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News & Recent Events
In mid-September, the Albany-based NPR station WFCR featured the East Quabbin Land Trust's (EQLT) Mandell Hill property in Hardwick, Massachusetts, where Ridge Shinn's beef cattle graze the pastures. The cattle are being pastured in rotation. Both EQLT board member Chris Buelow and farmer Ridge Shinn spoke about the land stewardship being practiced at Mandell Hill, stewardship that combines agriculture and ecological values. The grazing practices on all these fields are modified to facilitate successful breeding by grassland breeding bird species.
Chris Buelow noted "One of our major intentions of this
property is also to work as a model for the community, to
show how working profitable agriculture can be compatible
with sustainable ecology, especially with grassland birds. A
lot of these farmers who were very skeptical of what we were
doing back in 2003 and 2004 and who said they couldn't
work with a lease like this, are now approaching Ridge and
approaching us, and saying you know I've been watching
what you guys are doing and we are starting to see how this
could work."
Mandell Hill is a 200-acre farm overlooking the Ware River valley to the east of
Hardwick center. Historically, the fields were pasture or produced hay and corn. The woods are largely
mixed hardwoods and occupy the steepest and rockiest portions of the property. An abandoned apple
orchard on Barre Road provides food and cover for wildlife.
To learn more about the East Quabbin Land Trust, visit their website at www.eqlt.org/FieldNotes.html.
Naturalist Laurie Sanders each week reports on the ecology and environment of New England for WFCR. Additional programs can be found here: www.wfcr.org/field_notes/index.html.
2007 NADA Conference
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Rotokawa 688 calves
Below: A group of Bakewell collaborators who met at Barlow Ranch to discuss the Rotokawa Devon business.
Grass-Finished Beef Offers Safe
Option to Beef-Hungry Consumers
Contact: Ridge Shinn
Phone: 413-477-6500
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HARDWICK, MA -- While consumers are alarmed by the mad cow crisis, a safe and healthy source of beef does exist in this country, according to producers of "grass-finished" beef. The farming practices linked to mad cow disease are shunned by these farmers, who are taking a different route to the marketplace, with beef fed exclusively on grass and raised according to a strict protocol that specifically forbids grain, animal products, antibiotic-laced foodstuffs, and hormones.
According to Ridgway Shinn, director of the Bakewell Reproductive Center, which was organized to revive livestock farming in the U.S., "People should know where their food is coming from and how it is produced." Shinn is also distributing grass-finished beef through a new company, Hardwick Beef, Inc.
Shinn says that in France, for example, a piece of meat can be traced to the farm where the animal was raised, and the farmer's methods are open to scrutiny. He is working to develop a similar system in this country because the public is increasingly demanding healthy, tasty, humanely raised meat that is source-verified. Many scien-tists, nutritionists, and gourmands now feel that the health and taste benefits of grass-finished beef will answer this demand.
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Contact Ridge Shinn
Hardwick, MA 01037
413-477-6500
Other resources:
www.bakewellrepro.com
www.eatwild.com
www.stockmangrassfarmer.com
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To hear the entire interview,
