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On Food, Culture and the Catholic Faith
283 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, I had a unique opportunity to speak with Brandon Sheard and Ross McKnight We recorded this episode ahead of The Art of Foie Gras, presented by Ross and Brandon at Backwater Foie Gras in Louisiana. In this episode we cover an array of topics including meat production, culture, the Catholic faith, hands on learning and more. This was a great interview and presents another example of the Catholic Faith active in the world today.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you know.
Guest Notes:
Ross McKnight of 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 at https://backwaterfoiegras.com/foiegrasclass.
Check out the Backwater Foie Gras website at: https://backwaterfoiegras.com/
Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith is known for his excellent demonstrations and training in animal butchering. You can find information about upcoming, on-farm courses at the Farmstead Meatsmith Website: https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/.
Upcoming Farmstead Meatsmith Events: https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/upcoming-classes/
Additional Notes:
If you're looking to stock up on beef - consider purchasing from Ripley Cove Farms. You can find them at https://ripleycovefarms.com/. Be sure to use code LITTLE WAY for 10% off your order.
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/
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For more information about Little Way Farm and Homestead, including the farm, podcast, and upcoming events, check out https://littlewayhomestead.com/.
For media inquiries, advertising, speaking request, guest referrals, consulting and more - email us at hello@littlewayhomestead.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
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 Carissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
00:00:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast.
Guest Introduction and Event Overview
00:00:27
Speaker
In this episode, I had a unique opportunity to speak with Brandon Sheard and Ross McKnight. We recorded this episode ahead of the Art of Foie Gras, presented by Ross and Brandon at Backwater Foie Gras in Louisiana. In this episode, we cover an array of topics, including meat production, culture, the Catholic faith, hands-on learning, and more. This was a great interview and presents another example of the Catholic faith active in the world today.
00:00:53
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you know. Brandon and Ross want to thank you both for joining us once again on the Little Wave Farm and Homestead Podcast. Thank you both for being here today and taking time out of your schedules to join us. My pleasure. You're so gracious to have us.
00:01:22
Speaker
So I'm looking forward to what I believe is going to be a very interesting conversation.
Interest in Homesteading and Food Quality
00:01:26
Speaker
I want to really talk about some of the motivating factors behind why people are becoming so interested in home setting, farming, really why they're focused on the development of good food. And even beyond that, some of the implications about how to build good family lifestyles that support not only good food and good culture,
00:01:46
Speaker
but also the support of the Catholic faith in the society as we continue to see it be developed and respond to current events and people's interest in working to create a society that they're proud of and one that ultimately does support the Catholic faith. So I thank you both for being here.
00:02:02
Speaker
And really to go ahead and just get started, I was going to pass it over to you, Brandon. I'm curious, both of you are known for food production in some capacity. You're also obviously Catholic and your faith has received some degree of a spotlight over the last few years and we appreciate you for sharing that.
00:02:19
Speaker
Why are people ultimately becoming interested in their food production now? What is driving that interest to be more concerned about food, how it's produced, and why we should take care of the way that we produce our food so that it is helpful and also culturally sound? Yeah, that's a good question. And I've been offering classes on how to do that kind of thing for over a decade.
00:02:44
Speaker
and it's interesting even with all of the things that have happened in the past decade it tends to be people are motivated by a simple thing and even with crazy things like the last three years or.
00:02:59
Speaker
2008 or whatever, there might be some like accidental reasons like, oh, the fragility of the food system or trying to be less dependent upon decentralized production of food or health reasons like, you know, just crippling illnesses and you're trying to get out of it. And the only way you can is by creating food that you can actually eat and that is nutritive for you. But even with all of those reasons,
00:03:26
Speaker
What I keep being surprised at or encountering with people that come to my classes is they are seeking the tranquility of order.
00:03:35
Speaker
They see that there is an intent and an order and a meaning and a truth to reality. This complete and utter dependence upon acquiring the sustenance of your being through trade and through commerce is a remove. It's the distance between yourself and reality and that order.
00:03:57
Speaker
So a lot of time, you know, people are telling me it's, they're out here because yeah, it's good for a survival.
Food Production and the Good Life
00:04:04
Speaker
Like it's a good idea to have milk, a cow and have a super fat pig. So you don't starve when the food system collapsed, but also it's just true and good. Like it's the good life and that resonates with people. And I think what they're,
00:04:22
Speaker
What they're coming to is that there's an obvious order there. All of these arrows, the order of being the animals, the soil and the plants that feed the animals, it has a direction, it has a T-loss. And when we can participate in that, we're not bucking up against the reality of our own nature so much. It's like we're actually going with the stream rather than against it.
00:04:49
Speaker
I feel like that's the one common thread through everyone that I encounter. This is just the good life. Like it's harder to make. Let's pick like foie gras for example. It's more work, it's difficult, but the work itself resonates with human nature and it's altogether more fitting and proper. That's like Thomas Aquinas or a lot of the sumo when,
00:05:17
Speaker
you know, asked, oh, I think the exact question is why did it have to be crucifixion? And when you get down to those elemental questions with St. Thomas, I think his answer is fitting. It was fitting. And I think people are, we have an innate sense for that, hopefully by grace, preveniently illuminating our intellects to perceive that kind of thing, but it's just fitting and proper to produce it.
