on the farm and I did really enjoy it for the most part. It was a lot, but after a while when he was ready to step up, I think I took so much pride in it that I think in the beginning it was hard for me to let go of it.
00:34:04
Speaker
But during that time period, things weren't quite as balanced, you know, because I was outside and then the household was suffering. But the more I started like letting go of that and let him take the lead again and then focusing on the household, that's been really beautiful. So like, I would say to preface this, I listened to your interview with the Sheards like a few days ago. And I really loved what Lauren was saying about how you really have to focus on
00:34:33
Speaker
the family first, not the homestead. So if your family, if the domestic church is disordered or in chaos or just not right, not settled, then everything else is gonna reflect that. So it's been really, we've constantly been changing and growing and developing, but focusing on my primary role is taking care of the children in the household and his is
00:35:03
Speaker
doing all the work, not all the work, but focusing on running the business and running the farm. That's been really beautiful. I do have a milk cow. She's currently dry right now. So it's been nice having the break, not milking her. But yeah, I'd say focus on the family first. Focus on your roles within the family and then go from there. Make sure that is ordered. And then I'd also say a lot of people who get really
00:35:33
Speaker
excited about homesteading in the beginning. They feel like they need to do get all of the things and all the animals all at once. We have a friend. Go lean. It's kind of like go very lean. And yeah, don't do that. Definitely start
00:35:49
Speaker
slowly and then work from there. So yeah, you can produce foie gras. That's one thing you could do. But the other the other things is just really like, find something, you know, just kind of look at your market, do a market survey, right? And you don't have to do that. You don't like literally have to do a survey, but just look at what's in demand. Like, what do you want to eat that you can't get, for instance, that's one way to do it. You could also go and talk to chefs and be like, Hey, guys, like, what is it that you don't
00:36:14
Speaker
have access to locally, but what you want. And you can just let them lead you into your business model. And then once you get one thing running that you find is successful, do it in such a way that it's flawless. And then after that, you can start to scale it. And then it didn't just run lean. I think the goal of farming to make money for Catholics
00:36:38
Speaker
is really to build the homestead upon that. And you all might share that idea, which is really like, okay, I sell, I really only sell produce. I really only sell meat so that I can eat it.
00:36:56
Speaker
You know, and that's kind of how I feel is I really only do foie gras so that I can be here and so that I can eat bacon and that I grew, you know, and so that I can eat vegetables that I grew and so that I can, you know, have this family lifestyle so that we can educate our children together so that they can be around, so they can learn how to work and how to how that they can develop character, develop virtue, grow in the faith. That is why we're doing this. But I farm so that that occurs. So actually, it may be that someone's not able to farm in order to make those other things occur.
00:37:26
Speaker
But I think it can be rather simple. It's just look at the market, what is desired and what is not produced, and then go and do that. That's one way
Niche Markets and Catholic Integration
00:37:36
Speaker
to do it. The other thing is to go the way I went, which is this is a niche, very few people produce it. I know that I can find a market for it and I want to do it. So there are a couple of ways to go about it. If you have the time and investment and the type of property and climate, you could do something like white truffles or black truffles.
00:37:56
Speaker
because those things are going to be in demand and you might be shipping them or whatever, but you can look at what's in demand across the country, then you could do that, or you could look at what's in demand in your local community and then let that tell you how to farm. Anyway, sorry, that was very long.
00:38:12
Speaker
No, it's wonderful. It's really neat. One thing that has come up in the conversation thus far is this idea of the challenging nature of home setting. And I think it's evident through farming as well. One thing that concerns me often is I think people look at home setting only from what they see online, which is the best
00:38:31
Speaker
sides of it, the best pictures, the cleanest videography. And what they don't see is what's literally behind the camera often, which is a person who's struggling to keep up or maintain or they've overdone it. They've taken on way too many animals, or you could be like us and you're chasing cattle because you don't have good fencing in sometimes.
00:38:57
Speaker
You commented a little bit on it already, but I think this is something that comes up often because people are trying to balance the idea of farming and home setting and maybe getting lost a little bit in between the two and not fully committing to either or not doing either as well as they could if they really focus on doing one or the other. You mentioned stay lean. What other things in the very beginning might be helpful to someone who just says,
00:39:23
Speaker
We would like to produce a little bit to offset some of our costs, maybe embrace that subsistence farming lifestyle, but we really just want to provide for our family and make sure that our family unit and our family society is growing in virtue, responding appropriately to the faith, moving towards heaven, and using this lifestyle as a way of helping us in those things.
00:39:43
Speaker
Um, man, it's gonna help you in those ways. If you allow it, I think it's very natural. Um, you might have the same experience, but I think one of the most difficult periods of, of our business was last season. Following, following our most successful season, we lost 300 ducks.
