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A few helpful tips….
….from our farm manager Duane Ard, who spotted this on Facebook and now has a few years of experience with an “Old Farmer”: Advice from an Old Farmer: – Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong. – Keep skunks and bankers at a distance. – Life is simpler when you plow around the stump. – A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor. – Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads. – Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you. – It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge. – You cannot unsay a cruel word. – Every…
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Getting to know you….
….our first English bull, TDA Churchill, is introduced to that mysterious creature…a female. In this case, this heifer is a Devon-Senepol cross. This will take some getting used to. Churchill is still young…just 17 months…and so we’ve put him in a pasture with just three females. They were all born late in our normal calving season, too late to be bred with the other heifers in their class. So Churchill has his own little harem to begin his education. He’s an extremely gentle bull, even for a Devon. Moderate-sized but beautifully proportioned. Exactly what the three Devon breeders who make up Traditional Devon America hoped for when they began their…
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What’s in a name….
….apparently quite a bit, according to “leaders” in the mainstream meat industry. Enough that simply “pork chops” will no longer do. Here’s the article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-bye-bye-pork-chop-hello-ribeye-20130403,0,6636326.story We’ve found that, generally, our meat customers remain suspicious of anything that isn’t one of the most familiar steaks: NY Strip, T-Bone, Porterhouse, Filet Mignon. So we mostly grind the rest for hamburger, setting aside just a few cuts such as Silver Tip steaks for family use. On occasion a family that orders a side of beef will specify a rarer cut and our butcher can handle that. For instance, we recently had a request for “clod steaks”, a term we hadn’t heard before. But the…
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The “whole” truth….
….about fat-free skim milk. I’m still surprised that some parents continue to feed their kids skim milk, or use it themselves for weight control. The literature is pretty complete on the subject: skim milk actually will cause you to gain weight…it is usually combined with powdered milk in processing to get rid of its natural blue color and that injects toxins (and the government does not require they note that on the label)…and that Vitamin D they add, has no value at all. Skim milk is, in fact, a waste product that Big Ag discovered they could market as a health food after they had removed the fat to make butter. …
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An ancient saying….
…which I translated from the original Sanskrit overnight: When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need. Ayurveda proverb The picture is of Dhanvantari….incarnation of Krishna, Lord of Ayurveda. Okay, our farm manager Duane Ard, came across the quote and knows I’m a sucker for this sort of thing. The rest is from Wikipedia. While I like the quote, I’m not so sure about Ayurveda, a forerunner of what we now call alternative medicine. Seems to be that “the lord” and his followers prescribed a lot of questionable medicines, things that were somewhat heavy on the heavy metals.
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Well, if Harvard says it….
….it must be true. Get plenty of Omega 3 and us old folks will live a lot longer. Not sure if the world really needs that but… The article recommends fish as the Omega 3 source but you get just about as much from grass fed beef. Thistle Hill grass fed beef. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-fish-dying-older-adults.html#nwlt Note the companion links about Omega 3s benefit in combatting Alzheimers.
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What a wonderful world….
….so why do we keep insisting on messing it up? I know, corny and all that but still, wouldn’t it be nice….. http://www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0 Thanks to our dear friend, Gisela, in Koenigswinter, Germany for the link.
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Spring is in the air….
…37 degree air, but nevertheless. At Thistle Hill we decided today to declare Spring has arrived. We announced the news this morning to a line-up of our young bulls. That means some new assignments. For instance, Green Field, winter home for ease of taking care of our young bulls, is now reduced to six. Their buddies have been detached for duty at satellite pastures about 5 miles away. One bull is already on the job, breeding some young heifers for a farm in South Carolina. And another will be sent to still another satellite pasture to romance another group of heifers. Despite the temperature, green has begun to show in…
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In praise of fat – 2….
….as a late convert to the joys of bacon, I find it a bit strange that one could be classified as “in a rut” if he eats bacon and eggs every morning. What a rut! But one of the Paleo bloggers is worried about it and so offers three other options for your breakfast menu. https://www.paleotrail.com/blog/2013/04/healthy-paleo-breakfast-ideas-without-eggs
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In praise of fat….
….not the kind we carry around, but the kind we eat. For years, and particularly when I pretended I was dieting, I would try to eliminate fatty foods and butter from my meals. That included carefully trimming the fat off the steaks I ate, even Thistle Hill steaks. I have concluded that, for me at least, it was wasted effort. Fat, according to the latest research, is good for you. The right kind of fat. Here’s a recent article that provoked outrage in the comments section from people still wedded to the propaganda rammed down our throats by Big Ag and Big Government for at least 70 years. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393304578358681822758600.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories#articleTabs%3Dcomments Now…