Author Archives: jericacadman

Not the only Engineers

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Matt and Jerica are not the only engineers at Shady Grove Ranch.

(We feel more like Master Jugglers than Engineers these days, but anyway… that’s where we started!)

But no… there were engineers at Shady Grove Ranch long before it was even called Shady Grove Ranch.

Beavers. Nature’s engineers.

Some consider them pests, and perhaps we might have, too, had they chosen a different spot on our ranch.

But it just so happens that they chose a very good corner—the lowest corner, actually—and they started working hard at collecting the rain water that runs off the pasture sloping upward from the bottomland.

Since we landed at Shady Grove Ranch a short 9 years ago, they’ve doubled their reservoir and cleared an icky old forest in wetlands which were famous for sinking the kinds of heavy equipment required to clear thick brushy land like that.

They made better work of it than we ever could have, quietly working, plugging away secretly while the ranch grew up around them. Cows and chickens and even pigs have passed by their territory. And still they worked and chopped and dragged and patted and did their beaver thing.

You know, we’ve never seen one of them. Not up close, anyway. Maybe one glimpse of one swimming once. They are very shy little creatures. Just like an engineer! Haha.

Enjoy this picture adventure of our visit down to them last Sunday. This is what engineers-turned-farmers do during their time off.

Step 1: Adorn yourself with travel gear, including heart-shaped sunglasses, a beach hat, and a puffy warm coat.

Shevi is Mr. Adventure-Seeker, and preferred to ride his bike.

And Coconut, the faithful Pyrenees dog, decided to tag along.

But chores first! The evening cow check went fine. Everyone was present and accounted for.

And was looking healthy and mellow.

The new babies are doing fine, too.

We recently discovered a new species–Possumhaw!

Supplies for Farm Exploration include a trusty magnifying glass.

Finally we reached the Beaver Pond. It was quite calm and lovely.

There is quite a bit of water flowing out of the pond.

So much so that there was even a little waterfall!

Like a mini niagara, right here in Jefferson.

The lodge is spotted!

Here is the forest the beavers cleared. Amazing how big the trees are that they can use!

And there were LOTS chopped down!

Look at those big wood chips. Imagine chopping a tree down with your teeth.

The trees are Sweet Gum, rather a nuisance variety for pastureland.

Now it’s time to search for the entrance to the lodge.

Here’s another view of the lodge. It’s quite well camouflaged.

Everything in Texas is bigger–even the thorns!

This is the newest dam the beavers have constructed. It’s much higher than the surrounding lowlands!

Imagine building a pond using only your teeth and tail!

The beavers commandeered a 4×4 of Matt’s. I guess they figured he wasn’t using it.

A glassy little lake!

That whole pond’s edge was made by beavers. Such amazing creatures!

When Natural Becomes Unnatural

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Our journey started 14 years ago, and in that short time, pasture-raised foods went from unheard of to wildly popular to what I might describe as “enhanced.” What I mean is that it wasn’t enough to just have a return to bacon or milk or bone broth. Now things like turkey bacon or ultra-filtered milk  or bone-broth protein powder are in vogue.

Any turkey farmer could tell you—there’s not a muscle in that bird that resembles bacon. Not even close. Birds don’t make bacon. And milk doesn’t come out of the cow at half the fat and sugar and double the protein. What about protein powder? What is that stuff, really? Ground freeze-dried steak? It’s generally my philosophy that if I couldn’t figure out how to make it in my own kitchen, it’s probably not a good idea to be eating it… Just because some scientist says that what you really need is more protein, doesn’t mean you manipulate nature to get it. Now I realize that may step on some toes, and I cannot claim our diet is totally sourced out of our backyard. Nope! It’s definitely a balance, and I’m still working on improving things as I master various components of achieving a healthier lifestyle. But I say this in order to encourage you to really think through each ingredient you use, especially those more expensive ones that you’re using expressly to be healthier, and make sure it makes sense. 

After all, everything is “natural” when it comes down to it. I mean, humans source all our ingredients on Earth. Even if ingredients came from Mars, there’s really no such thing as not from the “natural” world. What we really mean by natural, when it comes to food, is that it’s not synthesized or artificial.

So when does Natural become Unnatural?

One practically-unknown practice is egg yolk color enhancement. There is a product out there that is sold in much the same way as house paint. The farmer can get a little book of “chips,” and decide precisely which shade of yellow-orange he wants his eggs to be. He then calculates the amount of the powder he needs to add to the feed. Voila! Beautiful, appealing, golden yolks.

I think we could all agree that THAT is unnatural.

But what about “natural” methods of color enhancement? Some enhancement could be considered incidental and unintentional. For example, feeding yellow corn instead of white corn will impart an orange hue to the yolks… naturally? Sure. The chickens need to eat some carbohydrates. Corn is actually a pretty decent choice (assuming it’s not genetically modified!). If it happens to be yellow, the chicken can’t help but pick up those beta carotenes. It’s how she was designed.

But what about non-nutritive natural products that are added *just* to enhance color. That’s the only reason they’re there. Is that “natural?” A common practice is calendula petals. AKA Marigolds. Well, flowers are surely natural! The yellow in the flower ends up as the yellow in the yolk. Is it harmful? Maybe not. But is it NATURAL?

We have to ask … why? Why do we need to add that? Consumers are expecting a nice golden hue, and you even hear it said that the darker the yolk, the healthier the hen.

But isn’t that just a little like having an athlete on steroids? He couldn’t really do that without the crutch. It’s not natural strength. It’s artificial. Even if it’s a “natural” substance making things so.

