Moo Cows

We've been raising our own beef for about 12 years. Back before the building boom in the early 2000's we had some land leased and were actually selling cattle to the feed lots. That's when I started learning about feed lots. I regret that any of my cattle were used for that. A feed lot is a place where cows go to become mass produced, unhealthy food. They stand in a small pen with many other cows being feed as much corn as they will eat for about 150 days. They get really fat during this time. Eventually, they are standing belly deep in cow crap. When they are slaughtered, the crap goes right on in to the slaughter house with them on their hair. That's how e-coli gets in your beef that you get from the store. Cows that are not feed corn do not carry the e-coli bacteria. Hmmmmm imagine that. Cows are not designed to be corn eaters. Cows are bovines and have four stomachs. They are grazers. Grass is their natural food.

All natural, grass feed organic beef on the hoof.

Now we just keep a couple of steers for our own personal consumption. When we get one butchered, we get about 650 lbs of healthy, lean, e-coli free, beef. Our hamburger is amazing, and so is our cube steak, but to tell you the truth, our steaks kinda suck. That's because we don't have all that fat in our steaks. The fat that comes from corn is what makes steaks tender and taste good . I'd rather eat the lean hamburger and know what's in my beef. I know farmers that take sick cattle to the sale. I tell you, the more I learn, the less desire I have to eat anything that comes from a grocery store.  Even if you can't raise your own beef, maybe you can find a farmer in your area that will sell you some. You'll never know until you try.

Bonnie Bell sizing up a steer.

Above is a picture of our Border Collie Bonnie. Her mom was a champion herding dog and I believe she was even on ESPN. Bonnie is a champion frisbee catcher....well not really a champion, but she's good at it, and she'll do it until she collapses. I've seen her do it. She's probably the smartest dog that I have ever seen and outsmarts me every once in awhile. She's getting old now and she's slowing down a lot. I know that one day she will leave us and I am not looking forward to that day. Some people think that I am heartless because I eat animals that I raise. God intended it that way. He gave us dominion over all the animals of the Earth and told us to make food of them. Don't believe me, look it up. It's in the Bible. I'm not gonna tell you where you kind find it yourself. Now I do not believe in cruelty. Our cows have a good life, way better than the cows that you get in the store, and never again will I send one to a feed lot.

Dave can do it!

It you have been reading my blog in it's infancy, you can see the direction I am going with this. You can eat healthier, and you can even grow some of your own food no matter where you live. We've already established that processed food is full of chemicals that I can't pronounce and that we have no idea what chemicals and pesticides are on the produce in the grocery store. I want to encourage you to grow some of your own food. It's better for you, and it can be very enjoyable.

Dave stands next to his pole beans. Behind him are Blueberries.

Meet my friend Dave. Dave lives in town on a regular size lot. I was at his house today and you should see all the fruits and vegetables he has growing and all in a kinda small space. I saw green beans, yellow beans, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, blue berries, peaches, oranges, and even pineapples. I probably missed some too.

These blueberries are delicious!

All of his plants look better than mine and he attributes that to his compost pile. He even had tomatoes growing out of the compost pile that looked better than mine. Now he has been at it longer than I have and he soil is in much better condition, but mine will get there.  Dave and his wife Nellie put all of their kitchen scraps in the pile. I took a peek at the bottom. Dark rich compost is waiting to be added to his garden.

Dave's secret, compost!

 Dave can probably disconnect from the grocery store as far as fruits and vegetables are concerned. In a very small space he is raising enough food to feed a family. All of his vegetable beds look very neat and compliment his yard nicely. Every thing is trimmed and well taken care of.

In this small space, Dave has onions, cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes. All that food in a small attractive bed.

You really have no excuse for not taking charge of the food your family is eating, even if it is just growing one tomato plant. It would be a good start and when you taste the difference between a store bought tomato and a home grown one, I think you'll try more vegetables.

This is the first time that I have ever seen pineapples growing. I was stoked!

Fun on the Farm

Today started off just like any other day. Up with the chickens, feed the dogs, feed the chickens, water the chickens, add worms to the compost pile, plant cucumbers, plant carrots, plant lettuce, clean manure out of the chicken coop and add it to the compost pile. Then it got fun.

This hen is not just a source of eggs, she makes the fertilizer for our garden too!

My buddy Tim has been wanting some cow manure to put in his garden. Since I have a never ending supply of fresh cow crap, I told him to come on over. He showed up with some help and a trailer to get it. It didn't take long to fill up a trailer with five of us shoveling the manure, so since I am a 14 year old trapped in a 50 year old's body, I started goofing off. Kyle started pitching cow patties to me and I was hitting them with a shovel. Manure would fly everywhere. Yep doesn't take much to amuse me.

