Devon Beef a la Beef Wellington
An Article in Forbes Magazine

The December 22, 2006 issue of Forbes magazine carries an article and recipe for individual Beef Wellingtons, using the chef's beef of choice: Devons. The chef is Mark Budd, who works at the restaurant in the Stafford, an old English hotel in London's St. James's Place.

Here is the link to the article, or you may read it in PDF format: http://www.bakewellrepro.com/forbesarticle122206.pdf

http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/21/perfect-pairing-stafford-forbeslife-cx_sb_1222perfectpairing_print.html

National Animal ID System
by Ridge Shinn

There has been a lot of discussion about the USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System as a way for both producers and officials to respond quickly when there is a foreign animal disease outbreak. The controversy concerns the intent and the implementation of such a program. This program is ambitious and involves the enormous task of inserting a radio frequency ear tag into all animals including chickens.

Recently in a speech touching on this issue, Joel Salatin (www.polyfacefarm.com) commented that in light of the fact that our government seems to be struggling with controlling illegal immigration, how can they think they can possibly implement a program of this scale? The federal government has already back-peddled from the position of making this program mandatory and is leaving it to the states to implement or not.

At the recent Acres USA conference (www.acresusa.com) Chuck Walters, the grand old man of eco-agriculture, encouraged all of us to circulate his recent article entitled "Mark of the Beast." Here we present the 4-page PDF version.

"Mark of the Beast" by Charles Walters

Brix and Quality Meat
by Ridge Shinn

We at Bakewell have spent a lot of energy finding the right cattle genetics for grass-fed production. The Rotokawa Devons and other subsets of English breeds produce great quality beef on a grass-only diet in various different environments. These cattle do better on some farms than others.

In an effort to figure out why cattle with the same genetic potential do better on certain farms, we have begun to measure the quality of forage on various farms. Doug Gunnink from MN conducted a seminar for Bakewell in July and started us down this fascinating learning track.

Brix is a measurement of nutrient density. A ruminant, of course, is defined by its rumen. A rumen is a unique part of a bovine digestive system that actually ferments forage and transforms it. It is really equivalent to a compost pile — although it is an anaerobic pile in that this takes place without a lot of air. The rumen works optimally when it has the right balance of ingredients just like a compost pile: the right Carbon Nitrogen ratio, the right pH, and the right amount of protein and energy. The quality and make up of the forage that the bovine eats becomes quite important as we focus on how to optimize rumen function.

Forage can be tested in a laboratory for the various elements that are present and Doug Gunnink suggests that this is more important than the soil test since if it’s not in the forage it never gets to the rumen. Actually he says, “Once the cattle start eating dirt, we will start testing soil.”

Another method of spot testing forage quality is with a refractometer or Brix meter. This is used for a field assay of “nutrient density.” It is a measure that is used often in the fruit business and especially in the wine industry to measure the sugar content of wine grapes. We find we can use it to measure the quality of forage. To change the quality of forage requires a forage analysis and then a prescription to change the mineral and sugar content of the forage (which we will address in a later bog article). To learn more about forage quality testing, read this series of articles explaining Brix, meters and optimal values for various crops:

USING A REFRACTOMETER TO TEST THE QUALITY OF FRUITS & VEGETABLES by Rex Harrill

Devon/Angus Beef Proves to Be Tasty & Tender
by Ridge Shinn

The data are in. The Devon/Angus calves that Hardwick Beef is harvesting are tender and tasty!

This isn’t really a surprise, because we had heard reports from customers that our 100% grass-fed Devon/Angus beef was both tender and tasty. Comments from friends and neighbors, our meat processor (with years of meat-eating experience), our customers and our vendors have all been overwhelmingly positive. In addition, a national Whole Foods representative says it’s the best beef he has tasted in America!

