Clear Creek Ranch Mom - Why Beef Is So Expensive, and Some Temporary Workarounds

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom about why beef is astronomically expensive right now, and some alternatives to get you through.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Leah at Clear Creek Ranch Mom in Nebraska. I was gonna say Arizona, I don't know why. And Leah's been a guest a couple of times on the podcast and she's here today to talk to us about the cost of beef right now. So good morning, Leah, how are you?

00:27
Good morning, Mary. Always good to visit with you. Thank you for having me. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for coming back. I love talking with you because you are. My dad would call you a no bullshit lady. You are. You are very, very forward and straightforward. And I almost blunt. Almost. I hate the word blunt because people tell me I'm blunt all the time. And I'm like, that's so mean. But you're very, very shoot from the hip. And I love that about you.

00:55
And if Maggie barks in the background, I'm sorry, we've got the farm stand open, we've got tomatoes in there and people keep pulling in for tomatoes. So. And it's International Dog Day, so she should have her moment. It is. Yeah, I didn't post on Facebook about Maggie for International Dog Day or whatever it is because I forgot that that's what it was. Yeah, I did too. I'll have to do it later. Be like, my dog's the best dog. I will die on that hill.

01:23
So, um Leah, you are a cattle rancher, right? Yes, ma'am. And you're in Nebraska, and you know as well as I do that beef prices have become astronomically expensive. And since you're a cattle rancher, I thought maybe you could give us all a little insight on what is going on with that. Yeah. Well,

01:48
It's a long and complicated story. Like many things that go on within our food chain. And even in 2025, the story in Nebraska has been a bit complicated. So when we had our cattle branding the first Saturday in May, I always call that our celebration, our first big celebration of the year. We brand those calves and get ready to turn the cows and calves out to grass.

02:17
But that day was anything but celebration. We were in a terrible drought in early May. And I have a couple of photos that I took that morning. One of the photos my daughter took of me. And I look at that picture of myself. I don't like it because the somberness was all over my face on what would typically be a joyful occasion. And it was me really evaluating the pasture conditions. we have been in drought.

02:46
on and off, some pretty significant drought really, since 2019, which was the last year of overabundant rainfall. If you want to back up even further across the Great Plains to 2012, we had what was called a flash drought across the Great Plains. What we saw then was the beginning of many ranchers starting to cut down on their herd inventory.

03:16
So 2012 was that drought. It was terrible in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. And Nebraska was plenty bad as well. And we included had to make some very difficult decisions that year as late summer came evaluating our pasture conditions and our feed and stock to see if we had cattle.

03:39
feed that would provide for those cattle and thankfully we did, but we knew if 2013 didn't improve, we were going to have to start selling down to manage our pastures well. Thankfully that turned the corner here, but that persistent drought did not get better in many places. And as fluctuations in inputs continued to plague ranchers, what we really saw as 2013 and beyond to the

04:09
it's really been the last 10 years, ranchers tightening those inventories. Couple that with the fact that ranchers continue to age and land transition plans have not been great. Ranchers don't have a child to pass that operation to and kids inherit and sell off and not necessarily not selling it into production for future ranching.

04:38
So the resulting effect is smaller numbers because of drought, shrinking numbers of ranches, which translates into shrinking numbers of cattle, cows in particular, which are the pipeline, if you will, for what becomes the beef in the stores, they're the mamas, make this all happen. And we won't even really get into the challenges of imports and tariffs and unrest.

05:08
and uh consumers making different choices about what they want to eat as far as their protein choices and those challenges, but the perfect storm of conditions. So here we are in 2025. Cattle inventory continues to shrink. We are historically at the lowest number in a very long time in the United States. That includes cows, the pipeline.

05:37
as well as the cattle in the finishing operations to be butchered to go to the grocery stores, historically low numbers, and the resulting effect is higher prices. Now- because when there's a lack of supply but the demand remains the same, prices go up. Yep. that demand has pretty much remained steady.

06:03
Our border is currently closed with Mexico because of the concern of the New World's screw worm. And if you haven't read up on the New World's screw worm, it is a real concern. I have read about it. I know enough from my grandparents era that when it was last here in Nebraska, it was bad and it was real bad. We do not want the New World's screw worm in the United States for a whole bunch of reasons.

