Honest Meat

Pictures Say It All...

All of these gorgeous pictures were taken by Linda Ozaki of Wink Photography at the TLC Ranch spring farm tour on April 25, 2009.  The last photo is our baby back ribs, artfully prepared by Linda's husband, Lorin, who has a Watsonville-based catering business called Rib King.

Raising Heritage Turkeys- One Farmers Perspective

We certainly are getting a lot of attention these days.  We are Bourbon Reds, part of a group of turkeys called "Heritage" breeds.  We can still mate naturally, although all of us will be on your dinner table before we get the chance.  We can walk normally, fly sometimes, and run around in a flock like a group of teenage girls at a dance.  We are getting a lot of attention because many people consider the older breeds to be superior in a lot of ways- eating qualities, genetic diversity, ability to forage and thrive without a high-grain diet, etc.  There are even a few persevering farmers out there making a living off of heritage turkeys.  My husband and I are not part of that group.

We (not the turkeys, the farmers) added turkeys to our farm mix in 2005 and 2006.  The first year we raised a flock of broad-breasted white turkeys, the standard commercial variety.  We raised them in bottomless hoop houses that protected them from the elements and predators, while still giving them access to forage for bugs and eat grass.  We would move them 1-2 times a day so they always had access to fresh forage and never spent too much time standing on their manure.  The birds grew briskly and sold out quickly.  Most of the birds dressed out between 15-20lbs.  A few foodies and Slow Foodies suggested we try heritage birds.  In 2006 we raised a flock of 80 Bourbon Reds.  We started them earlier than the broad-breasted turkeys because we knew they needed an additional 3-4 months of growing time to get to decent size.  Instead of raising them in the bottomless pens, we allowed them to day-range and then would close them in at night.  Several of them succumbed to predation because they flew over our electric fence (the broad-breasted birds even when outside of their pens could not fly that high).  The birds that survived grew slowly but surely, still consuming nearly as much organic feed as their large, hybridized brothers and sisters.  And when it came time for these hens and toms to meet their maker, they dressed out on the puny end of the scale, between 8-12lbs.  Our customers who had eagerly signed up to reserve a heritage bird were not only disappointed about the size, but they also complained about the higher price tag and the noticeable lack of breast meat.  So the heritage birds cost 2.5 times the price as chicks,  took twice as long to grow out, ate nearly twice the food, and dressed out at half the size. We had to charge $8/lb. and we still made no profits on these birds.  What was curiously frustrating was that these self-described foodies still wanted the size and body shape of a hybrid bird, along with a small price tag.  Even somebody from a local Slow Food chapter still insists that we should be able to raise heritage turkeys for $4/lb.  Unbelievable words from somebody who has never farmed in his life. 

Many farmers are frustrated by the lack of breeding for commercial production, with heritage turkey breeders perhaps focusing on backyard or hobbyist producers.  Breeding for the commercial turkey producer requires better selection of traits such as faster growth, larger body size, better feed efficiency, more breast meat, and uniformity of growth.  It goes without saying, but to resurrect these heritage breeds it has to be profitable for the farmer.  That means better genetics, more quality breeders, wide-spread information on the most effective production systems, and stronger consumer awareness of the time and money it takes to produce these birds.  Also for those of you who champion heritage turkeys, help convince consumers that dark meat is better than white meat, that smaller birds are o.k.,  and that paying a lot for an animal once a year is reasonable and won't break the bank.

Controlled Animal Impact: Part One

I used to manage a 200 acre demonstration farm owned by a non-profit.  As the land manager, I decided to try using goat grazing to clean-up some of the overgrown and fallow areas of the farm.  This was a former crop field that had filled in with mustard, thistles, annual grasses, and poison hemlock.  It did not look nice, appeared to be a fire hazard, and contained a lot of partially buried trash that we wanted to remove.  So I hired our local goat grazing outfit (Sycamore Farms) who brought in roughly 100 Boer goats to tackle some of the ugliest areas.

This is the same area a couple months later after the goats removed the standing dead plant matter, ate the seed heads, and fertilized the poor soils (those pine trees on the right were already dead, you just can't see them in the first photo).  After several successions of goat grazing, and more recently, pig tillage, this area was removed of a truckload of trash, and the weed pressure has dropped significantly.  Hey, who said well managed grazing can't help restore the earth?

Big Hog: Part Three (the alternatives)

Don't you even think about messing with my heirloom tomatoes, fennel, and Genovese basil.  These organic vegetables are mine, all mine!  We get about 8 tons of organic cull vegetables from a neighboring farm, 20 acres of organic pasture and forest, and an organic hog pellet to round out our diet.  We spend our whole lives outdoors, lounging under the shade of trees, rooting around for roots and grubs, building nests out of straw, rubbing against tree trunks when we itch, and attempting to mate with each other at nearly all hours of the day.  It makes us sad to think our brothers and sisters are standing on concrete or metal slats, confined to metal cages hardly bigger than their bodies, with no ability to root, nest, forage, or socialize.  Industrial swine production takes away every natural behavior of the pig, and replaces it with stress, pain, and extreme boredom.

