He who has water and peat on his own farm has the world his own way. -Old Irish proverb.

Category: Grassfed Beef (Page 2 of 3)

Grassfed Beef for Sale

Currently Available: Grass-fed, grass-finished beef. 

The meat will be available on or around July 14th and processing will be done at Eickman’s Processing in Seward, IL. (All wholes, halves and quarters will be picked up at Eickman’s.) Please place your order as soon as possible, keeping in mind that orders will be filled on a first come first served basis.

___Whole beef, $3.00/lb. hanging weight* (approx. 320-400 lbs. beef)
___½ beef, $3.25/lb. hanging weight* (approx. 160-200 lbs. beef)
___¼ beef, $3.50/lb. hanging weight* (approx. 80-100 lbs. beef)

*Processing fee not included. Processing usually runs about $0.55/lb. depending on how you specify your order. You will need to contact Eickman’s to specify which cuts you prefer.

___Variety Beef Box, $135

Includes approx. 25 pounds of varied cuts: steaks, roasts, round steaks and/or cube steaks, ground beef, etc. Processing fee is included in this price. You will pick up box at the farm.

Our cattle are rotated through organically-managed pastures and have free-choice access to an organic salt, mineral and kelp supplement. They are fed absolutely no grain, hormones or antibiotics.

Send your name, contact information and order to Jackie at comepifa@aol.com. Thank you!

Local orders only. We do not ship or deliver at this time.

Farm Events Galore

We’ve been busy this spring.  Busy with farm work, yes.  But also busy with events.  Farm events.

The renewed interest in local food has meant that there are a lot of people suddenly interested in and wanting to visit farms.  So far this spring we’ve been the destination for a local elementary school field trip, we participated in our second annual Openfields Farm Tour, and we hosted a Pasture Walk.  All of these events are a lot of fun (and a lot of work). 

The first event, the fieldtrip, brought 20 1st-graders and their parents out to see the chickens.  Each classroom at their school focused on a different farm animal, organized a field trip around that animal, and then reported what they learned back to the others.  They all visited a large farm and a small farm in the same day to see the differences in production styles, which I thought was a brilliant idea.

The kids that came here had first visited Phil’s Fresh Eggs in Forreston.  There they got to see a video about egg production, they got to see the egg washing machines, the egg sorters, the egg packing machines, etc.  Everything is very mechanized–it has to be when you’re packing 150,000 dozen eggs a day (!)–and must be pretty cool to watch, especially for a 1st grader!  But they didn’t get to go in a see the chickens (disease control) and they didn’t get to touch an egg (not quite sure why–couldn’t they spare a couple?).

When they got here, I let them visit the chickens, taught them about the different breeds and showed them the food that we used.  We showed them the baby chicks and explained the difference between those used for meat production and those kept for eggs.  They got to hold the chicks and gather some eggs.  Every single one of them got to candle their own egg, grade it and put it in the appropriate-sized egg carton.  They then took home a few dozen eggs (the teachers insisted on paying for them) so they could each take an egg home with them.  I joked that I took no responsibility for school-bus-induced scrambled eggs in their backpacks. 

The kids had fun, and so did I, but the best thing that came of that fieldtrip was the packet of thank you letters and hand-drawn pictures I got back from the kids about 2 weeks later.  They were absolutely hilarious.

Next, we participated in the Openfields Farm Tour for the second year in a row.  I seriously considered not doing it this year because the tour comes at the busiest time of year for us.  But it’s an Extension event, and I work for Extension, and my boss and co-worker basically told me I had no choice but to sign up for the tour, the big bullies.

That’s OK, it turned out to be a lovely day, Laura and Rob and family came over to help, and we had about 90 people come by the farm.  Wow!

Look at that farm crew! (Madelina was such a good tour guide she was given a few tips and I even had a lady threaten to steal her away. We definitely have her slated for the marketing and advertising department.)

Here are some happy visitors taking home a dozen eggs.  (This lady is running for the county board!  She likes farms, so she just might get my vote.)

