ONB Blog

6/26/2011

Have been going through a mid-year evaluation of the farm.  Beef and pork sales have been excellent.  We sent 12 more cattle and 2 hogs to butcher the past 2 weeks getting ready for the prime barbecue season.  We have also had good growth in the organic raised bed gardens with lots of arugula, spinach, lettuce, mesculin, chard, and kale.  This coming week we expect carrots, beets, green beans more greens, and garlic.  We've got the tomatoes and squash coming on as well.  Spoke with Ruell Chappell this morning about placing some of the meat (beef, pork and chicken) along with the produce in his grocery store which is opening after the July 4th holiday.  That would put our product in two grocery stores: Down to Earth Foods owned by Tony and Cher Piche on East Grand Street and Well Fed Neighbor Market on East Bennett Street.  We also now have our ground beef, sausage and steak at the Farmers Gastropub in Springfield.  We continue to grow!  We also recently received word that we have received some funding from the NRCS to build another high tunnel greenhouse which we will begin construction on this fall.

 

 

3/27/2011

The National Restaurant Association's Chef's Survey of what's hot in 2011 revealed that locally sourced meats, seafood and produce topped the list followed by sustainability.  Rounding out the list were organic produce, hyperlocal (e.g. restaurant gardens, on-site butchering), farm/estate-branded ingredients and artisan cheeses.

3/26/2011

Chickens and pigs have arrived.  We have 700 broilers and 50 layers that have gone out to pasture after being in the brooder for 3 weeks.  Also have 9 new Berkshire pigs out on pasture mingling with the cattle.  It is good to see the animals out on new spring pasture.

12/26/2010

Also from Whitingstall's book.  The reason most meat in the grocery store is of pitiable quality is because we allow it to be.  As long as it's cheap we don't complain.  The low price allows us to avoid asking awkward questions like where did it come from, how was it fed, how did it live and die, how was it stored, cut and packed, what was added and how far did it travel.  The truth is that cheap meat is ethically tainted in most cases, of untraceable origin, and of dubious quality.  

Whitingstall also makes a good argument with regard to the socioeconomics of purchasing more expensive meat.  He says that flooding the market with cheap meat is an obtuse way of tacking poverty and dietary privation in the Western world.  Hardly anyone is suffering from problems associated with too little meat, whereas millions are not getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables and wholegrain cereals to maintain good health.

Interesting fact about grocery store purchased meat.  Because meat is purchased on a weight basis, the heavier the product the more the grocer can charge.  As a result meat purchased at a typical grocer is kept very moist.  It is typically hosed down with warm water prior to packaging to ensure that it carries a maximum amount of water and thus weighs more.  In contrast, dry aged beef (as we do at ONB) will lose up to 20% of its weight during the dry aging (hanging) process.  Paradoxically, this loss of water during the aging state results in more moisture in the meat when it is cooking.  Wet, fresh underhung meat carries too much water which expands as the temperature rises during cooking, stretching out the fibers of the meat and leaching out between them - especially when the meat contracts after cooking and during carving.  This means that wet meat actually ends up drier after cooking than dry aged meat and vice versa.

The result of this wet aging in vacuum wrapped plastic is typically paler in color appearing more wet and soggy compared to slower grown beef which should be shiny but not sweaty.   In a frying pan store purchased meat will give off a lot of water which makes it difficult to brown the outside.  Once bitten into, store purchased meat is typically more dry and the texture is soft.  The flavor is typically on the outside and not the inside of the meat.  This means that the taste is typically 'short' with a burst of flavor and then  blandness.  With good meat, the flavor should intensify with chewing.

12/25/2010

 

Reading a great book I received as a Christmas present from my ever thoughtful brother-in-law and family entitled "The River Cottage Meat Book".  The author, Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall, makes a very compelling ethical argument for the non-commercial production of beef.  He states that we may claim the moral authority to kill animals for food only on the basis that we are offering them a better deal in life than they would get without our help.  This means better health, better survival rates, less pain, less stress, more comfort, suitable food and plenty of it.  Today the vast majority of our food animals are raised under methods that are systematically abusive.  For them discomfort is the norm, pain is routine, growth is abnormal, and diet is unnatural.  Disease is widespread and stress is almost constant. 

 

More importantly it is the consumer that holds the key to whether the industrialization of meat production continues.  If the efficiency of modern agriculture trumps the dark side of how the animals are treated - we are lost.  There is no way of getting around the fact that if you buy something, you support the system that produces it.  Buying meat from producers that practice good animal husbandry, providing abundant natural feed and water, taking care of the animals better than what they could possibly do on their own, and offering them a humane exit from farm animal to food, is a 'vote with your wallet' that condones the latter and thwarts the former. 

 

 

11/11/10

 

Just sent a large load of cattle for slaughter this week and last - 25 head in all.  We will have a good selection of steaks, roasts, and ground beef.  We also got back the 8 pigs that we fed out this summer.  The ham, chops, ribs, sausage, and roasts are just fantastic.  I'm anxious to have other people try them.

 

9/12/2010

The Springfield Farmer's Market continues to go very well.  It's really fun to talk to customers and find out what their needs are.  It is especially gratifying to have repeat customers come up and say how much they enjoy our grassfed beef.

This week our first set of Berkshire pigs go to slaughter.  We're going to have roasts, chops, tenderloin, bacon, ham and sausage that should be a great eating experience.  No nitrites of course.

8/8/2010

Spent the last couple of Saturdays at the Springfield Farmers Market.  What a great turnout!  It's great to see such a vibrant crowd looking for locally grown food.

The hot weather is really hard on the cattle.  The combination of temperatures in the 90s, high humidity and the black hided skin of the Angus cattle makes for a dangerous situation.  We've already lost a few calves in part due to those factors.  There is a report in Farm Talk that in the state of Kansas 2,000 head of cattle were lost over a 2 day period last week due to similar risk factors.

Finished reading a book called "Steak" by Mark Schatzker while on vacation a couple of weeks ago.  I great, great read.  This book is equal parts informative and humor.  It details the author's worldwide quest to find the perfect steak.  After traveling to Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, France, Scotland, Italy, Japan, Argentina and back to the U.S. he makes some very thoughtful insights.  One (not surprising to those of us in the grassfed business) is that grassfed steak on balance can be a much better eating experience grainfed steak with the important caveat that bad steak is bad steak - no matter how its fed.  Another insight that he gains during his travels is that grain can help make up some of the difference with bad steak.  By adding marbling with grain, and thus some juiciness and tenderness, a bad steak eating experience can be made into an average one.  Still the absolute best steak eating experiences he had on his travels were with grassfed beef.  There are no good scientific explanations for this - only anthropological ones.  Cattle have been domesticated for perhaps 20,000 years and have been eating grass the entire time until just after World War II, thus their evolutionary machinery is designed for the consumption and use of grass.

Schatzker also observes that the American notion of what makes for good steak is not shared by the rest of the world -  namely a quest for the right amount of marbling to make the steak more tender.  For example, in France the most prized beef is older when it is slaughtered and has little marbling in it because the French feel that the marbling suppresses the beef flavor or what is referred to in biological circles as  'umami' - the flavor or savoriness of meat.  Same for Scotland and Italy.  Conversely in Japan the marbling is taken to the extreme with thin slices of Kobe beef riddled with fat the ultimate in Japanese beef eating experience.

For those of us who love to raise and eat steak, Schatzker's book is a real treat.  It is a rare opportunity to make a cross-cultural comparison of what we do and how we do it.  For those of you who are also steak-lovers, reading it will give you great insight and a good number of belly laughs.

