Who's Worse?

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 9 February 2024…

Hey Y’all!

Good morning and happy Fast-jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle zooming low-level through Wales. The weather continues to be good, mild mornings and warm days. The top pic is an amazing sunrise over our hill yesterday morning. The next two pics are our future and current bull. The last is a view of a few of the cows this morning in the cool fog. The relative calm of the farm during winter continues. For the most part, farming these days is basically limited to morning and evening rounds. We continue to feed a bale of hay per day to the flerd and a bale every 10 days or so to the dairy cows. We started the winter with around 120 bales of hay and it’s looking like we’re going to need more to make it to Spring grazing. We’re not sure how much more but probably around 20-25. Lots of regenerative grazers discuss the expense of feeding hay and the reality that it is very difficult to make a profitable business enterprise that includes large volumes of hay on an annual basis. We’re paying $85 per bale this year, and we have to haul it. That means we’re already over $10,000 in hay with another over $2,000 impending. It takes a lot of beef and lamb (when you get around 400 pounds of beef per cow and 40 pounds of lamb per sheep available for sale) to simply break even when just the hay inputs for this small farm start at $12,000. We could sell cows and/or sheep, but that reduces the number of animals available to process. We’re planning on a bumper lamb crop this year to offset the input costs. We’ll see!

We’ve discussed military recruiting in the past. I’d like to revisit the topic and discuss the sheer desperation the different Services are displaying. Combined, the Services missed their recruiting goals for FY 2023 by 41,000 people. Within the past couple of weeks we hear that the Army just removed the requirement for a high school diploma or GED. The Navy just changed their policies regarding marijuana use in recruits. They can now continue basic training if they show up to training and test positive for THC. Not to be undercut, the Air Force just announced they are looking for retirees less than the age of 60 to return to service. The Marines just barely made their goal…after they reduced the overall force size by almost 9,000. Our Congress wanted to add 21,000 people to the military this year while the reality is a 40,000 person reduction over the past 3 years. This has left me wondering which Service has the WORST plan? Is it worse to recruit uneducated, high, or old folks? Or is it worse to just reduce the size of your Service below what is required for the defense of our nation? Having sat in countless Joint meetings in the Pentagon, I can easily imaging the different Service representatives leaving the meeting (assuming, most likely incorrectly, there was a meeting) laughing amongst themselves at how ridiculous the other Services’ plan sounds. While to me, they all sound ridiculous. What about you?

In Thursday’s Dust’er Mud podcast, we discussed my mom’s recent cancer diagnosis and the role of sugar in cancer. Check out this somber but necessary discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS4bMp-7yus

Today’s Video highlights a competition between Shelley and I to see whose keto pizza crust results in the best pizza… Check it out to see who wins!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3RGr3GPrRM

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley