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Click bait…
…although we didn’t call it that back in my ink-stained days of newspapering. Back then editors were always looking for photos that would help sell papers. The formula was simple…pretty girls, babies and animals. Get a picture with two out of three and you were guaranteed good placement in the paper. Today with the Internet and Facebook they call it “clickbait”…and here’s an example: A baby lamb qualifies as a two-for and the pretty girl is our Mackenzie Mason. The lamb is a kind of rescue project…it has a bone fracture making it difficult to balance and walk. Church took over care of the animal while on rounds with our…
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The family that works cattle together…
…well gets dirty together if nothing else. Pregnancy checking is a kind of tense moment in the year. Not only do you hope for a high rate of pregnancy…but for matings you’ve invested in embryo transplants and artificial insemination. This year we’re checking a total of 32 cows…a mix of regular Devon plus our pure traditional English Devon. The wranglers are grandson Church, his Dad Curt and his uncle Church. First mamas and calves are called in and then sorted in separate pens. The young will get permanent tags and tattoos and vaccinations. Some of the bulls that don’t meet Thistle Hill standards are also converted to steers. At the…
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Meat sales soar…
…according to a survey of supermarket and on-line buying. Meat during this pandemic year has gained about 20% in sales volume…it’s now 35% of the food dollar and twice as much as chicken. https://www.supermarketnews.com/meat/meat-sales-reach-record-highs-2020-increasing-192 It’s interesting that on-line sales have really increased while at the same time people are more concerned about healthy food. Now note this summary is based on dollar sales…not pounds. But now that younger people have broken the restaurant habit, will they continue cooking at home? Will their interest in healthy foods continue? Most smaller farmers we know haven’t been able to gear-up production to get a piece of this action. Nor do they have the…
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A new arrival…
…a young lamb Church came up with in his part time veterinary work. She has a hairline leg fracture but Church is determined to nurse it back to health. And he seems to have the willing assistance of his dog Nala. A friend who raises sheep thinks this is probably a Suffolk but suspects it’s been crossed with Hampshire. David
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What’s the difference…
..between Grassfed and grass-finished beef? From time to time we allude to the benefits of Thistle Hill’s grass-finished beef…but the labels are confusing and the USDA does it’s utmost to confuse the issue to the benefit of Big Ag. So we thought we’d reprint an article that does a fair and balanced treatment of the subject by food writer Nathan Phelps which was recently published in the US Wellness newsletter. David
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Free at last…
…with everyone in the family safely vaccinated, I was finally able to escape my senior residence for the first time in almost exactly a year. Naturally it was this year’s calf crop that interested me most. They’re five months old now and a rewarding bunch of prospects. Church’s favorite is THF 3…the daughter of TDA Cashtiller 4 and our Essington bull. She’s the latest in our line of pure traditional English calves. I was taken by this Bribery heifer..a combination of four great English herds. She’s two-years old…and perhaps in-calf. And she was the last mating Wooz and Church selected on our final visit to England. We were in agreement…
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A new wrinkle…
…to cooking steaks. Church introduced me to grilling on a soap stone. It’s pretty simple and pretty much guarantees even cooking. We cooked a filet and two boneless strip steaks…all from a 10-year old cow. Tenderness and the flavor could not have been better! We have pretty well satisfied ourselves that for our personal eating we’ll stick to the older cows. Will the day ever come when the government does away with the 30-month nonsense? The rule that older cows cannot be butchered goes back to the “mad cow” scare in England. Just what caused it was not conclusively proven but millions of cows were slaughtered “just in case”. In…
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Fugitives from our storm…
..for a nice set of Thistle Hill steers. They had just been shipped to Jimmy Acres Farm near Semora, North Carolina when the snows hit. Brother and sister Jake and Anna Tommerdahl originally were going to fatten the steers for us but I guess they fell in love and immediately offered to buy them! That’s the way it is with Devon. Church met the Tommerdahls when they and he were Fellows at a Grassfed Exchange meeting in California. Until now they’ve been farming produce and chicken and pigs. This is their introduction to bigger livestock though Jake had interned in cattle operations before. Perhaps best of all it’s confirmation of…
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This is SO important…
…we all have chemicals in us that weren’t around a hundred years ago. Even in the smallest of quantities these endocrine disrupting compounds can lead to major health problems like diabetes, obesity, and infertility. The end of the article has some tips on how to limit your exposure. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/endocrine-disruptors-sperm.html David
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Ahead of the storm…
…Church is seeding clover just ahead of our most recent snow storm. For our “civilian” readers, the clover serves several important purposes: It provides additional forage during the summer slump in the grass growing season. It counter-balances the toxic effect of the endophyte which is more prevalent in fescue in the summer. And it fixes nitrogen in the soil to such a great extent that we haven’t had to fertilize in a dozen years. All this without plowing. The nighttime freezing and daytime thawing…coupled with the melting snow…provides the ideal growing conditions for the seeds. And the snow did come just as Church was finishing. David