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We’re in the best of hands….
….a friend opined the other day that I was going a little far in my rants about Big Government. He conceded the abuses but he said he’d rather have the safety of federal inspections than the alternative. Turns out he…and we…have neither. http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2530619#.UaTHlkWFi0w.twitter Not to belabor the point: know your farmer and know his processor. Yes, all our meat is USDA-inspected but what really counts is the Thistle Hill label. Incidentally, we don’t ship our meat but if you contact us we’ll put you in touch with a reputable supplier near you. We also have been impressed with the meat offered on the internet by US Wellness.
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Big Ag’s balanced diet….
…with thanks to Big Government. We’ve dealt with this before, but here’s a good roundup on the issue. Check out just a partial list of how much Big Ag spends winning friends and influencing Washington. This is just the money they spend on your lawmakers and the bureaucrats…..doesn’t count the money they spend “influencing” scientists. http://paleodietlifestyle.com/fallacy-of-balanced-diet/
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Victory for a farmer….
….if you don’t count the fact that he could still go to jail for a year. The Wisconsin farmer, who produces raw milk and sells to about 200 nearby families, has become something of a cause in natural farming circles. For several years, he’s stood off the Food Safety police who want to close him down. Now, he’s been acquitted on the two charges of selling the raw milk without a license but found guilty of the one charge of violating an order prohibiting him from doing business while the whole thing was adjudicated. So he won the principle but could go to jail on the technicality. They’ll get you…
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The Thistle Hill alumni club…
…well the son of an alum, anyway. This young seven-month old bull, Tomina Farms Titan, is the son of Thistle Hill’s Magic. Magic was the meatiest bull we’ve ever raised here and he’s seen herd sire duty first at Tomina Farms in Tennessee and then gone on to Louisiana. Whenever Regina Tesnow sends us pictures from Tomina Farms, our animals seem to have improved with the trip and we wonder if we should have hung on to them. The heifer was born here just six months ago. Regina calls her Shenandoah. Actually she was born alongside the Rappahannock river, but I guess that’s not a good name for a little girl. …
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Can we learn from the Europeans….
….one of our readers thinks so, though he asks to remain anonymous because he works for you-know-who. Here’s the link: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Regulation/US-review-gleans-ideas-from-European-food-safety-reforms My own jaded view is that this becomes one more weapon to beat up on the little guy. If Europeans experience fewer food-related illnesses, I suspect it’s not because of bureaucratic efficiency. Everything there, from farms to processing, operates on a much smaller scale. It’s the huge packing houses and the factory farms in the United States that cause our problems. And a corrupt system that keeps us looking the “other” way. Further, one-size agricultural rules are too often written in the bowels of Big Ag and Big…
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We are about cows, after all….
….and we don’t want to get too far off subject. Here’s an English Devon cow on baby-sitting assignment in Cornwall. She’s from the Kew herd, of course, and our favorite Cornwall lass, Juliet Cleave.
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Violating my oath….
….but I had my fingers crossed. Normally I stay out of politics on this blog, but ever since the boss of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture advised us farmers to trust the government and be less suspicious, I haven’t been able to keep silent. What the IRS was doing to some conservative groups, is what the government does in agriculture and nutrition every day! The threat, my friends, is real and it’s not just to farmers. Real enough that even a very liberal Washington attorney is worried. He wrote first in the Washington Post and a conservative blog picked it up. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/349328/jonathan-turley-warns-against-bureaucratic-state
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The Monsanto Story….
…though I really can’t vouch for it. Found this on the internet while reading about the demonstrations against Monsanto yesterday in 400 cities around the world. The protest was aimed at Genetically Modified food but one commentor filled in some history on Monsanto I didn’t know. A link to one story about the demonstrations follows, but first this: John F Queeny started Monsanto in 1901 – with a chemical byproduct from COAL TAR that tasted sweet. They had only one customer – Coca Cola. Doctors prescribed the cocaine beverage to many… and this coal tar sweetener is called saccharin. An early user was Pres. Ted Roosevelt – diabetic and overweight. A…
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Now she tells us….
….Kathleen Merrigan, who recently resigned as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, created a bit of a stir this week when she said the latest law the government passed to “protect” us…..has the potential to transform and even destroy small and medium sized farms. Of course, the law has a high-sounding name, (see George Orwell), the Food Safety Modernization Act. But any bill that’s put together by Big Ag and Big Government is bound to be not only bad for small farms, but consumers. The basic idea is to make the requirements so stringent and so expensive that only mass producers with their chemical warehouses can afford them. Apparently there’s a lot of…
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Farm land…what’s it worth…
Our friend Bill Roberts, of 12 Stones Grasslands Beef, has had some experience in the subject in an “earlier life”. Sometime back we posted his thoughts on just how a farmer, or particularly a would-be farmer, should approach the subject of buying land for his operation. Bill has just gone back to the subject on his blog and we thought it important and am posting it permanently here. Just go to the Archives section….it’s right at the top.