So what about Shady Grove Ranch? Well, if you’ve been buying eggs from us for a while, you might remember that time a few years ago that it rained cats and dogs and maybe some elephants and hippos, too, and our egg-mobile got stuck on the downhill side of a levee that was bursting at the seams with overflowing pond water. The egg-mobile got stuck deep in mud, and the tractor with it. I think there may even have been a second tractor involved!

We finally had to just wait until the ground dried up to move the egg house. So the chickens ran out of live vegetation for a time. And the yolks told the story. They got quite pale that season. We tried to explain to our customers. We were and still are rather small, so we were able to speak directly with our customers about the issue, and they were generally glad to continue buying in spite of the lighter yellow they were seeing.

Where does that hue really come from, anyway? It’s supposed to come from the green pigment in live grasses! Anyone familiar with real pasture-raised eggs knows the richness of color they can see in springtime, but also the variation in color that is associated with natural husbandry.

That’s the story this photo tells. Here are 3 eggs, collected on the same day, from our two active flocks of laying hens.

That’s quite a difference in color, if you ask me! Maybe one of those chickens deserves a promotion for her go-get-em attitude. But I’d take a real pasture-raised egg, light yellow or otherwise, over an artificially-colored commercial egg any day.

Eggs are a little tight this season, but production is rising daily with the longer days. I’ve just replenished the online store inventory, and we’ll be here at the ranch all week, including Saturday, if you’d like to make a trip to the farm to stock up. We’ve got lots of other good stuff in stock, too!

Thanks for reading!

Jerica

Kite Day at the Farm

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I thought I’d take this opportunity to share about a fun new strategy we are trying this year.  I need help, and lots of it. Housekeeping tends to fall by the wayside during our busy season, but I desire to include hospitality as one of our many activities, and worrying over dirty bathrooms and laundry strewn across the floor is something that certainly inhibits my creativity energy! Plus a messy house is a real morale-killer, and with a family our size, a small mess quickly attracts larger messes and things get out of control fast.

Introducing the Ticket Chore Chart

This is different than previous chore charts and lists I’ve tried. But it is not unique, nor was it my brainchild. I had read about similar methods before, and I finally decided to try it. I am so glad I did.

This New Years, I sat down and created 3 lists—one for each of my biggest kids. It included mostly jobs they already know how to do, plus a few new things I would teach them. It balances their work across 6 days of the week, based on our typical weekly schedule and needs. It includes flexibility for those chores that don’t really have to be done every day, but should at least be checked on in case they need doing. And it includes an opportunity to quickly reclaim the house every evening after a busy day of school, work, and play. We call that part the “House Blitz.”

It fits us and our unique needs. But that’s not the best part.

You see, previously I offered pay as the compensation for a job well done. But I discovered two things about that method: Kids don’t really get that excited about money, at least not in their very young years. Second, Mommies don’t get excited about money, either, when it turns into a “Mommy, can I shop for a toy on your phone?”

I don’t know about you, but my kids are total junk-magnets! They are constantly attracted to the “as seen on TV” type rubbish that is so bright, colorful, and noisy. I know from too much experience, those toys only last a few hours and then there’s only heartache and more garbage to be dealt with. The reward is short-lived and self-defeating.

Setting that aside for a moment… There’s another problem inextricable to farming, and that is finding time for leisure and fun. Don’t get me wrong—we do take the occasional vacation (though sometimes it feels like we just do double the work the week before we leave so we can “not work” for a week, haha). But it’s a rather deadly combination to have two very driven engineers trained in a very grueling university program, with dreams bigger than two lifetimes put together, who have been planted on a brand-new farm with a mile-long task list. It’s hard to accept the fact that we will simply never be able to finish everything that needs to be done. So it can be hard to fit in “just fun” time with family on a regular basis.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. We get lots of quality time together! For one thing, our 3-times-daily meals together are a treasured blessing that make the sweaty, long hours of farming totally worth it. And there are other times, too—nightly story reading. Delivery trips together. Weekly movie and game night.

But we needed something more. Something extra, outside the routine. It can be hard to feel justified just “playing” when there’s so much left undone. I felt the same way in college while studying engineering. I remember feeling guilty about taking a nap, because I “should have been” working on homework or getting ahead on one of the many semester projects. Not your average college experience, eh? I told you we were crazy!

So I had an idea. Someone gave me the idea, actually. Don’t reward the kids with money. Reward them with FUN TIME. Nothing too complicated or unreachable. Just simple things we always want to do but never “have time.” I made the list. “Play-dough with Mom. Choose the Movie on Movie Night. Stay up 15 Minutes Late. Nature Hike. Go Out for Pizza. Kite Day.”

They earn “tickets” to spend by completing a week’s worth of chores. There are opportunities for bonus tickets for character traits we wish to encourage: “Exceptional Workmanship. Helping Siblings. Exceptional Attitude.” They can pool tickets to earn rewards sooner. And when one gets the reward, all do. There are penalties and a chance to lose tickets, too: “Dishonesty. Poor Teamwork. Bad Attitude.”

I realize it’s probably premature to be singing the praises of this new system, since we’ve been doing it for barely a week. But I can’t express to you how JOYOUS their attitudes have been over chores. And what FUN we had doing our first Kite Day over the weekend. It was beautiful and restful. It’s so different than before!