Matt gives this load of manure the "Thumbs Up" while Brian just keeps working.

In all seriousness, cow manure and chicken manure make great fertilizer. My goal is to totally be able to grow my vegetables next year with no chemical fertilizer. I am composting the manure and my wife Melinda is going to be starting a worm farm soon. The castings from the worms and the liquid from the process make the best fertilizer you can get. I am just done with all the chemicals and additives that are in our food these days. Did you know that chemicals that have been banned in this country are still used on crops in the countries that import food to us? Did you also know that less than 2% of these imported vegetables and fruits are inspected upon entry to this country. It's a challenge to find a vegetable or fruit in the grocery store that is from the good ole USA. So we can safely say that most of that produce has no certain criteria that it has to meet before it gets on your table. Who knows what it's been sprayed with. I am not trying to scare you, just make you aware of what you are eating. Now just because something is from the U. S. doesn't mean it's safe and healthy. I know a farmer that has treated human sewage dumped in his pastures. It doesn't smell like it's been treated too much. His cows eat the grass that it's dumped on, thus ingesting the human sewage. After they do this for a few months, they are loaded on a trailer, taken to the sale, and if you buy your beef at a grocery store, ultimately end up on YOUR hamburger bun.

A chemical free Sweet Banana Pepper just about ready for our table.

That's why we are disconnecting from the grocery store. I have big plans for our 5 acre homestead. As I make progress, I'll keep you up to date and hopefully inspire some of you to disconnect too, even if it's only starting a container garden on your patio. I can do it,and you can do it too. I believe Thomas Jefferson once said  " Farming is the backbone of Democracy". I'll post about my feelings on that at a later date. Don't want to scare you off too soon. LOL

You can do this!

Do you know what you are eating? Do you know what's in your food? Take a look at the labels. I can't even pronounce the ingredients in most foods that you buy everyday on the grocery store shelves. Our bodies were not designed to eat chemicals, we were designed to eat food. Did you know that the beef that you buy in the store was kept in a feed lot and feed corn 24/7 for 150 days? Cows are bovines and not supposed to eat corn. Cows are meant to eat grass. If a cow is feed nothing but corn, it will die from fat buildup in the blood. That same fat is going into your blood when you eat feed lot cattle. I can go on and on with examples of large scale corporate farming and how unhealthy it is for you. When you pack animals into small spaces with no room to move, and they stand in their own feces and urine until they are slaughtered, you are going to have disease. No way around it. So to counteract these diseases, your food is pumped full of antibiotics.

I'm gonna pick this one today!

My wife and I used to raise a lot of our own food. We have five acres and have been raising our own beef for years. We kept a small garden and ate wild game that I harvest during the hunting season. But we got busy just like everybody else and slowly starting depending on the grocery store more and more. We were working and chasing our kids around as they played sports all year long. We ate fast food a lot. We had to do that right? There was no time for anything else. Well I packed on the pounds and started having some health issues. Our kids are all grown up now so there are no excuses. We actually started a few months ago becoming "disconnected from the grocery store", that's what I like to call it. We built a compost pile. My wife is really into it. She saves every little kitchen scrap to go into that thing. I will blog more on composting later. We then built a chicken coop and purchased 12 chicks from the feed store. We will start getting fresh eggs in about 10 more weeks. The egg shells go into the compost pile. When the chickens stop laying, they will be replaced and become chicken pie. I can already hear some of you  gasping, " he's gonna kill the chickens?" I used to work for a major poultry producer and trust me on this, my chickens will have a much better and longer life than the ones you buy at the store. We planted a decent size garden which includes, green beans, yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers, sweet onions, watermelons, and we have pumpkins growing that I didn't plant. They came up from a pumpkin we had in the compost pile. I guess my pile didn't get hot enough to kill the seeds.

One of our girls, she'll be laying soon.

You don't have to have 5 acres to grow your own food and eat healthy. You can grow vegetables and fruit in the smallest of yards. You can even grow in containers on your patio. I have a friend that lives in town and he has a small yard. He has oranges, peaches, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, and all kinds of things growing in his back yard. He has them arranged in flower beds and everything looks neat and well kept. He has a compost bin that he made that looks very neat. You can buy your meat from local growers. You don't have to eat meat that is full of chemicals, growth hormones, and antibiotics. Did you know that cows that feed on nothing but grass do not carry e-coli? You can keep a few chickens in a small coop or almost everybody knows somebody that has chickens and you can buy eggs from them. This food you buy will cost a little more than mass produced food, but that's only at the register. It will save you plenty in the long run and may even save your life.

What's more natural than this?

I will be blogging on what we are doing and things we are trying on our small family farm. I will keep you up to date on our road to disconnecting completely from the grocery store.