• Meanwhile back at Thistle Hill….

    ….we have a half-brother to the two young bull calves down in Georgia.  This one is by Millennium Falcon, too, but the dam was Goldings Snowdrop.  He’s one of six traditional English Devon calves we’re raising here. The first generation we brought over is now approaching two years of age and we’re using one of those bulls on a small number of cows in our regular herd.  A kind of “test run”. For more information on our joint project with Bill and Nancy Walker and John and Patricia Forelle you can check our website: www.traditionaldevon.com  

  • To the barricades….

    ….there are times when I think I could be a revolutionary.  Mostly those are times when I hear about the latest outrage perpetrated by chemical giant, Monsanto. It’s hard to imagine a more powerful, more destructive company on the planet.  Their genetic engineering—all government-sanctioned—and their ability to skirt any real scientific review is without parallel. We’ve detailed many times their influence in Washington (and it has made no difference whether a Republican or Democrat is in charge).  While other countries have been careful to keep a lid on genetically engineered foods, Monsanto has had free reign with its willing accomplices in the government and universities. One of the articles of…

  • Updating our British newcomers….

    ….we spent several days recently inspecting our British calves at Doyle Unruh’s farm in Georgia…and our older heifers just across the state line at Bill and Nancy Walker’s farm in South Carolina. This is an Essington Buttercup son by Millennium Falcon, now almost six months old.  Doyle will be holding him on his recipient mother for a few more months. His half-brother, a Goldings Norah son also by Falcon, has an interesting story.  Recently our partner in Cornwall, England, Juliet Cleave, posted a picture on her Facebook page of an outstanding young bull . The picture was taken in 1963 and other than the name—      Uggaton Highwayman 2nd—she was asking…

  • Devon, we hardly knew ye….

    …our Cornwell correspondent, Juliet Cleave,  came up with this picture of an award-winning bull…the way Devon used to be…before the English (and the Americans) “improved” the breed. And it wasn’t that long ago:  1963! We’ve asked Juliet for more information.  For now, we only know his name was “Uggaton Highwayman 2nd”.

  • The “right stuff”….

    ….few things are as much fun as watching  a young dog learn to herd.  Our  nine-month old English shepherd “Pokey” has got it all figured out…except where to put the cows once she has them in a group.  Almost any corner will do.  We’re hoping a professional trainer will soon sort things out for her. Of course, “Pokey” did not have the advantage of an Australian shepherd we saw recently on YouTube.  He got to practice on ducks before graduating to cows. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=89luGserh3o

  • Famed Devon breeder a stroke victim….

    Gerard (Jerry) Engh of Lakota Ranch has been stricken by a serious stroke.  Son Jeremy Engh tells the American Devon Cattle Association (ADCA) that the stroke occurred several weeks ago and Jerry is recuperating at the ranch in Remington. Jeremy says it may take a few months before there is a full recovery. The senior Engh played the key role in keeping the Devon breed going through the dark days of the feed lot craze.  There was a time when an Association meeting would draw only a handful of breeders.  Today, with the merger of ADCA and its offshoot NADA in the offing, there are several hundred Devon farms in…

  • Do we know what we’re doing….

    ….from our unintended (and intended) consequences file.  The mad scientists experimenting with gene modification have come up with the next generation: changing the molecules in wheat to change it’s carbohydrate content. The process is called “silencing” the genes but it apparently not only silences wheat genes but may match human genes and silence them, too.  That could be potentially deadly for children and lead to serious illness in some adults. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/23/gm-wheat.aspx      

  • Food, the counter-revolution….

    ….we were at a party last weekend, and wound up sitting with two other couples at a table in the kitchen.  (I always position myself to watch the cook, if possible, or at least be closer to the “seconds”.) Near the end of the dinner, one of the women at the table commented this was the first time she had had a meal with a group of people and not one had pulled out a smart phone during the course of the dinner to check for email messages.  It was true, we were unhooked for more than an hour and not one of us was experiencing tremors. I was reminded…

  • A familiar scene….

    ….if you’ve ever tried to spray fish oil.  Add in several other ingredients, and you have a recipe for a sprayer jam.  We’re fortunate to have a neighbor—Ira McDowell—who is a veteran tractor mechanic as well as an all-around handyman. That’s Ira unclogging the line from the outlet of the PTO pump while I “supervise”. The material we’re spraying is a combination of fish oil and compost tea laced with microbes, calcium and phosphate.  It’s an expensive mixture and we’re trying it on two test pastures.  The hope is that this potent mixture…after several applications…will fix our pastures with a fertility profile they haven’t seen in hundreds of years. It’s…

  • A light at the end of the tunnel….

    ….signaling the demise of ethanol? The corn-based product has been probably the worst fraud environmentalists have inflicted on us.  Ethanol is more of a pollutant than the gasoline it’s supposed to help clean up.  And meeting the so-called “demand” has driven up the price of corn to the point where it’s caused starvation in the rest of the world…and food riots. I put the word “demand” in quotes because there’s no real demand….just a government mandate.  Fuel companies have been ordered to use more ethanol than they need or buy “ethanol credits”.  (A Texas sharpie was recently convicted of selling credits for an ethanol plant that existed only in his imagination.  Bilked…