tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32445893170077976552023-11-16T07:09:55.882-05:00Cairncrest FarmCairncrest farm is located in central New York, about fifteen miles west of Cooperstown. Brothers Edmund and Garth with their wives Normandy and Alanna purchased the farm in October, 2009, with the intention of starting a grass-based, seasonal dairy producing artisan cheese. But when Edmund discovered he had a dairy intolerance they re-evaluated their goals and shifted to producing grass-fed meats.Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-67275272349219904902015-01-04T09:19:00.001-05:002015-01-04T09:19:31.246-05:00Moved!<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As you may have noticed, we are no longer posting regularly on this blog. But don't worry! We have a new, much more ambitious project that has just begun. Follow along as we attempt to eat only food produced on our own farm. We'll be posting four times per week, and we'll try to keep things varied and interesting by using our own silly experiment as a platform to explore topics of agriculture, society and turnips.</span> <a href="http://www.cairncrestfarm.com/blog/" target="_blank">www.cairncrestfarm.com/blog/</a>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-29961054477906243612014-10-07T20:44:00.000-04:002015-09-27T19:26:54.427-04:00Cowspiracy Movie Review<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 13.8000001907349px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>We no longer blog here. Because of the increased discussion around this review, I have <a href="http://cairncrestfarm.com/movie-review-cowspiracy/" target="_blank">reposted it over on my current blog</a>. I'm happy to have a civil discussion with anyone there. </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I set out to write about the documentary </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, two problems are obvious. The first is that, as someone who raises cows and sells their meat, I am not by any stretch objective. The second is that it’s called </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which makes me want to think of all the dumb cow-related puns I can (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a moo-vie that makes beefy claims about a subject I have a steak in, etc.), and then to make a cup of tea while I think of more dumb cow-related puns (the film employs no hoof measures in its stampede to a reductive conclusion, and it repeatedly milks the same points in an effort to steer the conversation away from any topic that would actually encourage viewers to ruminate).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like most people, I have a kneejerk conviction that things I believe are right for the simple reason that I believe them. When I look out my window and see the herd of cows I just moved grazing a fresh break of pasture after having someone announce over social media that my raising them is some sort of ecological catastrophe, I want to get mildly incensed, knock down a few straw men in my mind, and then dismiss it to go about my day with an extra lift in my step. But, I tell myself, it’s good to make an effort, however compromised, at critical examination of topics I have strong feelings on.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, other than the whole dismissal of raising any livestock thing, I agree with some critiques of the sort made in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. What people choose to eat does have an impact on what kind of farming is done, and some types of farming are worse for land and animals than others. All of the various organizations that advise people on how to use less water or emit less greenhouse gases or destroy less jungle are being silly or disingenuous - or cowspiratorial - if they don’t discuss the roles food choice and the resulting agricultural practices play in various environmental issues.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The difficulty in discussing these or any other topics raised by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is that, though it certainly takes strong stances on both, it is neither fish nor fowl. It’s at once an investigative documentary, a personal journey, and most of all an argument for a vegan lifestyle. While the film does try to make good on its title by suggesting (though not nearly proving) that prominent environmental organizations are beholden to the livestock industry, it also takes time to dismiss the possibility of responsibly harvesting any fish, to visit a backyard duck farm, to liberate a chicken, and to establish that vegan diets are healthy, all while following filmmaker/protagonist/narrator Kip Anderson’s not entirely convincing arc from concerned but uninformed citizen to empowered herbivore. Responding to a polemic that plays as fast and loose with facts as this film could easily devolve into a line by line response, which would be even more boring to read than it would be to write. Instead, I’ll focus on a few of the main topics, beginning with how cows drink, burp, fart, and most of all poop, which - not to brag - I have some experience with. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The drought that has scorched California for going on three years now makes water use an understandable priority for Anderson, since it is where the film is set and presumably where he lives. So when he finds that it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef, he is chagrined. Unfortunately, he does not explain how he arrives at this number either in the film or on the film’s website. It strikes me as a bit high, so let’s see if we can figure out where all that water goes. Assuming a steer drinks on average 1.5 gallons of water per hundred weight daily, and supposing the steer is born at 50 pounds and slaughtered at 950 after two years of steady growth to yield 350 pounds of saleable meat, his average weight would be a little more than 450 pounds over the course of his life. Putting all these numbers together gives us expected direct consumption of about 5000 gallons of water. This is at best an approximation, since growth rate is variable, water consumption depends both on the ambient temperature and the water content of forage consumed, and we actually raise our cows to 27 months. Also, for the sake of fairness, a share of the water the steer’s mother drinks during his first year should be considered in the cost of raising him. Even if we assume my numbers above are low on every count and double his lifetime consumption to 10,000 gallons, it’s safe to say some water needs to be accounted for if we’re going to get to the number quoted by Anderson, since 2,500 gallons per saleable pound would lead us to expect a lifetime consumption of 875,000 gallons, a mere 865,000 more than our high estimate.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This raises the idea of embedded water - that a cow somehow uses all the water required to raise its feed. If I do more boring math I can actually get in the neighborhood of the larger number by counting all the water that falls in the growing season on the grass that the steer eats. An acre inch of rain is about 27,000 gallons, and we generally get a decent amount. But pretending that a cow munching away on perennial pasture somehow disrupts the natural water cycle such that we need to call this a cost of production is self-evidently absurd. No water is destroyed in the making of a cow, and rain falls and grass grows whether there’s a herd there to eat it or not. However, this measure becomes meaningful in a place like California, where huge amounts of forage are grown for beef and dairy on irrigated pasture. I am still skeptical of the 2,500 gallons per pound number, but I agree that raising alfalfa on irrigated land in the desert is horrifically short-sighted. Anderson interviews Manucher Alemi and Kamyar Guivetchi at the California Department of Water Resources, and when they uncomfortably dance around why they don’t recommend reducing meat consumption, he sees a conspiracy of silence; I see state employees who don’t want to be caught on film telling Californians that they can help the drought by buying meat and cheese produced in less arid parts of the country or by finding California producers who rely on precipitation rather than irrigation to grow forage.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Methane is a more vexed question, since cows indisputably belch and fart. In the film Anderson implies that cows are the main source of methane and that reducing their numbers is the fastest way to reverse global warming. After too much time poking around in search of definitive numbers on methane emissions, I decided to use those provided on a NASA website, even though a number of reputable sources arrive at different conclusions, particularly concerning the amount of methane released by wetlands, listed at 22% in the data I am quoting. By these numbers, ruminant livestock directly account for 16% of global methane emissions, and the (mis)management of all livestock manure accounts for another 5%. Human sewage treatment is 5%, biomass burning is 8%, fossil fuels production is 19%, and, surprisingly, rice cultivation is 12%. Various other manmade and natural sources fill out the remainder. While 21% of total methane is certainly significant, the idea that the elimination of livestock would clearly lead to a reversal of global warming trends is both an overstatement and an oversimplification, without getting into matters of methane’s half-life relative to carbon’s.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s another way to look at it. There are about 88 million beef cows in America and just over 9 million dairy cows. In 1800 there were 60 million buffalo, and though the film claims that grassfed beef is more damaging than feedlot beef, I’m confident those buffalo weren’t routinely wandering into CAFOs in an effort to reduce their methane emissions. But I doubt Anderson would accept a target of 60 million grassfed cows as ecologically sustainable, even though keeping them on pasture, besides making them healthier and happier, would mostly eliminate the 5% of methane emission that are a result of manure fermenting in lagoons and piles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The film fails to address, misrepresents, or glosses over any number of interesting points. At the backyard duck farm Anderson does some math and decides that it has a 100 to 1 feed to meat ratio, which is so obviously impossible that it suggests he simply doesn’t consider the roughly 500 eggs the duck likely produced during its life to be food. He says that 45% of the earth’s land is used for livestock production, even though the best information I can find puts the global total at about 40% for all agriculture. He dismisses any discussion of Allan Savory’s claims about managed grazing both improving degraded land and sequestering carbon by getting off a pithy line about the silliness of using livestock to reverse damage caused by livestock and an expression of horror at the range management practices Savory endorsed in the 1950’s. He doesn’t acknowledge that Savory himself is outspoken about the mistakes he made as a younger man and that in part due to them he now advises land managers to constantly evaluate every practice against its eventual goal. He’s outraged that the BLM rounds up wild horses and burros to make way for cattle, despite the fact that all three are European imports. He