Wolfe's Neck Farm Beef goes For Profit

This week's edition of MaineBiz magazine includes a feature about the Wolfe's Neck Farm brand of natural meats. Wolfe's Neck Farm, a not-for-profit located in Freeport, Maine, through it's Foundation for Agricultural Renewal has been selling it's naturally-grown meats for several years. The market for the product started out fairly small - farmer's markets and local restaurants and natural foods stores. Now WNF sells to large retailers (Hannaford and Whole Foods Markets) and high-end restaurants as well. With people becoming increasingly aware of what goes into their foods, and especially since the introduction of Mad Cow Disease to the US, demand for Wolfe's Neck's naturally grown beef (pasture fed, no hormones or antibiotics used, etc.) has rapidly increased. The operation, with revenues of $6.5 million last year and growing to an estimated $10-$16 million this year, has outgrown the scope of Wolfe's Neck Farm.

Now, with the support of the Portland-based philanthropic Libra Foundation, the WNF is spinning off the natural meats division to Pineland Farms Natural Meats Inc. Management will remain basically intact, and the new corporation will be housed at the Pineland Farms business center, located at the former Pineland mental health institution in New Gloucester, Maine. Because the Wolfe's Neck Farm label has become widely recognized it will continue to be used, though it may be complemented with the Pineland Farms Prime Beef label in the future.

I admit that I am usually skeptical about adding a "for profit" motive to a business model. When decisions are made solely with the bottom line in mind, bad things often happen to products and people. For now, however, it sounds like the current mission of FAR will be continued:

While Pineland Farms Natural Meats is in the midst of developing new business
strategies, (Erick) Jensen (founder of FAR) says its social purpose will remain the same: helping cattle farmers in Maine and beyond get the best value for their product, thereby
keeping farmland in production. “Now that we’re for-profit, we have the
resources to do that,” he says. Currently, the company has seven feedlots across
the state, with more than 4,000 head of cattle. Jensen would like to see the
number of feedlots increase by 30%-50% in the coming year.

My wife and I have made it a point to only purchase natural meats, and we have readily supported Wolfe's Neck Farm in our purchasing decisions. To the extent that this change makes natural meats more accessible and affordable, it can only be looked at as a positive. I will be optimistic that the company will be able to maintain its standards of quality as it continues to grow in the coming years.

An Axe to Grind

As a follow up to the "40" post, I'd like to comment on my fantastic birthday party. My wife and our good friends arranged to surprise me at the Sea Dog Brew Pub in Topsham. With family and friends on hand, we enjoyed good grub and good beer (and the occasional wine and lemonade) and celebrated me. (I guess this is a worthwhile endeavor, but I'm not always sure!) Everybody was very generous with gifts, which is much appreciated. The gifts fell generally into four categories: Red Sox stuff, golf stuff, "40" things (e.g. 40 plastic cups), and cooking gear. The granddaddy of them all, however, was from my wife. She apparently has been following my not-so-subtle hints (read: I haven't shut up about it), and she got me a beautiful Fender Toronado guitar. It's got a sunburst finish and a tortoise shell pick guard, and (unlike the model shown) has two single coil pickups rather than the humbuckers shown on the current model.

Oh, it's not the Jag-Stang that I've been lusting after since I laid eyes on the Sonic Blue beauty at the Music Center in Brunswick last winter. But it's a very similar guitar, and it's available (the Jag-Stangs were limited edition and aren't available through the standard retail channels at this time). It was also much more affordable (much to my relief). It's a second-hand model that is in terrific shape, but still cost about half of the retail price of a new one. Good shopping, honey! It's a wonderful instrument, and paired with the Ibanez practice amp that she purchased, it sounds great. It especially sounds great with the Overdrive button pushed. Distortion covers up for a lot of missed notes!

So now I'm 40, and I'm rocking, and I'm fully embracing my mid-life crisis! I hope to not overly annoy my ever-suffering partner with my poor guitar playing, but I'm really psyched with the gift. Thanks to her, and thanks to all who turned out for my party!

"40"

So I turned 40 years old yesterday. Because the first digit on the odometer has rolled over, and because it's pretty much in the middle of our expected life span (in the US anyway), it's a landmark birthday that often causes people to reflect on the state of their lives. And, what the Hell, I've got a Blog - why not me?

The question that I ask myself often these days is, "am I where I want to be in my life?" (Sometimes it comes in the form of, "Where am I in comparison to what I expected when I was younger?") It's not a suprise to the regular readers (reader?) of this Blog that there are changes that I would like to make, particularly with regard to my career. (And the update on the prior post is that I haven't heard yet from MaineBiz, so I'm guessing that they are not interested). I have known for probably 10 years that I don't enjoy my chosen career. Oh, there are times that it's kind of fun for me, but for the most part I look ahead on my career path and think, "that's not for me." Especially now as I peruse the job listings with regularity, I find myself looking at positions for which I'm very qualified and thinking, "Ick. I don't want to do that!" I also find myself (gasp!) Blogging at work. Writing when I should be accounting. This seems like another indicator that I don't desire a future that follows my present career path.

So, how did I get to this place? What kind of person will spend 10 years plugging away at a career that they don't like? I suppose that the easy answer to that one is, most US citizens spend their days at jobs they hate. But does that make it OK, and does that mean that I should just fall in line, suck it up and be miserable like the rest of you? I don't think so (which doesn't mean that I want the rest of you to be miserable, mind you), and I've got to do something about it. Which has been the problem in the past - I have been afraid to take risks in my life, for fear of losing the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to. But what good is maintaining that lifestyle if it's not making you happy, and you feel like it gets in the way of the pursuit of the things that do bring you joy?

It would be regrettable indeed if I were to wake up after another 40 years and say to myself, "well THIS has been a waste of time!"

So I'm making changes. There are things in life that bring me joy: my wife, my family, my friends, writing (and reading), baseball, nature & the environment, playing guitar, travelling and gardening foremost among them. What I find, however, is that working, commuting to and from work, and doing things to get ready to go to work (making lunches, ironing) take up a large portion of my waking hours, leaving precious little time for the things that I enjoy. Part of the solution is to make better use of my "free" time, which is part of the endeavor. Another part could be to generate my income while engaged in the activities that I enjoy. Since I'm unlikely to ever learn how to play guitar well enough to make a living in music, I am focused primarily on making the transition to a career as "working writer", though I would also pursue a finance opportunity for an environmental cause or a company that is providing alternative energy sources. While the MaineBiz thing didn't work out, I will be registering for a "How to Freelance" class this fall. Every step I take brings me more confidence that I will be successful one day in having a career that I enjoy.

And so I suspect it will follow that making the commitment toward my goals and continually making efforts to achieve them will lead me to a more fullfilling life as I navigate through my 40's. I have made changes in my personal values and in the way that I communicate that have led to a stronger relationship with my wife. I have made changes to my diet and exercise habits that allowed me to lose 50 pounds. I have made following my passions more of a priority, which has led me to my baseball scoring gig, to buy a guitar, and to write much more than in the past (evidenced by Joe's Family of Blogs!). It has led me to take a more active role in preserving the environment, by making better purchasing choices, recycling, and promoting my views via the Web. And so it will be with my career.

So am I where I want to be with my life? No, not really, but I'm getting there. I'm in good health, in pretty good shape financially, and have many valuable relationships with the people in my life. I'm headed in the right direction, which I probably would not have been able to say ten years ago. The first 40 years of my life haven't been an unqualified success, but the next 40 just may be.

The Cost of War

My friend David sent me the link to this website that tracks the fatalaties suffered by the "Coalition" forces in Iraq since the start of the war in March, 2003 (updated through August 4 of this year). It's an interesting graphic interpretation created by Tim Klimowicz that also includes sound, and it tracks the timing and location of deaths suffered by the US led forces. It's rather eye-opening in that it represents the breadth, in terms of both time and location, of the devastation suffered by our military forces. Log on also to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site to keep track of the numbers (2,047 total deaths, 1,853 of them US soldiers as of this writing).

Where this falls short (acknowledged by Mr. Klimowicz himself) is that it doesn't detail the loss of life suffered by the Iraqi "enemies". The President's ever-evolving goal in Iraq has been to eliminate Saddam Hussein (check), get rid of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (well, that one certainly backfired!), and eliminate the terrorist threat (not sure we ever had the right idea on this one, though). The numbers are difficult to come by, at least via US search engines, but the Iraq Body Count web site estimates roughly 23,000 - 27,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed in the war. This does not include military deaths, mind you. It's impossible to quantify how many of the dead were actual terrorists, but I suspect the number is somewhere south (far south) of 23,000.

Now, we know that anybody can put anything up on the Internet - I'm living proof of that. But the creators of this web site make the database readily available and cite two sources for each report. I think that it's a reasonable representation of the losses. And while the media in this country are centered on the loss of US lives, the real cost of war is measured in all human lives lost. Not all Iraqi citizens hate the United States. (Well, not before the war anyway.) The loss of these lives, especially the innocent lives, should be mourned by every US citizen as we ask if it's worth it, and why are we really there?