What’s the difference? I think it’s that since we know the kids have EARNED the reward, we can release the stress of what-am-I-not-getting-done and just relish the leisure time together knowing there was a job well done. Is that weird? Maybe it is. But I wanted to share it anyway in case it helps you in the same way it has helped me. My kids are more excited than ever about helping. I know I can reward them sooner and in a way that is so much more meaningful and long-lasting than some junky overpriced toy. And our house is cleaner than ever! Bonus!

Farming is tough. I think the toughest aspect is the SLOW progress in so many areas. We love seeing things get done. But so many times I feel like a tiny little ant pushing a giant boulder. I absolutely couldn’t do it without my helpers, big and small. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year! And now enjoy the fun photos I took of our adventures during Kite Day!

Jerica

The coyotes had pork for breakfast this week

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The coyotes had pork for breakfast this week—and a feast it was, too!

Before your heart starts a-racing in fear for your bacon supply… I’m glad to tell you that the coyotes don’t amount to much of a threat on that front. Actually, it’s PIGS that are our pigs’ greatest threat! Pirate pigs! Wild, barbarian pigs with no manners nor decency, trying to woo our sows and gilts (that’s the girls) away from all the comforts of home. It’s the classic story of the good-for-nothing bachelor slinking his way into the courtyard of the king during the dark of night, and trying to wile away the hand of the princess (or in this case… a bunch of princesses. Hairy ones that love to roll in the mud and stick their noses in the dirt).

via GIPHY

Wild hogs. They’ve been called the bane of Texas wildlife. Why more people don’t make use of this “free food,” I don’t know (or maybe after this experience… I do). We generally don’t have too many issues with them. We’re blessed to have a neighbor that traps them as a big-time hobby. And much of our big-little farm is fenced well enough to keep the stragglers out. But not all. It takes a lot of time and money to build a truly hog-proof fence.  We’re getting there, and many of our boundaries are impenetrable by anything bigger than a skunk, but we’re not arrived yet.

Once in a while a boar will show up, hungry for love. It’s pretty easy to spot fresh sign on the ground. It’s even easier to tell the difference between wild pigs and our plump domestic ones. Matt started noticing some sign on the ground around mid-September and began to up his alert status.

Then one morning around 7, Matt was on the phone with a friend from college who is venturing into farming, hoping to wean himself away from an engineering desk job. They happened to be talking pigs, and Chuck (the friend) was asking Matt’s advice about attending an upcoming pig seminar put on by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia. Oh the irony of it all… Matt was encouraging Chuck to consider it, but cautioned him on one big difference between Virginia and Texas when it comes to pastured pigs, and that is that Texas has a thriving feral hog population, and once in a while you’ll have attempted break-ins. As the words left Matt’s mouth, around the corner walks a wild boar! Matt propped the phone on his shoulder and pulled out his 9mm and took a couple of shots! Missed!

Matt returned from morning rounds and managed to talk me into buying a hog trap. We thought the matter would be fairly cut and dry, and even lined up a friend to come get the pig when we got him. But this boar is different. He won’t go near the trap. But he still comes to visit the girls. So the stalking continues.

Matt began to make it his habit to do his rounds with his Russian Mosin Nagant rifle in hand. One morning, he can hear some porcine flirting happening on the far side of the paddock (and these paddocks are pretty big!). So Matt spends the next hour army-crawling in a covert op to try to sneak up on him. Meanwhile the boar moseys right past Matt’s previous sniper position! Now the boar was between Matt and our own pigs, and according the Gun Safety rules (and common sense), Matt couldn’t take a shot without putting our own pigs at risk. Matt crawled behind a big bushy patch of goatweed and waited. Apparently the boar caught the human scent because when Matt peeped up over the bush, the boar was looking his way. The boar was in range, but there was no way to reposition the rifle without alerting the pig! So Matt quietly pulled out the 9mm again and waited for the boar to come around the corner. Sadly, the pig walked off at an angle and by the time Matt peeped again, he was out of range. The pig gets away again!

This can only mean one thing… WAR!

Matt began stalking the pig daily with his rifle. He also began to be concerned that his rifle wasn’t sighted in properly. The Mosin was a mass-produced rifle and was equipped with a very steep trigger pull of 10 pounds, which makes it rather inaccurate. Matt brought in an expert—another college buddy and fellow gun collector, who happens to be a retired Marine. Titus loaned Matt his souped-up Mosin with archangel stock and custom trigger. They did some target practice, and sure enough, with these minor equipment improvements, Matt could indeed hit a bullseye—who knew! 😉

Over the next days, the boar was spotted and Matt had him in sight, but at the long distances he was positioned from, Matt couldn’t positively identify him against our own pigs. It’d be a shame to kill one of our own pigs that had escaped from their paddock by some weird accident!

Normally, killing a boar is fairly cut and dry. He might get in, hang around like one of the gang, then at feeding time, Matt would pop him off with little trouble at all. But this boar is different. He is one wary dude.

October arrived and we thought our lives were never going to be rid of this pesky wild pig. It was an ever-present fear because at any moment, that pig could clobber our electric fences and take the whole herd with him, creating one major bacon shortage. Talk about stress!

One Sunday morning, Matt went out at dawn to hunt, again. When he arrived, he heard pigs in the woods out to right of the paddock—weird… Had an entire herd of wild pigs invaded? Then he spotted a big pig in front of him—that’s not a wild pig… that’s ours! Now the covert op is off—it’s rescue mission time! The best way to recapture a domestic pig is to play it cool, so Matt nonchalantly went into breakfast-time mode. Every one of our 25 pigs was out, so Matt spent the next who-knows-how-long getting them all back in. Thankfully it worked and it was time to finish feeding everyone. He walked up on one of our sows laying down, and just on the other side of her was a black, scraggly ear sticking up—the boar!

