Learn to Butcher. Learn to Live.

Ken Daniels
Jun 21
9 min read

My second time around at Crunchy Mama Farms hit different.

The first trip was a reckoning. My body was failing, my left eye nerve severely damaged. I arrived broken, searching for something that couldn’t be found in a clinic or in a bottle. And somehow, there between the steel tables and the burn of the Texas sun I found it. The work, the animals, the people, the silence between kills — it became a kind of baptism. I left changed.

This time, I came back stronger. The eye had returned. My limbs steadier. The mind clearer. I was ready to give something back. Maybe teach. Maybe just lend a hand. But I should’ve known, Crunchy Mama Farms always gives more than it takes.

Read about my first trip to Crunchy Mama Farms:

Blood Sugar Chef at Crunchy Mama Farms

The Welcome

Driving up the long gravel approach to Crunchy Mama Farms, there's a moment where the noise of the world fades. It gets replaced with something quieter. Not silence, but peace. Your chest unclenches. You exhale for the first time in weeks.

The air is thick with Texas humidity, heavy enough to feel like it’s pressing on your shoulders. The grass crunches beneath your boots. Greenish yellowed, sun-scabbed, and brittle at the edges. The sun is relentless, baking the concrete pads around the processing station until even the shade feels warm.

Then there’s the smell.

It’s not unpleasant. It’s just different. A mix of sweet hay and burned hog hair, like a backwoods barbecue that hasn’t started yet. There’s blood too. Iron-rich, unmistakable, clinging to the back of the throat like copper pennies. You can smell the minerally well water as it evaporates off the floor, earthy and alive. It’s everything at once. Primal, clean, sacred, and a little feral.

There’s sound too — not loud, but constant. Knives scraping against bone. Cows in the field. A deep wind that blows against a million blades of Texas grass and oak leaves.

The students had gathered, wide-eyed, like it was last time. Part nervous, part curious, part trying not to look like they’re holding their breath.

And then there’s Shawn Kelly.

The Man With the Gun

Shawn Kelly doesn’t announce himself. He doesn’t need to. His presence lands before he does. Weighty, grounded, and undeniable.

He walks like someone who’s carried more than most. Not slouched, not worn but built from years of hard lessons, heavy lifting, and the kind of work that doesn’t get posted online. There's a stillness to him. Not passive, but coiled. Intentional. Like a coiled spring, or a seasoned warrior who knows he doesn’t have to prove anything anymore.

He’s a builder of places, of people, of meaning. The kind of man who teaches you not by talking, but by doing. He built this farm with his own hands. Built it with Amy, who brings her own kind of strength. Quieter, maybe, but no less fierce. Together, they’ve built something not just functional, but foundational.

And when it’s time to harvest, when life has to pass so others can eat, Shawn doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t harden either.

He lines up his shot not with arrogance, but with reverence. He practices. Not just once. Not just when there’s an audience. He trains his eye and his hand over and over again, even between slaughters, like a medieval executioner obsessed with precision. Not for sport. Not for pride. For mercy.

Because if the shot is off. Even by an inch, the animal suffers. And Shawn would never allow that.

After the shot, when the limbs twitch and the breath leaves, there's a pause. I’ve watched him closely. His face doesn’t show much. But there’s a stillness that settles into his chest, just for a moment. Every time. The weight of the act presses in, almost taking a piece of him as sacrifice. Not enough to break him, but enough to remind him, and us, that this isn’t casual. It’s not routine. It matters. Life matters.

That’s why I trust him.

That’s why I learn from him.

Three Hogs

The hogs this time were thick, healthy, content. Clean, even. They weren’t panicked. There’s a peace to animals raised right. You can see it in how they move. You can feel it in how they don’t resist the inevitable.

You spend enough time with them, and your instincts start to shift. You stop seeing them as meat, and start seeing them as companions. Which is dangerous. Because they’re not pets. They’re provision.

These animals were raised to serve a purpose. Not in some utilitarian, cold-blooded way. But with reverence. They were cared for, fed well, protected from suffering. All so they could offer themselves in a way that honors both them and those who will be fed by them.

When the moment came, it was swift. The shot cracked. The heart stuttered. The limbs jerked once, then twice. Then stillness.

It wasn’t cinematic. It wasn’t dramatic.

It was clean. It was final. It was sacred.

The Asshole

Nobody ever talks about this part. But they should.

Once the kill is done, once the skin’s been scraped and the belly opened, there’s a job that comes next. A specific one. A delicate one.

Pulling the asshole.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not Instagrammable. But it’s essential.

You’re elbow-deep in the backside of a hog. There’s a delicate weave of tissue, colon, glands, and sinew. You don’t want to cut wrong. Because if you do, the entire cavity floods with shit. It clings. It ruins everything. The meat, the moment, the mood.

Shawn handed me the blade. No words. Just a look. Trust and confidence, shared in a look.

I made the first cut. Clean, but too soft. Safe.

Shawn growled. Not mean. Just focused.

"Get in there! Push in!"

I hesitated. He growled again.

And I bristled. I’m a chef. I'm a world class sommelier. A leader in my industry. I’ve cooked for fucking international dignitaries. Arrogant? Maybe a little.

None of that matters when you’re shoulder-deep in a hog’s ass, hesitating, scared to break something. Your nose inches away from anus and a smell. There’s no escaping the scent. Sharp, rank, unmistakably and unignorable. I pride myself on picking out notes of blackberry and oak. Now I was cursing my sommelier nose because I could taste everything in the back of my throat.

Shawn brought me back into focus.

I shut up and I listened.

I pushed in harder.

And suddenly, it all made sense. The way the muscles tied together. The angle of the glands. The difference between gentle and precise. My wrists were dripping with fat and humility, and still something in me clicked.

This was beyond training. This was trust. Not just in my hands, but in his. In the act. In the moment.

He wasn’t just showing me how to process a hog. He was sharing his talent. Shawn's treasure to the world. His symphony in knife, flesh, and bone.

He was showing me how to stop hiding behind titles and do the damn work.

It was at that moment that Shawn, my friend, became a mentor.

Head Cheese and Hands

Day two.

The heat broke as we moved inside. The AC hummed like salvation.

We started into the cuts. Shoulders, ribs, chops. Things I knew by name but hadn’t handled in years. Not like this. My knife had grown soft from years of convenience. From butcher boxes. From ordering what I wanted, pre-trimmed and portioned, shrink-wrapped and easy.

Shawn asked if I could make head cheese.

“Yeah,” I said. “Been about 25 years. But yeah.”

Boil the head. Let the skin and fat bloom apart. The cheeks go first. Then the jowl, the ear, the tongue. Pull it all. Chop it. Boil the liquid down until it clings to the spoon like gelatin, almost clear. Pour it into a mold. Chill it until it holds shape.

Think Jell-O salad, if you replaced the fruit cocktail with Wilbur’s tongue and jowl.

That was my gift to the Shawn & Amy.

My hands. My time.

Not fancy. Just something from me, for them.

Sausage and the Sacred

Day three was sausage day. The real magic.

Bratwurst. Chorizo. Breakfast Sausage. Guanciale. Bacon.

You can tell Shawn's hands have made these blends a hundred times before, maybe more. He moves with precision. He salts by feel, folds in the spices like he's kneading bread. Everything done with confidence, but not ego. He talks as he works, but never wastes a word. There’s no flex. Just someone who knows what pork needs, and gives it.

And somewhere between the grind and the twist, I realized it. Shawn is just someone I respect. Not in some professional kitchen-hierarchy kind of way. But in the deeper sense.

He was shaping me. Quietly. Directly. Whether he realized it or not.

