Last week we butchered one of our lambs. My two boys sat in the dirt and watched the whole thing.

I'm not going to show you any of it. No blood, nothing. This isn't that kind of episode. But I am going to be honest about what the day actually was.

I believe if you can't kill what you eat, you shouldn't be eating meat. I think it's wrong to hand that off to someone else and then look down on the people who do it. So we raised this animal, we fed it, and when the time came we did the hard part ourselves and I let my sons see where their food comes from.

Then they drank a soda in the dirt and went back to being kids, because to them it was just another day on the farm. Maybe that's the whole thing right there.

A note before you start: nothing graphic is shown or described in detail. If the subject isn't for you, skip this one. But if you've ever wondered where your meat comes from, this is an honest look at it.

No Signal. Life happens when you put the phone down.

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My grandpa kept this tractor running for years with a pair of vice grips clamped to the battery terminal. It worked, until I went to fix it the right way and the whole connector broke off in my hand.

This is the tractor that moves the chicken tractor and mows the fields. When it went down, the farm went with it. So I spent the afternoon working backward through it, a spliced starter wire with no nuts and no tape, an ignition with power but no crank, corrosion, and finally a broken terminal I had to replace with a part pulled off my grandpa's '65 Fairlane. One old machine fixing another.

My grandparents are 85 and 83 and still out here every day. Grandpa's at the tractor with me. Grandma walks up in the middle of it to ask about her computer. The analog and the digital, back to back.

Life happens when you put the phone down.

I came over to work on the siding. I left having torn out the whole outdoor kitchen behind my grandparents' garage.

It had been rotting for years. My grandma wanted it gone. My grandpa didn't. He came out, no hearing aids in, not in a good mood, told me to do whatever I wanted, and walked off. So I started anyway. The thing was pulp underneath; you could see why it had to go.

Then he came back out and said, "take it all down."

He's a complicated man. He's been in a lot of pain lately, and he hasn't been easy, on me, or on my grandma. But I keep showing up. This one's about that.

Life happens when you put the phone down.

• (00:00) - 30 Second Intro
• (00:30) - Main
• (03:00) - 30 Second Outro