7/30/2010

Went to the Ozark Empire Fair today and watched one of the many breed cattle shows.  Having shown both market and breeding cattle while growing up I love the smell, sounds and sights that are unique to a cattle show.  I couldn't help wonder in listening to the judge's comments on the cattle as he placed the classes, if the traits that are prized by the judge and, I presume, by seedstock breeders who are showing them, are really meaningful.  For example the primary indicator of whether a cow will stay in our herd year to year is if she weans a live calf under the management conditions that we provide.  If she does that consistently we don't particularly care if she isn't 'level from her hooks to her pins' or 'needs to move out better on her front legs' or 'doesn't have her head correctly attached to her shoulders'.  It seems a lot of what puts a breeding animal at the top of his/her class is the shape of the skeleton - something we only use for dog bones.  Another thought that I had while watching the show was how fat the breeding stock was.  Many of the heifers had obvious fat deposits in their udders - so much in some cases that I would think they would have difficulty getting bred.  I suppose the owners of these animals know what they are doing and wouldn't continue to do it if it wasn't profitable.  Still with multiple reports showing that a minority of cow-calf operators are consistently profitable year in and year out, I wonder if these types of shows are indicators of why our industry isn't more successful.

6/29/2010

Interesting article in USA Today regarding the use of antibiotics in the production of meat animals.  Apparently the FDA has just come to the conclusion that the indiscriminant use of antibiotics in healthy animals may lead to antimicrobial resistant bacteria that could infect humans and ultimately cause infections that were untreatable with known antibiotics.  The FDA is planning to recommend that use of antimicrobials be confined to the prescription by veterinarians and not with healthy animals.  They are leaving the proposed regulation open to public comment for the next 60 days.  Hard to believe it has taken this long for the government to come to such a conclusion.  

6/21/2010

Had an interesting article forwarded to me today from the Wall Street Journal (WSF 6/10/10 D3) comparing grassfed and grainfed beef.  Their panel all liked grassfed beef over grocery store purchased grainfed beef.  They commented that grassfed beef had a "cleaner" and less greasy taste than grainfed beef.  All tasters agreed that the grassfed beef tasted fresher than the comparison grainfed beef.  The article also noted that only 3% of all beef sold in the U.S. is grassfed.  This would make ONB a great source for beef that not only tastes better but is leaner and healthier for you. 

6/14/2010

We're running at about 200,000 lbs/acre on stock density right now...unless I screw it up.  Yesterday I went to move the cattle, dropped the back fence line thinking the cows would walk toward me to fresh green grass and instead - they decided to walk the opposite direction.  Once they discovered new green grass a few hundred yards down the pasture line moving them back to where they were supposed to be was, in the heat of the day, not popular with them.  Fortunately they got thirsty a little later in the day and Daryl was able to get them back to where they were supposed to be in a big mob.  Lesson learned.

6/9/2010

First Springfield Farmer's Market for Ozarks Natural Foods this past Saturday.  We sold organic greens - bibb lettuce, romaine lettuce, spinach and arugula.  We sold 65 bags in a little over four hours.  Also sold 10 bags to the Farmer's Gastropub restaurant in downtown Springfield.

3/31/2010
 

Just came back from purchasing 20 additional heifers from Kent Miller in Gage, OK.  Kent has very similar philosophies as we do at ONB.  He raises his cattle without grain, hormones or antibiotics on native pasture in the panhandle of Oklahoma.  Kent uses bulls from sources that I trust such as Ohlde Cattle Company in Palmer, KS and Pharo Cattle Company in Cheyenne Wells, CO.  Both have the type of moderate framed, easy fleshing cattle that finish well on grass and perform well in our environment.

4/13/2010

Lots of heavy lifting this weekend as we put in our organic certified raised bed gardens - 78 of them.  We plan to eventually couple the production and sale of these vegetables with our beef.

5/9/2010

This weekend we brought in 8 feeder pigs that will follow behind the cattle in the pasture.  We are feeding the pigs grain in addition to their consumption of grass in the pasture.  We have rigged up the pigs' house so that the cattle cannot access the pigs' grain plus it can be towed with the gator and moved behind the cattle as they strip graze.  

5/23/2010

Have read more stories this week about growing interest in locally grown food.  Whether it is the Slow Food movement or the concern about meats and vegetables coming from unknown places grown by unknown people there seems to be more and more interest in knowing where our food comes from.  I see our immediate challenge at ONB as continuing to hone the policies and procedures that will allow us to run an efficient, profitable and sustainable business and thus clear the way to scale up our production and meet that growing demand.