This time, our variety packs will feature pork chops, bacon, sausage, brats, pork steaks, and ham. So order as many pounds as you need (you’ll be surprised how quickly you can use it), and you’ll end up with a wide variety of delicious pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I also wanted to point you to a flyer that we prepared for the showing of Fresh: The Movie last night. It is laid out like a gourmet menu – so use it to select your entrees. And we’d be mighty thankful if you’d help us to spread the word about our meat availability in 2010. Thanks to all of you that came out – really enjoyed talking to you all after the movie.

FFF Menu Flyer

(Grass-fed) ground beef is 65% lower in saturated fat and its New York strips are 35% lower than conventional beef, as measured by the USDA. “Any feedlot-fattened animal has a much higher level of saturated fat than a forage-fed steer,” says Dr. Steve Atchley.

It makes sense. Grass is a low-starch, high-protein fibrous food, in contrast to carbohydrate-rich, low-fiber corn and soybeans. When animals are 100% grass-fed, their meat is not only lower in saturated fats but also slightly higher in omega-3 fatty acids, the healthy fats found in salmon and flaxseed, which studies indicate may help prevent heart disease and bolster the immune system. Ground beef and milk from grass-finished cattle also have more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which recent data suggest may help prevent breast cancer, diabetes and other ailments. Moreover, grass-finished meat is higher than grain-finished meat in vitamin A and vitamin E, two antioxidants thought to boost resistance to disease.

Link to the full article at Time.com – “The Grass-Fed Revolution”

Thanks to our friends at Family Friendly Farm in Cape Girardeau, MO for sending us to time.com to find these articles. Be sure to check them out for your local food buying needs – this year, in addition to carrying our pork and grass-fed beef in their on-farm store, they are carrying a number of other local products, including pastured eggs, grass-fed milk, pastured broilers, veal, turkey, lamb, catfish, homemade bread, honey, organic vegetables, and even local soap!

I’ve written before about how much I love to move the cows each day to new pasture. It’s because it seems to make them so happy and it just seems like you’re helping them do what they were created to do, graze. We’ll, allowing the hogs to forage for their own food is much like moving the cows to a new paddock. The hogs are visibly excited when they are allowed to root around and find nuts, clover, etc. When I drove up to the farm they were piled on each other and sleeping but they jumped at the chance to do this…

I hope that you click on the link and see what he and she have to say. I’m not a big Martha Stewart fan but was very impressed at the level of enthusiasm that she had for organic, local, grass fed, pasture raised, foods. She knew what she was talking about and really seemed to be supporting our type of farming. Of course Joel was himself, being both educational and entertaining.

Today I’m thankful for my family most of all but I’m also very thankful that there are more and more people getting on board and realizing the health (for soil, animal, and human) benefits of grass fed meats.

I found this video the other day. It’s a video of Joel Salatin doing a talk on how the business part of their farm really got started. As usual Joel is very entertaining. I can never get enough of this stuff and I hope you all enjoy it too.

A friend of mine from grad school shared a link on Facebook to her sister’s business – “The Burger Bus”, which is a local, grass-fed burger business on wheels. I love the linked video, where Cheryl describes her business in terms of “locals selling local food”. The burgers also look absolutely delicious (I’m going to try making my own CBJ – Cheeseburger and Jelly – asap). I thought this might spur some local entrepreneurs to open a mobile restaurant of their own — I just happened to know a good supplier of local, grass-fed ground beef. And if you’re in Santa Barbara, by all means, head over to their web site (http://www.theburgerbus.com) and find out where they’re going to be for lunch tomorrow!

The Burger Bus experience:http://vendr.tv/video/burger-bus/

One of the keys to this movement is finding ways to get more people connected with farms and their food, so it is inspirational to see businesses like this spring up to help make that happen. There are only a certain number of people that are going to go out of their way to find local foods… how many of those Burger Bus customers were going to make the effort to go to a farm or even a farmer’s market to buy their food?

One of the most interesting questions out there surrounding sustainable agriculture is “what about the poor?” — with the underlying assumption that sustainable food is more expensive and therefore out-of-reach for the poorer among us.

I’ve struggled at length with this question as well when it comes to pricing for our products.  In fact, I decided before jumping into the farm that I wouldn’t move forward unless the business case could be built on reasonable prices that average people could actually afford.  Still I knew that we’d probably have to charge a little more, because it would be impossible to compete with the supermarkets selling hormone-enhanced, subsidy-corn fed, routine antibiotically-treated, tax-favored commodity beef — but I did not want to have a business that could only prosper by selling to the rich at premium prices. There are already enough mail-order sources of $30/pound beef out there… what good would there be in creating another one in that same vein?

I think we’ve finally arrived at the right answer to this problem.  Today, Franciscan Family Farms is announcing a solution to this problem that involves both consumers and producers coming together to make good food available to the poor.  The program is called “A Dollar More”, and you can read all about it by clicking here or following the new link at the top of the page.  Please read about the program, share your feedback, and consider making “A Dollar More” part of your next food order.

