Waiting for Breakfast

The herd has access to pasture 24/7, 365 days a year. Of course, there comes a point each fall when the grass begins to die and we supplement their diet with hay from an excellent local producer, O'Dell Farms in Slate Hill. The girls got so excited for their hay this morning they were waiting at the gate as soon as they heard the tractor start. They were so inspired they tried a brief run before settling back to their normal leisurely stroll.

Just Before Sunrise

Autumn Sunrise

Fall/Winter 2010 Orders

Order Now for Chicken & Beef! Pricing and Info available through the link on the top left!

Chicken Tractors

Here are the chicken tractors we use for our pastured poultry. In order to keep them safe from predators while still allowing them to be on pasture, we keep them here from ages 4-12weeks. These "tractors" are designed to be light enough to be moved by hand...in our case, twice a day to fresh pasture. The birds walk along as we move them. On the left is our original model, constructed by bending 16' hog panels over a frame of 4x4's. The tractor on the right is the newer, lighter-weight model we built this year, made from 3/4" conduit piping and 2x4's. Both have held up nicely and protected the birds from predators and bad weather.

Morning Grazing

The herd enjoying fresh pasture on a cool September morning

Summer Harvest

Here is a day's worth of veggies from the garden. The satisfaction we get from sitting down to dinner with our meat, eggs, and/or vegetables makes all the hard work worth it!

Heat Wave

We have been experiencing temperatures well over 90F for the past week or so; which requires more intensive management of the cattle than normal. We do our best to put them in the breeziest, shadiest parts of the pasture, keep their drinking water cold, and spray them with a hose or sprinkler to cool down. Here Neel is carrying an hour old cross-bred heifer calf to the shade (and walking backwards so mom can keep an eye on her calf!). After some help nursing, cow and calf enjoy a much needed rest.

Summary of Important Health Benefits of Grassfed Meats, Eggs and Dairy

Lower in Fat and Calories. There are a number of nutritional differences between the meat of pasture-raised and feedlot-raised animals. To begin with, meat from grass-fed cattle, sheep, and bison is lower in total fat. If the meat is very lean, it can have one third as much fat as a similar cut from a grain-fed animal. In fact, as you can see by the graph below, grass-fed beef can have the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast, wild deer, or elk.[1] Research shows that lean beef actually lowers your "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.[2]

Data from J. Animal Sci 80(5):1202-11.

Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our national epidemic of obesity might diminish.

In the past few years, producers of grass-fed beef have been looking for ways to increase the amount of marbling in the meat so that consumers will have a more familiar product. But even these fatter cuts of grass-fed beef are lower in fat and calories than beef from grain-fed cattle.

Extra Omega-3s. Meat from grass-fed animals has two to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain- fed animals. Omega-3s are called "good fats" because they play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. For example, of all the fats, they are the most heart-friendly. People who have ample amounts of omega-3s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat. Remarkably, they are 50 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack.[3] Omega-3s are essential for your brain as well. People with a diet rich in omega-3s are less likely to suffer from depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder (hyperactivity), or Alzheimer's disease.[4]

Another benefit of omega-3s is that they may reduce your risk of cancer. In animal studies, these essential fats have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and also kept them from spreading.[5] Although the human research is in its infancy, researchers have shown that omega-3s can slow or even reverse the extreme weight loss that accompanies advanced cancer and also hasten recovery from surgery.[6,7]

Omega-3s are most abundant in seafood and certain nuts and seeds such as flaxseeds and walnuts, but they are also found in animals raised on pasture. The reason is simple. Omega-3s are formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves and algae. Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. When cattle are taken off omega-3 rich grass and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on omega-3 poor grain, they begin losing their store of this beneficial fat. Each day that an animal spends in the feedlot, its supply of omega-3s is diminished.[8] The graph below illustrates this steady decline.

Data from: J Animal Sci (1993) 71(8):2079-88.

When chickens are housed indoors and deprived of greens, their meat and eggs also become artificially low in omega-3s. Eggs from pastured hens can contain as much as 10 times more omega-3s than eggs from factory hens.[9]

It has been estimated that only 40 percent of Americans consume an adequate supply of omega-3 fatty acids. Twenty percent have blood levels so low that they cannot be detected.[10] Switching to the meat, milk, and dairy products of grass-fed animals is one way to restore this vital nutrient to your diet.

The CLA Bonus. Meat and dairy products from grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat called "conjugated linoleic acid" or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their products contain from three to five times more CLA than products from animals fed conventional diets.[11] (A steak from the most marbled grass-fed animals will have the most CLA ,as much of the CLA is stored in fat cells.)