blames livestock production for the continued existence of hunger but doesn’t discuss the surplus of calories already produced or the systemic factors that prevent food from going where it is most needed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, at least to my mind, he shows the least nuance when discussing poop. He tells us that 16,000 pounds of manure are produced every second in the U.S., enough to cover a number of major cities as well as several states, a statistic that I would find more interesting if he mentioned the depth of the coating. Later he says livestock produce 130 times the excrement of humans, without the benefit of waste treatment. He implies that his revulsion at this is natural and correct, which makes me feel a little weird, since one of my goals is to have an even layer of poop spread over my pasture land every grazing season. Historically, animal manure has been recognized as the very best fertilizer, and many of the early efforts to improve rather than degrade land both in America and England revolved around managing it. Manure only becomes a problem rather than something to celebrate when it piles up unused outside of factory pig and chicken operations or stews in anaerobic lagoons. When an appropriate number of animals are kept on an appropriate amount of land and managed with attention to both, their activities - there feet and hooves, their grazing, pecking, scratching and rooting, and most of all their manure - sustain, renew and even improve the ground that feeds them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The great weakness of </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, other than its title, is its single minded determination to prove that veganism is the only reasonable approach to feeding people, a proof it pursues without regard for facts or nuance. That’s not to say it’s worthless, for there are ideas for several good films within it. I would love to watch a truly investigative examination of any links between the industrial agriculture sector and large environmental non-profits, rather than one that infers connections from the vague responses of uncomfortable PR people. A devastating documentary could be made about the insanity of beef and dairy production in California, and I am all for consumers voting against them and other parts of the industrial food system with their dietary choices. I even think a fair examination of the ways small farms are not inherently better for land and livestock would be wonderful. Instead of any of these there is a failed effort to prove that one lifestyle choice can solve every environmental and agricultural problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This failure is not just a result of misleading and erroneous data, but even more so of superficiality. Though I watched carefully and took copious notes, I do not have a clear idea what Anderson’s vegan world would look like. Would excess land be converted to wilderness? Should the hills and fields of my farm return to forest and scrub like so much of the nearby land that used to be grass? Why is a monoculture of wheat preferable to a polyculture of pasture? Should we humans be connected to and reliant on the land around us and should these connections take different forms in response to local conditions? Yesterday, while out hunting turkey, I came across the remains of a deer, one of ten or so my brother and I have found this year. All of them starved or froze to death in the clutches of last winter. Now they are piles of mossy bones marking where living things curled up and never stood again. Why is this preferable to raising cows as I do, particularly when there’s room here for both?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am willing to say that true wilderness and unmanaged land have intrinsic value. I think of the sense of awe a still forest raises in me or the way a rough-legged hawk hanging in the air on a stark, white morning pushes all thought from my mind, and I know that the trees and birds and animals going about their lives have value even when I am in no way the beneficiary of them. I recognize that this claim is metaphysical rather than utilitarian, and it is critical to how I understand my role in the world, because I think farmed land shares this inherent worth. To borrow a thought from Wendell Berry, the land stretching out from the Adirondacks is deserving of the same reverence as the mountains themselves. The destructiveness of so many modern agricultural practices rests on a view of livestock as exclusively means to an end, rather than as beings in a world, intricate beyond our comprehension, to which we also belong.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a difficult time articulating this view, and I doubt I could make a good documentary about it, particularly since even made up statistics don’t have much to say about such matters. But to be meaningful, any discussion of agriculture and eating needs to engage with questions of our values and the specific forms those values should take. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowspiracy</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> provides a facile solution, dressed up with shoddy numbers, and in its effort to push a predetermined agenda it doesn’t begin to answer the questions a person should ask when deciding what to eat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-Garth</span><br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-b261b6d5-ed2e-17d4-837f-4f47d7df910c"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a final note to anyone interested in a comprehensive treatment of all these and other matters, the book </span><span style="font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meat: A Benign Extravagance</span><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Simon Fairlie is incredible. Don’t let the dippy cover fool you. As an even final-er final note, I’ll mention that he indirectly gives a detailed answer to Anderson’s closing question to Michael Pollan about how much meat and dairy per person a truly sustainable agricultural system could provide. Fairlie arrives at just over 83 pounds of total meat each year, with dairy consumption at current levels. This is for the UK, and with the lower population to arable land ratio in America, they would likely be a bit higher here.</span></span></span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-26312016158934054282014-10-06T12:36:00.000-04:002014-10-06T12:36:21.736-04:00Summer's Old NewsThis is a blog post I wrote months ago and never hit 'publish' on. Oh summer. How you overwhelm me. Here is the updated version of yesterday's news.<br />
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Edmund and Garth devoted a lot of time this summer to prepping the North half of our flat land for a fence. They spent weeks thinning this tree line and dealing with the abundance of wood and roughage that resulted.<br />
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The Soil and Water folks in our county have a post pounder they rent out at a price well below all of their competitors that we took advantage of. The engine stopped 5 minutes into the project, but two guys from their office came out and fixed it within an hour of our call. What service!<br />
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Aside from fencing the flats, we have taken on a new species - pigs! I heard Edmund and Garth remarking about how relieved they were to finally have enough experience under their belts to take on a new animal and not encounter too many surprises in the process of managing them. They are doing what we planned, and so far it's working. Well, for the most part. Heritage Tamworths, we now know, like to root a little more than they like to graze, so we have inadvertently begun using them to renovate our pasture in areas thick with thistles and burdock. In the future we plan to find a breed that will graze like a cow. We have our sights set on Old Spot and Large Black. We'll see. Right now the pigs are gaining well on a diet of whey and pasture. Edmund has been grinding burdock and mixing it with a little grain to give them a taste for it, as well as dipping thistles into fat to sweeten them up. I've seen them nibbling at the lower leaves.<br />
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And the heritage turkeys are coming up in the world. The toms are just beginning to fan out and strut. Watching something the size of soccer ball strut is very endearing.<br />
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-81088504432929076552014-08-09T20:09:00.001-04:002014-08-09T20:09:32.661-04:00Bryn Athyn Bounty Saturday 16th: special cup offer!On August 16th, we will be selling our meat at Bryn Athyn Bounty Market in Bryn Athyn, PA. We are really excited to provide our customers with healthy, delicious, humane grass-fed beef. This Saturday, we have something really special to offer in addition to our beef: handmade porcelain cups thrown by Normandy Alden and decorated with cobalt lines drawing by Alanna Rose. Our farm, these cups, this vision we have for our land and animals at Cairncrest Farm is truly a collaboration. These cups will be $50 at our table on Saturday, but FREE if you pre-order 100 lbs of meat or more. Email cairncrestfarm@gmail.com for information about pre-ordering. We are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!<div>
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-28158593996374094212014-04-25T16:19:00.000-04:002014-04-27T11:06:56.722-04:00So Many New Faces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are a few new faces around here. I heard that a grass based stocker operation near us (stockers are weaned beef cows that are sold to people who want more animals when the grass is abundant) had a number of steers available at a price below what people were paying at the auction. I thought it would be interesting to compare our new Kerry/Angus crosses with these pure-bred Angus cows through a growing season or two. After looking at their age and weight charts we decided on these two because they were middle of the road. One of them has a Simmental for a great-great grandfather, so even though he is Angus from every other side, he still wound up with a white face like his ancestor.<div><br>
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<div><br></div>These steers were weighed before they mounted the trailer on their way to us. We don't have a cattle scale (yet), so the other perk of them coming was getting to guess the weights of our own animals of a similar age based on their numbers.</div><div><br>
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<div><br></div>The other new faces are our brand new calves out of the robust Mr. Winchester (pictured in the background below). In fact, Garth walked in as I was writing this to tell me Vona just calved. These are the first crosses to be born here. It's hard to say how they differ in apperance with our pure bred Kerrys when we don't have any pure bred calves to compare them to, but their features will grow starker as they mature. </div><div><br>
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<div><br></div>We are naming the heifer calves after counties in New York. There's a different scheme here every year.</div><div><br>
