A View
Even though it’s late October, we still have some green grass thanks to a mild stretch of weather. Here’s the view from my deck this past week.
Tomatoes?
Some of you know we also run greenhouses. This time of year some of them are full of vine ripe tomatoes that taste like a tomato should taste. We do monitor what is available at the grocery store and this fall we have been appalled to find out where the store tomatoes come from. Thanks to the USDA for finally requiring country of origin labeling. Even during the height of tomato season here in our area, almost all tomatoes in grocery stores are coming in from Mexico. There are a few hothouse hydroponic tomatoes coming from Canada. The only domestic tomatoes I could find in the displays of the major grocery stores come from a huge hydroponic facility in Arizona. Some of our small local grocers have had half bushel tomatoes from Utah. Where will our food come from when the trucks can’t run for a few days?
Please….support your local (and I mean LOCAL) farmers.
2 Years and Grazing
Well Folks, it has been 2 years this month since we launched Bradys Beef. The website is not quite that old yet and my blogging has been pathetic. What we have concentrated on is producing the BEST beef product in the country. Karen and I are pretty happy with the results of that focus. We eat our beef every week and still comment on what great flavor it has. We cannot eat beef at a fast food joint any more. That stuff is pathetic. There is no comparison to great, clean, grass fed beef! This is not even mentioning the great health benefits of grass fed.
An added Plus is how great it is for the animals. Look at our pictures. The cows love this kind of salad bar.
Hot Dogs and Salami
In November I decided we needed to try making a holiday product with a small amount of our beef. In order to get a USDA certified product we had to use our regular butcher and ALSO a USDA certified sausage plant which are almost 200 miles apart. Due to a comedy (or tragedy) of errors on the part of all involved, we ended up with too much, too late, and missed our holiday window. We now have a fairly large inventory of really good Hot Dogs and Salami that we need to sell. It is made from our own great beef, including the steaks and roasts (unfortunately). There are no by-products in this. It is 100% grass finished beef and the taste is terrific. This stuff is fully cooked and vacuum sealed so we can ship almost anywhere. As with all products of this type, there is a nitrite compound added as a preservative. If we sell most of this batch, we may try again and have some of it done without nitrites. The drawback is that without nitrites it has to remain frozen in storage and transport. Time will tell if we ever do it again. In the mean time, enjoy some great salami and hot dogs. They’re great with cheese and crackers, sliced for sandwiches or pizza, or added to a salad, etc.
Grass finished beef in the winter
Lately I have had a few questions about what grass finished means when we have snow and winter weather. It is obvious that there is not a supply of fresh green feed this time of year. Our cattle were doing some grazing up until the last week of December. The second week of December we started feeding some supplemental hay and now in the second week of January we are providing hay for all their feed because the snow is deep enough that all the pastures are covered. Where does our hay come from? All of our hay comes from the fields that we graze the cattle on in the summer–right here on our farm. It is the same mixture of plants that the cows get in the summer, only it has been dried and stored. Even in the winter we do not feed grain. We only use high quality hay. Look at the early part of this blog for pictures of cows last winter. I will try to get some updated photos here in the next few days.
Idaho Grass Finished Beef–why it pays to know
Do you know where your beef comes from? Do you care? Should you care? One of our loyal customers sent us this information. If you eat at fast food joints or let your kids eat school lunchs that include hamburger you may be exposing yourself and your children to this. Copy and paste this link to your browser. http://www.naturalnews.com/027872_ammonia_beef_products.html
Our hamburger is pure clean 95% lean muscle meat with no additives. The other 5% is high omega 3 content fat. I just saw a grocery store ad offering 80% lean ground beef. What’s the other 20%?
Check our website and contact us for Idaho’s best beef. www.bradysbeef.com
Food Inc.
Have you seen this movie/documentary? You will think twice about eating beef again and you may never eat chicken again. This is now available on DVD. My wife rented it from Netflix last week. It is a must see for anyone who cares about what they eat. Just another reason to choose Brady’s Idaho Beef.
What does organic beef really mean?
I read an article today regarding a violation of law by a large organic company which was trying to pass off its product as organic. You can link to what I read at
http://wincustomersusa.com/stockman/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=0&Itemid=9
Here at Brady’s Beef we have never represented ourselves to be certified organic even though most of our practices would certainly qualify. There are a number of reasons we have not and will not certify our farm in the current political climate. The first reason that I mention most often is that we are short on phosphorus content in our soils and we have not found an economicly sound way to rebuild this component without some commercial phos fertilizer.
A second reason is that we are skeptical of government programs and national organic standards backed by the full faith and credit of the US Department of Agriculture. If you reference the above article you will learn two things that should be glaring inconsistencies. First, the agency doing the certifying is paid by the farm being certified. Where’s the logic in this? If my certifier threatens to decertify me, who is going to pay him his fee? The second glaring inconsistency is that if the USDA is the party with the teeth and has the final say on enforcing the National organic standards, why don’t they do it to the maximum allowed by the law? Who is buying off whom?
Once again we see the logic in getting to really know your farmer. Talk to him, go see his farm, tour his processing facilities, and take a little responsibility for knowing where your food comes from.
Chicken bacteria?
Did you see the news article Nov. 30 about the percentage of chickens contaminated with salmonella and camphylobacter? The jist of the report is that 60% of all chicken in the store is contaminated with it, which is a lower percentage than a few years ago. I don’t think this is really news or newsworthy. Salmonella and chicken have been synonomous for most of my lifetime and that is why we have been instructed by those who know that we should cook chicken products thorougly. Proper cooking will kill all the bad bacteria if it’s done right. We need to use some common sense in these matters. The government solution is to increase the inspection bureacracy. If chicken farmers are required to pay for all of that inspection overhead, it will drive more of the local producers out of business, especially the small ones. The net effect will be that more chicken will come from overseas (see my Chinese food blog) where we have no control over inspection or food quality. Let’s be smart, take control over our own food, and avoid the clammer for government solutions.
Sheep?
Here are the woolleys
We have had a traveling band of sheep visit us this week. There are about 1500 using up our last bit of pasture before the winter. The cattle can’t utilize this last bit of low growing feed. Question? Why can’t we find american lamb in our grocery stores?
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