00:05:47
Speaker
rather than to be totally, totally dependent upon the acquisition of it through trade. It's something I'm finding as well as it's not just the food, it's not the nutrients, it's not the taste, it's not the texture, it's something to the production of it that is particularly tied to not just good food, but a good life.
00:06:08
Speaker
I do wonder, Ross, obviously you are stepping more so now into that course training work as well, the instruction type of lessons to help people. But you also have a unique and specialty meat product that is particularly of interest to people.
00:06:24
Speaker
And I wonder if you find something similar in that there's a sense in the production of the food that is uniquely important, not just to the way that it ultimately is palatable, but the way that it is supporting culture, potentially even some way helping to communicate the faith or otherwise, but ultimately it's more than just the way it tastes and more than just the food itself. Is that something that you find not only maybe for your family, but your customer's sense as well?
Cultural Significance of Specialty Foods
00:06:54
Speaker
Yes, so today was a good example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts as far as the Toulouse sausages. So the Toulouse sausages that I was making out of all duck and it was good salt, black pepper and white wine and local garlic. And there's no way really I could have charged anyone with that sausage would be worth.
00:07:18
Speaker
I don't know how anybody would have paid with that sausage, the price tag I should have put on that sausage, but it was the right thing to do with that particular duck meat. And it was sort of like, it becomes a gift. I make enough selling it for what I sold it for.
00:07:38
Speaker
And it becomes a gift to the entire community, to everyone in the locale who gets to taste that sausage, because there's just no other possible scenario in which they could have had that experience.
00:07:55
Speaker
unless a local farmer produced it. And so there's almost two different planes of existence between the industrial food production, of course, and what we're doing on a small scale, small locally based farmers.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, it becomes something completely sublime where because merely one lives close to a local farmer who's using his own two hands and bringing forth from the earth
00:08:27
Speaker
the food is something almost sacramental. It sort of reminds me of the lobes and the fishes in a way where this something that seems kind of like on its face ordinary is in fact extremely extraordinary and that doesn't necessarily remind me of the miraculous part.
00:08:46
Speaker
But the miraculous part is it has ineffable worth. It can't be quantified. And in that sense, it is miraculous. It's like this. It couldn't have come about except for in being a blessing from God.
00:09:04
Speaker
Well, and the thing that it really hits on is this pregnant idea that production of food, if done well and done from a perspective truly of love, where you really understand and believe that what you are producing is a good and it's helpful. It's beneficial. It's more than just nutritionally possible or dense, but it is something that can promote culture and support explanation of the faith to children or to other people. Or as many of us know,
00:09:34
Speaker
help to encourage community because clearly people gather around meals, they gather around table, they gather around food events. Where I'm from, which is the Cincinnati region, we often are surrounded by festivals in a particular time of the year and often they're based around a particular type of food or culture where there is a type of food that is clearly associated with that culture.
00:09:57
Speaker
And that helps to invite us deeper into that experience. And I think that's a beautiful way of further understanding of love that God has ultimately for all of us and the diversity that is amongst us.
Virtues and Challenges in Food Production
00:10:07
Speaker
I do wonder, is that something between both of you that you find that there is a certain element of culture that is simply bursting from the seams when it comes to the type of food or the butchery process that you engage in typically as a part of your business and your family? Absolutely. Yeah. I think that the
00:10:24
Speaker
The beautiful thing about it is all of its limitations. So particularly in the production of food. And really, I mean, the limitations are just an invitation to unmanageable abundance, but they are actual concrete limitations when you endeavor to produce something on the family scale in the backyard. It's precisely from working within those limitations that you find yourself sort of
00:10:54
Speaker
I guess, yeah, if your final cause is to sustain the bodies, you know, of your children and of your family, then the handsillary benefits you get from that is culture. You give birth to culture because you're working within the limits. And so you start producing the thing that you should produce because that's all that works.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's the mass production, the commercialized, centralized production of food. It's this fantasy of infinite diversity, even though it's all the same, and infinite quantity. And it's a complete fantasy. It is not real at all. And consequently, our culture is as bland as our food. But when you are in the limits of your seasons dealing with no hay or too much rain and I have no soil or
00:11:45
Speaker
whatever, you are forced to utilize your intellect and your will. The full human package is engaged in producing that simple object. And this is why it's actually got this, even producing something as apparently opulent and extravagant, as luxurious as say, full crop.
00:12:06
Speaker
In the production of that, it has temperance built in because it's so hard to make. It's so difficult to produce and to do it well. And it requires just this full slew of virtues in the individual producer just to make it happen like 98% of the time, like just to get it to work well. And it's precisely in that struggle.
00:12:31
Speaker
on the small scale production that's rightly ordered, that's serving that irreducible unit, which is the family, that that's it. Because then you have real fasting and real feasting and you have great cause for celebration when the foie gras does work and it does come out. That's what you have Easter and Christmas. And so I think it's...
