-
Because it’s mine….
….on rare occasion I post something that has nothing to do with the usual topics of this website….not about food or cows or even our English partners….but…. This is not one of those times! This is about Food and England…..and Music! Opera, which I enjoy almost as much as Bacon! (thanks to Don Kunnard for the link)
-
The perfect storm….
An old CBS News colleague, Bill Kurtis, is a mover-and-shaker in grass fed beef circles….his Tall Grass Beef company marketing nationally. But Bill thinks those of us operating at a smaller scale better not be making any big, and particularly long-range, plans. Guest Blog August 2014 By Bill Kurtis Dry Age Beef and the grass-fed dilemma I much admire Tom Johnston’s Meatingplace “Dry Age Beef” series on the state of the beef business in America. I would add yet another segment that as a grass-fed beef rancher and distributor is just as dark. The perfect storm of drought, historic market prices and food safety pressures that have hit us…
-
GMO foods…the extra ingredient…
….it’s never mentioned by supporters of GMO products….it’s not only the “food of the future” but “the wonder food”….perfectly. Never said is that the only way these GMO foods get raised is with ever-increasing applications of herbicides. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. Here’s Dr. Joseph Mercola’s take: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/08/19/gm-crops-pesticides-herbicides.aspx And just like humans, animals are what they eat. That GMO grain is in the meat and poultry you eat, too. Thistle Hill makes sure that our pigs eat only non-GMO feed; our cows eat no grain, just alfalfa.
-
Gearld Fry stricken….
….we have received word through a family member that Gearld Fry, who has played a key role in the revival of the Devon breed, has been diagnosed with cancer. Fry has a farm in Rose Bud, Arkansas and was one of the founders of the North American Devon Association and is currently on the board of the successor organization, Red Devon USA. Only recently Fry re-married after losing his wife, Margie, to cancer following a long illness. This would seem to be an unbearable twist of fate and we pray Gearld will fight his way through this.
-
A fussy eater….
….not a phrase you associate with pigs. But this one wants things just so. First, she likes company when she eats. And she does not want her milk on top of her cereal….separately please. Most pigs could care less but this one’s mother taught her proper etiquette. She eats even more if grandson, Church, stays with her and talks to her for the whole meal!
-
Mama…don’t let your kids grow up….
….to be farmers. It’s still a no-win game despite all the publicity about the Locavore movement, farm-to-fork, food hubs, CSAs. “blah-blah” stuff. The dirty little secret is the Big Guys are killing us….and they’re the ones getting the subsidies and grants that enable them to further squash the idealists. The New York Times had the story this past weekend. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/dont-let-your-children-grow-up-to-be-farmers.html?_r=1 Thanks to Dr. Sue Beal for the link.
-
Letters, we get letters (cont’d)….
….and often the unexpected. Recently we posted an item about one of our English heifers, Essington Park Buttercup. Within hours we heard from a breeder in England we haven’t met—Martyn Heard—who farms near Exeter in Devon. Martyn told us he had purchased Buttercup’s dam in the Essington Park dispersal sale and he wondered about the identity of Buttercup’s sire. Well first, thanks for reading and thanks for writing. If you have a chance, tell us more about how you’re doing with your new cows. We AI-ed your cow at Bovine Genetics near Bishops Itchington to Ashott Barton’s Millennium Falcon. He was bred by Shiamala Comer, still an excellent source for…
-
“Stay with quality….
….quality will always sustain you.” That was the advice this butcher’s daddy gave him. Lovely. Here’s a short film that is an ode to country bacon and ham and a man from Virginia who has made it his life’s work. Heavily-salted bacon and ham are not my favorites but I’m not going to quibble with a man so obviously in love with what he does. http://vimeo.com/29677209 Now Thistle Hill bacon and hams are smoke-cured, the old-fashioned way, but there are no nitrates or other additives in our process. Nor do our pigs receive hormones, antibiotics or other drugs as they grow. Finally, they are raised on non-GMO feed. We simply…
-
Where do they learn these things…
….the other day, while taking pictures of an English bull for the Red Devon USA newsletter, I turned the camera on this young “American” bull. He immediately snapped to and assumed “the position”. The minute I moved on, he returned to grazing. He’s eight months old. From the moment he was born, we felt we had another herd bull…and he’s always acted like the lord of the pasture. Stands just apart from the herd, calls for his mother when he wants milk and she come over immediately. He’s THF 126…”Augustine”…you may call him “Gus”! He’s out of R2, who has produced many of our very best animals. Sire is “THF…
-
Under the radar….
….we’ve been paying a lot of attention to the English Devon here on our own pasture, but a photo from Georgia reminds us we have the start of another line developing there. She’s Essington Park Buttercup….and she’s under the tender care of Doyle Unruh who handles our recips. (click to see her nose and rump) Brian Drake’s Essington Park herd has been dispersed now but for years it was one of England’s leading Devon farms. TDA Buttercup will be carrying on the tradition here in the States, as we intended when we began this project four years ago. We wanted to be sure not to lose the best, traditional Devon…