We are really excited about the program and hope that other local farmers consider implementing similar programs in their communities – generosity and concern for neighbors in need is an important part of our agricultural heritage, and this is one more important way that family farms can help to keep the “culture” in agriculture.

Steven and I are learning first hand the work load increase that any small farm, grass fed dairy incurs. Steven wakes up one hour earlier to make his trek out to the paddock where the cows are grazing. (The walk gets progressively shorter since the rotationally grazing mob is on their way back to the barn. Every day, the walk is 30 feet shorter.) For the majority of dairies, they cut out this trek to the pasture by keeping the cows in sandy stalls or a dry lot and bringing them hay and grain.

Ivy is the cow. Milk is her game. She is a dehorned, black Irish Dexter cow and despite her eight years as “just a cow” she has become a quite trusty and calm milk machine. Steven halters her and leads her to the barn. He built a milking stanchion last year in hopes that one day he would be able to lead one of these dual purpose bovines up onto the raised platform to get a taste of this solar powered butter, cheese, ice cream, and milk. The crest of Ivy’s shoulder is just above my waste, so you could imagine the problems one may have when trying to milk udders that are so close to the ground.  We milk with a “short bucket” and a raised cow.

Day after day, Ivy gets more and more comfortable with her new roll. She knows where the stanchion is and will walk up into it and put her head through to chomp down on some delicious alfalfa cubes. I’ll admit, she liked my husband way more than me at first. She landed three kicks of about 30 tries when I first tried to take a turn at milking. Now when I see her shifting her weight, I rub the cow equivalent of a shin on her back leg until she calms and levels her weight back out. When you’re so “personal” when the cow and your head is totally in HER space, you can tell when she starts to have thoughts of kicking.

Milking is definitely a learned technique. You just have to learn it by doing it. Steven gets her going and the bucket gets all foamy. I tried and I was barely able to get a squirt out! Now, I am proud to say, that I can hum the melody to “I’m a Soul Man” to keep a rhythm and milk our three quarters of a gallon. Oh, yeah! Sure, she still gives Steven more milk, but my skills are growing.

When Steven milks both morning and evening, we are getting just over two gallons a day.  All this milk, what to do? What to do? Well make butter of course! Dexter milk has a fair share of cream. The lush alfalfa, clover, and orchard grass pastures make fine milk with plenty of cream. One quarter or more of each jar is cream after 24 hours. It takes longer to separate and float to the top than Jersey milk because the fat globules are smaller.

We’ve been exploring Gelato making. So far, we’ve had two batches that were C to F grades. This was due to our rookie mistakes. Now we are just pulling out two more batches, one vanilla and one Nutella. They are better but we may need to get a gelato maker as it seems that the speed of the paddles are slower when making real gelato.

For all of you who don’t know why one would go through the trouble to milk a cow I’ll just sum up some of the reasons. First, Ivy is 100% grass fed. Her milk has benefits similar to meat that is grass fed. The milk fat is healthy. Ivy is not fed “preventative” or sub therapeutic  antibiotics. So this is not in her milk. She is not given any bovine growth hormones to increase her production. Her body is cycling like a natural cow, a healthy cow, a womanly cow, as God designed. She’s giving the amount of milk that God intended her to give, not artificially over-producing for the sake of business profits.  Hormones come from the cow into her milk mainly in the fat molecules, so if there are added hormones (or naturally elevated estrogen due to the cow being pregnant) they are found in the cream & butter.  Ivy’s cream and butter, on the other hand, contain (probably) higher levels of CLAs and better ratios of EFAs.

Read more on Eat Wild

Anyone else have experience with a milk cow that you’d like to share? Anyone milking a Dexter? Anyone have any stories about Raw Milk benifites that you’ve experienced?

Personally I think that there are two things (one feeds off of the other) that really make our food system what it is. The first is federal subsidies of crops such as corn and soybeans. This encourages a mass amount of monoculture farming where now the same fields in our area are being used year after year for corn. It also encourages more and more processed foods that are made of elements of corn and soy. These aren’t good for you but the biggest worry for me is the fact that most of these corn and soy are now GMO (genetically modified organisms). The reason there is so much of this stuff is because farmers can produce the crops for more more than what they are worth on the market and still make a profit with their multiple subsidies. This is not the fault of the farmer, it’s a policy problem.

The second big problem, and this is huge, is that one multi-national chemical corporation M****nto (can’t be too careful is taking total control of our food. Not our country’s food but our world’s food. The are buying up seed companies and are bulying farmers into not saving their own seeds anymore. Soon we will all be eating GMO foods, not because farmers want to grow it but because they have no other choice. The stories in Food INC. about lawsuits against farmers and seed cleaners were really eye opening.

Of course there is something that we can all do. First, everyone can eat local, transparent food. Second, farmers that are thinking about raising natural and organic foods can take the plunge and start doing it.
Visit the Farmers Forum to see and get involved in a discussion on the movie.