Matt drew his pistol and took a shot. But the boar RAN OFF! How???

Matt returned, frustrated and tired. He determined that he must take this pig out, once and for all, and it would have to be under cover of night.  We did manage to get to church that morning, but Matt was brooding over the worry of his pigs escaping any moment. When we returned home, Matt headed out to Academy Sports to buy a night vision scope. The gun personnel mounted it to his rifle, and he returned to the ranch just as the sun set. Another day lost to this pig.

He managed to sight the gun in and then after night fell, he headed down for what he hoped would be the final hunt. Sure enough, there’s the boar. Matt shoots! He MISSES AGAIN! He discovered that the worker at Academy had not mounted the scope correctly. It had come loose and was no longer calibrated. “If you want something done right…” Back to square one!

Scope fixed and sighted in, Matt continued to check the paddock, armed, 3-4 times per day. The boar had obviously grown bolder and danger of herd escape was imminent.

The Mosin he had borrowed, though accurate, is heavy and ideal for shooting long range from the prone position, not so much for freestanding short-range shots. So during his routine check this past Tuesday, opportunity arose when the pig happened to walk right in front of Matt. He fired from the standing position.  But the pig ran off! Matt had missed AGAIN! Whatever aspirations Matt may have had in life, it seems ending as a famous sniper is not one of them. The long battle would continue…

The next day, there was no sign on the ground, and no sighting.

Wednesday Matt went out again before dawn with the night scope, hoping to end it once and for all. Too many hours had already been spent. He was tired. I was tired. It was a frustrating experience with no clear ending.

While watching, Matt heard some coyotes in the forest nearby. They were louder than usual—it sounded like they were fighting. Fighting over something.

There was still no pig.

I had started to think we’d be battling this pig forever. It had been over a month. So many hours. And still no clear path forward. Such is the farm life. Sometimes we face insurmountable odds. Sometimes it’s exhausting, both bodily and emotionally! During one of Matt’s long days out, and it seemed like every spare moment was spent trying to get rid of this pest, the kids and I prayed for some confirmation that the pig was no more, that the battle would end and not carry on forever.

Thursday we did our Longview and Marshall deliveries, and Matt knew it’d be tight timing with a hunt before our departure, so he went ahead and put his “town clothes” on under his hunting attire early that morning.

Matt and I were still both tense about the situation. I asked over and over if it was possible if he had hit the pig. But there wasn’t blood. Could it be the aim was that off? It didn’t seem to add up. Matt went to check on the pigs for maybe the hundredth time since this all occurred, and this time he decided to track that coyote activity to see exactly what it was they were fighting over.

Sure enough, the coyote-breakfast was pork, fresh-killed by a souped-up Russian rifle. Matt had gotten to know this boar quite well over the past month, and was able to unmistakably identify what was left of the carcass, only 50 yards from where he had taken the hit on Tuesday. Boars are tough. Super tough. Matt’s previous experience had taught him that it’s not uncommon for a boar to have smoke coming out of the bullet wound while he’s still going full speed, even with a high-powered rifle like a Mosin! In this case, he only made it far enough to elude us one more day. But not far enough that we couldn’t get some closure.

A fitting end, we think. Coyotes don’t bother us too much so long as we keep them out of our chicken paddocks. Especially when they clean up after us!

Life returns to normal… for now!

We hope you’ll come meet the now-safe SGR pigs in person at our final farm tour of the year. It’s only 2 weeks away on Saturday, October 27! Sign up here.

–Jerica, the Farmer’s Wife

If you care to see the remains of the pig, including his giant tusks, keep scrolling down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall 2018 – Farm Tour!

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You asked for it… so here it is: 

One last farm tour for 2018!

We’d love to have you join us for an adventure in learning about where your food could come from: HOW we do this crazy fringe thing of actually raising animals OUTDOORS on green, living grass; and WHY we’ve chosen to go against the grains in so many ways in order to bring you the best food we know how, right here in East Texas! 

This is a consumer-friendly farm tour geared toward getting you excited about supporting a small, local, family farm dedicated to doing things without “-cides,” soy, GMOs, and junk. Farm-wannabes are welcome, too, but you definitely don’t need to have farming aspirations to attend. 🙂

We have had special requests to visit the pigs on this tour, which are pretty far away, so get your walkin’ boots on and trek with us across our big-little farm in Jefferson. We’ll also visit the laying chickens, the last batch of broiler chickens of the year, and the cattle herd. We get GREAT feedback about the tours. Will you join us? Order your tickets today! 

Order tickets here. 

Paid admission gets you 10% off your purchase that day, excepting stuff that’s already-on-sale, bulk deals, and special orders (like turkeys). We’ll have a market table set up after the tour, or you can skip the line and order early online. For this latter option, choose “On Farm” pickup, and mention in the comments during checkout that you plan to attend the tour and we’ll apply the 10% discount to all eligible items in your order. Call with questions! 903-665-7076.

Beef Drought Sale – September 2018

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Custom Beef Drought Sale

We’re offering a one-time special prior to September 10 on custom-processed bulk beef to lighten the burden on our pastures during this increasing drought situation in East Texas.

Our beef is 100% grass-fed and grass-finished, and is fat, marbled, and excellent quality. No tubs, no cubes, no grains, no licks–just rotational grazing, good breeding, good minerals, and plenty of finishing time! 