So we decided it was time to test our hypothesis that the Rotokawa® Devon bulls stamp their progeny with the characteristics of high-quality meat. We would do this by analyzing a random sample of ½ Rotokawa® Devon steers as they were harvested. We cut two adjacent rib eye steaks from the 12^th and 13^th rib of 25 steers.

Some of these steers were calves that were born and raised in Montana. They were fed hay and alfalfa, combined with a mineral supplement, for their first winter. Then the calves were grazed on ryegrass on irrigated land. When they were 15 to 17 months old and fat, weighing between 1,100 and 1,250 pounds, they were harvested. The cattle were killed in Montana and the primal were “wet-aged” for 14 days before the rib eye steaks were cut 1” thick and then frozen. Other steers were raised in the Northeast on perennial pasture, hay and haylage; carcasses were dry-aged before samples were harvested.

Samples Evaluated

The samples were shipped to grass-fed meat researcher Dr. Susan Duckett at Clemson University to be evaluated for fatty-acid values as well as tenderness values as measured with the Warner-Bratzler shear force test.

Preliminary findings are very exciting; the first eight samples show consistent high quality. Total fat values were equivalent to USDA low choice values; the Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio was a near perfect 1.26 to 1; and the Warner-Bratzler Shear values averaged 3.6 -- below the 4.1 level, which is the generally accepted range where 98% of people feel the meat is quite tender and of restaurant quality.

Highly acceptable taste and tenderness values are essential for the consumer to fully embrace a 100% grass-fed and finished beef program. The story about the health benefits of this product for the consumer, the animal, the farmer/rancher and the environment have been trumpeted in the press and are no longer even debated.

More and more 100% grass-fed producers and vendors are bringing beef to market and the overall quality has improved. Marian Burros, influential food writer for the New York Times, reports that nearly 75% of the samples she tried recently were good, whereas three years ago 75% were either “bad” or not tasty and tender. (August 30, 2006; read it by clicking here.)

Consistent Quality

Consistent quality of product is the goal of any long-term market success. Numerous 100% grass-fed beef companies rely on sorting cattle for quality using the ultrasound method. Live cattle can be evaluated for quality parameters and can then be harvested if they meet the quality standard set by the meat company. Other meat programs are based on a production protocol like “organic”; the protocol and “purity” or adherence to a particular standard is the prerequisite for participation in such programs, but there is less emphasis on consistent quality of the meat.

One reason for the extreme variability of meat today is the adherence to cross-breeding programs by the cattle industry, and some companies actually market “composite” bulls that are generally a three-way cross. The resulting variability that we see in the industry is the enemy of producing meat of a consistent quality.

At Hardwick Beef, we use sorting methods, including ultrasound, to select cattle for harvest. We admit this is a short term crutch. How many producers will allow a meat company to cut their herd and “cherry pick” their good cattle every year? A better approach is to breed high-quality herds using condensed, high-quality bulls, and that is what we at Bakewell Repro Center are doing to create a consistent meat product.

It takes a long perspective and patience to wait for a return on investment to create 100% grass-fed bulls. We at Hardwick Beef and Bakewell Repro Center believe that using artificial insemination (AI) with semen from the right bulls is an investment that allows a producer to breed a consistent group of high-quality calves with the overwhelming majority fitting the profile of high-quality grass-fed beef.

We at Bakewell have evaluated numerous breeds of cattle and subsets of these breeds around the world to find bulls suitable for this job. The breed that excels in this arena is the Devon.

In spite of the mountains of press criticizing animal fats over the past decades, the consumer is now beginning to distinguish between good fats and bad fats. Essential fatty acids are just that -- essential for many aspects of health. Conjugated linoleic acids, which are produced in the rumen of bovines (one of the few places these are manufactured), have numerous health benefits including creating lean muscle mass and stopping tumor growth in mammalian experiments. The omega 6/omega 3 ratio is critical in determining how these essential fatty acids benefit human health, rather than harm it.

High levels of good fat and tenderness in meat are essential for palatability of 100% grass fed beef. The consumer’s acceptance and embrace of this product depends on experiencing quality consistently.

The recent data are excellent indicators that Devon are the ultimate grass cattle. They have always been an easy fleshing breed on grass and were also known historically as the “butcher’s breed” for the quality and volume of meat. We at Bakewell believe that artificial insemination using proven Devon bulls is the fastest and best way to introduce consistent quality to your 100% grass-fed beef program.

Click here to download the data: http://www.bakewellrepro.com/bulls/RotokawaDevonsdata.pdf

Some Harsh Facts About E. Coli
by Ridge Shinn

E. coli is a naturally occurring bacterium that lives in the lower intestines of mammals, and most strains are not harmful to people. However, there is a particularly virulent strain (E. coli O157:H7) that is dangerous to human health.

We all have heard about meat recalls and outbreaks that actually kill people, including the recent media reports concerning tainted spinach. Some people are theorizing that this spinach was infected with E. coli by exposure to animal manure or human manure (for example, feces from farm workers).

E. coli outbreaks are often linked to meats or meat products that are improperly cooked. Meat can be accidentally contaminated by E. coli in the slaughter process or by contamination of meat by manure from harvested animals that contains the E. coli.

What is the biology of this syndrome? Although E. coli naturally lives in the gut of all bovines, it needs an acidic environment to proliferate. The normal pH of a healthy rumen (digestive tract of the bovine) is basic in a range from 6.2 to 6.5.

However, most cattle in this country spend their final days in feedlots eating food that includes substantial amounts of grain. This diet causes an acid environment in the rumen called acidosis, which becomes a challenge to combat. Feedlots incorporate baking soda into cattle’s feed in an attempt to counteract the negative pH. In layman’s terms, the high grain diet causes indigestion and provides an environment in which E. coli proliferates. Is there any way to reduce this threat to human health and safety?

CORNELL RESEARCH
Cornell University suggests there are ways to curtail this problem. Although the research was reported in 1998, the findings are even more appropriate today: “A simple change in cattle diets in the days before slaughter may reduce the risk of Escherichia coli (E. coli) infections in humans, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Cornell University microbiologists have discovered.”

As reported in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science, the research indicates that E. coli in the bovine digestive tract could be substantially reduced by removing the grain ration from finishing cattle and feeding them hay for about five days before slaughter. This allows the rumen to revert to its normal pH, which in turn makes a very unattractive environment for nasty strains of E. coli O157:H7 bacterium.

Here are the important points:

“In studies performed at Cornell, beef cattle fed grain-based rations typical of commercial feedlots had 1 million acid-resistant E. coli, per gram of feces, and dairy cattle fed only 60 percent grain also had high numbers of acid-resistant bacteria. In each case, the high counts could be explained by grain fermentation in the intestines. By comparison, cattle fed hay or grass had only acid-sensitive E. coli, and these bacteria were destroyed by an “acid shock” that mimicked the human stomach.”

“… acid-resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to overcome the protective barrier of the gastric stomach. The ongoing process of natural selection allows organisms with the appropriate genes to survive and multiply where others cannot. Because cattle have been fed high-grain, growth-promoting diets for more than 40 years, he says, there has been ample opportunity to select acid-resistant forms.”

• Follow this link for the whole story: http://http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/acid.relief.hrs.html

• Additional research on this topic is summarized at Jo Robinson’s EatWild.com site: http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html

Once again we can see that changing how we raise cattle, moving them from their natural grass diet to a man-made diet of grain, has serious consequences for our food supply and our health. Raising 100% grass-fed and finished beef is just good sense.

NBC's Today Show's Tips for Buying Beef

On Aug. 23, NBC's Today Show's food editor Phil Lempert shared his advice on buying beef. In summary, his advice is:

1. "When buying fresh meat, always look at the package carefully."
2. "Buy the select grade and marinate the meat."
3. "For the best-tasting beef, think grass fed and organic."
4. "If you want to be 100 percent sure that the ground beef you are buying does not contain any carbon monoxide, buy ground beef in a "chub" package."

