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In an ideal world….
….this would provoke a national discussion and a “new” approach to farming. In an ideal world. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack is quoted as saying in a speech recently that rural America is fast becoming irrelevant. Now what Vlasick wants is for farmers to “get with the program” and stop bickering. Here’s the AP report: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VILSACK_RURAL_AMERICA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-12-08-08-24-10 In short, Vilsack apparently wants farmers to quit whining and stop resisting all those regulations that are good for them. Where to start? First, farmers are right to be suspicious of government regulations because government programs is what got them into trouble in the first place. They took the “candy” to buy tractors, and silos and…
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Read it…it’s good for you!
From time to time, we’ve gone off message a bit to warn that the serious threat to stability in the world is not energy but food. And just as we’ve discovered that the United States is better-positioned for the long term in energy, we are fortunate that we have the arable land to support our population. Much of the world does not, starting with China and that’s both the good news and the bad news. Here’s a lengthy article but one that is worth your time. So draw up a cup of coffee and click on the link. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to get to the article.…
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Better than nothing….
….at least that was my reaction to a report Fox News carried on grass fed beef. Never mind that the report was buried on Thanksgiving day when no one is watching television except football fans. About the only positive notes were that grass fed beef is leaner….and that consumption is growing. Not a word about the poisons that are poured into, onto and injected inside conventional cattle. Nothing about the diseases (cancer, heart, diabetes, etc) that have been linked to the consumption of corn…in boxes and in cows. No mention of the destruction of land and water in ordinary cattle production. Nothing about the huge consumption of energy required to…
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Forget Democrats and Republicans….
….vote for the Dinner Party. Well, in California anyway, where there’s one of those propositions on the ballot which challenges genetically modified foods and the unholy alliance between Big Ag and Big Government. Michael Pollan recently wrote an article about it in the New York Times magazine. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/why-californias-proposition-37-should-matter-to-anyone-who-cares-about-food.html?_r=1
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From the chef’s corner….
Thistle Hill Farm communicates with its friends, neighbors and customers (generally everyone falls in all three groups) not only with this website and blog, but with Facebook and an occasional newsletter to those who ask to be put on our mailing list to be told when beef and pork is about to become available. The other day, our daughter-in-law, Barbara, cooked a roast for her family using Thistle Hill beef, of course. It was a big success and she emailed us the recipe and we shared it with our meat customers. The recipe provoked quite a bit of interest so we thought we’d bring it over to our Blog. As you…
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Once more with feeling…
….we were at a party last night where, once more, someone in one of the conversation circles, announced her family “just doesn’t eat much red meat anymore”. Not a vegetarian exactly, you understand, just would rather not eat much red meat. Because I was a guest (and off-duty), I again let the remark pass. I did not tell the lady that the chicken and pork she was feeding her family was a whole lot worse for them than red meat. But still, despite all the evidence, it’s my impression that most of the experts today are still cautioning against “too much”, whatever that is, red meat. We’ve linked to various…
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About food prices…
The media has somehow found out that we’re in a major drought. (They’ll have to get out more) And that means food production is going down and prices are going up…particularly the price of corn. One article we read has some interesting insight: primarily that since the cost of producing food makes up only a small percentage of the price you actually pay at the market, your grocery bill may only go up about 1%. The notable exception, glossed over in this article, is conventional beef. Corn makes up a big part of the cost of raising Big Ag’s beef. Typically, the price you pay for most things is for the…
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Catching up….
What with long power failures, travels and visitors, we’ve fallen behind with our blogging. The topic here is food…beginning with the dinner guests prepared for us here at Thistle Hill. To explain: we asked Rappahannock’s wonderful chef, Sylvie Rowand, to stage a dinner here for friends in the style of her native Reunion, a French island in the remote Indian Ocean. Sylvie combines her French heritage with flavors of other populations on the island: Asian and African. But to make it a bit more entertaining, we asked Sylvie to add another of her specialties: a cooking class. Our kitchen is small so we spilled over into the adjoining breakfast room…
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The Unholy Alliance?
Sometimes I have to tell myself not to be so paranoid. As you will have figured out by now, when it comes to food and health, I’m no fan of the government, Big Ag and the drug companies. Now a writer has developed some history that indicates we need to throw Big Banks into the mix as well. There’s no question that we’re an over-weight, over-medicated nation, but I hesitate to blame it on a “grand conspiracy” put in motion 100 years ago. Nevertheless, that’s the claim. You can read and decide for yourself. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/15/ellen-brown-discusses-money-system.aspx?e_cid=20120715_SNL_Art_1 When you consider today’s “insider relationships”, cronyism and the revolving door involving people at the…
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It’s a fact….
Several articles have come to our attention that we thought you might like to hear about, the first in the newsletter of Animal Welfare Approved. It’s a discussion of a study by the United Kingdom’s National Trust, which manages a bazillion acres of land and overseas both conventional and natural cattle production. The Trust wanted to get to the bottom line of the controversy over the effect on the environment by the two types of management. Big Ag there (and here) has launched a campaign claiming that actually feed lot production is easiest on the environment because the cattle are fattened more quickly….thus less methane gas emission. The Trust…and Animal…