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<br></div><div>The biggest surprise was that a cow we didn't think was bred gave birth to a heifer calf. Sibley, who was herself the accidental product of an evening rendevous with her own father, had been small from the start and very slow growing. We attributed that to her onerously inbred genetics. She was the size of last years calves even though she had 8 or so months on them, and so we slated her for the slaughter house and fed her with the young stock over the winter. Low and behold, she too had gotten in with Mr. Winchester without our supervision and now we have a cow we didn't expect to. Not too shabby. It also changes Sibley's future here, at least in the short term. We are eager to see if her calf expresses unbridled hybrid vigor, coming from the combination of such a limited gene pool with a much broader and unfamiliar line. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMk_W65ot8WUHDsLY-JqJJ1rb78YYeGwkZPN8oSlGIBTptFa2AuTkHMAnluu7AxQDNQ65OMB0jp8fme-78TVK10qjaOdtUFj2paPvhA5UwEO-FbnlijUgn0WfcE-fIVXoDO1iWjfk7sMNT/s640/blogger-image--1714011207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMk_W65ot8WUHDsLY-JqJJ1rb78YYeGwkZPN8oSlGIBTptFa2AuTkHMAnluu7AxQDNQ65OMB0jp8fme-78TVK10qjaOdtUFj2paPvhA5UwEO-FbnlijUgn0WfcE-fIVXoDO1iWjfk7sMNT/s640/blogger-image--1714011207.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>The season began badly, but thankfully it wasn't a foreshadowing of things to come. Garth saw something strange hanging from the back of Acorn one evening. She wasn't having any contractions and the herd was not displaying the same anxious excitement that usually accompanies a birth. Garth took a photo and we called the vet. We sent him the image and he called us right back. He thought it looked like an unhealthy placenta and that we should go out and look for a dead calf. Garth scaled the pasture and finally found a dead heifer calf over the hill. Acorn was having trouble cleaning so we gave her some Caulophyllum in her water (a homeopathic remedy that is meant to encourage uterine contractions) and perhaps that helped. She seems fine now. </div><div><br></div><div>And now a great mystery has come to my attention. Garth tells me minutes ago that Butternut, last year's calf born here on 4/8/13, just gave birth to what looks like another heifer calf. That means that she was bred at 4 months old while she was still nursing under her own mother. We had been told that was impossible. What are the fertility gods doing around here? Her calf is up and nursing. This worries me though. We didn't separate the bull from the very young stock last year for the reason I mentioned above (it's not meant to be possible) and so what if all these babies have babies on us? Do they think it's some kind of animal farm over here? Oh my. I don't know what we are in for. </div><div><br></div><div>- Alanna</div>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-12536396828073210512014-04-04T07:08:00.002-04:002014-04-04T07:09:57.916-04:00Thaw On<div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although the world was white again on the morning of April first with a fresh inch on every surface, the sky was just playing us the fool. The thaw is officially ON.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The well water to the farm house has greater allegiances with the stream than it does with our comfort or preference. As the stream goes, so goes the well. When the stream is churning brown, we pour tea colored baths. Cleaning the toilet doesn't offer the same satisfaction when dark water stares back at you. Judging from my view out the window, it should be clearing up soon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And water isn't the only thing clearing out. We've seen several living examples that 'spring cleaning' is no cultural artifice. Everyone and everything has something to do away with this time of year. Garth mentioned to me a week or so ago that the field mice had simultaneously decided it was time to clean house. They broke through the icy crust and neatly piled the winter's poop at the snow's edge. Evacuation en masse. Hole after hole in the snow, each with it's own waste at the door. Even the soil is heaving unwanted contents up for the taking - bones, rocks, detritus, a civil war era medicine bottle. I joined the crowd by giving several ill-fitting shirts away. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The full inscription reads: DR. WISTAR'S BALSAM OF WILD CHERRY, PHILADA </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Birds are making faint noises in the early morning now, too. I heard them a month ago on <i>one</i> occasion and then they fell silent as the last wave of cold nights swept in. But now two Robins are bouncing off the ground in a tryst with hoards of grackles looking on, covering the bare trees like leaves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Maple sap is only just running. Mud creeps in between the cows' 'toes.' Bare earth lies everywhere. Spring, you have kept us waiting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-Alanna</span></div>
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-24813669375373665492014-02-27T12:30:00.000-05:002014-02-27T12:47:26.761-05:00Polar Vortex Returns<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
We, like many of you, felt the Polar Vortex lift off for a few days, only to return again in earnest. But the cold brings with it several benefits that you in the city or suburbs can't appreciate. The first is that freezing temperatures discourage the hatching of flies. We had only five consecutive days when the thermometer read above freezing - 43 being the highest it soared - and the effect on the latent in-house fly population was immediate. I decided to kill and then count the fly carcasses from just one average size window in this house (although I must admit it is in the running for most productive) and the results were unsavory. After just three warm days I had confirmation of more than 162 flies dead and stopped counting. That is just one window downstairs. We are not even talking about my upstairs studio. I get all crunchy inside, killing so many flies and witnessing the futility of my actions. I know there will be 50 more to contend with the next time I look. Arden, on the other hand, has just become sensitive to the miracle that flies are. She likes to reach and touch them as they walk up the living room window, and in a sharp twist of character I find myself assisting her - holding her up to see them, gently nudging them towards her open fingers. At least someone's enjoying them.</div>
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The few days of sustained warmth had other obvious effects here, namely the thaw en masse of vast amounts of accumulated snowfall. I was nursing Arden on the couch in the late afternoon when I heard something shift - a subtle elevation in white noise - and I looked behind me just in time to see this begin.<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouUgiQRgjHSa5vuKu3Xt5UPNwSnKQmk1jKHMhq8MphR6oxyHoX3GFiZYvkQlk_j_8GAiUSLYivnItPqN0lMmYm05Pxb4RjsgijYHM2t6w1J25G04CxS3WMoFMizT7KYaKYKHMLeqc_ncF/s640/blogger-image-26304673.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouUgiQRgjHSa5vuKu3Xt5UPNwSnKQmk1jKHMhq8MphR6oxyHoX3GFiZYvkQlk_j_8GAiUSLYivnItPqN0lMmYm05Pxb4RjsgijYHM2t6w1J25G04CxS3WMoFMizT7KYaKYKHMLeqc_ncF/s640/blogger-image-26304673.jpg"></a></div>
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The stream had inches of ice on its surface which had been covered by around 18 inches of snow. I presume the wind helped this along by blowing more into the hollow of the stream bed. On one of the warmest days we sustained heavy rains and Garth and I were waiting to see what would come of it. We got our answer in the above image. An ice dam somewhere upstream must have cracked under the pressure and sent this dark and frothing 'frosty' hurling. I have never seen such a thing. It kept up for around an hour.<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNxgUryIMcv9fL4LhJndOHN8O8MVpojpCW8580Y8EREy6mNfV9GL56-5q8wjShXYAI82dreFaFQhhNevHZ-X9c65A1UJFTabB7cAFdzA8l3WmxxeUuIW_lOKiIqlqgvvay_bRYxj5Z4MiS/s1600/DSC_0224.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNxgUryIMcv9fL4LhJndOHN8O8MVpojpCW8580Y8EREy6mNfV9GL56-5q8wjShXYAI82dreFaFQhhNevHZ-X9c65A1UJFTabB7cAFdzA8l3WmxxeUuIW_lOKiIqlqgvvay_bRYxj5Z4MiS/s1600/DSC_0224.JPG" height="427" width="640"></a><br>
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This is the aftermath. You can see where the water plowed the edges of the stream's snow bank.<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip9IVFnNCOuiRUjCp-O_8L0LCfa_MdQAMvMfGL_E2wasM5GxLn_ADd2YkPbM2AczyzCdo_flS3laxyGojP8GUJpbNs0Mp-nthnr4CXk2TKankoyXKUxCAQitiDoc6-SMfo0QL8YgjKpY4Z/s1600/DSC_0230.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip9IVFnNCOuiRUjCp-O_8L0LCfa_MdQAMvMfGL_E2wasM5GxLn_ADd2YkPbM2AczyzCdo_flS3laxyGojP8GUJpbNs0Mp-nthnr4CXk2TKankoyXKUxCAQitiDoc6-SMfo0QL8YgjKpY4Z/s1600/DSC_0230.JPG" height="428" width="640"></a><br>
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And thankfully now the Polar Vortex has returned, which is no surprise to you, reading this, as you are, in your blanket and hat. It left long enough to give us a taste of what's to come, and I'd be lying if I said we didn't like it. But the upside is that the flies are less enthusiastic (although still coming by the handful daily). At the very least you now have proof that we don't spray for flies or use other insecticides, apart from our own hands.<br>
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Lastly, I am grateful that Garth takes Arden to do the afternoon chores, regardless of the Vortex's whereabouts. She doesn't complain, and if it is really blowing we do keep her in. </div>
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- Alanna</div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-86028069932588869222014-01-29T12:10:00.001-05:002014-01-29T12:10:54.825-05:00Deep Freeze: Farmhouse Fallout<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This morning Garth and I were up early, as is customary these days - 4:30 or so - and I noticed that the pressure from the tap was low on both the hot and the cold. Nothing in the house was running, like a toilet or shower, that would have caused that. It has been <i>VERY</i> cold here for weeks and we don't have much snow cover, so Garth suspected that the buried line from the well to the pressure tank had frozen. He switched the well pump off at the breaker so that the motor wouldn't die trying to pull water that it couldn't have, and put a heater on in the basement. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There had been ground hog invasion down there during the late summer. They dug under the porch and hollowed out an area of the foundation, pushing a lot of new rocks and dirt up around the pressure tank. One of the upsides of summer is that there is no reason to go to the basement. We wouldn't have known they had burrowed in if they hadn't also happened upon a decade old empty bag of dogfood and begun making a raucous. My mother-in-law, Dorothy, first heard it - a loud plastic rustle, too loud to be a mouse or even a large rat. I later saw the red bag lurch to the base of the stairs making the same telltale sound. Groundhog, surely. Garth bravely went to investigate and found the basement as I described it. Their having exposed the pipe from the well to the pressure tank had no doubt contributed to the freeze. Garth and I considered the pros and the cons of our situation over the next few hours.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - The well pipe is frozen. We don't know if that heater will solve it.