Check it out online here:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14477703/

Book Review

By Susan Beal, DVM

Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals
by Paul Dettloff, DVM, ISBN 0-911311-77-7
AcresUSA, 2003, $28.00

This is a practical and straightforward book, simply written and easy to understand, and valuable to readers with all levels of experience. It is long on experience and practicality and short on nonsense. It's easy to tell that Dr Paul Dettloff has spent some time in the trenches working with cattle and other production animals, just as it's easy to tell that Doc takes his responsibility for contributing to a healthy source of food very seriously.

Doc writes in his first chapter, To The Reader, "I do not want to treat an animal with anything that I wouldn't eat or drink myself or inject into any one of my six children." He takes this vow seriously, as do I (though I don't have six children!), and challenges his producers, the folks who reference this book and students at his "cow camp" practical workshops to that same level of commitment to the quality of the food in the food chain and the stewardship of the livestock.

While the body of the text includes lots of useful information, much of the heart and soul of the book is to be found in the introductory To The Reader section as well as in his chapter outlining the timeline of his sixty years of dairying experience. Equally good reading will be found in the Introduction.

The rest of the book is arranged by organ systems, with each chapter addressing a major system. Within each chapter the common (and some not so common) ailments are arranged alphabetically by diagnosis.

In each subsection, Doc discusses the presentation, some of the contributing factors to the conditions, and then offers some treatment advice. The treatment advice is sound and ranges from herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, naturopathic treatments (hydrotherapy, massage, nutritional and special needs supplements, for example) and topical and supportive treatments. Doc Dettloff continually emphasizes the need for species appropriate nutrition and husbandry as well and is clear that the conventional industrial agriculture system does not always provide that.

Some of the diagnoses may be a little difficult to find when you look at the chapters. For instance, nutritional diseases such as iodine deficiency and copper toxicity are found in the chapter on endocrine diseases, as is pregnancy toxemia. Many readers might initially hunt for those things in different places, such as digestive system or reproductive system chapters. This minor fault is offset by the extensive index that helps in referencing the contents of this book.

There are additional chapters addressing the immune system and nosodes. The Immune System chapter contains good information on stray voltage and ley lines - again, not topics one might immediately associate with the title of the chapter but things which commonly influence the health, production and behaviour of stock.

The material on nosodes is presented as an alternative to vaccination – and while reducing dependence on vaccination is of real concern, over the years I have found that simply replacing the use of vaccination by the rote use of nosodes often creates health problems down the road. Oft times is it better to reduce or eliminate the use of vaccines and concentrate on bolstering the health of the individual and herd through proper nutrition and attention to the subtle signs of chronic illness than it is to rely on nosodes.

Dr Dettloff a real advocate of using the team approach to health care, realizing that there are some things the herdsman is able to do, while other things require the expertise of a veterinary professional. Doc also discusses management with an eye to prevention as well.

His advice is practical – ranging from how to administer medicines to how to roll a cow with a DA (displaced abomasum) (as well as when not to roll a cow with a DA!) to how to replace a prolapsed uterus. The photographs in the text are clear and illustrate his points well. Tales of practice and real life situations are rampant and help make the material in this book all the more real and easy to integrate into the day to day.

This book reminds me a little of the old Humphrey's patent medicine books common near the turn of the last century in that many of the treatment suggestions are for products formulated and sold by the author.

It is possible to use this book without using the particular patent medicine suggested by the author, but that requires a little more work and understanding of herbal medicines on the part of the reader. And, unlike the Humphrey's remedies, which were only identified by number, Dr Dettloff does list the basic ingredients of the medicines in the Resources section provided at the close of this text.