Rob is taking some visitors out to see the baby calves, which reminds me I need to post some pictures of them soon.

And Ana is taking advantage of the fact that we finally have enough people around to make a good go at a lemonade stand. Marketing and development for her, too.

All in all the day was a success.

Our final farm event was a Pasture Walk.  A pasture walk is an informal event for people interested in grazing.  It was hosted by the U of I Extension and the Northwest Illinois Grazing Network.  Extension did a good job of advertising for the event so we had between 20 and 25 people come, which I think was a really great turnout.

I explained our operation, Jim Morrison from Extension provided some technical information about finishing animals on grass, forage values, grazing techniques, etc., and Ed Johnston from NRCS gave the crowd some information about the EQIP program, which we used to cost-share for our fences and waterlines.  There was a nice article in the Freeport Journal Standard about it, so I’ll let you read it.

That’s right, I’m getting tired of typing. Follow this link:

Pasture Walk

A New Addition

It wasn’t like we didn’t have anything else to do Saturday. I had 3 coats of primer to apply to my new (!) kitchen walls (a project which of course necessitated two trips to the hardware store for forgotten supplies), the electrician was out to look at some old wires we had unearthed in the process, Marcel and Rob were finishing up a job we had started two weeks ago–cleaning out the barns and spreading manure, my oldest had plans with a friend at 3 PM, and we were keeping my nephew for the night, whom was supposed to arrive at anytime. I had no food and my house was a disaster, but I was going to get to that, too, eventually.

So when Marcel called to say that the young heifer #19 was in labor and not progressing, I had no choice.  Everything else had to be put on hold; we switched gears and jumped into ‘birth-assistance’ mode. #19 had never given birth before and is quite small, so we knew she might have problems. Marcel was already up there cleaning up the manure pile, so he kept an eye on her as I quickly excused myself from the electrician’s conversation about his beagle puppy, grabbed the kids and gathered the birthing-assistance tools: 3 straw bales for clean bedding, rubber gloves for Marcel and I, and the birthing chains.

When I arrived, the chute we use to confine the mother had been pushed out of position during the manure operation, so we had to get the tractor and move that first. At this time the mother was prostrate on the ground, pushing with little progress. Her eyes were strained and her neck outstretched–we needed to help her, fast.

Next we had to separate #19 from the rest of the herd. This is the worst part–how horrible to have to chase a laboring mother around the barnyard, knowing what she is going through and worried about the life of her calf. We separated a group of 5 from the rest and corralled them into the barn. Once in, it was pretty simple to get the others out (they know something’s up and want out of there!) while keeping her in. The nice thing about a round barn is that the cows follow the contour of the walls and don’t get hung up in corners where they might decide to turn around and go the other way. So #19 kept walking until she reached our ‘capture area’.  We have a gate secured in place that runs from exterior wall to interior wall, blocking her progress, at which point we swing a hinged gate around from behind and capture her in a small triangle-shaped pen.

At the wide side of the pen is a door to the exterior with a cattle chute on the outside. The chute is the only way out of the enclosure, so the cows try to walk through it to the outside. As they progress through the chute, we close the headgate around their neck, shut the reargate and voila–we’ve got ’em! Now we can vaccinate them, castrate calves, pregnancy check, you name it. Here is a picture from last year, showing how it normally goes:

In this case, however, we didn’t catch the mother in the headgate–we shut it before she gets that far so that she has some free movement within the chute. And instead of shutting the reargate, we put a large 2X4 board through the back of the chute about thigh-high, preventing her from backing up but giving us access to her nether-regions.

We immediately gloved up and got to work.  Marcel inserted his hand into her vagina to find the calf’s hoove.  I passed him the chains and he hooked one end around each foot, just above the second joint so as not to break the calf’s ankle as we pulled.  This is harder than it sounds, and took him a good 10 minutes.  Once the chains were in position, we hooked handles onto the chain, waited for the mother to push and then pulled with all our might.  Literally.  It is really hard to pull a calf and it takes awhile to get that babe out of there.  We noticed the calf’s tongue hanging out of its mouth–not a good sign.  So I told Marcel to keep pulling as I tore away the placenta from the calf’s nose.  The nostrils were moving!  The calf was trying to breathe, so it was still alive!