Grass-fed Beef by the Half

Halves are expected to hang at 250-275 pounds. Take-home poundage (excluding fat/organs) expected to be about 160-185 pounds.

Price is $4.50/lb hanging for a half (does not include processing).

Processing typically runs about $1/lb before extra charges (for sausage, etc).

Payments are to be made in 3 parts:

  1. Deposit to reserve is $300, paid online prior to September 10. Space is limited–first come, first served!
  2. Balance to be paid via mailed check after hanging weight is determined. (To pay online, add 3% convenience fee.)
  3. Processing to be paid upon pickup—ready in early October.

Pickup can be either at the butcher in Carthage, at the ranch in Jefferson, or via our next drop point of your choice in Tyler, Longview, Marshall, or Shreveport after beef is picked up from butcher. We will work with you on this once an exact pickup date is known.

Save 10% if you want the whole animal! Only $4.05/lb (plus processing) for a whole. Get with friends to reserve a whole cow!

What to Expect

This batch of steers is young and fat and will make excellent beef. Your price is based on the carcass or “hanging” weight of the animal after the entrails, hide, and hooves/head are removed. The carcass is then aged to improve flavor and tenderness, and will shrink a bit during this time due to moisture loss. Then, when surplus fat and edges are cut away and various muscles are deboned, the yield is reduced to an approximate 66% of the hanging weight, depending on your cutting preferences. So if your side hung at 250 pounds, you can expect to get approximately 66% of that back as “cuts,” or a final take-home yield  of 165 pounds.

We’ll walk you through the cutting process if you are not familiar with how it works, and we can make recommendations specific to our animals that will ensure your satisfaction!

Here’s a very rough breakdown of what you will receive with typical cutting:

  • Steaks (Strip, Filet, Ribeye, Sirloin, Fajita): 15% of cuts yield
  • Roasts (Chuck, Arm, Shank, Round, Rump): 30% of cuts yield (but highly customizable)
  • Burger, Round Steak, Stew Meat: 40% of cuts yield (highly customizable)
  • Other cuts (Ribs, Brisket): 10% of cuts yield
  • Liver, Organs, Bones: 5% of cuts yield

**These numbers are estimates only and will vary based on the anatomy of your animal and on your cutting requests. 

How Much Freezer Space Will It Take?

We find that planning for 1 cubic foot per 25 pounds of meat works well to be able to navigate your freezer inventory reasonably easily. According to this estimate, you will need at least 7 cubic feet to store a typical half beef, or 1 mid-size home chest freezer. But in case the animals run a little larger, it never hurts to plan for extra freezer space!

How to Get Started

Ready to sign up for your half of beef for the winter? Hop over to our online reservation site: https://squareup.com/store/shady-grove-ranch/

After you place your deposit, we’ll get in touch to complete your cutting orders. Thanks for supporting our work!

Define Your Terms

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You may know by now that we are one of those geeky homeschool families, where every discussion with the kids is a “learning opportunity.” It doesn’t help that Matt and I were shamefully nerdy before we had kids. Our poor children can’t get a straight answer out of us when it comes to their questions about the world around them! 🙂

We use a fabulous curriculum called Classical Conversations, and during the middle school and high school years that we look forward to, many sages of classical home education advise you to use the maxim, “Define your terms.”

They’re right. You can’t have a meaningful conversation with anyone unless you’re using your terms in the same way.

So when you read headlines like, “Grass-fed beef is no healthier than conventional,” before you can understand the meaning of their conclusions, you have to understand just a bit about the industry.

Where Do Grass-fed Cows Come From?

No matter how badly you may want to farm, everyone knows cows don’t appear out of thin air—you have to buy seed stock from someone who’s already doing it. In our quest to continue expanding our beef herd, we’ve “shopped” around for cattle. Some of the herds we considered were as far away as Wisconsin, some were way down in central Texas, some were in Missouri or Alabama or Arkansas or Oklahoma, and some were scattered around East Texas, and of course, the closer to us we could buy, the better.

I can tell you first hand—cow-shopping is not like car-shopping or house-shopping. The cows keep making more cows just like them, so whatever characteristics they start out with, the babies will have also. With a car or house, if something doesn’t work right, you can just fix or replace the quirky parts. But you can’t change genetics, so if you buy a cow that’s not a good fit for your climate or operation, it’s just going to go downhill from that point.

Why are good genetics important?

Well, when it comes to cows, grain-feeding is a type of crutch. If a cow is “nice and fat,” in the dead of winter or in the heat of summer, if she’s been supplemented with grain, it’s very likely she will always need to be supplemented with grain in order to stay fat and healthy through the tough times of year. The benefits of really-grass-fed beef are too extensive to deal with in this post, so let’s just assume we’re wanting truly all-grass-fed beef that’s grass-fed all year long.

That’s where defining one’s terms comes into play.

On more than one occasion, even right here in East Texas, we’ve visited operations that, on the phone, assured us that they were all-grass, nice fat cows, very healthy, very clean.

What you’re about to read is exactly why you need to go visit the farm you buy from, at least once, and ask LOTS of questions.

We went to visit one farm, not too far from us, that had been recommended by the friend of a colleague. The owner drove us out to the field in his truck, and we were immediately suspicious of his claims to “grass-fed.” There were lots of trough structures around, and hardly any healthy pasture, in spite of the wet year and the not-too-hot temperatures up to that time. It was a large field, and when we finally found the yearlings, they came over to the truck, curious and searching.