Alternative Treatment for Ruminant Animals is a primer of alternative treatments to common conditions in ruminant animals (goats and sheep as well as cattle). It is written from the perspective of a clinician offering care in a system that does not use conventional medicines, whether the producer is officially certified or not. This is a great resource for the herdsman or the hobby-type farmer as well as for veterinary professionals who may not have extensive experience in organic herds or in managing illness with other than conventional medical approaches. It is a resource that all herdsmen should have – and not stuck somewhere on a shelf looking pretty, and staying clean, but out in the barn or truck or medicine box, being used.

Susan Beal, DVM
Big Run Healing Arts

Book Review

By Lynne Pledger

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 2006

This book is by one of our favorite authors who is also a long-time friend of the Bakewell Repro Center. As fans of Michael Pollan know, he brings a fresh perspective to the often complex topic of what we eat. Below we present our own book review, by Lynne Pledger.

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma could be a revolution-maker. In one engaging, comprehensive volume, Pollan reveals more than any of us knew about the way industrial agriculture, backed by government policies, erodes our health, environment, and quality of life. But he also addresses alternatives — notably the grass-fed meat movement — leaving us with hope that the situation can be righted

In light of the abundance of food, varieties of food and conflicting advice about food in our culture, the book asks, What should we eat? and then follows with a critical companion question, What are we eating now?

In a disarmingly earnest quest, Pollan leads us up and down the food chain to consider all the implications — health, environmental, ethical — of food he consumes as we read. These meals include take-out from McDonald's, a chicken dinner from Joel Salatin’s family farm, and a “personal” meal that the author hunts, gathers, grows and prepares himself. In the hands of a lesser writer -- or less thoughtful human being — this documentation might be a tedious tome or an evangelical diatribe. But Pollan is provocative, moving, and humorous, serving up fresh insight with every page.

Appropriately, the book starts with a beleaguered American farmer, George Naylor, who we join in his Iowa cornfield where he is planting yet another subsidized crop of that already over-abundant, cheap commodity fertilized by fossil fuels. Following the trail of kernels from cornfield to grain elevator, and then on to a feedlot and a maze of food processing, we end up at a McDonald's, where Pollan and his wife and son purchase three meals to go.

Pollan takes his research down to the level of the atom, utilizing a laboratory spectrometer that identifies the corn atoms, to find out how much of the carbon in McDonald’s various offerings comes from corn. The results: soda , 100% (high fructose corn syrup), milk shake, 78%, salad dressing, 65%, chicken nuggets, 56%, cheeseburger, 52%, French fries, 23%. Even those of us who eschew McDonalds are likely to be corn-fed without realizing it. Corn-derived substances are in many processed foods. And a great deal of corn passes through a steer on its way to being beef at the supermarket or steak house.

A central point is that cattle are ruminants, and ruminants have evolved to eat grass, not corn, which makes them sick, requiring medication to live long enough to be slaughtered. For those who think feedlots are an advance of modern agriculture, Pollan offers this chilling analogy:

“A feedlot is very much a premodern city …teeming and filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads, and choking air rendered visible by dust…. As in fourteenth-century London, say, the workings of the metropolitan digestion remain vividly on display, the foodstuffs coming in, the streams of waste going out. The crowding into tight quarters of recent arrivals from all over, together with the lack of sanitation has always been a recipe for disease. The only reason contemporary animal cities aren’t as plague-ridden or pestilential as their medieval human counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic.”

In Chapter 9, Big Organic, Pollan buys an organic TV dinner at Whole Foods. The meal turns out to be,

“… a highly industrialized organic product, involving a choreography of thirty-one ingredients assembled from far-flung farms, laboratories, and processing plants scattered over a half-dozen states and two countries, and containing such mysteries of modern food technology as high-oleic safflower oil, guar and zanthan gum, soy lecithin, carrageenan, and ‘natural grill flavor’… Several of these ingredients are synthetic additives permitted under federal organic rules. So much for ‘whole’ foods.”