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pro - At least we have a stream where we can fetch water.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - There is 4 inches of ice over the surface.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pro - We have an axe, a few buckets, and Garth is a strapping and motivated man.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - It's -12 out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pro -</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> Yeah, but now we will <i>really</i> be pioneers!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - It's still -12 out. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pro - We have a Berkey water filter, so drinking stream water will be A-okay. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - I am cloth diapering and this is going to get messier than it already is.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pro - It's meant to get up to 34 here in four days.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Con - That's four days away and it might not be warm enough to thaw the water line. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This went on. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I went outside to get more wood as the light crept into the cobalt world. There were turkeys gobbling and hens clucking in the distance. What? Why now? Two deer were standing and looking at me on the porch from Don's field. That's when I heard Garth say, 'Did you hear that!?' from the basement. It's bad when you can discern your husband's voice from the basement while you stand on the front porch. This farm house wasn't insulated well now, was it? The turkeys' calls were consuming the silence, and so I had to step inside to hear more from Garth. He had flipped the breaker again and the hydrogen peroxide pump spontaneously began cycling. The hand-dug, 15' well for the farmhouse is sulfurous and pumping hydrogen peroxide into the pressure tank dissipates the odor. It works some of the time. Anyway, this meant we had water flowing from the well again. The heat had worked its magic!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I've had moments when I've wished everything in my life were different, and today it was so nice when everything remained the same. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Just think; if those ground hogs hadn't excavated that pipe, we couldn't have delivered the heat where it was most needed. We'll thank them later. Maybe I'll buy some new dog food and hurl it down the stairs. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I still don't know why those turkeys were talking so loudly. I guess sometimes it's just as well <i>not</i> to know what the animals are up to. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span></div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-3713943503260608672014-01-23T06:05:00.001-05:002014-01-24T05:30:44.488-05:00Farming Futures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Efno2A3eBoYT2Xy3MwIruhynphrGgxbWLZkc8SQOqMZ3huAnCJa-jB8jAR5xMvQj9pNdix7COahOVT4s3MrdWkVVsLkKsh8tAwgHlOkQzc3x65jHtiM4IIIo8iILYROweIqF2xhhJrdw/s1600/DSC_0136.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Efno2A3eBoYT2Xy3MwIruhynphrGgxbWLZkc8SQOqMZ3huAnCJa-jB8jAR5xMvQj9pNdix7COahOVT4s3MrdWkVVsLkKsh8tAwgHlOkQzc3x65jHtiM4IIIo8iILYROweIqF2xhhJrdw/s1600/DSC_0136.JPG" height="214" width="320"></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So, this is about as much of the farm as I see on a day to day basis: Arden in the foreground with Garth heading out to do chores as the backdrop. I can't complain. It was -17 degrees out this morning and Garth gives me a full report when he stops in again to deliver an egg or two, or an armload of wood. And it's more of the farm than either Ed or Normandy get to see lately. They are spending their last winter away, as Normandy will complete her masters degree in ceramics come Spring. Thankfully, their absence is primarily physical. Edmund seems to be constantly thinking of the farm and the next season specifically. Hardly a day passes without an e-mail or three from Edmund on various farm related topics. And what's stranger still is that his thoughts track with Garth's in real time. I sent Ed an e-mail asking if Garth had shared his latest idea for using excess whey, (which was mixing in barn lime to neutralize the it and then applying that to our pastures as fertilizer) and Ed's response was that he was about to send us the very same idea. So the farm evolves, despite our limited man power at the moment. There is water running beneath the frozen surface of the stream, so to speak.</span><div><br></div><div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And where does that take us? Who knows, but here are a few of our ideas.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We loved raising heritage turkeys on pasture last year, and judging from the feedback we got from those of you who bought one or two of them, the results were good too. Wonderful even! We are aiming to do roughly the same thing this year. Our heritage turkeys (probably Standard Bronze again), will be given free range on pasture and offered organic grains. The only difference in our management of them from last year is that this year we intend to raise pigs (PIGS!) and our feeding system for them might benefit the turkeys in one way or another. We hope to source whey to feed our pastured pigs as an energy source. Whey is a waste product from butter and cheese making and there is still a lot of nutrition to be had in there, but it's mostly lactose in a probiotic slurry. The grass and other forages they'll eat will provide them with protein and fiber primarily, and they'll need some carbohydrate to balance that all out. If we do find a reliable whey source, there is a chance the turkeys will get to pick through the solids at the bottom of the tank, if they are interested. I imagine we may also seek out un-sellable vegetables and other food waste from local organic growers to offer our pigs, and we'll inevitably produce a fair amount of that ourselves with the reliable abundance of our growing season. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At any rate, this is all to say that we would like to offer you heritage turkeys raised in this manner at the price/pound we did last year ($9.00 delivered, $8.00 locally) and may even get to reduce the price further if our feed costs come in well below what they were. (Last year grain prices were hugely inflated because of the previous year's widespread drought and dire corn yield. Story has it, the world saw an unprecedented bumper crop this last summer, and perhaps we will see the effects of that in the marketplace this year. That is yet to be seen.) We will raise as many turkeys as there are buyers, and will place an order for poults with these numbers in mind soon. If you would like a turkey from us, or have questions about any part of the process, please send us an email:</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>cairncrestfarm@gmail.com</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I let the cat out of the bag earlier by saying we were intending to raise pigs this summer. If you are interested in buying our pork, you can also send the farm an e-mail at the address above and we will put you on our list to receive updates about the products we have on offer as the time approaches. I am sure you will get to read about the pitfalls and successes here on our blog as the events unfold. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This spring we will see the first grass-fed Angus/Kerry crosses out of our new bull, Mr. Winchester. It will be a few years before we arrive at a verdict on them (better than purebred Kerry alone?) but it will be fun to see how they behave on pasture. We will be sending a few steers at some point this summer, so again, please e-mail the farm if you would like updates on the availability of our beef and are not on the list already. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Thank you for your ongoing support and your enthusiasm for what we produce. We were so happy to deliver actual goods to you last year. Garth said he finally felt like a farmer, rather than someone who obsessively moves cows around as a hobby. We excited to have more to offer this year. </span><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Spread the word. Spread the love! We're farming!</span><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-Alanna</span></div></div></div>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-56581200022930182272013-11-22T12:36:00.002-05:002013-11-22T12:36:58.699-05:00Thanksgiving Delivery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is just a reminder that we will be delivering our heritage turkeys to Bryn Athyn on Tuesday, the 26th, along with our 100% grass-fed and finished beef. We have a fair amount of ground beef still unspoken for, but only a few individual cuts left. If you haven't yet ordered any and would like to please send an e-mail to cairncrestfarm@gmail.com. We will respond to your personally with all the details you'll need. Cheers!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-Alanna</span><br />
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-34848758526712383742013-10-21T20:32:00.000-04:002013-10-21T20:32:01.510-04:00Dry Aging<br />
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There is one other significant difference between our beef and the stuff available in groceries. It is not exclusive to grass-feeding as it has to do with post slaughter treatment of the carcass. Traditionally beef carcasses were chilled and then "dry aged" for 14 to 21 days (sometimes even longer) between slaughter and butchering. The butcher we use to process our cattle still does this as it results in a superior final product. Aging gives naturally present enzymes time to work on muscle tissue and develop flavors to their fullest. It also dehydrates the meat which means we sell more meat and less water per pound of meat. The large meat packers moved away from aging during the 1960s because most consumers didn't complain or shift their buying habits when they bought more water, while the extra water weight in each cut contributed to the packers' bottom line. This is true across all cuts, but is most readily apparent in a side-by-side ground meat cook-off. A pound of Cairncrest beef will release less water into the frying pan than a comparable package from the local grocery. Next time you cook ground meat from a store take note how much water comes out.<br />
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In the interest of science here is my try at demonstrating it. I cooked the same amount of meat from ourown steer and a package from the grocery store.<br />
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Here is a photo of the two meats prior to cooking. Guess which is which. (I did adjust the color balance a little bit in this photo because I struggled to get the light to cooperate while cooking dinner. But I did my best to get the shades of meat true to reality.)<br />
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I did a poor job of photographing the liquid that come off, but as you can see the grocery meat released more liquid. I'm actually surprised there wasn't more of a difference, but what is shown represents approximately one ounce out of a one pound package so ~ around 5%, which is in line with what I've read occurs in a two week aging.<br />