06:32
But so we understand why the border is closed. We can have a whole conversation some other time about the need to import or not. I am a big fan of supporting American beef producers, if at all possible. I understand that people should be given choice. I'm a big fan of transparent labeling. But the bottom line is American ranchers also are really good at what they do. They raise high quality beef.

06:59
and consumers like choice, which means they want to be able to purchase the McDonald's dollar value, dollar, whatever they call their value meals. And that beef is generally not the quality raised in the United States. We raise better beef than that. Good, better, and different. That's the way it is. um So that's why we talk about importing beef of lesser quality. So we raise really great beef. The other part that doesn't enter into the conversation is

07:29
the cost of inputs for ranchers is also really, really expensive to raise this beef that you enjoy. And so while it looks like ranchers are making big money right now because your beef is expensive, it doesn't translate into us lining our pockets. That is simply not the reality for us. am so glad you said that because I was going to get to that. So that helps. um

07:55
That leads me to something I was thinking about last night and I was going to ask later about last now. um Once you sell your beef, your animals, and they're no longer your property, whatever people do with the meat that's produced from that sale doesn't impact your bottom line at all. Once you've sold the meat, that's it. Correct. That's absolutely correct.

08:23
One of the things that I want to tell people is if you go out and buy, if all you can afford is ground beef right now, and ground beef is even expensive, if you go out and buy in bulk and you actually package that up and put it in your freezer when it's on sale, you're going to help your bottom line. And I would highly suggest that people do that because we do a lot of burger-based meals in our house, unfortunately. um

08:52
Again, I am kind of burguered out. I'm over it, but my husband and my son are not. And so when we buy ground beef, we buy it in bulk, we package it up in Ziploc bags, we seal them, we stick them in the freezer when it's on sale. And that way we can continue to eat. you're talking and I don't know entirely who your audience is, but what you just shared, Mary, is what you and I consider normal practice.

09:22
starting with the fact that you're eating your meals at home. Yes. That doesn't resonate with a lot of people anymore. it needs to. It needs to. And I had this conversation with my 17-year-old last night on our way home from the college visit when we talked about this interview about where is it appropriate to go when talking about

09:47
the bigger picture here on the values of the American consumer. She said, well, I don't know how you think you can share something that may impact the value system of an American consumer. I suppose you can share your thoughts or ideas and they might be intrigued or make them question some of their thoughts or choices and do their own research, but you can't tell people what their values ought to be.

10:15
You can suggest it, especially if you're concerned about their health, the health of their family and the health of their bottom line. But are Americans really in a place today where they want to have someone suggest ideas to them? If they wanted to, they would. We talked about the Mel Robbins, let them kind of theory. I think it's a really interesting topic because the things that I do,

10:42
were the things that I saw growing up and the things my mom and dad saw before them. And making conscious decisions that were within our budget, for instance, or to be a healthy choice, that was always at the forefront of family living. And a lot of that has gone away now in our hustle and bustle. And then in some cases, it's because people are so busy working to try to make ends meet. What they sacrifice is

11:11
They don't have time to be home prepping a meal. And then it becomes this vicious circle where they are even saying, I don't even have time to look at the local grocery store ad for the week and choose the cuts of beef that are on sale because I don't have time to menu plan and I don't have time to prep my meals at home or I don't have time to eat as a family. Well, then we're just kicking the can further down the road. And so again, speaks to a bigger uh concern I have here.

11:40
Yeah, the costs of beef are really, really high. Beyond that, um can we adjust to living this way if we're willing to step back and say, there things we can do differently in our lives to make beef or whatever protein you love still be a really important part of our family living and be okay financially?

12:10
I think we can. I think it can be done with thoughtful, caring, devoted people who are willing to come alongside consumers and children. This kind of curriculum used to be a main staple in home economics, instance, 4-H programming. And then it was just what you did at home. it was modeled and you knew it and you took it with you when you were out on your own. we've lost so much of that.

12:40
and it really does have me concerned. what you do is what I do. It's normal for us. The question is, how can we help others normalize such behaviors? By talking about it on my podcast and hopefully people listen and go, how do you do that? Isn't it something that, mean, our grandmothers probably would be rolling their eyes and saying like, can't believe that you're having to even

13:09
suggest this, I do want to say I have friends um whose children have studied the meat science program at the university and something really cool they still do is they go to the grocery store on the weekends and they set up a table. And when people come down the meat aisle, they offer to help you talk about what you can do with different cuts of beef, especially the ones that are on sale. Their whole motivational

13:34
efforts of being there is to help encourage people to purchase, not just beef, they do the same with the poultry and the fish and even the unique uh cuts of pork and sheep and goat, lamb, that is to help inspire people to be unafraid to buy this cut of beef, knowing that you can take it home and do something manageable that is tasty and a good option to feed your family. And I think that's a win.