00:12:53
Speaker
It is in the most concrete sense that is the stuff from which culture is born. It's from precisely the limitations. Just like a sonnet, it's a very limited format of writing a poem, but it produces the best stuff.
00:13:08
Speaker
Unlike, you know, free verse. Free verse is like Cheetos. It's like 18 varieties of Cheetos at the grocery store. Can't stand free verse. But you put a bunch of limitations, like the lines have to be this long, there has to be this many beats per line. It has to be 14 lines. We'll even prescribe, like it's got to have a conflict and a resolution. All of these limits, because I think sonnet even means room. And when you do that, you actually produce something that's beyond.
00:13:36
Speaker
what you thought you were capable of, literally. And that's just, all those limits are the necessary hindrances and sufferings that you go through to produce something true, good, and beautiful. And thankfully, the product ends up being beyond your mere abilities, I think.
00:13:56
Speaker
And a lot of conversation about foie gras in there. Ross, I'm curious, what insights do you have there? Obviously, as someone who produces foie gras, you do have this time period of discipline in the way that the meat is curated and created over time. And then you have this period almost of celebration in the harvesting, in the consumption, in the preparation, in the culture around it.
00:14:24
Speaker
What insights do you have into what that really looks like and how the community celebrates that, how your family appreciates that? What does that look like?
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, so Brandon seems to be counting on me having an extraordinary amount of virtue over the next month. And now there's no way for me to escape accountability. Put myself in a tight spot. But that was an interesting point about, so I know I can tell you exactly how to produce foie gras, but if something's off in my life, something's off in the foie gras.
00:14:58
Speaker
And, oh man, is that an interesting experience. It is not a one-to-one correlation for a number of reasons, but there's a positive correlation there that can be witnessed. But as far as the production, yeah, it's sort of like this
00:15:19
Speaker
There's this sort of pressing anxiety. There's this expectation. There's all of this effort. The thing is, you cannot see what is going to occur. You have to have faith in a sense that everything that you're doing, all the practices that you're putting in place, the precision that you are operating at,
00:15:43
Speaker
that all of these elements combined are going to, with all of the right conditions, give you the result that you need, that you desire. And sometimes you don't know why it doesn't. Other times
00:15:59
Speaker
You can begin to see and you feel, you understand the way the duck is, its behaviors, how it's moving, the shape of its belly, all those things. And you're like, it's going to be a good slaughter day next week.
00:16:15
Speaker
There are kind of it kind of reminds me of Advent, I guess, in kind of an odd way, maybe a little funny, but it it is. Yeah, there's and there's definitely a pressure to do it right. And and you there's there's self doubt, of course. And like, oh, I've done this before and I've done it so well before. But is it going to work this time? As I've mentioned before, that abandon, you have to sort of abandon yourself to
00:16:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Faith and trust because there are times it doesn't work out. You know, I just, we slaughtered some really beautiful ducks, really beautiful ducks two days ago. I mean, the large, one of the largest ducks, no, the largest duck I've ever harvested.
00:17:01
Speaker
was over 13 pounds after being fattened and just, oh, a beautiful beast. The foie gras were not great. So it's funny how that works out. But it balances out. The meat is something that is so delectable.
00:17:22
Speaker
We weren't able to sell the last duck. A couple of people wanted it and then did something else. And so now I get the duck, right? And it's hanging and it's going to dry age till Christmas. And we're going to probably cook the breasts and the legs and the wings separately. That's how I like to do it. To really honor the whole process and really get the most out of the experience.
00:17:45
Speaker
And then we'll probably have some foie gras pate, maybe even some seared foie gras for Christmas. And I definitely saved a lot of Toulouse sausages. But the community does, is really beginning to understand sort of everything that goes into this. And, you know, we brought
00:18:00
Speaker
14 jars of foie gras pate to the market and sold all of them. And everyone is kind of, yeah, starting, I think there's this beginning phase of understanding that what's happening here is something really special and that something that we can really take pride in and rejoice in together. And that brings us together. And those are all good things on a natural level.
00:18:28
Speaker
Hey there, we hope you're enjoying the episode thus far. We recently met a Catholic family producing some of the best beef we've ever eaten, and that includes the beef we sell.
Food Enriching Family and Community Life
00:18:38
Speaker
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00:19:02
Speaker
And what I'm finding as we produce more of our own pasture-raised meat, we sell for customers to sell direct to retail, but we also produce crops as well. And in all of that, what we're finding is not so much the importance of the actual food itself, but in these elements of fasting and waiting and abundance and discipline, all that equal this final culmination of using these goods in order to better
00:19:29
Speaker
the strength of the family society and share them with the community in a joyful way almost as gifts. I think you mentioned that Ross and it's a beautiful way of considering it because it takes it from a mechanized sterile production of something for calories and it turns these same foods into something of love and charity
00:19:51
Speaker
and an offering in some capacity to one another, whether for good charity, hopefully to stimulate discussion and conversation around the faith, and more. But it is there, and we're finding it more and more important. And it's almost difficult to even explain the seriousness there or the reality of that in the production of good food, is that it's not just about the food anymore.