00:40:06
Speaker
And for us losing 300 ducks is losing between 40 and $50,000 in opportunity cost because of the type of product that we produce. And the worst part of it in a sense was that we were doing something that on its face objectively would be considered good and reasonable. So what we did was we invested in changing our feed program to non-GMO
00:40:34
Speaker
and a specifically duck-formulated feed. So we were, just to clarify, we were already non-GMO, but we switched to a different supply provider because we wanted the best feed for our ducks that we could get. And we were having trucks come here and drop off super sacks, and it was this whole ordeal every month to get our feed. But we wanted to, of course,
00:41:02
Speaker
We're just trying to produce the best product that we can, right? So what ended up happening is after...
00:41:10
Speaker
at least from what we have observed in all of the deduction that we can do, we finally determined that the cause of the death of our ducks was actually that feed that we had switched to. That we were paying more for, that was objectively supposed to be superior, right? That was specifically formulated for ducks because we'd been using chick grower. But not for muscabees. Yeah, maybe not for muscabees. Whatever it was, I think there's a problem in general with the infrastructure as far as non-GMO and organic feed and
00:41:39
Speaker
And it's just not where conventional feed is. So anyway, so maybe it was arriving moldy, old, right, deteriorating, made buggy, would arrive buggy. So
00:41:51
Speaker
So anyway, so that was like this, this massive kick in the teeth, right? It was like, okay, you just had a successful season. And then it's kind of like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But, but you know, this, this was, this was, it seemed like a very reasonable decision. So we, so I think, man, it was just the hardest thing to watch. You know, it's like you, you kind of go after the regenerative ideal.
00:42:19
Speaker
And you're trying to insert all of those elements that make it really, really desirable, really trying to up your game and develop your craft and produce the best possible product, like I mentioned, and do it the right way. And then you literally just get like,
00:42:39
Speaker
just completely stomped on trying to like that completely goes crazy you know it goes completely south everything's flipped on its head and I felt like it seemed like we were going to lose the business and we even had an employee at the time so it was really crazy.
00:42:56
Speaker
But, so if you don't have, obviously you must have the firm foundation of the faith in order to actually make sense of these things and say, okay, like this suffering is meaningful. Like this terrible thing that happened while I was doing, well, it seemed to me that I was doing my best
00:43:15
Speaker
to behave virtuously, to make good decisions, it completely backfired. And it shouldn't have. There's no reason why it should have backfired. And yet it did. And so how does one make sense of that when everything, one plus one should equal two and it ends up being like negative 40,000? Well, what does that mean? How do you then proceed from there? And so that's one of the ways in which
00:43:42
Speaker
this life because it is difficult and because you surrender so much control. You do not have control over coyotes, over the weather, over major temperature shifts that kill animals, over crazy torrential downpours. You don't have control
00:44:03
Speaker
You surrender it all. And that's sort of integral to the spiritual life as well. You do not have control. You must surrender it all. And that complete abandonment and dependence is in fact, right, becoming the child that enters the kingdom of heaven. And so even in these really difficult scenarios,
00:44:23
Speaker
that is actually God bringing you to that next level spiritually so that you can come closer to Him by stripping you of all the things that you're attached to. So anyway, I think it's a natural process. You start farming, you start homesteading it, and you might have rose-colored glasses on like we did, but it's going to transform you if you allow it to, and if you are looking at everything through the eyes of faith.
00:44:52
Speaker
I think that's one of the greatest things about a life that is connected to the productive land from where your food comes from, where your labor is employed, is that the connection between the faith and the home setting and the farming activities are so simple to understand. And it practically puts you in a position to be humbled and to constantly be reminded of our need for grace and to develop in holiness.
00:45:21
Speaker
I appreciate you all sharing that. It's phenomenal insights. It's great all around. We still feel very unqualified to be having this conversation, but thank you for having us.
00:45:33
Speaker
Well, I've got one more before we head out here. A lot of conversation is had around the idea of developing that Catholic culture in the home. And I find that cuisine and local agriculture production is one great way of helping to inspire or bring Catholic culture into the home as well. What insights or practices do you all have that help to support the development of Catholic culture in your own home and on the homestead?
00:45:59
Speaker
Oh, man, a liturgical year is so great. It comes very naturally. Oh, it's amazing, yeah. Looking at the old calendar, the traditional calendar, liturgical calendars, this kind of is so integral to the agrarian life. I don't know. It's like one thing leads to the next. You look at Lent, and that's when you're running out of cured meat and stored things that you saved up for the winter. You're running out of those things. So of course, Lent is natural. You just start fasting, like, OK, great.