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I didn't take a picture of the cooked meat because the color discrepancy was much less dramatic and probably wouldn't have shown up on a computer screen, though it was still apparent in person.<br />
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I found both the flavor and texture of our beef to be more enjoyable.<br />
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-Edmund</div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-66772614671945015152013-09-24T07:24:00.000-04:002013-09-24T07:24:17.128-04:00Grass-fed and FinishedThis week we get to go to the fun stuff.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I arrived early enough to catch them in bed! One year old steer in the foreground. This year's calf, a cow, and our bull, Mr. Winchester in are in the back.</td></tr>
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Grass-fed meat is all the rage right now, and for good reason. I read recently the grass-fed segment of the beef market is booming while the rest of the beef market stagnates. The authors of the article attribute the consumer popularity of grass-fed to concerns about the wholesomeness of the meat fed in big feedlots, as well as for animal welfare and the environment. I believe in my heart of hearts that grass-fed meat can be the best on all fronts - healthy meat, contented animals, and more fertile soils. But as with grain finishing, just because something <i>can</i> be a certain way doesn't mean it <i>is</i> that way all the time.<br />
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The term grass-fed encompasses a huge spread of management intensivities. Some producers put a perimeter fence around a piece of land and turn the herd loose. Some producers have a few large paddocks they slowly rotate the their cattle through every few months. Others, like us, use both perimeter and portable electric fencing to allocate a small amount of pasture at a time and then move the herd onto fresh grass every day or so (see photos below). Daily moving allows adequate rest periods for the grass to recover between grazing events, thus the more palatable species of plants are not munched to death by hovering grazers. It promotes taller and healthier pasture plants that can tap deeper nutrients in the sub-soil. It supposedly <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cows-Save-Planet-Improbable-Restoring/dp/1603584323" target="_blank">sequesters carbon</a> into the soil as organic matter much faster than say forests or ungrazed grass. It keeps the herd clear of its own waste until enough time has elapsed for the manure to reincorporate into the soil. It reduces erosion since the grass sward is denser and more vigorous, and there is no plowing for the finishing feeds. It reduces the need for fossil fuels since growing grain requires a lot of diesel for tractors, combines, and trucks for hauling the harvest.</div>
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Frequent (more than once per week) moves generally allow for a higher average plane of nutrition in the paddocks the herd has access to every day. Better nutrition allows cattle to express their genes fully and those that are suitable for grass finishing come to the fore. Good genes under good management makes for exceptional meat. Good genes under lax management e.g. turning the herd loose for the entire year in a single large pasture, does not. Cattle unsuited to grass production will never grow great beef, even under the best management regime. Management can help the marginally suitable animal achieve full health, and therefore be reasonably tasty on the table. <br />
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The take away lesson here is this - the term "grass-fed" does not guarantee a great steak. In fact, there are plenty of average and even sub-par grass-fed products chasing the price premium it offers. The best tasting is always grass-fed though, and when one factors in the social, environmental, and animal welfare components of grass vs grain it becomes a no brainer.<br />
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Grass farm pastures should not look like golf course fairways. If they do the animals and the pasture are not going to express their full potential. Depending on the time of year and most recent cut, hayfields can have a fairly uniform even appearance.<br />
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It is hard to judge distances in the photo, but this first image shows one day's worth of grazing. Look closely and you can see white pigtail posts on both sides of the picture. This is early morning and I've just moved the cattle into their fresh "break" of grass. To the left of the herd you can see the effect that 24 hours of animal impact has on a patch of pasture.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The camera flattens the topography. Here I'm looking up a moderately steep hill toward the cattle.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting closer, and a better look at the portable electric fence used to contain the cattle.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is another image of impact. We're looking at the ground in the area the animals just finished. Note the mat of grass pushed against the soil, this protects from erosion and feeds worms and microbes.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is pasture after roughly a week of regrowth. That shaggy look is a good thing when it comes to pasture.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finally, don't forget water. We buried a line in this pasture and use gravity to pull water where we need it. That's a 40 gallon plastic tank that is light enough for one person to move easily.</td></tr>
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That's it for this week. I have a little more to say about beef, but I'm going to wrap up in the next week or two.<br />
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-Edmund</div>
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-2160758896036310382013-09-15T16:37:00.001-04:002013-09-15T16:37:13.969-04:00Grain Finishing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week we went through a sort of general overview of a steer's life. This week we go into a little more detail about finishing on grain.</div>
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Grain finishing rations for steers are mostly corn and beans, but they include all kinds of other stuff too. I've seen footage of a feedlot mixing waste candy, wrappers and all, into a wagon to feed. Until the mad-cow scare of the 90s it was legal to feed protein sources from slaughterhouses. In some places it is still common to put chickenhouse waste (chicken poop) into cattle rations because the rumen bugs can use the nitrogen in it to make proteins. Nevermind that a cow would never eat chickenshit given a choice in the matter, or the fact that it can impart a fecal smell to the carcass itself. The bovine digestive system is a beautiful thing, designed to process large amounts of low quality feed into parts and pieces of life. It is easily overwhelmed by concentrated sources of calories like corn and bean meal. An out of whack digestive system pushes problems into the rest of the organism and they get really fat really quickly. They're fed antibiotics and other <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/food/2013/02/zilmax_the_cattle_growth_drug_that_s_making_beef_more_like_chicken.html" target="_blank">growth promotants</a> to push their growth rate up ever higher. Most receive an ear implant of hormones to goose their growth beyond the pale. All these things would be fatal in short order for even the most rugged steer, but the cattle go to slaughter before the wear and tear of pharmacology, unhygenic living conditions, and an unatural diet can exact their ultimate toll.</div>
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Most consumers only ever meet their meat on the dinner plate. So what does grain finishing this way do to the final product? It makes for a higher percentage of soft meat (this is the one desirable outcome of this style of finishing). Standing around waiting to be fed doesn't promote connective tissue development the way walking a hill in search of a tasty bite of grass does. This allows some cuts of a grain finished steer to be softer on average than a properly finished grass-fed beefer. I'm thinking specifically of round and sirloin tip steaks... But the classic steak cuts from the rib and loin should be tender, no matter the production model. If they're not, something is out of whack. Grain finishing changes the fat profile <a href="http://www.eatwild.com/cla.html" target="_blank">in the meat.</a> Grain finishing allows for slaughter at a younger age as we discussed previously. I believe there is a rough correlation between age at slaughter and flavor. All other things being equal younger animals are milder in the flavor department. And many people are now used to bland beef because that's all they've ever been exposed to. Grain based rations also dampen the flavor compared to the diverse diet of self-fed cow. Our pasture has at least 70 species of plants, and the cattle eat most of them. On a mixed ration cattle get all their sustenance from just a few plant seeds, and the majority of it is corn.</div>
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Most grain finishing occurs on huge, huge feed lots in the mid-west. These massive manure factories foist their odors and water contamination on all the neighbors within several miles, but just because most operations move with disregard for the social and environmental externalities they impose on their communities doesn't mean grain finishing must be that way. There are smaller organic feedlots that do a much better job of keeping their animals healthy and clean. And there are many small farms like ours that have a beef herd and sell meat directly to consumers after finishing the cattle on grain themselves. So if you prefer the flavor and texture of grain finished beef, it is possible to find farmers who do it as well as it can be done.</div>
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Next week we get to the fun stuff that really makes us different - grass finishing.</div>
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We don't feed our cattle any grain so I can't show a picture of it, but since photos are fun here's one with some cows and two calves from this year.</div>