00:20:16
Speaker
It is really about what is produced as a lifestyle through community, through potentially subsistence-based living, through the culmination of child rearing and more.
00:20:29
Speaker
I do wonder, you all often meet lots of people, I'm sure, whether through selling food to them or through on-farm instruction. A lot of people, though, are interested and they see visions of farms and homesteads. They hear conversations similar to this and they're just in that position of, I want to get there. How do I get there? What concrete steps can I make in my life in order to more orient myself towards a life maybe not even that's necessarily producing, but is simply
00:20:59
Speaker
living in a way that is inspiring in the way that these conversations seek to be. The culture is present. The food is present. A lifestyle is pregnant with the faith, always underpinning their movements and their activities and their society.
00:21:15
Speaker
You all have phenomenal ways of talking about the food in the way that it encourages these types of livings. But what do you think people can do wherever they are right now to begin developing this type of culture in their own homes and even as they potentially consider moving towards a homestead lifestyle?
00:21:32
Speaker
That's a good question. I think, um, cause I meet people all the time that are, that are on that journey to a homestead or at least trying to incorporate it more into their current situation. And the thing that has lasted for me is, is the virtue part.
00:21:51
Speaker
And I think that you can do that anywhere, fortunately. And I think the biggest thing we have to overcome that I think is a hindrance to that kind of solitary culture you're talking about
00:22:08
Speaker
is our bizarre attitude towards food now that we just inherit.
Discipline and Virtue in Eating Habits
00:22:14
Speaker
It's not one that we necessarily conjure and exercise, but it was just what we inherit, just living in the world that we live in and the way food is acquired. And it's incredibly impoverishing, even though it's so abundant. And that's why I think that just altering that
00:22:35
Speaker
perspective is probably the best thing you can do. I think that the step one is to fast actually. That just changes the whole paradigm to food because the thing that food from the grocery store or anywhere else is just clamoring to tell you is that you are an autonomous individual and you are defined by your likes and your dislikes and your tastes for this thing and that thing.
00:23:04
Speaker
And you deserve it. You deserve exactly what you like, which is just so wrong and so bad for your soul. So bad. And so just immediately like, just cut that off fast. And it has this way to order your perspective. And I think we gain so much just, you know, we produce a lot of meat here, obviously, but we also do not buy any meat.
00:23:27
Speaker
It would be so insane for us to purchase meat. It would be ridiculous. But just that fast is as important as the production. Like you kind of have to force yourself a little bit into a more ordered way of being.
00:23:44
Speaker
And fasting, fasting is the beginning of that because then you start to gain the virtue of not being a slave to your consumer appetites, which is exactly the thing that ties you into the whole bland system of all the bad food and everything.
00:24:04
Speaker
And if you can be immediately not a slave to that, that's the beginning of liberty. And because at the end of the day, the easy thing is to produce this food, with the exception of foie gras, I would not say that's easy, but it is to raise a healthy duck and to slaughter it and cook it beautifully and for it to blow your mind. I mean, the flavor is gonna be amazing. All of that is relatively simple, the hard part.
00:24:33
Speaker
is the discipline of eating that way always. And I tell people the same thing, like when they come to a pig class and we make prosciutto, it's like, all I do is I show them, we take a leg of a pig that has been raised and killed rightly, and then we put salt on it, and then we rinse it off. And that's how you make prosciutto, like that's it. It's really easy, the making part is easy. The challenge is eating it.
00:25:00
Speaker
which sounds crazy, but it is, you actually have to make an act of will and discipline to not grab the easy thing, but rather to shave off a few pieces of this dusty leg of a pig that's been hanging in your house for two years and actually endeavor to consume it in a way that makes sense. And so you actually have to have the discipline of eating.
00:25:28
Speaker
That's really where the good life that I hope we're describing transcends our mere lowest base appetite. It's like this is where the virtue comes in because the amateur zeal, our heightened degree of being enamored with our backyard chickens, that will wear off.
00:25:51
Speaker
And there will come a day when you will hate them. For some reason, for some infraction or excess of poo on your front porch. And you will need something more stable than that amateur zeal. And it's going to come from the virtue of eating.
00:26:13
Speaker
which is the virtue of fasting and feasting. So I would start there. I think that's how we begin the culture. And you're gonna need grace for that. So go to Mass mainly. Actually, that's the first. The first step is get thee to Mass.
00:26:28
Speaker
It continues to drive even this idea of not just having an abundance, but how to use an abundance and what to do with it so that it's not squandered and wasted, but then it's not also consumed gluttonously so as to nearly spoil the experience and create an experience following that which is less than pleasurable or less than ideal as it ought to be in good community or consumed with virtue.
00:26:55
Speaker
Ross, foie gras is interesting and I'm not certain how to cook it at all. Frankly, I have not enjoyed it just yet, but I do wonder when you began producing foie gras, is that something that you had to learn as well? How to cook it, how to use it, how to teach other people how to effectively create culinary dishes with foie
Culinary Techniques for Foie Gras
00:27:18
Speaker
gras?
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's really bizarre. It's it's a bizarre product. And it's kind of like, just really funky, you know, it kind of just reminds you about it can teach you something about God when you think about the fact that he's sort of like, created it aloud, you know, it's, it's like, it's kind of weird.
00:27:39
Speaker
I don't know what's going on there, but I'm interested to learn. It's strange because it's meat, but it's not meat. It's an organ, but it tastes nothing like an organ. It has none of the textures of an organ. It doesn't really have the texture of meat.
00:28:00
Speaker
But if you have to describe it in course terms, it's kind of like meat butter. If you emulsified a really high grade butter with a really fine ribeye, it might approximate something like foie gras. So yes, it's a challenge to cook it, but at the same time,
00:28:23
Speaker
It's, I mean, it's so worth it. There are a few ways to do it. One is a traditional cold
00:28:34
Speaker
served cold preparation, which is the foie gras terrine. And you'll take an entire foie gras, which a lot of people call a lobe, which aggravates me because it's inaccurate because a liver has two lobes. But you take an entire foie gras, so the entire liver, and you devein the entire thing. And it has this network of veins that's sort of like tree roots going through it. And so you almost butterfly it open from the backside
00:29:00
Speaker
I use actually I hold the eating portion of a spoon in my palm and use the handle of it to do the butterflying and scraping away from the vein network. And then you want to pull all the vein network out generously salt and add pepper to the lobe. I'm sorry. Oh my goodness.
00:29:21
Speaker
Do the liver and then pack it into like a little tiny clay pot or like ramekin or large ramekin something even a jar shove it in there real good real tight and then add maybe like a little bit of cognac or something and
00:29:40
Speaker
and cook it in a water bath of bain-marie for like 30 minutes at 250 and that's it. And then you just let it chill. And then the next day with all the fat solidified and everything, you can make slices of it and just serve that on like little pieces of French bread. And that's really traditional way of doing it. And we make the pate for the market. It's just, it's sort of like an easy way for people to get accustomed to an experienced foie gras.
00:30:08
Speaker
And so we do that with our smaller lobes that, oh, our smaller livers that, then, uh, we wouldn't otherwise sell whole. So we kind of, there's sort of a grading system within the farm, right? Like if it's, if it's under 300 grams, it's going into Pate and yeah. And then you can sear it. So, and that's familiar. People are familiar with that. If they've ever had tornados Rossini, which is filet mignon with a seared slice or medallion of foie gras on top.
00:30:37
Speaker
It's sort of like it's a challenge because it's unfamiliar, I think at first when you approach it, but it's really not difficult once you get into it. Searing foie gras, you know, the challenge is to make sure you undercook it because when you think that you've cooked it well, you'll have rendered half the thing in the pan.
00:30:55
Speaker
because it's there's so much fat and then you can serve that with a little bit of like a fruit preserve or some kind of fruit reduction even like a spiced grape jam or something like that like like a muscadine jam jelly rather on a little crostini so it's it's it's weird to approach it it's it's very foreign i think it was foreign to me i was like what
00:31:17
Speaker
is this thing, you know, what do I do with it? I'm going to ruin it. But really, once you get into it, it's not so difficult. And it is sort of like you really just barely do anything to foie gras in order to enjoy it. And that's the beauty of it. So the battle is really to do as little as possible to foie gras. Yeah. That's what's so amazing about it is that it has the duck has this passive potency.
00:31:45
Speaker
to be fogorarized. It's unreal. Like I cannot believe the creator did that. You know, it's the capacity, the potency is in the duck. We're not overriding or the goose. We're not overriding their nature or creating some insane mutant. We're just artfully cooperating with this design.
Natural Food Production and Techniques
00:32:10
Speaker
that is there, specifically designed that lacks a larynx and a gag reflex, which you realize that immediately if you raise waterfowl for five minutes is they swallow all things whole. That's how they do. And so you're just going to capitalize on that capacity artfully with the full resource of your intellect.
00:32:34
Speaker
And also tenderness because it makes no sense to injure all of your birds. That's not going to work. It's like milking a cow or shearing a sheep. You know, it's this daily chore that you have to go out predicated upon a relationship with your birds. It's so great and it's so ordered towards the domestic scale.
00:32:58
Speaker
that I feel shame that I have only tried it once unsuccessfully. And I need to do it more because it's the kind of thing that I think you only get the abuses and all of the grossness when you try to industrialize it.
00:33:13
Speaker
One of the things that comes up, I think, consistently in conversations like this is the sense that people are going to have to learn something new, that either they're excited to learn new things, whether that's culinary techniques, animal husbandry. For many people that we encounter, their first experiences are occurring now or in the near future with animals and homesteading or small-scale farming or really anything associated with these style of topics, new understandings of economics even.
00:33:42
Speaker
Brandon, you have a lot of classes where you bring a lot of people to learn about these types of techniques for butchering, probably give them instruction on how to eat or how to prepare. What are some of those themes that people can expect when they begin to enter this conversation space?
00:33:59
Speaker
I want to learn how to raise my own food. I want to learn how to prepare my own food. I want to learn how to properly consume food and create culture within our house that echoes the Catholic faith that is supported by good nutrition. What do people ask and what can they be prepared for as they begin this journey towards a better way of living?
00:34:23
Speaker
One of the things that surprises people sometimes is the idea that all of these tastes are going to be acquired tastes, which are really the only ones worth having. The idea that we can just in an undisciplined manner indulge our desire for food is, I think, the definition of gluttony. It doesn't work, but when you shift a little bit,
00:34:51
Speaker
And you act like Samwise when he first encountered the elves. And Frodo asked him, well, what did you think of the elves? And he doesn't say, it's like, oh, they were awesome. They were so cool, so beautiful. He says, well, oh no, because Frodo asked him, do you like him? And he says, they're a bit beyond my likes and dislikes, if you follow me.
00:35:14
Speaker
so good and so true and that is gonna be what the experience is like when people start to first prepare, cure their own bacon. It's not gonna taste like the store bought stuff. So there's going to be a purgation as a tour of your old tastes and of what you kind of might have thought was good.
00:35:38
Speaker
And the cool thing is, is you're actually not a slave of your appetites for any of this stuff. You're not a slave to your tastes, what you like. You can acquire the taste for anything if you develop the habit of eating it. And it's done. It takes about two weeks. And we've known this since Aristotle, but modern food scientists in their infinite philanthropy have rediscovered it again.
00:36:08
Speaker
and they keep testing it improving it that yeah you can actually change your taste so so much of it is just the self-limiting factor of limit yourself to what you can produce within reason.
00:36:22
Speaker
And when you produce it well, especially if it's an animal or even a plant, you know, if you raise it well, and then you harvest it well, and then you taste it, you're like, Oh, I don't recognize that flavor. Just know that that actually that's what it's supposed to taste like, that that's, that's actually it.
00:36:40
Speaker
And so you're kind of in this weird context. And I experience this with my kids sometimes or with some customers for the first time who, you know, they taste some simply cured bacon, for example, just cured with salt. And it's actually smoked with the wood produced from a fire that is combusting firewood. It's smoked with smoke, actual smoke. And so it has a different flavor.
00:37:06
Speaker
And I have to restrain myself because sometimes we're like, you know, I didn't really like it. It didn't taste like bacon to me. And the actual answer to that is, well, you're wrong. My apologies. You know, actually, no, that is that is the flavor of bacon. That is what it is. The other stuff is is not it is ontologically promiscuous. And we just need to
00:37:31
Speaker
to get out of it. So just being willing to transform your likes and dislikes by the good thing. That's actually the true final cause of the appetites anyway. It's just the good. We just want the good.
00:37:49
Speaker
not some false imitation thereof, which we can get addicted to erroneously. How do you find people respond often at maybe your on-farm instructions, your courses, the training when they do encounter new flavors, new textures?
00:38:09
Speaker
Is there a certain willingness that people have to have in order to persevere through that in order to understand more fully this food space, the connection of it to culture? Or do people simply recoil from that often in the beginning and they struggle to push forward?
00:38:27
Speaker
I would say, in spite of everything I just said, that they pretty much love it every time. So this is not a hard battle or a steep hill. When you taste the real thing, fresh, well-raised, and especially harvested well, it is so delicious. It's indubitably delicious most of the time. And if people do have hangups, it's textural, not necessarily
00:38:56
Speaker
in terms of flavor. It's more just unfamiliar. But it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy to eat the best things. Now, we learned this when we began producing poultry as well as beef, that there is very clearly a difference in texture and in flavor.
00:39:16
Speaker
And I would classify it in both of those categories. And I think that I think it's very clear. I even think it's clear when you talk about eggs and the way different diets for chicken affect the production of the eggs, the smell, the flavors, the way they look and more. I am curious from both of you all's perspective, you all have talked with me before about not growing up having a background in agriculture and having to learn these things over time.
Accessibility of Home Food Production
00:39:45
Speaker
and in some ways, relatively recently. And I wonder, is this a space for the production of local food, not necessarily for commercialization to sell, but simply that anyone can take on in their backyard or locally as a community that's really accessible to people? Is this something that requires a high degree of specialization and training and technique? Or is this a venture that many people
00:40:11
Speaker
can look forward to stepping into if they really want to put that as a priority in their life. Only the industrialized production of food has convinced us that it is a very complicated and difficult and dangerous thing to produce any degree of your own nourishment in your backyard.
00:40:33
Speaker
But that is a facade of industrial production, which is inherently, that is dangerous and super sketchy. And yeah, that is difficult. But if you do this in your backyard, that's not just a difference in degree. It's not like, well, I'm just doing fewer animals, whereas they're doing more. It's like, no, no, no. It's a totally different paradigm, 100%.
00:40:54
Speaker
your home reared pig or your backyard goose or duck, that is a difference in kind from the industrial stuff. Totally different. Every process is different and everything is simpler and easier and you're endowed by your creator with the ability to do it. You can do it if you have an intellect and a will. It's really, it's very simple and it is effortlessly delicious.
