We are continuing to sell our beef direct to the customer through our deliveries to Red Deer and Sylvan Lake, Calgary and Edmonton. We are choosing not to do any farmers markets again this year as increasing regulations and costs are making it too expensive to be able to give our customers the best price possible. We are continually looking for new ways to meet our customers needs so hopefully soon, we will have some exciting news to share.

Our family continues to grow. Aidan is working on his commercial pilots’ license. Liam joined the army and is in basic training right now. Therese is in Red Deer College studying business. Joey is working trying to save some money for college in the fall. The rest of the kids are at home with their mom, Lori, homeschooling.

Thank you for checking out the website.

When you want some of Alberta’s best organic grass-finished beef, please let us know!

I had a breakdown with my bale shredder, so I had to go to town at noon to buy a part. I was back home by 1 and kept feeding. When I finally parked the tractor at the end of the day as the sun was setting (5 PM in Alberta in January), I realized that I had not eaten all day.

I had not eaten a bite, and I was not hungry. No hunger pains. No insane cravings for food. Nothing. I felt good.

I went in the house, started defrosting some ground beef for patties, did my exercises and then cooked five nice big patties.

The most interesting thing about going #carnvore is the way your body adjusts to the new diet. The desire for carbs, the craving for sugar, and the desire for other foods disappear. The way it was explained to me is as you starve out the bacteria in your gut that digest certain foods, the bacteria die off and stop telling your brain that you need the food they desire. The first few days can be very tough with cravings. But you need to outlast the bacteria, and the cravings disappear. The bacteria will die off before you do.

I went 24 hours with no food. I had an active day and was working from 7:30 – 5 PM, and I felt great with no cravings.

And what are the results for seven days?
I have lost 1 lb.

Let me first express my frustration with that. Seven days of denial and saying no to all the little things that could make life a little more enjoyable and those are the results? 1 lb? Disappointing.

On the other hand, it has been effortless. I have no cravings, I am not hungry, my body feels content, and I am not miserable at all. I feel great. That is not right. I feel awesome. My mind feels focused. My mind is slow and calm, and not racing around from thought to thought.

I feel good. And I get to eat food like the roast in the picture! Win Win!

I wish the weight was coming off a little faster.

Oh well. I will keep going on with this.
Onwards and Upwards!

I primarily eat beef. Who would have guessed? An organic grass-finished beef producer would like to eat beef?

I also eat chicken, pork, fish, dairy products and coffee.

The reason I eat lots of beef is that it agrees with me. I call it my neutral food – my base. I feel satiated after I eat it, I feel content and happy when I eat it. There is a high enough fat content in the beef that I do not feel famished or low on energy when I eat it.

The thing you need to remember is that the food you eat affects you. A small dose of Tylenol (1/2 gram) and dissolve a headache and change how you feel. That is what drugs do. The sugar in Coke changes how you feel and how you behave.

Food is the same. The food you eat affects you.

As I learn more about the stomach and the microbiome, I see the connection between the food that you eat, the gut bacteria that digest it for you, and the relationship between those gut bacteria and your brain.

Beef is my base food. I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel any adverse reaction to it.

After you eat only your base food for a while and then add other foods back in your diet, you notice how they make you feel – both physically and emotionally.

I like chicken. I find it is too lean for me. When I eat chicken, I don’t feel satiated by it because it is so lean. I need to eat the drippings where the fat is to make me full. It is the fat in the meat that gives me the satisfied feeling. I could eat and eat until I am stuffed but it is only when I eat enough fat that I feel content, not just full. I hope that makes sense.

I also eat pork. When I eat beef, I feel content, and my emotions stay level. Pork has a funny effect on me. Within 12 hours of eating pork, I get a terrible feeling – almost a sense of paranoia, a feeling of impending doom. Many people think that sounds crazy. Honestly, it seems crazy to me. It took me eating pork 4-5 times before I made this connection. My best guess is that there is something in pork that is released when I am digesting it that gives me a bad feeling. Maybe it is just a coincidence.

Fish does nothing for me. It doesn’t fill me up. It feels like I am eating air. I have never been a big fan of seafood. I think it is my German-Polish landlocked roots that cause my genetics not to appreciate seafood.

I eat dairy. I have a buttered coffee every day in the morning. I put heavy cream in my coffee. I will drink milk. I eat cheese and use it to make cheeseburgers. Dairy is my cheat food.

Coffee and alcohol are topics for another day.

