Brooder Clean Out, Hallie's Egg Layers, Freedom or Force

We went on a short hike in the mountain after church on Sunday. This is my favorite time of year to go hiking. Warmer temperatures but before all the trees are filled with leaves. After hiking, we rounded up a group of 20 mature steers and heifers into the barn to sort out 12 for Monday’s trip to the processor. 

After getting back from the processor Monday, Amy cleaned out the trailer while the kids and I began cleaning out the brooder, scooping out all the old bedding to add to the compost pile. Then sealing it back up tight, putting up partitions to keep the different age groups separate, putting down fresh bedding, hooking up heat lamps, filling up waterers and feeders. We still have a little more to finish up at the brooder, but we’re getting close. Amy is on the way to pick up our first batch of 300 chicks from the post office right now. 

Hallie wasn’t a big fan of us selling the egg layers, so she asked if she could buy the remaining hens. We’ve been selling them for $30/each, so 6 hens would be $180. I asked, “Where are you going to keep them? What are you going to feed them?” We just finished putting together a new $300 coop from tractor supply. The coop plus the chickens would be $480. Throw in a feeder and waterer for $20 to make it an even $500 investment. After asking if she had $500, she checked her savings jar and reported a grand total of $47, which opened the door to borrowing and interest. We agreed to lend her the $500 if she agreed to pay us back $510. We priced the feed to her at $7/bucket. If they eat a bucket of feed a week and she can sell 3 dozen every week for $6/dozen, she figures she can pay back her loan in less than a year, maybe even sooner if she puts some of her chicken processing earnings towards it. 

This is not something threw on her or insisted she take on. She wanted to take ownership. I love her entrepreneurial mind. Of course Amy and I want to encourage it and give them opportunities, but we also want to make those opportunities realistic. Everything comes with a cost. She needs to know the cost, evaluate the risk, and decide if the endeavor is worth pursuing or not. I want this to be successful for her, but I also want her to know that success is not easy or automatic, especially when it comes to farming. Hopefully, this will be a good learning opportunity that will soon lead to other opportunities. So far, she’s doing great. In the past she had handled some of the chicken chores when asked, now that they are hers, she’s taking the initiative on her own: feeding, watering, putting them up at night, cleaning out the coop, collecting and washing the eggs. Now Amy and I have to buy our breakfast. 

Much of this week’s plans were put on hold thanks to a bout with pneumonia early in the week. A rough couple days but doing much better now. Thankfully, it no longer hurts to breathe.

I didn’t listen to any books this week, but I did listen to an interesting podcast conversation between Jordan Peterson and Steven Bonnell II, also know as Destiny. It was episode #433 on the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. I’d never heard of Destiny, but was intriguing to hear two intelligent people presenting and debating their world views. We live in a polarized world. I suppose it always has been. It’s easy to present a case that’s unopposed or have a like-minded conversation with someone you agree with, but actual discourse between differing perspectives is a rare thing. 

Destiny mentions shifting to the left after a more conservative upbringing, while Peterson’s journey has led him from a more liberal take earlier on to a more conservative view. In both cases, their personal views didn’t really change. What changed was how involved the state should be in regards to those views. Discussing problems from climate change to COVID, their differing views hinged around the government’s use of force in regards to these issues. Destiny presenting the case that we need the government’s extensive involvement, whereas Peterson believes that government use of force is what leads to tyranny. 

Concerning climate change policies, Peterson says this: 

“This isn’t data. This is guess. And there’s something weird underneath it, there’s something weird that isn’t orientated well towards human beings underneath it. It has this guise of compassion. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re going to save the poor in the future.’ That’s what the bloody communists said. And they killed a lot of people doing it. And we’re walking down that same road now… And the alternative to that is to stop having global level elites plot out a utopian future, or even an anti-dystopian future. And that’s exactly what’s happening now with organizations like WEF, and if this wasn’t immediately impacting the poor in a devastating manner, I wouldn’t care about it that much, but it is.”

Peterson refers to COVID as “the COVID tyranny, because it was more of a tyranny than a pandemic.” 

When Peterson asked Destiny to define force, Destiny consents to being in favor of the proposed vaccine mandates. “Biden tried to make it so that OSHA, who’s the body that regulates jobs safety, could make it so that employees had to get vaccinated… or they’d lose their job.” A vaccine that Peterson pointed out was a new kind of vaccine, inadequately tested, that didn’t prevent people from getting the virus, and didn’t prevent people from spreading it. 

“To some extent we trust, we have to trust, third party institutions,” Destiny argued. “Except when they use force,” Peterson combatted. Regardless of the success of the vaccine, using force breaks trust, not builds it. Mandates break trust between the government and the individual. It breaks trust between the pharmaceutical companies and the individuals. The break of trust will lead to more detrimental affects than the virus itself and contradicts the idea of freedom. 

“The core issue here is use of force.”

“What do we do as an alternative to tyranny?… One answer is: We don’t use force.”

“We could’ve used a pure invitational strategy to distribute the vaccine. It would’ve been much more effective. It was bad policy, rushed.”

“If the policy isn’t invitational, if I can’t make a case that’s powerful enough for you to go there voluntarily, then the policy is flawed.”

People seek power to impose their values and views on the rest of society. This is a problem from all sides. People too often choose a side that will legislate their personal beliefs. As a Christian, Jesus didn’t force followers. The great commission wasn’t a mission to change laws and governments of the land but to change the hearts of individuals through voluntarily submission. I’m not advocating for my personal beliefs to be imposed on the rest of society through law, I want the freedom to live what I believe. Which gives others the freedom to live and believe differently. But that also means I don’t want other people’s values imposed on me through force. Is freedom such a bad thing to wish for? Why does the idea seem so foreign?

I appreciate both Dr. Peterson and Destiny’s willingness to hash it out with each other. Not just to make their own case, but to sincerely listen to the case of the other. “The alternative to talking is fighting. So when we stop talking, it’s not like the disagreements are going to go away, we will start fighting. And talking can be very painful because a conversation can kill one of your cherished beliefs, and you will suffer for that, although maybe it’ll also help you.”

Have a good week. 

Will