00:41:19
Speaker
That's the crazy thing because you're going to get the husbandry right and the harvesting. You're going to do that properly. And then it's, you find that good food that nourishes you and tastes good is not a complicated thing. It's actually the easy thing. The best prosciutto or the best ham, the hamon, the best ham in the world is still produced the simplest way possible. Um, so this is well within the prowess of a human. We are qualified by.
00:41:49
Speaker
that that power that all living beings have to nourish themselves. That's that's what you need. And then you can do it. I don't know. What do you think, Ross? I.
00:42:05
Speaker
So on some level, I agree that we all have the ability, if we have an intellect and a will, to approach these things and accomplish them. But I also have my own war stories. And so having really frustrating experiences that are just wholly based on ignorance and things that really, I think,
00:42:32
Speaker
have been lost really because we didn't lose, you know, just a couple of generations worth of knowledge and understanding of the greater in life of agriculture. We lost thousands of years when a couple of generations stopped doing it. And so, you know, I think we've lost a lot of refinement.
00:42:52
Speaker
in our way of thinking about animal behavior and understanding it and under reading cues, all those sorts of things. And also, of course, I don't know that there's a way that we can be reconnected to that.
00:43:07
Speaker
In, oh man, are we can approximate that extremely closely just because there's this, uh, like where you get feed from. And Brandon, I know like you and I probably have similar perspectives on this. It's like, well, I kind of rely on the feed right now for what the way, like the way that I do things and I can't produce the fee, the amount of feed that I need to input into my farm.
00:43:29
Speaker
in order to actually make it everything sustainable. So this is just the way it is. But that's, oh my goodness, that's such a risk, right? And I've experienced that firsthand, which I mentioned to Matthew before with our massive casualties that one year. From feed problems. So it's a yes and no, it's like, yes, you can do it. And it's safer and less risky in the small scale of your backyard. And in fact, it's superior to
00:43:56
Speaker
you know, at least on the scale, the scale is superior to whatever I'm doing here. You know, it's going to be easier to sort of analyze issues and overcome them on that level in the backyard, you know, on the homestead. Here it's, well, because we can't merely subsistence farm, you know, and have abundance because we're not allowed to, because there are people with guns and badges who want to extract money from us.
00:44:26
Speaker
Will we have to also produce cash flow to generate cash flow to pay bills etc blah blah blah and so that that's the bigger challenge but I think that also think it's not that farming wasn't done on a larger scale.
00:44:42
Speaker
when our ancestors were doing it either. So I don't know. I guess I'm presenting a very confusing picture of what I think about this. But I guess the overarching point is, yes, everyone can do it. And starting small is ideal. Small and diverse, I think, to some extent, but not overly diverse.
Homesteading and Catholic Values
00:45:01
Speaker
But once you start, I think once you start to scale up to produce for others,
00:45:09
Speaker
That's where it becomes a completely different ball game. Yeah. I do suspect that that would point towards another conversation or another discussion where really what's happening is that a lot of people are.
00:45:25
Speaker
feeling this interest in developing these lifestyles that more reflect what they believe is morally sound and would ultimately help support a society that encourages things like the presence of the Catholic faith and the living of its guidance through their lives and through culture and through
00:45:43
Speaker
society at large. And what we always continue to run up to is that we live in a fallen world and we're in a time period now where these questions are emerging and these interests are coming and there are certain paradigms that are allowing them to be present and be heard and be felt. And yet we still wrestle within the world that doesn't always necessarily appreciate the same conversations or the same potential outcomes for these style of living.
00:46:12
Speaker
I do want to, as we look to wrap up here for the conversation, I do want to ask something though that is a little bit different but gives people hopefully a little bit of hope that maybe both of you can comment on. Brandon, you do courses and you do farm work and you do instruction and people come to you to learn butchery. And Ross, you're getting into the same space right now and you have upcoming coursework at your farm where you're going to teach people about foie gras.
00:46:38
Speaker
Why is that on farm instruction that hands on why people would leave their their homes, their states, their farms, even their homes to come see you all? Why is that the preferred method or a preferred method right now for people to learn how to accomplish some of these tasks from animal husbandry to crops to butchery? Why now? Why is that the style of learning that people are seeking? Yeah, I think that they've
00:47:06
Speaker
For a lot of them, and this has been the case for me not just recently, but for the past 10 years, is they've taken YouTube as far as it can go. Most of this work, it's tactile. I mean, obviously, it's a no-brainer, but it is physical. Especially when it comes to slaughtering, harvesting, there is a tactile awkwardness.
00:47:34
Speaker
that you absolutely cannot get over unless you do it. There's just no way a two dimensional, even a moving image can help you through that. And so I think people come to that and they just come up to that limitation and they realize, oh, I need to do this with my hands because when that guy does it, it seems to go a little quicker, more efficient. So I know it's possible.
