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Congrats to our butcher….
….don’t know how I missed this, but Blue Ridge Meats in Front Royal, VA—better known around here as “our butcher”—received great press about a month ago in the Washington Post. Doug and Lois Aylestock do it the right way and that’s why we selected them when we began selling beef (and later pork) direct from our farm. Here’s the story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031600921.html?sid=ST2010031603046 Choosing the right farm to buy your beef includes choosing the right butcher. There’s a warning sign about one of the butchers right in this article though the writer doesn’t realize it. There is some point in the size of the operation where you have to be particularly careful.…
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Gluten sensitivity….maybe not….
….here’s a nutritionist that makes the point that gluten has been around for thousands of years. While all the gluten sensitivity now? (To be honest, I suspected it was one of those yuppie diseases). But here’s an explanation that makes sense to me: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/ Thanks to Dawn Gerrish for the link.
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You just don’t get it….
….a Washington Post reporter passes over the fact right before his eyes. (This is my shocked face!) Chipotle, which was the darling of the fast-food category for a time, has run into a bad patch. The chain has been plagued with an outbreak of E.coli that has forced it to close a number of stores….sales are off….the stock is down. Why the sudden bad luck? Well you have to read down to the 12th paragraph before the reporter notes—only in passing—that Chipotle changed it business plan two years ago. The chain that was built on quality, grass fed beef switched to conventionally-raised beef (meaning like everybody else) and the food born…
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Baloney….
….and other processed meats. Just ran across a blogger, Adele Hite, thanks to our old friend Ridge Shinn. Ms Hite (or perhaps, by now, Dr. Hite) does a total nuclear strike on the “settled science” of nutrition. This is must reading…and fun reading…particularly for those who have been denying themselves the delights of bacon and sausage, “trites” and “trates”. Worth spending an hour or so reading her site. Here’s a link to just one article. http://eathropology.com/2015/11/03/again-in-3-part-harmony-its-not-about-the-science/
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Antibiotics….
….right up there with ISIS and maybe even climate change. This is only one of several reports in the past week on the menace of antibiotic resistant superbugs. And this article makes the point that you’re not really protected simply by refusing the drugs for yourself, except in dire emergencies. http://news.yahoo.com/dangerously-high-antibiotic-resistance-levels-worldwide-112717705.html Thistle Hill never uses antibiotics that will find its way into our meat, of course, but 70% of all the antibiotic consumption in the United States is used in agriculture.
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And that’s the way it is…..
….although no one is the Ag community talks about it. Health expert Dr. Joseph Mercola blows the whistle in the practice of dumping sewage sludge on pastures and crop lands. Several farms have down this in our area despite the serious concerns that have been raised about the practice. In our experience, the pastures look good the first year…but deteriorate rapidly. Wonder if the sludge kills the microbes in the soil? At least I’ve never noticed anyone doing a repeat treatment. Here’s the Mercola link: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/11/01/biosolids-fertilizer.aspx?e_cid=20151101Z1_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20151101Z1&et_cid=DM89600&et_rid=1193536402
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Behind the scenes…..
….many, though probably not most, consumers of grass fed beef know the right questions to ask a farmer to be sure they’re getting the “real thing”. The problem is most consumers don’t know their farmer, which is why we think buying “local” is just as important as buying “grass fed”. Simply put: a good deal of what passes for grass fed is really finished on grain, and that destroys all the benefits of a pure, natural product. But the farmer is only half the story. The butcher has just as much to do with the quality and purity of the meat you buy. That’s why we surveyed a number of…
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What could possibly go wrong…..
….we keep coming up with new ways of killing ourselves. Genetically modified organisms again. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-sound-alarm-over-supercharged-gm-organisms-which-could-spread-in-the-wild-and-cause-environmental-disasters-10434010.html
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What could possibly go wrong?
Call me a cynic, but I think we could write up the results of the study right now. http://news.yahoo.com/monsanto-says-expert-panel-review-finding-cancer-herbicide-184600564.html
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A world without antibiotics….
….I switched dentists the other day and, for the first time in more than 30 years, the hygienist presented a cup with four little pills….yes, routine, preventive, antibiotic therapy. The explanation was that I’d undergone hip surgery in 1980 and there was a danger of infection when she cleaned my teeth. Never mind that I had somehow survived almost four decades of dental work, including extractions, crowns and the like, without antibiotics…the young woman and the older dentist were insistent. So I did what any obedient subject of modern medicine would do: I palmed the pills and threw them away later. But I wonder, as with red meat and red…