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“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…
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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…
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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…
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Final stop….
…on our “magical, mystery Devon tour”: Mike Scannell’s Harrier Fields Farm. He’s pictured with Dee Dee King, a new friend we met along the way. Mike probably holds the world’s record for Devon prices…..$36,000 for a cow-calf at the NADA sale a few years back. Mike and Joan Harris are still recovering from a devastating fire that destroyed an historic barn on their property a few years back. However, that certainly hasn’t slowed them down. Their new herd bull, Dundee, (think Crocodile), is an embryo bull from the Tiranna herd in Australia. Tragically, most of the embryos were in a canister lost in the fire but Dundee,…
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Third stop….
….on our Devon summer tour: the famed Rotokawa herd in Hardwick, Massachusetts. Few breeders could be under more pressure than Henry Hauptman. For the past few years he has owned the famed Rotokawa…and his first big decision was to withdraw the animals from the marketplace while he worked to restore their luster. We think Henry’s “there”….he thinks it will take at least one more year. There are imitators, but Henry’s are still the original genetics imported by Ridge Shinn, Gearld Fry and Chuck Lacy. And Ken McDowall remains in close contact with Henry on all the breeding decisions. After being transported from New Zealand….and then trucked around the countryside here in…
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Second stop….
….on our summer vacation Devon tour: Don and Heather Minto’s Watson Farm on an island in the middle of Narragansett Bay. We met Don at the very first North American Devon organizational meeting….worked together on the board…and planned NADA’s second convention at his Rhode Island farm. No one has done more for Devon than he and Heather…and our friendship has survived the association wars! Watson Farms current herd bull is R46…a line bred Rotokawa 93 sire out of a 688 daughter. There are Watson Farm bulls in a number of herds and we credit one…R58…with putting us on the road to success. R46 sired 33 calves for the Mintos last…