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This little piggy…
..is off to the market soon. This guy claims to be a Berkshire, but for some reason I keep seeing a Gloucester Old Spot! No matter; both are delicious breeds. However, unless you pre-ordered, you’ll just have to take our word for it. This year’s group has already sold out. Beef coming soon. Don’t be left out again. Contact Church. churchhh@gmail.com David
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Meat sales soar…
…according to a survey of supermarket and on-line buying. Meat during this pandemic year has gained about 20% in sales volume…it’s now 35% of the food dollar and twice as much as chicken. https://www.supermarketnews.com/meat/meat-sales-reach-record-highs-2020-increasing-192 It’s interesting that on-line sales have really increased while at the same time people are more concerned about healthy food. Now note this summary is based on dollar sales…not pounds. But now that younger people have broken the restaurant habit, will they continue cooking at home? Will their interest in healthy foods continue? Most smaller farmers we know haven’t been able to gear-up production to get a piece of this action. Nor do they have the…
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A new arrival…
…a young lamb Church came up with in his part time veterinary work. She has a hairline leg fracture but Church is determined to nurse it back to health. And he seems to have the willing assistance of his dog Nala. A friend who raises sheep thinks this is probably a Suffolk but suspects it’s been crossed with Hampshire. David
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What’s the difference…
..between Grassfed and grass-finished beef? From time to time we allude to the benefits of Thistle Hill’s grass-finished beef…but the labels are confusing and the USDA does it’s utmost to confuse the issue to the benefit of Big Ag. So we thought we’d reprint an article that does a fair and balanced treatment of the subject by food writer Nathan Phelps which was recently published in the US Wellness newsletter. David
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Free at last…
…with everyone in the family safely vaccinated, I was finally able to escape my senior residence for the first time in almost exactly a year. Naturally it was this year’s calf crop that interested me most. They’re five months old now and a rewarding bunch of prospects. Church’s favorite is THF 3…the daughter of TDA Cashtiller 4 and our Essington bull. She’s the latest in our line of pure traditional English calves. I was taken by this Bribery heifer..a combination of four great English herds. She’s two-years old…and perhaps in-calf. And she was the last mating Wooz and Church selected on our final visit to England. We were in agreement…
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A new wrinkle…
…to cooking steaks. Church introduced me to grilling on a soap stone. It’s pretty simple and pretty much guarantees even cooking. We cooked a filet and two boneless strip steaks…all from a 10-year old cow. Tenderness and the flavor could not have been better! We have pretty well satisfied ourselves that for our personal eating we’ll stick to the older cows. Will the day ever come when the government does away with the 30-month nonsense? The rule that older cows cannot be butchered goes back to the “mad cow” scare in England. Just what caused it was not conclusively proven but millions of cows were slaughtered “just in case”. In…
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Fugitives from our storm…
..for a nice set of Thistle Hill steers. They had just been shipped to Jimmy Acres Farm near Semora, North Carolina when the snows hit. Brother and sister Jake and Anna Tommerdahl originally were going to fatten the steers for us but I guess they fell in love and immediately offered to buy them! That’s the way it is with Devon. Church met the Tommerdahls when they and he were Fellows at a Grassfed Exchange meeting in California. Until now they’ve been farming produce and chicken and pigs. This is their introduction to bigger livestock though Jake had interned in cattle operations before. Perhaps best of all it’s confirmation of…
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This is SO important…
…we all have chemicals in us that weren’t around a hundred years ago. Even in the smallest of quantities these endocrine disrupting compounds can lead to major health problems like diabetes, obesity, and infertility. The end of the article has some tips on how to limit your exposure. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/endocrine-disruptors-sperm.html David
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Ahead of the storm…
…Church is seeding clover just ahead of our most recent snow storm. For our “civilian” readers, the clover serves several important purposes: It provides additional forage during the summer slump in the grass growing season. It counter-balances the toxic effect of the endophyte which is more prevalent in fescue in the summer. And it fixes nitrogen in the soil to such a great extent that we haven’t had to fertilize in a dozen years. All this without plowing. The nighttime freezing and daytime thawing…coupled with the melting snow…provides the ideal growing conditions for the seeds. And the snow did come just as Church was finishing. David
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Bill Gates…devil or…
…conspirator. Gates is by no means the first well-meaning billionaire to float his save-the-world schemes. And in the process cause as much harm as good. Not surprisingly he has a technological solution for everything and that has put him cross-wise with the regenerative ag movement. Gates’ recommendation now that rich nations all abandon meat for the artificial stuff is nonsense but it’s getting a serious hearing. Our neighbor down the road Joel Salatin neatly skewers the pretensions of Gates in his latest blog. https://www.thelunaticfarmer.com/blog/2/18/2021/who-will-censure-bill-gates At Thistle Hill we’re satisfied with our 20-year experiment of doing things naturally. Raising grazing animals on grass without chemicals…fertilizers or poisons…producing meat that is…