The skills he teaches, the cuts, the cures, the timing; they aren’t just technical. They’re ancient. Primitive in the best way. Caveman, stone blade in hand, taking down an animal, gutting it, feeding the tribe. That’s the lineage. That’s the thread that connects me and you, and every person that attends Crunchy Mama Farm back to the Neandertal.

They’ve got AI eating computer code and satisfying it's digital hunger. We’ve got a dead hog, a boning knife, and a cooler to fill before sundown. Call it primitive. Call it sacred. It’s the most honest work I’ve ever done. I'm becoming a butcher.

The Magic Still Lingers

Amy is the rhythm of the farm. The pulse under it all.

Her strength is different than Shawn’s, but just as steady. She sees everything. Anticipates everything. Feeds everyone; not with food, but with her presence.

The farm still hums with Amy’s love. It’s everywhere.

You see it in the tenderness between her and Shawn when they think no one’s looking. You hear it in the stillness of night when the work is done, and the world slows down, and the stars feel close enough to touch.

We went out for ice cream. Me, Amy, the girls.

I could only try a sample or two. That used to feel like sacrifice. Now it feels like survival. I’m a changed man. No more sugar. I want to live. I want to see — really see — with my left eye, and not waste the second chance I’ve been given.

The girls laughed like girls do, no idea they were sitting in the middle of something rare. Something most folks spend a lifetime trying to find — and still miss.

They don’t know it yet. How could they?

What their parents are building doesn’t show up all at once. It reveals itself slowly, in seasons, years measured by inches and penciled door jams, by the fearlessness lived by kids raised on a farm.

It took me decades to understand what it meant to grow up surrounded by something real.

The oldest daughter, nearly fourteen, learning to carry the fire her parents built with bare hands and quiet faith.

Their youngest boy, cradling a frog like it was treasure. Muddy hands, wide eyes, and no sense yet of how rare this life really is.

Their 9 year old daughter, cracking eggs, torching sugar, making crème brûlée with wonder in her eyes.

That’s legacy. That’s faith made flesh.

This farm isn’t just land. It’s not just a business.

It’s a covenant.

It’s a holy place.

The Invitation

Shawn shared something with me once, something from the early days, when this wasn’t yet a farm, just a dream whispered between two people brave enough to believe in something more.

When they left the city and stepped out into the quiet, Amy had her concerns. She had every reason to. The country can be vast in all the wrong ways. Too much space between you and the next porchlight, too much silence that doesn’t always feel like peace. She wondered if they were walking away from community. From connection. From the life they’d built.

And Shawn, steady as ever, made her a promise.

“I’ll bring the right people to you,” he said. “They’ll come.”

Not customers. Not influencers or likes or whatever the world pretends matters now.

People. Real ones. Who aren’t afraid to get blood on their hands. People who don’t just take. They give. They build. They become part of something they didn’t know they were missing until they got here.

He told me that story while we were standing drenched in bone and sweat, my boots soaked, my soul wide open. Surrounded by the kind of raw beauty and holy mess that only a slaughter weekend can offer. He shared it as a friend. Vulnerable.

He didn’t tell it with pride.

He told it like a confession.

Like a prayer finally answered after years of quiet asking.

And then he thanked me. Not for showing up. Not for being a friend.

He thanked me for being part of what Christ had promised.

And I haven’t let go of that since.

I carry it with weight. With reverence.

I don’t come here casually. I don’t show up to play expert.

I bring my time, my talent, and my treasure to this place, because what they’ve built deserves it.

You don’t just leave Crunchy Mama Farms with a cooler full of meat.

You leave with courage. With clarity. With connection.

You leave with your sleeves rolled up and something sacred under your fingernails.

For a few days, you are folded into something rare — a family that honors Christ, honors life, honors sacrifice, and opens the door wide enough for you to walk through, no matter how you arrive.

They let you in.

And you leave changed.

That’s the Crunchy way.

And this trip — this kill — this moment in the arc of something greater — was for Shawn.

Whether he wants the spotlight or not.