14:01
The thing that makes me a little crazy, Leah, is that humans are smart. I mean, there are people who don't have a high IQ. I get that. Not everyone is smart, smart, but humans are smart. If they can go to work and do their job, they can cook. it just, makes me crazy. And the other thing I was gonna say back five minutes ago is that you don't have to have meat at every single dinner.

14:29
You can always do a meatless dinner two nights a week if you want to not have to spend money on meat. It will not kill you to skip meat two nights a week. That's right. You can find lots of healthy protein sources that you do need protein. It's essential to live. But I learned from my mother in the very, very thin times in the 1980s how to stretch a meal. And again, you can learn how to cook.

14:56
And you can make black beans not taste like black beans. I saw my mother do it. And that could be quite delicious. And it's not hard and it's not scary once you get over your apprehension or your willingness to say, I'm going to put my phone down or I'm going to stop my distractions and focus on what really matters. We all have to eat like of all of the things you have to do in a day. Eating is one of them. It just requires that.

15:25
devotion to finding a way. That's why I'm so passionate about humans being involved in their own food security. It really does matter and it doesn't have to be in some huge big way. It's in small ways, like I said, just learning to be invested in feeding your own family because there may be a time that comes where you're going to have to pull yourself up. You're going to have to do it and boy, wouldn't you rather

15:53
find yourself in that position because you were equipped to do it rather than having to do it. yeah. Learning to cook when you don't have to is far better than trying to cook when you have to and you don't know how. You were saying something about black beans. um I fought the red beans and rice trend for a long time. People were telling me I should make red beans and rice and I was like, eh I'm really not into it.

16:23
And then a couple of years ago, I was like, I'm going to try making red beans and rice. I'm to look up a couple of recipes and see how you do it. And it's super easy. You make beans, you make the rice, you season it the way you want to. And tada, you have food. And I ended up making it with cumin and granulated garlic and some fresh onion and some sweet peppers and I don't know, stuff. And cooked it up. And it's basically like, like rice aromani, only way, way better for you.

16:53
And to this day when I bring it up, I say, hey, we should probably look at making that taco beans and rice thing again this winter, because we try to do it once a winter. It's not our favorite thing to make, but it's good. so I stopped calling it red beans and rice because we actually use black beans. And it's taco beans and rice is what we call it because of the cumin. Good stuff.

17:19
Yeah. And I don't know why I fought it for so long, except that I really wasn't a fan of beans. But then I was like, well, I like black beans and chili, so maybe I would like it in this. And it worked out fine. So. Sweet potatoes are another favorite here. make sweet potato chili in the wintertime. Yes. Sweet potato. Amazing. My daughter is a Taylor Swift fan. And the other comment she made last night was she's on social media just a little bit.

17:48
It's funny how teenagers have kind of moved away from it. She said it's interesting how, and she works in retail for her summer or for her job after school, how people are very happy to get online and complain about the cost of groceries. And I'll give it to you, they are very expensive. It's crazy. But she said Taylor Swift has a new album coming out in October and we'll have a concert lineup after that. And I don't think you're going to see people complaining about what they're going to shell out to get one of those concert tickets.

18:19
I just had the same conversation with my husband only about the Minnesota State Fair. Is it? The Minnesota State Fair is going on right now and they have opened up the city streets around the fair so that people can park and you pay $25 for the day. A full price ticket to get into the fair is $20. So you're looking at $45 just to get into the fair if you're looking at parking and getting in.

18:47
That doesn't count anything else. And I looked at my husband and I said, you know, there are people who can't afford to buy groceries, but 137,000 people were at the opening day of the state fair. It's just crazy to me. it's an interesting sociological evaluation in our country. And I'd be so fascinated to speak.

19:13
to people from other countries about this conversation in 2025 about our values systems. mean, Americans, thank you technology, but we have definitely become a nation of we want what we want when we want it. Our patience is thin. I mean, I had a friend talk about in the airport last week watching someone be late for their flight. It was their fault and they threw their water bottle at the flight attendant. And it was their fault.