He also purchases a “free-range” chicken and subsequently investigates its provenance:

“The last stop on my tour of California industrial organic farming took me to Petuluma, where I tried without success to find the picturesque farmstead, with its red barn, cornfield, and farmhouse, depicted on the package in which the organic roasting chicken I bought at Whole Foods had been wrapped.”

Instead he finds the chickens crowded into “barracks,” with fans on either end; not caged, but not ranging freely either.

Pollan’s week at Joel Salatin’s “beyond organic” grass-based operation is the author’s crucible for testing the wisdom of organic agriculture’s heroes such as Sir Albert Howard, who wrote (in 1943), “Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion …” At Salatin’s Polyface farm, Pollan finds that both the theories and the food can take the heat.

A key observation of the book is that while agriculture has always been the business of capturing free solar energy for human use by growing plants or raising plant-eating animals, industrial agriculture has made a fundamental shift in this relationship by relying on a finite resource—fossil fuel-- for fertilizing, processing, and transporting food. The products may have a cheap price tag, but the cost to our society is incalculable.

Fed up with the system? Buy The Omnivore’s Dilemma for your family, friends, and elected representatives. Better yet: buy grass-fed meat and dairy, and pastured pork, poultry and eggs — and vote with your food.

Lynne Pledger

Pricing & Parity
by Ridge Shinn

Establishing a fair price for our meat and milk is critical to establish a thriving, sustainable rural economy. But what determines a fair price?

Most of us are old enough to attest that prices in general have skyrocketed in our lifetime. But have the prices of meat and milk risen in accordance with the price of other everyday items? To clarify, Randy Cook of the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM) provides the following calculations. Compare the price of a postage stamp in 1947--$.02—to the price of a postage stamp today--$.37. This ratio of almost 20 to 1 is reflected in many prices today in comparison to prices in 1947.

But look closely at the price comparison for milk and meat: the average price from 1947-1949 for milk was $4.37/hundredweight (cwt), and for beef was $20.13/cwt; the average market price as of January 2005 was $14.70/cwt for milk and $89.44/cwt for beef. Using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of the base period 1947-1949 as 100, the value for 2004 would be 807.6. Therefore, to produce buying power equivalent to that in 1947-49, milk today should be priced at $35.29/cwt and beef should be priced at $162.57/cwt. At these prices, most farmers could make a living.

The year 1947 was not selected for this calculation arbitrarily. NORM, under the leadership of Carl Wilken and working with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), determined that the years 1947 to 1949 mark a period in American history when prices paid to farmers actually reflected the cost of production: in other words parity prices (“parity” meaning equal or similar). This was because an Act of Congress established a government-backed loan program for commodities at the level of 90% of parity; this created a period of nearly full parity. After the War Price Stabilization Act ran out in 1951, it was not renewed; supports for parity pricing disappeared and pricing for agricultural commodities started a rapid descent.

Importance of Parity Pricing
A compelling description of the importance of parity prices is found in NORM’s summation of 60 years of analysis of the nation’s economic records.

Two Men and a Truck:
On the Road with Ridge & Gearld
by Steve Campbell (New Meadows, ID)
Edited by Laurel Hoffman (New Bethlehem, PA)

Gearld and Ridge invited me to travel with them in March during their quarterly “embryo-flushing” trip. I had read about the Devon heifers from New Zealand and also heard Ridge and Gearld describe them in a number of different talks, and here was my golden opportunity to see them first hand. I met them and Susan Beal, a homeopathic veterinarian, at the airport in Hartford, Connecticut. We drove to Wayland, Massachusetts, that evening.

The next morning we met Tim Henderson at the Mainstone Farm, where he is the manager. After the cows were flushed, and Ridge and Gearld were sorting through the magic with their microscopes, Tim and I headed out to look at the rest of his herd, including the mother of the embryos we purchased last spring. Even at the tail end of a droughty winter, she and her herd mates were in excellent flesh, as turned out to be the case at all of the farms we visited over the next 5 days. After a wonderful venison stew, cookies and taking a few pictures of Tim’s bull, we loaded the equipment in the truck to head to Rhode Island to meet the Minto’s, and see the Watson Farm.

