Posts Tagged → CutCo knives
Life and Love of the Knife
Since God created us humans, either in one quick master stroke or through a series of evolutionary steps (I don’t know which one and I don’t really care, because God is all powerful and can do anything He wants, and all we puny humans can try to do is figure it out as we muddle along), we have had a love affair with sharp edges. Blades, that is, which give our amazing but soft and weak hands the ability to cut, slice, stab, and pierce dangerous foes and animals, and render them into delicious roasted brontosaurus steaks. As Mogli says in “A Jungle Story,” his antagonist, the massive male tiger Shere Khan, may have his big teeth, but “I have my own tooth,” a sizeable steel knife blade affixed to a sturdy and dependable handle, with which Mogli is indeed a significant foe to all who would eat him.
To humans, the knife in all its forms – skinning blade, meat slicing blade, spearing blade, or stabbing sword blade – is our tooth, claw, and fang. It is our defense, a lifeline, and third arm in a world where most of the critters we have hunted, eaten, and clothed ourselves with often have a mouth full of knives as well as heads and hooves adorned with sharp and pointy edges, any one of which is instant doom to us. As a brief visit to the dinosaur and modern reptile exhibits in any respectable museum will show, we humans inhabit a world where history has had most of our battles and warfare with men and beasts alike determined by who had the bigger, faster, longer, sharper knife blade.
The Pleistocene is where modern humanity and our knives and spear blades came into Yin and Yang fusion, resulting in the extermination of even the largest and most dangerous of wild animals. And well into the 20th century, men everywhere across the planet daily adorned themselves with blades both practical and beautiful. In a world that is still always dangerous, blades have always represented us humans, and men in particular, as both useful and dangerous.
So is it any surprise that even today, in our sickly society filled with Toxic Femininity, men, particularly men, still have a love affair and deep personal connection with knives and blades of all sorts? It’s almost spiritual. Knives and sharp blades have been our constant companions since our species gained consciousness, and knives have been all that stood between us and death for over a hundred thousand years. Often in a hunter-gatherer society, a good knife is all a man needed to live a comfortable life. Nowadays, we habitually carry small pocket knives by Case so that we can accomplish small home chores easily. Serious blade length reduction! How far we have fallen! Are we still men, armed only with our tiny folding pocket knives?
I say yes, we are.
Because like so many millions of others, I am a masculine man and a not a Low T feminized and pathetic freak of self-loathing nature, and because I am an outdoorsman, and because I am against being or feeling helpless and defenseless, I use sharp blades all the time. A sharp edge is always on me or near me, so that a threatening saber toothed cardboard box can be quickly broken down and put into the recycling bin. That always makes my woman feel like the tipi is properly sorted out. Like thousands of generations of men (M-E-N of nose, ear, and back hair variety) before me, my appreciation and love of the knife has resulted in a life of the knife, and I celebrate that. It keeps me thoroughly human.
If you are a guy (born a man with a penis) or a practical woman (a human born with a vagina and female reproductive parts), or even someone caught in between both genders and yet nonetheless afflicted with a strong streak of self preservation and practical ability, I strongly suggest carrying the largest and most robust blade you can legally and practically use every day. Or just get some CutCo knives for your kitchen. It will make you feel like a million bucks, at night your hands will naturally paint beautiful primitive cave art on the walls of your basement, and you won’t ask yourself where that innate skill suddenly came from….because you will be acting organically like a natural and properly kitted out human being. These things naturally flow from one to the next.
Just be careful not to get too carried away with this knife thing. Buying knives easily becomes a habit or even an addiction. All for the right reasons, of course. It is hardwired in us.
My buddy Irv has a knife problem. As an electrician, he has many opportunities to seriously test all kinds of pocket knives and knife steels. But he yearns to strap a dozen sheath knives on and prowl the woods. He has significant back hair, too, because he is a man.
Two original Stone Age tools. A flint hide scraper (top) and a chert butchering knife from Upstate New York
A very small slice of the hunting knives we have at our reach here, including a matched ivory micarta handled pair of Randall copies for my son and I by Perry County maker John Johnson each complete with over-the-shoulder baldrics and belt sheaths.
Pronged spears and sharp arrows (sharp blades on flying sticks) from about twenty thousand years ago. Still the best hunt around.
Super cheap WalMart special faux Damascus steel Japanese style kitchen knife is still very sharp and an an incredible tool
USA-made CutCo, definitely not a cheap kitchen knife, with excellent blade steel and bombproof handle material. Highly recommended.
Most of the knives in our kitchen. All CutCos except for two Old Hickory high carbon blades at either end. Old Hickory is an excellent USA-made kitchen knife at a very low cost that can easily be an outdoor knife
It’s Farm Show 2023! You should be here
“Man does not live on bread alone. Occasionally there must be a beverage.” Similarly, a blog wholly devoted to politics these days is just going to be no fun at all, to write or to read. Far too much drama afoot. So here is the beverage… Pennsylvania Farm Show 2023.