CLA may be one of our most potent defenses against cancer. In laboratory animals, a very small percentage of CLA—a mere 0.1 percent of total calories—greatly reduced tumor growth. [12] There is new evidence that CLA may also reduce cancer risk in humans. In a Finnish study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet, had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels. Switching from grain-fed to grassfed meat and dairy products places women in this lowest risk category.13 Researcher Tilak Dhiman from Utah State University estimates that you may be able to lower your risk of cancer simply by eating the following grassfed products each day: one glass of whole milk, one ounce of cheese, and one serving of meat. You would have to eat five times that amount of grain-fed meat and dairy products to get the same level of protection.

Vitamin E. In addition to being higher in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grassfed animals is also higher in vitamin E. The graph below shows vitamin E levels in meat from: 1) feedlot cattle, 2) feedlot cattle given high doses of synthetic vitamin E (1,000 IU per day), and 3) cattle raised on fresh pasture with no added supplements. The meat from the pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than the meat from the feedlot cattle and, interestingly, almost twice as high as the meat from the feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements. [14#] In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and cancer. This potent antioxidant may also have anti-aging properties. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin E.

Data from: Smith, G.C. "Dietary supplementation of vitamin E to cattle to improve shelf life and case life of beef for domestic and international markets." Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1171

Cooking Tips

http://www.americangrassfedbeef.com/tips-for-cooking-grass-fed.asp

http://www.sustainabletable.org/features/articles/grassfedbeef/

Rotational Grazing

We move our herd to fresh grass daily, setting up temporary paddocks within our larger fields. In the photo on the left, you can see how clean and even the grass is after it has been grazed.Pictured below is the difference in a paddock before/after the cattle have grazed it. The bottom picture shows some of the herd in a new section of pasture.

It's a Girl!

Neel came home from work Friday afternoon to find a healthy new heifer calf sleeping next to her mom. Although we would prefer to be here for every birth, this is really the next best thing! This little girl will grow up right here on the farm and become a wonderful addition to our herd.

Spring Fever

It was always a dream of mine to have pygmy goats....all the years I rode and worked in the hunter/jumper world I would try and convince anyone who would listen that the horses would benefit from having them around. We finally got two Nigerian Dwarf wethers in 2008, followed quickly by a doe we rescued from a local shelter (what's one more?), and shortly thereafter we were joined by her kid (guess that explains the weight gain!). They have proven to be excellent roommates for Pebbles, who is so enamored with them she puts up with the kind of daily shenanigans shown above...

Our first calf of the season!
He is a Full Blood Lowline Angus Bull Calf
Calved 3/11/10

"Snowicaine" 2010

"Hurry up, you're blocking the path!"
This steer's belly is just barely clear of the snow....

Although we are always disappointed to lose a healthy tree, we will get some good posts out of this cedar

We had a halt in production thanks to the 30"+ of snow we got late February.

Chicken Tractor: Step 1

1) Go to lumberyard with list; hope you don't have to make umpteen return trips (but let's be realistic)

Also, get all helpers dressed and ready....

New Chicken Tractor

We have started production on a new "chicken tractor" for our pastured poultry.....after a back-breaking 2009 we have new plans for a lighter model (moving to fresh grass twice a day can be exhausting!). Thanks to Owenlea Holsteins and Chris Bailey for these plans....

Eat Wild

Eat Wild

Here is one of our favorite websites for finding other local producers, markets, and restaurants.

Miniature Hereford Cattle Breed: Facts
Miniature Hereford Cattle look just like standard Hereford Cattle, they have the white face and are red with white under markings.
Read More

Informed and Inspired

What a wonderful weekend! We attended a conference on raising grass-fed beef put on by Cornell Cooperative Extension, and were overwhelmed by the incredible speakers and information! It was also so encouraging to meet and learn from so many other small farmers...hearing their stories, challenges, and triumphs, and realizing that we are not alone on this crazy and wonderful journey!
I chose this picture to post as I think it relates to several topics we discussed this weekend...
1) I think this is a decent example of the difference in the pasture before/after the cows are rotated into an area. In this picture they have eaten down most of the grass fairly evenly, and are ready to move on.
2) There was some discussion about the "novel" idea of grazing the whole herd together, and the community relationships that ensued. Isn't it a bit counter-intuitive to think that the herd should be/would function better separate? In this picture we have a bull, three cows, a yearling steer, and a calf, with another calf and two more steers out of the shot. This just seems natural to us.....some people also suggested that there might be a minimum number (40?) required to achieve the "community", but it seemed to work with our small group as well!
3) There was a lot of good information on stocking density/mob grazing/maximizing animal impact to get the best results from both your pasture and your animals. Obviously we have not yet achieved that! I am anxiously waiting for spring to try some new ideas with our rotational grazing set up!

The only down side to the weekend was that we can't get moving fast enough! There is so much still to learn, to do, and never enough hours in the day!
Thank you to CCE and all the speakers at the conference; we can't wait for the next one!