While I can be hard on government ag agents, it was one of those critters (since reformed) who set us on the path to grass fed cattle and, indirectly, Devon.<\/p>\n
His name is Jim Gerrish, a consultant now, who lives and works out of Idaho.\u00a0 Jim visited Thistle Hill almost 10 years ago, when we were still a traditional operation using chemicals, feeding grain, and not really interested in eating our own meat.\u00a0 That really shocked Jim at the time and he immediately pointed out a cow that we should slaughter and taste.<\/p>\n
Jim also recommended moving our calving to the Fall, to spare the cows the stress of Virginia’s summer heat.\u00a0 And he is the one who said: “put some red into your herd”.\u00a0 That set us on the path that led to our Ruby Red Devon.\u00a0 So the next time you’re having a Thistle Hill steak, or even a burger, lift a glass to Jim Gerrish.<\/p>\n
All this was triggered by an item in another friend’s blog: Kit Pharo, who raises and markets grass fed bulls out in Colorado.\u00a0 Kit and Jim were raising a glass (or two) recently after which Jim opined:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a debt crisis, a housing crisis, a leadership crisis and a healthcare crisis.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He continued by saying, \u201cI think the most serious crisis that we have is a health crisis.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Two-thirds of the U.S. population is classified as overweight.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cObesity is a failure of fat metabolism \u2013 NOT fat accumulation,\u201d explained Jim, \u201cand plenty of people will say that it is too much fat in your diet or lack of activity \u2013 but those factors are NOT the problem.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Jim firmly believes that meat and animal fat are good for us.<\/em><\/p>\n Jim said, \u201cIf you want to identify the three things that put us in our current health crisis, they are sugar, specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the increase in grain consumption and vegetable oils.\u00a0\u00a0 Fat has nothing to do with it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Jim continues by saying, \u201cThe simple solution to the health crisis is to eat REAL food \u2013 NOT processed commodities.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Gerrish suggested that people should only shop the outside edges of the supermarket \u2013 purchasing items like fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products \u2013 or to shop locally at food cooperatives or farmers markets.\u00a0\u00a0 He said, \u201cThe inside aisles at the supermarket are where the processed commodities are located \u2013 where the HFCS and highly processed grains can be found.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n It’s not exactly the kind of words you hear from a typical government agent today.\u00a0 But times are definitely changing when two old-timey cowboys—Jim and Kit—get together and wind up discussing nutrition.<\/p>\n A point of clarification:\u00a0 we assume\u00a0only Jim lifted a glass.\u00a0 Kit doesn’t drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While I can be hard on government ag agents, it was one of those critters (since reformed) who set us on the path to grass fed cattle and, indirectly, Devon. His name is Jim Gerrish, a consultant now, who lives and works out of Idaho.\u00a0 Jim visited Thistle Hill almost 10 years ago, when we were still a traditional operation using chemicals, feeding grain, and not really interested in eating our own meat.\u00a0 That really shocked Jim at the time and he immediately pointed out a cow that we should slaughter and taste. Jim also recommended moving our calving to the Fall, to spare the cows the stress of Virginia’s summer heat.\u00a0 And he is the one who said: “put some red into your herd”.\u00a0 That set us on the path that led to our Ruby Red Devon.\u00a0 So the next time you’re having a Thistle Hill steak, or even a burger, lift a glass to Jim Gerrish. All this was triggered by an item in another friend’s blog: Kit Pharo, who raises and markets grass fed bulls out in Colorado.\u00a0 Kit and Jim were raising a glass (or two) recently after which Jim opined: \u201cWe have a debt crisis, a housing crisis, a leadership crisis and a healthcare crisis.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He continued by saying, \u201cI think the most serious crisis that we have is a health crisis.\u201d Two-thirds of the U.S. population is classified as overweight.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cObesity is a failure of fat metabolism \u2013 NOT fat accumulation,\u201d explained Jim, \u201cand plenty of people will say that it is too much fat in your diet or lack of activity \u2013 but those factors are NOT the problem.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Jim firmly believes that meat and animal fat are good for us. Jim said, \u201cIf you want to identify the three things that put us in our current health crisis, they are sugar, specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the increase in grain consumption and vegetable oils.\u00a0\u00a0 Fat has nothing to do with it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Jim continues by saying, \u201cThe simple solution to the health crisis is to eat REAL food \u2013 NOT processed commodities.\u201d Gerrish suggested that people should only shop the outside edges of the supermarket \u2013 purchasing items like fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products \u2013 or to shop locally at food cooperatives or farmers markets.\u00a0\u00a0 He said, \u201cThe inside aisles at the supermarket are where the processed commodities are located \u2013 where the HFCS and highly processed grains can be found.\u201d It’s not exactly the kind of words you hear from a typical government agent today.\u00a0 But times are definitely changing when two old-timey cowboys—Jim and Kit—get together and wind up discussing nutrition. A point of clarification:\u00a0 we assume\u00a0only Jim lifted a glass.\u00a0 Kit doesn’t drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,9,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-health","category-nutrition","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}