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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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BULLETIN: Famed Rotokawa herd sold…again…
A stunning announcement in the Devon world this morning: the famed Rotokawa herd, which originated in New Zealand, has been sold to Massachusetts breeder Henry Hauptman of East View Farm in Hardwick. Henry has been a fan of the herd from the moment he went into the cattle business and this fulfills a long-held dream. Henry tells us that he would not have considered the purchase of the herd Ken McDowall developed in New Zealand, if Ken hadn’t promised to once again be personally involved in operations. We talked with Ken last night and he said he would begin by traveling to the Hauptman farm in August to discuss breeding decisions. Both men expect to…
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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…
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Good friends, good times, good cows…
We’re back after a swing through the northeast capped by a visit to Don and Heather Minto’s Watson farm in Rhode Island. The Mintos have a wonderful herd of Devon and also sell grass fed beef. Their hot dogs are the best I’ve ever tasted but their butcher won’t reveal his secret. After checking their herd we had dinner at an excellent restaurant in nearby Jamestown, something of a ritual for us. Watson Farm has one of the prettiest settings of any we know, right on the shoreline of Narragansett Bay. Now it’s back to work. Our pigs are ready for market and the next steer has been butchered and…
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By way of explanation….
Between power outages and visitors, blogging has had to take a back seat recently. Last night we invited Rappahannock chef Sylvie Rowand in to prepare dinner in the style of her native Reunion and our guests included two Germans, a Brit and a Norwegian. Globalization strikes Hume. But so did another power outage…right in the middle of preparation. Of course, the battery on the generator decided to quit so I had to make another round trip to the pump house in the pouring rain with jumper cables to get a boost from the Gator. (Incidentally, that rain felt wonderful!) There’s a limit to what the generator can power and we…
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The least patriotic food in America?
That’s the headline in the Washington Post and their answer is, yes, the hamburger. The article is in four parts: the burger itself, the bun, the fixings and equality. The bottom line is that fresh, nutritious, real food has increasingly been reserved for the more affluent. The poor are left with the artificial, cheaper, processed food…dressed up with salt and flavorings, packaging, and advertising. It was a problem Thomas Jefferson worried about 200 years ago, noting that the wealthy ate vegetables and the poor did not. The major points in the article: The burger. 85% of all the burger Americans eat come from just four giant food processors. They control…
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Glad that’s over….
We were without electric service the past several days thanks to a lightning storm that was the most spectacular display I can ever remember, at least over land. (A few crossing the Atlantic in my flying days were probably about the same.) But this storm came rolling over the Blue Ridge with a magnificent fury, the sky constantly illuminated with uninterrupted lightning across the horizon. I should have gone to the pump house and cranked up the generator but it was time for bed and, as our guests will tell you, nothing interferes with my bedtime. First thing in the morning we were greeted not only with the power failure…
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Nature is always right…
One of the lessons of farming is that you don’t fight nature….and it’s time for us to recognize that we ‘re in the summer dry spell. Maybe drought. Whatever. While the grass still looks good and there’s plenty of it, you can feel the dryness in the hardening ground. And you certainly see the water reduced to a trickle in our young bull pasture. In our area, the forecast is now for several days of more than 100 so we’re tanking our first steps. Not really our first. Earlier this year we did reduce the size of the herd slightly looking to future growth with our new English calves. So…