Cattle are not particularly curious animals. Not like chickens or cats. They don’t come up to vehicles unless they are accustomed to doing so. Unless something has lured them. Unless they’re expecting a treat. That was our first clue. The cows were WAY too excited to see us.

We asked a few more questions. The truth finally came out. “Well, we do feed them cubes sometimes.”

How often?

“Well, just when we need to move them.”

Ok, so how often?

“Uh, just about every day.”

Oh. Every day. Every day? Our definition of grass-fed was clearly different than this man’s.

We drove a little farther in search of his breeding herd.

What’s that big tub over there?

“Oh, that’s just fly control we put out this time of year.”

Do all the cows get it?

“Well, no, just the yearlings.”

What’s in it?

“Oh, just a little bit of Ivermectin.” (an insecticide that is terrible for soil health)

Not that we were even remotely interested at this point, but perhaps just to try to get the guy to realize how ridiculous his own claims were… We asked about the “fly lick:” No protein? (aka soybeans and/or corn)

Wrong. A simple check of the label lists “grain by-products.” Cows don’t eat poison unless it tastes good. Apparently this guy’s definition for “all natural grass-fed” beef did not match ours or most customers’ definitions!

Needless to say… we didn’t buy any cows from that operation.

Buyers, beware!

Being in the industry, we know what we’re looking for, so the scariest thing about this whole incident was that the man had heard about the higher prices he could get for “grass-fed beef,” and clearly was contemplating marketing his beef accordingly.

If you think this is just an isolated incident, here’s another story. Again, in a quest to find some good grass-fed genetics, Matt drove all the way to Kansas—that’s upwards of 8 hours one-way, with a 30-foot cattle trailer—only to find out that the seller had misrepresented the breeding heifers he had for sale. A two-day trip for nothing. Just an empty cattle trailer and a continued search for good animals. The industry is riddled with downright deceit!

It’s far worse in the supermarket, where buyers are very far removed from sources, maybe even a half-a-world away, and no one is asking the hard questions—there’s no one to ask!

Well, the label says, “Grass-fed.” They couldn’t call it that if it wasn’t true, right?

Pap-Pap (Matt’s dad) is an avid fan of murder mystery novels, and once shared this quote with me from Dorothy Sayers’ novel, “Murder Must Advertise:” 

“Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously , “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or , not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you— such are the niceties of our English tongue.””

Define Grass-fed

The last nail in the coffin of truth-in-advertising of grass-fed beef is this: A couple of years ago the overseers of this particular industry (the USDA) quietly deregulated the term “grass-fed” (which was poorly defined even at that time), stating that they’d decided it was really a marketing claim, and that companies should be able to define it for themselves, and customers could just visit individual brand websites to find out what the internal meaning of “grassfed” is for a particular company.

Since most consumers want to do a big research project in the middle of their grocery shopping expedition… Not!

The best way to be sure is to define your terms, ask lots of questions, then buy from a farm you can trust and visit. And when you do go, make sure the cows don’t follow the ATV like the pied piper, looking for “candy!”

So… want some really grass-fed beef right here in East Texas? Here are some easy meal ideas for this summer!

 
 

How to Keep from Going Gray

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Not gray hair, mind you. I’m not sure there’s a cure for that, especially when you run a crazy ranch like we do! 😉 I’m talking about something else…

As I cooked breakfast a couple of days ago, I noticed on the mostly-empty package of pork breakfast sausage I had thawed a few days prior, that the edges of the meat had gone gray. Some people might call it brownish. It was pork, so it was a very light pink to begin with, and that, mixed with a faint brown, really looked grayish to me more than anything. It was certainly not the pinkish color one normally encounters when first opening a pack of our sausage. I knew it wasn’t spoiled. It was only days old, I had thawed it in the fridge, and it smelled great—like clean, sagey pork sausage!

Having done pretty extensive chemistry studies in college, I knew it had only grayed up because of its exposure to air, and this speculation was confirmed by noticing that the gray was only at the open edge of the package, not within the bulk of the meat, or along the sealed edges of the clear packaging. This is called Oxidation.

You’ve seen oxidation plenty of times. You know how if you make a bowl of guacamole and put it in the fridge overnight, the top will turn a terrible icky brown color, but underneath it will still be a beautiful yellow-green?

That’s oxidation.

It’s a natural process we are all fighting (most of the time—sometimes oxidation is good!).

Oxidation is why we’re aging. It’s what makes our cars rust. It’s what makes our guacamole turn brown.

And it makes our meat turn gray-brown in the fridge, unless…

…unless we do something to stop it! But WHAT?

I know you’re super busy, and this is a BIG can of worms kind of topic, so I’m just going to boil it down for you.

Meat naturally oxidizes when exposed to air.

It goes from red (or pink) to brownish-gray. The meat industry has figured out that customers don’t want to buy brownish-gray meat, but they also don’t like buying frozen meat (which is WAY fresher than “fresh” meat), so they have a couple of practices in place to prolong the shelf life of “fresh” meat.

My little breakfast sausage experience this week reminded me that you might not know about some of these practices, and you might find it surprising if your perfectly-safe raw sausage or hamburger turns gray-brown before you use it all up.

Industry Practices to Keep Meat from Going Gray

1. Add preservatives.

Sodium nitrate is the most familiar example of color-preserving-agent, and it is used to make bacon a really pretty pink color, in spite of the fact that it’s smoked and “cured” (aged). If you were to smoke plain ol’ pork belly, it would turn gray-brown–like the color of a patty of cooked sausage or a cooked pork chop. Now it is true that some vegetables are high in natural nitrites, and so if you add something like celery juice to your bacon brine, it can accomplish the same thing, but using a naturally-produced ingredient rather than a man-made product. Voila. Pink (naturally) bacon!