If we could just get that head out. I pushed up on the cow’s labia to help widen the pathway as Marcel pulled. All of a sudden the mother gave a good push and the head slipped out. Now we had to quickly change tactics: if the mother sat down onto the 2X4 board, she would kill the calf. We had to let the calf hang there through a contraction to help squeeze the liquid out of its lungs, and then get it down quickly and gently. Here is a photo from last year showing Farmer Scott pulling one of our calves. He is a dairy farmer from down the road and taught us how to assist difficult births.

Isn’t that amazing?  He did this by himself with some assistance from my brother-in-law (my sister was taking photos).  That’s what I call experience.  

Anyways, I stood underneath the calf and wrapped my arms around it (they are super slippery!) as Marcel pulled. The mother pushed, Marcel pulled, and I caught the calf. Well, I helped break its fall to the ground at least. Did I mention how slippery they are?  We removed the board and pushed the mother back into the pen where she went to work licking it, cleaning it, and mooing gently at it. 

It’s a girl!  And she is a strong, spunky little calf.  We stood around and watched her try to stand up, which was the entertainment of the day for my kids.  They laughed and laughed as she stumbled and toppled over, head over feet, more than a few times.  But she did it.  Within 2 hours she was walking, nursing, and checking out her new home.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Here they are, mother and daughter, immediately after she was born.  Welcome to Irish Grove, little lady.

Finally! A Small Farm Advantage

“Rain, rain go away. Come again another day.”

It’s been THE rainiest growing season I can ever recall. A wet spring made it difficult to plant the crops. A wet summer meant it was difficult to make hay. And a wet fall has the harvest at a complete standstill.

If you recall, I was a fall-weather-whiner last year as well, with rain delaying harvest, corn moisture levels extremely high, etc. etc. I should have saved my breath, because last year was a walk in the park compared to this year. With the weather forecasted to continue in this wet and cold pattern, I don’t foresee getting the corn out of the field until December. Which means we might be fighting snowy field conditions.

I have to admit that being a farmer has made me a little cranky. (My family may argue I’ve always been cranky–don’t listen to them.) But my crankiness really comes out when in company with a person that starts to wax rhapsodic about “farmers (said with a negative tone) who are making money! hand over fist! as they farm fencerow to fencerow! with no consideration of the environment! in pursuit of the almighty dollar!” People eat this line up, man. They are all over it. If you want your own popularity to soar sky-high, try that line out. I guarantee you’ll have people murmuring in agreement, possibly a small applause, and definitely an increase in groupies. (Hey, everyone needs a few groupies.)

What these people don’t realize is that our livelihoods are mostly out of our control. Grain prices soared last year to record levels. So did trucking fees, basis levels (what elevators charge for handling our grain), fertilizer and input costs, diesel prices, drying charges, etc. Don’t blame a farmer for trying to squeeze a few hundred extra bushels out of his or her land, is what I’m trying to say here. The survival of their farm depends upon it.

This year is even tougher. Grain prices have come down a bit, but we were forced to pay for much of the aforementioned input fees during last year’s highs. Add to that our wet year, and we’re talking near disaster.

Wet grain means thousands, yes thousands, of dollars in drying charges. Wet grain also means that even if you’re able to harvest your crops, the grain elevators won’t take them because the moisture counts are too high. What does one do with thousands of bushels of grain and nowhere to go? Wet fields increase the likelihood of soil compaction at harvest, which causes a myriad of problems in future years. And wet weather means low quality hay and fewer cuttings (read lost income).

While we’re on the subject of hay, I have to point out one distinct advantage Irish Grove has over other farms: we have livestock. Most people, including us, have given up on their 4th cutting of hay. The alfalfa and grass hay fields sit there, unharvested, taunting us with the lost opportunity and lost income. Except, wait! We have cows. And hay fields with fences.