When we arrived, Don and Heather Minto were just finishing sorting the cows and calves. Wow, more really thick animals. We took a pasture walk that evening and then enjoyed Heather’s marvelous cooking. That evening, Ridgeway told me that in the northeast, there is a local moving company called “Two Men and A Truck” and described how he and Gearld felt the same way on most of their flushing trips.

The next morning, after flushing, while Gearld and Ridge were sorting the embryos, Don, Heather and I got very familiar with the linear measuring tools and the hide and hair indicators on a number of their cows and calves. The soft hide and fine hair feel like velvet in your hands.

In the early afternoon, we went out to the pasture to look at the rest of the animals on the farm and view the Atlantic ocean that is the southern border of one of the paddocks. (for a bit of fun) I could not find any of those three legged, one-eyed animals Gearld keeps mentioning come from these line breeding programs. We left around 4:00 to take the 4 hour + drive to Bath, New Hampshire to see Tom Cope at the Woodburne Farm. Gearld and Susan renewed their ongoing “discussion” about animal health. We should have had a tape recorder. A book could probably have been written. We arrived in Bath, just in time for dinner, with milk (from their family cow)… and cookies.

Standard operating procedure says the first order of business on each farm is to flush all cows that are ready. Ridge and Gearld are very efficient with set-up and how they work the animals through. If one of the cows seemed a bit fussy, Susan would put a dab of one of her “concoctions from her apothecary” on the nose and the cow would settle down within a minute.

We sorted off all of the purebred Rotakawa bulls that Tom has on his place in to run through the chute for linear measurement, testicle evaluation, ultrasound and weight. Gearld has talked about docility before.

However, to see it in animal after animal almost made me think they were drugged. If I remember the conversation correctly, there will be a few bulls for sale in the fall. We helped Ridge pack up the “truck” and he headed back to Hardwick to get ready for the field day scheduled for the next day at his farm. That evening, Susan, Gearld, Tom and I had home grown chicken dinner with…. more cookies.

We arrived in Hardwick to find the Minto’s, Robert Cope, and Mike Scannell and Joan Harris already in attendance. We then proceeded to set up to weigh and measure the purebred Rotokawa yearling bulls. These animals were even more docile than the 18-month-old animals at Tom’s farm. After a full evaluation, it was decided to let them mature until 2 years of age before offering any for sale. The quality of the meat, both in New Hampshire and here at Hardwick, as indicated with the ultrasound and those visual indicators Gearld keeps talking about, was exceptional.

We went back to the house for a lunch of, soon to be world famous “Rotokawa Stew” (spellcheck keeps wanting me to say rutabaga). Gearld spoke to us about the challenges that the group had overcome over the last 2-3 years. His words are always kind and encouraging. Everyone there expressed how this project has “put new wind in their sails” about the future of Grass Farming.

The next morning we went to Devon Lane Farm in Belchertown, Mass. Will Shattuck met us at his implement dealership. During the flushing of 7 thick and docile cows, Gearld shared with me the story of how Will and this farm started Gearld on the search for superior Red Devon bulls. Without Will asking the right questions, Gearld may have never gotten to New Zealand and met Ken McDowell. These cows added 32 embryos to the total for the trip.

That evening, on the way back to the house, we stopped by the land trust farm Ridge is leasing. A lot of work is being done including water development, fencing, reseeding, etc. to get it ready for livestock this spring. The stonewalls that were uncovered by the “brontosaurus” are just amazing in size and quality of workmanship. Ridge's commitment to "this program" (other words here... sustainability,environment, etc.) is evidenced by the effort he is putting into converting his own farm and this land back to grazing.