Nitrate is probably on the less-scary end as far as artificial additives go, but things like BHT raise my eyebrows a little higher. You don’t see BHT in plain meat products very often, probably because added preservatives always have to be labeled (as far as I know). And adding stuff like BHT to hamburger might not fly among savvy shoppers, but those three little letters might slip by pretty easily if they’re surrounded by other more benign ingredients like sausage seasonings.

2. Feed arsenic to the animals.

Blech. I know. But it’s true. Commercial poultry companies have found that by feeding small amounts of organic (carbon-based) arsenic, the meat will turn out pinker and more appealing in appearance. No, the arsenic doesn’t all get pooped out like they originally thought. And no, they still haven’t officially banned it in the US. And yes, they feed the arsenic-laden chicken poop to cattle, even the “organic” ones. Not kidding. It’s scary out there, folks.

3. Douse the meat in carbon monoxide.

By now, you probably think I’m making this stuff up to scare you. I only wish it was so! They poison the meat?? Yep, pretty much. And the reason it works is the same mechanism by which it would poison your body—myoglobin (the stuff that makes meat look red) has a strong affinity for CO (carbon monoxide), much more so than for regular oxygen, so it grabs onto the CO molecules and hangs on for dear… death? Meat that has “bonded” with CO can’t oxidize in the normal way, so it stays bright red for a longer period of time.

The benefit in the meat industry, of course, is that the meat can remain unfrozen without turning colors for longer periods of time… even if it has already spoiled! The literature is scarce when it comes to safety of this practice, and of course no label is required because it’s not considered an “additive,” but rather a “processing step,” even though some package types may still contain actual CO gas. Consuming the meat has been declared GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status, even though CO exposure has been linked with autism, and consuming meat exposed to CO does not have undetectable results.

Let’s get this straight. Meat packers are adding poison to food without labeling it because it’s poorly-researched effects are probably negligible. And they’re doing this, not to enhance safety or quality, but only to accomplish the appearance of those things by literally tricking the customer. And they’re doing it simply because people think it’s weird to buy frozen meat, but apparently they’re ok with not being aware that they’re buying meat that may have been sitting out for upwards of 2 or 3 weeks before purchase? Is this the kind of food production American consumers should be supporting?

It’s enough to give you gray hairs, isn’t it?

This is why it’s important to choose food producers that have your health in mind. Not just your dollars.

So how do we keep from going gray without poisons?

Well… it’s a pretty simple solution, really. We at Shady Grove Ranch keep the meat frozen. Meat products have a delightfully long “shelf” life in the freezer. And then after it thaws, well. It might just turn a little grayish-brown (ground meat in particular, since it has more surface area exposed to oxygen). If you practice safe thawing techniques, keep your fridge nice and cold, and wrap stuff up tightly if you don’t use it all right away, it should stay nice and pink until you cook it. It’s not going to hurt you if it turns a little grayish-brown due to oxidation. But you won’t have that problem because it’s so yummy, how can you wait any longer to eat it? 😉

Thanks for reading this far. We appreciate you investing in knowledge about how your food is produced!

Jerica

PS–In case you care to do more reading about this complex topic… And in case you want to order some meat that does not have arsenic, sodium nitrate, or carbon monoxide in it. 🙂

 

The Forgotten Flap

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We changed butchers a while back, and just like moving to a new town, the habits and names for things vary from meat packer to meat packer. So from this new butcher, we got this new cut back from our grass-fed cows called Flap Steak.

Before we started farming, I was like any grocery-store shopper, and was only vaguely familiar with the various cuts of meat available. So it was a whole new world when we started raising our own cows for food. It was like learning a new language: Pike’s Peak, Loin Tip, Loin Strip, Flank, Filet, and… Flap!

When I stocked it for the first time, I had a couple of customers get really excited because they knew what it was already, and a few others that are willing to try just about anything. But to the rest like myself, it was just one of many choices that seemed to involve a learning curve, and so was reserved for a less busy day that never came.

And you know, at our house, we often use the “weird” stuff or things that get damaged and can’t be sold, and there seems to always be plenty of that. But sometimes you just want a good batch of fajitas for supper.

So I finally decided to try it myself.

I had intended to marinate it like fajita meat and either grill it or pan-sear it (because Matt’s the Griller at our house, and he doesn’t often have time to fire it up with all the evening chores that have to be done).

But I got busy that week, but the meat was already thawed and waiting in the fridge…

So I did the irreverent thing and put it in the crockpot.

You can’t do that with a fajita steak! You’re supposed to grill it!!

I know, I know. But it was either that or dinner at 9pm!

We wanted fajitas but never did get around to making that marinade, so in went the fajita spices—chopped bell pepper and onion, minced garlic, and plenty of cumin and salt. I hoped it wouldn’t turn to mush. I do like a good, bitey fajita!

It was perfect! So perfect, in fact, that we ate it all before anyone thought to snap a picture.

My untrained culinary review? Flap Steak offers an ideal balance of tenderness and texture, and is robust enough to stand up to slow-cooking. It has amazing flavor, and the best part was we got our fajitas with so very little effort on my part. Because you all know we stay busy here at the farm!

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you in case you’re feeling adventurous but still want a very easy meal. Try Flap Steak on our next round of deliveries to East Texas and Shreveport!