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<br />Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-58127658277082573182013-09-03T12:30:00.002-04:002013-09-03T12:30:37.384-04:00Cairncrest Beef II<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Last week I covered some basic definitions of terms I will use here and there in the coming posts. Now I get to go into actual production descriptions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Most beef calves are born in the spring or late winter. They spend the first six or eight months of life at momma's side, typically on pasture. Once the farmer or rancher decides it's time to sell the calves they get sorted off their dams and sent to auction, or if they're lucky, straight over to a "stocker operation". Stocker operations are typically pasture-based, but many use supplements (grain) to make cattle grow faster. The stocker raises the steers and heifers up to "finishing size", at which point they're loaded into a truck again and shipped to a feedlot. They then stand around eating out of troughs and standing in their own waste for approximately four months, though it can be as short as one month or as long as six. Once they're "finished" they truck one more time to a large slaughter house where they're killed and butchered. Total time from elapsed from birth to death is somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At our farm calves are born in the spring once the chance of snow is low. They run with their dams on the pasture until the fall or late fall when we wean them across a few strands of electric fence. The calves spend the winter in a bedded barn with access to the outdoors. In the spring they rejoin the cowherd and run together for the entire next year. They go through their second fall and winter as part of the larger herd eating dormant pasture and hay we provide. They shelter from our nasty winter winds behind the tree lines and topography of our place. When the warmth arrives again they fatten up on the high quality grass that flushes out in spring. Then they have one short 20 minute truck ride to the slaughterhouse where they're dispatched quickly. Total time from birth to death is 24-30 months, or even longer in some cases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are a number of points here that ought to be addressed. One is the number of times the animals are trucked around. Shipping is extremely stressful to cattle. They often get sick immediately after being shipped because of the stress involved. "Humanely" raised meat does not include number of times a given animal is shipped during its life, but in my book it ought to be one of the many metrics used to determine whether a cow was in fact raised ethically.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The time discrepancy between the two models is important from a cost perspective. The longer life of a grass-fed animal means we need to feed it for more days. That increases our costs, and thus the price of the final product is higher too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Also notable is the fact that even in this day and age, the realities of the bovine life-cycle do not lend themselves to mega-agri-business for the first 2/3 of a cow's life. Pigs and chickens have been relegated to vertically integrated CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operation) for several decades thanks to the American dictate that food must be cheaper at any cost. The logistics of trying to deal with the health of a confinement operation for pregnant cows appears to be beyond the ken of even IBP and Cargill. "Conventional" beef cattle still get to spend a little over a year in the wide world of grass and sunshine. So its really the finishing period that sets beef into different worlds.</span><br />
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Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-1324566216838985942013-08-21T12:13:00.001-04:002013-08-21T12:13:32.652-04:00Cairncrest Beef I<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hEZw3LcSfaklEaVEpywOTCXCeuLuTvK0N03cZrToyEZcFtQ8NDVpF0VVJaiL_95ovX5oEXWn3ROVtfGBv3fabtkwmpXLKFCFk6QfczOAqMlibuGS0LmnD1qIL-N0UJ9pxCKegXCUY5xT/s1600/mystery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hEZw3LcSfaklEaVEpywOTCXCeuLuTvK0N03cZrToyEZcFtQ8NDVpF0VVJaiL_95ovX5oEXWn3ROVtfGBv3fabtkwmpXLKFCFk6QfczOAqMlibuGS0LmnD1qIL-N0UJ9pxCKegXCUY5xT/s400/mystery.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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I imagine our customers are aware of the many differences between our 100% grass-fed beef and that offered in the supermarket. They're both "beef" but they could be from different species if one judged solely by qualitative factors like flavor, odor, color, and texture. We've all seen the photos of mega feedlots where cattle stand hock deep in their own excrement for the few months leading up to slaughter, and that is certainly the most glaring point of diversion, but there are several others worth noting as well. Because I find the topic very interesting, I'm going to do a series of posts about beef in general and particular. Here's the first installment.<br />
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I'll start with some definitions so we're all basically on the same page when I get into the meat of my essay here.<br />
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<i>Management -</i> When I use this word in relation to farming and livestock I'm approaching it from the perspective of Allen Savory as described in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Holistic-Management-Framework-Decision-Making/dp/155963488X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375992394&sr=8-1&keywords=holistic+management" target="_blank">Holistic Management</a>. If his book could be distilled into a few words it would say something to the effect that everything we do or choose not to do is a management decision. Decisions are linked together and we need to look at the big picture and ask ourselves whether a little choice we're making right now in any given moment is taking us toward our goal or away from it. And we need to ask whether the action we're taking is the best action to take. Is there something else we could do at the present moment that would get us closer to the big picture more quickly than whatever it is that is at hand? This will become more concrete later when I get into management intensiveness.<br />
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<i>Grass-fed -</i> Cattle eat grass. They also eat a lot of other pasture plants like legumes, bedstraw, thistles, and burdock. Our pastures include all of these and more. When I say "grass-fed" I mean they eat exclusively from the pasture during the grazing season (grazing season doesn't perfectly overlap with the growing season), and stored hay during the winter. <br />
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<i>Grain</i> - Seeds of plants in the grass family - corn, wheat, barely, etc, harvested and concentrated by human ingenuity. I'm not referring to the incidental grass seed the cattle eat when a pasture sward gets a little mature and sets seed.<br />
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<i>Finishing - </i>The window of time immediately prior to slaughter. Fattening occurs during the finishing period. Finishing is critical for proper flavor development and cooking properties. Without adequate "finish" steaks are lean and prone to drying out while cooking. Some cuts are this way no matter how well finished the animal - sirloin tip, flank, and round steaks for example, and must be cooked on the rare end to retain any juiciness.<br />
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More next week!<br />
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-Edmund<br />
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<br />Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-2285134477375701382013-07-11T07:17:00.001-04:002013-10-26T11:20:20.171-04:00Beef for sale<br />
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Soon, August 3rd to be precise, we will have our 100% grass-fed and finished beef for sale. Our cattle live outside year-round and they eat only pasture plants and hay, never high energy supplements like grain or beans. Every day during the grazing season (April-mid December in our area) they get a fresh patch of grass to eat and bed on. During the winter they escape the cold wind by snugging up to the tree line and we supply hay. </div>
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We're proud of our animals and our production methods. Raising animals the way we do provides them with the space to fulfill their instinctive drives, minimizes the fear they experience during their lives, and as an added bonus it improves the fertility of our soils. When we get to provide our hard-won meat to our customers it is gratifying to feel like we've engaged in a win-win-win exchange. Our customers get clean healthy food, we get enough money to encourage us to keep at it, and our land creeps into greater productivity and fertility.</div>
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Perhaps most important of all, the flavor of meat raised on pasture is unbeatable. </div>
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Ground Beef/Stew Meat 7.00/lb<br />
15# 6.25/lb<br />
50# 5.50/lb</div>
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Chuck (pot) Roast 7.00/lb</div>
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Loin Steaks 14.00/lb</div>
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<strike>Filet Mignon 20.00/lb</strike></div>
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Rib 14.00/lb</div>
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Shanks 5.00/lb (significant amount of bone)</div>
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Sirloin Steaks 12.00/lb</div>
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Round Steaks/Roasts 10.00/lb</div>
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<strike>Flank Steaks 10.00/lb</strike></div>
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Tongue 3.00/lb (fantastic lunch meat cold cut, but takes a little work to prepare, ask me how)</div>
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<strike>Liver 2.00/lb (these are mature animals, strong liver flavor, dogs love it though)</strike></div>
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Heart 5.00/lb</div>
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Suet 1.00/lb (good for cooking and bird food)</div>
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Soup Bones 0.50/lb</div>
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If anyone has questions we're happy to answer them. We have a few go-to recipes for cheaper cuts if needed too... Shanks are one of my favorite cuts for example, just ask... cairncrestfarm@gmail.com is the best place to direct orders and questions.</div>