Over a pork steak dinner, purchased from Mike and Joan’s farm, the decision was made to flush one cow in the morning at Hardwick and then do the microscope work at Mike and Joan’s. When we arrived in Schodack Landing, New York, Mike gave me a quick tour of the barns and horse drawn equipment. I saw some items I had never heard of before.

After lunch with more cookies, we went down to look at their thick, docile cows and calves. The hide here was just like at all of the other farms, thick, soft, pliable, and easy to move around on the animal. Gearld added the “Escutcheon”, under the animal’s tail, as another visual indicator to add to the list after reading some information, which Joan Harris found in a book written in 1892. Size, uniformity side to side, and hair “fineness” are the important terms here.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave for the airport. I said many heartfelt good-byes. Wished Gearld God’s help through his knee surgery next month, and Ridge and I were headed off to the airport in Albany. I had come to the Northeast with the intention of seeing those Rotokawa heifers (now cows) that I had only been able to picture in my mind’s eye. As impressive as they are, I was more impressed with all of the people I met there. As Ridge and I parted company, I could not help but think about “Two Men and a Truck” spreading hope for the future of small grass farming everywhere they go.

Brasher: Studies say crop subsidies make us obese
Theory states farm policy leads to cheap foods that add sugar and fat to Americans' diets.
PHILIP BRASHER WASHINGTON FARM REPORT
April 30, 2006

Washington, D.C. — Farm subsidies help keep food cheap. That's long been an article of faith among farmers.
But are farm subsidies also making Americans fat? That's a line of attack against federal farm policy that is cropping up in a number of places, including a recent report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and a new book by journalist Michael Pollan.
There are problems with the theory that subsidies and cheap food cause obesity: Fresh fruit and vegetables are relatively cheap, too, and farmers who grow them don't benefit from subsidies.
But farmers may well have to deal with the obesity issue when Congress writes the next farm bill.
At the very least, the nation's swelling girth could make an argument for using the farm bill to promote the consumption of healthful foods.
There are plenty of reasons for the obesity problem — overeating and lack of exercise, to name a couple — according to the report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
But the report argues that federal farm policy shares in the blame because it has encouraged the overproduction of corn and soybeans, crops that processors turn into cheap food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.
(It's no small bit of irony that the report was funded in part by the Wallace Genetic Foundation, a legacy of Henry Wallace, the father of hybrid corn and founder of Pioneer Hi-Bred International.)
"The problem with the extensive use of these cheap commodities in food products is that they fall into the very dietary categories that have been linked to obesity: added sugars and fats," the report argues.
Pollan, a longtime writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of the best-seller "The Botany of Desire," makes a similar argument, though more elegantly, in his new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
Pollan likens the country's obesity problem — he calls it the "Republic of Fat" — with the national drinking binge that was blamed on a surplus of corn and corn-made booze in the early 1980s.
"When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat," he says.
Pollan also faults subsidies for encouraging the use of corn as cattle feed.
Pollan would have us eat grass-finished beef, in part because farmers consume less fossil fuels growing grass rather than corn.
But even if you accept his premise that cheap, subsidized food makes people fat, it doesn't necessarily follow that getting rid of the subsidies will cause Americans to slim down.
Economists at Iowa State University analyzed what would happen if corn and soybean farmers stopped getting subsidies and found that prices would rise at most by 5 to 7 percent.
An increase of that amount would have no impact on the price of corn syrup and would boost the price of meat by no more than 1 percent, the economists said.
Even an ardent critic of U.S. farm policy like Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, doubts the subsidies-obesity linkage will have much traction in Washington.
"I have a hard time believing that if you cut farm subsidies people would lose weight," Cook says.
What the obesity problem could do, however, is push Congress to put more money into programs that promote the consumption of fruit and vegetables.
One of the ideas is to expand a program initiated by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., that provides free veggies to school kids in selected school districts.
The question is where lawmakers will find the money for programs like that.
One place they could go: subsidies for crops like corn and soybeans.