A New York Times article out today highlights a 3-decade nutrition study comparing grass-fed beef to grain-fed beef.
From the article:
Beef from grass-fed animals has lower levels of unhealthy fats and higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are better for cardiovascular health. Grass-fed beef also has lower levels of dietary cholesterol and offers [...]

A while back we made contact with a woman who grew up on our property in the 1950s.  Renee was kind enough to share some pictures, and I’ve finally gotten around to scanning a couple of them, as well as found the approximate point that they were taken from in order to do a photopoint [...]

As the last post indicated, food security is a pretty compelling issue in the US, and the Northwest in particular. For a state that is awash in good farmland with which to grow enough food to feed all of us, a series of socioeconomic and cultural conditions prevents the food from getting from where [...]

The American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman gave the keynote address at a Farm Bureau conference in Seattle earlier this week. The text of his speech is here.
Wow. Talk about being divisive. It seems to me that the FB Prez just issued a call to arms (literally?) for Farm Bureau members. [...]

Thanks to Karen for tipping me off about an article about the link between drug-resistant bacteria and animals fed antibiotics. Article here.
The article talks about how the rise of (unnecessary) antibiotics use in animals is leading to drug-resistant infections. For readers who aren’t already aware of this, most of the cows, pigs, and [...]

Gene Logsden has a good post up about the piles of corn that end up in the midwest at the end of harvest season. Oh, my aching HFCS.

With the Copenhagen climate talks stuttering along, it seems like past time to throw in some quick comments
The effect of livestock on greenhouse gas emissions are often overrated, if not entirely exaggerated
Pasture is part of the solution to the carbon issue
Some farms are doing it right
And the systems exist to fix the problem
OK, seriously, I [...]

Our friend Clare was interviewed on KBOO recently along with Joel Salatin…quite a coup. I found it especially interesting to hear Joel talk about the massive gullies that were on his land when his family arrived there, since we are dealing with similar legacies of past land abuses.
They talk about land, farm [...]

It’s that time of year again…you have an opportunity to purchase some grass fed beef raised by our neighbors, the Thorntons.  The Thorntons have been on their ranch since the 1930’s, and breed the steers that we raise for our grass-fed beef.  They have 2-3 cows that will be butchered this fall – 1 in [...]

The lack of posts recently can be somewhat attributed to the vagaries and long lists of summer, and somewhat attributed to a bit of farm excitement that happened early in July. I didn’t want to post until I had a complete story, and the story dragged on somewhat.
Now, however, things are back to normal, [...]