19:43
Our patience is thin. I understand why. We're uh definitely a restless nation right now every day. It's like, what fresh garbage are we going to have to hear about today? um We're restless. Our patience is thin. We want what we want when we want it. And where are our priorities? What are the things that matter most to us? And I think most, if you had conversation, it's, want to be able to provide for my family. I want us to be safe.

20:12
I want us to have access to clean drinking water and good food. But let's be very, very honest, Americans value expensive entertainment. We want multiple cars and TVs and we want satellite uh channel packages of $200 and we want new cell phones and we want to be entertained and go to concerts and have all of these things and we don't talk a lot about that.

20:41
but we are sure ready to go on the attack about what we're paying for our groceries. Yes, absolutely. And I hope that you didn't take my question to you and messages about the cost of beef as an attack. just want to- Nope, I've been getting a lot of questions about it, like an explanation or a breakdown. people have actually, I've been very grateful to hear, please tell me that-

21:06
I'm paying whatever for this roast in the grocery store that some of this is getting back to you because I know during the very bad years, y'all were losing money every year. And I thought how interesting that you noticed. Historically, Mary, we only make money one out of every seven years as cattle ranchers. How many Americans do you think the grocery store worth are thinking?

21:34
those other years when they're getting a great deal. Huh, I hope the ranchers are okay. You know, I actually do think about that and have since I was about 15 because my grandpa's friends had a dairy farm and I ended up talking with Bea. She was, I used to think of her as aunt Bea, but she wasn't actually related to us. And I asked her one time, said, so if, if we're buying milk at the store for whatever it was, two and a half bucks a gallon.

22:03
back then. I said, what are you making? She just laughed. Just laughed. And I said, I'm not being stupid. I'm genuinely curious how this works. And she said, oh honey, she said, I love you. She said, just nobody thinks about this. It would be you who would ask me this. And I laughed and I said, well, seriously. And she said, we make about 50 cents a gallon.

22:34
the most grotesque story of how a group of American farmers have been marginalized historically, repeatedly. is what has happened to the dairy farmers of this country. It's sickening. It's just sickening. I said to Aunt B, as I called her in my head, I said, so how can you afford to do this? And she said, well, we really can't.

23:03
And I said, why are you doing it? And she said, because we love it. And the word love was so full. just, I had no other questions. I couldn't even think of any, because she was just like, we love it. Yep. I feel the same way. And so what most people do is diversify their risk. So we have row crops, which is a whole other conversation and how bad that is right now. And we have cattle and we have off the farm jobs. And that is the story of most of us.

23:33
And again, we look through our lens and forget about the lens of others like the cranberry farmers, the potato farmers, the wheat farmers, the almond farmers, every one of us going through our own seasons of awful times and then okay times and wrestling with the same struggles collectively. It's feast and then famine and then famine and then famine and then feast and then famine and famine. And you're hoping

24:02
that you can just hold on through all of those lean years, being hopeful for that one really good year or maybe two good years in a row. The challenge is we have such little control over our costs and that is getting to be harder and harder and harder. And that is why we're seeing people leave agriculture altogether because of those forces that we can't do anything about like skyrocketing property taxes.

24:32
um And a great reckoning is coming in this country because consumers are also being

24:44
illuminated by um seeing how other countries can use their pipelines to bring us food cheaper for a whole bunch of reasons that are maybe not as ethical when we talk about what they're paying their labor for. And they don't have some of those other challenges. We have our own set of problems in this country too numerous to list when it labor challenges, taxes, um water.

25:12
issues, water access. ah I mean, a great reckoning is coming and that is, again, going back to the value system. Americans, what role do you want to play in how you feed yourself? Do you care? Do you want this country to provide for you? Do you care where your food comes from? Do you want to be a part of it? And if so, if you decide so,

25:43
striking the right balance so that people who are doing the producing can make an honest living at it because by golly, it is really hard um without gouging the consumer.

25:56
It's a very, very fine balance. I have never met a farmer or rancher who said, I'm not willing to pay my fair share. But those who are actually the ones they'd like to make an example of saying, you know, they live high on the hog and get new equipment all the time and new houses and have XYZ, they're so few and far between. And they talk about, well, they're the ones, you know, getting subsidized and getting all this extra.