Cattle prices are too low to make sense for most smaller farms, so cows are usually relegated to large feedlots that can take advantage of bulk pricing discounts, etc. etc. Ignoring the drawbacks that come with large feedlots, the results are that farm fences have been torn down. I don’t blame anyone for this: fencing is extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention a royal pain in the arse–they easily become overgrown with weeds and brush. (Anyways, one may be able to fit a few more corn rows where that fence used to sit. Don’t hate.)

But we graze our cows and fences have gone back up. So while we may not be able to take that 4th cutting of hay, we can run the cattle through the field and they will eat it green instead! After some heavy frosts, the plants don’t have the same nutrient availability as they did during the summer months, but it’s nutritionally equivalent to dry hay.

So, the cows harvest the hay on their own and save us time and money spent on harvesting a hay crop. They keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (no tractor driving), fertilize the land by pooping and peeing, which in turns keeps greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (no need to mine for and truck fertilizer in). Oh, and we won’t have to feed them as much dry hay this winter, leaving more to sell to our neighbors. Brilliant!

Small farms like ours have few advantages over large farms, so it’s nice to finally find one. Maybe it’ll help a bit with my crankiness! If so, my family will be thanking the cows on a daily basis.

Letter to the Editor

A local foods advocate published an article in the local Rockford Register Star about the health and environmental benefits of pastured meats. Sure enough, a rebuttal of sorts was written as a letter to the editor. Here’s what it said:

The article about pasture-fed meat (“Pasture-fed meat packed with benefits,” Go, June 17, 2009) contained several misconceptions.

Livestock raised on pastures is not less stressed or healthier. According to researchers in Canada, Australia and Germany, the opposite is true.

Livestock raised in pastures — also called “free-ranged” — is more prone to diseases and parasites and is exposed to weather extremes, including cold, rain and wind. Such animals are also more vulnerable to wild predators, such as coyotes, and must constantly forage for food and places to rest. As a result, mortality rates are higher.

Feedlots and other confinement systems enable producers to closely monitor the health of animals under their care.

As to the statement that meat from pasture-fed livestock contains higher levels of omega-3 fats: Omega-3 fat is found in soybeans and fish meal — feed ingredients not available to pasture-fed animals but commonly fed to animals raised in feedlots.

Pasture-feeding is not more environment-friendly. Animals on range often foul streams and waterways. On the other hand, feedlot cattle recycle food that consumers do not want to eat.

Ever wonder what happens to all that stale bread at the grocery store? It is fed to animals in feedlots.

As you can see, the guy’s logic is a little screwy. Anyways, the local foods advocate asked me to write a rebuttal to his rebuttal, as I am a pasture-based farmer. Here’s my letter (hoping the paper doesn’t let this go on and on):

As manager of a grass-finished beef operation, I find Mr. ___________’s rebuttal to your article on pasture-fed meats interesting. He is correct that feedlots recycle many unwanted food items. Stale bread may not alarm anyone, but The Wall Street Journal reported that feedlot cattle also recycle “cookies, licorice, cheese curls, frosted wheat cereal, Tater Tots, Kit Kat bars, uncooked French fries, pretzels and chocolate bars.”

Feedlot operators monitor the health of their herd by assuming they are all sick. After reading that feed list, I don’t blame them. As a result, all feedlot cattle receive daily doses of antibiotics to “preserve health”. In contrast, pastured animals are naturally healthy and receive daily doses of sunshine, fresh grass, and the freedom to move about. Antibiotics are rarely needed for a pastured animal (and never used on organic cattle).

Cows shouldn’t eat fish and can produce Omega 3’s on their own by eating grass. Cow waste should drop onto a grassy field where it fertilizes the soil. And yes, cows can die–either of natural causes or unnatural living conditions. I invite the public to visit both a feedlot and a pasture-based farm. Inform yourself and support whichever farm-model you find acceptable.

