A Day In The Life of a Living History Farmer

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A Day In the Life..

Drove to town today with a light snow coming down. The ATM didn’t like my cash deposit, so I had to repeat it 3 times, in the rain. The Carl’s Jr. drive-thru AI screen kept trying to increase my order to larger and larger combos, but I persisted, “No, just a western bacon cheeseburger and a bottle of water, please.” I had to fight with the artificial female voice several times to avoid all the additions she was proposing. “Believe me,” I told the computer girl, “there’s no greater friend of capitalism than this guy, but I really just want a western bacon cheeseburger.”

I parked, prayed, and enjoyed that barbecue sauce and cheese and bacon and beef and bread intensely. I refined my theory on food: I am really after the sauce, never the main course. The barbecue sauce, which makes my steering wheel sticky, is what I’m really ordering. It’s the same with fish sticks (tartar sauce) and baby carrots (ranch dressing). Mary makes this al dente angel-hair pasta bathed in a kind of crunchy, browned-butter, garlic “savory-paint” that has spoiled me for plain wet pasta. The “primary thing” is the excuse for the herbal decoration.

I work this all out and then, on the way home, ponder the mystery of a question I keep putting before God: “scripture and romance.” God never explains this to me in very precise terms. The puzzle goes something like this. The very FIRST command God gives man is not “don’t eat the fruit of that tree.” The very first command is “have babies.” (Look it up.) But THEN in the New Testament, celibacy is actually pitched as a higher calling. Solomon’s wife is hot, but be careful how you look at her, because if she stirs any desire in you, then you are committing.. well you know. “Explain this,” I ask the Man upstairs, “to me, okay?” The Old Man smiles at me but remains silent.

At home, I take my blood pressure. It is WAY down. 105 over 75. I’m a guy who registers 180 over 120 regularly. This might be better living through chemistry, better drugs, or it might be magnesium. When I ponder the avalanche of supplements pitched in Instagram — Ryze mushroom coffee, beef and deer liver pills, cortisol milkshakes, weird foot baths that pull gross stuff out of your body — I think back to matrix algebra in college and multivariate analysis. We live in a world where MILLIONS of different stimuli bombard us daily. How do we figure out which variables to control?
Back at my desk, trying to figure out how to get you up to see Revolutionary Evenings and Finnegan’s Wake. I did a bulk email yesterday and it brought in lots of orders, but I still need more of you to take a break and discuss life with me..

What about a day in the life post? Hmmm…

Will that work?

My Son, Sam

My son Sam tonight, (paraphrasing): “Dad, if every Christian in this country rose up and locked arms, abortion would be utterly conquered. The powers that be would crumble.”
We forget that the church is a MIGHTY ARMY. We forget that the “gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Think about that. How many of us wake up thinking, “oh, there’s so much evil in the world. I can’t expect any victory here on earth.”
Oh, ye of little faith!
America was built on the optimism of Christian faith, Christian prayer, Christian scholars, and Christian soldiers. We don’t have to beg for a corner in the palace. WE OWN THE PALACE. Start acting like the princes you were born to be.
His ministry, Abolitionists Rising, takes the message onto college campuses, Sunset boulevard, Washington DC, and the world. You should follow it. It’s a lesson in love, courage and FAITH.

First Amendment Update

Today, (2/18/2026) we filed our third appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, (where we have won twice on the injunctive relief issue). If you had asked me, in high school or college, whether Americans would ever fight to end the First Amendment, by giving government the right to penalize “unapproved” speech, or their version of “misinformation,” I would have scoffed. All over the world, governments — facing citizen journalism on the internet — are pushing hard to make sure you only think what they want you to think. If you want to join the fight, consider a contribution: RileysFarm.com/Fight

The Holiness of Ridicule

Imagine you sat in the tavern with me, and I said..
“I saw something yesterday, here on the farm, that was flat-out hilarious. There were these five blind guys, each of them with with an “ICE Out” t-shirt, holding hands, FOLLOWING another BLIND GUY. The fellow in front walked them right over the berm and into the stream ditch. They fell all over each other.”
..Or I listened to some diatribe from a woman who was lecturing me about supporting the surgical transition of “gender confused” children, and she called me “hateful and intolerant” for opposing it, and I told her: “You know what you are? You are like rotting, dead, stinking flesh in a polished casket.”
..Or I chastised a fellow believer for acting like a whore who “spread her legs” and didn’t even bother collecting any cash for it.
..Or I lectured a bunch of legalist dudes and told them, “you should just cut off your whole p*cker, you ‘stupid’ Galatians.”
Those are very close embroideries on Jesus, Ezekiel and Paul.
Obviously, we shouldn’t go out of our way to pepper our language with gratuitous vulgarity, but we need — I repeat — to remember the example of Jesus in using RIDICULE. There is a purpose for it. When you ridicule an evil, the little ones get it. They know what absurdities, what sins, what evils to avoid — because you have reserved some of your wrath, and mockery, to properly demonize those evils.
It never fails to puzzle me, the priorities of some believers: you could be witnessing some rugged old muleskinner, swearing up a storm as he beats a rapist to within an inch of his life, but there would be some believers who would lament his language.
CS Lewis: “..The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks..”

Family Feuds

Years ago, you may have followed a feud our family endured, very publicly, for several years. I’m happy to say it’s completely over, and has been for a very long time. We break bread. We have dinner with each other. We happily share customers. We work out our problems over a glass of wine. I genuinely look forward to Riley Family conversations, because my extended kin are some of the most interesting people I know. (You’ve never lived until you sit around a circle, listening to music that your own family is making.)
BUT, there is a fascinating sociological reality. When two or three grown men, with their own followings, duke it out over their differences, and then make up, their FOLLOWERS are the ones most likely to have a lot of trouble letting it go. After all, they have been out there defending you, and now — cough — you’ve made peace? Think of Jonah sent out to settle a fight between God and the Ninevites. Who was the most troubled by that peace? Jonah!
I think most of these folks, thankfully, have come to enjoy both sides of our no longer feuding family, but for a few years, I would approach someone and I would get the distinct feeling they weren’t sure if they could smile at me.
Hilarious. (The human condition.)

What Riley’s Farm Has in Common With Ben & Jerry’s

From time to time, I have to clear this up: people sometimes wonder why the owners of an apple farm have opinions about a political candidate, or legislation, or art, or pop music, or religion.
I find this startling. If you care about your nation, your family, your history, your heritage, wouldn’t you want to have vigorous discussions with the people you serve in your business? Wouldn’t those customers value knowing where you stand? This “assumed gag-order” on small business discussion feels something like suburban isolation: people who live on the same street know almost none of their neighbors very well. It is the covenant of silence: “don’t tell me what you believe because I don’t want to risk not liking you.”
When did we become so frail, so unwilling to trade ideas? Particularly conservatives, “values-voters,” Christians?
You surrender the ground to the sort of people who believe children should be mutilated to meet their weird mothers’ idea of gender identity. You let the crazies win by not speaking truth: “Acme Construction Supports the Second Amendment.” When you announce your beliefs, (which are really held by the majority of sane people) you let them know their favorite contractor, their favorite antique store, their favorite apple farm all stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
You might lose the crazies, but you will keep the customers, and friends, you really need.

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This post was written by Jim Riley

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