26:22
I I worked for the USDA and I have a lot of neighbors and friends and I work for a nonprofit that visits with people all the time. And I don't know who these people are. I'm sure there's some that exist, but by and large, most of the producers that I know, they're just getting by. And most of the time it's because they're, like I said, working off the farm as well. It is really not for the faint of heart and it's getting more difficult by the year.

26:51
Yes, and that actually leads me into another question about this whole beef situation. If the, let's call it inventory of cattle, at historically dangerous, I think it's dangerous, low, and it takes, it takes what, a year and a half to three years for a steer to be ready to be sold and butchered? Depending on what you do, but

27:17
18 to 24 months is probably considered more commonplace, depending on how aggressively you can push them. So if things don't improve, could we be looking at a cattle list United States in the next 10 years?

27:39
I've heard a lot of conspiracy talk over the last couple of years about what's the end game here. And honestly, I don't know, Mary. I can only speak about what's going on in my backyard. um And ranchers depend on the renewable resource, which is rainfall, to grow the grass that the cattle need. So our inventory is down here.

28:07
And that's because, as I said, we had to deplete some numbers because of drought. Our moisture has replenished those pasture conditions. So we're in a position where this fall, the females um will be evaluated and the best ones kept. And the hope is to keep more than usual so we can start replenishing those numbers. What that means for the consumer is those ones that would normally be called feeder calves will not be going on.

28:37
to be finished as beef. So we will keep more to start rebuilding our pipeline, which means in two years, three years, we'll start to do our part to try to send more towards that finishing point. But for the next two to three years, we're actually going to continue to shrink our contributions to what goes to be finished. There is talk about

29:06
And again, I say ranchers are real smart and very ingenious in their breeding programs. They are raising animals that feed more efficiently. They finish faster. They are growing cattle uh not so big, but appropriate to their frame size. So they finish faster, which means they're ready to go to be harvested sooner, which gets them to the grocery store sooner.

29:36
but that doesn't solve all of our problems. um The American rancher is one of the most resilient people types I have ever met. They will not go down without a However, they will need people to join the fight with them because there's not enough of them. Yeah, that's what I thought your answer was going to be.

30:06
In the meantime, for people listening, maybe we could all give the ranchers time to rebuild their inventory by maybe finding other protein sources and a really good protein source couple. Number one, fish. Fish is a really good protein source and you know, it only costs like 20 bucks for a fishing license and there's a thing called a limit.

30:35
And when you go fishing, you're allowed to catch a certain number of a certain kind of fish and you bring them home and you freeze them and you stick them in your freezer. And it's a per day limit, I think, or a possession limit, like total possession limit. And the other thing that is really dying in the United States is hunting for deer. My dad is an avid hunter. He just turned 83 and he went hunting last year. He did not get a deer, but he still hunts.

31:05
And venison is a really, really good alternative to beef if you can't get beef. so, and my point is, is that the kids coming up today are not deer hunting. has a plethora of extra deer in the state. So the point that there are places that are overrun.

31:30
Like they have special hunts in the fall so that people can take more than one deer to get the population down. So if you can learn to fish or you can learn to hunt, maybe that would be a way to give you guys a chance to build your stuff back up because we're not like screaming for beef every time. I think there are many creative solutions to our challenges. also wanted to mention our friends who raise poultry.

32:01
poultry numbers have also been annihilated because of the required um

32:08
um amount of animals that had to be destroyed because of bird flu. In many cases, whole flocks wiped, right? So you'll notice poultry prices are up as well. And I think that is a contributing factor to why those prices are up. But realistically, we need to support all of our protein producers. I have a dear friend who raises sheep. um I am not a huge fan of eating.

32:38
uh lamb chops, but I do eat them to support her. We have them for sale in our grocery store. I have another friend who raises meat goats and she actually has very, very high demand. And not just from our Hispanic population who enjoys using that meat in a lot of their dishes, but from others who are being more adventurous. There's game birds, the hunting and fishing, as you mentioned. I don't want to forget about our friends who raise pork.

33:08
There are so many viable options for us. And I also don't want to count out the opportunities do exist for people to buy a share or participate in a co-op where you can help raise and purchase directly from a producer. You just have to do your own research. And I have this conversation often. We again, we've become this.

