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Pardon the bragging….
….but it’s pretty hard not to when you have six children, 14 grandchildren, a great-grandchild and another on the way. Seems something exciting is always happening around here. This year of course grandson Church has been off in Idaho working at Jim Gerrish’s Idaho ranch. We were really proud when Jim left our 18-year old grandson in charge of the herd so he could go on a speaking tour while Dawn had family business to take care of. So far there’ve been only two calls….one to say everything was under control, the other to ask for the brand name of a particular wrench Jim favors. Another grandson is entering Virginia’s William…
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Socializing a cow….
….our friend Regina Tesnow of Tomina Farms in Kentucky has seemed to have a particular knack of gentling her cows. It helps to start with the wonderfully docile Devon but Regina takes it from there, as she explains in a recent letter to a newcomer to the breed: Now, how to get cows to go where you want them. Find a food that they LOVE and you are comfortable feeding. I use Beef Builder. I do not feed Beef Builder; I simply use it as a training treat and kept under 1.5 pounds a day it will not damage their ruminant stomach, but believe me they will come when called…
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Cashtiller keeps on giving….
….it was love at first sight when I first saw Tilbrook Cashtiller in the yard at Gavin Hunter’s Tilbrook Grange. She became the foundation cow for a partnership with two other breeders that we named Traditional Devon America. TDA now has seven of her cows on the ground here in the States thanks to embryo transplant; three more are on the way; and eight embryos remain in the canister. Cashtiller is 13 years old now and this is her latest calf, a heifer. Gavin says this one was a little tougher for her and he’s not sure he wants to breed her again. As Wooz commented, “This is what she…
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In case you were wondering….
….we’ve finally herd from grandson, Church, explaining he hadn’t written because he’s been busy herding fish and stringing thousands of feet of wire on Jim Gerrish’s Idaho ranch. The picture (click to enlarge) shows a moose sharing Church’s fishing hole. I hadn’t carefully thought out the possible ramifications of this summer job. Our grandson’s letter had three very specifics instructions to us on improving our grazing techniques! Today, he’s taking a break and attending a Gerrish lecture on real food and nutrition in a nearby town. We were just a bit surprised that Jim has to pay someone to get an audience. Just kidding, Jim, just kidding!
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Free range pigs….
….well, we hadn’t planned it that way. At least, not yet! But these two piglets must have overheard me say I’d like to try letting some pigs roam our woods, gorging themselves on acorns to their heart’s content. In any event, despite the picture, they’re on their own. But they do come home twice a day to snack on the non-gmo corn. Getting hard for them to sneak under the fence, though. We’re going to have to leave the gate open for them. Maybe, one of those pet entrances they put on garage doors? The danger isn’t really that they’ll run away; it’s that they’ll get into our vegetable garden. …
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In praise of The Pig….
….I admit that I was never much of a fan of pork….until we started raising (and cooking) our Tamworth pigs. We’ve all been schooled to over-cook our pork and so restaurant chops are almost always dry and bacon fried to the taste of old shoe leather. Now we look forward to the next harvesting as eagerly as our customers do. Thistle Hill pork chops, sausages and bacon have made me a big believer. (Just don’t over-cook; not necessary with our pastured pigs!) Recently we came across a Paleo book on pigs…the animal itself and preparing the “proper pork”. It certainly pays pigs their “due”. Be sure to read the reviews…
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Some kids have all the luck….
….our grandson, Church, for instance. He’s had the great good luck to be taken in hand by Jim Gerrish, the pasture expert, and put to work this summer at Jim’s ranch in Idaho. This is a picture of them herding fish in one of the mountain streams on the ranch. Actually it was just a break they took on the 4th of July. There’s not much to do on a big ranch with thousands of cattle. You’d think the kid could write his grandparents, wouldn’t you?
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Mission accomplished….
….we’ve just returned from delivering a load of six females to South Carolina, to Linda Hendrix and her son Dr. John Hendrix. Their farm in Pacolet is rapidly becoming Thistle Hill South. The shipment included four bred heifers, being off-loaded here by our good friend, Glen Covington, who in real life manages our local co-op. For some reason, he enjoys long distance driving as much as I try to avoid it. Included in the load was a lovely young heifer out of Thistle Hill’s “Niner Magic”, who is one of our three lead herd bulls. And this little one keeps intact the record of our “64” cow, who only knows…
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The processing conundrum….
….the largest single cost in producing local meat, whether beef or pork, is the processing. Butchering your meat is just about half the total cost. We reported awhile back that the bill for processing a steer into beef is very close to $500. That compares to the $50 the Giants pay at the huge, factory meat-packing plants. It’s not that the local butchers are getting rich. It’s a matter of scale. They have to hire full-time crew to handle a sporadic supply as small farmers finish their animals. And butchering itself is something of a “lost art”. We’re very fortunate here to have a choice of many butchers (some dare…
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The elephant in the room….
….or in Congress. Now that the dreaded farm bill….with billions for town and farm….has marched down the hill (as in Capitol) again….what next? Normally, the city legislators get behind the pork (with apologies to the guys out back in the woods) for farmers in exchange for easy sailing for their much-loved Food Stamps. This time, however, at the last minute some cost-conscious folks upended the deal. Brian Snyder, the executive director of The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, was very involved in the early stages of the Farm bill negotiations and we were critical of his role. We felt he had been lured in by the Big Boys to provide…