Red Truck Farm

08/27/2026

Outwash from a rain that’s not mine. Thankful that someone northwest of me may catch a rain. We all have troubled hearts in this drought.

The consumer only feels the record high prices. They won’t remember, or wear creases in their face, over the record high and prolonged inputs it took to raise that meat.

08/26/2026

08/24/2026

“Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones.”
Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

It’s telling that this passage comes to my mind so often now. I took a drive around the neighborhood on Sunday. To cheer myself up. The best AC is in my truck. There’s even snacks if you’re willing to dig under the hoof trimmers, syringes, and pliers.

The drive did not bring joy. Things are grim. Most pastures were vacant for the summer. I should have found hope in recovering grasslands. But this country is sad. Too much set stocking, too much aerial herbicide application, too little rain to hide the damage. I don’t know how many years it takes to ease 100 years of abuse. But I don’t think these eyes will see it.

“ …..something wicked this way comes.”
Wm Shakespeare, McBeth

08/23/2026

Hmmm….. is there a number?👩‍🌾

08/22/2026

Everyone has a different value system. Price. Prestige. Convenience. Loyalty. Wealth. Quality. Durability. Modern culture leads away from a deeply held but unflinchingly examined value system.

Trendiness is in vogue. Local food is finding its 15 minutes of fame. No one celebrates this more than a farmher who’s spent almost 20 years trying to build it. I hope it allows new but durable producers and consumers to find each other before the trend evaporates.

To you that are my Ride or Die Club, sourcing breeding stock and grass fed meats from me, I genuflect. Loyalty is the very opposite of trendy. Thank you for making this life possible. As long as a little rain falls and Warner Brothers Seed Company keeps delivering hay, this farm and I will feed you.

08/21/2026

Form follows function. I’ve turned this philosophy over in my head for decades. I’m pragmatic enough to consider it gospel. My livestock must conform and excel in this particular environment. They must be part of the ecological function. And my definition of ecological function is based on the historical range of variability. For the southern prairie that’s a lot of variability. Floods to drought. Ten below to 110 above. Low quality forage nine months of the year.

My Texas longhorn cattle are of the WR bloodline which is the least improved. Read wildest. Good mothering, easy birthing, sound udders, durable feet, forage efficient, common sense, and a keen sense of survival. My hair sheep are chosen for the same. Papers don’t impress me. Performance impresses me.

As I told my horrified 12 year old daughter when I forcibly relocated her from SE Alaska to SW Oklahoma - if you can make it here. You can make it anywhere.

08/20/2026

108 degrees at 11:30am. Dead calm. Meadow larks panting in the shade of my pickup. I think about my grandparents and dad on this farm from 1904 until WWII. No running water. No phone. Rural electric in no hurry to arrive. Everyone in long pants, heavy cotton underclothes, sun bonnets, and long sleeves.

Thinking about my family and I newly back on the farm in 2011, clearing away 50 years of occupation and almost 60 years of stasis. Pounding T-posts and running hot wire paddocks for the first horses and longhorns.

Thankful today to sit by the window in a room with AC. Hopeful that all the stock makes it.

Thank you Meteorologist Austin Bowling at the texomaweatherlab for the great posts and forecasts.

08/19/2026

Vaca vieja. Food of the Ancients. Shunned by get-rich-quick modern agriculture. Thick yellow bands of grass-fat in a chuck roast from a 14 year old WR longhorn cow.

Layered in the crockpot with organic onions from the Lawton Farmers Market, a nice porter, the last cup of coffee in the pot, enough fresh ground pepper to make an elephant sneeze, my secret weapon from Alaska Pure Sea Salt, and respect. Rosey was a grand old girl.

The porter’s 5 friends are in the fridge. Loaf of crusty sourdough on the counter. Tonight under the Milky Way when your FarmHer finishes her chores, she’ll sit down to French Dip worthy of fine dining. And she’ll be mindful that this brutal land nourished her grandparents and parents. And in turn is nourishing her daughter and granddaughter.

08/18/2026

The American Serengeti. The curtain goes up on another grinding day of 107-110. No wind. No bird song. The sheep trudge to pasture now. The cows only graze at night. The cicada chorus drills into your brain. Your eyes grate in their sockets.

“What you can’t go around, you go through.”
Cousin Thelma Fern. 1909 - 1998.

08/17/2026

Five beautiful, straight backed, strong minded, historically correct longhorn ladies left the farm yesterday bound for the Evans Longhorn Ranch. It takes a special person with a sound objective to pry a longhorn cow away from me. Give Joseph and Michelle’s ranch page a follow and some likes. It takes courage and grit for young ranchers to buck the flow of industrial agriculture and operate a ranch in step with the changing times and changing climate.