33:33
this country of people like convenience. don't want to plan ahead. I don't want to make a list. want to wander around Walmart and just buy whatever I think I need. But if you want to be intentional and stretch your dollars and use a budget, you can plan for these things and stock your freezer, shop the sales, and you'll be all right. It just requires

33:56
shutting away those distractions that we all struggle with, myself included, and being really intentional in your decision making. And that is what we're all going to have to do to weather the storms that we're in and what we know we have ahead of us. absolutely. And that's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you because I knew stuff would come up like how to get around some of this pain point of how expensive things are.

34:24
I've told the story a couple of times already on the podcast, tell it in because it's true. We weren't going to get new chickens until this past May. We ended up getting them in March because I didn't want to pay for eggs at the grocery store that were yucky, that didn't taste right to me. And so we ended up getting chickens and we've been selling, we can't keep eggs in the farm stand this summer. We put two dozen eggs out there a day at $5 a dozen and they're gone by the end of the day.

34:52
that makes my heart so happy because that means others are recognizing the value of what you have in supporting you. it makes my heart happy too, because I would be swimming in eggs right now if people weren't buying them. But I just, could not look at another store bought egg. I was just like, there's nothing to them. They are actually lighter in your hand than the ones we were getting from our chickens last fall. And so if you have room,

35:22
And if your city allows it, or if you're out in the suburbs, most suburbs will let you get away with a few chickens. You can be having your own eggs from your own chickens if you want to. if we had room, we would probably have a dairy cow and a steer we're raising up for butcher, but we don't have room. So you can DIY this, you can buy into a herd share, you can buy

35:51
beef from the local farmer who has it in their cooler because that's how they do it. There are so many ways to get around this insanity about inflation on everything. It's not just beef or chicken, it's everything right now. you got to go look, you've got to do the research, you've got to find out how to get around it. And that's why I do the podcast so that can tell people things like that. uh

36:20
I'm a big fan of history and I'm a big fan of the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Me too. Her writings apparently now are not without some controversy and I'll set that aside and focus on the positive. One of my favorite books, I don't know for what reasons, has always been The Long Winter because it's truly a depressing story. I always like to refer to what Laura wrote of her mother.

36:49
In the long winter, by all historical actual actual historical accounts, people starved and they did die. But Laura lovingly referred to the efforts her mother made to keep feeding them through the very leanest of times. And her mother absolutely decided, I will not let my family starve. Now.

37:19
If you walk around in this country, at least to my eyes, I'm not seeing anyone starving. Do we have people who are food insecure? Oh yeah. Do we have real problems with what kind of food is available? Yes, that's a whole other conversation. But the message conveyed was she decided she found a way. And that is the message for all of us.

37:49
We have to decide.

37:54
what matters. Yep. And we have to decide what we're going to do about it. Yes, you're darn right. And it takes all of us to be intentionally committed to figuring it out. We are no longer given the luxury of, I'm going to sit on the sidelines and I don't have anything to add of value. I have nothing to say, I have nothing to contribute. We all

38:22
have the means to contribute something meaningful to figuring this out. Absolutely, we do. I just hope other people jump on board because we need everybody. We sure do. Well, I want to end this by saying that I think that people don't understand that once they are buying stuff at the grocery store,

38:46
The farmer has already been paid for whatever it is that they produce. So if you buy stuff on sale, you are not hurting the farmer. Don't worry about that. If you need to buy a burger on sale, buy it on sale so you can feed your family. The middle man is doing just fine. In fact, I have some concerns, some transparency issues, but we got to be real honest about that.

39:11
For every action, there is an equal reaction. what we are seeing is, even in my own local grocery store in Nebraska, we are on a surge, we're catching up with the push to raise the minimum wage. Again, a whole nother conversation, but you can't complain about the price of groceries when you're also saying we've got to increase wages. It's just the natural course of things. But you're right. The middle people, they're getting compensated just fine.

39:40
And whatever you're paying in the grocery store has nothing to do with what the farmer or rancher is receiving. I say this all the time, but I'm going to say it again. You guys learn to cook from scratch. You will save yourself so much money and you will eat better. 100%.

40:03
oh it's not hard, you just got to learn how to do it. Once you learn how to do it, you've got it. It's like riding a bike. You never forget how to cook once you learn how to cook. Yup. uh I love, I adore Jennifer Garner and she has a show on Facebook called her Pretend Cooking Show. I don't know if you've seen it. I have not. Her recipes are a little fancy for me. Sometimes her ingredients are things that I wouldn't say, quote, everyday people have access to and all.