Pennsylvania’s Farm Show at the enormous humungous gigantic Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg has been a mainstay since the 1800s. Pennsylvania is still a rural and agricultural state, and so 4H is still active, and so there tons of really cute little kids leading equally young and cute goats, sheep, miniature horses, heifers, rabbits, ducks, chickens, roosters, pigs, and so on either to or from some showing. If you catch the kids and their critters coming from a competitive showing, you will often see the award ribbons prominently displayed on the animals’ heads, like on ears or mane. The little kids walk along with their pets like total bosses, many of them wearing grown up cowboy boots and western style clothing.
If there is a crisis among American youth because they are spoiled, lazy, lacking direction etc, it is not to be found among the 4H kids. Many of them have been getting up at 4:30AM daily since they were seven or eight years old, to feed and water their prize critter, before going to school. By the time 4H kids reach their teens, they have developed the maturity of a responsible parent with a professional job. And it is evident in their faces and the confident way they carry themselves.
Want your kid to be wholesome and normal some day? Make them work on a farm.
While the show opens Saturday, Sunday is probably the biggest day. Parking was a 30 minute long slow crawl into the main lot. Once inside, I neglected to take a picture of the food court, which was jam packed from end to end with long lines of people for the fresh milkshakes, especially. Other fresh and wholesome foods are also available, and it is clear that showgoers really enjoy the large selection of good tasting home style food. And they are willing to stand in line a bloody long time for it.
As one might imagine, the Farm Show has a lot of farming related stuff, including Pennsylvania made maple syrup and hickory syrup, Herlocher’s mustard, Utz’s pretzels, a zillion types of canned and smoked meats and cheeses, pickles, vegetables, and of course the grand butter sculpture. And of course farm animals and the wagons they pull.
Tractors old and new, recreational vehicles, 1800s style wagons, clothing, knives, hats, boots, belts…. I myself bought two new bridle leather belts. One says “Country Boy” and the other says “John Deere” and has a picture of a tractor. How embarrassing to admit that the belt proprietor asked me to fit the belts around my waist, so he could measure how much to cut off the end, and in my case, nothing needed to be cut off.
We also purchased another five CutCo knives, to add to the six we already own. On the one hand, we are really happy with the quality of the CutCo knives we already have, and as a custom knife fiend myself, I admire high quality knives. CutCo knives are definitely very high quality. On the other hand, I feel kind of silly buying something from a sales rep at a show. It just seems like super high retail idiot. But it’s the way to buy these particular products.
We also purchased alpaca wool dryer balls and knitting wool yarn for a favorite family member who enjoys knitting, or crocheting, or whatever the hell annoying thing it is people do with wool yarn. The farmer lady selling the wool gets it from brushing her pet alpacas, adding up the wool, washing it, carding it, and using a spinning wheel to turn the raw wool into yarn. She also dyes the wool before spinning it into yarn. Or maybe she dyes the entire alpaca before brushing the hair off of it.
Her dryer balls are about the same price as the best available in big box stores and high end special order websites. Having used her balls two times since Sunday, I can report back that they bounce hard. You may read into this whatever you wish, but I am telling you only the truth. Her clothes dryer balls really work, and I suppose it’s a brave new world we occupy that has this phenomenon.
Go visit the Pennsylvania Farm Show. If you have never been to it, you should go full bore tourist and come to Harrisburg and see it. You can spend about two days here and see about as much of farm life without actually having to wash the cow crap off your boots as you would normally want to see. In truth, if you spend any time around the many farm animals present, especially in the later days of the show, and especially especially if you hang out in the (for real) Goat Snuggling Corner, then you will inevitably step in a big pile of horse, goat, or cow crap. But then you will have gone and done something real and tangible with your life, and learned something new.
So come to Harrisburg and step in a pile of horse crap and drink a delicious fresh milkshake and watch farmers do their farm thing. You will have a hell of a lot of fun, guaranteed. Best and most wholesome fun your family will have in a very long time.
Even if America’s useless politicians are not patriotic, most American citizens still are, and flags sell well
Yes, it is true, you can snuggle the cutest baby goats at the Steinmetz Family Farm nook at the Farm Show. And a photographer could make a living just taking pictures of happy little goats nestled in the cradling arms of really happy kids. It is quite wonderful
What farm show anywhere would be caught dead without some antique John Deere tractors? I myself drive a “Green Machine.” The old ones are works of art.
Beth Lutz of Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA, explains her weaving loom to the Princess of Patience at the 2023 PA Farm Show
Dyed alpaca wool and clothes dryer wool balls from Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA
Pennsylvania has capitalized on traditional “Dutch” quilt styles that you can still find for sale along many rural roads in the summer. These styles are also prominently displayed on barns across Pennsylvania.
Jen Boltz runs a wagon for some friends in a competition. There is a whole subeconomy of these traditional 1800s wagons and the huge gentle draft horses that pull them.