Quilts of Valor!

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 14 June 2024…

Hey Y’all!

Good evening and happy Fast-Jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms & Meats! The fast jets today are both the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle, flying low in Wales this week. Our own Strike Eagle pilot, daughter #2, Hannah “Hail” Slayton, completed her 4-ship flight-lead upgrade program this week. She breezed through a program that is designed to be an intense scouring of your tactical prowess. She earned above average grades throughout the upgrade proving her abilities to the squadron and setting her up well to enter the Instructor Pilot upgrade soon. The weather turned HOT! Thankfully, we have still been getting some rain to include a quarter of an inch at about 0400 this morning. We processed batch #3 of Beef Chickens this week. Thanks again to Mrs. Auntie Fiat for the help! We finished the 50 birds in 3 hours, shaving more time yet again. We didn’t keep any of the organs this time. We had great hopes that folks would be interested in the hearts and livers. Last time, we even spent an additional hour and a half cleaning gizzards. So far, there is very very little interest. So, in order to free up freezer space, we fed it all to the dogs. We’ve decided not to keep any of it from now on, thus quite a bit of time saved. We found the same thing with the organs and bones from the beef, lamb, and pork we have USDA processed and the chicken carcasses we have left from parting out the birds. We have decided that we will no longer pay to keep the organs and bones from the processor and we won’t waste our time keeping the chicken carcasses. We can’t use that much and it doesn’t sell. Easy decision. We looked into making pet food from the organs and carcasses from the chickens and it is a regulatory nightmare. It’s way easier for us to sell chicken for human consumption than for pet food. Our government agencies at their finest. The middle cow pics show a new calf born yesterday and the herd bull. The new mom’s teats were so engorged that the new calf wasn’t being able to nurse. It is very important for new calves to get that first bit of colostrum quickly. So important, in fact, that we intervened. I carried the 75 pound calf, walking backwards, for a few hundred yards to the cow pens. The new mom followed me into the pens (yeah right…I kept putting the calf between her and I to ensure she didn’t charge me!). She followed me all the way through the pens until we had her in the squeeze chute and caught her head. Our chute has removable sides so we were able to get the plugs out of her teats and get things flowing and then got the calf to nurse on all four deflating them a bit so he could nurse on his own. The middle set of pics are Air2Ground Meats store coming along! Makaylah (daughter #5) loves to meticulously clean and the rental space needed it. Great match. It’s looking good that we will be able to open Saturday, 22 June 2024! The top pic is me a couple of weeks ago.

Recently, I had the profound honor of receiving a handmade quilt from the incredible ladies of the Quilts of Valor Foundation's local Missouri chapter. This experience was deeply moving and introduced me to the essence of this remarkable organization and its mission. The Quilts of Valor Foundation (QOVF) was founded in 2003 by Catherine Roberts. The inspiration for the organization struck Catherine when her son, Nat, was deployed in Iraq. She envisioned a comforting and healing quilt wrapped around him, providing solace during a time of great uncertainty and danger. This vision became the cornerstone of Quilts of Valor, a national grassroots community service effort aimed at covering service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor. These quilts are tangible tokens of appreciation, meant to offer comfort, honor, and gratitude to those who have served and sacrificed for their country. Each quilt is handmade with care and presented in a special ceremony, symbolizing the love and gratitude of a grateful nation. Since its inception, Quilts of Valor has awarded over 250,000 quilts to service members and veterans across the United States. The impact of these quilts goes beyond the physical warmth they provide; they offer emotional warmth, healing, and recognition. For many veterans, receiving a Quilt of Valor is a moment of validation and acknowledgment of their service and sacrifices. It's a reminder that their contributions are remembered and valued. Standing among fellow veterans, to include Vietnam veterans, during the quilt ceremony was an experience I will never forget. The sense of camaraderie, respect, and mutual understanding in that auditorium was palpable. Each quilt draped over our shoulders represented not just a piece of fabric, but a symbol of the nation's gratitude and the unbreakable bond shared among veterans. The honor I felt receiving my quilt, handcrafted by the loving hands of the local Missouri chapter, was immense. It's a testament to the incredible dedication and compassion of the volunteers who pour their hearts into every stitch. Look in the foreground of the pic to see the quilt draped on the shoulders of a fellow veteran. Only the coldest of hearts could leave that ceremony untouched and most didn’t leave with dry eyes. The Quilts of Valor Foundation is a beacon of hope and gratitude for veterans across the country. Its mission to provide comfort and healing through handmade quilts has touched countless lives, including my own. My dilemma is whether I use the quilt or put it on display. For now, it will be on display in Air2Ground Meats where the most people can see it.

Sunday’s video was a garden update, highlighting our weed-free garden fabric and our new awesome boots! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkRixOPe5JQ&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=2&pp=gAQBiAQB

This week’s Dust’er Mud podcast was about a recent study that highlighted the amazing new things they are finding about a fairly new zero-calorie sweetener called allulose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exVFwxH92zk&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=1&pp=gAQBiAQB

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley