Green, Precious Years, Inflation Cure
Green. I love this time of year. The dormant ground coming back to life. Grass is growing but still not fast enough to stop feeding hay. Almost 150 of the 200 recently purchased hay rolls have been fed. Thankfully, I’ll be feeding less and less from here on out as grass comes on.
The beautiful days early in the week probably should’ve resulted in this farmer being more productive than I was. Though my notes app has a long list of spring projects that have been patiently waiting all winter for my attention, playing with the kids in the yard somehow made its way to the top of the list. For the past 15 years or so I’ve been devoted to tackling farm projects. In another 15 years, there will still be just as many farm projects to do. There won’t always be beautiful spring days to play with my 10 year old Hallie, 8 year old Hasten, 6 year old Wren, and almost 4 year old Cart. Only so many days of holding little Leon until he won’t want to be held. In a matter of days he’ll be out of our laps and chasing his older siblings right into adulthood. Trying to squeeze the most out of this season and not take these moments for granted. I know how precious these days are. And how fast they go by.
Leon is getting acclimated to life on the farm. He slept through his first cattle crossing while Amy blocked the road. He sleeps through most things. We got ORVF beef back from the processor Wednesday morning which he also slept through. When does wake up, there are four big siblings chomping at the bit for a chance to hold him and give their attention.
More freezer work yesterday as we filled orders and coolers for the coming week. I’m making the quarterly delivery to NC today. No farmers market tomorrow. Knoxville delivery on Monday. Bristol and Kingsport Thursday. Marion and Abingdon next Saturday. Then Chilhowie the following Monday. If you’d like to fill up your freezer, we’d love to help.
Have you noticed the steady climbing of prices at the grocery store? Do you wonder what those same groceries are going to cost 6-8 months from now? Though I try not to think about it, that doesn’t stop the prices from rising. Our meat prices also rise and unfortunately will likely continue to rise so long as our costs increase. To be straightforward, our goal is not to produce the cheapest meat we can. We want to produce the best meat we can by raising the best animals we can. That being said, we want to make it as affordable and budget friendly as we can without compromising our quality. When you join the ORVF herd share subscriptions, you are locking in your meat prices for the next 12 months. Though store prices will rise and fall… keep rising, your herd share prices will stay the same for a whole year. And more importantly, it will all come from cows, pigs, and chickens raised right here on the farm. Try doing a background check on the meat you get from the store.
Speaking of prices, Milton Freedman’s MONEY MISCHIEF has me all fired up about inflation.
“The higher prices means that the money people have in their pockets or in safe deposit boxes or on deposit at banks will now buy less than it would have before… the extra money printed is equivalent to a tax on money balances.”
“The cure for inflation is simple to state but hard to implement. Just as an excessive increase in the quantity of money is the one and only important cause of inflation, so a reduction in the rate of monetary growth is the one and only cure for inflation. The problem is not one of knowing what to do. That is easy enough. Government must increase the quantity of money less rapidly. The problem is to have the political will to take the necessary measures. Once the inflationary disease is in an advanced state, the cure takes a long time and has painful side affects.”
“A more instructive analogy is one between inflation and alcoholism. When the alcoholic starts drinking, the good affects come first. Bad affects come only the next morning when he wakes up with a hangover and often cannot resist easing the hangover by taking the hair of the dog that bit him. The parallel with inflation is exact. When a country starts on an inflationary episode, the initial affects seem good. Increased quantity of money allows whoever has access to it, nowadays primarily governments, to spend more without anybody else having to spend less. Jobs become more plentiful, businesses brisk, almost everybody is happy. At first. Those are the good affects. But then the increased spending starts to raise prices. Workers find that their wages, even if higher in dollars, will buy less. Businesses find that their costs have risen, so that the higher sales are not as profitable as has been anticipated unless prices can be raised even faster. The bad affects are emerging. Higher prices, less buoyant demand, inflation combined with stagnation. As with the alcoholic, the temptation is to increase the quantity of money still faster which produces the kind of roller coaster the United States has been on. In both cases, it takes a larger and larger amount of alcohol or of money to give the alcoholic or the economy the same kick. The parallel between alcoholism and inflation carries over to the cure. The cure for alcoholism is simple to state: stop drinking. But the cure is hard to take because this time the bad effects come first, the good effects later… So also with inflation, the initial side effects of the slower rate of monetary growth are painful. Lower economic growth and temporary higher unemployment without for a time much reduction in inflation. The benefits begin to appear only after one or two years or so…”
The way I see it, our nation has two options. Both involve economic hard times. Either we can keep pumping printed money into the economy until it crashes and the dollar isn’t worth anything. Or we can vote in politicians who are willing to balance the budget. (I know, such politicians are hard to come by). A balanced budget will no doubt produce some hard times in the short term. But continuing down the road we’re on will produce much harder times in the not so far off future. Our government is economically intoxicated. And it keeps turning to the financial bottle to fix it.
I’m not trying to be negative, but I want to be real. I try to be positive. And I am positive that road we’re going down, if uncorrected, is going to end up real negative. But it doesn’t have to be. The future always hinges on the present and what we do with it.
Have a good week.
Will