Name: Brandon and Lauren Sheard

Company name: Farmstead Meatsmith

What does the business do:

1. Teach small, hands-on classes on the domestic art of homestead slaughter, butchery and preservation of all livestock using the pre-modern traditions of our fathers to assert and transmit the well-off frugality of the family table.

2. Farmstead Meatsmith hosts the Meatsmith Membership, which is an online archive of films on artful domestic provisioning, covering everything from how to preserve meat as bacon, to backyard rabbitry and how to keep pigs. We have monthly live chats, a robust online community and many other resources exclusive to members.

3. On-farm slaughter and traditional butchery and preservation of local livestock around Tulsa, Oklahoma.

4. A Meatsmith Harvest podcast.

Number of employees: One

Website: FarmsteadMeatsmith.com

The secret to your success: Unwavering pursuit of quality in our services and classes. This zero compromise is also the cause of our struggles.

The hardest lesson you had to learn: As a tradesman, valuing my labor in a novel field while providing a sui generis service; how to afford a homestead mortgage while also homesteading. Both lessons are still ongoing.

How your faith fits in to your business life: We return to the natural order promulgated by the Divine Law Giver. Though it is inscribed in nature, we can only fulfill it by the grace that proceeds from the altar. From there, grace flows to the pews, the market square, the homes and then the agricultural fields, ordering life to its final cause. Insofar as we are at enmity with the Creator by mortal sin, we reap discord with his created order. Through our podcast, classes and membership, we seek to conform our lives to Christ in his Body, the Catholic Church. This leaves no part of life outside of his sovereignty, including the provision of a sufficiency of bodily goods and the making of salubrious bacon.

Do you have a patron saint? St. Joseph, Pillar of Families

What advice can you share with aspiring Catholic entrepreneurs?

Disabuse yourself of the fantasy that “if you love what you do for a living, you will never work a day.” Toil is divinely prescribed penance to postlapsarian man. This is so true, that doing what you love for your business is the surest way to turn your passion into toil. The proper end of your business is first to supply your family with a sufficiency of bodily goods and secondly to serve the common good. Think not of pursuing your passion, which is fickle, but rather of using your gifts, which is your duty. A business is to be valued by its end which is to supply the bonum corporis (good for the body) of food, shelter, clothing, transportation and access to the sacraments. These primary goods are instrumental to the good life, the life of virtue. Therefore, supplying these to your family constitutes a good business.