About HornCore

— who is behind it, and what they actually use

Chris D., McEwen, Tennessee

Thirty-five acres and change, a family, and a place we are building from the ground up.

We are not going to pretend to be something we are not, so here it is plainly: we are early. The fences are going in. Half the gear on this site is equipment we are buying for the first time, this season, with our own money, because we need it and not because somebody sent it to us.

That is either a reason to trust this site or a reason to wait a year. Both are fair.

What that means for the reviews

Most gear sites are written from the far side of the decision, by people who bought everything so long ago they have forgotten what they did not know. We are on the near side. We are making the choices right now, in order, with a budget.

So you get the research before the purchase, and then you get what actually happened — the same product, revisited, with the date on it.

Every post on this site carries one of three tags, and they mean exactly what they say:

Research — we have not used it. We have read the specifications, the standards it claims, and what it costs, and we say what those do and do not tell you. Most of the site is here right now.
Tried — we have it and we have used it. Not long enough to swear to it.
Tried and True — we bought it, we used it hard, and we would buy it again. This one has to be earned, and on a place this new it takes seasons.

You will see very few Tried and True tags for a while. That is not modesty. It is arithmetic. Anyone posting them on a homestead this young is telling you something that is not true.

What we cover

Animal health, barn and shop, cattle handling, feed and mineral, fencing, hauling, ranch tech, water, and workwear.

The bias is toward small places. Most of what gets recommended online is sized and priced for operations running ten times what we do. If a piece of equipment only earns its keep above [?] head, or over [?] acres, this site says so instead of pretending it scales down to us.

How we decide

Prices get named. When the cheaper thing does the same job, that is the recommendation — which happens more often than the catalogues suggest.

Nothing gets recommended that we would not buy again with our own money. Not for a discount code, not for a sample, not to keep a rep friendly.

And we keep the parable of the two-dollar latch in mind, which is the closest thing this place has to a policy.

How we pay for it

Affiliate commission. Buy through a link here and this site earns a percentage at no extra cost to you. The affiliate disclosure covers what that does and does not change.

What it does not change is the verdict. A thing that disappointed us does not stop having disappointed us because it pays better.

Contact

[?] — an address that gets read. Corrections welcome. So are manufacturers who want to argue with a review, provided they bring data.

— Chris D. McEwen, Tennessee