Ninja Cow Farm LLC

Yesterday I had to drive to South Carolina and back for a meeting. On the way back, I stopped by the new farm we leased to check on the cows. I found them just off the road thankfully so I could just hop the fence and walk in and check on them. It was a relatively cool day, about 82 degrees. The cows were happily grazing the grass that barely showed any signs of their efforts. They really seemed to enjoy the trees interspersed in the grassy fields allowing them to graze in the shade. Also, the trees are pretty low so the cows could walk under them and scratch their backs, something they really enjoy being able to do.

Overall they seemed really happy and content. The calves were off hiding in the woods having their own adventure. The cows will stay at this farm for about a month then come back here for a month’s rotation around our pastures. By then we’ll likely be feeding hay so they’ll be here for the winter, unless our new farm has some rye planted in the fields. If that’s the case, we’ll head back over to graze the rye down at least once this winter.

This article came across my news feed recently.

Consumer Reports, which generally has a pretty decent reputation for checking things fairly, has found that cows raised in conventional (read: Industrial) settings have a higher count of bad bacteria and a higher count of anti-biotic resistant super bugs. Interestingly, and not really discussed in this article, non-industrial meat still had both troublesome bacteria such as e. coli and super bugs. Hmm, what does that tell us.

My theories:

1. Bacteria is everywhere and is normal. The idea that we have anything perfectly clean just isn’t correct, as shown in this episode of  Mythbusters. So that means we need a strong immune system to handle the contamination that is inherent living in our world.

2. Organic isn’t a magic talisman. When people see organic meat, they picture this. 

When what Organic really looks like is a lot more like this. 

You cannot produce the amount of Organic beef in the time that we as consumers have demanded it, in the volume that we have demanded it, on the schedule that we have demanded it, for any kind of reasonable price without the picture above.

I’m not saying this type of system is bad, I’m saying that most people paying that extra premium at Whole Foods thing they are buying the first picture and in reality they are buying the second picture where the only real difference in the cows life is that the grain is Organic instead of conventional. This isn’t hyperbole, I’ve sat next to big Organic producers in grazers schools and talked about their management systems. By and large they came from the conventional world and they still operate a conventional system, just now with Organic inputs.

However when you come to our farm, you see this. 

And that is how the cows are every day. There are no feed bunks on our farm. No grain silos. It’s forage and produce, that is it. I think you’d find that we don’t produce super bugs or contaminated meat. We produce proteins the way God intended.

Yesterday we accomplished something we’ve been working on for some time. Our cows moved to a completely new farm that we’ve just leased. This additional acreage almost doubles our grazing land allowing us to add about 20 more cows to our herd. More cows in the herd means less times we are out of beef and a steadier supply over the course of a year, all good news.

We had the cows temporarily on our farm while we (Miguel) finished some repairs on the fencing at the new farm. When we started the voltage on the hot wire didn’t even register. A couple of days of work, being stung by wasps multiple times, being bitten by fire ants multiple times (all Miguel) and it was ready to go. We went from no reading to “Hi” on the volt meter meaning it was above 16,000 volts. Since 6,000 will keep most any cow in, I think we are good to go. Miguel kept trying to get me to touch the hot wire. No dice. I know what 10,000 volts feels like. I’m fine not knowing what 16,000 feels like.

The new farm is only about 5 miles away and is beautiful with lush tall grass, watering holes surrounded by trees, rolling hills, etc. This is something we tried to tell the cows. Did the listen? Oh no.

Here the cows are walking into the central paddock where we will put them into the loading corral and load them onto our trailer. They got about 2/3 of the way in and decided to all run back into the pasture. Once in the pasture, they wouldn’t hear of going into the paddock again. After a few laps around the pasture and both Gators being brought into play, we finally got them in and began loading.

We put the cows in a temporarily closed off area with grass, trees, and water. It is only a few acres so it’s easier to see how they adapt to a new environment and let them establish a new routine. The new farm is much bigger than the 30 acres of grazing we have access to so it was important that moms reunite with babies and the herd becomes a herd again before we turn them loose to roam.

By the time this above picture was taken the cows had been on the new farm for a few hours. The look they gave me seemed to indicate that I wasn’t welcome because I’d probably make them leave. Kind of like when you visit your kid’s dorm room in college. Glad to see you, did you bring money, you need to leave because my girlfriend is coming over.

I took it to mean that they were happy.