00:48:02
Speaker
And that's why we've always kept the classes small so that we can send people home, not just with like the cognitive list of events, schedule of processes, but with the actual hand knowledge to know like, okay, this is how, I mean, skinning is a great example of this. This is how tight I need to hold onto the hide. And that's tiring, come to find out. And there's just no way you can learn that from,
00:48:31
Speaker
from a video. So it's really just the value of hands-on stuff because then at least you can adjust your expectations when you go to kill your cow in your backyard or your pig. You know how much work it's going to take and you know also you're going to get better at it the more you do it. It's like one of those things like, okay, like I've had enough, you know, something's lacking here and
00:49:00
Speaker
whatever I'm doing and the trajectory I'm on, it's not fulfilling any of my needs whatsoever. In fact,
00:49:07
Speaker
it's just satiating my appetites. And so I have to go, I have to go out and find it, you almost have to go out into the desert. And it really is that way, you know, and I think it's common across many aspects of our lives right now where, okay, you know, it's like, in order to pass on the tradition in order to actually recover something and hand it on and give it
00:49:32
Speaker
pass on what I myself have received first to have to have something to pass on and I have to search for it and it turns out that there's only a few places I can go to find it um and so I'm not that's merely an analogy so like you know I don't wear a Roman collar or anything like that
00:49:54
Speaker
merely an analogy. I'm just saying, you know, as far as foie gras specifically is like, man, like, I got to learn all this myself and go through all these different sources. And, and, you know, and I had friends visiting farms in France and things like that. But yeah, it's like, we have to, we have to really focus in on where we're going to find things that are valuable to know and to do. And those are often again, on the peripheries.
00:50:23
Speaker
That's right. And all you have to do is go to Ross's foie gras instructional to learn this. And then you can benefit from the thousands of hours of trial and error that Ross has already been through. Yeah. That's the big part. I'm really looking forward to it. You did all the hard work.
00:50:45
Speaker
And so I, yeah, it's one of those things like I don't know how to calculate the value of that too. Cause I'm really looking forward to it. But you know, it's like, oh, I think I'm receiving too much. I don't know. It's weird. Cause I know, you know, sitting next to you, learning how to do this with one of your ducks, it's gonna be like, this is a lot of experience distilled into a few moments.
00:51:13
Speaker
And these are the things I'm not going to have to deal with just because you've already been through it. And I think that's a big value of a hands-on class and why people seek it is because you're getting it from someone who has done it and can tell you and show you and then like put the apparatus in your hands and have you do it with the added benefit of all their experience.
Hands-On Learning and Connection
00:51:38
Speaker
One of the things that continues to emerge now is that we live in a time where technology is so rampant that we are nearly devoid of human connection. We don't trust technology and it has led to a loss of a sense of trust in one another.
00:51:54
Speaker
And so one thing that I'm finding and the reason I think people are so drawn to these hands on style of courses is because they one really want to believe that the instruction they're being given is accurate. They simply need that hands on instruction to go from point A all the way to the table.
00:52:12
Speaker
to make sure that this is actually how it works. Because it's bringing forward questions of, am I processing this correctly? Am I doing it safely? Is this healthy? Is it OK for my family? It brings up questions about the movement of food production and dependency from a generational system of mechanization and post-industrialization to your own hands and your own garden and your own soil.
00:52:38
Speaker
And it also brings to mind the sense of community that comes around food and the preparation of food. It brings to mind the conversation around community development, around productive labor, and ultimately the idea of journeying as a community towards a common end, which hopefully is heaven.
00:53:00
Speaker
And it also makes me think, and maybe this is theologizing it just a bit too far, but there are so many examples in the Scriptures of Christ meeting individuals. And I imagine that in those conversations, they truly believed and felt that He was being present directly to them in those encounters. And in some ways, I find that
00:53:24
Speaker
these experiences that people seek now, whether it's to, you know, whether it's some type of reconciliation with a friend that's been broken over time or relationships that's in damage, all the way to how do I make bread in the kitchen to how do I grow a garden to how do I
00:53:43
Speaker
change the oil in my vehicle. There is something emerging and it's clear and it's beautiful in the world now where people are willing to reprioritize their lives to experience human connection in a way that is productive and good.
00:53:59
Speaker
And I think that that is also something that helps to drive some of these in-person conversations and these experiences. I look forward to hearing how the joint training course on farm goes regarding how to learn about foie gras production.
Preparation for Foie Gras Course
00:54:14
Speaker
I'm excited to see how this turns out. And I look forward to hearing good things about it. Me too. There'll be a lot of preparation in the next month. So it's going to be interesting. I'm looking at rendering a lot of fat.
00:54:27
Speaker
So we're going to need a lot of fat, guys.
00:54:31
Speaker
Well, I want to say thank you to both of you for joining the Little Way Farm and Homestead podcast. And I look forward to hearing great things from the upcoming courses.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:54:40
Speaker
And we'll make sure that we have lots of links and ways to point people back to both of you for upcoming courses and towards places where they can find you all online. So thank you both for being here today and thank you for the willingness that you give the world and the efforts that you take to show people a good way of living.
00:54:58
Speaker
Thank you for the work you do. You're a generous host. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode and be sure to tune in next week.