I know I left a lot out, but had to keep it to 200 words. Anyways, I tend to be a bit long-winded. We’ve got to think of the poor newspaper-reading public, you know.

Frustration

You know those lovely cows I’ve been so enamored with? And how I think rotational grazing is the most awesome kick-butt farming system out there?

Well today I can’t stand either one. And the only butt that’s getting a kicking is mine.

I’m frustrated. F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-E-D.

You see, we’ve been working hard to set up our leader/follower grazing system. What is a leader/follower grazing system, you ask? A leader/follower system is where we take a section of our pasture and divide it into small paddocks. The yearling calves that are fattening for market are let into that fresh paddock first. They eat as much yummy goodness as they can until they get moved to a nice fresh paddock the following afternoon. They are the leaders.

The followers are the pregnant mothers and the bull. Once we move the leaders into their new paddock, these ladies (and one guy) get put into the paddock just vacated by the leaders. They clean up what the leaders left behind, which includes some yummy goodness, but also the less yummy stuff like weeds, alfalfa stalks that have been stripped of their delicious leaves, etc.

This systems allows all of the cattle to fulfill their nutritional needs, but the leaders get first choice at the sweetest, highest energy plants in the paddock, which translates into nice meaty grassfed steers by the end of the summer.

Sounds great, right? Harrumph.

First off, it took us two days and many trips to Farm and Fleet to get the system set up. We had the water tank, but the float didn’t fit it. We got the float to finally work, and then the connection was leaky. We got a new connection but then needed longer hoses. Hoses in place, we found we needed another polytape reel for the extra paddock divisions. Trying not to lose my patience, I bought or found what was needed and moved forward. You see, Marcel isn’t so sure about this grazing stuff, and I didn’t want to show any weakness in the system.

Which in hindsight makes me laugh. Or cry.

Here we are, getting the water tank in place. Ah, the confidence I was projecting. I look pretty convincing, don’t I?

Next we sorted the calves at our place, loading the grassfed steers into the trailer and leaving behind the four Charolais calves that we’re going to grain feed. We haven’t been too enamored of these Charolais so far, and Sunday was no different. They are so skittish it makes the whole group nervous. Because of them, the separating took a lot longer than planned.

But we got it done, and hauled the Murray Greys over to Mom’s pasture. We let the steers into their ‘leader’ paddock, where they got to rub noses with their mama’s across the electric fenceline.

And all was well. For one day, at least.

‘Cause on the very second day of grazing, my lovely children were having so much fun running through the tall, lush pasture grasses…….

that they spooked the leader calves right through the electrified backline that separated them from the mama cows.

Oh the joy!, the ecstasy!, the sheer delight that overcame these calves as they were reunited with their mothers once again. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

Almost, but not quite, as this wonderful, joyful reunion undid two solid days of work on the farm. It undid the previous day’s work, plus the long day’s work of separating the calves from their mamas that happened a few months ago. On a not-so-nice day, if you recall.

By this time I’m feeling discouraged. How are we supposed to re-separate the calves from the mothers in the middle of the pasture? How are we supposed to keep the bull away from those two young, impressionable heifers that he now has access to?

Most importantly, how do we restart our leader/follower system without discouraging Marcel? I need him to buy in to this system because…well, frankly because he’s the backbone of this farm. Without his enthusiasm and belief in this system it’ll be an uphill battle for yours truly. One that I will likely lose.

Ok. So we need to re-separate the calves, but at least for now they’re happily grazing in a nice, fresh paddock, right? Wrong.

When I went to check on the cattle this morning I found two very stubborn, curseword-inducing calves outside of the temporary electric fencelines. They had somehow escaped the paddock.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

It’s not like they were going anywhere, as the perimeter fence would keep them in the field, but the water was in the paddock. And on a sunny, windy day like today, they’d soon be thirsty.

I called Marcel and grumbled in his ear for awhile. He suggested that I take down the whole system, let all of the cows back into the barnyard, and we’d start all over later tonight. “OK. You’re right. That’s fine. I’ll take it all down.”

NOT.

