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Welcome to episode 7 of The 'Steadcast: New Year on the farm and firearm needs on the homestead featuring an interview with Dan Lanotte of Falcon personal security.

Happy New Year, 'steaders! It's 2016! One of the things that struck me about the changes we've made to ourselves and our world views taking on this homesteading project is that I don't find myself saying things like “It's 2016, and still no flying cars.” I don't want a flying car any more. I don't want a real hoverboard – and certainly not those no-handle segway deathtrap firebombs they're selling nowadays. What is “the future?” The future is when the windbreak pines are tall. The future isn't a talking robot that serves drinks, it's when the soil is built up around here enough to support grazing animals. The future looks a lot like what the past did. Just without the whole dysentery and wacky ranchers waging range wars and stuff. Oh... wait. Maybe not the range war part if you're reading the news about Oregon. Yup, I went there.

I think we've got a good show for you today. I had a fascinating conversation with Dan Lanotte of Falcon Personal Security. He's a NRA instructor, firearm and security consultant and all around good guy I've known for several years now as part of the Eastern Plains Chamber of Commerce in Falcon.

But first, updates around the farm:

* The Christmas and New Years holidays marked our mostly annual trip out to Southern California to see both sides of the family, get out of the wind and cold a little, and visit the water that Colorado is forced to take from the ranchers and farmers of the mountains and send down that way.
* It's also sometimes known as the annual pilgrimage to California to remind us why it's okay that we left California. Of course it's great visiting with family and friends over the holidays, but stepping out of the truck back here on the farm after two weeks in suburbia? Going from being able to see basically the next house over to our 175 mile views here? It was something special.
* That said, we did see some promising things out there as far as the grow-your-own food movement. We gifted a special little mini-garden tray for microgreen growing to Tera Lynn's parents. TL's brother and his family were proud to show off a really nice batch of tomatoes and peppers they grew in their garden and they're getting kale other winter greens going, and the across-the-street neighbors had a small flock of backyard chickens in the middle of a planned golf course community!
* But there are still some negative things we noticed out there: Standard factory farm chicken eggs at Walmart were going for $4.28 a dozen. We sell our epic pasture raised natural eggs of awesomeness for between $3.50 and $4.00 a dozen. $4.28 for standard factory eggs? Are you kidding me? And it's December when we saw that, WAY after the whole bird flu thing so don't tell me it's still part of the whole egg shortage thing, because that's over and done. Their organic eggs were going in the $6s and the alleged pasture raised eggs – which props to a walmart for carrying that, you can only really find those at whole foods around here – were in the $8s. I told one of my fellow reporters from the herald that, and she messaged me that I should start shipping our eggs to CA with those kinds of prices. Which at first I said “yeah, but interstate commerce for eggs is a whole thing that's just as bad as chicken meat,” but at $8 a dozen, maybe I'll have to research that more.
* And of course, going from the land of $1.71 a gallon gas to the land of between $3.01 and $3.89 a gallon gas is a big shock.
* Meanwhile, back at the ranch – as they say on the old westerns...