40:31
But she is so relatable. She's so fun. She's pulling out old cookbooks that were her grandmother's, et cetera. And I adore it. And she is doing that. She's a Hollywood type. She could have a home chef. She doesn't. She is in the kitchen preparing her food from scratch and feeding her family. If she can do it, others can do it. So more of that. That's what we need to see.

40:59
Yes, and even if the thing that you cook doesn't turn out perfect, but it's edible, you can still eat it. made a loaf of, I tried to make a loaf of sourdough. Today's Tuesday, Sunday, and I'm not good at this yet. I've only made one. This is the second loaf I've made. And I followed the recipe with my active sourdough starter and it was not rising the way it was supposed to.

41:24
And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to bake it anyway. If it's a brick, it'll go to the chickens. And if it's not a brick and it's edible, I will eat it. And it was edible. It was underproofed because it didn't want to rise. And I ate some of it and it's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. When in doubt, bakers can always blame the weather, blame the humidity, blame the fog, blame the wind.

41:48
Well, I think what went wrong is it was only 70 degrees in my house because it was cold outside on Sunday. It only got to 67 degrees here on Sunday. think winter is coming early. I'm just having this feeling. We're about due for a hard winter and I don't want to be a worry ward, but I certainly want to make my plans accordingly. We always plan for it to be a bad winter and that way if it's a good winter, we're good. And if it's a bad winter, we're ready. 100%. Smart lady.

42:19
All right, Leah, thank you so much for coming to chat with me about this because I just, needed to talk to somebody who's actually in the business who could be honest with me. I appreciate it. Anytime. Well, I'm passionate about it. I'm not as informed on the actual statistics day by day of where things are and how they're going. I can tell you because I am a person who has to write a big check to pay the property taxes that at least here in Nebraska, as I said,

42:47
There is a great reckoning coming because while we have these really high dollars for cattle being sold at market, our inputs continue to skyrocket. And what I think we're actually seeing is the devalue of the dollar itself. m people aren't gaining ground. And we need to because one day the numbers are going to tumble, but the inputs are not going to. And then where will that leave us? And it breaks my heart to think that I couldn't.

43:17
positively sell this dream to another young person because it won't be possible. I mean, I just can't bear the thought that that optimism would have to leave me. So it's coming. ah It may be upon us already. um There are young people who are really intrigued and interested in this and

43:45
And being okay with the hard work used to be the biggest part of the battle. But now it is the capital outlay. Being able to manage the risk financially um has outpaced the worry about being able to get the work done. Yep, absolutely. All right, Leah, where can people find you?

44:10
You can find me on Facebook because I'm old fashioned at Clear Creek Ranch Moms. don't think Facebook is old fashioned. I just think the young kids want us older folk to feel old. That's what I think. I did hear. So we've been serving our students this summer and our students are between 18 and 30 years of age. They all say they get on Facebook as a source of reliable information. They just don't interact. They do get on there to find

44:39
credible information, which is interesting that that's the way they put it, but they just don't post, they don't share, they don't do that kind of stuff. But they still like to go online on Facebook to look for credible information. That really scares me. I don't like that at all. And maybe they were referring to posts made by about workshops and educational opportunities, which is where we share a lot of our things on Facebook about upcoming events and things. But yeah, I was chuckling.

45:08
for sure. Those kids have no idea what it's going to be like in 25 years for them. sake. I'm very concerned and I appreciate being able to have a real conversation with you because it is getting harder and harder for people to discern fact from fiction when they read what is created by chat GPT or an AI voice knowing are you even looking at something that is real or not. Yeah, it's another.

45:38
conversation for another day. Yeah, for sure. We should just like schedule a call every five, every week for five weeks to hit the five things we didn't talk about today. Anytime, anytime. All right. As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Leah, thank you so much for your insight and your wisdom. And I know you said you're not an expert, but you are wise about this stuff. Thank you. You are a wonderful place for people together and to

46:08
and find community and support one another. Keep up the good work. I'm trying every day. And my podcast is two years old tomorrow. Can you believe that? anniversary. Thank you. All right. I'm going to catch you, You have a great day. You do the same. Thank you, Mary. Bye.