I hung up, grabbed the pick-up truck, picked up Armando from preschool, and proceeded to torture him (and those two darn calves) for over an hour. I even broke the first rule of cattle rusting–never herd cattle alone–but I’d be d*mned if I was gonna take all that work down and accept defeat.

I moved the mothers, calves and bull into a fresh paddock full of yummy goodness so they wouldn’t pay mind to the fact that I was lowering the electric fence on one side. I pinned the fence down for a 20-foot opening, and then chased those two stubborn calves around the open field until they finally (finally!) saw the opening and crossed over.

I swear they stopped in front of the opening at least 6 times before they decided to cross into the paddock. And speaking of swearing, I think I gave my 4 year old an education, if you know what I mean.

So there you have it. My frustration runneth over, my rotational grazing system runneth amuk, and my yearling heifers runneth with the bull. And I’d better stop saying runneth, or I’ll be talking with a lisp for the re-thst of the day. Laugh.

At least I’d be amused. That’s a lot better than frustrated.

Why So Expensive?

Many people have asked me why grass-finished beef is so expensive. They don’t understand how a cow, eating grass, could be more expensive than one that eats grains. I mean, it’s just grass, right? Everyone can grow (and does grow) grass, so therefore grass-finished beef should be cheaper.

Me being me, I do a rather bad job of explaining the costs involved in raising grass-fed beef, mostly because it’s pretty darn difficult to recite a cost-benefit analysis in anything less than a 10-minute, one-sided and extremely boring “talk-at-you-not-with-you” conversation. Snore.

It is at this point that my friend and marketing consultant, Angela, would wag her finger at me and tell me to not focus on production costs because people buy with their emotions, not their knowledge.

Well, I see her point. But it also makes me seem a little shifty and a lot shiesty when I answer the “I don’t understand why it’s so expensive” question with an “Ours cows are happy. Our land is happy. The environment is happy. We farmers are happy. That 12 oz. steak will cost you $25, thank you.”

For the record, Angela did not advise me to say that. I came up with that hair-brained answer on my own.

But in all seriousness, I believe that people who truly want to know the “why” should get an honest answer, so I’m gonna try and list some of the costs involved in raising grass-finished beef. This list is surely not complete and only corresponds to the costs incurred in Irish Grove. Costs will be different for different farms.

SPACE
Grass-fed beef cannot be confined to a small barnyard. They need pasture, and lots of it. The general rule of thumb is 1 acre of pasture per cow-calf pair (mama and babe) per year. Got 40 cows with calves? You’ll need 40 acres of pasture, which means 40 acres of land that won’t be planted to a cash crop.

INFRASTRUCTURE
Animals require two things that cash crops don’t: fences and water. The investment we’ve made, so far, in fencing and water systems has cost us about $15,000. And that’s after receiving an EQIP grant from the government. The beef cattle have to pay for this. And it shows up in your meat costs.

PASTURE QUALITY
Quality beef requires high-quality pasture. Which means expensive seeds and fertilizer, specialized farm equipment, and lots of skill to properly manage the land. We also buy more-expensive organic seeds and organic-approved fertilizers to improve the health of our land. Imagine a good $10,000 to get a 40-acre field started. Then add $2000/year for fertilizers and reseed costs, if necessary. (Winter happens.)

CATTLE
You can’t use just any old cow in a grass-fed beef operation. The cows must be medium-framed and finish well on grass, meaning they’ll reach market weight by 20-22 months and marble well . This limits our sources of eligible calves, which makes it more practical to raise our own. Unfortunately, raising our own is more expensive because we not only have to feed the calf, but we have to maintain the mother and a bull as well.

WINTER
Winter is the most expensive time of year to have cattle. We must have plenty of high-quality hay on hand during the winter because we can’t supplement our cows’ diets with grain. This means more land in hayground or it means we purchase hay from a local grower at market prices plus transport costs.


I’m sure there are a myriad of other things I’ve forgotten here, and by this time tomorrow I’ll be kicking myself about another inefficient conversation, but you get the point. Grassfed beef is expensive to raise.