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-Edmund</div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-14420436023637015772013-06-05T13:14:00.001-04:002013-06-05T13:14:13.903-04:00Heritage Turkeys <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The turkeys arrived on the 25th of April with a note from the hatchery telling us that they would be 'lively, husky and' some other adjective that has since been forgotten because the word husky was so preoccupying. Husky? At any rate, three of the 21 perished within a day or so of getting here, which is on par with other poultry we've raised. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzIQjYTCnUqSskqylHpKhs8sYI06l6uLSTmxfAhjQFocJqn2DikGRpdpDNn3qJkJ6ctim4XvFECGPm0O_u0dANC6AFj6RFeT6tuN_a8eDTCWwL4QRcuWgxhmTYD3LL2PZeoyEn3-VCA1iK/s1600/DSC_0004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzIQjYTCnUqSskqylHpKhs8sYI06l6uLSTmxfAhjQFocJqn2DikGRpdpDNn3qJkJ6ctim4XvFECGPm0O_u0dANC6AFj6RFeT6tuN_a8eDTCWwL4QRcuWgxhmTYD3LL2PZeoyEn3-VCA1iK/s320/DSC_0004.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It seems that the world is full of conflicting reports about turkeys and their ability to survive even the simplest events in life. For instance, after praising their stamina, the hatchery insisted that baby turkeys never be let out in the rain and that they even prevent their mature birds from getting wet throughout their adulthood. What? We'll need to be hustling turkeys in from the pasture when a cloud blows over? Garth read that Joel Salatin doesn't shelter his turkeys from weather events at all, while I hear people locally tell us about turkeys that stand in the rain with their heads up and drown.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRsvSoW7ZD_mAaY31amdBkSlCFA_VVI8NYehcT_g5Xfoi4PpQwDwfvVs1tRKHWbBMBtVi_i9glMhJ9fWUiRCU8uFY3nkXHC4f5M3rM3tRa3FKwt3siCNNfPdKym3RPAmakCckmmB6W9hq/s1600/DSC_0009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRsvSoW7ZD_mAaY31amdBkSlCFA_VVI8NYehcT_g5Xfoi4PpQwDwfvVs1tRKHWbBMBtVi_i9glMhJ9fWUiRCU8uFY3nkXHC4f5M3rM3tRa3FKwt3siCNNfPdKym3RPAmakCckmmB6W9hq/s320/DSC_0009.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Well, so far they have been much more sophisticated than we feared. We began letting them out to range around a week or two ago. There have been a couple fast moving storms that worried me, but the birds have put themselves inside or under burdock leaves and have suffered no harm. Their personalities are fairly ideal. They are curious, friendly, and seem to be free of the constant stress and terror that consume chickens from the inside out. They love being in the grass and they make a wide variety of calls to each other, none of which affront the ears the way a goose or a hen call might. They are lovely. They are almost big enough now that stray cats or clever skunks have ceased to pose a mortal threat. With a little care they should continue to flourish from here on out.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJchtxOIPI7_DS7Wt0gITDl7aTcTpU-fEPy76xNwLImwWYX0WGPm3TBbdZCatzK9G7n0Cy8zeZE7NRGm0bTC5foUrNgC-YH6vA4uBqwhDJL6INFonpeYIdbP6NdqSYT7LPpGSBAuHnxbL/s1600/DSC_0010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJchtxOIPI7_DS7Wt0gITDl7aTcTpU-fEPy76xNwLImwWYX0WGPm3TBbdZCatzK9G7n0Cy8zeZE7NRGm0bTC5foUrNgC-YH6vA4uBqwhDJL6INFonpeYIdbP6NdqSYT7LPpGSBAuHnxbL/s320/DSC_0010.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-49618783274257753032013-04-10T18:01:00.000-04:002013-04-10T18:03:00.885-04:00First Calf of the Year<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robinia just gave birth to a beautiful heifer calf on the 8th. It was the first day this spring to reach 60 degrees, and the cows were panting and desperate in their winter coats. They'd had reason to keep them until now.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dALZLC3FrfI9KfFcC9eHzBEIXpa-JBS1W1_axw_hi7LAWO-7v1HSvYWESXGGfSYCbwJr-oCNahklcHvQu9fngluODQnWTXPk7GvS1A3hru90-wV3jeBKV7MkR97asLHhGMLIcJeiWIwt/s1600/DSC_0052.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dALZLC3FrfI9KfFcC9eHzBEIXpa-JBS1W1_axw_hi7LAWO-7v1HSvYWESXGGfSYCbwJr-oCNahklcHvQu9fngluODQnWTXPk7GvS1A3hru90-wV3jeBKV7MkR97asLHhGMLIcJeiWIwt/s320/DSC_0052.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zkI6XS8Ufmh7DVpFMK4OReQ2lOffZcS9lDtquKn6iq-wNkKmnulRNTN0suFEnor961twX2eDTq_CDchlxc4vZtapGfcOM6NmswN4QGmve8xk18BfbCBWm2tCCn78GmrKTdr1bc5MuPwv/s1600/DSC_0053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zkI6XS8Ufmh7DVpFMK4OReQ2lOffZcS9lDtquKn6iq-wNkKmnulRNTN0suFEnor961twX2eDTq_CDchlxc4vZtapGfcOM6NmswN4QGmve8xk18BfbCBWm2tCCn78GmrKTdr1bc5MuPwv/s320/DSC_0053.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robinia is the first cow born on our farm to give birth on our farm, which feels like a landmark. So, let the calving season begin! And let the shedding season commence soon too!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-22582687153254937632013-03-14T09:43:00.001-04:002013-03-14T16:57:31.594-04:00Cows on the Run<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Having come in from my afternoon chores, I was about to sit down to write about the very unromantic malaise of March. Farming is occasionally painted as Renoir would - all gaiety in pastel hues - a harmonious overlapping of the farmer and nature - interdependence at its best. My recent observations don't conform to that aesthetic. The egg mobile sits above a thick swamp of soaked feed and poop that the chickens leave their tracks in after pecking after the edible bits. The winter's compost that they didn't consume lies bloated and gray on the saturated ground. The cows mull around in their own wet waste, churning the soil to its own detriment. The grass that does show through the swaths of snow is the color of mulch hay and mice. This was all about to pour out of me in greater detail when Garth swung open to the door to tell me that the little cows had broke through the gate and were on the loose. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I tied my boots, grabbed a long stick and hustled outside. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Garth had been suspicious of their intentions every time he would see them congregate at the lower gate, sniffing and licking the metal chain that keeps them in their place. It's unclear how they actually got out, but three of them were on a mad dash toward the main road. I ran after them, trying to hedge them into our neighbor's field to cries of Garth yelling "don't chase them!" As I hoped, they turned right and galloped off over the sloping hill toward the tree line. I followed them at a great distance, trying to make out exactly where they were. The cows that remained within our fence were getting a kick out of this, bucking and jumping in the air and hollering to them desperately. Within minutes I saw the escapees at the edge of our fence again, as Garth tried to open the gate for them in time. They didn't take the bait and ran up the road instead. Garth followed after them. They meandered across the road to the other field when I saw Garth running down the hill toward the gate ahead of them as they followed behind. On occasion Garth will get them all running by sprinting down the fence line to close in the chickens. Apparently this was good practice for today. But soon the forward motion sputtered and stopped as they careened around to go up the hill again. Garth ran after them and cut in across the stream to force them to run down along the fence. I stood with the gate open, but moved away from the gate and onto the road as they approached. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw me and made a few vain attempts to prolong the chase. Finally the youngest of them noticed the open gate and the lack of human intervention beyond it and trotted in with the others behind her. We ran them up to the top of the hill to join the 'big' cows. We had been wanting to merge the two groups for a week now, and I guess we were just waiting for them choose it themselves. It is blowing snow now, but I think they are old enough to handle it without the comforts of the barn. I am just grateful to have them all back in one place because the thought of the sun going down and missing a handful of cows makes me sick. I would take March any day in comparison with that.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzuzGlkt3SGDDS_VAA58w2KqRISwRs1cdRqYTYeRnlIlhabhiv3Hl9V-Jlto-5rQbWBTWQwBp22JeywMOY56jyd7ejHbIcB6uY2xuQ8aO4MlW1DKNvYCGNwcMM80TSAJwdXxub1w1HR9x/s1600/DSC_0048.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFzuzGlkt3SGDDS_VAA58w2KqRISwRs1cdRqYTYeRnlIlhabhiv3Hl9V-Jlto-5rQbWBTWQwBp22JeywMOY56jyd7ejHbIcB6uY2xuQ8aO4MlW1DKNvYCGNwcMM80TSAJwdXxub1w1HR9x/s320/DSC_0048.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span></div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-62354160226707747822013-02-17T14:39:00.000-05:002013-02-17T14:39:12.008-05:00Bits of Color<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The passing of these cold days is made easier by moments of color. These are the ones that have swept me up in their coming.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpNSOnmeCOdJ0eMxy3jo6KiQ1QrKkllxsEe_ocVkldcMXzgf5FkTdqpsOb0tgsqX7ZTYBn_QDHnzrX4ej__-uBBOgMjH8Q7InXaNIG7aKlamOpboh0mU-vcnNB-WQHX4DzVjpemGjxyMyb/s1600/DSC_0038.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpNSOnmeCOdJ0eMxy3jo6KiQ1QrKkllxsEe_ocVkldcMXzgf5FkTdqpsOb0tgsqX7ZTYBn_QDHnzrX4ej__-uBBOgMjH8Q7InXaNIG7aKlamOpboh0mU-vcnNB-WQHX4DzVjpemGjxyMyb/s320/DSC_0038.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The gorge is at its finest in winter. The collective evidence of entropy is softened beneath the snow. You can hear the water rushing under its arrested surface. The slow rhythm of these short days permits me to visit the edges of our farm, the places where our will is not evident.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUCLoWbzx-vT63PI3pKmICfP93TrhCnMvhJk18sDaVT2jDfua4cO8Hwii5lTCGdw-AtdKJzDTCgpxgRsHgjImkAic28kff3t1nCg5xGsbLkRS_8uGG9uUB7skVam4Xd6Iq5M5SkmoalY0/s1600/DSC_0036.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUCLoWbzx-vT63PI3pKmICfP93TrhCnMvhJk18sDaVT2jDfua4cO8Hwii5lTCGdw-AtdKJzDTCgpxgRsHgjImkAic28kff3t1nCg5xGsbLkRS_8uGG9uUB7skVam4Xd6Iq5M5SkmoalY0/s320/DSC_0036.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Have you been making sweet potato pancakes? If not, I encourage you to try. Grate 1/2 of a peeled sweet potato and mince some onion finely. Mix them together, add an egg with some salt and pepper, and pat the mixture flat into a hot pan that is well greased. Fry each side until it is crisp and lightly browned and then top them with savory things of your choosing. Below is an avocado with melted cheddar, but I have taken equal pleasure in cream cheese, avocado and bacon, and of course cream cheese, dill and smoked salmon. It is nice to have something orange when the world is composing variations on grey. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQlgTigstcdkmD8GDu5OnSbN4qGShoF0n1WJjEV6q4rS8E6vTNKMEiXkgFY-pUUyMrf1l9KD3rX_lz4HA3ro3W3t-pFOVr8VHwKkE6VU0PcarS81_zbuCkQaagcyAhU_AuxHzzyIwjP6S/s1600/Sweet+potato+pancake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQlgTigstcdkmD8GDu5OnSbN4qGShoF0n1WJjEV6q4rS8E6vTNKMEiXkgFY-pUUyMrf1l9KD3rX_lz4HA3ro3W3t-pFOVr8VHwKkE6VU0PcarS81_zbuCkQaagcyAhU_AuxHzzyIwjP6S/s320/Sweet+potato+pancake.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And for the grand finale, I was doing yoga one morning weeks ago when I saw a red pigeon flying with the flock of soot colored ones. I ran downstairs to catch Garth before he left for chores, pointed the bird out, and then we marveled at it for some time through binoculars. We felt pretty certain that it was indeed a pigeon, but then we didn't see it again. It was more than a month before Garth saw it a second time. He brought the camera out and managed to snap this photo. If you click the image it should enlarge. Which one of these is not like the others? Does anyone else know of a completely red pigeon? How lucky are we to have something red in the winter sky?</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpK3uXdb68SZJpIwRDKWRVUb2ndgR1IKM2jP_3kq_WENoxL6TB81byRpWIEjFV2mcqiUbBrMxSqniOXfEpafCf51XB8y68WozvX-NiKhMVGNOEtsEj0_8e5zRjjEbFfl0zNZKQJkA3R62v/s1600/DSC_0046.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpK3uXdb68SZJpIwRDKWRVUb2ndgR1IKM2jP_3kq_WENoxL6TB81byRpWIEjFV2mcqiUbBrMxSqniOXfEpafCf51XB8y68WozvX-NiKhMVGNOEtsEj0_8e5zRjjEbFfl0zNZKQJkA3R62v/s320/DSC_0046.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span></div>