It was a beautiful day with temperatures reaching up to 10C. I have boys here off of work for the holidays, so we took advantage and did one of the big jobs here on the farm.

We did the big sort and processed all the calves, and in the process, I stepped over 17 000 steps, at least according to my Fitbit.

The strange thing is that I wasn’t hungry all day. I didn’t eat breakfast; we didn’t stop for lunch, and we worked from before sunrise to sunset.
This is the fantastic thing about the carnivore diet. I don’t experience hunger anymore.

When I would eat the SAD way (Standard American Diet), I would be hungry within a few hours of eating. I would have to stop working and refill my stomach, and then have a snack before bed. I was constantly hungry.

But now, it is entirely different.

I wake up and have a buttered coffee to get some good fats in my system and then I don’t eat. I don’t experience hunger even though I can go up to 20 hours without eating. Sometimes I will experience a decline in energy mid-afternoon, so I have to decide whether to have a heavy cream coffee or eat my meal for the day.

After this long day, I had four hamburger patties (about 1lb of ground beef), and I was completely satiated and content with no desire to snack on foods before bed.

It was a good day!

The hardest part about eating carnivore is when you are invited out somewhere for a meal. My Dad and Mom had a New Years Day meal. I attended with my wife and kids. My brother had brought his daughters as well. It was a lovely roast beef and pork dinner with all the fixings – potatoes, carrots, salad, and other tasty things to eat. I am sure you can picture it (and perhaps taste it as well!)
So what was on my plate? Just the meat. It seems a little strange to look down at your plate and see only beef and pork with all this other fantastic food.

So why am I doing this? At the end of 2017, I topped the scale at 220 after putting on 10 lbs in 60 days after I was elected to the local municipal council. I started by going keto, and then after listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast with Dr. Shawn Baker, I made the switch to carnivore.I had great success, and by August I was down to 195 lbs.

In August, my wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary, and I started ‘expanding’ on what I would allow myself to eat. A beer here, a dessert here, and you know the story. Once you start treating yourself, it is so hard to stop.

It is easier to go cold turkey on this diet than to moderate yourself.

When you throw in a trip to Vegas with the wife for a holiday, and then three weeks of budget and many days of long meetings and public consultations, it was easy to see that more was ‘expanding’ than just the foods I was eating. I was expanding.

I stepped on the scale this morning and was at 208. Crap. I was up 10 lbs from my low weight in August.

It feels like it was a year of denying myself wasted. Six months to slowly take it off and then six months to slowly put it back on.

So, to make a long story short, I am back at it. I should be happy that I am 12 lb lighter from 365 days ago, but I am not.

My goal for 2019 is to end it at 190, and my goal for World Carnivore Month is to finish it 8 lbs lighter.

But it is what we grow below our feet that is more important.

We don’t want to degrade our farm and our soils. Our goal is to regenerate the soil, to improve our land and to make things better for the next generation.

Ultimately, we don’t just grow beef. We grow people. We grow families.

Our farm has raised 5 generations of Hovens, and we want to help you raise yours.

June is my favorite time of year.

To go out every morning and to see these magnificent beasts grazing, moving, resting just like the big herds of the ancient days acted is inspiring.  The grass is green and growing.  The soil is moist from spring rains and snowmelt.  The air is crisp in the early morning and hot in the afternoon.

You can see the contentedness of all the grass-fed cattle in their faces and in their behavior.  I have made the comment many times that we have happy cows.  This is the time of year when you can see it in every bite they take.

I love it.

We are working on some big plans for August, and we can’t wait to share them with you all.

The secret to making healthy soil is to put the most cattle on the smallest area of the earth for the shortest period.

This picture shows our animals moving onto a new field. We make the highest stock density possible, and day after day, year after year, the soil improves. As the ground improves, the grass improves, then the cattle eat the grass and fertilize the land with their dung and urine, and the soil continues to improve.

This is a healthy ecosystem cycle, and it is what we do here at Hoven Farms.

It is our belief that in order to be part of a healthy ecosystem, families need to be connected to the soil.  The easiest way for that to happen is through the food that you eat.

We are posting to Instagram stories so families can see what we do to grow your grass finished organic beef.

Take a minute or two and look at some beautiful pictures of our cows and our farm.  Watch the Instagram stories we produce.  Get in touch with nature and how organic food production really works.

Follow Tim and the Farm Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/hovenfarms/

Follow Lori and her view of Farm Life at https://www.instagram.com/mrs_hovenfarms/

See you online!

-Tim