-
On the soap box…
A note to all the currently-unoccupied “Occupy Wall Street” folks. Why not target a truly greedy and evil company: Monsanto? If there has been a company more responsible for despoiling our earth and our food supply it is this chemical giant. Particularly galling are all Monsanto’s ads proclaiming its dedication to “sustainable agriculture”. In fact, Monsanto’s only real dedication has been to its bottom line. Now some financial advisers have finally put it on their “sell” list. Monsanto’s biggest claim to fame has been the promotion of Genetically Modified foods. They’ve made all sorts of claims for GM products such as corn and soybeans: higher yields and disease resistance, in particular. …
-
The best part….
….of raising Devon is coming into a pasture at sunrise and finding that your herd has a new and excellent addition. Second best is hearing about a wonderful addition to another herd, particularly if it’s from our bull. This is five-day old Tomina’s Ruby Slippers at Tomina Farm in Waynesboro, Tennessee. Dad was Thistle Hill’s Magic (you can see his picture in our bull section) also now enjoying life in Tennessee. Regina Tesnow tells us she loves this little heifer so much “I just can’t stand it!!!!!!!!” (I think I’ve copied the right number of exclamation points. We love to think we’re helping establish quality Devon herds around the country…
-
Now about Senepol…
Back in the beginning, when we were deciding on the breed that would do best in our area and provide the best meat, we considered not only Devon, our eventual choice, but Senepol. And here is our newest calf from a Senepol mama, born yesterday. She has a Devon daddy and we’ve found the cross between the two to be just about ideal. They are the steer of choice for many of our customers who are in the meat business. The Amish in Pennsylvania are particularly fond of them and report they get sensational carcass yields from our Thistle Hill crosses. And here’s another Thistle Hill baby once removed. This…
-
The interloper….
Despite the disappointing results of the recent sale of Rotokawa bulls, we were pleased to see that one young bull did quite well. However, he was not out of a Rotokawa cow, but one that calls Thistle Hill “home”. Her name is the not-very-melodious “180” and she’s shown here nursing another of her bull calves at Thistle Hill. We smile when we hear other breeds claim their cows can wean close to half their weight. 180 can do that with half an udder. She’s something special, no doubt. Visitors invariably single her out as one of our best cows. A western cattleman, Steve Campbell of Idaho, took one look at…
-
A grazing update….
With our neighbors all feeding hay for some days now, I took a quick run through our pastures and think we’re still in pretty good shape. Our mob grazing experiment has paid off with a better winter stockpile of grass than usual. The main herd still has more than a month of grass left and that’s without squeezing out the last quarter of an inch as we’ve often done in the past. We want to leave a good residual of at least 3 inches in all our paddocks so growth has a head start and can take off in the Spring. That was our major weakness as we began our…
-
Turkey Bowl VI…
Our annual Turkey Bowl has become a fixture of our family weekend. And the play has improved each year, mostly because our grandchildren have moved up to high school and college. Grandpa, in the center, has also moved up to great-grandpa and has been assigned a more limited role to a few plays as nose guard and center. This is a recognition not of his skill but his singular lack of mobility. Son-in-law Paul, the quarterback of our team, is the prime force in organizing the game and always has a few trick plays up his sleeve, which insure that our team will continue its losing streak. We were further set back…
-
Thanksgiving feast at Thistle Hill…
-
Why we’re so fat….
Dad’s note: what follows is a post from our daughter, Carolyn. At the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, they call her Dr. Matthews. She is a cancer surgeon who has shifted some of her attention recently to creating a center for integrative medicine at Baylor. Carolyn is a frequent writer and lecturer, the mother of two, and a partner in Thistle Hill Devon. Here’s her post: In our lifetime we are experiencing never before seen rates of obesity, with a 60% rate of overweight in adults. In my field of gynecologic oncology, our surgical cases have become tremendously challenging due to the large size of our patients. When I was…
-
On the soap box (again)…
If Thistle Hill has a secret weapon, it may be our mineral program. It’s certainly not a “top secret”; many natural livestock people do what we do. But it is not generally used in the commercial industry because of the cost involved. A cow grazing in the wild doesn’t need mineral supplementation. She can select from the grasses, herbs and even the soil to keep her system in balance and her immune system strong. But in a fenced pasture, she is at the mercy of what is before her. That’s particularly a problem in the East, where the land was “farmed out” long ago. I’ve seen estimates that it would…
-
Important information for your Thanksgiving…..
If you’re like our family, the second best thing about Thanksgiving—right after the stuffing—is the annual Turkey Bowl. Usually grandpa (your humble blogger) determines the rules (usually favoring your humble blogger). We’ve had more than a few challenges to the rulings on the field (issued by you-know-who). But daughter, Linda—wide receiver, mother of two running backs, wife of one of the quarterbacks and grandmother of this year’s rookie phenom—has forwarded a set of rules not to be quarreled with. We offer them to your family as a public service. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204531404577050370294096452.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_second I mentioned one quarterback—Linda’s husband, Bill—the other is Paul—Janet’s husband. I also mentioned our new rookie, great-grandson Rowan. Rowan may be only six months old, but…