So why do it?

HAPPY COWS
Cows raised on pasture are healthier, requiring less medication and veterinary calls. Cows are ruminants and are designed to eat grass only. Feeding cows grain is like feeding your children a diet of fruit snacks and Snicker bars. Sure, they’ll grow and they’ll certainly fatten up. But is it good for them?

HAPPY LAND
We live in the Prairie State. Our natural landscape is prairie, otherwise known as grasslands. Grasslands are the natural habitat for large ruminants. Grass-fed beef is farming that mimicks nature–it improves and restores the land to its natural state, which in turn restores habitat for many threatened prairie animal and bird species.

HAPPY ENVIRONMENT
While grassfed beef operations seem quite inefficient at first glance, in fact our land is sequestering carbon (grasses sequester more carbon dioxide than trees) and saving gallons and gallons of fossil fuels. Our cows harvest their own food, for goodness sakes, which translates to fewer tractors planting, spraying, harvesting, hauling and grinding feed. The cows even spread their own manure!

HAPPY FARMERS
While our happiness may seem like our own responsibility, I would argue that it behooves all of us to have happy farmers who make a healthy living off of their farms as our neighbors. Happy farmers are more likely to preserve green space, care for their land and welcome you onto their farm in the spirit of transparency and community. They will show you what they produce, how they produce it, and then you can decide for yourself if that’s a product you would buy. Try visiting a CAFO and see what reaction you’ll get. (One that likely results in an escort service, if you know what I mean.) Most importantly in this day and age of sprawl, loss of open space, and a degradation of our rural culture and farming knowledge base, happy farmers are more likely to live on, work on and pass their farm on and into the hands of the next generation, not into the hands of that developer.

Hmmn. It looks like my happy cow sentence might not be that ridiculous afterall. I’ll have to ask Angela what she thinks about it. In the meantime, do the costs of grass-fed beef still seem ridiculous? Hope not, ’cause I didn’t even touch on the health benefits for eating grassfed meats.

Thankfully, some else has done that homework. For information regarding the health benefits of eating grass-fed versus grain-fed, check out Jo Robinson’s website: www.eatwild.com

And if that’s not enough for you, well then I give up already.

What Happens When….

What happens when…..

the cows are hungry,

and they’re really giving you the business for not bringing them hay any sooner,
and these are frozen to the ground?
A farmer temper-tantrum, that’s what.

Help Us Decide!!

I’ve got a fun little task for y’all to do for me.

You see, rumor has it that we here in Irish Grove just might be going organic on some of our acres next year. Grassfed beef is our main push with those acres, but we won’t be able to certify our beef until the following year. So, in the meantime, we’re thinking of raising some organic, pastured chickens to sell for meat.

This is where y’all come in. Organic pastured chickens will be a lot of work, for minimal return, especially the first year. Organic pastured chickens mean Marcel and I will be spending many winter hours building moveable chicken pens. Organic pastured chickens mean that yours truly will be spending about 2 hours/day, 7 days a week, for 4 long months next summer, feeding, watering, and moving those same chickens to a fresh paddock. Organic pastured chickens mean we’ll be buying organic grain from someone for extremely high prices. And organic pastured chickens mean I’ll be driving 4 hours south, once every 2-3 weeks, for a long, boring day waiting for the chickens to be processed at an organically certified chicken processing plant.

The extra work doesn’t scare us. We’re farmers; the type of people who like to work. What scares us is the prospect of extra work coupled with few customers and a failed business idea.

So, I need to know the following: Do you think organic chickens is a good idea and worth the effort? And do you or would you pay more than $3.00/lb for organic chicken?

This is not a ploy for customers, even though I’d love to sell you a chicken, but a ploy for opinions. You all are very aware of my opinions on store-bought chicken. Now I’d like to hear yours.

You can reply to this post, or vote on my cute little poll that I’ll be adding in the sidebar. It’s as easy as that. We’ll just call today “inform a farmer” day.

Please?

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