Ruminations

Recently the New York Times visited Bryn Teg, a farm in the Northern Kingdom of Vermont, that’s owned by Judith Jones. She is a long-time editor at Knopf who edited Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, among many other noted authors, and is herself an author (The Tenth Muse and The Pleasures of Cooking for One). The farm has a small herd of grass-fed beef that includes Black Anguses and Belted Galloways.

Hardwick Beef’s own Michael Gourlay is mentioned in the article as advising Jones’ step-daughter Bronwyn Dunne on the herd and grass-finishing the cattle. Not only does Judith Jones relish the fact that her family is using the land for pasture and raising “contented” cows, but she also enjoys “a return to the true beef flavor that she hadn’t experienced since she was in Paris in her 20s,” as the article notes. “… this is what meat should taste like,” she says.

To read the entire article, click here. 

To read Judith Jones’ blog about her adventures in farming, click here.

Filed by admin at 12:03 am under Better Beef, Nutrition, Diet & Food Politics
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According to Allan Nation, editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, the grass-finished beef market has exploded in the last five years. As interviewed and reported by the North Platte Bulletin, he says the good news for grass-fed beef farmers is this: “Although grass-finished beef amounts to only one-percent of the market, that percent amounts to a billion dollars, Nation told producers at the recent Nebraska Grazing Conference in Kearney.”

Read the interview here.

Filed by admin at 9:20 pm under Beef Marketing
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Yes, the New York Times reports on a farm that offers a vacation for only $332 a night (guests sleep in a tent with a flush toilet and running water). Plus, the guests get to do the work on the farm. What a deal!

This article discusses other farms that offer the chance to pay to get your hands dirty: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/dining/26farms.html?emc=eta1

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In America’s heartland, the New York Times reports on the return of a family’s farmland to raising heirloom crops and restoring local agriculture once again. The Travis family succeeded in buying back the land sold by his grandmother to developers. Now they grow unusual varieties of crops and very successfully sell them to restaurants. They are most pleased to bring back white Iroquois corn that was close to extinction and now is their most sought-after crop. An encouraging story to counter the factory farming throughout the U.S.

Read the full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30food-t-000.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Filed by admin at 7:40 pm under Sustainable Agriculture & Policy
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Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, recently traveled to France, and offers fresh insight into food safety and the reality of live food for people who want to be healthy. In stark contrast to Americans’ preference to have their food arrived pre-packaged, he writes, “the French don’t believe what they’re eating is genuine unless they’ve seen gritty proof of provenance. …”

Later in his column, he concludes, ”The American healthcare debate is skewed. It should be devoting more time to changing U.S. culinary and eating habits in ways that cut the need for expensive care by reducing rampant obesity, to which anxiety, haste and disconnectedness contribute. France has much to teach, guts and all. ”

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Op-Ed%20Columnist:%20%20Advantage%20France%20&st=cse

Filed by admin at 7:29 pm under Food Safety, Nutrition, Diet & Food Politics
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An article at Gourmet Magazine’s website points to one extreme of achieving tender tasty meat. Author Barry Estabrook writes: “Like many people, I am familiar with Kobe lore: These supremely pampered bovines pass their days in almost Zen-like bliss, getting regular massages and subsisting on all the grain they can eat, washed down with cold Kirin beer.”

Upon investigation of the conditions under which Kobe beef are raised, however, he decides he prefers not to order it again at restaurants.

His somewhatdisparaging remarks about grass-finished need to be changed by those of us with Devon beef varieties coming to market with a tender tasty product raised right.

Read the complete article here: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2007/12/kobe_beef_estabrook?currentPage=2

Filed by admin at 3:46 am under Better Beef
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