We pigs are happy to know that there is a growing body of farmers across the country who are trying to raise us piggies in a more natural environment and respect our natural behaviors.  Even in the states of Iowa and North Carolina where industrial production reigns supreme and virtually unregulated, more and more small farmers are bucking the system and raising pigs outdoors, free of hormones, antibiotics, and with little to no deleterious effects on the environment.

Although these pig pictures are taken on my farm (well really my husband's farm since he does most of the hard work), they could be from anyone of these natural pork producers.  Some of the ones I could find info. on www.localharvest.org include:

• Coon Rock Farm (Hillsborough, NC)- www.coonrockfarm.com/pigs.html
• Hidden Pond Farm (Selma, NC)- www.localharvest.org/farms/M22782
• Parker Farms (Hurdle Mills, NC)- www.freewebs.com/parkerfarms/
• Gaining Ground Farm (Asheville, NC)- www.localharvest.org/farms/M22690
• Poppy's Knob Farm (Boone, NC)- www.poppysknobfarm.com

There are in fact many dozen more honest, ethical pig farmers in North Carolina and hundreds across the country that you can find on Local Harvest.  I encourage you to ask them questions, buy directly from them, and spread the word to family and friends that factory farmed pork is a plague on this world but good pork is out there and can and should be consumed (that is, if you like bacon, etc.).

(P.S. Feel free to use these pictures as long as you ask me permission!)

Go Ahead- Just Try To Get Past Me

Hi.  My name is Angel.  I know this name seems a little strange given my job, but I think it was given to me as a pun, to make light of what I am not.  I'm not really dangerous around humans, although please don't try to sneak up on my chickens in the middle of the night.  What I am a menace to is coyotes, raccoons, foxes, bobcats, and any other creature that wants to take out a fat chicken or two that I am protecting.

Industrial livestock production sees the presence of predators as a threat, and one that has to be exterminated by force.  Our federal government still spends millions of your hard-earned tax dollars to pay federal agents and private hunters to rid our country of thousands of coyotes, wolves, foxes, and other predators.  These are the same predators that control the populations of our deer, elk, rabbits, squirrels, and other species that are probably nibbling at your garden as you read this.  When we eliminate predators, the shockwave is felt throughout the animal and plant kingdoms (for example, more deer create more pressure on vegetation near waterways, in some cases virtually denuding areas of browse).  Flying creatures such as hawks and owls are also killed, although this practice is illegal but still done nationwide.  Big Chicken (industrial poultry) uses the presence of predators and other wild birds as an excuse to keep their birds completely confined.  Using typical corporate rational, they say this practice of confinement 'protects their poultry from contacting diseases that might be present in wild birds and keeps them safe from predators'.  The picture above shows that you can have poultry ranging unconfined that are also safe from most predators.  Yes a few birds get nabbed by a Red-Tail Hawk or a Great Horned Owl here and there, but that is just a cost of doing business.  This cost gets factored into the price of the product.

There are certainly cases in which predators have to be removed-either physically relocated or killed.  This might happen when a specific animal gets habituated to a site, and despite your best efforts, it will not stop killing your critters.  However, the term habituated is very important to analyze.  Why is this one animal habituated?  Is it because your livestock is always in one place?  Is it because where your animals give birth is not well protected (lots of yummy smells, blood, afterbirth, etc. that will attract predators).  A thoughtful producer would consider all of those things and more before deciding to exterminate the habituated predator.

So next time you buy those eggs, whole chicken, or steak, ask the producer or the butcher how are predators dealt with in that production system.  There is a nascent movement to label animal products as "Predator Friendly", starting out with mostly lamb and wool products raised in the Intermountain West.  However, producers all over are using practices such as electric fencing, guard dogs, guard llamas, noises, lights, and other strategies to prevent predation from occurring without resorting to lethal force.  See the book Livestock Guardians by Janet V. Dohner listed in my Honest Books list for more information if you are thinking about what type of guard animal would suit your production system.

Animals in Their Element

Well, I could start out this new blog talking about the negative aspects of the livestock industry, or I could start out with the positive alternatives.  I think I'll start with the positive.

In full disclosure, much of my discussion of the positive will center around the work that I do with my husband, and that is raising livestock on pasture.  But I will be sharing many more stories than ours, stories of innovative farmers, ranchers, and backyard gardeners raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs in ways that compliment the natural behavior of those animals and honor the natural resources upon which our food must come from.

The purpose of Honest Meat is to challenge your assumptions about animal agriculture, encourage you to question practices of the industrial model, and inspire you to seek out the alternatives.  If you have stories you think others should know about, photos or video of what's right and wrong in animal agriculture, or questions about different practices, please share your thoughts.  I want this blog to be about learning and challenging, but not about name calling or personal attacks.