And for just such an occasion, I’ve created a fun new category for our online ordering system showcasing the newest items we’ve added to our repertoire. Look for lots more as the summer progresses. I have a surprise for you coming very soon!

Becoming an Eggspert Isn’t Easy

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This Egg-ing Thing is Tough!

We’ve been raising laying chickens for going on 9 years now, and we find that the more we learn, the more there is to learn!

Early Lessons in Raising Eggs on Pasture

For example, one of the early lessons we learned is if you suddenly switch feeds on your hens, their bodies panic and they quit laying eggs and start making new feathers (aka molting) in case there’s going to be an extended food shortage.

Or if you buy baby hens (we call them pullets) with springtime as the target date for starting to lay, you’ll have eggs up to your ears, especially if it’s a mild spring. The thing is… so does everyone else—you can hardly GIVE an egg away! But by August when the weather turns really hot, there will be nothing!

So, learning from that experience one year, the next year you buy a batch of hens, aiming to have at peak production by July. Well, forget having eggs at Thanksgiving from those chickens! And they may or may not turn back on until springtime, so a backup plan is pretty necessary.

But it takes almost 6 months to get a chicken to laying age, and even the first few weeks of that, the eggs are teeeeny tiny as the hen’s system gears up to produce real, normal-size eggs.

Yep. In our extreme climate here in Texas, egg production is really unpredictable. No one can say what the weather will be up to 6 months down the road. Whether it will be a harsh, brutal winter or a mild one. A scorching, dry summer, or a lush, cool one. And for hens raised on pasture, it makes a big difference. And sometimes, here in Texas, those weather patterns come closer together than a body can reckon with!

 

She’s not getting older… she’s getting bigger!

Another interesting phenomenon is egg size as it relates to hen age. In general, during a hen’s life cycle, her eggs will gradually get larger as she gets older and puts on weight (it’s actually because her ovary—she only has one active one—grows larger as she ages). But there are seasonal effects, too. In winter, the hens tend to eat more feed to produce more body heat, and so their eggs will be larger. In the dead of summer, they drink a lot more water but eat less feed, so they will still lay large eggs, but fewer of them. In spring and fall, when there’s lots of grass and bugs to nibble, the eggs will tend to be smaller. Take a snapshot at any given time of year and of any given batch of hens, and you’ll see a wide variety in distribution of egg size.

Crazy, huh? Even crazier when you’re a direct-to-consumer farm and all the eggs you’ve got to sell are the ones your chickens are laying. To say it another way, if your hens are only laying very small or very large eggs… that’s all there is!

How does this all compare to a commercial egg operation?

A typical commercial egg farm might have around 7 million hens. They could collect 5,000,000 eggs or more PER DAY during the peak season. To put this into perspective… it would take us 57 years to produce as many eggs as they can produce at just one farm in one day!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being big, of course, but to do really-pasture-raised at that scale would be pretty doggone difficult. Theoretically it *could* be done. But most of us who are really-pasture-raising our hens are MUCH smaller operations.

It’s not that the giant egg farms don’t have to deal with these seasonal issues, although keeping the hens indoors can help keep the temperature and lighting much more uniform throughout the year (for better or worse…). I’m sure their hens still produce pullet-size eggs for a time, and some eggs are weird shapes, and some eggs are double-yolker jumbos and some have stains on the shells… But supermarket-shopping consumers never see these anomalies and extremes of production, so it seems as though they must never occur.

The reality is… when you’re THAT BIG, you have access to a wider variety of markets. If your eggs are too small or too big, you can sell to the liquid egg/dried egg/processed food market. If your eggs are not Grade A (like if the shells are misshapen or have stains), you can sell to institutions like cafeterias, delis, restaurants, food distributors, etc. If your eggs have cracks, there are special markets for salvaging those. Those of us who sell direct really can only sell premium eggs in common sizes. It’s really hard to sell pullet-size and jumbo-size to the average customer.

If you’re a small fry like us, but bigger than just a backyard farm, you produce too many “weird” eggs to eat yourself, especially during those transition phases, which are amplified when the hens are having to deal with real weather patterns. So you have to come up with strategies to try to balance things. But sometimes nature is unpredictable, and there are LOTS of factors that affect outcomes.

Pickled Eggs!

We’re in that sort of a pickle right now, as you can tell from our online farm store. The older batch of hens is going through a molt, so though they’d be laying larger eggs right now, they’re taking a break for the summer.

The younger recruits are stuck in pullet/small phase! So we have lots of eggs… but they’re all tiny!

Nine years of egg production, and we still feel like rookies. Ha! Just goes to show you that farming is like parenting. You don’t know how to do it until after it’s over. 😛

What’s an SGR Fan to do?

Y’all hang in there with us. And buy a few extra eggs to make up for the smallness. The small ones are big on taste! 🙂

How to substitute small eggs in recipes

Small eggs are ¾ the size of larges. The easy way to say that is that for every 3 large eggs called for, use 4 smalls. Or you can just multiply the number of larges times 1.5, and that’s the number of smalls you need. Pullet eggs or “peewees” are 5/8 the size of larges. They’re just a smidge bigger than half a large egg. Most recipes are not so finicky that you can’t just pretend that 2 pullet eggs equal 1 large egg. If you get into some huge volume recipe like a soufflé or custard, I’d suggest using the 5/8 (5 larges = 8 pullets) conversion. But if you’re making soufflés and custards… you probably don’t need me to explain this. 😉