00:46:28
Speaker
And then, you know, November 11th comes around, it's Martinmas and you slaughter the goose. And it's like, well, you know what, it's about time to slaughter a goose. It's getting cold. They're probably, you know, you could have fattened them up to this point. Same thing with harvesting in general in the fall and early winter. It just makes so much sense. And that's when, you know, the great feast of Christmas and epiphany and all those things happen. So the liturgical year,
00:46:50
Speaker
and farming are so woven together and I think that again ties back to Genesis where God literally told us as our first vocation, our primary vocation, you know, to go and to tend and to keep or to till and to keep the
00:47:05
Speaker
the earth. And so it just makes perfect sense that it would tie in with every aspect of the liturgical year. And so that's very natural to talk to the children about. And of course, that's kind of how things ebb and flow on the homestead anyway. So it's Christmas, and guess what? I've got foie gras and I've got fat and ducks. We're definitely going to do some of that stuff for the Christmas meal or as an hors d'oeuvre.
00:47:30
Speaker
in the same thing with Easter. We've got some lambs that are, they're ready to be slaughtered now. So, and we're coming up on Advent. So, and it, and also I think with Advent, you kind of look at sort of, it's a time of preparation in the church and for our souls.
00:47:50
Speaker
But you can also think about it, man, it's kind of a time of preparation for the long winter, where we have all these things to do, but they're not quite done yet, and we can't just necessarily sit down and rest quite yet. Of course, wild grass season continues throughout the winter, so you don't get to rest your way. But I guess for farming in general, for the agrarian life in general,
00:48:10
Speaker
You have a lot of preparation to do with harvest and with storing and preserving food if you're trying to do all those things traditionally, right? Trying to really, really get a hold of what life should be like.
00:48:22
Speaker
So it's a time of preparation in that sense as well. So anyway, I think, like I've said before, those things can be very natural if you allow them to be natural. The liturgical year is gonna kind of like reflect the life you're living and then your life is gonna reflect the liturgical year. And it allows you to synthesize those things and kind of understand why the church and her wisdom and our Lord and God and his omniscience
00:48:47
Speaker
made the church and made the calendar the way that it is. And it's really beautiful. It's like sort of like, it's impossible not to see God. So I would say, I don't know.
00:48:59
Speaker
what you do in terms of liturgical living, Carissa. But I know online there's a wealth of information for Catholic homeschooling families on like, these are certain crafts you can do or like different things you can make. I'm not the kind of mom that's prepared that way. That's just not me. I try sometimes, but that's not me. But you know, everybody has to eat. And a really big component of the homestead is the kitchen and
00:49:29
Speaker
really going back to traditional cooking and even going back to the meals that are traditional to Louisiana. That's just natural. We all eat. And the kids know what's on their plate. They know where it came from, either from us or from the farmer's market. And it just, it comes very naturally. And so we're constantly making things from the homestead
00:49:56
Speaker
for feast days and then talking about the feast days. So it really does come naturally when what's on your plate is something that you've produced and it's, you know, it's advent. So you got to eat. So yeah, the kitchen is the great sort of like synthesizer. Yeah.
00:50:17
Speaker
It does seem that way. And the more that we embrace the homesteading lifestyle and the farming work, the more I think that we find that to be the case as well. And it really, a lot of things come together in the kitchen and it's a great place to really, I want to say demonstrate, but really almost show off the beauty of the Catholic faith in the home as well.
00:50:40
Speaker
Well, this was wonderful. We want to say, just really say thank you for, for both taking time out of your day to be here. This was wonderful, uh, to have the conversation and we look forward to continuing to follow along with your farm and hopefully one day, uh, trying some fall grow. I have not had it before. Yeah. We always do down for the class in January.
00:51:00
Speaker
Hey, that's a great point. Let's do that real quick, too. What's coming up? What's on the radar? What can people look forward to? How can they find you? Sure. So like I mentioned, the class in January, this is the first foie gras class that we're doing. We're going to partner with Brandon Sheard for it. He's going to come down, co-host the class. So he'll be doing it together. It'll be very hands-on. I'll actually be showing people how to perform a gavage. We'll go through harvest. We'll go through harvesting the foie gras itself, breaking down the ducks, cookery as well. And that's a couple of days, January 19th, 20th.
00:51:28
Speaker
And you can find the registration on our website, backwaterduckfarm.com or backwaterfogra.com. We're also on Instagram where we mostly follow suit and post pretty things. But you've just learned about some of the catastrophes here. So there you go. And then, of course, we've got the whole Facebook thing going. But yeah, that's how you can follow along. We've got a newsletter. If you want to follow our newsletter, that's probably the best way. Email is probably the best way to get on that newsletter. Yeah.
00:52:00
Speaker
Great. We'll make sure we've got links, uh, in the, uh, show notes. And again, we say we thank you all for being here immensely. So thank you and have a wonderful day. Thank you, Matthew. And Carissa really appreciate your time and hospitality. Yeah. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the little way farm and homestead podcasts. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode and be sure to tune in next week.