Are you feeling confused by all the executive orders, policy statements, and tweets about importing beef from other countries, and the shady, backdoor meetings that seem to go along with it? You're not alone. There's a massive amount of noise and uncertainty swirling around all of it.

Here's the good news: if you buy beef directly from us then worldwide trade issues and massive, monopolized beef systems aren't nearly as important, or as relevant, to you. When it comes down to it, we're talking about food — your food, and where it comes from. If you buy from us, you already know exactly where it comes from. You know who raised it and how it was raised. This is why we decided to start selling Wickens Ranch beef directly to Montanans.

And that's true for more of your food than you might think. We live in a new age, one where shipping, logistics, and technology give people more choice over where their food comes from than at almost any point in recent history. You are not stuck at the mercy of government policy or whatever a handful of massive companies decide to sell you. You have real control over your food supply, and that's a genuinely exciting thing.

Take Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, for example — the rules around whether beef has to say where it actually came from. Luckily, we don't have to wade into that debate, because it simply doesn't apply to us. Our beef goes from our ranch straight to your house. There's no blending, no mixing in products from somewhere else, no mystery to untangle. Big packers import beef from all over the world, blend it together, and sell it back to people as a slightly cheaper, unknown product. Whether or not that's good or bad for the country is honestly beside the point for us, because it doesn't touch what we do, which is helping people like you circumvent that system by purchasing beef directly.

Our beef is processed by the great folks at Stillwater Packing in Columbus, Montana — not by the big four packers. That was the reason we started selling direct in the first place: so we didn't have to depend on massive systems that were completely out of our control.

I hope more people realize they have complete control over where they spend their food dollars and what kind of systems they choose to support. This new age we live in has given all of us far more choices than we've had in the recent past, and we're excited to be here for the people who are paying attention, and who care.