<br />Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-24855192893320080392013-01-20T18:59:00.001-05:002013-01-20T18:59:25.703-05:00Predator Pressure<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Edmund and Garth both shot deer this season. They hung in our hops barn as long as the weather permitted before being skinned and butchered. I was present while Edmund was pulling the hide away from the carcass, and I heard him gasp. He had found a cluster of dog ticks buried in the white fur just behind the deer's front legs. He related this experience to a group of older men who gather every year to cut their deer communally. They always invite Edmund and Garth to partake in these evenings. Many of them reported finding the same thing on their deer. The alarming part is that they have been hunting deer here for more than 60 years, and no one ever remembers seeing a tick on one of their animals until this year. Last year was a very warm winter and this may be just another indicator of the pervasive shift occurring in our climate. Whatever the cause, it makes me uneasy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I heard a radio program recently that was discussing zoonotic diseases - those shared between animals and humans - lyme disease being the most recognized among them. The person being interviewed described the factors that limit their spread. The most effective was the natural order attained by having diverse species inhabit a large area together. Predators limit the overpopulation of their prey, allowing a tenuous balance to be achieved The diversity of wildlife on this farm is our most important asset in maintaining ecological stability. It is one thing to hear owls in the night, or observe coyotes stalking groundhogs, but it's another thing to find clear evidence of a predator with its prey. After taking some hay up to the cows, I was remarking to Garth about how you could see all the little mouse tracks swerving this way and that on top of the snow. Our eyes followed the meandering lines until we both noticed one path that was interrupted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A large bird had caught sight of this rodent, swooped down, carving large streaks with its tail, and then, clutching the mouse with its talons, broke into flight again. I feel so happy to have these relationships playing out around us. It's my hope that our farming practices will do little to quell this activity and that we might live contentedly around the edges of this dynamic order. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- Alanna</span></div>
Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-61534600428976719782013-01-03T18:47:00.000-05:002013-01-03T18:47:28.772-05:00Heirloom Turkeys in the New Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The new year stretches ahead of us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is the path worn through the snow by our cows. They use it to retreat from the wind once they've eaten their fill. It stretches to the very top of the hill where the forest beyond the fence cups the pasture at its side and blocks the brunt of the weather. I marvel at them every time I'm within view when they descend to the feeder. They follow each other tightly in single file along the ridge of the hill. We have nearly two feet of snow now, and cows know to conserve what energy they can through minimizing their efforts. We're doing the same - carving only necessary paths, going no further than we need to, and casting our minds forward as we sit comfortably indoors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Among our many ambitions for the coming year, raising heritage turkeys is high on the list. We haven't decided firmly on a breed yet, but we intend to raise an heirloom bird on pasture, one that might actually fly away from us if it cared to. Initially, we thought of raising a set number of birds and randomly offering a few of them for sale when the time came to the first bidder. But Normandy had the brilliance to suggest that we inform people of our intentions ahead of time, and then raise as many birds as we have the interest for. Granted, we don't yet have full command of the details (what the poults will cost, the grain expense, and these finer points will certainly contribute to the final price per pound). But a few things are certain: these turkeys will be truly free ranging in our pasture with our cow herd - they will be fed organic grain (although they will also be fed any number of garden scraps and roots we harvest for them - meaning that they will feast on the full compliment that nature/nurture has to offer) - and that we will care for them with the respect that sentient beings deserve (including a humane slaughter by own own hands). If you are interested in purchasing one or more of these birds from us, send an email directly to cairncrestfarm@gmail.com. We will respond shortly with all the details, including discounts for pre-orders, that may influence whether or not you want to commit to this. If a number of people in a given location (say, Bryn Athyn) express interest, we would absolutely make a specific trip to deliver those turkeys fresh. On the off chance that more people express interest than we feel comfortable accommodating, we will determine priority by the order in which we receive e-mails. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We hope you are enjoying some reflection on the past year and casting your hopes for the one to come like seeds into good ground. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-Alanna</span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-67179015127787266212012-11-19T08:26:00.000-05:002012-11-19T08:26:03.558-05:00Cold Weather GrazingThe other morning I was out moving the cows to a fresh break of grass and marveled at their ability and willingness to eat huge quantities of frozen grass. The morning temperatures here at Cairncrest have been in the upper teens and low twenties, which is chilly enough to freeze the surface of the soil and heavily frost our pastures. Cattle must have massive bloodflow to their mouths to keep them warm and mobile while munching down pound after pound of ice. Our cows need just under 30 pounds of dry matter per day in order to fill their rumens and stay happy. Standing pasture has much more water in it than dry hay does, so when grazing they actually consume more than 30 pounds of forage per day, which is a lot of cold, cold stuff to chew through.<br />
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The end of our third year of grazing approaches, the exact date will probably be determined by the weather, i.e. too much snow will fall for the cows to dig through for a fresh bite. It is possible we'll run out of grass before the snows get too deep as our pasture's fertility is far from optimized and the volume of grass available to our herd diminishes by the day. Our goal is to make it to the New Year on stockpiled pasture, thereby avoiding many days of (expensive) hay feeding. Last year we grazed until just after Thanksgiving, but this year our management was tighter and the weather has been cooperative, so things look good for meeting our goal.<br />
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Here is a photo of where the cattle were a few days ago. Note the line in the grass where the cows were fenced and the spot where they have yet to hit. We're currently moving the herd away from this line, but we'll be back to harvest all that good grass in a week to ten days. Well, actually the cows will get to do all the work of harvesting... This area was last grazed back in late July/early August. The regrowth is pretty good because we have outwintered the animals here and all the imported hay has done wonders for the quality of the pasture. Unfortunately this is only one small section of a much larger pasture, and most of our land in this paddock is not so lusty.</div>
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And here is a picture of the herd. You can see the portable electric fences we use to set-up new paddocks every day or two. Also worth noting are the water tanks. We have to remember to drain the hoses every time we fill them this time of year or else we run into issues the next time we go out. Frozen hoses are a royal pain.</div>
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Once it gets even colder we will set the water tank in a "permanent" spot for the winter and leave it running continually, with a drain to siphon the excess off to the little creek at the bottom edge of the paddock. The agtitated water can then stay open for the cows even when the temperature drops way below freezing for days or weeks on end.</div>
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And here is a picture of my favorite cow in our herd, Sable. She's docile, maintains her condition well, and raises a big calf every year. I love cows.<br />
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-EdmundCairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-76640095550988677002012-10-19T10:27:00.000-04:002012-10-19T10:27:05.008-04:00My Brother the Goose Whisperer<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While the competing views of nature as either bleak waste, red in tooth and claw, or a Disneyland inhabited by anthropomorphic herbivores still shape many discussions of the place of humans in the world, the practical reality is not so simple, as I'm sure you, dear reader, know well. There's lots to say and lots that's been said about the predator/prey relationship, and the strange subversion of this relationship that is animal husbandry. But this is not my interest today. Today I want to write about the unexpected, the beauty and the wonder that abound.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We are well into fall, and most of the trees on the farm have disrobed, leaving their hardened skeletons to chatter at one another through another blustery winter. On several long drives over the past weeks I've been struck by the subtle shifts in foliage that accompany descent and ascent, the confluence of temperature and time that shape the colors of autumn - drop into the Hudson valley, and the trees are two weeks behind, still merry in their reds and aflame in their oranges.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Last spring, out hunting turkey, a bobcat padded through the morning woods, twenty feet from where my brother and I sat. Its gray ears twitched at my brother's whisper, and it turned and vanished silently back into the trees.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I heard little from the coyotes last year, but of late their eerie yips and howls have filled the night, exciting a frenzy in the village dogs and keeping me from sleep with thoughts of our calves. Last week I saw one at midday work slowly through my neighbor's pasture, stalking and pouncing after mice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But there is something on our farm beside which these encounters and observations pale. It hinges on a relationship between human and animal more profound than that of a skilled rider and his mount. The songs of humpback whales are justifiably celebrated, but here we have a music far more haunting, a music which rings out through the valley, more beautiful than the peels of the Maria Glorioso or a Bach partita, more moving than any aria, a harmony which can only be termed sublime.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">-Garth</span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3244589317007797655.post-2757639703256446352012-10-07T11:52:00.001-04:002012-10-07T11:53:41.850-04:00Squash Harvest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Where do we store 955 pounds of squash?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Almost anywhere. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">- Alanna</span>Cairncrest Farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16529897892584816502noreply@blogger.com1